Who is Who in Big Siberia

NAME and BUSINESS

“Zhuravleva’s Center «Lingua» — is the name known in Surgut for the NOU NT “Lingua” Foundation for the Arts and Humanities”. The abbreviation officially stands for the non-governmental educational institution of the new type.

“What kind of the new type? We all know about kindergartens, schools, and Institutes — and what are you”? In response to the baffled questions of the education authorities Lyudmila Zhuravleva, the Center’s founder and its Director General says: “We are everything”!  

Humanitarian Economy

The “Lingua” Foundation for the Arts and Humanities” was opened in 1992. The idea of setting up a training system radically different from the conventional type was triggered by Lyudmila Zhuravleva’s study placement in the USA. At the time Russia was widely practicing the generally accepted clichés: “Our classical education system is the best in the world.” Zhuravleva had no intention to argue that but what really was wrong in her opinion, was the gap between the academic knowledge and the real life. In Lyudmila’s view one of education’s key objectives was to address pragmatic tasks too — teach people how to live in a society, be successful and earn one’s living. In other words, produce non-material values that can be transformed into material resources.

The idea of accumulation of humanitarian resources became the Center’s fundamental concept, — Lyudmila Zhuravleva says. — There is a commonplace formula in education: “Our goal is in developing individuality”. But development is a process, whereas we have been always focused on the result — accumulation of resources: social (the skill of building relations within the society), humanitarian (competences), cultural (family, city, country values and readiness to engage in a constructive dialogue with other cultures). However our basic product is a man provided with a possibility of making a real choice. Thus, he/she would choose a higher educational establishment based on the principle of what he/she can gain from this or that institution, rather than on the idea of “closer to the parents’ house” or “easy to enter”. By the way, 100% of our graduates become students of higher educational institutions. Once one of

of my former students admitted: “If not for the “Lingua” Center I would have never dared entering the Moscow State University”.

Fundamental Approach

Annually the “Lingua” Center provides education to about two thousand people — from pre-schoolers to University graduates and Doctors of Sciences. Young children when learning the basics of foreign languages at the lessons of “Happy Geography” learn some more important things too: confidence, rules of contacting people, mutual respect. Defending their projects in the English language the students acquire new skills of critical thinking and upholding their ideas. Adults are provided with the “club”-type training including holding various disputes, presentations, and contests. The Center’s International projects are also a way of building up social, humanitarian and cultural resources.

For instance, our children go to England with the task of comparing intra-family relations in Russian and English families, — Zhuravleva says. — When on the Malta our kids learn the rules of hospitality, in the USA — responsibility and independence, in Canada—benevolence and kindness. Thus, or projects provide not just fragmentary (linguistic only) but conceptual educational approach.

The Center’s teachers are also always continuously upgrading their skills and knowledge. The Center is often hosting Canadian, Swiss, and British experts for master classes, which make the participants change and develop. Thus one of the teachers, a person with the higher professional education and the 5-year work record in the “Lingua” Center asked the director to be awarded with the diploma certifying her title as a full-fledged teacher.

Windows of Growth

Lyudmila Zhuravleva does not care much that many see her mostly as an entrepreneur rather than an education worker. She is sure: economic categories are quite applicable to the sphere of managing humanitarian education, including personal:

In business there are such notions as the “window of time” and the “window of place”. My “window of time” turned to be the period when I returned from America — full of curiosity, vigor, and enthusiasm of making a “different education”; while Surgut became my “window of place” — the city of intensive and more effective development: houses are built quicker here, ideas are put to life more efficiently. It is this dynamics that makes me believe that with the time our Center will grow into an expert private educational institution. We are providing such social sciences that are currently in high demand in the today’s Russian society. Inter-personal and business relations, quality of communication and cultural values — are all elements of people’s mentality, which is far more important than political and economic resources.