The transition of Russian universities to the Bologna system, which involves four years of study in higher education, was a mistake. This recognition was made by the rector of Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov Viktor Sadovnichiy, speaking on Wednesday - December 7 - at the III Congress "Innovative practice: science plus business", which takes place at the university site.
“I can’t resist and I’ll say it again. I consider the transition to a four-year education in higher education a mistake we made, ”TASS quotes the words of the head of the country's main university.
Europe - he noted - "did its job" - unified professional standards and built education accordingly. “Unfortunately, we transferred this four-year education, now it is already three years in some cases, to our higher school,” Sadovnichiy said. In his opinion, education in Russian universities should last five or six years, as in leading Western universities.
It is not entirely clear why the rector did not remember the Soviet system of higher education with the same five or six years. However, the very fact that he touched on this topic at all already says something. And, above all, about the fact that the Bologna system, designed to adjust higher education in Russia to European standards, is not very justified. And it made no sense to enter it.
I spoke about the fact that the transition to the Bologna system was a mistake when we were just beginning to plant this system. Further experience both in our country and abroad quite clearly proved that it is indeed extremely harmful to the country and the world. Therefore, I fully agree with Sadovnichy that it must be canceled as soon as possible.
Moreover, now we still have such an opportunity. Since almost all teachers still know how to work in a normal system, and not in Bologna. There are methodological materials for such work. But if we miss a whole generation, as happened in Europe, then we risk losing the opportunity to quickly return to a reasonable system of teaching. And then we will be forced to recreate it practically from scratch.
"SP": - And what do you not like about the Bologna two-stage system of higher education?
The main problem is that this system, as they say, puts the cart before the horse. A future bachelor has to memorize practical professional recipes for three or four years, having no idea about the theoretical foundations of this knowledge. They become a master after two years of in-depth study of theory, when a significant part of practical skills is already half-forgotten. This, of course, leads to a sharp drop in the effectiveness of education, since less is learned in six years than under the classical system in five years.
"SP": - It turns out that a bachelor's degree gives an inferior education? As they used to say, "unfinished higher education"?
It turns out like this. But the main thing is not that it is unfinished, but that it is not started. What is taught in the bachelor's degree follows from the theory, as I said. And since theory itself is not taught (they are now beginning to be taught in magistracy), much of what is reported turns out to be misunderstood. The correct sequence is to start with the basics of theory, and then get practical knowledge based on this theory.
"SP": - What's the difference if in any case the same document is issued - a diploma of higher education?
According to the Bologna system, this is considered normal. But there is another side of the problem here. Because Russian diplomas are beginning to be recognized in the West. And, we know, there is a very serious interest in our most talented graduates. But is it worth it then to spend money and effort so that our best minds leave the country immediately after training?
"SP": - Nevertheless, Sadovnichiy proposes to focus again on "leading Western universities." Why?
I think the rector did not refer to the Soviet system solely for ideological reasons. Now it is not customary to mention it. It is generally accepted that everything connected with the Soviet Union was obviously bad.
Otherwise, it is not clear why we, in fact, abandoned the Soviet system and switched to a market system, if it is obviously bad.
The Bologna process is precisely the process of harmonizing the interests of different countries. In order to ensure academic mobility of students and teachers. Align the requirements for the quality of programs implemented by the university. Switch to a modular system. And each student should form his own educational program depending on his interests and the tasks that he sets for himself as the tasks of professional development.
In this sense, this is a process of coordinating interests, requirements for the future development of education as a joint all-European, but - in general - global.
Two-stage is one of the implementation mechanisms. He assumes that in the areas of training - namely in the areas of training - bachelor's programs are being implemented. And in many countries of the world (first of all, developed countries, including the USA), this education, as a rule, is absolutely enough to work in most professions. And which does not close, but opens a long, almost continuous, professional education. It, in particular, can be more profound in the magistracy.
"SP": - Explain?
It does not matter where a person graduated from a university in a particular area of training - in America, Europe, Russia or China - he has certain competencies. And employers understand this.
Nobody forbids a specialty in Russia (five-year higher education - ed.). It is allowed in our country and is assigned by law to the second level of higher education, as well as the magistracy. Moreover, many of the world's leading universities are already implementing integrated six-year programs at once - bachelor's and master's degrees.
You know, the UK didn't join the Bologna system at first either. They believed that they already had the best education in the world. But then they quickly realized that the Bologna process is the design of a joint future education. And it's pointless to stand aside. No one will make someone else's past the best for their common future.
"SP": - But in our country, employers quite often treat specialists who have completed a bachelor's degree with prejudice. They are perceived as half-educated and refuse to be accepted to more or less significant positions. Do you know about it?
Any employer has the right to set certain requirements for a particular workplace. Lacking qualifications? Let me finish my master's degree. See what position you are applying for. Often after all, higher education is absolutely not necessary. We need workers with secondary vocational mass education.
In the modern world - the concept of continuous education. A person changes at least several professions, jobs, etc. throughout his life. And mobility in a working career is a top priority today. During the first three years after graduation, young people change jobs at least two or three times.
"SP": - Are there any statistics, how many bachelor's graduates do we then go to the magistracy?
No more than thirty percent. Moreover, if almost 60% of us study at their own expense in the bachelor's program, then only 15% study in the master's program. Many people think that you can go to the magistracy later, not necessarily right away. That is, continuing education in the magistracy is not such an unambiguous inseparable trajectory.
