Almost any conversation about Soviet education sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it was of the highest quality in the world. As a rule, the story does not end there, but becomes overgrown with details: the teachers were stricter, the assessment of knowledge - more precisely, the porridge in the dining room - was thicker, and the graduate of the Soviet school was head and shoulders above today. Of course, you should not instantly believe such statements, as well as get upset about the fact that the "present", "correct" and "best" education is in the past. Anna Kondra debunks the main myths about the Soviet school.
1. Education was so good because his device was copied from pre-revolutionary Russia
A widespread myth appealing to the fact that the People's Commissariat of Education (the future Ministry of Education of the USSR), creating a new Soviet school, took all the best that was in the pre-revolutionary education system.
There is some truth in this statement. In most cases, after the revolution, teachers continued to teach, educated in Tsarist Russia. The approaches and methods by which the training was conducted have been preserved. Moreover, the process of inheriting the traditions, culture and moral principles of a bygone era did not stop, but was actively progressing at the dawn of the Soviet school.
But already in the second half of the 1920s, experiments began: the Soviet leadership not only allowed, but also encouraged attempts to introduce new approaches and programs. Such a radical search completely crossed out everything that was mentioned above. Moreover, the idea of a unified system for all schools in the country of the Soviets was completely rejected. The concept changed again at the very beginning of the 30s. Wishing to introduce a single educational standard, the government demanded that all schools, teaching methods and curricula be quickly unified. By the end of the 30s, with minor amendments, schools became approximately the educational institutions that they remained until recently. So the early Soviet school, full of continuity, mutated into an educational institution of a completely different type. Therefore, it is still not very correct to say that Soviet school education owes something to the school of tsarist times.
It is interesting that the history of the Soviet university began with a harsh rejection and even denial of all previous experience, reminiscent of the bourgeois past. The desire to abandon the "bourgeois vestiges" reached the point that lectures as a form of education until 1932 were not practiced in Soviet higher institutions at all.
2. School education was free
Words that, for some reason, are uttered by many parents or grandparents when the school again plans to renovate or plant flowers. The belief that Soviet schools never had anything to do with money is wrong. Few people remember that from 1940 to 1956, education in high school (from eighth to tenth grade), as well as in technical schools and higher educational institutions was paid and cost from 150 to 200 rubles per year according to some data and up to half of the parents' income according to others.
For a long time, Soviet theorists were very interested in the so-called pedology - an approach in which knowledge from biology, medicine, psychology and pedagogy was used in the formation of school curricula and teaching methods. Today pedology has been absorbed by other sciences and has ceased to exist, but it is interesting what such experiments resulted in. The most striking manifestation of pedology was the principle of forming the composition of classes in schools.
Based on tests designed to determine the level of intelligence, students were placed in a class with children of the corresponding level. This is how the classes of "achievers" and "laggards" were created.
The transition from the second category to the first was very difficult and even almost impossible. Quite often, admission to technical schools or universities was dictated precisely by belonging to a class with the correct characteristics. Discussion of such an approach today may seem simply inappropriate, but this fact remains in the history of the Soviet school.
As a rule, disputes about the level and adequacy of wages reveal the most striking contradictions. And this is true: there are several ways to assess whether teachers' work was paid adequately. For example, comparing the salary of a teacher with the average income level in the country, we will see that throughout almost the entire Soviet period, it was lower by an average of 15%. If we compare the incomes of a school teacher and an associate professor at the university, the result will be completely indecent. The middle school teacher received about nine times less.
The hardest hit was for teachers who worked in rural schools. For a long time, they did not receive state salaries at all: their salaries were completely dependent on the income of the collective farm or state farm.
Nevertheless, one should not forget about the level of the ruble's purchasing power. For example, the average salary of a primary school teacher in the 70s was 70 rubles, while bread cost about 23 kopecks, and, for example, a men's suit - about 87 rubles.
5. The Soviet teacher took an active part in the education of his wards and outside of regular hours
Of course, one would like to hope that both earlier and today schoolchildren are faced with caring people, but it is easy to trace what this belief is - the influence of a difficult period in history, when Soviet teachers really had to go home, so that their students did not lag behind. Until 1943, socialist competition was announced between schools (as well as in factories, factories and collective farms) - a rating based on average school performance. For the sake of victory in such a competition, grades were mercilessly overestimated, and the level of knowledge did not correspond to the results indicated in the report cards. In 1943, when Soviet troops were approaching the border, leaving behind them already not captured, but devastated settlements, the question arose of who would restore them. Given the demographic situation, they hoped for those who at that moment had to finish high school.
It turned out that their level of knowledge was catastrophically low. So much so that the question was raised about the impossibility of training in technical schools or universities.
Then the government took a number of measures to improve the situation. The Minister of Education urged to combat the previously practiced memorization of texts and to pay special attention to understanding and the ability to use information. The Ministry of Education required each teacher to investigate the reasons for poor academic performance and non-attendance. This is where the idea of a teacher penetrating the private life of his student was born. An idea that was reinforced in the minds of people by a large number of texts published in the periodicals of that time and the first post-war years. The problem with this, at first glance, not a bad idea is the lack of motivation: after the abolition of socialist competition, no other incentives for a teacher running around his students' houses were invented.
Anna Kondra
Full text "5 MYTHS ABOUT SOVIET SCHOOL" http://mel.fm/2015/09/17/ussr
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I am reading article 45 of the Soviet Constitution.
“Citizens of the USSR have the right to education. This right is ensured by the gratuitousness of all types of education. "
And not only free education, but also "the provision of state scholarships and benefits to pupils and students, free distribution of school textbooks."
Yes, it was so. And the teachers were good, who not only gave good knowledge, but also brought up.
Then, with the "damned scoops", the school training program was the same throughout the country. The hostel presented itself. You could live on the scholarship. One of my favorite writers, Vasily Shukshin, has a story called "Space, Nervous System and Shmat of Sala." The hero, the old man Naum Evstigneich, asks a village schoolboy who was going to enter the medical institute:
- Stretch your legs until you reach the surgeon. Where does she, mother, get so much money?
- For a scholarship. The guys are studying ... We have two students from the village like this.
Not luxurious, but one could then live on a scholarship.
My daughter, a student in the 80s, had a scholarship of 40 rubles. Let the average salary be 120 rubles. It turns out that the scholarship was one third of the average salary. If the average salary is now, say, 40,000 rubles in Moscow, then the scholarship should be slightly less than 14,000 rubles. Is there such a thing? 1800 rubles, and live as you want.
Try today, living in the countryside, studying in the city without the help of your parents, living on a scholarship.
What happened then, at the time of "soviet lack of freedom"? After graduation, a young specialist was given three years to gain experience. At the same time, he was paid the same salary as an ordinary specialist. Housing was definitely presented. The young specialist had a mentor.
Before the army, I graduated from a vocational school and worked for two years at a metallurgical plant - I cooked steel on electric furnaces. I saw all this in reality and I can confirm that in reality it was so. And today it is problematic for a graduate without work experience, not to mention the fact that he will be trained and paid a normal salary.
In addition to good knowledge, then the personality was brought up in schools and universities. Personality! What is missing today.
And what kind of people came out of that Soviet school! Academicians, great scientists, designers, cosmonauts, production managers, great artists and statesmen.
Who is the school raising today? It got to the point that the students began to kill and maim their teachers. In January of this year alone, there were three cases of attacks by schoolchildren on their teachers.
In Perm, a ninth-grader stabbed a teacher and fourth-graders with a knife. The teacher and four children were taken to the hospital in serious condition.
