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NEFU expert talks on the reasons for the failure of Yakutia in the geographical dictation

  • 05 March 2018
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NEFU expert talks on the reasons for the failure of Yakutia in the geographical dictation

Photo: Svetlana PAVLOVA / NEFU editorial board

According to the results of the All-Russian Geographical Dictation 2017, Yakutia along with Sakhalin and Chukotka has showed the lowest result (31.6 scores) in the Far East. Speaking of the results, Mikhail Cherosov, the head of the educational programs of the Institute of Natural Sciences NEFU, noted that the event was conducted in order to assess the level of geographical literacy of the population and identify related problems.

There most participants in the dictation were schoolchildren. The organizers of the event focused on general educational establishments to obtain an objective picture of the geographical knowledge level of schoolchildren. "In the first two years, an infrastructure for dictation was created, where anyone could take part in the action. Our republic leads the coverage. Today, there is still no official statistics, where assessing knowledge includes age and social groups factors. Therefore, it is too early to make an assessment now," Mikhail Cherosov said.

As noted by the expert, the dictation was conducted to assess the level of geographical literacy of the population, for the country already faces problems in the field of geography. "Geography is the subject of the world view plan, it has a great educational importance for the younger generation. And the fact that the problems do exist is known to everyone, because the number of geography academical hours is reduced to a minimum. Sometimes in remote schools the subject is taught not by specialists-geographers, but by teachers of a completely different profile. Of course, it's wrong to blame teachers, the results of the dictation show the problems of geographical education in general," the head of the educational programs of INS NEFU.

According to Mikhail Cherosov, the problem that the dictation has revealed will be solved systematically and not immediately. "Through continuous work, the indicators of the level of geographical literacy will improve. If we want to improve the assessment artificially, then we can organize an action only for the adult population, and only interested people will come to us. In this case, of course, the assessment will be much higher, but that is not really what we should aim," the doctor of biological sciences summed up.

Author: Olga SAVVINOVA, NEFU Newsroom

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