But if we are talking about integration into the global educational space, then, of course, this mutual recognition, as it were, agreement on common research quality standards, they are extremely important. In this sense, I am not a supporter of any isolationism. I am in favor of discussing and designing general requirements in the interests of academic mobility for both students and teachers.
Myth one: Soviet education was the best in the world. When we talk about Soviet education, we imagine something monolithic, static, unchanging throughout its entire length. Actually, it wasn't. Soviet education, like any social system, of course, changed, underwent certain dynamics, that is, the logic of this education changed, the goals and tasks that it faced changed. And when we generally say the word “best”, it is very loaded with emotional evaluation. What does “better” mean, compared to what is the best, where are the criteria, where are the assessments, why do we think so?
In fact, if we take Soviet education from the beginning of the 1920s, when the Bolsheviks finally came to power, to the collapse of the Soviet Union, we see that it has changed significantly. For example, in the 1920s, the main task for Soviet education was the elimination of illiteracy. Most of the population - it is almost 80%, and not only among the peasant population, but also some people in the cities, practically did not know how, or did not know how to read and write at all. Accordingly, it was necessary to teach them this. Special schools were created for adult citizens from 16 to 50 years old, special courses were created for the younger generations, and there was a completely understandable task - the elimination of illiteracy.
If we take the later era of the 1930s-1940s, then, of course, the most important task there was to create personnel for accelerated naturalization, to train specific technical personnel who will ensure the accelerated modernization of industry. And this task is also understandable. School courses were built accordingly, technical schools, colleges and so on were built accordingly. And Soviet education also coped with this task, courses were prepared and, as you and I know, Stalin's industrialization was carried out in the shortest possible time.
If we take the post-war era of the 1950s-1960s, then here the main task for Soviet education is again to provide scientific and technical personnel for a big breakthrough in space, in the military-industrial sphere, and again, Soviet education coped with this task, we we remember the words of John F. Kennedy that we lost the space race to the Russians at the school desk. That is, with those tasks that faced the Soviet education, it, in principle, coped. But we can already see that it was heterogeneous and these tasks changed.
However, we are talking mainly about physical and mathematical education, that is, Soviet education was aimed at specific main tasks. All other spheres, and first of all the humanitarian sphere, respectively, were in a completely different state, there were actually no foreign languages, and at the level at which they were taught, those people who were lucky enough to escape abroad were stated that few people understand them. Moreover, humanitarian knowledge itself was blinded by ideological clichés. And in general, and as a whole, this sphere was mothballed and its development was called into question.
Why was there a focus on mathematics, physics and the exact sciences? There were both objective and subjective reasons. The objective reasons were that it was necessary to train personnel, as I said, for the military-industrial complex, engineers, engineers, qualified in the first place, were needed. Not just a person who would know how to work at the machine, but a person who would understand how it all works. And the subjective reasons were that insofar as the humanitarian sphere was completely ideologized and there was no space for scientific thought, as such, there was nowhere to turn around in the humanitarian sphere, everything was banned. Therefore, the person who wanted to be relatively free to engage in precisely science could afford to do this in the field of mathematics, in the field of physics - in the field of exact sciences. And it is characteristic that the future philosophers of logic came mainly from Soviet mathematical schools. And if we take the humanitarian sphere, a classic example is our philosopher Alexei Fedorovich Losev, who was forbidden to engage in philosophy, and he was engaged in aesthetics under the guise of philosophy, although he practically did the same.
For the exact sciences, physical and mathematical, the Soviet education was really very good. But the fact is that when in 1943 Soviet troops began to push the Germans to the borders of the Soviet Union and new cities and villages were liberated, the question arose of who would restore all this. Of course, the choice was made in favor of high school students and future students of technical vocational schools. But it turned out that the level of literacy of these people is at the lowest level, they cannot even enter a technical school for the first year, the level of education was so low.
In the future, a gradual increase in the level of education began to take place. First, a mandatory seven-year plan, then an eight-year plan from 1958, a ten-year plan from 1964, and an eleven-year plan from 1984. What this led to - it led to the fact that those losers who could previously go to work, or, say, to a factory, or to a factory school, get some kind of education there, without breaking away from practice and become a good worker, or simply could leave to work immediately, without raising their educational level, now they were forced to stay at school. And those who could not be fused to vocational schools were forced to stay at school and teachers had to do something about it. Moreover, since this was all done spontaneously and our educational level was rising rapidly, that is, yesterday, a very large number of teachers did not have time to master this elevated level, that is, to take refresher courses, to understand what was required of them.
And therefore, a very ugly situation turned out - what we call culling, when most of the students could not go anywhere and the formalization of education, when the teacher pretended to teach, the children pretended that they were studying in order to reach the end of school, to draw triplets and release them in peace into a greater life. And the result was a situation of segregation, when universities, on average, in the 1960s and 1970s, 20-30% of school graduates entered universities. The remaining 70-80% were rejected, they did not go anywhere, they went to production, but those 20% that did receive a good academic education at school, they could get it and wanted to. They then received a very good education in universities and then made glory to Soviet science, primarily to fundamental physical and mathematical science. They will then launch rockets into space and so on. But the remaining 80% were left out and not taken into account, and the literacy rate among them was very low. That is, they knew how to read, write, count, and in general, after that they immediately went to production.