In Buryatia, a student with an ax attacked a teacher and schoolchildren. The teacher and three schoolchildren were taken to the hospital in serious condition. Seven schoolchildren were injured.
In the Chelyabinsk region, a ninth-grader stabbed another student with a knife. Earlier in the same place, in the Chelyabinsk region, in the village of Yeral, students killed their physics teacher.
In Vladivostok, an eighth grader sprayed pepper gas at a school.
Earlier, in 2014, in Otradnoye (Moscow region), a tenth grader shot a geography teacher with a gun.
My granddaughter is graduating from the Pedagogical University this year, and I'm already getting scared for her. The profession of a teacher becomes the most dangerous, like that of a miner. Some fool for a deuce can easily stab a teacher.
And the teachers today are not the same as in our Soviet era. Last year, at an elite school in Moscow, the director and his deputy committed lecherous acts against girls for a long time. Did they accidentally solve this crime, and how many were not solved on the periphery? Nobody knows.
Bad things at school today. And they do not educate, and teach poorly.
Previously, we had ESHO - a unified school education. Now the foreign exam. Teacher Yuri Vnukov said at one meeting: "To pass the foreign exam today, it is enough to know the subject for a deuce" (in accordance with the criteria of the ESHO)
Liberals and rulers have ruined Russian education, and their children are now sent to study in the West and the United States. Russia today has become a leader in studying children in England.
They do not want to teach their children in our schools. It is unlikely that these students will leave foreign schools as patriots of Russia.
And once our education was considered the best in the world. When Gagarin flew into space, US President John F. Kennedy said: "We lost space to the Russians at the school desk."
We need to return the quality of Soviet education.
Reviews
Thank you, Nikolai Ivanovich! I have found my complete adherent in your person, and the number of your readers is an indicator of the correctness of the cause for which you stand. I put you in the "favorites". As time and effort go, I will read you.
The school theme is wide and deep because it is a cut of our today's society. In response to one review, the author of which believed that due to the enormous volume of this problem it is too early to tackle it today, I wrote: “Those who in thirty years will“ stand in line ”for the presidential chair, today they still go to school. the future of our country will largely depend on how we train and educate them. "
I worked as a school teacher for five years before retirement. I expounded my judgments about the state of affairs in it in the article "Let's talk about school" (it is at the beginning of the list of my works). I would be glad if you show interest in her.
With great respect and sympathy!
The education system in the USSR was called the public education system in official documents. Since its inception in 1917, its main task has been to educate and educate the younger generation in accordance with the communist ideology that determined the life of society. The main moral goal of Soviet education at all levels - from kindergarten to university - was considered to be the preparation of a worthy member of the working collective, together with the whole country, building a "bright future." Throughout the entire period of the existence of the Soviet educational system, these attitudes were subordinated to the teaching of not only humanitarian disciplines, but also natural and even exact sciences.
Preschool
The first stage of the state program of public education was preschool institutions. They opened all over the USSR from the first years of its existence: the building of the Land of Soviets required millions of workers, including women. The problem "with whom to leave the child for a young working mother" was not relevant - it was successfully solved by kindergartens and nurseries that accepted babies from the age of two months. Later, preschool institutions were an important part of the system of universal secondary education, which since 1972 has been compulsory for every Soviet citizen.
There were no private kindergartens in the Soviet Union. All institutions were municipal (state) or departmental - owned by enterprises: factories, collective farms, factories, etc. They were supervised by local education and health authorities.
The state not only built children's preschool institutions everywhere, but also almost completely financed the maintenance of children and the educational process. Parents partially reimbursed food expenses, which were calculated taking into account the total salaries of the baby's father and mother. There were no "voluntary-compulsory" contributions for curtains, blankets, carpets, books, pots, and so on. Large and low-income families were exempted from paying for kindergarten services.
The ramified system of preschool institutions in the USSR consisted of:
- from the nursery - the smallest were brought up in them - from two months to three years;
- kindergartens - they took three-year-olds and prepared them for admission to the first grade until the age of seven, gradually transferring them from the junior group to the middle, senior and preparatory;
- day nurseries-kindergartens - combines, under one roof, united the two previous types of institutions.
Experienced teachers and nannies worked with pupils of preschool institutions. Children were taught to a healthy lifestyle, and cultural development kept pace with the directives of the Communist Party and government decrees that governed the entire education system in the USSR.
School
During the existence of the USSR, the secondary school was transformed several times in accordance with the realities of the changing life, all 
the modifications were aimed at increasing the level of education of new generations.
In the first years of Soviet power, general and vocational education was not divided: in the unified nine-year labor schools of the RSFSR, mastering the basics of theoretical knowledge and craft took place in parallel. The training was carried out in two stages: the first - five years, the second - four years. Additionally, in 1919, workers 'faculties were opened at secondary specialized and higher educational institutions - workers' faculties that prepared illiterate proletarians and peasants for study at universities. They existed until the mid-30s and were abolished as unnecessary.
In 1932, secondary education in the USSR became ten-year and three-stage:
- primary - from 1 to 4 grades;
- incomplete secondary education - from the 5th to the 7th;
- middle - 10 classes.
During the Great Patriotic War, two types of specialized schools appeared in the education system of the USSR:
- Suvorov and Nakhimov schools, which trained applicants for higher military educational institutions;
- schools for working and rural youth, created so that workers in the evening and correspondence form could receive secondary education.
In 1958, the structure of secondary education changed: the first three became the primary grades, the middle - from the fourth to the eighth, the senior - the ninth and tenth.
In the same year, the first technical schools were opened, and the factory apprenticeship schools (FZU), which trained skilled workers on the basis of primary education, were replaced by vocational schools (PTU), where one could enter after 8 classes to acquire a labor specialty.
To provide support to incomplete, large and low-income families, a system of boarding schools was developed, in which children lived during the working week, studying like in a regular school, and on weekends went home. In all general education schools, extended day groups have been introduced so that children who do not have grandparents stay in school after school until the evening, eating well and doing homework under the supervision of teachers.
The system of secondary education in the USSR, reformed in 1958, remained unchanged until the collapse of the country and was recognized by many foreign authoritative educators as the best in the world.
Higher
The pinnacle of the education system in the Soviet Union is a complex of higher educational institutions that produced highly qualified and comprehensively developed specialists. 
for each sector of the national economy. More than eight hundred universities and institutes successfully functioned in the country:
- polytechnic;
- agricultural;
- pedagogical;
- medical;
- legal;
- economic;
- arts and culture.
Institutes trained personnel primarily for industry, while universities were mainly engaged in training specialists in the humanities and natural sciences.
Universities graduated competent professionals and at the same time served as a base for scientific work, since they were equipped with research classes and laboratories, where experiments were carried out, technology for production and household appliances was developed. Students were actively involved in innovative activities, but the main occupation for them was still systematic study. Young people were paid a scholarship, the amount of which depended on academic performance and workload in social work.
In order to increase the availability of higher education to all strata of the population in the USSR, for the first time in the world, they began to use the correspondence form of education.
Despite the ideology of the education system in the USSR, its effectiveness, especially the quality of engineering and technical training, was noted even by political opponents of the Soviet Union.
| Alexander Ivanovich I wrote: |
| Idle talk and slander - such is the impression from the article. For what purpose was it written? The author does not give an answer to the main, substantive question - what was the quality of education in the USSR in comparison with the current one. And most likely it does not set such a goal. Its task is simpler, if not meaner: clumsily pulling out particulars from the general educational context, to form an idea among readers that things with education in the Union were oh, how bad. And the author is not shy about the means, what are only fabrications about discrimination in the formation of classes, etc. It remains only to regret that a worthy resource did not disdain to host an opportunistic political order. |
Why knowingly sow into the minds of people What is the idea of a high level of education in Soviet times?
