Development of “sacredness-morality” concept in Russian pedagogical education of the last century

Introduction. The article is the result of analyzing complex dual-core concept of “Sacredness and Morality” in the discourse of educational text on pedagogy. Aim and objectives. The purpose of this study is to develop a model of the concept for pedagogical discourse, including its basic conceptual features. Materials and Methods. Conceptological analysis made it possible to develop a system of conceptual features for each of the nuclear concepts. Results. The structure of the concept has five conceptual features characteristic of both nuclear concepts: ideality, complexity, achievability, social and individual conditionality. The resulting model was applied to the textbooks on pedagogy of pre-Revolution, Soviet and post-Soviet periods. In all cases, it established incomplete relationship with the original linguistic form. In preRevolution period, concept structure did not expose two cores, sacredness concept had a complex structure and is individually conditioned, possibility of its full implementation was rather denied, verbal signs of its dependence on social attitudes were not found in the text, and sign of ideality was not fully realized. The implementation of concept in the textbook of mid-twentieth century looked too idealized. The construction of an absolutely new communist morality made it possible to present current understanding of the concept in “broad strokes”, to express the neophytes’ conviction in reality of embodying standard of a true communist through the means of Soviet education. The model proposed by modern authors did not implement core of morality in general. The textbook returns to one of original ideas about sacredness, but with significant differences. Firstly, it equalized all religious ideas and excluded dominance of one confession in education process. Secondly, it perceived weak social conditioning as a shortcoming that must have been eliminated. Discussion and Conclusions. Analysis of the factors limiting full concept representation lead to recommendations for their elimination. We propose to consider modern request for sacred and moral education in light of normal evolution of the concept underlying it. Despite the words order in nominating phrase, morality core is interpretive and fundamental for a correct understanding of sacredness. For effective work on needs of moral education, we recommend organizing practical work consistently, with progressive and gradual formation of first moral values, and then sacred ones. The basic principles of such work should be those conceptual features that are regularly and fully implemented in each of concept cores.