A Swedish school has temporarily banned homework, tests and exams throughout April. This caused a new wave of discussion in Russia: should homework and tests be abolished in schools?
A school in northern Sweden has temporarily banned homework, tests and exams for the entire month of April for children in grades 7 to 9. The Unified National Exam will not be cancelled. The reason is concern for the health of students due to stress caused by workload and study. The fact that children are in a state of stress became known after testing. If this measure shows a positive result, then Swedish schools are ready to give up tests and homework for another two months after the summer holidays.
A year ago, it was reported that the Ministry of Education and Science of Kazakhstan would cancel homework for schoolchildren on holidays and vacations and reduce the hours of homework by a third. First graders are asked not to assign homework at all. No more than fifty minutes a day are allocated for homework for second grade students. Seventy minutes - third or fourth. Ninety minutes past five or six. One hundred and ten minutes from seven to nine. And one hundred and thirty minutes in tenths and elevenths.
In Russian schools, March and April are the busiest months. Students write final tests, all-Russian test papers, take the Unified State Exam early, and participate in many Olympiads.
The idea of reducing homework is not new. But this measure is good when the children succeed in everything in the lesson and master the material at least to a C level. Unfortunately, not all schools have such capable teachers and talented children. In addition, classes are overcrowded due to compaction and consolidation. In Russia there is per capita financing: the more children in classes, the more money the school has. As a result, according to HSE experts, 25 percent of our students are unsuccessful.
According to online surveys, only 25% of parents of schoolchildren said that their children spend 1 hour on homework. Almost 29% admitted that the child sits for lessons 4 hours a day or more, 11% - 3 hours and 35% - 2 hours a day.
According to a survey on the RG website “Should tests and homework be canceled due to stress among schoolchildren?”, 37% chose the option “Yes, definitely, children’s health is most important”, 19% - “You can refuse homework, but not tests.” 20% - “You can make decisions only after research and tests.” 18% did not agree with the cancellation: 13% - “No, there is no stress. On the contrary, children have a lot of free time,” 5% — “No, our schoolchildren are constantly under stress, they’re used to it.”
Take note
In Russian schools, in 1st grade there should be no assignments or assessments, in 2-3rd grades they account for 1.5 hours, in 4-5th grades - 2 hours, in 6-8th grades - 2, 5 hours, and from 9th to 11th grade the average student should not spend more than 3.5 hours a day on homework. At the same time, difficult academic subjects, which are usually given a lot of assignments at school, should not be on the schedule on the same day.
Comment by Anton Kolokolov, director of school No. 9, Petrozavodsk:
- The idea is good and correct. I believe that children should work at school and relax at home, since school is an image of future work, a game of work... For this, it is necessary that extracurricular activities, for which the creators of the new Federal State Educational Standards are fighting so hard, must be fully introduced into secondary education. Accordingly, the length of the student day must be increased so that all the main elements of education, integrated into a single educational system, have an effect. In simple words, the knowledge and competencies that are studied or developed at home must be developed at school.
However, a contradiction arises: the opportunity is there, but the funding is insufficient. How will teachers be paid for their work? Solution: paid services, but not all parents are willing to pay, and education in the country seems to be free. Our education system, built on the vertical Germanic (strict hierarchy), presupposes a strict framework. The classroom-lesson system, the need to form a strict set of knowledge, abilities, skills, certain competencies or, as it is correctly called now, universal educational activities, which, by the way, have not been figured out how to evaluate. This system is politically advantageous, it is cheap and simple, everyone obeys all the strict rules that are prescribed in laws, Federal State Educational Standards and other documents. One teacher can teach from 25 to infinity children, and the salary does not depend on the number of trained.
All attempts to introduce tutoring, individualization, an individual approach to each child in public schools, without which it is simply impossible to implement the idea under discussion, a horizontal system of education, etc., end only in attempts and beautiful replies. Unfortunately, the state benefits from such a system. There are altruists who work and are not afraid to try new things, but there are so few of us... And it’s too late to break the system that has developed over the years, unless within the framework of a private organization.
There is a way out - homework should be given in the main subjects and children should not be overwhelmed with assignments in art, art, art, labor, local history, music, and physical education.
The problem of education is now in first place. And it does not lie in the system, because in the USSR there was excellent education, children also did their homework, the programs did not change much and even became easier. The problem is staffing and attitude to work. Many now are not following their vocation, but because they have a long vacation, they took home lessons... People cannot be kicked out of school, but they don’t want to work for the idea, as before, because it is not their vocation... A vicious circle in which to free the school, class, a particular child due to stress from completing a test, independent work is simply impossible. Therefore, children get sick, miss school, and sometimes simply cannot cope with the workload due to fatigue.
Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Education and Science Boris Chernyshov (LDPR) said that a group of deputies will introduce a law to the State Duma to abolish the Unified State Exam. Being one of the authors of this initiative, he gave the following justification: “ The essence of the bill is to cancel the Unified State Exam, which is boring for students and parents, which is aimed not at gaining knowledge, but at “training” on a certain set of tasks. A return to the traditional exam is proposed. This will improve the learning process and make sure that in the final grades children do not prepare for the Unified State Exam, but study calmly and then enter universities.
Most likely, such a bill should be considered part of V.V.’s election campaign. Zhirinovsky. The attitude towards the Unified State Exam in society is still negative, and the LDPR is trying to use it as its asset.
Meanwhile, the idea itself of canceling the Unified State Exam and returning to a two-stage exam system (at the exit from school and at the entrance to the university) is not worth much. To give assessment of students' knowledge first to local teachers, and then to admissions committees of higher educational institutions, means abandoning centralized management of educational processes and losing its quality. The level of knowledge of graduates is guaranteed to go down, and the level of institutional corruption is guaranteed to go up.
The arguments given by Chernyshov are unfounded. The level of knowledge still needs to be checked. Some tasks are used in one way or another to test knowledge. The only question is that the assignments are adequate to the amount of knowledge that should be in the student’s head. Not just primitive tests. And tasks for understanding the topic. It is in this direction that the Unified State Examination is developing.
Why is the Unified State Exam accused of leading to “training”? It is not the Unified State Examination that trains. Teachers train. The school is motivated to ensure that its graduates show good results in the exam. This is what the students themselves want. And the easiest way to achieve a good result is to learn how to solve specific problems. Not to understand the topic, but to learn the solution. A person always strives to take the path of least cost. Schools followed this path when they received the Unified State Examination. Who is guilty? It’s easiest to blame the Unified State Examination. Blaming the teacher is also easy. But this is their natural reaction. People cannot be expected to act in more complex ways than they are directly forced to do. You cannot blindly rely on consciousness.
But this same property will also manifest itself when we roll back to the “two exams” model. It cannot be expected that teachers, being glad that the Unified State Exam filter is turned off, will achieve better learning from their students. They won't achieve it. Rather, they will take advantage of the situation to reduce the stress of the learning process and thereby make their lives easier.
But if the development trend of the Unified State Exam continues, we will come to a situation where the ability to solve problems from options from previous years will not help to get a high score on the current exam. "Training" will work within simple tasks, but the best results will require understanding of the topics. Accordingly, only those who “understand” will be able to get into the best universities. We are already close to this. As soon as the realization that this has happened becomes widespread, the entire attitude towards the educational process will change. “Training” will go away, but high demands will remain. The quality of the educational process will be consolidated at a new level, unattainable under the old conditions of “two exams”,
Antiplatelet agents
Anticoagulants
Conclusion
Thromboembolism is one of the main causes of mortality and disability in patients. To reduce the risk of complications, patients at high risk of thromboembolism receive one or more antithrombotic agents, including antiplatelet agents, anticoagulants, and fibrinolytics. Sometimes such patients need minor oral surgery. This article is a kind of guide for dentists on what treatment regimen should be followed with such patients.
Antiplatelet agents
Antiplatelet agents, as their name suggests, reduce platelet aggregation and prevent blood clot formation; they are often used in the treatment of patients with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. The most commonly used drugs are from the group of cyclooxygenase inhibitors (eg ASA) and inhibitors of adenosine diphosphate binding to receptors (eg clopidogrel).
Although antiplatelet agents may double the bleeding time, this time may still remain within the normal range and therefore not be clinically significant.
The antiplatelet effect of ASA is due to the inhibition of cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1), which prevents the formation of prostaglandin H2 and thromboxane A2. Thromboxanes are responsible for platelet aggregation.
Although a number of dentists recommend that their patients stop taking ASA several days before surgery to prevent the possibility of bleeding, studies show that there is no need to stop taking low doses of the drug (75-100 mg/day). In most cases, the time to stop bleeding in patients who took ASA and in patients who stopped taking it did not differ. In addition, according to one study, there is also no need to discontinue high doses of ASA (325 mg/day) before removing one tooth. Thus, it is necessary to eliminate the practice of discontinuing low (and in some cases high) doses of ASA before minor oral surgery.
