A FOLK HIGH SCHOOL AS A FACTOR OF IMPROVING THE SOCIAL WELL-BEING OF A THIRD AGE PERSON
Authors: Gordina Olga V. , Gordin Alexsandr I. 
Published: November 2024

Background.  The Strategy of Action for the Citizens of the Older Generation in the Russian Federation until 2025, which received high appraisal by the expert community when it was published in 2016, is close to summarizing its results. The decade, during which new opportunities for health improvement, education, employment, social activity and creative self-fulfilment among the older generation were to appear, is coming to an end. The authors do not set the task of a global analysis of the results of this Strategy. They do not engage in polemics with its creators. Adopting the ideology of this document, they expand the list of indicators for determining the quality of life of a senior citizen. Implementing for 15 years their volunteer project Folk High School (FHS) for people of the third age, being immersed in this issue at the scientific and methodological level (articles, monographs, textbook for universities “Andragogy” at the publishing house “URAIT”, etc.) and organizational and practical level (activity of Irkutsk Folk High School from 2009 to the present), they analyse the model of the Folk High School as an integrative educational space, contributing to the active longevity of the senior generation and to the creation of an attractive image of third age in the Russian society. The authors consider the social well-being of its students to be one of the key criteria for determining the quality of work of the Folk High School.
Purpose – analysis of the structure and specifics of the Folk High School as an educational space, contributing to the improvement of the social well-being of its students – people of the third age.
Materials and methods. The main method of the research is scientific observation. The Folk High School was created by the authors as an experimental model of the educational process for the people of the third age. Its systematic development and study are carried out in the natural conditions of urban society. Quantitative and qualitative methods of diagnosing the results of educational activity of the FHS are actively used, including for assessing the social well-being of the students. Quantitative indicators are used to identify the dynamics of changes in the social well-being of students of the Folk High School. Qualitative methods allowed to assess the current state of the respondents’ social well-being and receive feedback containing information that was not reflected in quantitative research methods. The article is based on a set of sources: professional reflection of the authors, who have been managing the work of Irkutsk Folk High School for more than 15 years, materials of scientific and practical conferences, subject collections on the problems of the work of folk schools in Russia and abroad. The article presents the results of quantitative and qualitative studies of social well-being of the students of Irkutsk Folk High School.
Results. We suppose that attention should be payed to the successful experience of work with the senior citizens that started more than a quarter of a century ago, long before the programme “Active longevity” was opened and that is now developing not less brightly. As the project is voluntary, the basis of the functioning of the FHS originally was and remains the social partnership. The authors of this article would like to consider another important side of this social and pedagogical phenomenon – the influence of the folk high school on the social well-being of its students. New knowledge, constant, essentially friendship circle and collective socially meaningful activity form such an educational environment, where a person feels psychological comfort, safety and belonging to the big community, which is extremely important for the retired people. Further in the text it will be presented Folk High School model, having proved its efficacy with the years of successful work, high level of demand in its target group, stays unnoticed by the governmental structures and continues functioning as a public initiative side by side with the programme of active longevity. Based on the experience of Russian schools for people of the third age, we are sure that the Folk High School must become a significant part of the system of the life-long education in Russia with the state support.