Because like this, no fools, the formed statement evokes blind rage among Russophobes, irritation among critics of the Soviet period and satisfaction among its admirers. To avoid misinterpretation, I will immediately declare that I am an admirer. Therefore, in terms of the Soviet education system, I do not deny it due to the fact that political repressions took place in the Soviet period. At the very least, such a denial is stupid. But in order not to become like Russophobes and not to refer to the opinion of a certain civilized part of humanity, I will try to substantiate my assertion in the ways available to me, an amateur in this area.
For this I will pose the questions: what is education and what is the education system, what are their structure and goals, what are their accessibility and results.
Education is a purposeful cognitive activity of people to acquire knowledge, skills, or to improve them. It is possible to get an education through self-education or through the use of the state education system. With regards to me, I must admit that I am a supporter of a reasonable symbiosis of these paths.
The state education system includes the systems of preschool education, primary school, basic general education (or the lower level of secondary (secondary) education), secondary (complete) general education in general education schools and higher educational institutions (upper level of secondary (secondary) education) , primary vocational education on the basis of a complete secondary school, secondary vocational education, higher vocational education (preparation of bachelors, specialists, masters) or tertiary education and, finally, postgraduate education - postgraduate studies, doctoral studies.
The most uninteresting part was completed. I will only add that bachelors, specialists, masters, as well as the test results of checking the knowledge gained, are taken from the current system, licked from Western models and just emphasizing the losing positions in comparison with the Soviet system.
What is the first distinguishing feature of Soviet education? Its obligation. For refusing to receive an education, it was really possible to fall under political repression. Before that, only voluntary education was known.
The second, the most important for the average man in the street, organically flowed from the first distinctive feature - the availability of education at all its levels. Moreover, the acquisition of higher education was encouraged by law, through the payment of scholarships and, even, with a market element, when the student was additionally financed for the sake of an enterprise interested in him.
The student was obliged to reimburse the costs invested in it with work in the acquired specialty, for which he was distributed to the enterprises of the profile corresponding to his education. This distribution for liberalizing Russophobes is a red rag for a bull. How so? Freedom of choice is infringed! That’s the freebie essence of a liberal — it’s an ice to be formed for free, but to work it off is not an ice. Rotten.
Finally, postgraduate education, postgraduate and doctoral studies. Also paid. Also provided with a workplace and verified by an independent highly qualified non-corrupt system.
What was the purpose of Soviet education? Listen to the ex-Minister of Education of the Russian Federation Fursenko: "We do not need a creative person, we need a competent consumer."
These words of his first of all assess Soviet education as a successful, harmonious education that managed to create a creative personality.
US President Eisenhower, who gave him a brilliant assessment of Soviet education, was ahead of him based on the results of the US lagging behind the USSR in the space field. He did not foolishly count the number of Soviet and American Nobel laureates, leaving this absurd occupation to Russophobes from liberalism, but declared the need to adopt the Soviet experience.
Yes, it somehow looks dumb, this subjective opinion. Here Gorky is not a laureate, only a nominee, but Brodsky is a laureate. Vasily Aksyonov wrote that Joseph Brodsky is "quite a middle peasant writer who was once lucky, as the Americans say, to be" at the right time in the right place. "
But let's leave that. Let's talk better about the functional literacy of schoolchildren. What she is like in Russia, we saw in the famous interview with Zhirkova. And what is it like for the flagship of the Western world - the United States?
20% of Americans believe that the sun revolves around the earth. 17% believe that the Earth orbits the Sun in one day (The Week, January 7, 2005). Only 13% of young Americans capable of serving in the military were able to find Iraq on the map, and 83% did not find Afghanistan, where US troops have been stationed since October 2001. However, only 89% of Americans know where their country is. In general, 55% of Americans patriotically believe that the United States is located in the very center of the Earth. And Ronald Reagan, returning from a trip to Latin America, said: \ "Compatriots, you will be not only surprised, but amazed to learn that Latin America is not one country, but several \".
Sad but not fatal. In the United States, there is a different approach to education. It is based on buying up brains. The US National Academy of Sciences draws attention to discouraging statistics: with the funds needed by a company in the US to hire one engineer, it is possible to hire five engineers in China and 11 engineers in India. In 2004, about 70 thousand engineers were trained in the United States, 600 thousand in China, and 350 thousand in India.
Only here it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that foreign applications for postgraduate studies in the United States decreased by 28%. In the United States, the number of Chinese graduate students fell 56%, Indians 51%, South Koreans 28% (New York Times, December 21, 2004).
Against this background, the available free Soviet education looks like a beacon pointing the right course. The USSR is long gone, but its education system to this day has a beneficial effect on the position of Russia in the world table of educational ranks. The share of people with tertiary education (all levels) in the country's population aged 25-64 (2005 data) in Russia is 55%. The closest neighbors in this indicator, Canada and Israel, each have 46%. I hope that Russian education is also enough to understand - 25-64 years is the most condovional Soviet period of acquiring knowledge?
Soviet education in certain circles is considered to be the best in the world. In the same circles, it is customary to consider the modern generation to be lost - they say, these young "victims of the Unified State Exam" do not stand any comparison with us, who went through the crucible of Soviet schools as technical intellectuals ...
Of course, the truth lies far away from these stereotypes. If a certificate of graduation from a Soviet school is a sign of the quality of education, then perhaps 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 strongly, amaze us with the depth of their ignorance. Not knowing the Latin letters, not being able to add simple fractions, physically not understanding the simplest written texts - alas, for Soviet citizens this was a variant of the norm.
At the same time, Soviet schools also had indisputable advantages - for example, teachers then had the opportunity to freely give two marks and leave “not pulling” students for the second year. This whip created that mood necessary for learning, which is so lacking now in many modern schools and universities.