For the most part, Soviet schoolchildren had a fairly good set of fragmentary knowledge in subjects, but, firstly, they did not know how to apply this knowledge in life, and secondly, they had no idea how knowledge could be transferred from one subject area to another. A classic example with mathematics and physics - any physics teacher knew that if physics sinks, most likely it is necessary to look for problems in mathematics. But it was more problematic for other subjects, such as chemistry and biology, or history and literature. And most importantly, when they talk about the best educational system in the Soviet Union, they forget that practically no one copied this system. We now know the best educational systems in the world - in Finland, in Singapore, people from all over the world aspire to go there. This system is in demand, it is bought for a lot of money. Nobody bought the Soviet system, and even for free, by and large, nobody needed it. The diploma of a graduate of an average Soviet university was not quoted anywhere in Europe and in the world. Now I'm not talking about those bright minds who went abroad and then received good money, first of all, these are again physicists and mathematicians, someone could even become a Nobel laureate. But the question is how much the education system itself has invested in these people, how much it is from the system and how much it is a result from them, from these outstanding people.
Soviet education, as you know, was the best in the world, and was very popular. I think that the Russian language should be recognized as the second (if not the first in number) international language. Now foreign specialists with excellent knowledge of the Russian language work in many countries of the world. To the question from where: - "I studied in the USSR." The Soviet Union raised a generation of specialists that many countries are proud of. Doctors, teachers, engineers, architects are ordinary workers for us, but in the countries of the East, Africa, Brazil, etc., they are very respected specialists with high salaries and positions in society.
They were accustomed to learn and learn from birth - proof of this - a lot of published books that are cheap in price and invaluable in content, a huge number of circles and sections in school years, development by a deficit of ingenuity and resourcefulness (the ability to replace a missing item with cash and make everything that whatever). Coming to study, foreign citizens for 5-6 years completely mastered, if not all the tricks, then certainly a part of our national consideration.
In the world of science, Herald of Knowledge, World Pathfinder, Inventor and Innovator, Science and Life, Science and Technology - all these magazines popularize science and tell the laws of nature, physics, and technology in an accessible language. Even high school students enjoyed reading them.
History of Russian tea. New experiments on far-sightedness. - Underwater radio. - New English radio stations of "directional" action. News about the expedition of Professor I. I. Vavilov. — Use of the thermal energy of the oceans. — The mechanism of laying eggs by the silkworm. Questions of the universe and interplanetary communications. About going to the moon. — About the telescope. - About comets. — On the principle of relativity. — Atoms and molecules. — Light and its distribution. — On the phenomena of thunderstorms. — The study of chemistry. — Questions of biology. - Speech and thought. - Acmeism. — Studying the literature of the past. — Internal combustion engines and turbines.- these are the topics of the 4th issue of the Journal of Knowledge for 1927.
In production, such concepts as rationalization and invention were spread and encouraged. A creative approach to work was welcomed, in which each employee sought to simplify and make the labor process more perfect.
In the film "Rain in a Strange City" love experiences unfold in parallel with the labor process of the protagonist, during which a new idea is born - rationalization.
Rational proposal - so, in conscience, an innovation in the labor process was abbreviated. The accepted rationalization proposals made the workflow more advanced - faster, less costly, and therefore more profitable. Creative teams were created at the factories, which competed with each other in making more rational proposals.
In order to further develop the mass technical creativity of the working people, the All-Union Society of Inventors and Rationalizers (VOIR) was created in 1958. Its tasks included the development of rationalization and inventive movement - lectures were given, competitions were held and the exchange of experience was widespread - that is, employees of one enterprise were sent to another similar enterprise and adopted labor skills from each other. They moved both within the country and abroad. To get on a business trip abroad for the exchange of experience was the highest chic.
There was a list of regulations governing relations in this direction - The methodology (basic provisions) for determining the economic efficiency of using new technology, inventions and rationalization proposals in the national economy (approved by the Decree of the State Committee for Science and Technology, the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the USSR Academy of Sciences and the State Committee for Inventions of February 14, 1977), Regulations, instructions and explanations and one of the most important for employee - Regulations on bonuses for promoting invention and rationalization (approved by a resolution of the USSR State Labor Committee of June 23, 1983).
Rewards were determined based on the amount of annual savings realized from the implementation of the proposal. The holiday "Day of the Inventor and Innovator" was celebrated annually, on the last Saturday of June. On this day, the USSR Academy of Sciences selected the best inventions and rationalization proposals made over the past year and awarded the best with state awards, prizes and honorary titles “Honored Inventor of the Republic” and “Honored Innovator of the Republic”.
It was beneficial for the country to raise smart citizens and encourage innovation. This is a guarantee of the development of the country.
Soviet education in certain circles is considered to be the best in the world. In the same circles, it is customary to consider the current generation as lost - they say, these young "victims of the Unified State Examination" cannot stand any comparison with us, the technical intellectuals who went through the crucible of Soviet schools ...
Of course, the truth lies far away from these stereotypes. A certificate of graduation from a Soviet school, if it is a sign of the quality of education, is only in the Soviet sense. Indeed, some people who studied in the USSR amaze us with the depth of their knowledge, but at the same time, many others no less amaze us with the depth of their ignorance. Not knowing Latin letters, not being able to add simple fractions, not physically understanding the simplest written texts - alas, for Soviet citizens this was a variant of the norm.
At the same time, Soviet schools also had undeniable advantages - for example, teachers then had the opportunity to freely give deuces and leave “not pulling” students for the second year. This whip created the mood necessary for study, which is so lacking now in many modern schools and universities.