"Vulgus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur"
"The crowd wants to be deceived, let them be deceived"
4. Education
Why do the people need to be educated? What devilish pride is needed to impose oneself on educators! ... The striving for the education of the people was replaced by the slogan of its upbringing.
Nadezhda Mandelstam
The first five-year plan, approved in 1929, officially began in 1928. On October 13, 1928 Izvestia reported: “In our system of scientific planning, one of the first places is occupied by the question of the planned training of new people - the builders of socialism. a commission under the Main Science, a commission that will unite the scattered work of pedagogical, psychological, reflexological, physiological, clinical institutes and laboratories, organize their efforts to study the developing person according to a single plan, and will bring this study into the mainstream of the practical service of the tasks of socialist education and socialist culture. " It was natural that the child becomes the most important object of "socialist education". Speaking at the Thirteenth Party Congress (1924), Bukharin declares: "The fate of the revolution now depends on how much of the younger generation we can prepare the human material that will be able to build the socialist economy of a communist society."
A. School
The initial stage in the processing of "human material" was the school. Among the first acts of the Soviet government was the destruction of the old education system. To build a new school, - wrote V. Lebedev-Polyansky, one of the leaders of the People's Commissariat for Education, - the old school must be killed. The radicalism of the "Regulations on the Unified Labor School", the law adopted in November 1918, was not inferior to the radicalism of the October Revolution. All the "attributes of the old school" were eliminated: exams, lessons, homework assignments, Latin, student uniforms. School management is transferred into the hands of the "school team", which includes all students and all school workers - from teacher to caretaker. The word "teacher" is canceled - he becomes a "school worker", a shrub. Direct leadership is carried out by the "school council", which includes all "shkrabs", representatives of pupils (from the age of 12), the working population and the department of public education.
The "New School" decisively rejected the old teaching methods, turning to the most modern pedagogical theories, both Russian and foreign. In particular, the books of the American philosopher John Dewey, which are translated into Russian in large numbers, are very popular. The Soviet school of the 1920s is the most advanced in the world in terms of teaching methods and forms of self-government. Revolutionary teachers foresee a complete victory in the near future: "The state is withering away. We are moving from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom ... The meaning of pedagogy is changing to the same extent ... Cognition of a person and the ability to educate a person acquire decisive importance ..." 1 School , - assert the theorists-Marxists, - arose together with the state, together with it it will disappear. It will become a place for a game, a club. It will be replaced by: the communist party, councils of deputies, trade unions, factories, political meetings, courts.
In the late 1920s, they discover they were wrong. The state is not going to wither away. It begins to grow stronger every day: Stalin spares no effort for this. At the same time, the attitude towards school is changing. In the 30s, all the attributes of the "scholastic feudal school" returned to her. All experiments in the field of teaching methods and programs are declared "leftist deviation" and "hidden Trotskyism." A sign of a break with the policy of building a "new school" was the replacement of Anatoly Lunacharsky (who had held this post since November 1917) at the post of People's Commissar of Education by a party leader who had been head of the Red Army's Political Administration for many years, Andrei Bubnov.
The turn was by 180 °: instead of self-government - the sole authority of the director and "firm discipline", instead of the collective form of education ("brigade method") - traditional classes, lessons, timetable. In 1934, "stable" curricula and "stable textbooks" were introduced: throughout the Soviet Union, all schools at the same time teach the same thing using the same textbooks. One textbook is introduced for each subject, approved by the Central Committee.
A 180 ° turn did not mean a change in target. Both Lunacharsky and Bubnov were old Bolsheviks who knew what they wanted. The dispute about the nature of the school concerned not the principle, but the methods and techniques of processing human material. The main problem was the need to combine the upbringing of a new person and his education. In the first post-revolutionary years, the revolutionary school was necessary, first of all, as a tool for breaking with the past. destruction of pre-revolutionary public relations. In 1918, at the congress of public education workers, it was said clearly and unequivocally: “We must create a generation of communists from the young generation. -under the rude influence of the family. We must register them, frankly, nationalize them. From the very first days of their lives they will be under the beneficial influence of communist kindergartens and schools. Here they will perceive the alphabet of communism. Here they will grow up to be real communists. "
As the Soviet system matured, in the Stalin era, when a new world was modeled with the help of cutting, stabbing, shooting tools, the appearance of the school changed. "... The interests of the state and the school," writes the Soviet historian, "merged into one, the idea of the autonomy of the school acquired a counter-revolutionary character ..." 3 Parents changed, a Soviet family was born and the state takes her into service as an assistant in educating young people. The goal remains the same. Prof. Medynsky, one of the most active teachers of Stalin's time, repeats in 1952 the formula of 1918 with almost no changes: "The Soviet school, including the elementary school, educates its students in the spirit of communist morality." work is the formation of communist morality among young people. "5 The quote from Lenin supplements the invariable formula:" At the heart of communist morality lies the struggle to consolidate and end communism. This is what the basis of communist upbringing, education and teaching consists of. " on the directions of the reform of the Soviet school, published in January 1984, approved by the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers in April of the same year, the instructions of Yu. Andropov were quoted: - as a citizen of a socialist society, an active builder of communism ... "7 Law about the school, which approved the draft of the Central Committee, ends with an instruction: "To increase the vanguard role and responsibility of communist teachers for a radical improvement in the quality of teaching and communist education of the younger generation."
The Soviet school was the most revolutionary in the world, then it became the most reactionary and the most conservative in the world. But not for a moment did the Party lose sight of its goal: the creation of the New Man. Throughout Soviet history, the school remains a powerful instrument for achieving this goal. In the 1920s, when the most advanced pedagogical theories of that time (primarily Western) were used for teaching, the most prominent Soviet educators assert: without communism, we do not need literacy.
The need to possess "a certain amount of knowledge," as Andropov put it, was not denied: the practical need for them was obvious. But teaching "knowledge" was always of a secondary nature, it was, as it were, a necessary evil, an additional element of education, persuasion, and formation. The history of the Soviet school can be viewed as the history of the search for the best combination of upbringing and education, as the history of the development of technical methods that make it possible to turn education into a carrier of upbringing, to permeate all educational subjects with "ideological".
The author of the "methodology of political literacy", obligatory in the early 1920s, insisted on the possibilities hidden, for example, in arithmetic. Teachers were asked to build the tasks as follows: "The uprising of the Parisian proletariat with the seizure of power took place on March 18, 1871, and the Paris commune fell on May 22 of the same year. How long did it exist?" The author of the methodology adds: "Naturally, in this case arithmetic ceases to serve as a weapon in the hands of bourgeois ideologists." In the second half of the 50s, a scholarly work on fairy tales indicated the directions of their "correct interpretation" when working with children: "In fairy tales about animals, the primordial class enmity between the oppressor serfs and the oppressed people is truthfully shown ..." Baba Yaga "," the mistress of "the forest and animals, is depicted as a real exploiter, oppressing his servants-animals ..." 10 At the end of the 70s, in the methodological manual, Academician I. I. Lenin, not being a physicist, understood more deeply the significance of Einstein's theory of relativity for physics than many prominent scientists of that time ... "11
Strengthening the authority of A. Einstein by the omnipotent authority of V. I. Lenin is the most expressive example of the subordination of "knowledge" to "ideology." The point is not only that Materialism and Empirio-criticism, in which Lenin allegedly "understood the significance of the theory of relativity," was written in 1908, published in 1909, and Einstein's first article was published in 1905, but in his theory was presented in its final form only in 1915. The point is not only that Lenin does not mention Einstein, for he does not know him in 1908. In 1953, Einstein's theory was considered anti-scientific ", 12 in 1954, the author of the theory of relativity was reproached in the fact that “under the influence of Machian philosophy,” he gave a “perverse, idealistic interpretation” of his theory. development of modern physics, which were given by Lenin in Materialism and empirio-criticism.13 In 1978, it was announced that the significance of Einstein's theory is determined primarily by the fact that Lenin was the first to discover its significance.