I am smoothly moving on to the essence 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 ask you to join the discussion - and, if necessary, even supplement and correct the article directly on the "Reference", since this is a wikiproject that is available for editing by everyone:
This article examines the Soviet education system from the point of view of its merits and demerits. 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 people of the older generation had only 3-4 grades of education behind their backs, because far and all were able to complete the full course of school education due to the war, mass displacements, the need to go to work early. However, virtually all citizens have learned to read and write.
For mass education, I must also say thanks to 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. As a result, the Bolsheviks received a huge number of literate and trained teachers, and they only had to double the share 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 the so-called indigenousization, the Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 1930s. for the first time introduced education in the languages of many small peoples of Russia (often, along the way, creating and introducing alphabets and writing for these languages). Representatives of the outlying peoples had the opportunity to learn to read, first in their native language, and then in Russian, which hastened the elimination of illiteracy.
On the other hand, this very indigenization, 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, a very widespread higher education). In tsarist Russia, education was associated with class restrictions, although as its availability increased, these restrictions weakened and eroded, and by 1917, with the availability of money or special talents, representatives of any class could get a good education. With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, class restrictions were finally removed. Primary and then secondary education became universal, and the number of students in higher educational institutions increased many times over.
High motivation of students, public respect for education. Young people in the USSR really really wanted to study. Under Soviet conditions, when the right to private property was seriously limited, and entrepreneurial activity was practically suppressed (especially after the closure of cooperatives under Khrushchev), getting an education was the main way to advance in life and start making good money. There were few alternatives: not everyone had enough health for Stakhanov's manual labor, and for a successful party or military career, it was also necessary to raise 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 eradicated in the USSR and the system of universal secondary education was being established, the teaching profession remained one of the most respected and demanded in society. The teachers were relatively literate and capable people, moreover, 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). They wrote songs about the school, made films, many of which were included in the golden fund of Russian culture.
Relatively high level of initial training of those who entered 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 size 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 of a higher quality and talented one. It is precisely with this circumstance that the complaints of modern teachers about the sharp drop in the level of training of applicants and students are primarily associated.
Very high quality higher technical education. Soviet physics, astronomy, geography, geology, applied technical disciplines and, of course, mathematics, were undoubtedly at the highest world level. A 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, here, too, we must say a special thank you to the pre-revolutionary Russian science and higher education, which served as a solid foundation for all these achievements. But it must be admitted that the Soviet Union succeeded - even in spite of the massive emigration of Russian scientists after the revolution - to fully revive, continue and develop at the highest level the national tradition in the field of technical thought, natural and exact sciences.
Meeting the colossal demand of the state for new personnel in the context of a sharp growth in industry, army and science (thanks to large-scale government planning). In the course of mass industrialization in the USSR, several new industries were created and the scale of production in all industries was significantly increased, several times and dozens of times. Such an 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 personnel losses as a result of revolutionary emigration, civil war, repression 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.
Comparatively 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 quite large only for excellent students, graduate students and doctoral students.
Developed and free out-of-school 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 out-of-school 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 just emerging, then in the Soviet Union it came to the fore 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 taken first or second place at every Olympics since 1952, when the USSR began to participate in the international Olympic movement.
== Cons (-) ==
Low quality of liberal arts education due to ideological restrictions and clichés. Almost all humanitarian and social disciplines in schools and universities in the USSR were to some extent loaded with Marxism-Leninism, and during Stalin's life - also 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 (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 teaching economics and politics, the main place was occupied by Marxist political economy, in teaching philosophy - dialectical materialism. These directions in themselves are worthy of attention, but they were declared the only correct and correct, and all the rest were declared either their predecessors or false directions. As a result, huge layers of humanitarian knowledge either completely dropped out of the Soviet education system, or were presented in a metered manner and exclusively in a critical way, as "bourgeois science." Party history, political economy, and dialecticism 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, divorced from reality and at the same time relatively difficult, so that their study is mainly was reduced 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 the vilification of the tsarist period in the history of the country, and in the early Soviet period this vilification was much more extensive than the post-perestroika vilification of Soviet history. Many pre-revolutionary statesmen were declared "servants of tsarism", their names were deleted from history textbooks, or mentioned in a strictly negative context. Conversely, outright robbers like Stenka Razin were declared "national heroes", while terrorists like the murderers of Alexander II were called "freedom fighters" and "progressive 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" had to be persecuted or even destroyed. From 1917 to 1934 history in universities was not taught at all, all history 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, but 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 influence of ideology and political struggle on academics 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 strata 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 are a lot of specialists trained in the tsarist time 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 workload on the remaining teachers, but mainly due to the intensified 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 government. The persecution of genetics is widely known, because of which Russia, at the beginning of the 20th century, was one of the world leaders in biological science, by the end of the 20th century passed into the category of lagging behind. Due to the introduction of ideological struggle into science, many prominent scientists of the humanitarian and social trends 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 accusations spying on Japan or other countries because of their professional ties), 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 overly 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 get higher education in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. were deprived of the so-called disenfranchised, including private traders, entrepreneurs (using hired labor), representatives of the clergy, former police officers. Children from families of nobles, merchants, clergy often faced obstacles when trying to get higher education in the pre-war period. In the union republics of the USSR, representatives of 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 for Jews.
Restrictions on familiarization with foreign scientific literature, restrictions on international communication of scientists. If in the 1920s. in Soviet science, pre-revolutionary practice continued, involving very long foreign trips and internships for scientists and the best students, constant participation in international conferences, free correspondence and unlimited supply 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 ties became simply dangerous for the life and career of scientists, since many were then arrested on trumped-up charges of espionage. In the late 1940s. In the course of the ideological campaign against cosmopolitanism, it reached the point that references to the works of foreign authors began to be regarded as a manifestation of "servility to the West," and many were forced to accompany such references with criticism and stereotyped condemnation of "bourgeois science." The desire to publish in foreign journals was also condemned, and, what is most unpleasant, almost half of the leading scientific journals in the world, including publications like Science and Nature, were removed from free access and sent to special depositories. This “turned out to be in the hands of the most mediocre and unprincipled scientists,” for whom “the massive separation from foreign literature made it easier to use it for hidden 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 the conditions of limited external relations, they began to drop 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. »Soviet science was only partially corrected, as a result, there is still a problem of low citation rates of Russian scientists abroad and insufficient acquaintance with advanced foreign research.
