Lenta.ru: Is it true that Soviet education was the best, like everything else in the USSR?
Lyubzhin A: I didn't notice it. If the opinion about the superiority of Soviet education were at all close to reality, it would be logical to assume that Western countries would have to organize 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 of borrowing Soviet models. Because they didn't appreciate them.How about Finland? They say that at one time she borrowed her techniques from us. At the same time, it is believed that today this country has no equal in school education.
I cannot agree that Finland is out of competition. This is due to the peculiarities of local education, which is not designed for high results of individual individuals, but to raise the average level of education of each citizen. They really succeed. First, Finland is a small country. That is, everything is easier to organize there. And secondly, very benign people go to teachers there. So the Finns manage to pull out the guys at the expense of strong teachers, and not at all due to a good program. But at the same time, higher education is seriously sagging there.
Many believe that the structure of Soviet education is rooted in the educational system of Tsarist Russia. How much did we take from there?
Exactly the opposite - Soviet education is the complete antipode of the imperial one. Before the revolution, there were many types of schools in Russia: a classical gymnasium, a real school, a cadet corps, a theological seminary, commercial schools, and so on. Almost everyone who aspired to this could learn. There was a "own" school for all abilities. After 1917, instead of educational diversity, a single type of school began to take root.
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 the natural sciences. What the Bolsheviks did. Comprehensive education has come.
This is bad?
It was the elementary school, where elementary literacy was taught, that fit well into the concept of universal education. It was organized at the level in the USSR. Everything that went on is already a fiction. The secondary school program offered the same set of subjects to everyone, regardless of the abilities or interests of the children. For gifted children, the bar was too low, they were not interested, the school only interfered with them. And the lagging behind, on the contrary, could not cope with the load. In terms of the quality of training, a graduate of a secondary Soviet 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 a diploma from a higher primary school did not give access to universities.
St. Petersburg, 1911. Students of the 3rd gymnasium in the classroom in military affairs. Photo: RIA Novosti
Did the level of knowledge fall 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 various sciences - physics, geography ... There were no foreign languages \u200b\u200bbecause the compilers of the programs understood that it would be a fiction.
The preparation of a graduate of the Soviet school was about the same. The Soviet high school student mastered writing, counting, and fragmentary information on other subjects. But this knowledge filled his head like an attic. And in principle, a person interested in the 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 students did not know how to apply the knowledge gained within the framework of one discipline to another.
How then did it happen that the "attic" Soviet people invented a space rocket, carried out developments in the nuclear industry?
All the developments that glorified the Soviet Union belong to scientists with pre-revolutionary education. Neither Kurchatov nor Korolyov ever attended a Soviet school. And their peers also never studied in a Soviet school or studied with professors who received pre-revolutionary education. When the inertia weakened, the margin of safety was depleted, then everything fell down. There were no own resources in our education system then, and there are none today.
You said that the main achievement of the Soviet school is the beginning. But many people say that mathematical education was adequately organized in the USSR. This is wrong?
This is true. Mathematics is the only subject in the schools of the Soviet Union that met the requirements of the imperial high school.
Why is 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 the ideology. Only mathematics and physics could hide from Marxism-Leninism. Therefore, it turned out that the intellectual potential of the country was gradually artificially shifted towards the technical sciences. The humanities were not quoted at all in Soviet times. As a result, the Soviet Union collapsed due to the inability to work with humanitarian technologies, to explain something to the population, to negotiate. Even now we see how monstrously low the level of humanitarian discussion in the country is.
1954 At the exam in chemistry in the 10th grade of secondary school No. 312 in Moscow.
Photo: Mikhail Ozersky / RIA Novosti
Is it possible to say that the imperial pre-revolutionary education corresponded to international standards?
We have been integrated into the global education system. Graduates of the gymnasium Sophia Fischer (founder of a private women's classical gymnasium) were admitted to any German university without exams. We had a lot of students who studied in Switzerland, Germany. At the same time, they were far from the wealthiest, sometimes vice versa. It is also a factor of national wealth. If we take the lower strata of the population, the standard of living in Imperial Russia slightly exceeded the 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 the level of education and the level of knowledge, Russians are uncompetitive in the world. But there was a “lag” during the USSR as well. Historian Sergei Vladimirovich Volkov 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 any where higher education was needed. Unlike the West, where countries were run by graduates of the best universities. And after the collapse of the USSR, the model of Soviet general education ceased to make sense. If the student is not interested, because the subjects were taught superficially and for the sake of show, some social pressure is needed so that the children still study. In the early Soviet period, 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 crept down. In order not to deal with repeaters, teachers had to deal with pure drawing of grades, and children could quite easily not learn anything. That is, education does not guarantee a career. In other countries, this is practically not the case.
As a mother of a fourth-grader, I get the feeling that today, compared to the Soviet period, they don’t teach at school at all. The child comes home after classes - and the "second shift" begins. We do not just do homework, but study the material that we seem to be learning in the lesson. Friends have the same picture. Is the program really that complicated?
