Between “Half-education” and “Half-agency”: in Search of a Path to Effective Education

Concept of semiotics by Theodor Adorno is comprehended in two main areas: the discovery of philosophical correlations and significance for the assessment of educational processes in modern Ukraine. The essential link of criticism of Adorno “half-education” with an understanding of goals and means of proper education is pointed out. Proper education is analyzed as effective education, which is countered by imitations of education, which appears as half-life. If secondary education is a substitute for education by its ersatzes in the form of numerous its reifications in a mass society, then half-life also appears as a substitute for effective action by accentuation on its means, which is imperceptibly, but invariably, substituting its goals. In the field of education, such half-dwellers are provided with educational services that are supposedly intended to ensure the unbreakable functioning of educational institutions, but in practice displaced from education its orientation towards the education of a person. Setting up education, constantly overcoming the existing and directing to positive as counter-faculty in the semester is replaced by the systematic implementation of the norms of consumption of educational services. In the field of legislative support of the educational sphere of Ukraine, there is a return to the definition of its tasks in terms of “educational services” and the reduction of educational tasks of the individual and the orientation of educational institutions to meet the educational needs of the learner. These negative changes became noticeable in comparison with the progressive Law of Ukraine “On Higher Education” in 2014 compared to the ambiguous Law of Ukraine “On Education” in 2017. The necessity of corresponding corrections of educational strategies, which should orient the person to effective education as the education of higher achievements rather than the fulfillment of norms, is grounded on the return of the elitist essence of education in opposition to its egalitarian character, which is taking place during the last decade.