Relatively low quality of teaching foreign languages. If in the West in the postwar period the practice of attracting foreigners - native speakers to teaching was established, 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 possible way, the Soviet Union lagged significantly behind in teaching foreign languages from - because of the closed borders and the almost complete absence of emigration from the West to the USSR. Also, for censorship reasons, the admission to the Soviet Union of foreign literature, films, recordings of songs was limited, which by no means contributed to the study of foreign languages. Compared to the USSR, in modern Russia there are much more opportunities for learning languages.
Ideological censorship, autarchy 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, Stanislavsky's system, the art of film montage - this and much more aroused admiration from the whole world. However, by the end of the 1930s. the variety of styles and trends 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. Relying on their own traditions was proclaimed, while attempts at new experiments began in many cases to be condemned ("Confusion instead of music"), and borrowing from Western cultural methods - to be subject to restrictions and persecution, as in the case of jazz, and then rock music. Indeed, not in all cases experiments and borrowings were successful, but the scale of condemnation and restrictions were so inadequate that this led to discouragement of innovations in art and to the gradual loss of world cultural leadership by the Soviet Union, as well as to 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 "struggle 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 into the Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture of the USSR, and in 1963 it was completely closed (until 1989). As a result, the era of the late USSR was a time of decline in design and a growing crisis in the field of architecture and urban environment. The architectural tradition was interrupted and was replaced by the soulless construction of micro-districts inconvenient for life; instead of the “bright future”, the “gray present” was built in the USSR.
Cancellation of teaching 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 grammar schools). Logic was returned to the program and a textbook was published 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, which gives the 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, learning these languages is good gymnastics for the mind and helps to develop discussion skills. 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 upbringing of moral values, partial loss of the upbringing 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 problem was 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 cope with the education of 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 a family, or for the role of a “brother” or “sister” in a community of believers. Under Soviet rule, all such institutions were closed, specialized analogs were not created for them, the education of morality was entrusted to an ordinary mass school, separating it from religion, which was replaced by the propaganda of atheism. The moral goal of Soviet education was no longer the upbringing of a worthy member of the family and community, as it was before, but the upbringing of a member of the working collective. For the accelerated development of industry and science, perhaps it was not bad. However, this approach could hardly solve the problems of a high level of abortions (legalized for the first time in the world in the USSR), a high level of divorces and a general degradation of family values, a sharp transition to few children, increasing mass alcoholism and extremely low, by world standards, male life expectancy in the late USSR.
Almost complete elimination of home education. Many outstanding figures of Russian history and culture received home education instead of school education, which proves that such education can be very effective. Of course, this form of education is not available for everyone, but either for relatively wealthy people who can hire teachers, or simply for 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 studies for schoolchildren was introduced only in 1985-1991.
Non-alternative coeducation of boys and girls. One of the dubious Soviet innovations in education was the compulsory joint education of boys and girls instead of the pre-revolutionary separate education. Then this step was justified by the struggle for women's rights, the lack of personnel and premises for organizing individual schools, as well as the widespread practice of coeducation in some leading countries of the world, including the United States. However, the latest research in the same USA shows that segregated education increases 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, 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 genders to improve performance, the self-esteem of adolescents depends more 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 Stalin's death, 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 not only persisted, but even degraded. compared with 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 of the re-education of former homeless children, while 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 given the fact that before the revolution, civil war and famine, most street children still had some experience of family life. However, later, due to the prohibition of child labor, this system was abandoned in the USSR. In the USSR, by 1990, there were 564 orphanages, the level of socialization of inmates of orphanages was low, many former orphanages fell into the ranks of criminals and marginalized people. 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 already close to completion.
Degradation of the secondary vocational education system in the late USSR. Although in the USSR they extolled the working man in every possible way and promoted working professions, by the 1970s. the system of secondary vocational education in the country began to clearly degrade. "If you do badly at school, you will go to vocational school!" (vocational technical school) - roughly what parents said to careless schoolchildren. In vocational schools, students who did not enroll in universities and did not graduate, they forcibly placed juvenile criminals there, and all this against the background of a comparative surplus of specialists-workers and the weak development of the service sector due to the lack of developed entrepreneurship (that is, there are no alternatives in employment, as now, then It was). Cultural and educational work in vocational schools turned out to be poorly organized, students of "vocational schools-shniki" began to be associated with hooliganism, drunkenness and a general low level of development. The negative image of vocational education in blue-collar occupations is still held in Russia, although qualified turners, locksmiths, milling cutters, 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, like the media and Soviet culture in general, fostered in citizens the belief in a powerful and wise party that leads everyone, cannot lie or make major mistakes. Of course, faith in the strength of your people and state is an important and necessary thing, but for the sake of supporting this faith, one should not go too far, systematically suppress the truth and harshly suppress alternative opinions. As a result, when, during the years of perestroika and glasnost, they gave freedom to these very alternative opinions, when facts about the history and modern problems of the country that had been previously hushed up began to emerge en masse, huge masses of citizens felt deceived, lost confidence in the state and in everything that they had been taught in school in many humanitarian subjects. Finally, citizens turned out to be unable to resist outright lies, myths and media manipulations, which ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR and a deep degradation of society and the economy in the 1990s. Alas, the Soviet educational and social systems failed to cultivate a sufficient level of caution, critical thinking, tolerance for alternative opinions, and a culture of discussion. Also, education of the late Soviet model did not help bring up sufficient independence in citizens, the desire to personally solve their problems, and not wait for the state or someone else to do 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 comprehensive conclusion due to its inconsistency.
Positive points:
The final elimination of illiteracy and the provision of universal secondary education
- World leadership in higher technical education, 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.