The task set before the Soviet school explains the keen interest that has been shown since the beginning of the 1920s in physiology and psychology as tools of education and persuasion. Since the "main practical question" put forward by the new social system was "the question of changes in the mass man in the process of socialist influence on him," 14 insofar as this question was "pedological": , a decisive factor ... determining all the main prospects for the future of a person. " In search of "energetic acceleration of our creative variability," 15 pedologists first of all turn to the teaching of physiologist Ivan Pavlov about conditioned reflexes, because "the center of this teaching is in the external environment and its stimuli."
Educators dream of using the latest achievements of Soviet science, which in the 1920s and 1930s was actively looking for opportunities to remake human psychology and physiology. Scientists and pseudo-scientists announce miraculous discoveries and "discoveries" that make it possible to return youth, to start making - on an assembly line - a socialist man. Mikhail Bulgakov's story The Heart of a Dog, written in 1925 and never published in the USSR, conveys well the atmosphere of time - the expectation of a miracle, the elixir of youth, and eternal life. Alexander Bogdanov, philosopher and physician, one of the founders of the Russian Social Democratic Party, dies in 1928 as a result of an unsuccessful experience in blood transfusion, made to prove the possibility of rejuvenation and the theory of universal brotherhood of people. The research institute was placed at the disposal of prof. Kazakov, who announced that he had found a miracle cure - lysates.17 In 1938, I. Kazakov, arrested in the Bukharin case and accused of murdering OGPU chairman Menzhinsky, was shot. From his testimony it follows that he treated Soviet leaders with his magic lysates. In 1937, the People's Commissariat of Health created a 50-bed oriental medicine clinic in Leningrad, capable of serving 200-300 patients a month.18 Perhaps the best evidence characterizing the atmosphere of expectation of a miracle, faith in it, was the name of the head of the new clinic, a specialist in Tibetan medicine - Doctor Badmaev. The same name was borne by one of Rasputin's predecessors at the royal court - the Mongol-Buryat physician Badmaev.
The difference between Zhamsaryn Badmaev, who treated the royal family with miraculous herbs, and Doctor N.N.Badmaev, a Soviet doctor who treated the "working people of the USSR", was that the latter worked "according to plan" and on the basis of "materialistic philosophy."
Conditioned reflexes, lysates, Tibetan herbs, the study of the "brain barrier" - true science and charlatanism got along well if they made their starting point an accurate statement about the direct connection between the external environment and the psyche, if they promised to alter the human psyche by influencing the external environment. In this atmosphere, the emergence of the largest of the twentieth century charlatans - T. Lysenko - was inevitable. If the wonderful idea to remake nature on the basis of Stalin's teachings had not occurred to the agronomist in Ganja, it would undoubtedly have come to someone else. This idea was in the air, it was necessary, it expressed the spirit of the times, the essence of "rational" Soviet ideology.
The talented psychologist A.S. Vygotsky substantiates the role of educators in society, developing I. Pavlov's theory of the second signal system - an intermediate structure that filters stimuli-signals of the physical world. The brain of a child or a person who has just been taught to read and write, explained Vygotsky, is conditioned by the interaction of spontaneous and non-spontaneous concepts. The authoritarian educational system, feeding the mind of the object with organized concepts, allows the design and control of spontaneous elements.
The conclusion from all these theories was obvious: the possibility of processing human material has been scientifically proven, it should be started as early as possible. Dr. Zalkind states at the end of the 1920s that in the USSR "completely new, richest pedagogical possibilities have been discovered in the nursery age - possibilities unknown to Western nursery practice." 20 He continues: "No less rich and no less optimistic material on the issue of variability brought preschool age to Soviet pedology ... A new preschooler has appeared, growing up with our pedagogical purposefulness. " a machine that functions in such a way that it produces what we call the correct mental Phenomena ... Man ... is a piece of organized matter that thinks, feels, sees and acts.22
In the following decades, considerable external changes took place: in 1936 pedology, which was declared "bourgeois anti-science", was eliminated, many names of the leading figures of pedagogy, psychology, physiology and biology - the standard-bearers of science of the Stalinist period - were erased from memory, the frankness of the dream of a miracle inherent in the post-revolutionary era disappeared. The desire to treat the child, starting the impact as early as possible, remains constant. The charter of the kindergarten, approved in 1944, reads: "To foster love for the Soviet Motherland, for its people, its leaders, the Soviet Army, using the riches of native nature, folk art, bright events in the life of the country, accessible to the understanding of children." The "Program of Preschool Education in Kindergarten", approved in 1969, proposes to pay attention to "the formation from an early age of such important moral feelings as love for the Motherland, the Soviet people, the founder of the Soviet state V.I. nationalities ".24
Intensive "psychophysiological and pedagogical studies" of young children are continuing, indicating "the great cognitive capabilities of children in the first two years of life," the role of "orienting reflexes." 25 Special psychological and psychological-pedagogical studies of the development of emotional processes in preschool age, "their significance for the formation of social motives of behavior."
The external changes that took place in the field of education in the first half of the 30s, which accurately reflected the process of building a socialist utopia, marked the transition to a new technique for processing human material. The main direction is not a change in the environment, which would entail a change in a person, but training, which, as A. Zalkind offendedly wrote, "the worst enemies call training children."
"Training, methods of hypnotic, terrorist pressure on children" 27 was an accurate definition of the technique used by Soviet pedagogy. Gradually, since the beginning of the 30s, the technique of education has been improving. The attitude towards ideology is changing: it ceases to be a system of views based on certain unshakable concepts, and turns into a system of signals emitted by the Supreme Instance. The need for "faith" disappears: the extermination of "ideological Marxists" during the years of terror signaled the beginning of a new era.
An excellent illustration of the unlimited possibilities that have opened up for pedagogy can be the song that children sing in the nursery, having barely learned to speak. For two decades, Soviet children sang: "I am a little girl, I play and sing. I do not know Stalin, but I love him." In the mid-50s, the text was changed: "I am a little girl, I play and sing. I don't know Lenin, but I love him." The expression of love for an unknown deity matters; his name does not matter.
The training (or training) method requires relentless repetition of the same movements - or words. A model is also needed that demonstrates the correct movements, saying: do as I do! After the generation trained on the Stalin model, there are growing generations trained on the Lenin model. The signal - "Lenin" - enters the brain of a Soviet child immediately after birth. Opening his eyes, he sees portraits of the Leader, among the first sounds - the name of the Leader, among the first words - after the word "mother" - "Lenin". “When a simple freaky boy comes to the first grade, he reads this word for the first time in the very first book.” 28 This is exactly how the poet M. Dudin states a true fact: the first word read by a Soviet child is Lenin. The recommended list of books for reading for schoolchildren of the first eight grades is entitled: "Lenin - Party - People - Revolution". First recommended book: The Life of Lenin. Selected pages of prose and poetry in 10 volumes. The list, numbering 78 pages, contains dozens of books about Lenin: poetry, prose, plays, memoirs.
