School's identity and organizational deviations of school as a cultural and historical form

the article examines the changing state of the school as a social institution in the context of the education reform. The school is considered as the unity of ideal predetermined structure and real structure due to working and personal relationship. The essential primary and secondary features of the school are determined in the article. The primary features are location, integration to the local educational system, the implementation of educational technology; the secondary features are time frame of activity, focus on children, adolescents, and young adults, use of classroom group learning. The article uses the concept of «organizational deviation» in order to define the situation in a modern Russian school system when the qualitative and quantitative goals, which are to be achieved according to the Federal State Education Standards, are constantly falling short. Among the factors which determine the functions of the school as a social institution are educational technologies, human recourses (students and teachers), financial, economic, material and technical resources, institutional and regulatory structures, controlling). The reasons of the most serious organizational deviations are connected with a critical imbalance of these factors. In addition to that, current education regulations have been analyzed, and the author comes to the conclusion that these regulations are the sources of organizational deviations as well. The examples of innovations which become deviations (so called «variofications») are considered in the article. The author also presents and explains two extreme types of school organizational deviations: «school-cloud» and «school-inferno». The author states that the above-mentioned problems of the school system are caused by unsystematic and even destructive actions of education authorities. The school is viewed as a cultural and historical institution, and any radical reforms or substitution of the school by other institution will result in a radical change in the society.