The Organizers of the School of a Young
Author.
Galina Vitkovskaya, a member of the Academic Council of
the ERPC, prompted the idea of creating the School. Sergei
Panarin, who also held the first training in the town of
Pushkin, elaborated the methodical part of the trainings.
Victor Dyatlov (see Personalities, only in Russian) organized
and held the training in Irkutsk. Both of the organizers
had wonderful assistant managers. That was Julia Pinigina
(Ibid) who helped Victor Dyatlov. Sergey Panarin's assistant
who has a wonderful talent for organization and teaching
at the same time is a very modest person and that is why
has wished to stay anonymous.
The School of Younger Author
General Information.
The idea of creating the School of Younger Author has not
appeared from a blank space. Both the editor-in-chief of
Acta Eurasica and his deputy felt long ago that it was absolutely
necessary to do something if we want to keep the level of
the journal and if we at the same time did not want to rewrite
a half of the articles. There is a staff of editors getting
a salary in academic journals and rules of work with authors
- agreement on corrections, proposals on making texts better
during meetings of the editor with an author, etc. Acta
Eurasica, where up to the recent moment only the part-time
editor was getting a modest salary and where up to a half
of the articles is sent by provincial authors often lack
of contemporary means of communication, has none of these
rules.
We considered all these peculiarities in
the search of a way out of this situation. It is almost
hopeless to teach those who write for a long time as their
author's self-esteem has been formed together with their
skill to write not thinking much about the form. Under-graduate
students, post-graduate students, young university teachers
and scientific workers are quite another business. Of course,
they also have strong self-esteem, but at the same time
they still have a habit to learn, receptivity of youth and
interest for play. However, in Russia the skills of writing
and editorial work with texts are not inculcated in the
young people either at universities or post-graduate departments.
Thus, all these reasons prompted the idea of creating the
School of Younger Author, where young people at the age
of up to 30 inclusive could study.
The opening of permanently working courses
would demand a staff of teachers and, of course, a housing.
That is why a form of intensive five-day trainings twice
a year has been chosen. For reduction of travel expenses
we have decided to divide the trainings into "European"
(organized for those living to the west of the Urals) and
"Siberian" (to the east of the Urals).
It was necessary to think well about the
methods of participants' selection and the methods of the
trainings themselves to get maximum effect. As for the first
one we have counted on one and a half page theses of a far
bigger text, which was to be prepared by each potential
participant. Presentation of such a text was sine qua non
for the participation in trainig of winners of the competition.
In fact, the theses really turned out to be tests that let
us select people with excellent writing skills. As we are
limited for funds and time, it is possible to teach only
those who have abilities to write analytical texts and moreover
concern their work seriously. The newness and interdisciplinary
character of themes were an additional criteria of selection.
The classes at the training were organized
on the principle of a teaching through participation. The
participants listened to only three one-hour lectures; the
rest of time was devoted to the work on carrying out tasks
in mini-groups consisting of 5-6 people, analyses of reports
about the results of the group work made every day by a
new rapporteur, a "round table" on the articles
about the problems of a sholarly text and its understanding,
and final discussion of the results of the training.
We were pursuing a double goal. Firstly,
all the participants were to feel the methods of organization
and stylistic editing of a sholarly text, that would let
them make the text easier for a reader's understanding without
destroying its content and at the same time demonstrating
the beauty of the Russian language. And secondly, on the
base of the gained knowledge the participants were to edit
their own texts.
Sergei Panarin has borrowed such methods
as collective work in mini-groups, everyday classes with
an element of a business game, writing of group reports
and their public analysis from his own experience of participation
in the International Seminar on Preventive Diplomacy held
in May 2001 in the Italian town of Chervia (Ravenna province).
The "peacemaking" methodology was adopted to the
tasks of the trainings with much success and caused perfect
results.
Indeed, mutual understanding was quickly achieved in the
mini-groups; the velocity of mastering the methods of editing
and self-editing turned out to be really incredible; some
participants revealed themselves to have well marked editorial
skills; in several cases the texts under group editing were
polished so well that even an experienced editor could envy
them. The final decisions about preparing a collection of
the best texts and creating of an editorial boards out of
the participants themselves are the best testimonies of
success of the trainings. Besides, the journal Acta Eurasica
received about 20 very interesting articles, out of which
two issues of it were compiled (Nos. 3, 2002 and 2003).
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