- A high level of development of sports education, broad encouragement 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 humanitarian education due to the negative influence of ideology and the foreign policy situation. The teaching of history, economics and foreign languages was especially 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 fault in the degradation of family values and a 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 ideology, as well as from obstacles to the development of foreign methods; 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 of the country's moral, demographic and social decline. Which, however, does not negate the presence of the impressive achievements of the USSR in the field of the humanities and art.
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.
Recently, many 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 was done after the collapse of the USSR with the previous education system? In the Soviet years, the training of future specialists was fundamentally different from the one that has reigned throughout the post-Soviet space today. But the Soviet education system has always been competitive. Thanks to her, the USSR came out in the 1960s to the first lines in the ranking of the most educated countries in the world. The country took a leading place in 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" (IV 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. To paraphrase it, US President J.F. Kennedy, on October 4, 1957, on the day the USSR launched the first artificial earth satellite, said:
“We lost space to the Russians at the school desk.” The Soviet school trained 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 50s.
NATO Policy Brief on Education in the USSR (1959)
In May 1959, Dr. Ts.R.S. (C.R.S. Congressional Research Service) Menders prepared a report for the NATO Science Committee on Science and Technology Education and Human Resources 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 crop in the Soviet south was wiped out by locust infestations, resulting in food shortages and low morale [note - not a 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 spheres, illiteracy was widespread, and after almost 10 years [and this is 1929] Soviet magazines and print publications still reported the same level of literacy. Forty years ago, there was a desperate shortage of trained personnel to lead the Soviet people out of a difficult situation, and today the USSR is challenging the United States' right to world domination. This is an achievement that has no equal in modern history ... ”.
“Over the years, a significant proportion of the trained workforce has been returning back 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 the UK 2.5 - 3%) ”.
“With each new stage of scientific and technological progress, a corresponding teacher training program begins. Since 1955, programming teachers have been trained at Moscow State University. "
“At the level of postgraduate education, the USSR does not experience a shortage of professionals capable of managing government 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 envy the quantity and quality of equipment in Soviet educational institutions."
“There is a significant tendency in the West to take extreme views of 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 zeal as their counterparts in the Soviet Union, they will achieve similar results. States that are independently competing with the USSR waste their strength and resources in attempts that are doomed to failure. If it is impossible to constantly invent methods that are superior to those of the USSR, it is worth seriously thinking about 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 analogy in history. Persecution of Christians? No. There is no religious persecution. The doors of the churches are open. Political repression? Oh sure. But now it is already clear that those who were shot would have betrayed Russia to the Germans. "
Now we can confidently assert that education in the USSR was at the highest level, which is confirmed by the conclusion of Western analysts. Of course, it did not meet world standards in many ways. But now we are well aware that this is a problem of "standards". For now we have the same world standards. Only the most capable representatives of our youth, trained in accordance with these standards, by our Soviet standards, do not pull at literate at all. So so ... solid C grade. Therefore, there is no doubt that it is not a matter of Ministers Fursenko or Livanov, that the modern problem lies exclusively in the system itself.
What was the Soviet education system, which was so respectfully spoken about in the West, and whose methods were borrowed both in Japan and other countries?
There is still debate about whether the education system in the USSR can really be considered the best in the world. Someone with confidence agrees, while someone speaks about the destructive impact of ideological principles. Undoubtedly, propaganda existed, but also thanks to propaganda, illiteracy of the population was eliminated in record time, education became widely available, and there have never been as many Nobel laureates and winners of international Olympiads as there were annually in Soviet times. Soviet schoolchildren won international Olympiads, including those in the natural sciences. And all these achievements occurred despite the fact that general education in the USSR was established later than in Western countries for almost a whole century. The famous educator and innovator Viktor Shatalov (born in 1927) said:
“In the postwar 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 really many pluses. 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: they like to compare this heritage of the Soviet past with the quality of education in modern society.
Accessibility and inclusiveness
One of the most significant advantages of the Soviet school system was its affordability. This right was enshrined constitutionally (Article 45 of the 1977 USSR Constitution). The main difference between the Soviet education system and the American or British one was the unity and consistency of all levels of education. A clear vertical system (primary, secondary school, technical school, university, postgraduate, doctoral studies) made it possible to accurately plan the vector of their education. For each step, uniform programs and requirements were developed. When parents moved or changed schools for any other reason, there was no need to re-study the material or try to delve into the system adopted in the new educational institution. The maximum trouble that a transfer to another school could cause was the need to repeat or catch up with 3-4 topics in each discipline. Textbooks in the school library were given out free of charge and were available to absolutely everyone.
It is a mistake to believe that all students in the Soviet school had the same level of knowledge. Of course, the general program must be learned by everyone. But if a teenager is interested in some particular subject, then he was given every opportunity for its additional study. At schools there were math circles, circles of lovers of literature, and so on.
However, there were both specialized classes and specialized schools, where children had the opportunity to study in depth certain subjects, which was a reason for the special pride of the parents of children who studied in a mathematical school or a school with a language bias. This instilled in both parents and children a sense of their own exclusiveness, “elitism”. It is these children who have become in many ways the "ideological backbone" of the dissident movement. In addition, even in ordinary schools, by the end of the 1970s, the practice of latent segregation developed, when the most capable children get into the "A" and "B" classes, and the "D" class is a kind of "settler", which is the practice in today's schools. 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, mathematics, the study of disciplines that give a systematic view of the world was mandatory. As a result, the student left the school bench with practically encyclopedic knowledge. This knowledge became that solid foundation on which it was possible to subsequently educate a specialist in almost any profile.
The key to high-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, linked through the dominant ideas in society. Thus, new concepts and terms were introduced in parallel, which helped to structure knowledge and form a holistic picture of the world in children, albeit ideologized.
