Translation. Region: Russian Federation –
Source: Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University – Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University –
Future engineers are taught to listen to music. For Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, this has been a routine matter for 18 years. That is how long the Polytechnic has been implementing the unique educational practice of “Creative Semesters” for Russian universities.
The Polytechnic is the only university in the country where the development of students’ creative abilities is built into the educational process using the best examples of world musical culture. Instead of an auditorium, there is a concert hall, lecturers are a conservatory professor and musicians of a symphony orchestra. Future civil engineers, nuclear physicists, technologists, systems analysts, bioengineers – all first-year students of the Polytechnic do not just listen to Mozart and Bach, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, they learn to hear and understand music.
For 18 years in a row, the Polytechnic University has been purposefully educating students in music, revealing to them the cultural heritage accumulated by humanity. The university’s leaders are convinced that the walls of the Polytechnic University should not just produce graduates, but the future elite of Russia, those who will determine the life of the country tomorrow. Their ideas and decisions will shape the future of the Russian economy, politics and culture, says the author of the project, the head of the Directorate of Cultural Programs and Youth Creativity of SPbPU Boris Kondin.
This year, the first lesson of the “Creative Semesters” was devoted to getting acquainted with the electronic musical instrument theremin, invented in the last century at the Polytechnic Institute. In the second lesson, students became participants in the musical and literary composition “Russia, don’t be afraid, we are with you!”, in which theater actors, soloists and musicians, through the prism of the Leningrad blockade, talked about the tragic events in Donbass. Now the Polytechnic students are getting acquainted with classical music of different eras, learning to talk about it, and willingly enter into dialogue with Professor Igor Rogalev of the St. Petersburg State Conservatory named after N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov.
In every person there lives both a creator and a scoundrel, and one of them wins. It seems to me that it is music that clears the way for the creator, for the artist, – Igor Rogalev is sure. – Music is a life-giving emotion, a feeling that gives life. Freshmen come out of our meetings different. There are more creators.
Many students, most of whom came to study from the regions, hear a symphony orchestra live for the first time in their lives in the majestic interiors of the concert hall.
This is divine! I didn’t know that music can also be described in words. The discovery in such a field is surprising, – shared first-year student of IPMET Maxim Pashin.
Lively discussions about music during creative semesters are very interesting. According to my observations, first-year students are cultured people, classical music will resonate in everyone’s heart! – says first-year student of IPMET Ivan Sinko.
Over the 18 years of the “Creative Semesters”, more than 50 thousand students have been able to receive a “cultural vaccination”. In addition to music lessons for future engineers, the Polytechnic University can boast of the White Hall with a concert philharmonic repertoire, a huge number of creative student associations, including two theaters, two choirs, vocal studios and a pop-symphony orchestra. Since the beginning of the new academic year, all of them have been involved in another cultural project of the Polytechnic University. “Musical Break”— mini-concerts on the main staircase of the Main Building.
In the spring of 2024, the SPbPU Academic Council adopted the concept of developing the university as a cultural territory, and these are the first steps towards its implementation. Banners with quotes from great thinkers, writers, and scientists about culture, education, and the purity of language have also appeared on campus, and their number will grow. A specially created film about the inadmissibility of obscene language has been shown. Creative contacts are being established with the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. The issue of covering the entire university campus with music, which today only sounds above the entrance to the Main Building, is being resolved.
All of this university activity in the musical and aesthetic education of students is in line with the National Security Strategy of Russia in terms of protecting traditional Russian spiritual and moral values, culture and historical memory.
The founder of the Polytechnic University, Sergei Witte, believed that educating a modern engineer without a good humanitarian background is not only immoral, but also destructive for the country. Today, thanks to the support of the rector of SPbPU, Andrei Rudskoy, the culture at the university is entering a new stage of development.
This is what the story said about it “Why do engineers need a classical music education?” on Channel One.
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