Personhood, community and social nurture

Thanks to Anna Popova for an interesting discussion of vospitanie or social nurture in Russia.
I suggest the following in applying her description to Britain:

After the Russian revolution, there seems to have been a deliberate attempt to rethink the notions of personhood-in community (as opposed to previously being 'feudal serfs'), and the concept of community (as opposed to hegemony/authoritarianism). The result was grass-roots 'socialist' reshaping or redefining of what it means to be a Russian 'citizen' (and indeed more generally a 'person in community'). The community ceased to be based on patronage and needed to develop cooperatively on self-help principles. Vospitanie ('social nurture' was the means of passing on these new definitions to the following generations, and operated independently of whatever was going on in macro-politics. It became 'tacit knowledge', the common sense of this generation and the last. It is now coming into conflict with chaotic market capitalism and the rise of individualism and the resulting fat-cats, and fuels a backlash which asserts the best values of the soviet years.
In contrast, in Britain there has been no grassroots reflection on citizenship as 'persons in community' or on the nature of community. The Plowdon Report (following John Dewey's philosophy) encouraged primary schools to develop active persons in community, but that was destroyed by our own market capitalist chaos from 1980, the negative consequences of which we are still experiencing in the banking sector. At policy level (top-down) we are trying to assert 'persons in community' and 'social nurture' but without a popular grassroots tradition to support it. We need to consider how to encourage such grassroots reflection on personhood in community, perhaps using vospitanie as a guide.

Social nurture is the responsibiliy of both home and school. It involves 'what kind of neighbour are you?', 'are you helpful to your colleagues?' and other such questions. Social awareness is rooted in an awareness that others have needs and emotions, and that it is better to help rather than hurt. Such a simple start belies the fact that some children grow up to be violent killers or masochistic hoodlums. What went wrong was probably a long time ago, in their childhood. And there has been a continued failure to intevene and put things right. This is a challenge to community, society and the education process.

Our schools are pressed by government and OFSTED to be engaged with citizenship, personal and social education, social and emotional aspects of learning, a wide range of different initiatives which engage in some way with social nurture. This is part of the great concern for schools to produce productive and contributing members of society. The Respect Agenda emphasised that respect for others should be emphasised. This is top-down desperation, generated by teenage murders, muggings, and anti-social behaviour. What is needed is a bottom-up respect process in which pupils generally leave school feeling respected. That is, dialogue and discussion has happened, not recriminations, criticism and sarcasm. Pupils, teachers and parents together need to reflect on what it means to be a person-in community, and for that to be central in the curriculum. It is what we mean deep down by citizenship, but it is much more, it is a moral and ethical way of living in the world.