Thousands of anecdotes ridiculing the deification of the Leader is an attempt to break out of the hypnotic sleep into which a Soviet person is immersed. But the jokes that make fun of Lenin have Lenin as their plot. The cult model allows you to create a ritual of worship that remains unchanged, in which the name of Lenin's heir can be replaced as a used part of the machine. The Nineteenth Congress of the Komsomol (1982) assured the party that "he would raise conscious fighters for communist ideals, educate children on the example of the life and work of the great Lenin ..." the successor to the work of the great Lenin, an outstanding political and statesman of our time, a tireless fighter for peace and social progress, a wise mentor of youth, Comrade Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. "29 Exactly two years later, a young worker of the Moscow plant assured the new General Secretary:" We have someone to take example, from whom to learn ... Before us is your bright life path, Konstantin Ustinovich. "30 Calling the life path of K. U. Chernenko" bright "is perhaps the greatest hyperbole since the time when Stalin was called the greatest genius of all times and peoples ... But the young worker did not seek hyperbole, comparisons, he did not express his own feelings - he participated in the ritual.
The chief is the basic model, the basic model. In his image and likeness are created by cultural workers - writers, filmmakers, artists, etc. - reduced models - positive characters. The Central Committee of the CPSU in its next resolution ("On the creative ties of literary and art magazines with the practice of communist construction") gives the same order: "New generations of Soviet people need positive heroes who are close to them in spirit and time."
Heroes of children's literature occupy a special place in the gallery of positive samples. Children's writers praise boys and girls who are ready for heroic deeds, who commit heroic deeds, sacrificing themselves for the sake of the Motherland. Children are convinced of the need to destroy the enemy and die. The author of essays on the history of Soviet children's literature emphasizes the exceptional merit of the work of the classic of literature for children Arkady Gaidar: “For the first time in children's literature, Gaidar introduces the concept of“ betrayal. ”32 Pavlik Morozov became the first positive hero of Soviet children's literature, for he exposed the "treason" (of his father) and died, having fulfilled his duty. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the death of the young parricide. Komsomolskaya Pravda emphasized the importance of the "legendary feat" in the upbringing of Soviet children and adults.33 Half a century after the birth of the "legend" about Pavlik, Yunost magazine published a story by E. Markova Podsolnukh, which tells about a young, talented artist who serves as a border guard. Noticing from the tower the enemy leaving the border (no one else can 'violate' the border), the Soviet border guard jumps: “He jumped on that hated back, feeling a hundred horsepower in himself. The young man is broken to death, but he does his duty. Before his death, in the hospital, he realizes that he did the right thing, that the Soviet man could not have acted otherwise. A woman doctor who comes to a dying person expresses general feelings: "What he has done is worthy of the highest words ..." 35
Galileo in Brecht's play says: an unhappy country that needs heroes. If we agree with this, then there is no doubt that the Soviet Union is the most unhappy country in the world. Not only because she needs countless heroes - a popular song says: when a country orders to be a hero, anyone becomes a hero in our country. The misfortune of a country is primarily determined by what kind of heroes it wants to have. Soviet children and youth are taught by the examples of hero soldiers and heroes of the police. In 1933, Gorky noted with satisfaction: "... We are beginning to create Red Army fiction, which was nowhere to be found - and no. 36 Today, millions of copies of books are published about the war, intelligence officers, policemen, workers of" organs. " - and television films, plays, songs, paintings, sculptures. In the Central Museum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, a special exposition is dedicated to A. M. Gorky, who was declared the chief of militia and "organs." and Zarnitsa. The Central Committee of the Komsomol, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Special Education, the State Committee for Vocational Education, the Central Committee of DOSAAF of the USSR, the Sports Committee of the USSR, the Union of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies of the USSR participate in the organization and conduct of these games.
Schoolchildren of elementary grades (first - seventh) participate in "Zarnitsa", pupils of senior grades (eighth - tenth) take part in "Eaglet". In 1984, 13 million schoolchildren took part in the "Eaglet" military sports game ": 37 they compete in shooting, grenade throwing, overcoming obstacles, overcoming the terrain affected by an atomic explosion (in a special protective suit), and in a military march. "Eaglets," a Soviet journalist enthusiastically describing the "game," reports, "study the history of the Soviet Armed Forces, engage in tactical training ..." Both boys and girls participate in Zarnitsa and Orlyonok.
The command of the military games (professional military in general ranks), except for "Orlyonok" and "Zarnitsa", has been regularly held since 1973: in October - youth triathlon, in November-December - the competition "Friendly and strong", in January-February - Operation Dear Heroes, in March - Operation Defense, in April - Operation Sniper, in May - Dolphin.
"Military-patriotic education" begins with a nursery, continues in kindergarten and school - it is the most important element of the Soviet system of upbringing and education. "The main educational and upbringing task of the Soviet school," says the work prepared by the staff of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, "is to form a Marxist-Leninist worldview among the younger generation, to educate convinced materialists, staunch fighters for peace." The most important task is to impregnate each subject with a "system of basic ideological ideas." 38 Methodists are obliged to remember the need for "education in the learning process and to emphasize the" ideological orientation "of each subject.39
It is enough to compare the guidelines, separated by a quarter of a century, to discover their unshakable constancy. In 1952: "The history course has great educational value - it brings students to a Marxist-Leninist understanding of history." , Marxism-Leninism. "41 It is quite obvious that the humanities are especially convenient for introducing ideology into them." But Soviet methodologists do not forget the natural sciences. rebuilt on the basis of the teachings of the great Russian physiologist I. P. Pavlov, and teaching the foundations of Darwinism is based on the teachings of I. V. Michurin. " the formation of a firm atheistic position. "43 In 1952, among the main tasks of the chemistry course:" To acquaint students with the scientific foundations of chemical production and the role of chemistry in military affairs; promote the development of a materialistic outlook among students. "44 In 1977: the school should introduce the basics of nuclear physics and chemistry, which enable the student" who is deeply thinking about these phenomena not to resort to the hypothesis of God ... Physics and mathematics ... this is not only technology, but also the economy, this is labor productivity; consequently, it is also a social category directly related to the building of communism. ”45 In 1984, after the approval of the new school law, it was emphasized:“ The entire educational process should, to a much greater extent, become the bearer of ideological content. This problem is solved in the process of teaching practically all subjects, both the humanities and the natural cycle. ”46
The special character of Soviet education, which is primarily upbringing, determines "a new psychological and didactic approach to the study of the curriculum." 47 It is based on the deductive method of presenting material. Soviet pedagogical science has established that "an earlier theoretical generalization of the acquired knowledge makes learning more conscious ..." 48 All "generalizations", all initial theoretical data "are based on Marxism-Leninism." The teaching method consists in presenting material "from the known" to the "known": from Marxist-Leninist generalizations to Marxist-Leninist facts. Thus, the possibilities of independent thinking, questions, doubts are eliminated. Soviet schoolchildren are required - "to raise the theoretical level of education" - to study "the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism, the most important documents of the CPSU and the Soviet state, the international communist and workers' movement in the lessons of history, social science, literature and other subjects."