The presence of incentive and involvement in the educational process
Today, teachers are sounding the alarm: schoolchildren lack motivation to study, and 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:
- The grades in the subjects corresponded to the knowledge gained. In the USSR, they were not afraid to put twos and threes even in a year. Class statistics played a role, of course, but were not of paramount importance. A poor student 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. You couldn't buy a grade: 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 undeniable 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 poor student achieved success. For strong children, it was also a good school: in order to explain a subject to another student, they had to study the material in detail, independently learn to apply optimal pedagogical methods. The system of sponsorship (or rather, helping the elders to the younger ones) educated many Soviet scientists and teachers, who later became laureates of prestigious international prizes.
- Equal conditions for all. The social status and financial position of the student's parents did not in any way affect 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 college, although it was perceived as an undesirable phenomenon, guaranteed work and the relevance of the acquired knowledge and skills. After the coup d'etat of 1953, this situation began to slowly change, and by the 1970s, the children of the partocracy had become more "equal" - "those who were more equal" received places in the best institutions, many physics, mathematics, and language schools thus began to degenerate into "elite ", From which it was no longer possible to remove the careless student just like that, since his dad was a" big man ".
- The emphasis is not only on training, but also on education. The Soviet school covered the student's free time, was interested in his hobbies. Sections, extracurricular activities, which were obligatory, left almost no time for aimless pastime and generated interest in further training in various fields.
- Availability of free extracurricular activities. In the Soviet school, in addition to the compulsory program, electives were regularly held for those wishing to. Classes in additional disciplines were free and available to everyone who had the time and interest to study them.
- Material support for students - scholarships accounted for almost a third of the average salary in the country.
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 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 need to be equal.
It was considered an honor to be a teacher
There were reasons for this. High demands were placed on the personality of the teacher in the Soviet school. People who graduated from universities and who had an inner vocation to teach children went to teach.
This situation persisted until the 1970s. The teachers had comparatively high salaries even when compared to skilled workers. But closer to "perestroika" the situation began to change. The development of capitalist relations contributed to the decline in the authority of the teacher's personality. The orientation towards material values, which have now become attainable, made the teaching profession unprofitable and not prestigious, which entailed the leveling of the true value of school grades.
So, Soviet education was based on three main "whales":
- encyclopedic knowledge achieved through versatile training and synchronization of information obtained as a result of studying various subjects, albeit through ideology;
- the presence of a powerful incentive in children to study, thanks to the patronage of elders over younger ones and free extracurricular activities;
- respect for teaching work and the institution of the school as a whole.
Looking at the Soviet education system from the "bell tower" of our time, 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 take a look at some of the disadvantages that are best seen from a distance.
Emphasis on theory over practice
The well-known phrase of A. Raikin: “Forget everything that you were taught at school, and listen ...” was not born out of nowhere. Behind it lies an intensified study of theory and the lack of connections between the knowledge gained and life.
If we talk about the system of universal compulsory education in the USSR, then it surpassed the educational 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 knowledge not of a directly applied nature, but mostly knowledge of a fundamental nature, from which all directly applied knowledge and skills flow. But Soviet universities were also characterized by a common flaw in the Western-type education system, which has been characteristic of it since the second half of the 19th century.
Lack of "industry philosophies"
A common flaw in the Soviet and Western educational 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, "philosophy of health care and medical care" and etc. applied philosophies - in the training courses of Soviet universities were not. The available courses called "Introduction to the specialty" for the most part did not cover the problems of this kind of philosophies, and, as practice shows, only a few of the entire mass of university graduates were able to reach its understanding on their own, and then only many years after receiving their diplomas.
But their understanding of this problem in the overwhelming majority of cases did not find expression in publicly available (at least among professionals) texts:
- partly because the few who understood this problem, for the most part, were busy with their professional work and did not find time to write a book (a textbook for students);
- but among those who understood there were also those who consciously supported their monopoly on knowledge and skills associated with it, since such a monopoly was the basis of their high status in the social hierarchy, in the hierarchy of the corresponding professional community and provided one or another 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 in many respects contradict the ideological principles of the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the stupidity of bureaucratic leaders 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 it was not always "by order" to write on such topics in the conditions of the tribal system of the post-Stalinist USSR. And those who were "by rank" in post-Stalinist times were mostly careerist bureaucrats, unable to write such kind of vital books. Although bureaucratic authorship sometimes produced books that claimed to fill the gap, they were essentially graphomania.
An example of this kind of graphomancy is the book of the commander-in-chief of the USSR Navy from 1956 to 1985, S.G. Gorshkov (1910 - 1988) "The Sea Power of the State" (Moscow: Military Publishing. 1976 - 60,000 copies, 2nd revised edition 1979 - 60,000 copies). Judging by its text, it was written by a team of narrow specialists (submariners, surface watermen, aviators, gunsmiths and representatives of other branches of the forces and services of the fleet) who did not perceive the development of the Navy as a whole as the construction of a complex system designed to solve certain problems, in which all the elements must be presented in the required quantities and interrelationships 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, then due to the dementia of a careerist, he did not understand the vital inconsistency and mutual incompatibility of many of the provisions expressed in it by the authors of different sections.
Before understanding the problems of the development of the country's naval power, expressed in the works of the 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 USSR 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 multiplicity and diversity, is really a fleet. The latter took place in the USSR, when S.G. Gorshkov, and this was very ruinous for the country and not very effective militarily.
Non-interference in technical issues of ideological bureaucracy
“How could it happen that sabotage took on such a wide scale? Who is to blame for this? This is our fault. If we had set the business of managing the economy differently, if we had moved on much earlier to the study of the technique of business, to mastering technology, if we often and sensibly interfered in the management of the economy, the pests would not have been able to do so much harm.
