Humanitarization of Technical Education: Challenges and Modern Approaches

The article is devoted to the analysis of the role of humanitarization of technical education in resolving issues of technogenic civilization. The relevance of this topic is based on the complexity and global nature of the problems that can be solved by the whole humanity or by each individual independently. Within the framework of technogenic civilization, many aspects of relations between society and nature, man and society, and the interactions of various human communities are particularly acute as issues of the survival of mankind. Of particular danger in the modern era is terrorism, the aggravating environmental situation, demographic, raw materials and other problems. The article proves that all that we call “humanitarization of education”, including personal orientation of education, mainstreaming of the values of human life, the use of personality potential, and culture centricity, can qualitatively change attitudes towards the world and people and provide an optimal solution to the problems of technogenic civilization. The presented study implements an integrated approach that allows us to use historical and cultural, and topic addressed methods to determine the factors, tasks directions and expected results of the humanitarization of education. The author analyzes the educational process of the famous Russian technical university, Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, as an example of the successful humanitarization of technical education. The humanitarian aspects of education at this university include: 1) the close relation between science and education, the persistent desire to provide on this basis effective research and educational activities aimed at improving the quality of educational services; 2) fundamental and applied social research on a wide range of priority areas for the development of science and technology; 3) historical, philosophical and cultural analysis of the problems of construction and architecture; 4) a highly effective system of education in the humanities for masters and qualified specialists; 5) training of students on the best traditions of education in the field of construction and the industry as a whole, etc. The culture-centric approach is defined as a modern approach to the humanitarization of technical education, which is associated with the search for the axiological foundations of modern education and the determination of its basic humanistic values.