This list of "theoretical texts" hides the speeches of the next general secretaries, the next decisions of the Central Committee. "Raising the theoretical level" ultimately boils down to memorizing an up-to-date political vocabulary.
An analysis of Polish school textbooks made in 1980 by Bogdan Tsivinsky was a demonstration of the universality of the methods of forming a Soviet person. He identified four intertwining ideological tasks carried out by textbooks: the formation of a Marxist view of the world, man, society, culture, economy and various historical and contemporary social problems; atheization of consciousness; subordination of historical and current information to Russian and Soviet interests; a comprehensive presentation of the modern Polish state as a socialist homeland, the only undoubtedly worthy object of genuine patriotic feelings.50
The English historian Seton-Watson stated with indomitable optimism in 1975: "The growth of material well-being / in the USSR - M.G. / ... was accompanied by the rapid development of education at all levels ... Successive generations of young people learned to think" .51 The English historian did not take into account that the Soviet teaching method was intended to prevent students from thinking.
Since the party runs the school, the CPSU Central Committee prepared a draft school reform, approved in April 1984. But even the CPSU cannot do in schools without teachers, "sculptors of the spiritual world of a young personality," as the law on schools says. The role of the teacher as a tool for carrying out party politics, as a "sculptor" of the Soviet person, explains his position in society. “Sociological studies show that the prestige of the teaching profession among young people is unacceptably low,” a Soviet teacher bitterly stated in 1976.52 In Veniamin Kaverin’s story The Riddle, published in 1984, the teacher complains: “... I, for example, in an unfamiliar society, somewhere on the beach, I am embarrassed to admit that I am a teacher. There are prestigious professions: director of a shoe or grocery store, artist, merchandiser, artist, garage manager. And teaching is a profession that, alas, did not command respect. " The teacher knows the reasons for disrespect for her profession: “Teachers are not trusted.” 53 There are other reasons: low wages, very high employment, loss of authority among schoolchildren. The main thing is distrust of the teacher. It is born primarily of the fact that children understand that the teacher is telling them a lie. Teachers also understand this well. "... I would have acted honestly," says the heroine Kaverina, "if I had left teaching, which I love, because first of all the truth must be taught, and only then geography or physics." , deceive. Teacher deception is obvious to all schoolchildren, starting from the very elementary grades, because it is expressed primarily in the fact that grades are given to students not depending on their knowledge, but on the needs of fulfilling the academic performance plan. The teacher's performance is graded based on the percentage of the academic plan. The work of a class, school, district, region, republic is also assessed. “The principle of quantitative summing up,” writes the Moscow teacher G. Nikanorov, “has been planted in our country from top to bottom.” 1%. "56 The observation was completely accurate, the minister did not understand, however, that he was observing the effect of planning. At the very beginning of the school year, says a Moscow teacher, "the percentage of academic performance often rises to ninety-nine and tenths ..." so as not to disrupt the implementation of the plan by the class, school, district, republic.
The advancement of the fulfillment of the plan as the first "pedagogical" task entails a deliberate decrease in the level of education, designed not for good, but for unsuccessful students. This policy is based not only on the "planning" of the entire life of the country, but also on the pedagogical concept formulated by Makarenko: , including biological needs, but in the general process of organizing children's life, social and collective relations, in the course of which the child's personality is formed. " interesting and creative, but which are absolutely necessary ... "59 Educators are obliged to explain that the state determines who will perform the" interesting "and who will perform the" necessary "type of work.
Very low salaries contribute to disrespect for teaching. In Maria Glushko's story The Return, the teacher jokes bitterly: "Since our salary is small and we have nothing to steal, we ... are forced to live a rich spiritual life. Of course, we could take bribes, but no one gives." the Soviet reader, who is well aware that the bribe did not stop at the school threshold, that teachers are included in the magic circle of those who give and receive bribes.
Entering school, the first step out of family into life, confronts the child with the realities of the Soviet system. To an even greater extent than the knowledge that the teacher gives, the graying of the teacher becomes the most important factor in upbringing - the beginning of the training of the Soviet person. Personal qualities of a teacher: honesty, love of the profession, talent, desire to do their job well cannot significantly affect the course of the system. As soon as the system senses even the slightest resistance, it throws out a hindrance. Vladimir Tendryakov, a writer who closely followed the Soviet school, dedicated his story An Extraordinary Scandal in a small provincial town when it was discovered that the mathematics teacher believed in God. He never said a word to his students about religion, his subject, it would seem, had nothing to do with religion. He was forced to leave school, because by his presence he interfered with the "system", testified to the possibility of choice. He interfered with the "training" .61
The schoolboy, despite the teacher's personal desires, perceives the teacher as a knife in the hands of the state, as an executor of orders that force him to lie, to be a hypocrite. Children see that for this painfully hard work he receives scanty remuneration, has no authority in society. This is how life begins.
All children inevitably become adults. Students still remember the school well, their attitude towards professors is colored by their attitude towards the teacher. In many stories and novels about students at the center of the conflict is the problem of betrayal of the professor. Students betray their professors - denouncing them, exposing them at meetings - under pressure from the party, finding that this is the only way to make a career. For Soviet writers - D. Granin, Y. Trifonov, I. Grekova, V. Tendryakov, V. Grossman - treason to a professor is a symbol of a system that puts pressure on a person. In this conflict, there is also revenge on the teacher who betrayed the student from the first grade of school.
The word "reform" is used in the Soviet vocabulary - in relation to the Soviet system - very rarely. The resolutions of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers concerning various kinds of changes use optimistic expressions: "increase", "improve", "expand", "strengthen", etc. Emphasizing the significance of the changes in the school system approved by the law adopted in April 1984 year, they were called "the reform of the general education and vocational school." The April reform creates a "school in the conditions of improving developed socialism", a school of the twenty-first century: 15-20 years and beyond - in the coming twenty-first century. "62
The school law accurately records the state of the Soviet system after seven decades of existence and the dreams of its leaders for the future. The directions of the school reform testify to the decision to enter the twenty-first century backwards, tightly barred from everything new, which can violate the entropy of the Soviet system, the total power of the party. With astonishing intransigence, the new school law confirms the strategic goal: “The unshakable foundation of communist education of students is the formation of a Marxist-Leninist worldview in them.” 63 The reform defines new tactical directions for achieving the goal, taking into account the “coming twenty-first century”. It registers the incomplete success of the Soviet educational system.
The main task set before the school is "to form a conscious need for work in the younger generation." with the direct participation of schoolchildren in systematic, organized, feasible, socially useful, productive work. ”65
The structure of the school is changing. Education starts at six instead of seven. The decrease in the age of admission to school is undoubtedly associated with the desire to start processing the child as early as possible. For this purpose, a new structure is being introduced: primary school (first - fourth grades), incomplete secondary school (fifth - ninth grades), full secondary (tenth - eleventh grades). Instead of the compulsory ten-year education that existed until now, nine-year education and additional two-year education are being introduced for those who get the opportunity to continue their education in a higher educational institution. The ninth grade becomes the threshold at which selection will be made: the majority - for production, the minority - for the university. In connection with the reform, the number of schoolchildren who go to vocational schools or directly to production will approximately double.66 Consequently, the number of candidates for admission to a university will be halved. In 1950, about 80% of high school graduates went to university, at the end of the 70s - no more than 18% .67 Apparently, this is too much - the Soviet state discovered, on the threshold of the twenty-first century, that it needs, first of all, workers ... The selection of schoolchildren will be made "in accordance with the needs of the national economy, taking into account the inclinations and abilities of the students, the wishes of the parents and the recommendations of the pedagogical councils of schools."