Let's get right to the point of the post. A long overdue article on the pros and cons of Soviet education was created on the Patriot's Handbook by the efforts of a team of authors. I am publishing this article here and I ask you to join the discussion - and, if necessary, even supplement and correct the article directly on the Directory, since this is a wiki project that is available for editing by everyone:
This article examines the Soviet education system in terms of its advantages and disadvantages. The Soviet system followed the task of educating and shaping a personality worthy of realizing for future generations the main national idea of the Soviet Union - a bright communist future. This task was subordinated not only to the teaching of knowledge about nature, society and the state, but the education of patriotism, internationalism and morality.== Pros (+) ==
Mass character. In Soviet times, for the first time in the history of Russia, almost universal literacy was achieved, close to 100%.
Of course, even in the era of the late USSR, many older people had only 3-4 grades of education behind them, because far from everyone was able to complete a full course of schooling due to the war, mass migrations, and the need to go to work early. However, virtually all citizens learned to read and write.
For mass education, one must also thank the tsarist government, which in the 20 pre-revolutionary years practically doubled the level of literacy in the country - by 1917, almost half of the population was literate. The Bolsheviks, as a result, received a huge number of literate and trained teachers, and they only had to double the proportion of literate people in the country for the second time, which they did.Wide access to education for national and linguistic minorities. During the process of so-called indigenization, the Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 1930s. for the first time introduced education in the languages of many small peoples of Russia (often creating and introducing alphabets and writing for these languages along the way). Representatives of the outlying peoples got the opportunity to become literate, first in their native language, and then in Russian, which accelerated the elimination of illiteracy.
On the other hand, this very indigenization, which was partially curtailed in the late 1930s, managed to make a significant contribution to the future collapse of the USSR along national borders.
High availability for the majority of the population (universal free secondary education, very common higher education). In tsarist Russia, education was associated with class restrictions, although as its availability grew, these restrictions weakened and blurred, and by 1917, with money or special talents, representatives of any class could receive a good education. With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, class restrictions were finally lifted. Primary and then secondary education became universal, and the number of students in higher educational institutions increased many times over.
High motivation of students, respect of society for education. Young people in the USSR really wanted to study very much. In Soviet conditions, when the right to private property was severely limited and entrepreneurial activity was practically suppressed (especially after the closure of artels under Khrushchev), getting an education was the main way to advance in life and start making good money. There were few alternatives: far from everyone had enough health for Stakhanov’s manual labor, and for a successful party or military career it was also necessary to improve their level of education (illiterate proletarians were recruited without looking back only in the first decade after the revolution).
Respect for the work of the teacher and teacher. At least until the 1960s and 1970s, while illiteracy was being eliminated in the USSR and the system of universal secondary education was being established, the teaching profession remained one of the most respected and in demand in society. Comparatively literate and capable people became teachers, moreover, they were motivated by the idea of bringing enlightenment to the masses. In addition, it was a real alternative to hard work on a collective farm or in production. A similar situation was in higher education, where, in addition, during the time of Stalin there were very good salaries (already under Khrushchev, however, the salaries of the intelligentsia were reduced to the level of workers and even lower). Songs were written about the school, films were made, many of which were included in the golden fund of national culture.
Relatively high level of initial training of students entering higher educational institutions. The number of students in the RSFSR at the end of the Soviet era was at least two times lower than in modern Russia, and the proportion of young people in the population was higher. Accordingly, with a similar population in the RSFSR and in the modern Russian Federation, the competition for each place in Soviet universities was twice as high as in modern Russian ones, and as a result, the contingent there was recruited better and more capable. It is with this circumstance that the complaints of modern teachers about a sharp drop in the level of preparation of applicants and students are primarily associated.
Very high quality technical education. Soviet physics, astronomy, geography, geology, applied technical disciplines and, of course, mathematics, were without a doubt at the highest world level. The huge number of outstanding discoveries and technical inventions of the Soviet era speaks for itself, and the list of world-famous Soviet scientists and inventors looks very impressive. However, even here we must say special thanks to pre-revolutionary Russian science and higher education, which served as a solid foundation for all these achievements. But it is impossible not to admit that the Soviet Union succeeded - even despite the mass emigration of Russian scientists after the revolution - to fully revive, continue and develop at the highest level the domestic tradition in the field of technical thought, natural and exact sciences.
Satisfaction of the state's colossal demand for new personnel in the face of a sharp increase in industry, the army and science (thanks to large-scale state planning). In the course of mass industrialization in the USSR, several new branches of industry were created and the scale of production in all branches was significantly increased many times and dozens of times. Such impressive growth required the training of many specialists capable of working with the most modern technology. In addition, it was necessary to make up for significant losses of personnel as a result of revolutionary emigration, civil war, repressions and the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet education system successfully coped with the training of many millions of specialists in hundreds of specialties - thanks to this, the most important state tasks related to the country's survival were solved.
Relatively high scholarships. The average scholarship in the late USSR was 40 rubles, while the salary of an engineer was 130-150 rubles. That is, scholarships reached about 30% of salaries, which is much higher than in the case of modern scholarships, which are large enough only for honors students, graduate students and doctoral students.
Developed and free extracurricular education. In the USSR, there were thousands of palaces and houses of pioneers, stations for young technicians, young tourists and young naturalists, and many other circles. Unlike most of today's circles, sections and electives, Soviet extracurricular education was free.