It's just that the school has moved from normal teaching to supervising. In the 1990s, this was a forced step on the part of the pedagogical community. Then the teachers were left in complete poverty. And the method of "do not teach, but ask" for them has become the only way to guaranteed earnings. For tutoring services, their student was sent to a colleague. And he did the same. But when teaching salaries increased in the same Moscow, teachers could no longer and did not want to get rid of this technique. Apparently, it will not work to return them to the former principles of education.
I see from the experience of my nephew that they don’t teach him anything at school and didn’t teach him anything, but they carefully ask about everything. In schools, tutoring is common from 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 this. In our country, in principle, it is no longer possible to isolate school and tutoring work.
Late 1990s Moscow school students Photo: Valery Shustov / RIA Novosti
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in Russia almost every year there are reforms to improve education. Have there been any positive developments?
Spears broke around important issues, but of the second order. The knowledge test system is very important. But much more important is the program and a set of subjects for study. And we are now thinking about the fact that tougher exams can improve learning. No way. As a result, the difficult exam has only two options: either we must lower the bar so that almost everyone can get a certificate. Or the exam will simply turn into a fiction. That is, we are again returning to the concept of universal education - so that only everyone can receive a secondary education. Is it really necessary for everyone? Approximately 40 percent of the population is capable of mastering a full-fledged secondary education. The imperial school serves as a reference point for me. If we want to cover 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?
This is the cost of democracy. If we call simple things higher education, why not? You can call a 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 begin to learn how to handle the remote control of this broom right on the spot. Formally, the Institute of Asian and African Countries and the Uryupinsk Steel University grant the same rights. Both of them provide crusts on higher education. But in reality, for some jobs, one graduate will be hired, but not another.
What should parents do if they want to properly teach their child? Where to run, what school to look for?
You need to understand that there is no segregation of schools by programs now. Segregation exists according to what the school has - a pool or a horse. We have top 100 schools that are always at the top of the educational rankings. Today they replace the missing system of secondary education, as they prove their advantage at the Olympiads. But you need to understand that studying there is not easy. They just don't take everyone there. I don't think that anything can be done about 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 cannot bear any intervention.
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 to be 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.
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. When asked 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.
So, what universities in the USSR were still considered the best, according to the criterion of the level of knowledge?
Moscow State University MV Lomonosov (Moscow State University, founded in 1755) Moscow State University has always been the most prestigious institution of higher education in the country. It traditionally had the highest passing scores for applicants. Mathematicians, physicists, chemists, biologists, programmers, economists, lawyers, philosophers, historians, philologists, journalists, psychologists came out of the walls of Moscow University ... And the diploma of Moscow State University has always been a sign of quality - at least within the USSR. Leningrad State University (Leningrad State University, now St. Petersburg State University, founded in 1724) This is the oldest university in Russia, which has always been one of the centers of Russian science and culture. From its walls came such luminaries of science as I.P. Pavlov, L.D. Landau, G.Ya. Perelman. Today, St Petersburg University is the first and currently the only Russian university that is included in the prestigious Coimbra group, which unites the most significant European universities.
MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations, founded in 1944) MGIMO as an independent educational institution was transformed from the international faculty of Moscow State University. It has always been difficult to enter here, because representatives of the most elite professions were trained here - diplomats, attachés, military translators, international journalists. By the way, MGIMO entered the Guinness Book of Records as the university where the most foreign languages are taught.
MVTU im. N.E. Bauman (Moscow Higher Technical School, now Moscow State Technical University, founded in 1830) "Baumanka" in Soviet times was considered one of the best technical universities in the country. Here it was possible to study in a large number of technical specialties, including mechanical engineering, aeromechanics, energy, construction, and chemical technologies. In 1948, the Faculty of Rocket Engineering was created at the Moscow Higher Technical School, with which the activities of the General4 Designer and the founder of Soviet cosmonautics S.P. Queen. Today MSTU is the head of the Russian Association of Technical Universities and is the owner of the European Quality award for meeting high international standards of education.
MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, founded in 1942) Now it is called the National Research Nuclear University. The Moscow Mechanical Institute of Ammunition (MMIB) was founded for the needs of the front, its initial task was to train military specialists. In the Soviet Union, MEPhI was the most popular university for physics education. They were very seriously engaged in nuclear research, and graduates of this university were subsequently "not allowed to travel abroad". Branches, technical schools and schools in different cities of the country operated on its basis. I would like to emphasize that these universities continue to be among the top five even now, in the post-Soviet era, which can serve as an indicator of the objectivity of assessing their high level.
Recently, many people often ask themselves questions: why do we have such a low level of education and why many graduates cannot answer even the simplest questions from the school curriculum? What did they do with the previous education system after the collapse of the USSR? In the Soviet years, the personnel training of future specialists was fundamentally different from that which today prevails throughout the entire post-Soviet space. But the Soviet education system has always been competitive. Thanks to her, the USSR came out in the 1960s on the first lines in the ranking of the most educated countries in the world. The country occupied a leading position in terms of the demand for its people, whose knowledge, experience and skills for the benefit of their native country have always been valued. What were they like, Soviet science and Soviet education, if cadres really should decide everything? On the eve of the new academic year, let's talk about the pros and cons of the Soviet education system, about how the Soviet school shaped a person's personality.