So that 15-year-old boys and girls after the 9th grade could work in production, the law obliges the school to ensure the mastery of the profession by schoolchildren during training, and also provides for "mandatory participation of schoolchildren in socially useful, productive work ...", 69 including during the period summer holidays. The leading journalist of the Ministry of Education noted with satisfaction: “The experience of 1981 showed that the scale of the involvement of students in grades 4-6 and even 1-3 grades into socially useful labor during the summer holidays is expanding. This tendency should be encouraged and developed.” 70 School Law made "this trend" mandatory.
Pravda emphasizes that the school will devote “special attention to educating the need for labor.” 71 Hence, not only to teach a profession, but, above all, to foster a sense of the need to work wherever the party and the government send. Thus, two tasks merge together: communist education and vocational training.
The third main task - the Soviet school of the twenty-first century should be on three pillars - to strengthen "military-patriotic training." Not satisfied with everything that has been done in this area, the authors of the new law include in it a paragraph from the law on military service, adopted in 1968. The school receives the task: "To lay the basis for the military-patriotic education of students to prepare them for service in the ranks of the Armed Forces The USSR, fostering love for the Soviet Army, fostering a high sense of pride in belonging to the socialist fatherland, constant defense of it. To raise the level and effectiveness of military training for general education and vocational school. ”72
No school in the world, apart from perhaps Iran Khomeini, knows military training that begins at a very early age. "Military-patriotic education" aims to prepare future soldiers for military service, but no less important task is to develop in schoolchildren from the first grade (from 6 years old according to the new law) soldier virtues, that is, first of all, discipline and unquestioning obedience to the order, hatred of the enemy, which the teacher calls. At school, the role of a military instructor - a teacher of military affairs - is sharply increasing.
"Military-patriotic education" colors the teaching of all subjects. The new law pays special attention to the Russian language in non-Russian republics, demanding "to take additional measures to improve conditions for learning, along with their native language, the Russian language, which was voluntarily adopted by the Soviet people as a means of interethnic communication." The law requires: “Fluency in Russian should become the norm for young people who graduate from secondary educational institutions.” 73 The special attention to the Russian language is explained not only by the fact that it is used as a powerful carrier of Soviet thinking, as a means of Sovietization of the population, but also by the direct demand of the army. The article of the law on the Russian language directly responds to the complaint of Marshal Ogarkov: “Unfortunately, quite a few young people today come to the army with a poor knowledge of the Russian language, which seriously complicates their military training.” 74
The text of the law on the Soviet school is remarkable not only for what it contains, but also for what is omitted from it. In particular, the trend observed in recent years towards a reduction in teaching hours dedicated to teaching foreign languages has been silently sanctioned. In the 1980-81 academic year, language was allocated in high school one hour a week. Given that only one foreign language is taught in Soviet schools, it is obvious that this is a deliberate measure aimed at isolating Soviet citizens from the non-Soviet world. The required number of specialists who know the languages are trained in special educational institutions and schools. The most important silence is related to the scientific and technological revolution: the law on schools, which specifies in detail how to increase the ideological influence on young people, how to prepare them for work in production, how to educate them as soldiers, gets off with one vague phrase about the need to "equip students with knowledge and skills in using modern computing technology , to ensure the widespread use of computers in the educational process. ”75 Legislators talk about the need to“ equip ”the knowledge of the latest technology in a conditional mood - when computers will be available.
In September 1984, the Uchitelskaya Gazeta reported that "the computerization of the Soviet economy will take place in 15 years," by which time schools will graduate one million boys and girls with computer technology each year. In 1985, schools are to - according to the plan - receive 1131 computers for personal use "Agat", manufactured in the USSR.
The refusal to "computerize" the school is explained by fundamental, ideological reasons. Wide access to information, special skills of analytical, independent thinking, necessary when working with new technology, run counter to the entire system of upbringing and education in the USSR.
A Soviet journalist who claims that a country of "mature socialism" needs not "personal computers", but only large machines, admits that the emergence of computers can only be compared with the taming of fire or the invention of the alphabet.76 But he considers it perfectly natural that fire in the Soviet Union , the alphabet and computers are at the disposal of the state: it issues and controls matches, letters, cybernetic equipment. The required number of programmers, as well as experts in foreign languages, can always be trained in special institutions. The program of the new school mentions - in addition to Marx, Engels, Lenin - the names of two teachers: N. K. Krupskaya and A. S. Makarenko. These names underline the immutability of the model of the Soviet school. The task of education, formulated by the creator of "a truly scientific system for the education of the communist personality," 77 by the father of Soviet pedagogy A. Makarenko almost half a century ago, remains the main goal for the future: “We want to educate a cultured Soviet worker. we must qualify him, we must discipline him, he must be a politically developed and devoted member of the working class, a Komsomol member, a Bolshevik. "
Makarenko never tired of asserting that the army, the army collective, as he put it, is an ideal model of a school that would educate a "cultured Soviet worker." The Soviet school of the twenty-first century should - on the basis of the 1984 law - achieve the ideal: to educate worker-soldiers in the spirit of hierarchy, discipline, receiving strictly necessary knowledge in a form that does not require thought and reasoning, firmly convinced of the inevitable victory of communism. Hitler saw a similar ideal. Speaking at a May Day holiday in Berlin in 1937, he outlined his program: “We started first of all with young people. Nothing can be done with the old idiots / laughter in the hall /. We take their children away from them. We educate them as Germans of a new kind. When a child is seven years old, he still does not know anything about his birth and origin. One child is similar to another. At this age we take them to the collective until the age of 18. Then they enter the party, the CA, SS and other organizations, or directly go to factories ... And then go to the army for two years. "79
The ancient Romans insisted that whoever wants peace must prepare for war. And following this covenant, they created a world empire. Clausewitz explained the paradox: the war is always started by the one who defends himself. If the state attacked by the aggressor does not defend itself, there will be no war.
The Soviet school made it its new task to strengthen the preparation of schoolchildren for peace, strengthening their preparation for war from the age of 6.
Minister of Education and Science that Russian schools need to return to the best traditions of Soviet education - "the best in the world." According to her, education has lost a lot in recent years, abandoning the conservative line of behavior. Teachers from Yekaterinburg responded to her call. There they developed a project, according to which it is necessary to return to schools the classical Soviet teaching methodology, as well as Soviet textbooks "tested over the years". An employee of the Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts of the Scientific Library, a historian of Russian education, head of the Humanities Master's program at the University spoke about how well schoolchildren were taught during the Soviet era and whether we should be equal to the Soviet school today.
"Lenta.ru": Is it true that the Soviet education was the best, like everything else in the USSR?
Lyubzhin: I didn’t notice it. If the opinion about the superiority of Soviet education were even close to reality, it is logical to assume that the Western countries would have to arrange an educational reform in their country, following the example of the USSR. But none of the European states - neither France, nor England, nor Italy - ever thought to borrow the Soviet model. Because they did not value them highly.
What about Finland? They say that at one time she borrowed her techniques from us. At the same time, it is believed that today there is no equal to this country in terms of schooling.
I cannot agree that Finland is beyond competition. This is due to the peculiarities of local education, which is not designed for high results of individual individuals, but for raising the average level of education of each citizen. They really do it. First, Finland is a small country. That is, everything is easier to organize there. And secondly, very benign people are becoming teachers there. So the Finns manage to pull the guys out at the expense of strong teachers, and not at all at the expense of a good program. But at the same time, higher education is seriously sinking there.
