The best universities of the USSR. Soviet education system: advantages and disadvantages of education in the USSR

What made the Soviet education system so unique?

One of best models The Soviet system of education was recognized throughout the world. How was it different from the others and what was its advantage? To begin with, a short excursion into history.

The secret weapon of the Bolsheviks

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite. The country, whose economic and demographic position was undermined by the bloodiest of wars, spent a little more than a dozen years making a space breakthrough, which the most economically powerful power that was not at all damaged in the war was not capable of. In conditions cold war with the USSR and the arms race, the United States perceived this fact as a national shame.

The US Congress created a special commission with the task of finding out: “Who is to blame for the national shame of the United States?” After the conclusions of this commission, the secret weapon of the Bolsheviks was named... the Soviet secondary school.

In 1959, NATO officially described the Soviet education system as an achievement unparalleled in history. According to all the most unbiased estimates, Soviet schoolchildren were much more developed than American ones.

First of all, due to its mass character and accessibility. By 1936, the Soviet Union had become a country of universal literacy. For the first time in the world, conditions have been created so that every child in the country from the age of seven has the opportunity to receive a free education, even if he lives in the taiga, tundra or high in the mountains. The younger generation became completely literate, something that no other country in the world had achieved at that time!

Education to the masses!

The program was uniform throughout the vast territory of the Soviet Union. This allowed any child, son of a peasant or worker, after graduation high school, with the help of the workers' faculty system, enter a university and there show your talents for the benefit of your native country. Soviet system higher education was the most widespread in the world, because the country set a course for industrialization and was in dire need of highly qualified personnel. The new emerging Soviet intelligentsia are the children of workers and peasants, who later became professors and academicians, artists and performers.

The Soviet educational system, unlike the American one, provided an opportunity for gifted children from the lower social classes to break into the ranks of the intellectual elite and reveal their full potential for the benefit of society.

“All the best for children!”

The Soviet slogan “All the best goes to children!” in the USSR was supported by a serious program of action to educate a new generation of Soviet people. Special children's sanatoriums and pioneer camps were built to improve the health of young citizens, and dozens of types of sports sections and music schools were opened. Children's libraries, Pioneer Houses and Houses of Technical Creativity were built especially for children. Various clubs and sections were opened in the Houses of Culture, where children could develop their talents and realize their potential for free. Children's books on a wide range of topics were published in huge editions, with illustrations made by the best artists.

All this gave the child the opportunity to develop and try himself in a wide variety of hobbies - from sports and music to creativity, artistic or technical. As a result, the graduate of the Soviet school approached the moment of choosing a profession quite consciously - he chose the business that he liked most. The Soviet school had a polytechnic orientation. This is understandable - the power set a course for industrialization, and one should not forget about defense capability either. But, on the other hand, a network of music and art schools, clubs and studios was created in the country, which satisfied the need younger generation in music and art classes.

Thus, Soviet education provided a system of social elevators that allowed a person from the very bottom to discover and develop his innate talents, learn and become established in society, or even become its elite. A huge number of factory directors, artists, film directors, professors and academicians in the USSR were children of ordinary workers and peasants.

The public is more important than the personal

But what was the most important thing, without which the education system could not have taken place even with the best organization: a high, noble idea - the idea of ​​​​building a society of the future in which everyone will be happy. Comprehend science, develop - not in order to make money in the future more money for their own individual happiness, but in order to serve their country, in order to replenish the treasury of the “common good” with their contribution. From an early age, children were taught to give - their labor, their knowledge, skills, and abilities for the benefit of their native country. It was an ideology and a personal example: millions of people gave their lives defending their homeland from fascism; parents, without sparing themselves, gave their best at work; teachers, regardless of time, tried to give knowledge and educate the next generation.

The educational process in the Soviet school was built on the basis of communist ideology, which was abolished 70 years after the revolution, and the ideas of collectivism: the public is more important than the personal, conscientious work for the good of society, everyone’s concern for the preservation and increase of public wealth, man is a friend, comrade and brother to man. The younger generation was told from a very early age that the social value of an individual is determined not by official position or material well-being, but by the contribution that he made to the common cause of building a bright future for everyone.

According to System-Vector Psychology by Yuri Burlan, such values ​​are absolutely complementary to ours, in contrast to the Western individualistic mentality. The priority of the public over the personal, collectivism, justice and mercy are the main ones distinctive features Russian worldview. In Soviet schools, for example, it was customary to help weak students. The weaker one was “attached” to the one who was stronger in studies, who was supposed to improve his friend’s studies.

