В отечественной педагогической традиции есть личность, самой судьбой призванная связать Россию и мир, Восток и Запад, педагогику с философией, психологией, культурологией, этикой, социологией и политологией. Объединить в себе прошлое, настоящее и будущее российского образования. Это Сергей Иосифович Гессен (1887 – 1950). В развитии образования случается, правда очень редко, когда книга, написанная десятилетия, а то и века назад оказывается при ее «открытии», намного более актуальной и значимой чем современные разработки. Все это в полной мере относится к фундаментальному труду российского философа, этика, политолога, педагога и психолога Сергея Иосифовича Гессена «Основы педагогики». Ее повторная публикация в 1995 г. вызвала в педагогических кругах настоящий культурный шок. В ситуации, когда прежние «основы педагогики» базирующиеся на марксистско-ленинской идеологии оказались дискредитированы, а новых «основ» не появилось, да и в прежнем смысле вообще появиться не могло, книга Гессена стала подлинной основой для педагогических исследований, а имя автора чрезвычайно популярным.

In the pedagogical tradition of our nation, there is one individual whose fate was to be called upon to connect Russia with the world, east with west, pedagogy with philosophy, psychology, study of cultures, ethics, sociology, and political science. This scholar brought together the past, present, and future of Russian education. Who was this giant? He was Sergei Iosifovich Gessen and he lived from 1887-1950. It is certainly rare that any book on education, or any subject for that matter, which was written one hundred and ten years ago is finally able to be opened and turns out to be more significant and current than contemporary works. This is exactly what happened with S.I. Gessen’s Principles of Pedagogics. Its publication in 1995 in Russia shocked educators and the entire pedagogical culture of that time. The situation was like this: the Soviet “principles of pedagogics” based on Marxist-Leninist ideology utilized throughout the entire country had been discredited only a few years before and no substitute had yet been found. Then, Gessen’s book made its appearance and was received as an authentic, and Russian, basis for pedagogical research. Let us remember that we are talking of the republication of the book, written and published in 1923 in Berlin, Germany, and kept in special “closed for public” storages of the Soviet libraries for many decades. No wonder, hardly any researcher and practically no teacher would know the name of Gessen in Russia, when at the same time the West witnessed many volumes of his books published and republished; numerous Western researchers wrote articles and manuscripts on his contributions to philosophy, sociology, political sciences, ethics, and pedagogy. There is even a Society of the researchers of Gessen’s works.