The educational ideal in the ideological context of modern times

Modern society is going through a process of changing its basic value motivations, which puts the issue of updating the value and semantic foundations of education on the agenda and highlights the need to rethink the educational ideal, which performs the function of meaning-making and regulation in the education system. The subject of this study is the substantive characteristics of the educational ideal, determined by the ideological context. The purpose of the article is to consider the problem of the formation of an educational ideal and to identify the necessary conditions for its viability. A new perspective of understanding the educational ideal is proposed, which is understood as a projection of cultural and social ideals into the field of education, which determines the importance of research and the need for an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the educational ideal in the context of its philosophical and socio-psychological foundations. Two forms of representation of the ideal are identified – conceptual and psychic (mental), and their dependence on the ideological context is shown. It is shown that: 1) the values and meanings of postmodernism serve as the generating basis of the modern educational ideal; 2) the unity of the conceptual and mental forms of representation of the ideal is a necessary condition for the feasibility and viability of the educational ideal; 3) the consciousness of modern society is characterized by the presence of a mental form of representation of the educational ideal of postmodernism in the absence of a conceptual form of its representation; 4) the formation of a national educational ideal is complicated by the absence in the public consciousness of a mental form of its representation in the presence of a conceptual form, which determines the simulative nature of the said ideal. The results of the research can be used in solving the problem of reforming education and upbringing, taking into account traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.