"To master science, to forge new cadres of Bolsheviks - specialists in all branches of knowledge, to study, study, study in the most stubborn way - this is now the task" (I.V. Stalin, Speech at the VIII Congress of the Komsomol, 1928)
More than once, different people interpreted the words of Bismarck in their own way, who, regarding the victory in the Battle of Sadovaya in 1866 in the war of Prussia against Austria, said that it was won by the Prussian folk teacher. It meant that the soldiers and officers of the Prussian army at that time were better educated than the soldiers and officers of the enemy army. Paraphrasing it, US President J.F. Kennedy, on October 4, 1957, on the day the USSR launched the first artificial satellite of the Earth, said:
“We lost space to the Russians at a school desk.” The Soviet school prepared a huge number of young people who were able to master complex military equipment in the shortest possible time, were able to take accelerated courses in military schools in a short time and become well-trained commanders of the Red Army and patriots of their socialist Fatherland .
The West has repeatedly noted the successes and achievements of Soviet education, especially in the late 1950s.
NATO policy brief on education in the USSR (1959)
In May 1959, Dr. C.R.S. (C.R.S. Congressional Research Service - Research Service of the US Congress) Manders prepared a report for the NATO Science Committee on the topic "Scientific and technical education and personnel reserves in the USSR." The following are excerpts from this report, the notes in square brackets are ours.
“When the Soviet Union was formed a little over 40 years ago, the state had to face enormous difficulties. The harvest of the Soviet south was destroyed by the locust invasion, resulting in food shortages and low morale of the population [note - no word about the so-called "Holodomor"]. Nothing contributed to the defense, except for the rational use of territorial and climatic conditions. The state lagged behind in education and other social areas, illiteracy was widespread, and almost 10 years later [and this is 1929] Soviet magazines and print publications were still reporting the same level of literacy. Forty years ago, there was a desperate shortage of trained personnel to get the Soviet people out of a difficult situation, and today the USSR is challenging the US right to world domination. This is an achievement that knows no equal in modern history ... ".
“Over the years, a significant proportion of trained personnel has returned to the education system to train even more specialists. Teaching is a well-paid and prestigious occupation. The net annual increase in trained personnel is 7% in the USSR (for comparison, in the USA - 3.5%, in Great Britain 2.5 - 3%).
“With each new stage of scientific and technological progress, a corresponding teacher training program begins. Programming teachers have been trained at Moscow State University since 1955.”
“At the level of postgraduate education, the USSR does not experience a shortage of professionals capable of managing state projects. In higher and school education, everything indicates that the number of professionally trained graduates will not only easily remain at the same level, but can be increased.”
"Western experts tend to be jealous of the quantity and quality of equipment in Soviet educational institutions."
“There is a significant tendency in the West to take extreme views on the Soviet Union. Its citizens, however, are not supermen or second-rate material. In fact, these are people with the same abilities and emotions as everyone else. If 210 million people in the West work together with the same priorities and the same zeal as their counterparts in the Soviet Union, they will achieve similar results. States that compete on their own with the USSR are wasting their strength and resources in attempts that are doomed to failure. If it is not possible to constantly invent methods that are superior to those of the USSR, it is worth seriously considering borrowing and adapting Soviet methods.
And here is another opinion of a Western politician and businessman about Stalin's policy:
“Communism under Stalin won the applause and admiration of all Western nations. Communism under Stalin gave us an example of patriotism, which is difficult to find an analogy in history. Persecution of Christians? No. There is no religious persecution. Church doors are open. Political repression? Yes, sure. But now it is already clear that those who were shot would have betrayed Russia to the Germans.”
Now we can say with confidence that education in the USSR was at the highest level, which is confirmed by the conclusion of Western analysts. It, of course, in many ways did not meet international standards. But now we are well aware that this is a problem of "standards". For now we have the very world standards. Only now, the most capable representatives of our youth, trained in accordance with these standards, by our Soviet standards, do not pull on the literate at all. So-so ... solid C students. Therefore, there is no doubt that the matter is not in ministers Fursenko or Livanov, that the modern problem lies purely in the system itself.
What was the Soviet system of education, which was so respectfully spoken about in the West, and whose methods were borrowed both in Japan and other countries?
Until now, there are disputes about whether the education system in the USSR can really be considered the best in the world. Someone agrees with confidence, and someone talks about the detrimental effect of ideological principles. Without a doubt, propaganda existed, but thanks to propaganda, illiteracy of the population was eliminated in record time, education became generally accessible, and so many Nobel laureates and winners of international Olympiads, as there were annually in Soviet times, have not been until now. Soviet schoolchildren won international olympiads, including those in the natural sciences. And all these achievements arose despite the fact that general education in the USSR was established later than in Western countries for almost a whole century. The well-known innovative teacher Viktor Shatalov (born in 1927) said:
“In the post-war years, the space industry arose in the USSR, the defense industry rose. All this could not grow out of nothing. Everything was based on education. Therefore, it can be argued that our education was not bad.”
There were indeed many positives. Let's not talk about the mass character and accessibility of the school level of education: today this principle is preserved. Let's talk about the quality of education: people like to compare this property of the Soviet past with the quality of education in modern society.
