“Like in other newly established national states of the former Soviet Union, the Belarusian system of national values is forming gradually. The fundamental values, on which the national consensus rests in the Eastern European societies, are elements of main political ideologies, such as liberalism, social democracy, conservatism, Christian democracy, civic nationalism. They are, so to say, a building material, fertile soil, in which the nation’s value consensus takes roots”, says Viktar Charnou, a political scientist and the leading contributor to the book. “A lot of books on Belarusian state ideology have been published in recent years. However, there are practically no handbooks that are devoted to an in-depth study of today’s main political ideologies. We are trying to fill this gap,” explains V.Charnou.
The primary target group of this book is school teachers of history and social science and university faculty of political science. Designed to equip them in conducting classes with high and higher school students, this teacher’s book will also be helpful in non-formal civic education.
The Introduction and Chapter 1 of the book overview the general methodology of studying political ideologies, including such issues as the nature and origin of political ideologies, their structure and functioning, classification of the main ideological currents of today, the formation of values- and norms-based consensus. Chapters 2-4 examine the fundamental features of the three world-wide political ideologies, i.e. liberalism, socialism and conservatism. One after another, the book presents their classic political doctrines and contemporary interpretation (liberal reformism and neo-liberalism, social democracy, neo-conservatism). Chapter 5 is devoted to the ideology of Christian Democracy as one of the most influential political doctrines in the modern world, which originated at the junction of the social philosophies of conservatism and socialism. Chapter 6 highlights the ideology of nationalism and its main modifications such as ethno-cultural and civic nationalism. These chapters are followed by a glossary of forms and methods of instruction.
Each chapter of the teacher’s book consists of two interconnected parts. The first contains the lecture material and recommendations for its presentation. In the second, practical, part the teacher is provided with a wide range of active learning techniques and tasks for the students, including questions for the monitoring and discussion, work on the text, exercises, essay writing, history lessons, classics’ reading, problem situations, independent research, persuasive speech, brainstorming, Socratic dialogue, discussion, group work. With no goal to limit the creative autonomy of the teachers, the book’s authors equip some practical tasks with so-called “tips” with keys to the questions or instructions for their search, which greatly facilitates the teachers’ preparation to their classes.
You can download the electronic version of the book free of charge here: Что надо знать об основных идеологиях современности / под общ. ред. В.Ю.Чернова (pdf, 1,7 Mb)
The teacher’s book “What We Should Know about Main Ideologies of Today” was published by the “Parus” printing house in 2010 with the circulation of 1000 copies. The language of the book is Russian.
The group of the book’s authors consists of V. Charnou, Dr. V. Bobrovich., Dr. L. Vonsovich, O. Savchik, V. Tomashevich.