The Zimin Foundation is a non-profit organization created through Zimin’s family circle to help education and science. The Foundation partners with leading universities and budget studies and school projects that combine school excellence with a strong perspective of positive real-world impact. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Zimin Foundation has supported scholars and scholars affected by the war. I spoke with philanthropist Boris Zimin, director of the Zimin Foundation, about his perspectives on fashion education.
Julia Brodsky: Based on your enjoyment of managing the budget and school organizations, what do you think modern education deserves to focus on?
Boris Zimin: While most of the world is prioritizing STEM these days, I have been thinking about the need for a general moral and humanitarian approach to education. Take the example of education in Soviet Russia, which was well known around the world for offering a strong STEM education. The purpose of Soviet education was to train personnel and infantrymen to build the “communist future,” and questions about intelligence and evil never arose: ready-made answers to those questions were the prerogative of the ruling communist party. Such education produces smart technical specialists and “effective managers” who are not used to wondering about the social and humanitarian consequences of their actions. And that has not been superseded in the post-Soviet fashion, as the brutality of Russian forces in Ukraine demonstrates. In my opinion, schooling focuses first and foremost on ethics. In the early 2000s, when we introduced our philanthropic foundation, “Dynasty,” we focused primarily on the fundamental sciences, but we didn’t come up with literature, history, or the social sciences. Fourteen years later, we knew that our purpose was short-sighted. Mathematics is important, but ethics is fundamental. Without thinking of the price of human life, complex mathematical skills can lead us to destruction.
JB: You discussed the challenge of teaching science to young people at the expense of the humanities. The only thing that matters is to concentrate on the situations of good fortune of each child so that the young people have that prestige. What do you think are the most productive tactics to inspire parents and society? as a total to put more emphasis on ethics and holistic view of education?
BZ: The most productive technique is diversity. We cannot anticipate the desires of society because everything, adding schooling, is to fit more complex. Therefore, they deserve that there are many other schools, as they deserve that there are many other businesses. But we want to remind parents of the goals of schooling. Parents occasionally attribute their insecurities to their children and aspire to “success” in the strict sense without knowing that young people have their own interests and preferences. Running is up to them.
JB: The fashionable public school formula requires students to adhere to strict rules. It is natural that other people raised through this formula would be more susceptible to settling for authoritarian power. What do you think?
BZ: I think the root of the challenge is not authoritarianism but the accumulation of complexity. For example, fashion aviation has many strict regulations to improve safety. We wouldn’t say that aviation has become more authoritarian over time, but that it has become more complex. Schools are responding to increasing complexity through the introduction of more and more regulations. While such regulations may seem overwhelming to students and teachers, we recognize the pros and cons of those regulations in light of the formula as a whole.
JB: As you said, global is very complex, but the school curriculum seems fragmented. Should school attendance scholars expand a comprehensive understanding of a global in conversion?
BZ: While many other people have expressed this concern, I am reassured by the parallels with biological evolution. When life began on Earth, a more complex life bureaucracy evolved as single-celled organisms effectively specialized to exist in symbiosis with other cells. In our body, there are many bacterial cells that have lost their independence. Similarly, prehistoric humans had to know much more than we know today because they had to do anything to survive. This is no longer the case. Many of us can only live in villages and don’t know how to handle a horse. Humanity as a whole becomes a much more complex organism, although each of its members may possess less versatility and independence. And this mirror image comforts me.
JB: What are the specificities of the projects you support?
BZ: In addition to the emphasis on ethics, we believe that motivation is essential to be informed. What is the basic difference between “instruction” and “being informed”?To teach, the instructor manages the educational procedure regardless of the student’s preferences. The student may or may not be actually informed about the subject. On the contrary, deep and original information almost requires a motivated student. We decided to concentrate on information.
JB: Given the importance you place on human-centered education, do you have education systems that help refugee students?
BZ: The Zimin Foundation, in collaboration with the Razom Foundation, supports the Center for Ukrainian Refugees in Wroclaw through courses to more than two hundred academics to examine the Ukrainian language following the curriculum of the National School of Ukraine. Together with the Boris Nemtsov Foundation, we sponsor several scholarship schemes for Ukrainian refugee scholars in the Czech Republic, adding the Prague University of Economics, Charles University and the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design. In addition to this, we sponsor the Feodor Stepun program at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, supporting Ukrainian researchers as well as Russian scientists who have fled Putin’s corrupt regime. We sponsored Ukrainian tweens to attend Le Sallay Academy this educational year and are proud to have helped supply thousands of books in Ukrainian to refugee shelters. in ten European cities.