Availability and inclusiveness
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 system (elementary, secondary school, technical school, university, graduate school, 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 free of charge and were available to absolutely everyone.
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.
However, there were both specialized classes and specialized schools, where children got the opportunity to study certain subjects in depth, which was a reason for the special pride of the parents of children who studied at a mathematical school or a school with a language bias. This brought up in parents and children a sense of their own exclusivity, "elitism." It was these children who in many ways became the “ideological backbone” of the dissident movement. In addition, even in ordinary schools, by the end of the 1970s, the practice of hidden segregation had developed, when the most capable children fall into the "A" and "B" classes, and the "D" class is a kind of "sump", which practice in today's schools is already considered the norm.
Fundamentality and versatility of knowledge
Despite the fact that a powerful number of leading subjects stood out in the Soviet school, among which were the Russian language, biology, physics, and mathematics, the study of disciplines that give a systematic view of the world was mandatory. As a result, the student left the school bench, having almost encyclopedic knowledge. This knowledge became that strong foundation on which it was possible to subsequently educate a specialist in almost any profile.
The key to quality education was the synchronization of acquired knowledge in different subjects through ideology. The facts learned by students in physics lessons echoed the information obtained in the study of chemistry and mathematics, and were linked through the ideas that dominated society. Thus, new concepts and terms were introduced in parallel, which helped to structure knowledge and form in children a complete picture of the world, albeit an ideological one.
The presence of incentive and involvement in the educational process
Today, teachers are sounding the alarm: schoolchildren lack motivation to study, many high school students do not feel responsible for their own future. In Soviet times, it was possible to create motivation due to the interaction of several factors:
- Grades in the subjects corresponded to the acquired knowledge. In the USSR, they were not afraid to put deuces and triples even in a year. Class statistics certainly played a role, but were not of paramount importance. A loser could be left for the second year: it was not only a shame in front of other children, but also a powerful incentive to take up studies. It was impossible to buy an assessment: you had to study, because it was impossible to earn an excellent result in another way.
- The system of patronage and guardianship in the USSR was an indisputable advantage. A weak student was not left alone with his problems and failures. The excellent student took him under his care and studied until the loser achieved success. For strong children, it was also a good school: in order to explain the subject to another student, they had to work out the material in detail, independently learn to apply optimal pedagogical methods. The system of patronage (or, rather, helping the elders to the younger ones) brought up many Soviet scientists and teachers, who later became laureates of prestigious international awards.
- Equal conditions for all. The social status and financial situation of the student's parents had no effect on the results at school. All children were in equal conditions, studied according to the same program, so the road was open to everyone. School knowledge was enough to enter the university without hiring tutors. Compulsory distribution after graduation, although perceived as an undesirable phenomenon, guaranteed work and the demand for acquired knowledge and skills. This situation began to change slowly after the 1953 coup d'état, and by the 1970s the children of the partocracy became more "equal" - "those who are more equal" received places in the best institutions, many physics, mathematics, language schools thus began to degenerate into "elitist ”, from where it was no longer possible to simply remove a negligent student, since his dad was a “big man”.
- The emphasis is not only on education, but also on education. The Soviet school covered the student's free time, was interested in his hobbies. Sections, extracurricular activities, which were mandatory, left almost no time for aimless pastime and generated interest in further education in various fields.
- Availability of free extracurricular activities. In the Soviet school, in addition to the compulsory program, electives were regularly held for those who wished. Classes in additional disciplines were free of charge and available to anyone who had the time and interest to study them.
- Material support for students - scholarships accounted for almost a third of the country's average salary.
The combination of these factors gave rise to a huge incentive to study, without which Soviet education would not have been so effective.
Requirements for teachers and respect for the profession
A teacher in a Soviet school is an image with a high social status. Teachers were respected and treated as a valuable and socially significant work. Films were made about the school, songs were composed, presenting teachers in them as intelligent, honest and highly moral people who should be emulated.
Being a teacher was considered an honor
There were reasons for this. High demands were placed on the personality of a teacher in the Soviet school. The teachers were people who graduated from universities and had an inner calling to teach children.
This situation continued until the 1970s. Teachers had relatively high salaries even compared to skilled workers. But closer to the "perestroika" the situation began to change. The development of capitalist relations contributed to the decline in the authority of the teacher's personality. Setting on material values, which have now become achievable, made the profession of a teacher unprofitable and not prestigious, which led to the leveling of the true value of school grades.
So, Soviet education was based on three main "pillars":
- encyclopedic knowledge, achieved through versatile learning and synchronization of information obtained as a result of studying various subjects, albeit through ideology;
- the presence of a powerful incentive for children to study, thanks to the patronage of the elders over the younger ones and free extracurricular activities;
- respect for the work of teachers and the institution of the school as a whole.
Looking at the Soviet education system from the "bell tower" of modernity, some shortcomings can be noted. We can say that they are something like a brick that we, many years later, could add to the temple of science built by the country.
Let's look at some flaws that are better seen from a distance.
Emphasis on theory rather than practice
A. Raikin's famous phrase: "Forget everything you were taught at school, and listen ..." was not born from scratch. Behind it lies an intensified study of theory and the lack of connections between the acquired knowledge and life.