If a person committed an act that was contrary to public morality, he was collectively “worked through”, put “on display” so that he would feel ashamed in front of his comrades, and then bailed out. After all, shame in our mentality is the main regulator of behavior. Unlike in the West, where the regulator of behavior is the law and fear of it.

October stars, pioneer and Komsomol detachments helped unite children on the basis of higher moral values: honor, duty, patriotism, mercy. A system of counselors was introduced: the best pioneer was appointed as a counselor for the October students, and the best Komsomol member for the pioneers. The leaders were responsible for their squad and its successes to their organization and their comrades. Both older and younger children rallied not by (as is often the case in modern schools), but on the basis of a common noble cause: be it a community cleanup, collecting scrap metal, preparing a holiday concert, or helping a sick comrade study.

Those who didn't have time are late!

After the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the old value systems. The Soviet education system was recognized as overly ideological, and the principles of Soviet education were overly communist, so it was decided to remove all ideology from the school and introduce humanistic and democratic values. We decided that school should provide knowledge, but that a child should be raised in a family.

This decision caused enormous damage to the state and society as a whole. By removing ideology from school, it was completely deprived educational functions. It was no longer teachers who taught children life, but on the contrary, children and their rich parents began to dictate their terms to teachers. The education sector has de facto turned into a service sector.

The collapsed ideology also disoriented the parents themselves. What is good and what is bad in the new conditions and circumstances, completely different from the Soviet ones? How to raise children, what principles to follow: the urethral ones “perish yourself, but save your comrade” or the archetypal skin principles “if you want to live, know how to move around”?

Many parents, forced to deal with the problem of making money, had no time for education - they barely had enough strength to ensure survival. Having given best years their lives to the state and having experienced the collapse of the values ​​in which they believed, adults, succumbing to their own despair and the influence of Western propaganda, began to teach their children the opposite: that they should live only for themselves and their family, “do not do good, you will not receive evil "and that in this world everyone is for himself.

Of course, the change in views, which had tragic consequences for our country, was also influenced by the fact that it came into its own after the Second World War, and in the territory former USSR- in the 90s.

In the education system, free (or, in other words, paid for by the state, by common labor) clubs and sections very soon disappeared. Many paid classes appeared, which quickly divided children based on property. The direction of education also changed to the opposite. The value has become not to raise people who are useful to society, but to give the child the tools to get more for themselves in adulthood. And those who couldn’t, found themselves on the sidelines of life.

Do people raised according to this principle become happy? Not always, because the basis of happiness is the ability to exist harmoniously among other people, to have a favorite business, loved people, to be needed. An egoist, by definition, cannot experience the joy of realization among people.

Who are they, the future elite of the country?

From the point of view of system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan, the future intellectual and cultural elite of the country is formed from children who have and. The percentage of such children does not depend on the status and income of the parents. Developed properties of a vector give to society happy person and an excellent professional, realized in his profession for the benefit of people. Undeveloped properties increase the number of psychopathologies.

By developing some and leaving others undeveloped, we are laying a time bomb that is already starting to go off. Teenage suicides, drugs, murders in schools are still a small part of the price to pay for the selfish upbringing, disorientation and underdevelopment of our children.

How to raise the level of school education again?

All children need to be developed and educated. How to do this without unifying, without driving education and upbringing into a Procrustean bed of equalization, taking into account the individual abilities of everyone? An accurate and practical answer to this question is given by the system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan.

The problem of teaching and raising children is directly related to the understanding of psychological laws. Parents and teachers must be clearly aware of the processes that occur in the child’s psyche, in a particular school and in society as a whole. This is the only way to influence the current situation. Until there is such an understanding, we will be swimming in the syrup of Western ideas that are alien to us about what education should be. An example of this is the introduction of the Unified State Examination system in school, which does not reveal knowledge and does not contribute to its deep assimilation, but is aimed only at dull memorization of tests.

The secret of effective education lies in every student. This does not mean that we need to completely return to the previous Soviet education system or switch to Western standards and abandon successfully working methods. We just need to bring them under the modern format that system-vector psychology tells us about. Thanks to knowledge about human vectors, it becomes possible to reveal the child’s natural predisposition, his potential abilities in the very early age. And then even the most “incapable” student acquires an interest in learning and a desire to absorb knowledge that will help him realize his maximum potential in later life.

