Shalva Amonashvili is the founder of humane pedagogy, which is based on the principles of a careful and respectful attitude towards the personality of the child.
Unconditional love
For many parents, Shalva Amonashvili discovered the whole universe - the universe of childhood and a happy life in it. There is no suppression of a child's personality, an evaluation system, an authoritarian upbringing. But there is child acceptance, talent development, and unconditional love. Shalva Aleksandrovich Amonashvili is a pedagogical psychologist, the author of a pedagogical method based on a humane attitude towards childhood. According to the teacher, childhood is the most important period in a person's life when he needs maximum attention and participation from parents and other adults. Amonashvili turns to the teachers more. He believes that no matter what educational reforms are carried out, love for children should remain unchanged.
But Shalva Aleksandrovich himself began working with children back in Soviet times. He was born in Tbilisi on March 8, 1931. And he began his work as a child in his second year at Tbilisi State University, where he studied at the Faculty of Oriental Studies. In the summer, he worked as a pioneer leader in a children's camp and was so fired up with the idea of studying child psychology that he later defended his Ph. D. thesis in pedagogy.
After Shalva Amonashvili worked at the Research Institute of Pedagogy in Georgia, at first as a simple laboratory assistant, and then went through the entire career ladder up to the CEO. All this time, Amonashvili's pedagogical ideas were subjected to harsh criticism. In a country accustomed to living in an authoritarian regime, ideas about the inner freedom of a person, especially a child, were not supported. At the same time, he wrote and published more than 30 books in Russia and abroad.
Work at the call of the heart
After the collapse of the USSR, Shalva worked at the Pedagogical University in Tbilisi, where he headed the Department of Primary Education. The whole Amonashvili family is somehow connected with pedagogy. His wife Valeria Givievna is a doctor of pedagogical sciences, her son Paata is a psychologist and sociologist, she helps her father in scientific work, her daughter Nino is a philologist. And even my sister Nateella Aleksandrovna works as a teacher at the school.
In 1998, the family moved to Moscow, where Shalva Aleksandrovich holds the position of head of the laboratory of humane pedagogy at Moscow State Pedagogical University, where he works to this day. Amonashvili's pedagogical activity is recognized all over the world. This is evidenced not only by numerous awards and prizes, but also titles. Now Amonashvili, despite his age, is actively working. At the same time, he manages to give lectures and conduct seminars for parents around the world. His main work is aimed at children of primary school age. In the opinion of the teacher, it is necessary to start learning from the age of six, and not earlier. Here his methodology is very different from the newfangled early development. Not to fill with knowledge, but to let the child reach for them himself and make his choice. The parent can only direct, observe and prompt. This is the highest parental wisdom and love.