If we talk about the system of universal compulsory education in the USSR, then it surpassed the education systems of foreign countries (and, above all, developed capitalist ones) in terms of the breadth of the thematic spectrum and the depth of study of subjects (especially mathematics, physics, chemistry, and other branches of natural science). On the basis of secondary education of a very high quality (by world standards of that era), the universities of the USSR gave students not directly applied knowledge, but mostly fundamental knowledge, from which all directly applied knowledge and skills stem. But Soviet universities were also characterized by the general defect of the Western-type education system, which had been characteristic of it since the second half of the 19th century.
Lack of "industry philosophies"
A common defect of the Soviet and Western education systems is the loss of the canons of professional activity: therefore, what can be called the “philosophy of design and production” of certain technosphere objects, the “philosophy of operation” of certain devices, the “philosophy of healthcare and the provision of medical care” and etc. applied philosophies were not in the curricula of Soviet universities. The existing courses called “Introduction to the specialty” for the most part did not cover the problems of this kind of philosophy, and, as practice shows, only a few of the entire mass of university graduates were able to independently reach its understanding, and then only many years after receiving diplomas.
But their understanding of this issue in the overwhelming majority of cases did not find expression in public (at least among professionals) texts:
- partly because the few who understood this problem were mostly busy with their professional work and did not find time to write a book (textbook for students);
- but among those who understood, there were also those who consciously maintained their monopoly on knowledge and related skills, since such a monopoly underlay their high status in the social hierarchy, in the hierarchy of the corresponding professional community and ensured this or that informal power;
- and partly because this genre of “abstract literature” was not in demand by publishing houses, especially since this kind of “philosophy of work” could largely contradict the ideological guidelines of the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the stupidity of bureaucrats-leaders higher in the hierarchy of power (in the professional sphere) .
In addition, those who were able to write this kind of book, for the most part, did not occupy high leadership positions, as a result of which they were not always “according to rank” to write on such topics in the conditions of the tribal system of the post-Stalin USSR. And those who were “according to rank” in post-Stalin times were mostly careerist bureaucrats who were not able to write such vital books. Although bureaucratic authors sometimes published books that purported to fill this gap, they were essentially scribbled.
An example of this kind of graphomania is the book of the Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy from 1956 to 1985, S.G. Gorshkov (1910 - 1988) "Sea Power of the State" (Moscow: Military Publishing. 1976 - 60,000 copies, 2nd supplemented edition 1979 - 60,000 copies). Judging by its text, it was written by a team of narrow specialists (submariners, surface sailors, aviators, gunsmiths and representatives of other branches of forces and services of the fleet), who did not perceive the development of the Fleet as a whole as the construction of a complex system designed to solve certain problems, in which all elements must be presented in the required quantities and relationships of the functions assigned to each of them; a system that interacts with other systems generated by society and with the natural environment.
S.G. Gorshkov himself hardly read “his” book, and if he did, he did not understand the failure of life and the mutual incompatibility of many of the provisions expressed in it by the authors of various sections due to the dementia of a careerist.
Before understanding the problems of the development of the country's naval power, expressed in the works of Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union I.S. Isakov (1894 - 1967), S.G. Gorshkov was very far away, which had an extremely harmful effect on the defense capability of the USSR and the development of its Navy during those 30 years when S.G. Gorshkov headed the Soviet Navy.
Those who are prejudiced that under the leadership of S.G. Gorshkov, a mighty fleet was built, we must understand that every fleet is a collection of ships, coastal forces and services, but not every collection of ships, coastal forces and services, even with their large number and diversity, is really a Fleet. The latter took place in the USSR, when S.G. was the commander-in-chief of the Navy. Gorshkov, and it was very ruinous for the country and not very effective militarily.
Non-interference in the technical issues of the ideological bureaucracy
“How could it happen that sabotage has assumed such wide dimensions? Who is to blame for this? We are to blame for this. If we had put the matter of managing the economy differently, if we had gone over much earlier to the study of the technique of business, to mastering the technique, if we had intervened more often and sensibly in the management of the economy, pests would not have succeeded in doing so much harm.
We must ourselves become specialists, masters of the business, we must turn our faces to technical knowledge—this is where life pushed us. But neither the first signal nor even the second signal provided the necessary turn. It's time, it's time to turn to technology. It is time to cast aside the old slogan, the obsolete slogan of non-intervention in technology, and become specialists themselves, experts in the business, become the full masters of economic affairs.
The slogan about non-interference in technical issues in the practice of management during the civil war and the 1920s meant that a “politically ideological”, but illiterate and ignorant of technique and technology, a person could be appointed leader, as a result of which under his leadership were “politically immature and potentially counter-revolutionary professionals. Further, such a leader set before the professionals subordinate to him the tasks that the higher leaders set for him, and his subordinates, in turn, relying on their knowledge and professional skills, had to ensure their solution. Those. the first stages of the full function of enterprise management (or a structure for another purpose) turned out to be behind the "politically ideological" but not knowledgeable leader, and the subsequent stages were behind the professionals subordinate to him.