In fact, discontinuation of ASA use itself may lead to a higher risk of complications (eg, acute heart failure) than the risk of intra- and postoperative bleeding.
Clopidogrel works by inhibiting adenosine diphosphate (P2Y12) receptors. It is prescribed in cases where there are contraindications to ASA - for example, due to allergic phenomena, intolerance to ASA or gastric ulcer. If indicated, clopidogrel is combined with ASA to prevent thrombus formation - for example, after coronary artery bypass grafting due to a previous ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction.
According to research results, taking clopidogrel does not increase the patient's tendency to intra- and postoperative bleeding. Based on this, we recommend not stopping this drug before performing minor oral surgery.
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen, also play a role in prolonging the time to stop bleeding because they inhibit cyclooxygenase. However, they are not used specifically to prevent platelet aggregation.
Anticoagulants
Anticoagulant therapy with heparin is used to treat and prevent venous thromboembolism. Both unfractionated and low molecular weight heparins are used, although the latter are considered the “gold standard” due to better medicinal properties and fewer side effects. Heparin is a cofactor for the activation of antithrombin, which, in turn, affects blood clotting factors II and X. According to research, there is no need to discontinue heparin therapy for patients before minor oral surgery.
The oral anticoagulant warfarin is used to prevent arterial thromboembolism in patients with atrial fibrillation and artificial heart valves. It is also given to patients with deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism.
Warfarin, as a vitamin K antagonist, interferes with the production of vitamin K-dependent blood clotting factors (factors II, VII, IX and X). Warfarin is used under the control of the international normalized ratio (INR); INR between 2 and 3.5 is considered normal therapeutic values.
Most authors believe that when the INR is below 4, there is no need to cancel or change the use of anticoagulants, since hemostasis can be achieved by local means. However, if the patient’s INR goes beyond the therapeutic corridor, the dentist must consult with a therapist before performing surgery and adjusting treatment.
- First of all, all operations should be performed in the morning, so that there is time to control the development of immediate bleeding, as well as at the beginning of the week, in order to be able to take timely measures if delayed bleeding occurs (1-2 days after surgery).
- The use of local means: tamponade and vascular ligation will also help in controlling hemostasis.
- Oxidized regenerated cellulose hemostatic dressings (eg, Surgicel, Ethicon, Somerville, NJ), gelatin sponges (eg, Gelfoam, Pfizer, New York, NY), and fibrin glue (eg, Tisseel, Baxter Corporation, Mississauga, ON) also play a role. ).
- To prevent bleeding, it is recommended to treat the oral cavity with a 4.8% solution of tranexamic acid and a 25% solution of epsilon-aminocaproic acid.
Conclusion
As a rule, there is no need to cancel or change the anticoagulant or antiplatelet therapy regimen before performing minor oral surgery. In this case, you need to focus on the severity of the patient’s condition and the presence of concomitant diseases.
The Legislative Assembly of Karelia submitted to the State Duma a bill to abolish the Unified State Exam in Russian language and mathematics. Deputies propose returning essays and tests.
It is proposed to cancel the final certification for the Unified State Exam. Make the unified exam in the Russian language voluntary, like the rest of the entrance exams. Consider the final essay as a GVE in the Russian language, giving schools the right to evaluate it independently,” says the explanatory note to the bill.
As planned by the authors, the Unified State Examination in mathematics will be canceled, and the State Examination in this subject will be carried out in the form of a “final test based on the program for grades 10-11.” At the same time, the Unified State Exam will remain the entrance examination to higher educational institutions.
Deputies are going to introduce GVE in stages. In the first two years, the final exam in mathematics and the Russian language will be held voluntarily in those schools that are ready for this. In other schools, graduation certification will be based on assessments of current performance. “In two years, the GVE in mathematics and the Russian language will become mandatory for everyone. The proposed bill makes it possible to restore mandatory GVE for all basic educational programs of secondary general education,” the legislators decided.
In January, LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and deputies Alexei Didenko and Mikhail Degtyarev already introduced a bill to abolish the Unified State Exam. In 2013, deputies from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation introduced a bill providing for passing the Unified State Exam on a voluntary basis. The initiative was rejected. The proposal to make passing the Unified State Exam voluntary is contained in the A Just Russia program.
What do famous people of Russia and Karelia think?