We ourselves must become specialists, the owners of the business, we must turn our face 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 high time to turn our face to technology. It is time to discard the old slogan, the obsolete slogan of non-interference in technology, and become specialists themselves, experts in business, and become full masters of economic affairs themselves. "
The slogan of non-interference in technical issues in management practice during the Civil War and the 1920s meant that a “politically ideological”, but illiterate and ignorant of technology and technology, a person could be appointed a leader, as a result of which, under his leadership, it was “politically immature "And potentially counter-revolutionary professionals. Further, such a leader set tasks for the professionals subordinate to him, which were set before him by higher managers, and his subordinates, in turn, relying on their knowledge and professional skills, had to ensure their solution. Those. behind the "politically ideological", but not versed in business, the leader turned out to be the first stages of the full function of managing the enterprise (or a structure of another purpose), and for the professionals subordinate to him - the subsequent stages.
- If the team leader and the professionals were conscientious, or at least honest, and as a result - ethically compatible in a common cause, then in this version the enterprise management system was efficient and beneficial to both parties: the manager learned the case, the subordinate professionals broadened their horizons, were drawn into political life and became citizens of the USSR (in the sense of the word "citizen", clear from the poem by NA Nekrasov "Poet and Citizen") de facto, and not only de jure.
- If a manager or professionals turned out to be ethically incompatible due to the dishonesty and dishonesty of at least one of the parties (even an "ideological" leader, even professionals), then the enterprise management system more or less lost its efficiency, which entailed consequences that could be legally qualified as sabotage of 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 - the professional naval sailor L.S. Sobolev (1898 - 1971, was non-partisan) "Exam". In this story, the "spirit of the era" is presented in many aspects accurately, but from the point of view of liberals - slanderous. However, the same “spirit of the era” was also “in civilian life”, therefore, approximately the same is the system of “political and ideological leader - subordinate professional specialists, apolitical and lack of ideas” (the same as Professor Nikolai Stepanovich from A.P. Chekhov’s story “Boring history ") also worked in civilian life.
In fact, I.V. Stalin in the quoted speech set the task: since “ideological conviction in the correctness of socialism” alone is not enough for business leaders, their ideological conviction should practically be expressed in their mastering of the relevant technical knowledge and the application of this knowledge to identify and resolve the problems of economic support of 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's "New situation - new tasks of economic construction" at a conference of business executives on June 23, 1931 (emphasis in bold - ours):
“... we can no longer make do with the minimum of engineering and technical and industrial command forces that we did before. It follows from this that the old centers of 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, Siberia, and Central Asia. We need now to provide ourselves threefold, fivefold more with engineering and technical and command forces of industry, if we really think of carrying out the program of socialist industrialization of the USSR.
But we do not need all the command and engineering forces. We need such command and engineering forces that are able to understand the policy of the working class of our country, are capable of assimilating this policy and are ready to implement it. conscientiously» .
At the same time, I.V. Stalin did not recognize the party and its members as a monopoly on the possession of conscience and business qualities. In the same speech, there is the following fragment:
“Some comrades think that only party comrades can be promoted to leading positions in factories, in factories. On this basis, they often wipe out capable and initiative non-party comrades, nominating party members to the first place, albeit less capable and non-initiative ones. Needless to say, there is nothing more stupid and more reactionary than such, if I may say so, "politics." It scarcely 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 about turning the party into a closed caste. Our policy is that there should be an atmosphere of "mutual trust", an atmosphere of "mutual verification" between the party and non-party workers (Lenin). Our party is strong in the working class, among other things, because it is pursuing precisely such a policy. "
In post-Stalinist times, if we relate 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 perestroika activists, reformers and 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 activities of every person, and above all of managers, in the conditions of building socialism and communism contrasts with the statements of another political figure of that era.
“I liberate a person,” says Hitler, “from the degrading chimera called conscience. Conscience, like education, cripples a person. I have the advantage that no theoretical or moral considerations hold me back. "
The very quote from the report of I.V. Stalin at the ceremonial meeting of the Moscow Soviet 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 denying conscience. Nietzsche
“Have I ever felt a pang of conscience? My memory keeps silence on this matter "(T. 1. S. 722," Evil wisdom ", 10).
"A pang of conscience is as stupid as an attempt by a dog 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 in translation from Latin into Russian - community, community; in addition, in Latin, this word has the same root with "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" - "message". In other words:
"Communism- community of people on the basis of conscience: everything else in communism is a consequence of the unity of conscience among 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 clichés 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 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 embarrassing, but also dangerous to refer to foreign scientists in student and academic papers. Lack of up-to-date 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 reformation.
Lack of home education and external studies
It is difficult to judge whether this is good or bad, but the lack of an opportunity for strong students to pass subjects as an external student and move to the next class hindered the development of future advanced cadres, equating them with the bulk of schoolchildren.
Non-alternative coeducation of boys and girls
One of the dubious Soviet innovations in education was the compulsory joint education of boys and girls instead of the pre-revolutionary separate education. Then this step was justified by the struggle for women's rights, the lack of personnel and premises for organizing individual schools, as well as the widespread practice of coeducation in some leading countries of the world, including the United States. However, the latest research in the same USA shows that segregated education increases 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, 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 genders to improve performance, the self-esteem of adolescents depends more 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 Stalin's death, was again eliminated in 1954.
Degradation of the secondary vocational education system in the late USSR
Although in the USSR they extolled the working person in every possible way and promoted working professions, 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 en masse took poor and C students who did not enter universities, and also forcibly placed juvenile criminals there. As a result, the average quality of the student body at 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 1930s and 1960s, the best jobs were taken, and it became more difficult for young people to break through to the top. At the same time, the service sector was extremely poorly developed in the USSR, which was associated with serious restrictions on entrepreneurship, and it is the service sector that creates the largest number of jobs in modern developed countries (including places for people without higher or professional education). Thus, there were no alternatives in employment, as at the present time. Cultural and educational work in vocational schools was poorly organized, students of "vocational school" began to associate with hooliganism, drunkenness and a general low level of development. "If you do badly at school, you will go to vocational school!" (vocational technical school) - roughly what parents said to careless schoolchildren. The negative image of vocational education in blue-collar occupations is still held in Russia, although qualified turners, locksmiths, milling cutters, and plumbers are now among the highly paid professions, whose representatives are in short supply.