Many believe that the structure of Soviet education is rooted in the educational system of Tsarist Russia. How much did we get from there?
Quite the opposite - Soviet education is the complete opposite of imperial education. Before the revolution, there were many types of schools in Russia: classical gymnasium, real school, cadet corps, theological seminary, commercial schools, etc. Almost everyone who aspired to this could learn. There was "own" school for all abilities. After 1917, instead of educational multi-structure, a single type of school began to be introduced.
Back in 1870, in the book of the Russian historian Afanasy Prokopyevich Shchapov, "Social and Pedagogical Conditions for the Mental Development of the Russian People," the idea was expressed that the school should be the same for everyone and that it should be based on natural sciences. What the Bolsheviks did. The general education has come.
This is bad?
It was the elementary school, where they taught elementary literacy, that fit well into the concept of universal education. It was organized at the level in the USSR. Everything that went on was already fiction. The high school curriculum offered everyone the same set of subjects, regardless of the abilities or interests of the children. For gifted children, the bar was too low, they were not interested, school only hindered them. And the laggards, on the contrary, could not cope with the load. In terms of the quality of training, a graduate of a Soviet secondary school was equal to a graduate of the imperial higher primary school. There were such schools in Russia before the revolution. Education in them was based on primary school (from 4 to 6 years, depending on the school) and lasted four years. But this was considered a primitive level of education. And the diploma of the higher primary school did not give access to universities.
The level of knowledge fell short?
The main skills of a graduate of a higher primary pre-revolutionary school: reading, writing, counting. In addition, the guys could pick up the rudiments of different sciences - physics, geography ... There were no foreign languages there, because the compilers of the programs understood that it would be fiction.
The preparation of a graduate of the Soviet school was about the same. The Soviet high school student was proficient in writing, counting, and fragmentary information in other subjects. But this knowledge filled his head like an attic. And in principle, a person interested in a subject could independently assimilate this information in a day or two. Although foreign languages were taught, the graduates practically did not know them. One of the eternal sorrows of the Soviet school is that the knowledge gained in one discipline, students did not know how to apply to another.
How then did it happen that the "attic" Soviet people invented a space rocket and carried out developments in the nuclear industry?
All the developments that glorified the Soviet Union belong to scientists with that pre-revolutionary education. Neither Kurchatov nor Korolev have ever studied in a Soviet school. And their peers, too, never studied in a Soviet school or studied with professors who received a pre-revolutionary education. When the inertia weakened, the margin of safety was depleted, then everything fell apart. Our education system did not have our own resources then, and does not appear today.
You said that the main achievement of the Soviet school is the beginning. But many say that mathematics education was adequately organized in the USSR. This is not true?
This is true. Mathematics was the only subject in the schools of the Soviet Union that met the requirements of the imperial high school.
Why exactly she?
The state had a need to make weapons. Besides, mathematics was like an outlet. It was done by people who were disgusted in other scientific fields because of ideology. Only mathematics and physics could hide from Marxism-Leninism. Therefore, it turned out that the country's intellectual potential was gradually artificially shifted towards technical sciences. During the Soviet era, the humanities were not quoted at all. As a result, the Soviet Union collapsed due to the inability to work with humanitarian technologies, to explain something to the population, to negotiate. We still see how monstrously low the level of humanitarian discussion in the country is.
Is it possible to say that the imperial pre-revolutionary education was in accordance with international standards?
We have been integrated into the global education system. Graduates of the gymnasium Sophia Fischer (the founder of the private female classical gymnasium) were admitted to any German university without examinations. We had a lot of students who studied in Switzerland and Germany. At the same time, they were far from the wealthiest, sometimes the other way around. It is also a factor of national wealth. If we take the lower strata of the population, the standard of living in imperial Russia was slightly higher than English, slightly inferior to the American and was on a par with the European. Average salaries are lower, but life here was cheaper.
Today?
In terms of education, in terms of knowledge, Russians are not competitive in the world. But there was a "lag" also during the USSR. The historian notes that, unlike other countries, the Soviet elite had the worst education among the intelligentsia. She was inferior not only to academic circles, but also to anyone who needed a higher education. In contrast to the West, where countries were ruled by graduates of the best universities. And after the collapse of the USSR, the model of Soviet universal education ceased to make sense. If the student is not interested, since the subjects were taught superficially and for the sake of a tick, some social pressure is needed so that the children still learn. In the early Soviet times, the very situation in the country forced a person to become a loyal member of society. And then the pressure eased. The scale of requirements has crept down. In order not to have to deal with repetitives, teachers had to do pure drawing of grades, and children could completely calmly not learn anything. That is, education does not guarantee a career. In other countries, there is practically no such thing.
As a fourth-grader mother, I have the feeling that today, compared to the Soviet period, they do not teach at all in school. The child comes home after class - and the "second shift" begins. We do not just do homework, but study the material that seems to be learned in the lesson. Friends have the same picture. Has the program become so complicated?
It's just that the school has moved from normal teaching to supervising. In the 1990s, this was a forced step by the teaching community. Then the teachers were left in complete poverty. And the method “do not teach, but ask” for them became the only way of guaranteed earnings. For tutoring services, their student was sent to a colleague. And he did the same accordingly. But when, in Moscow, for example, teaching salaries increased, teachers could no longer and did not want to get rid of this method. Apparently, it will not be possible to return them to the old principles of education.
I see from the experience of my nephew that they don't teach him anything at school and they didn't teach him anything, but they ask him carefully about everything. In schools, tutoring has been widespread since the fifth grade, which was not the case in the Soviet school. Therefore, when they check the school and say: the results are good, then you can't really believe it. In our country, in principle, it is already impossible to isolate school and tutoring work.
After the collapse of the USSR, reforms to improve education have been carried out in Russia almost every year. Have there really been no positive shifts?
Spears broke around important issues, but of the second order. The knowledge testing system is very important. But much more important is the program and the set of subjects for study. And we are now thinking that toughening exams can improve learning. No way. As a result, a difficult USE has only two ways: either we must lower the bar so that almost everyone can get a certificate. Or the exam will simply turn into fiction. That is, we are again returning to the concept of universal education - so that only everyone can receive secondary education. Is it really necessary for everyone? Secondary education in a full-fledged volume is capable of assimilating about 40 percent of the population. The imperial school serves as a reference point for me. If we want to embrace everyone with “knowledge”, the level of education will naturally be low.
Why then in the world the need for universal secondary education is not only not questioned, but even a new trend has appeared - universal higher education for all?
These are already the costs of democracy. If we call simple things higher education - why not? You can call the janitor a cleaning manager, make him the operator of an ultra-complex broom on wheels. But most likely there will be no difference - he will study for about five years or immediately on the spot he will begin to learn how to use the remote control of this broom. Formally, the Institute of Asian and African Countries and the Uryupinsky Steel University give the same rights. Both provide crusts about higher education. But in reality, one graduate will be hired for some jobs, but not the other.
What should parents do if they want to properly educate their child? Where to run, what school to look for?
It is necessary to understand that there is no segregation of schools according to programs now. Segregation is based on whether the school has a pool or a horse. We have the top 100 schools that are always at the top of educational rankings. Today they are replacing the absent secondary education system, as they prove their advantage at the Olympiads. But you need to understand that it is not easy to study there. They just don't take everyone there. I don't think that anything can be done with the current educational system in Russia. Today, Russian education is a patient in need of a very difficult operation. But in fact, his condition is so fatal that he simply will not endure any interventions.
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