- If the head of the team and the professionals were conscientious or at least honest, and as a result, ethically compatible in the common cause, then in this version the enterprise management system was efficient and benefited both parties: the head learned the business, subordinate professionals broadened their horizons, were drawn into political life and became citizens of the USSR (in the sense of the word "citizen", understandable from the poem by N.A. Nekrasov "The Poet and the Citizen") de facto, and not just de jure.
- If the manager or professionals turned out to be ethically incompatible due to the dishonesty and dishonesty of at least one of the parties (at least the "ideological" leader, even professionals), then the enterprise management system to a greater or lesser extent lost its efficiency, which entailed consequences that could legally qualify as wrecking either a leader, or professionals, or all together (such an article was in the criminal codes of all union republics).
How such a system worked in practice in military affairs, see the story of the writer-marine painter, and earlier - a professional naval sailor L.S. Sobolev (1898 - 1971, was non-partisan) "Exam". In this story, the "spirit of the era" is presented accurately in many aspects, but from the point of view of liberals - slanderously. However, the same “spirit of the era” was also “in civilian life”, therefore, the system “political and ideological leader - subordinate professional specialists, apolitical and unprincipled” (the same as Professor Nikolai Stepanovich from A.P. Chekhov’s story “Dull History”) also worked in civilian life.
In fact, I.V. Stalin, in the quoted speech, set the task: since one “ideological conviction in the rightness of socialism” is not enough for business leaders, their ideological conviction should be practically expressed in mastering the relevant technical knowledge and applying this knowledge to identify and solve problems of economic support for the policy of the Soviet state in all its components: global, external, internal; otherwise, they are hypocrites, covering up real sabotage with their "ideological conviction" - idle talk.
And now let's turn to the speech of I.V. Stalin "New situation - new tasks of economic construction" at a meeting of business executives on June 23, 1931 (highlights in bold are ours):
“... we can no longer get by with the minimum engineering, technical and command forces of industry that we used to get by with before. It follows from this that the old centers for the formation of engineering and technical forces are no longer enough, that it is necessary to create a whole network of new centers - in the Urals, in Siberia, in Central Asia. We must now provide ourselves with three, five times more engineering, technical and command forces of industry if we really think to carry out the program of socialist industrialization of the USSR.
But we do not need any command and engineering forces. We need such commanding and engineering-technical forces that are able to understand the policy of the working class of our country, are able to assimilate this policy and are ready to implement it. honestly» .
At the same time, I.V. Stalin did not recognize the monopoly on the possession of conscience and business qualities for the party and its members. In the same speech, there is the following passage:
“Some comrades think that only Party comrades can be promoted to leading positions in factories. On this basis, they often wipe out capable and enterprising non-Party comrades, pushing Party members to the forefront, although they are less able and uninitiative. Needless to say, there is nothing more stupid and reactionary than such, so to speak, "politics". It hardly needs proof that such a "policy" can only discredit the Party and alienate the non-Party workers from the Party. Our policy is not at all to turn the Party into a closed caste. Our policy is to create an atmosphere of "mutual trust" between Party and non-Party workers, an atmosphere of "mutual verification" (Lenin). Our Party is strong in the working class, among other things, because it is pursuing precisely such a policy.”
In post-Stalin times, if we refer to this fragment, the personnel policy was stupid and reactionary, and it was as a result of it that M.S. Gorbachev, A.N. Yakovlev, B.N. Yeltsin, V.S. Chernomyrdin, A.A. Sobchak, G.Kh. Popov and other activists of perestroika are reformers and unable to put them in the place of V.S. Pavlov, E.K. Ligachev, N.V. Ryzhkov and many other "opponents of perestroika" and bourgeois-liberal reforms.
The mention of conscience as the basis of the activity of every person, and above all - managers - in the conditions of building socialism and communism contrasts with the statement of another politician of that era.
“I free man,” says Hitler, “from the humiliating chimera called conscience. Conscience, like education, cripples a person. I have the advantage that no considerations of a theoretical or moral nature hold me back.
The quotation itself from the report of I.V. Stalin at the solemn meeting of the Moscow Council of Working People's Deputies on November 6, 1941, dedicated to the 24th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
But A. Hitler is not an innovator in the denial of conscience. Nietzsche
“Have I ever felt remorse? My memory keeps silent on this matter” (T. 1. S. 722, “Evil Wisdom”, 10).
“Remorse of conscience is the same stupidity as a dog’s attempt to gnaw a stone” (Ibid., p. 817, “The Wanderer and His Shadow”, 38)”
As a result, F. Nietzsche ended his life in a madhouse.
Communism, translated from Latin into Russian, means community, community; in addition, in Latin this word has the same root as “communication”, i.e. with communication, including information communication between people and not only between them, and the root of the word "conscience" is the same "communication" - "news". In other words:
"Communism- a community of people based on conscience: everything else in communism is a consequence of the unity of conscience in different people.
Low level of teaching foreign languages
The lack of experience in communicating with native speakers gave rise to the study of languages based on stamps that did not change in textbooks from year to year. After 6 years of studying a foreign language, Soviet schoolchildren could not speak it even within the limits of everyday topics, although they knew grammar very well. The inaccessibility of educational foreign literature, audio and video recordings, the lack of the need to communicate with foreigners relegated the study of foreign languages to the background.