The world's best sports education system. From the very beginning, the Soviet Union paid great attention to the development of physical culture and sports. If in the Russian Empire sports education was only in its infancy, then in the Soviet Union it reached the forefront in the world. The success of the Soviet sports system is clearly visible in the results at the Olympic Games: the Soviet team has consistently won first or second place in every Olympics since 1952, when the USSR began to participate in the international Olympic movement.
== Cons (−) ==
The low quality of liberal arts education due to ideological restrictions and clichés. Almost all the humanities and social disciplines in schools and universities of the USSR were to one degree or another loaded with Marxism-Leninism, and during the life of Stalin - also with Stalinism. The concept of teaching the history of Russia and even the history of the ancient world was based on the “Short Course in the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks”, according to which the entire world history was presented as a process of maturing the prerequisites for the 1917 revolution and the future building of a communist society. In the teaching of economics and politics, the main place was occupied by Marxist political economy, in the teaching of philosophy - by dialectical materialism. These directions in themselves are worthy of attention, however, they were declared the only true and correct ones, and all the others were declared either their predecessors or false directions. As a result, huge layers of humanitarian knowledge either completely fell out of the Soviet education system, or were presented in a dosed and exclusively critical way, as “bourgeois science”. Party history, political economy and diamat were compulsory subjects in Soviet universities, and in the late Soviet period they were among the least loved by students (as a rule, they were far from the main specialty, out of touch with reality and at the same time relatively difficult, so their study is mainly came down to memorizing formulaic phrases and ideological formulations).
Blackening of history and distortion of moral guidelines. In the USSR, school and university teaching of history was characterized by denigration of the tsarist period in the history of the country, and in the early Soviet period this denigration was much more ambitious than the post-perestroika denigration of Soviet history. Many pre-revolutionary statesmen were declared "servants of tsarism", their names were deleted from history books or mentioned in a strictly negative context. Conversely, outright robbers, like Stenka Razin, were declared "people's heroes", and terrorists, like the murderers of Alexander II, were called "freedom fighters" and "advanced people." In the Soviet concept of world history, a lot of attention was paid to all kinds of oppression of slaves and peasants, all kinds of uprisings and rebellions (of course, these are also important topics, but by no means less important than the history of technology and military affairs, geopolitical and dynastic history, etc.) . The concept of "class struggle" was implanted, according to which representatives of the "exploiting classes" were to be persecuted or even destroyed. From 1917 to 1934 history was not taught in universities at all, all historical departments were closed, traditional patriotism was condemned as "great power" and "chauvinism", and instead "proletarian internationalism" was implanted. Then Stalin abruptly changed course towards the revival of patriotism and returned history to universities, however, the negative consequences of post-revolutionary denial and distortion of historical memory are still felt: many historical heroes were forgotten, for several generations of people the perception of history was sharply torn into periods before the revolution and after, many good traditions have been lost.
The negative impact of ideology and political struggle on academic staff and individual disciplines. As a result of the revolution and civil war in 1918-1924. about 2 million people were forced to emigrate from the RSFSR (the so-called white emigration), and most of the emigrants were representatives of the most educated segments of the population, including an extremely large number of scientists, engineers and teachers who emigrated. According to some estimates, about three-quarters of Russian scientists and engineers died or emigrated during that period. However, already before the First World War, Russia ranked first in Europe in terms of the number of students in universities, so there were a lot of specialists trained in tsarist times in the country (although, for the most part, quite young specialists). Thanks to this, the acute shortage of teaching staff that arose in the USSR was successfully filled in most industries by the end of the 1920s (partly due to an increase in the load on the remaining teachers, but mainly due to the intensive training of new ones). Subsequently, however, the Soviet scientific and teaching staff were seriously weakened during the repressions and ideological campaigns carried out by the Soviet authorities. The persecution of genetics is widely known, because of which Russia, which at the beginning of the 20th century was one of the world leaders in biological science, by the end of the 20th century moved into the category of lagging behind. Due to the introduction of ideological struggle into science, many outstanding scientists of the humanities and social areas suffered (historians, philosophers and economists of a non-Marxist persuasion; linguists who participated in discussions on Marrism, as well as Slavists; Byzantologists and theologians; Orientalists - many of them were shot on false charges spying on Japan or other countries because of their professional connections), but representatives of the natural and exact sciences also suffered (the case of the mathematician Luzin, the Pulkovo case of astronomers, the Krasnoyarsk case of geologists). As a result of these events, entire scientific schools were lost or suppressed, and in many areas there was a noticeable lag behind world science. The culture of scientific discussion was excessively ideologized and politicized, which, of course, had a negative impact on education.
Restrictions on access to higher education for certain groups of the population. In fact, the opportunities to receive higher education in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s were almost non-existent. the so-called dispossessed were deprived, including private merchants, entrepreneurs (using wage labor), representatives of the clergy, and former policemen. Children from families of nobles, merchants, clergy often faced obstacles when trying to get a higher education in the pre-war period. In the union republics of the USSR, representatives of the titular nationalities received preferences for admission to universities. In the post-war period, the percentage rate for admission to the most prestigious universities was tacitly introduced in relation to Jews.
