The review about the book

А.С.Валявского, А.С.Яковис

Оздоравливающие учебные игры.

Часть первая: Практикум.

Информация к действию для практичных родителей.

СПб.: ТЕССА, 2001

of I.A. Kolesnikova

Doctor of Pedagogics, Professor

Full member of Academy of Humanities

Deputy Director of Institute of Adults' Education

A present to parents, children and teachers!

It is really a great luck that apart from specialists inventing all kinds of tests aimed to expose a child's inability to learn, which means, defective state of mind, there exist some people in Russia deeply convinced that if one comprehends the nature of child's difficulties in his interaction with the world, the people and himself – it would be possible to help him.

One of such persons is Andrey Stepanovich Valyavsky. All of his works lie within the author's system of professional/personal purports and values, within ethical pedagogics. I would call it differently – the pedagogics of real humanism, effectual humanism directed towards not a human being only, but a particular child, teenager, adult, with his particular problems and difficulties in education and upbringing.

Andrey Stepanovich's previous book was entitled "How to understand a child". This name has much in common with the well-known Ya. Korchak's book "How to love a child", for the science of love to children supposes, in the first place, teaching the adult to understand the child and the processes shaping and forming his development from within.

The book is universal to a great extent as it is based on the knowledge of fundamental properties of human brain connected with perception and processing of information. It is written, like the other author's publications, in a perfect, figurative Russian language. Andrey Stepanovich has the ability to talk so simply about extremely complicated things not only because he reflected profoundly for many years as a pedagogue and philosopher on the problems of person's development and upbringing, but also because he managed to verify experimentally as a brilliant practitioner the authenticity of his pedagogical conjectures and insight recoveries. Many teachers, parents and children in different regions of Russia recollect the meetings with him, his lectures, seminars, classes.

I have no doubt that the new book being a practical aid will be interesting to a broad audience, in the first place to those who comprehend what is implied beyond the text, that is, to specialists handling human problems. It is these people who will be able to see beyond the shell of very simple - on the face of it - games an extremely complicated system launching the mechanisms of development and recovery of the child's organism and will be pleasantly surprised by subtle methodical stratagem that the author was able to conceive.

The book will be not less interesting and useful to the parents who do not understand many things so far, in particular, why their child is not so talented and successful as they would like to see.

It would be very useful if the teachers who would like to understand the reasons of their professional failures in the work with some (or even with many) children trusted the author and realised what things should or may be corrected, when facing the children's or teenagers' inability, ignorance, lack of understanding.

Finally, the practical aid will be an excellent present to those who feel they are not always understood by parents and teachers, namely, to children. It is for them that the authors compiled under one cover over 80 games that will be of interest to those who realise that playing the games will help them to solve their own problems which can not sometimes be conveyed to adults.

The acquaintance with the materials collected in the book must convince the reader that the results of development diagnostics gained through some dispatcher programme is not a verdict at all, but just a reference point for joint application of adult's and child's efforts aimed at self-correction, being the change in which the recovery (physical, mental, intellectual, social) is coupled with learning, in the first place, self-actualisation and self-perfection. It is important that this book represents collected "recipes" for teaching and physical rehabilitation not only of a child, but of an adult as well, for each of the taken steps will favour relax of psychic strain that many people have, not understanding the causes of failures of their offsprings, without being able to help him.

There are so many opportunities for creative cooperation of all family members if they work over every part offered by the author. The variety of routes is numerous… Good luck!

I.A. Kolesnikova

Doctor of Pedagogics, Professor

Full member of Academy of Humanities

Deputy Director of Institute of Adults' Education

under Russian Academy of Science

The review about the book

А.С.Валявского, А.С.Яковис

Оздоравливающие учебные игры.

Часть первая: Практикум.

Информация к действию для практичных родителей.

СПб.: ТЕССА, 2001

of Sergey Yurievich Afonkin

Teacher of highest qualification category,

author of many manuals and books

ADDRESS TO THE READER

The technical progress is incontestable. We see its results every day around us. Moreover, we actively make use of the product of this progress in our everyday life. We watch TV, talk on the phone, sometimes using the cellular phone. We switch on the computer at the office or at home. There is no need to mention transport – we just would not be able to imagine the present-day life without it. As concerns the progress in pedagogics, the situation is not so perfect here.