Lack of wide access to foreign literature
The Iron Curtain created a situation in which it became not only shameful, but also dangerous to refer to foreign scientists in student and academic papers. The lack of fresh information has given rise to some conservation of teaching methods. In this regard, in 1992, when Western sources became available, the school system seemed outdated and in need of reform.
Lack of home education and external studies
It is difficult to judge whether this is good or bad, but the lack of opportunity for strong students to take subjects externally and move to the next class hindered the development of future advanced personnel, equalized them with the bulk of schoolchildren.
Non-alternative co-education of 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. Then 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 United States 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.
Degradation of the system of secondary vocational education in the late USSR
Although in the USSR people of labor were extolled in every possible way and working professions were promoted, in the 1970s the system of secondary vocational education in the country began to clearly degrade, even despite the noticeable advantage that young workers had in terms of wages. The fact is that in the USSR they tried to ensure universal employment, and therefore, in vocational schools, they massively took students who did not enter universities with two or three students, and also forcibly placed juvenile criminals there. As a result, the average quality of the student population in vocational schools has fallen sharply. In addition, the career prospects of vocational schools were much worse than in the previous era: a huge number of skilled workers were trained during the industrialization of the 1930-1960s, the best places were filled, and it became more difficult for young people to break through to the top. At the same time, the service sector was extremely underdeveloped in the USSR, which was associated with a serious limitation of entrepreneurship, and it is the service sector that creates the largest number of jobs in modern developed countries (including jobs for people without higher or vocational education). Thus, there were no alternatives in employment, as there are now. Cultural and educational work in vocational schools turned out to be poorly organized, students of “vocational schools” began to be associated with hooliganism, drunkenness and a general low level of development. “If you study poorly at school, you will go to vocational school!” (vocational technical school) - something like this parents said to negligent schoolchildren. 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.
Perhaps the time will come when we will return to the experience of the USSR, having mastered its positive aspects, taking into account the modern requirements of society, that is, at a new level.
Conclusion
Analyzing the current culture of our society as a whole, we can come to the conclusion that the societies that have historically developed on earth give rise to three levels of unfreedom for people.
Level one
There are people who have mastered a certain minimum of commonly used socially significant knowledge and skills, who are not able to independently master (based on literature and other sources of information) and produce new knowledge and skills from scratch. Such people are able to work only in professions that do not require any specialized qualifications, or in mass professions that can be mastered without much labor and time on the basis of a universal educational minimum.
They are the most unfree, because they have practically no free time and are not able to enter other areas of activity except those that they have mastered in one way or another and in which they ended up, perhaps not of their own free will.
Level two
Those who have mastered the knowledge and skills of "prestigious" professions, in which relatively short employment (everyday or occasional) provides a sufficiently high income, which allows them to have a certain amount of free time and dispose of it at their own discretion. Most of them also do not know how to independently master and produce new knowledge and skills from scratch, especially outside the sphere of their professional activity. Therefore, their lack of freedom begins when the profession they have mastered depreciates, and they, unable to quickly master any other sufficiently highly profitable profession, slide into the first group.
At this level, in the cultures of most civilized societies, individuals are given access to the knowledge and skills that enable them to enter the realm of governance of general public importance while remaining conceptually powerless. The term "conceptual power" should be understood in two ways: firstly, as the kind of power that gives society the concept of its life in the continuity of generations as a single whole (i.e., determines the goals of society's existence, ways and means to achieve them); secondly, as the power of the concept itself over society.
Level three
Those who are able to independently master previously developed and produce from scratch new knowledge and skills of social significance as a whole for them and society and exploit them on a commercial or any other social status basis. Their lack of freedom begins when, without thinking about the objectivity of Good and Evil, about the difference between their meanings, they fall consciously or unconsciously into permissiveness and begin to create objectively unacceptable Evil, as a result of which they encounter a stream of circumstances restraining their activity of certain circumstances beyond their control — up to the deadly. These factors can be both intrasocial and general natural, and can have a personal or wider scale, up to the global one.
Access to this level is due to the development of managerial knowledge and skills, including those that are necessary for the acquisition and exercise of conceptual power. In the conditions of societies in which the population is divided into the common people and the ruling "elite", in which an even narrower social group is reproduced from generation to generation, carrying one or another internal closed tradition of governance, access to this level is blocked by the system of both universal and " elite" education. Access to it is possible either arbitrarily (rare self-taught people are capable of this), or due to belonging to certain clans of those who carry the internal traditions of governing or electing an individual by these clans to include him in their ranks. This blocking is not of a spontaneous natural nature, but is a purposefully built system-forming culturological factor, the action of which is expressed in the protection of their monopoly on the conceptual power of certain clan groups, which allows them to exploit the rest - managerially incompetent - society in their own interests.