Restrictions on familiarization with foreign scientific literature, restrictions on international communication between scientists. If in the 1920s pre-revolutionary practice continued in Soviet science, involving very long trips abroad and internships for scientists and the best students, constant participation in international conferences, free correspondence and unlimited flow of foreign scientific literature, then in the 1930s. the situation began to change for the worse. Especially in the period after 1937 and before the war, the presence of foreign connections became simply dangerous for the lives and careers of scientists, since so many were then arrested on trumped-up charges of espionage. In the late 1940s In the course of the ideological campaign against cosmopolitanism, it came to the point that references to the works of foreign authors began to be regarded as a manifestation of "cow-worshiping the West", and many were forced to accompany such references without fail with criticism and stereotyped condemnation of "bourgeois science". The desire to publish in foreign journals was also condemned, and, most unpleasantly, almost half of the world's leading scientific journals, including publications like Science and Nature, were removed from the public domain and sent to special safekeeping. This “turned into the hands of the most mediocre and unscrupulous scientists”, for whom “mass separation from foreign literature made it easier to use it for covert plagiarism and pass it off as original research.” As a result, in the middle of the 20th century, Soviet science, and after it education, in conditions of limited external relations, they began to fall out of the global process and "stew in their own juice": it became much more difficult to distinguish world-class scientists from compilers, plagiarists and pseudoscientists, many achievements of Western science remained unknown or little known in the USSR. » of Soviet science was only partially corrected, as a result, there is still a problem of low citation of Russian scientists abroad and insufficient familiarity with advanced foreign research.
Relatively low quality of teaching foreign languages. If in the West in the post-war period the practice of attracting foreigners - native speakers to teaching, as well as the practice of large-scale student exchange, in which students could live in another country for several months and learn the spoken language in the best way, was established, then the Soviet Union lagged far behind in the teaching of foreign languages from -for the closed borders and the almost complete absence of emigration from the West to the USSR. Also, for censorship reasons, the flow of foreign literature, films, and recordings of songs to the Soviet Union was limited, which did not at all contribute to the study of foreign languages. Compared to the USSR, in modern Russia there are much more opportunities for learning languages.
Ideological censorship, autarky and stagnation in art education in the late USSR. Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and the early USSR were among the world leaders and trendsetters in the field of artistic culture. Avant-garde painting, constructivism, futurism, Russian ballet, the Stanislavsky system, the art of film editing - this and much more aroused admiration from the whole world. However, by the end of the 1930s. the variety of styles and directions was replaced by the dominance of socialist realism imposed from above - in itself it was a very worthy and interesting style, but the problem was the artificial suppression of alternatives. Reliance on their own traditions was proclaimed, while attempts at new experiments began in many cases to be condemned (“Muddle instead of music”), and borrowings from Western cultural techniques were subjected to restrictions and persecution, as in the case of jazz, and then rock music. Indeed, not all experiments and borrowings were successful, but the scale of condemnation and restrictions were so inadequate that it led to the discouragement of innovation in art and the gradual loss of world cultural leadership by the Soviet Union, as well as the emergence of an "underground culture" in the USSR.
Degradation of education in the field of architecture, design, urban planning. During the period of Khrushchev's "fight against architectural excesses" the entire system of architectural education, design and construction was seriously affected. In 1956, the Academy of Architecture of the USSR was reorganized and renamed the Academy of Construction and Architecture of the USSR, and in 1963 it was completely closed (until 1989). As a result, the era of the late USSR became a time of decline in design and a growing crisis in the field of architecture and the urban environment. The architectural tradition was interrupted and was replaced by the soulless construction of microdistricts inconvenient for life; instead of a “bright future”, a “gray present” was built in the USSR.
Cancellation of teaching of fundamental classical disciplines. In the Soviet Union, such an important subject as logic was excluded from the school curriculum (it was studied in pre-revolutionary gymnasiums). Logic was returned to the program and the textbook was released only in 1947, but in 1955 it was removed again, and, with the exception of physics and mathematics lyceums and other elite schools, logic is still not taught to schoolchildren in Russia. Meanwhile, logic is one of the foundations of the scientific method and one of the most important subjects that gives skills to distinguish between truth and falsehood, to conduct discussions and resist manipulation. Another important difference between the Soviet school curriculum and the pre-revolutionary gymnasium was the abolition of the teaching of Latin and Greek. Knowledge of these ancient languages may seem useless only at first glance, because almost all modern scientific terminology, medical and biological nomenclature, and mathematical notation are built on them; in addition, the study of these languages is a good gymnastics for the mind and helps to develop the skills of discussion. Several generations of prominent Russian scientists and writers who worked before the revolution and in the first decades of the USSR were brought up in the tradition of classical education, which included the study of logic, Latin and Greek, and the almost complete rejection of all this hardly had a positive effect on education in the USSR and Russia.
Problems with the education of moral values, partial loss of the educational role of education. The best Soviet teachers have always insisted that the goal of education is not only the transfer of knowledge and skills, but also the upbringing of a moral, cultured person. In many respects, this task was successfully solved in the early USSR - then it was possible to solve the problem of mass child homelessness and juvenile delinquency that developed after the civil war; managed to raise the cultural level of significant masses of the population. However, in some respects, Soviet education not only failed to educate morality, but in some ways even exacerbated the problem. Many educational institutions of pre-revolutionary Russia, including church education and institutions for noble maidens, directly set themselves the main task of educating a moral person and preparing him either for the role of a spouse in the family, or for the role of a “brother” or “sister” in the community of believers. Under the Soviet regime, all such institutions were closed, specialized analogues were not created for them, the education of morality was entrusted to an ordinary mass school, separating it from religion, which was replaced by propaganda of atheism. The moral goal of Soviet education was no longer the education of a worthy member of the family and community, as it was before, but the education of a member of the working collective. For the accelerated development of industry and science, perhaps this was not bad. However, such an approach could hardly solve the problems of the high level of abortions (for the first time in the world legalized in the USSR), the high level of divorces and the general degradation of family values, the sharp transition to having few children, the growing mass alcoholism and the extremely low life expectancy of men in the late USSR by world standards.
