Metamorphoses of the idea of personality and environment in Russian education: a path to Man

The article reveals the features of the transformation of the idea of personality in Russian education in a historical retrospective in the context of current social priorities, and also characterizes the dynamics of the role and place of the environment as a pedagogical tool. It is shown that the idea of personality in Russian education came out of Christianity and was influenced by free pedagogy at the beginning of the 20th century. In the future, this idea is subjected to severe ideological censorship. It is established that today the main challenge for education is the "social horizon of artificial values", simulacra (according to J. Baudrillard). The images of a person, which, in the spirit of the People's Commissariat of Education, Socialist Education and Proletkult, are purposefully formed by the media and network communication, are the result of manipulation of a person's emotions and his motivation. The complexity and uniqueness of the individual is lost. It is assumed that education should respond to this challenge by generating and implementing clear authentic goals for the de-velopment of the individual. The experience of history shows the possibility of embedding external utilitarian goals in education, but they are not effective in the context of the true development of the individual. Receiving today a social order for a unique and inimitable personality, the education system is untenable when traditional imperative education is used. The type of personality and its unification is opposed by the complexity of personality and its diversity. The paper traces the idea that the attitude towards the environment and its place in education is undergoing significant changes. The features of the use of personality-developing environmental tools are also different. The educa-tional environment, by definition, is intended to create opportunities for a person who exists exclusively in the modality of the possible (according to D.A. Leontiev). The educational environment acquires a qualitative difference when these possibilities are refracted through the personal principle, realizing a special way of human existence associated with personal functions.