The spread of the "coronavirus"1 infection COVID-19 in Russia in March 2020 forced the Russian Government to take some restrictive measures designed to minimize the risks of the disease among the population. One of the results of these measures was the widespread use of distance learning both in general and specialized secondary schools and in higher educational institutions. In general, the student and teaching community responded adequately to these drastic changes and was able to establish the educational process as effectively as it could be done in the current emergency conditions.
At the same time, some actions and measures on the part of the Ministry of Education and Science suggest that government agencies are currently considering the possibility of transforming distance learning from an emergency and forced measure into a legalized norm of the educational process. It makes us seriously consider both the positive aspects and the undoubted challenges and risks of this metamorphosis.
First of all, it should be recognized that we are talking in the true sense of the word about revolutionary changes in one of the most sensitive areas for society. Since its formation in Antiquity as a socially significant phenomenon, education has been designed to provide not just a certain level of professional competencies but also the homogeneity and integrity of the cultural and spiritual basis of the nation as a living organism consisting of individuals connected by a single tradition. From the very beginning, the most important component of this process was the procedure of personal communication between the teacher and the student, and one of the main functions of education was considered to be upbringing of the individual, primarily on the living example of the mentor.
In the new conditions, it is proposed to push aside the teacher's personality, replacing it with an impersonal computer program. On the one hand, this replacement seems attractive. One program written by the best specialists can now be available to students and is not limited by the size of the audience. Moreover, it can replace hundreds of professors from the teaching staff, which in modern conditions of a financially (and not value-oriented) oriented economy creates the temptation to save money. Computerization and “digitalization” of the education system makes it possible, and even dictates this need, to replace tens of thousands of highly qualified teachers, associate professors and professors with fewer network system operators who can serve centrally created clusters of educational programs. It means partial or complete dismantling of the entire system of higher education formed over the past two millennia.