Almost complete elimination of home education. Many outstanding figures of Russian history and culture received home education instead of school, which proves that such education can be very effective. Of course, this form of education is not available to everyone, but either to relatively wealthy people who can hire teachers, or simply to intelligent and educated people who can devote a lot of time to their children and personally go through the school curriculum with them. However, after the revolution, home education in the USSR was by no means encouraged (largely for ideological reasons). The system of external studies in the USSR was introduced in 1935, but for a long time it was designed almost exclusively for adults, and a full-fledged opportunity for external education for schoolchildren was introduced only in 1985-1991.
Non-alternative co-education for boys and girls. One of the dubious Soviet innovations in education was the compulsory joint education of boys and girls instead of pre-revolutionary separate education. At that time, this step was justified by the struggle for women's rights, the lack of staff and facilities for the organization of separate schools, as well as the widespread practice of co-education in some of the leading countries of the world, including the United States. However, the latest research in the same US shows that separate education improves student outcomes by 10-20%. Everything is quite simple: in joint schools, boys and girls are distracted by each other, there are noticeably more conflicts and incidents; boys, up to the last grades of school, lag behind girls of the same age in learning, since the male body develops more slowly. On the contrary, with separate education, it becomes possible to better take into account the behavioral and cognitive characteristics of different sexes to improve performance, self-esteem of adolescents is more dependent on academic performance, and not on some other things. Interestingly, in 1943, separate education for boys and girls was introduced in the cities, which, after the death of Stalin, was again eliminated in 1954.
The system of orphanages in the late USSR. While in Western countries in the middle of the 20th century they began to massively close orphanages and place orphans in families (this process was generally completed by 1980), in the USSR the system of orphanages was not only preserved, but even degraded according to compared to pre-war times. Indeed, during the struggle against homelessness in the 1920s, according to the ideas of Makarenko and other teachers, labor became the main element in the re-education of former homeless children, while the pupils of labor communes were given the opportunity to self-government, in order to develop skills of independence and socialization. This technique gave excellent results, especially considering that before the revolution, civil war and famine, most homeless children still had some experience of family life. However, later, due to the prohibition of child labor, this system was abandoned in the USSR. By 1990, there were 564 orphanages in the USSR, the level of socialization of orphanage residents was low, and many former orphanage residents fell into the ranks of criminals and outcasts. In the 1990s the number of orphanages in Russia almost tripled, but in the second half of the 2000s, the process of their liquidation began, and in the 2010s. it is close to completion.
Degradation of the system of secondary vocational education in the late USSR. Although in the USSR they extolled the worker in every way and promoted working professions, by the 1970s. The system of secondary vocational education in the country began to clearly degrade. “If you study poorly at school, you will go to vocational school!” (vocational technical school) - something like this parents said to negligent schoolchildren. In vocational schools they took students who did not enter universities, poor students and triple students, forcibly placed juvenile criminals there, and all this against the background of a comparative excess of specialist workers and poor development of the service sector due to the lack of developed entrepreneurship (that is, alternatives in employment, as now, then there were no was). Cultural and educational work in vocational schools turned out to be poorly organized, students "vocational schools" began to be associated with hooliganism, drunkenness and a general low level of development. The negative image of vocational education in blue-collar specialties persists in Russia to this day, although qualified turners, metalworkers, millers, and plumbers are now among the highly paid professions whose representatives are in short supply.
Insufficient education of critical thinking among citizens, excessive unification and paternalism. Education, as well as the media and Soviet culture in general, instilled in citizens faith in a powerful and wise party that leads everyone, cannot lie or make major mistakes. Of course, faith in the strength of one's people and state is an important and necessary thing, but in order to support this faith, one cannot go too far, systematically hush up the truth and severely suppress alternative opinions. As a result, when during the years of perestroika and glasnost they gave freedom to these very alternative opinions, when previously hushed up facts about the history and modern problems of the country began to massively emerge, huge masses of citizens felt deceived, lost confidence in the state and in everything that they were taught in school in many humanities. Finally, citizens were unable to resist outright lies, myths and media manipulation, which ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR and the deep degradation of society and the economy in the 1990s. Alas, the Soviet educational and social system failed to bring up a sufficient level of caution, critical thinking, tolerance for alternative opinions, and a culture of discussion. Also, the education of the late Soviet model did not help to instill in citizens sufficient independence, the desire to personally solve their problems, and not wait until the state or someone else does it for you. All this had to be learned from the bitter post-Soviet experience.
== Conclusions (−) ==
In assessing the Soviet education system, it is difficult to come to a single and exhaustive conclusion due to its inconsistency.
Positive points:
The final eradication of illiteracy and the provision of universal secondary education
- World leadership in the field of higher technical education, in natural and exact sciences.
- The key role of education in ensuring industrialization, victory in the Great Patriotic War and scientific and technological achievements in the post-war period.
- High prestige and respect for the teaching profession, a high level of motivation of teachers and students.
- High level of development of sports education, wide promotion of sports activities.