Galina Vasilyeva, deputy of the Karelian parliament:
– You know that the results shown by our graduates, especially in mathematics, are very weak. And “training” for the Unified State Exam shows precisely the fragile knowledge of our students. This has resulted in the school performing the functions that higher education should perform.
Alexander Merkushev, deputy of the Karelian parliament:
– School is becoming a profanation of knowledge – as a result of the Unified State Exam, students who cannot master mathematics at the level of mechanics and engineers enter universities. We will soon completely lose the education system in the country if we continue to leave the Unified State Exam in the form in which it exists. There is a huge group of tutors working, but the output is nothing - universities are groaning because people are coming who are not able to study.
Emilia Slabunova, chairman of the Yabloko party:
– I have a positive attitude towards the Unified State Exam. This is just a tool that helps determine the quality of education, as well as identify problems in the educational sphere. You and I would probably be surprised if a person with a fever began to protest against thermometers and demanded that they be abolished. The Unified State Exam has revealed many problems in the field of education, and it will, of course, not be possible to solve them using the old format exam, which many opponents of the Unified State Exam advocate for. We all remember very well the collections of “gold” and “silver” essays, how teachers dictated answers to exam questions, which graduates then literally memorized, tutoring by university teachers “with a guarantee of admission to a university” and the scale of corruption in the field of education. A few years after the Unified State Exam was introduced, a large study was conducted to determine who was for and against the Unified State Exam. It turned out that there were three categories against it: students who did not want to study, teachers who found it difficult to prepare children for this difficult exam, and universities that used corruption schemes. Accordingly, those who support the Unified State Exam are children who want and can study (after passing the exam, many doors are opened for them), teachers who are able to qualitatively prepare for any exam, and universities that refuse some kind of corruption and gray schemes. Of course, the Unified State Exam itself needs to be improved, but, first of all, it is necessary not to oppose the instrument, but to solve the problems of the education system.
Viktor Bolotov, scientific director of the Center for Monitoring the Quality of Education at the Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics:
– The abolition of the Unified State Exam will not give any advantages to Russian education. And it’s true that the content of measuring materials needs to be improved. But this work is underway. The latest VTsIOM survey showed a sharp increase in the confidence of the Russian population in the Unified State Exam. Therefore, I think this slogan “Down with the Unified State Exam” is from the “Moscow for Russians” series. This is a stupid initiative. Not a single country in the world that introduced a national exam has canceled it. This is already irreversible.
Alexey Semenov, rector of Moscow State Pedagogical University:
– It seems to me that the Unified State Examination process is moving in a positive direction. Another thing is that any idea can be spoiled or poorly implemented. I think the movement was in the right direction from the very beginning. Now those shortcomings that existed have been largely eliminated, and certain developments are underway.
Vladimir Filippov, rector of RUDN University:
– Rectors often reproached me: “We accept applicants based on papers, we need to look them in the eyes!” But earlier in universities, during entrance exams, they looked not in the eyes, but in the pocket, trying to force them to pay, either legally or illegally. And do not forget that the Unified State Exam has made admission to universities accessible to many capable schoolchildren from remote regions. And for such a huge country as Russia, this is especially important. Children from Russian regions will again be forced to travel to large cities to try to enroll in the country's leading universities. People will have to send their children from Siberia and the Far East to Moscow, St. Petersburg, so that the children buy tickets and try to enroll in a specific university. People don't have money for this. We understand perfectly well how it was in its time. It will be necessary for parents to choose special paid courses at a given university, and tutors would be hired only from this university. And, of course, I emphasize, millions of people in Russia will be against a return to this system. And these PR people will lose the voices of millions of people who understand that a more transparent, more objective system of admission to higher education institutions has been created.
Vladimir Burmatov, State Duma deputy:
– I have a number of systemic complaints about the Unified State Examination. However, it is impossible to cancel the Unified State Exam, since this will lead to a change in the rules of the game during the game itself; it will require introducing changes to all Russian legislation related to both general and higher education, and this is definitely not needed by anyone. The first complaint is that the exam is stressful. In Russia, the final test of knowledge takes place within the framework of the presumption of guilt of the student.
The second systemic complaint about the Unified State Examination is the corruption surrounding this exam. It should be admitted that earlier corruption as a phenomenon was recorded in universities and schools, and even today it has not gone away, but has simply “gone” to the federal level. It is not necessary to throw the Unified State Exam instrument into the trash, but to fire those people who are responsible for its implementation.