Perhaps the time will come and 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, one can come to the conclusion that societies that have developed historically on earth give rise to three levels of lack of freedom for people.
Level one
It hosts people who have mastered a certain minimum of commonly used socially significant knowledge and skills, who are unable 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, since they practically have no free time and are unable to enter other spheres of activity except those that they have mastered in one way or another and in which they found themselves, perhaps not of their own free will.
Level two
Those who have mastered the knowledge and skills of "prestigious" professions in which relatively short-term employment (daily or occasional) provides a sufficiently high income, which allows them to have a certain amount of free time and use it at their own discretion. Most of them also do not know how to independently master and produce "from scratch" new knowledge and skills, especially outside the sphere of their professional activities. Therefore, their lack of freedom begins when the profession they have mastered is depreciated, and they, not being able to quickly master any other sufficiently highly profitable profession, slip into the first group.
At this level, in the cultures of most civilized societies, individuals are provided with access to knowledge and skills that allow them to enter the sphere of government of public importance as a whole, 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 whole (that is, determines the goals of the society, ways and means of achieving them); secondly, as the power of the concept itself over society.
Level three
Those who know how to independently master the previously developed and produce "from scratch" knowledge and skills of public significance, new for them and society, and exploit them on a commercial or any other social status basis. Their lack of freedom begins when they, without thinking about the objectivity of Good and Evil, about the difference in their meaning, consciously or unconsciously fall into permissiveness and begin to create objectively unacceptable Evil, as a result of which they encounter a stream of certain circumstances that are not subject to their control - even murderous. These factors can be both intrasocial and general natural, and can have a scale of both personal and wider - up to a 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 implementation of conceptual power. In the conditions of societies in which the population is divided into 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 government, access to this level is blocked by the system of both general and " elite "education. Access to it is possible either on its own (rare self-taught people are capable of this), or as a result of belonging to certain clans of those who carry internal traditions of governance or the election of an individual by these clans to include him in their ranks. This blocking is not spontaneous and natural, but is a purposefully built system-forming cultural factor, in the action of which the protection of their monopoly on the conceptual power of certain clan groupings is expressed, which allows them to exploit the rest - administratively incapable - society in their own interests.
The level of gaining freedom
The level of gaining freedom is one and only: 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 independently master and produce "from scratch" new knowledge and skills for him and the 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. Let us note that in the religious understanding of the world, 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 shy away from this dialogue himself, and in this dialogue God gives everyone a proof of His being 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 differentiating objective Good and Evil in the specifics of the constantly flowing life of society, and a good person is a person living under the rule of a dictatorship of conscience.
In the 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 this sense as a self-evident fact, without going into the discussion of theological traditions of the historically established concepts of religion, if circumstances do not dispose to this; either if you have to explain this problem to atheists-materialists, for whom turning to theological questions is a clear sign of the inadequacy of the interlocutor, or to atheists-idealists, for whom the disagreement of the interlocutor with the tradition of religion they have adopted is a deliberate sign of obsession and Satanism.
In accordance with this - non-economic and non-military-technical in its essence task - the task of changing the current concept of globalization to the righteous concept of the system universal compulsory and vocational specialized education in the country was oriented under the leadership of I.V. Stalin to ensure that everyone who is able and willing to learn acquired knowledge that would allow them to reach at least the third level of lack of freedom, including the acquisition of conceptual power.
Although the gradation of the levels of unfreedom shown above and the phenomenon of conceptual power in the era of I.V. Stalin was not realized, nevertheless, it was about this that he wrote directly in the terminology of that era, and this can be unambiguously understood from his words:
"It is necessary ... to achieve such a cultural growth of society, which 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 actors in social development ...".
“It would be wrong to think that it is possible to achieve such a serious cultural growth of members of society without serious changes in the current situation of labor. To do this, you must first of all reduce the working day to at least 6, and then to 5 hours. This is necessary to ensure that members of the community have enough free time to receive a comprehensive education. For this, it is necessary, further, to introduce compulsory polytechnic education, which is necessary so that members of society have the opportunity to freely choose a profession and not be chained to one profession for the rest of their lives. For this, 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 by directly raising money wages and especially by further systematic reduction in prices for consumer goods.
These are the basic conditions for preparing the transition to communism. "
Real government by the people, which is based on the accessibility for mastering knowledge and skills that allow to carry out the full function of government in relation to society, is impossible without the development of dialectic art by sufficiently wide layers in all social groups (as a practical cognitive and creative skill) as the basis for developing conceptual power.
And accordingly, dialectical materialism was included in the USSR as the standard of both secondary (later became universal) and higher education, due to which a certain number of students, in the process of getting to know the “diamat”, developed in themselves any kind of personal culture of dialectical cognition and creativity, even with the fact that dialectics in the "diamat" was crippled by GVF. Hegel: reduced to three "laws" and replaced by a certain logic, in what 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 perverted the world outlook and brought it into conflict with conscience, which was also facilitated by the principle of "democratic centralism", which underlies the internal discipline of the CPSU (b) - the CPSU, the Komsomol and the pioneer organizations, Soviet trade unions, which became an instrument of subordination of 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 interfere with the implementation of a breakthrough to freedom for 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 party leadership as a historically transient circumstance, and conscience - as to an enduring foundation, on the basis of the relation to which the essence and fate of every personality 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 of the country's defense capability is a means of solving the above I.V. Stalin's 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 the above - it can be expressed only in the construction of a system of universal compulsory education, capable of bringing the student to a single level of freedom in a previously defined sense and motivating everyone who has problems to achieve this result. health problems do not interfere with learning curricula.
At the same time, education (in the sense of providing access to the development of knowledge and skills and assistance in their development) has no alternative to be associated with the upbringing of the younger generations, since reaching the only level of freedom is not only the possession of certain knowledge and skills, but also the unconditional self-subordination of the individual's will. conscience, and this is the theme of raising each child personally, according to the specifics of the circumstances of his life.