Level of gaining freedom
The level of gaining freedom is the only one: a person, acting according to his conscience, realizes the objective difference between Good and Evil, their meaning, and on this basis, taking the side of Good, acquires the ability to master independently and produce “from scratch” new knowledge and skills for him and society in advance or at the pace of development of the situation. For this reason, it gains independence from corporations that have monopolized certain socially significant knowledge and skills on which the social status of their representatives is based. Note that in the religious worldview, conscience is an innate religious feeling of a person, “connected” to his unconscious levels of the psyche; on its basis, a dialogue between man and God is built, if a person does not deviate from this dialogue himself, and in this dialogue God gives everyone the proof of His existence in full accordance with the principle “practice is the criterion of truth.” It is for this reason that conscience in the religious worldview is a means of distinguishing between objective Good and Evil in the specifics of the incessantly current life of society, and a good person is a person living under the dictatorship of conscience.
In an atheistic worldview, the nature and source of conscience are not cognizable, although the fact of its activity in the psyche of many people is recognized by some schools of atheistic psychology. One can speak of conscience and freedom in the indicated sense as a self-evident fact, without going into a discussion of theological traditions of historically developed concepts of religion, if circumstances do not favor this; or if you have to explain this problem to atheist-materialists, for whom the appeal to theological questions is a known sign of the inadequacy of the interlocutor, or to atheist-idealists, for whom the disagreement of the interlocutor with their accepted religious tradition is a known sign of obsession and Satanism.
In accordance with this non-economic and non-military-technical task in its essence, the task of changing the current concept of globalization to the righteous concept of the system universal compulsory and professionally specialized education in the country was oriented under the guidance of I.V. Stalin that everyone who is able and willing to learn acquire knowledge that allows them to reach at least the third level of unfreedom, including the acquisition of conceptual power.
Although the gradation of levels of unfreedom shown above and the phenomenon of conceptual power in the era of I.V. Stalin was not realized, however, it was precisely about this that he wrote directly in the terminology of that era, and this can be clearly understood from his words:
“It is necessary ... to achieve such a cultural growth of society that would provide all members of society with the comprehensive development of their physical and mental abilities, so that members of society have the opportunity to receive an education sufficient to become active workers in social development ...” .
“It would be wrong to think that such a serious cultural growth of the members of society can be achieved without serious changes in the current state of labor. To do this, it is necessary first of all to reduce the working day to at least 6, and then to 5 hours. This is to ensure that members of the society have enough free time to receive a comprehensive education. To this end, it is necessary, further, to introduce compulsory polytechnic education, which is necessary for the members of society to have the opportunity to freely choose a profession and not be chained for life to any one profession. To this end, it is necessary to further radically improve housing conditions and raise the real wages of workers and employees at least twice, if not more, both through a direct increase in money wages, and especially through a further systematic reduction in the prices of consumer goods.
These are the basic conditions for preparing the transition to communism.”
Real democracy, which is based on the availability for mastering knowledge and skills that allow to carry out the full function of management in relation to society, is impossible without mastering the art of dialectics (as a practical cognitive and creative skill) by fairly wide layers in all social groups as the basis for developing conceptual power.
And, accordingly, dialectical materialism was included in the USSR as the standard of both secondary (later becoming universal) and higher education, due to which a certain number of students in the process of getting to know “diamat” developed in themselves some sort of personal culture of dialectical knowledge and creativity, even with that the dialectic in "diamat" was crippled by G.W.F. Hegel: reduced to three "laws" and replaced by some kind of logic, in which form it was perceived by the classics of Marxism - K. Marx, F. Engels, V.I. Lenin, L.D. Bronstein (Trotsky).
However, the education system of the USSR did not provide access to the level of freedom due to the totalitarian domination of Marxism, which distorted the world outlook and brought it into conflict with conscience, which was also facilitated by the principle of “democratic centralism”, which underlay the internal discipline of the CPSU (b) - the CPSU, Komsomol and pioneer organizations, Soviet trade unions, which has become a tool for subordinating the majority to the not always righteous will and, in fact, to the mafia discipline of the ruling minority.
But even with these vices, the education system in the USSR still did not prevent those who lived under the rule of the dictatorship of conscience and treated Marxism and the internal discipline of the party and public organizations controlled by the leadership of the party as a historically transient circumstance, and to conscience - as an enduring foundation, on which the essence and fate of every individual and every society is built.
And ensuring the effectiveness of the education system as a means of innovative development of the economy at a faster pace and economic support for the country's defense capability is a means of solving the above-mentioned I.V. Stalin of the main task: so that everyone can become active figures in social development.
If we talk about the development of the education system in Russia in the future, then - on the basis of what has been said above - it can only be expressed in the construction of a system of universal compulsory education that can bring the student to the only level of freedom in the previously defined sense and motivate everyone who has problems to achieve this result. with health do not interfere with mastering training programs.
At the same time, education (in the sense of providing access to the development of knowledge and skills and assistance in their development) without alternative turns out to be associated with the upbringing of the younger generations, since access to the only level of freedom is not only the possession of certain knowledge and skills, but also the unconditional self-subordination of the will of the individual to her conscience, and this is the subject of the upbringing of each child personally, according to the specifics of the circumstances of his life.
Afterword
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. There was not a single school graduate in the USSR who did not read Pushkin or did not know who Vasnetsov was.
In the end, I would like to give an essay by a Soviet schoolboy about the Motherland. Look! So our mothers and grandmothers knew how to write. 1960-70 years in the USSR... And this is written not with a ballpoint pen, but with a fountain pen!
We congratulate you all on the Day of Knowledge!