Of course, there exist teachers-innovators whose names have been known to the whole country, but there is a very small opportunity to bring your child a class tutored by such teacher. His famous school is located thousands of kilometers from you. Moreover, it is sometimes late to set hopes upon teachers if the problems with the child started before he went to school. Naturally, one may go to the library, read clever books and articles of doctors of pedagogics - we have a pedagogical academy, apart from other things. But how can you find among hundreds of books and articles the one you need, that will help you to find the solution of the problem or outcome from a difficult situation and help your child? This is not simple at all. The reasons are below.

First, usually such articles are written in a specific scientific language that can be understood only by a specialist. Second, their contents are often devoted to merely theoretical issues that are unlikely to give an answer to a question what you should do with your own child in the situation when he is not… (you may complete the problem yourself).

It seems, the search of reasons resulting in particular problems in a child's development is a subtle thing. It is more complicated than looking for car faults. Not in the imported one, with in-built electronics, but in our home-made car. Even a fresher in the field of automobiles may cope with some failures independently if he looks into a manual which says: "If the car does not start you need to…". Next it gives a list of units that should be checked. Normally it helps. The thing is that we proceed from the assumption that all cars of the same make leaving the conveyor have the same structure. Breakdowns do happen, but if their reason has been identified it is not a big deal to eliminate the defect.

The child is not a car, and human psyche is a complicated thing. In order to cope with the problems arising in the process of child's development efficiently, one should know how this psyche works. At first sight this task seems to be impracticable for an average parent. Leave alone the parents! Even the specialists vaguely comprehend the profundity of processes taking part in human brain. However, parents do not need to go into such depths. To provide effective help to the child, the parents just need to base their efforts on a simple model that will explain the origin of the problems and give recommendations how to remove them. If the results are positive what else should be required?

Models like these have been developed for many years already by Andrey Stepanovich Valyavsky, doctor of philosophy, academician of International Academy "Informatisation, communications, management in technologies, nature, society". One of the models is briefly reduced to the following: the information enters the child's brain through three channels – visual, audial and kinaesthetic; next it is processed and is expressed in the form of speech, actions and other reactions; failures in one of these blocs (input – processing – output) will result in certain problems.

The ideas that a man perceives information from hearing, with his eyes and with the help of tactile sensation is not a novelty, of course. Everyone knows this. Most people do not go beyond this statement deeming it to be a commonplace. It is similar to being limited to the assumption that the Earth is round, without any idea of contours of its continents and oceans.

It appears that if one looks into how a child hears, sees, senses, how these channels interact, how the information coming through them into the brain is processed, one may find a lot of interesting, in fact not only find out, but also get practical instructions as how to help the child.

One should not forget two things, naturally. The first: the scheme of perception and processing of information used in the book is just a simplified model of child's psyche. The reality is always more complicated than the models and schemes used by people to learn it. However, this is a working model, that is, true prognostication of consequences of particular situations, providing practical advice how to avoid certain nuisances. The second: one should not forget that the child is not a machine. It is impossible to achieve positive results without loving him, respecting his personality, whatever methods are used by the pedagogues and parents. On the other hand, love as such is not sufficient. One should know how to use it for the child's benefit. This is what is communicated in the book you are holding.

Remember the analogy with car breakdown? Well, as a first approximation one may think that all children are born similar; however, they show specific peculiarities in the process of their development. One child may have more developed logical thinking, but the imagination is poor, the other child is more attentive, while the third one feels difficulty staying/sitting in one position, but he is more active. The way to correct the child's weak points independently "on the way" – this is what Andrey Stepanovich Valyavsky's book tells us about. The book is written jointly with his disciple, student of St. Petersburg University of Pedagogics Alexandra Sergeevna Yakovis. This book and the games presented in it helped me, being one of its first readers, to understand better many of my pupils and their parents.

Sergey Yurievich Afonkin

Teacher of highest qualification category,

author of many manuals and books