- The emphasis on technical education made it possible to solve the most important tasks for the Soviet state.Negative points:
Lagging behind the West in the field of liberal arts education due to the negative influence of ideology and the foreign policy situation. The teaching of history, economics and foreign languages was particularly hard hit.
- Excessive unification and centralization of school and, to a lesser extent, university education, coupled with its small contacts with the outside world. This led to the loss of many successful pre-revolutionary practices and to a growing lag behind foreign science in a number of areas.
- Direct guilt in the degradation of family values and the general decline in morals in the late USSR, which led to negative trends in the development of demography and social relations.
- Insufficient education of critical thinking among citizens, which led to the inability of society to effectively resist manipulation during the information war.
- Art education suffered from censorship and high ideological content, as well as from obstacles to mastering foreign techniques; one of the most important consequences of this is the decline of design, architecture and urban planning in the late USSR.
- That is, in its humanitarian aspect, the Soviet education system ultimately not only failed to solve the key tasks of preserving and strengthening the state, but also became one of the factors in the moral, demographic and social decline of the country. Which, however, does not negate the impressive achievements of the USSR in the field of the humanities and arts.
PS. By the way, about logic. A textbook of logic, as well as other entertaining materials on the art of civilized discussion, can be found here.
It is impossible to talk about any merits of the Soviet education system without understanding how, when and where it came from. The basic principles of education for the near future were formulated as early as 1903. At the II Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, it was stated that education should be universal and free for all children under 16, regardless of gender. In addition, estate and national schools should be liquidated, as well as the school should be separated from the church. 9 1917 is the day of the establishment of the State Commission for Education, which was supposed to develop and control the entire system of education and culture of the vast country of the Soviets. The regulation "On the unified labor school of the RSFSR", dated October 1918, provided for the compulsory attendance of schools by all citizens of the country aged 8 to 50 years who did not yet know how to read and write. The only thing that could be chosen was to learn to read and write (Russian or native).
At that time, most of the working population was illiterate. The country of the Soviets was considered far behind Europe, where general education for all was introduced almost 100 years earlier. Lenin believed that the ability to read and write could give an impetus to every person to "improve their economy and their state."
By 1920, over 3 million people were literate. The census of the same year showed that more than 40 percent of the population over the age of 8 could read and write.
The 1920 census was incomplete. It was not carried out in Belarus, Crimea, Transcaucasia, in the North Caucasus, in the Podolsk and Volyn provinces, and in a number of places in Ukraine.
Fundamental changes awaited the education system in 1918-1920. The school was separated from the church, and the church from the state. The teaching of any creed was forbidden, boys and girls now studied together, and now there was nothing to pay for the lessons. At the same time, they began to create a system of preschool education, revised the rules for admission to higher educational institutions.
In 1927, the average time of study for people over 9 years old was just over a year, in 1977 it was almost 8 full years.
By the 1930s, illiteracy as a phenomenon was defeated. The education system was organized as follows. Almost immediately after the birth of a child, he could be sent to a nursery, then to a kindergarten. Moreover, there were both day care and round-the-clock kindergartens. After 4 years of primary school education, the child became a secondary school student. Upon graduation, he could get a profession at a college or technical school, or continue his studies in the senior classes of a basic school.
The desire to educate trustworthy members of Soviet society and competent specialists (especially in engineering and technology) made the Soviet education system the best in the world. It underwent a total reform during the liberal reforms in the 1990s.
One of the most significant advantages of the Soviet school system was its accessibility. This right was enshrined constitutionally (Article 45 of the Constitution of the USSR of 1977).
The main difference between the Soviet education system and the American or British one was the unity and consistency of all parts of education. A clear vertical level (elementary, secondary school, university, doctoral studies) made it possible to accurately plan the vector of one's education. Uniform programs and requirements were developed for each stage. When parents moved or changed schools for any other reason, there was no need to re-learn the material or try to understand the system adopted in the new educational institution. The maximum trouble that a transition to another school could bring was the need to repeat or catch up with 3-4 topics in each discipline. Textbooks in the school library were issued and were available to absolutely everyone.
Soviet school teachers provided basic knowledge in their subjects. And they were quite enough for a school graduate to enter a higher educational institution on his own (without tutors and bribes). Nevertheless, Soviet education was considered fundamental. The general education level implied a broad outlook. In the USSR there was not a single one who did not read Pushkin or did not know Vasnetsov.
Now in Russian schools, exams may even be mandatory for students (depending on the internal policy of the school and the decision of the pedagogical council). In the Soviet school, children took the final final exams after 8 and after. There was no mention of any testing. The method of knowledge control both in the classroom and during the exams was understandable and transparent.
Each student who decided to continue his studies at the university was guaranteed to get a job upon graduation. Firstly, the number of places in universities and institutes was limited by the social order, and secondly, after graduation, mandatory distribution was carried out. Often, young professionals were sent to virgin lands, to all-Union construction sites. However, it was necessary to work there only a few years (this is how the state compensated for the cost of training). Then there was an opportunity to return to their hometown or stay where they got on the distribution.
It is a mistake to assume that in the Soviet school all students had the same level of knowledge. Of course, the general program should be assimilated by all. But if a teenager is interested in some particular subject, then he was given every opportunity to study it additionally. At schools there were mathematical circles, circles of lovers of literature, and so on. In addition, there were specialized classes and specialized schools, where children got the opportunity to study certain subjects in depth. Parents were especially proud of their children studying at a mathematical school or a school with a language bias.
