ETHNOTOURISM AS THE MEANS OF CIVIL AND PATRIOTIC EDUCATION

Svetlana N. Fedorova¹, Vera I. Toktarova², Valentina V. Konstantinova³, 
Elvira M. Vorontsova⁴, Elena V. Alekseeva^5
1 Prof. Dr., Mari State University, Russia, svetfed65@rambler.ru
² Assoc. Prof., PhD, Mari State University, Russia, toktarova@yandex.ru
³ Assoc. Prof., PhD, Mari State University, Russia, mar.pedagog@gmail.com
⁴ Assoc. Prof., PhD, Mari State University, Russia, vem_77@mail.ru
⁵ Assoc. Prof., PhD, Mari State University, Russia, elena_vitaliev@mail.ru

Abstract
The article discusses a new direction of civil-patriotic education – ethnotourism. The direction was being carried out by a group of scientists of Mari State University under financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. Ethno-tourism being a relatively new, rapidly developing direction of the tourism industry is considered to be an inclusion of lifestyle and national culture of various ethnic communities. Ethnotourism has a high pedagogical potential because it allows people to experience living under the conditions of their native culture, to penetrate into peculiar mental outlook of their own people through making acquaintance with their traditions, customs, attitudes. One must say that, despite all its attractiveness, ethno-tourism, including its direction as ethnotourism for children and youth, is not widely used in our country for many reasons. One of the reasons is the lack of professionals being able to professionally provide scientific-methodological and psychological and pedagogical support of the implementation of this direction for the formation of civil and patriotic character qualities of a person. The article considers revealed scientific-methodical and psychological and pedagogical bases of ethnotourism support for children and youth in the Republic of Mari El in the course of the project realization, model of ethnotourism support, including the purpose, objectives, principles, content, forms, methods, means, and result is developed and tested.

Keywords: ethnotourism, children, ethnotourist route, Republic of Mari El.