E. V. Listvina
2.2. Educational Milieu and Culture Role
In recent times aiming for demolition of boundaries and technical capabilities shows the aiming for development
of the total educational area without conventions and fixing to the state and other systems. It appears that the
more open a learner is in the course of knowledge gathering, the more productive the result will be. There is
provided the existence of so called total educational milieu which is not parted by any boundaries and that fully
associated with the educational area, for example in medieval Europe, enabling the students moving regardless
of political boundaries. However, the experiments of the latest decades are the reflection of the fact that these
wide opportunities lead to some surprising conclusions.
Involving into the different education systems, even into the most universal Bologna system as a united Eu-
ropean Higher Education area, an individual one way or another has to be in contact with communicative, dis-
cursive, cultural practices accompanying education process, elements of the everyday culture, acting as a
two-sided filter both on the part of a learner and on the host side.
Thus, the educational milieu is closely linked to the determination of the culture role in the education itself. If
we turn to the definitions of the culture, the definition of V.S. Stepin which specifies the culture as a system of
historically connected, developing suprabiological programs providing reproduction and change of social life in
all its basic aspects will be the most responding to our research [3]. Following in V.S. Stepin’s tracks we can say
that culture creates its own special “container” for what we call socialization, and even enculturation to a greater
extent. According to I.T. Kasavin, almost everything that a person gains as knowledge like a form of social and
individual memory, a convoluted performance and communication scheme, a result of indication, structuring
and interpretation of objects in the learning process for all its universality “is colored” into specific cultural,
mental shades.
By all means knowledge and information gathering is carried out through the prism of the culture concept, i.e.
education perception as “a cultural process exercised in the culture forming educational milieu where all the
components are filled with human sense, work for a person who freely shows his/her individuality and is good at
cultural self-development and self-determination in the world of cultural values” is formed [4]. We would also
add the mental components featuring the deep level of consciousness, including the unconscious, undifferen-
tiated steady set of attitudes and aptitudes of an individual or a social group to perceive the world and them-
selves in this world in a certain way. According to the well-known characteristics mentality is formed depending
on traditions of culture, social structures and the whole sphere of human life and activities, at the same time ac-
tively influencing their formation. But in this case it is more important to emphasize its syncretism, perplexity of
rational and irrational factors which break a new ground for any informative, educational activity perception.
And then a specific cultural, mental component which is found to be very naturally inscribed into the very
structure of the educational area and of the educational milieu altogether starts to play an important, foundation-
al role in the process of getting education.
It is the syncretism, internal integrity of the educational milieu that should be made a point of. Educational
milieu appears to be integral syncretical phenomenon wherein a learner is fully intented, without any conditio-
nalities. It is a complete state of effective output, solution in the process when the process is not divided into
separate operations, lessons, lectures, classes in the learner’s mind but is perceived as some natural continuum.
The educational milieu absorbs the learner since he/she enters the educational system even if it is not a specific
institution, premises, complex with its particular territorial and spatial characteristics. This happens to be one of
the foundational elements of knowledge acquisition extent because no matter how we try to rely only on the ra-
tional principle in knowledge gathering, its assimilation goes through mental schemes. And here the educational
milieu takes center stage as it emphasizes specificity of presentation and structuring of materials, learner psy-
chological state formation.
2.3. Educational Milieu and Collective Memory
The elements of collective memory which promote a special collective ground unifying students groups and in-
cluding intergenerational traditions play the considerable role in formation of educational milieu based on unity
of education and life. According to Moris Halbwachs, “in addition to the recorded history there is a real history
[5]”, which is exactly fixed with the collective memory holding the community together highly firm and origi-
nally. Besides the collective memory of the nation which is generally in the foundation of the educational milieu
each educational institution, each students group daily create specific space of the collective memory fixing