Afterword
The teachers of the Soviet school 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 educational level implied a broad outlook. In the USSR, there was not a single school graduate who did not read Pushkin or did not know who Vasnetsov was.
At the end, I would like to cite an essay by a Soviet schoolchild about the Motherland. Take a look! So our mothers and grandmothers knew how to write. 1960-70s in the USSR ... And this was written not with a ballpoint pen, but with a fountain pen!
We congratulate you all on the Day of Knowledge!
Soviet education, as you know, was the best in the world and was very popular. I think the Russian language should be recognized as the second (if not the first in number) international language. Now in many countries of the world there are foreign specialists with excellent knowledge of the Russian language. When asked where: - "I studied in the USSR." The Soviet Union has raised a generation of specialists that many countries are proud of. Doctors, teachers, engineers, architects - these are ordinary workers for us, but in the countries of the East, Africa, Brazil, etc., they are very respected specialists with high salaries and high status in society.
Were accustomed to learn and learn from birth - a proof of this - a lot of published books are penny in price and invaluable in content, a huge number of circles and sections during school years, the development of a lack of ingenuity and resourcefulness (the ability to replace a missing item with cash and make everything from improvised means whatever). Coming to study, foreign citizens for 5-6 years have completely mastered, if not all the wisdom, then certainly part of our national considerations.
In the world of science, Herald of Knowledge, World Pathfinder, Inventor and Rationalizer, Science and Life, Science and Technology - all these journals popularize science and tell the laws of nature, physics, technology in an accessible language. Even high school students read them with pleasure.
History of Russian tea. New experiences in foresight. - Underwater radio. - New English directional radio stations. News about the expedition of Professor I. I. Vavilov. - Use of thermal energy of the oceans. - The mechanism of laying eggs by silkworms. Questions of the universe and interplanetary communications. - About the flight to the moon. - About the telescope. - About comets. - About the principle of relativity. - Atoms and molecules. - Light and its distribution. - About the phenomena of a thunderstorm. - Study of chemistry. - Questions of biology. - Speech and thinking. - "Acmeism". - Studying the literature of the past. - Internal combustion engines and turbines.- these are the topics of the 4th issue of the journal Vestnik Znaniya for 1927.
In production, concepts such as innovation and invention were disseminated and encouraged. A creative approach to work was encouraged, in which each employee strove to simplify and make the work 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.
A rationalization proposal was the abbreviated name for the innovation in the labor process. The adopted rationalization proposals made the workflow more refined - faster, less costly, and therefore more profitable. At the factories, creative teams were created, which competed among themselves in making more rational proposals.
In order to further develop the mass technical creativity of workers, the All-Union Society of Inventors and Rationalizers (VOIR) was created in 1958. Its tasks included the development of the 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 foreign business trip to exchange 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 the decree of the USSR State Committee for Labor on June 23, 1983).
The remuneration was determined based on the amount of annual savings received 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 Academy of Sciences of the USSR selected the best inventions and rationalization proposals made over the past year and awarded the best state awards, prizes and honorary titles "Honored Inventor of the Republic" and "Honored Rationalizer of the Republic".
The country benefited from raising smart citizens and encouraging innovation. This is a guarantee of the country's development.
If we follow the logic of Soviet patriots that the Soviet education system was better than under the tsar, then those people who did not study in any tsarist gymnasium, but studied in Soviet schools, or who studied at universities not with former tsarist professors, and even among the most Soviet people, they should show no less, but perhaps even greater results than the people I have listed above. That is, people born in some Soviet 50s (the apotheosis of "Soviet" science), who studied in the 60s in Soviet secondary schools and received higher education in Soviet universities in the 70s, should have shown the whole world something new extraordinary. Well, where are these new Kurchatovs, Keldyshs, Kapitsa, Landau, Tupolevs, Korolevs, Lebedevs, Ershovs? There are no them for some reason.
That is, in fact, any unbiased person can see that the explosion of scientific and design thought in the USSR was based on people who received the basis of their education in tsarist times, or, in any case, trained with tsarist specialists. Their work was continued by their students, but as the first and second, the so-called. "Soviet science and technology" is becoming more and more dull. In the 80s of the XX century, both Soviet science and Soviet design thought already amazes few people and cannot boast of a galaxy of world-class names. That is, the Soviet system of education for any showed itself to be more flawed than the system of teaching "bast shoes" of Tsarist Russia. Academicians in the 80s were like uncut chickens, but just how these academicians enriched science is an open question.
Thus, it can be argued that the scientific and design breakthrough that characterized the USSR in the 30-60s became possible not thanks to, but in spite of the Soviet system. Contrary to the disfiguring souls and brains of the people of the Soviet regime, Landau, Tupolev, Ioffe, Lyapunov, Rameev, Korolev worked. Of course, a number of these people, thanks to the military ambitions of the communists, at some moments got their hands on colossal human and material resources, but only a completely over-the-top communist agitator can argue that people like Kapitsa, Landau or Kurchatov are in another political and economic system. organizations of life, could not achieve world-class results.
Science is never Soviet or capitalist or tsarist. Science is thought, idea and the smooth exchange of these ideas. Therefore, until 1917, Russian science was a full-fledged component of European science. For example, Popov and Marconi were an integral part of a single science, albeit with a national flavor. And when the Bolsheviks decided to create some kind of separate "Soviet science", it initially seemed that the experiment was a success, because in the name of the development of military industries, the Bolsheviks actually invested a lot in the scientific and technological development of some industries (to the detriment of many others). However, the isolation of "Soviet science" inevitably led to regression and stagnation, a clear eloquent evidence of which was the fact of the disappearance of the Russian language as the second obligatory language for scientists of the world at international symposia. And this happened already in the 70s of the XX century. World science stopped speaking Russian, because it didn’t expect anything interesting from “Soviet science”. The times of Ioffe, Landau and Kurchatovs, brought up in the tsarist grammar schools, ended when the days of ordinary "Soviet scientists" brought up in the Soviet education system began.