Development of skills of ethnotolerant behavior in older adolescents (on the example of Russians and Mordvins)

The article is devoted to the problem of formation and development of ethnic tolerance of adolescents. Ethnic tolerance is one of the key ethnopsychological phenomena that attract the attention not only of researchers but also of the general public. The authors note that the current state of society is characterized by an increase in the level of interethnic xenophobia, religious-ethnic extremism. The decrease in the level of interethnic and social intolerance, in general, is possible only if the children and young people are brought up in the atmosphere of understanding, an adequate attitude to other ways of life, to other cultural patterns of behavior, and the formation of tolerant consciousness as a stable personal characteristic. Formation and development of students’ skills of tolerant behavior towards ethnic «others» is an important part of the educational and upbringing process today. The authors conducted an empirical study on the basis of the Municipal Educational Institution «Secondary School No. 40» in the city of Saransk. 90 teenagers of the 9th grade took part in the study. The findings of the current stage of the study indicate that adolescents tend to display cultural prejudices, negative ethnic stereotypes and ethnic intolerance. At the formative stage of the study, the authors developed a program for the development of ethnic tolerance of adolescents. The program consisted of 11 lessons. At the control stage of the study, repeated diagnostics were carried out using diagnostic techniques used at the ascertaining stage of the study. The results of diagnostics and mathematical processing of data have shown the development of skills of intercultural understanding and interaction of adolescents who have completed the training stage of the study. After the implementation of the program, the number of teenagers with a high level of ethnic tolerance markedly increased and the number of subjects with a low level of ethnic tolerance decreased.