We need to return the educational aspect to school. The Soviet school instilled in children basic values ​​in line with our urethral mentality, which is why true citizens and patriots of our country emerged from it. But this is not the only important thing. It is necessary to teach the child to live among other people, interact with them and enjoy being realized in society. And this can only be taught at school, among other people.

When a positive psychological climate is created in the family and at school, the child will grow into a personality, he will realize his potential, and if not, he will be forced to struggle with his environment all his life. If there are children in a school or class who have a difficult life situation or psychological problems, everyone suffers from this. And even if, with the help of elite schools, it is possible to provide some of the children with an elite education, this is not a guarantee that they will be able to be happy in a society torn apart by hostility. It is necessary to create a system that promotes the education and development of all children. Only then can you hope for a happy future for your children.

System-vector psychology tells how to establish communication with a child, create a comfortable microclimate in the family and school, make the class friendly, and raise the level of education and upbringing at school. Register for free introductory online lectures by Yuri Burlan.

The article was written based on training materials “ System-vector psychology» On April 18, the early exam period ended. Experts state that there are no fundamental violations. But will established control over tests affect the knowledge of schoolchildren, which was not subject to doubt in Soviet times? Let's try to figure out this problem.

Russian self-knowledge

Article No. 7 of the “Law on Education” prescribes the introduction of Federal state standards, according to which the current education system abandons the traditional format of education “in the form of knowledge, skills and abilities.” Now, the so-called universal learning activities (UALs) are taken as a basis, which are understood as “general educational skills”, “ general methods activities", "supra-subject actions" and so on. If you try to understand these phraseological units, their meaning boils down to the fact that the specifics of knowledge give way to cognition and self-development.

Instead of forcing students to cram and meticulously test their knowledge, the teacher encourages children to figure out topics on their own. In the end, federal state standards are loyal to negative results, in other words, to twos. In particular, the standards say that “failure to achieve these requirements by a graduate cannot serve as an obstacle to his transfer to the next level of education.” By the way, in the USSR poor students were kept for the second year.

Teenagers in Italian

The compilers of the new Russian education system, according to many experts, copied the format of most Western schools, the main postulate of which is: “if you want to learn, study.” Meanwhile, teachers are sounding the alarm about the lack of high school students' sense of responsibility, which was typical of Soviet graduates.

Many young people who have graduated modern school, the psychology of teenagers is observed. Associate Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics Ekaterina Hakim noted that two-thirds of young girls in Europe categorically do not want to work, setting a successful marriage as the main goal of their lives. In Russia there are already half of them.

About how the “self-cognitive” educational system adopted in the West influences adult life, can be observed in EU countries. According to statistics, 80% of thirty-year-old Poles, Italians and Greeks live with their mothers and fathers, and in England, half of all young people regularly demand money from their parents for living expenses. Advisor to the director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Igor Beloborodov, speaks about this problem: “Widespread post-adolescence is not a personal choice of Italians or Japanese, it is a deep deformation, the crisis is already in an advanced stage.”

Calligraphy: punishment or necessity?

The Western approach fundamentally contradicts Russian ethnopedagogy. For example, penmanship required children to persevere and concentrate. Calligraphy was the only subject inherited by the Soviet educational system from the Tsarist primary school. “In the memoirs of those who remembered pre-reform penmanship lessons (before 1969), the latter are very often depicted as punishment and a curse little man, explains philologist, leading researcher at the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences Konstantin Bogdanov. - Marshall McLuhan (an outstanding theorist of the 20th century in the field of culture and communications), and after them other specialists in the field of media anthropology and theory of mass communications wrote a lot about the dependence of the meaning of information on the nature of its media transmission.

The educational role of penmanship seems to be more significant than just the role of the initial stage in mastering the alphabet, writing and literacy.”

“The degree of generational continuity among children of pre-revolutionary and Soviet times in this regard is higher than among children who went through Soviet school and those who are studying at school now,” states Konstantin Bogdanov. “In the latter case, the boundary between generations lies where, figuratively speaking, the ink blots end.” The school traditions of the Russian and then Soviet schools have been completely supplanted from the current way of life and replaced by the standards of Western entertainment culture.

This concerns, first of all, the oblivion of the moral code of a young man that took place in the USSR. This is especially evident now – in the era of the Internet. In front of everyone technical advantages, the lack of self-censorship on the World Wide Web leads to the degradation of children's personality. “Uncontrolled Internet cripples a child’s soul,” teachers are sure, “schoolgirls organize selfie sessions, trying to shock the public. Boys become aggressive and cynical. They flaunt cruelty." According to the general opinion of educators, children suffer from Internet addiction. Such teenagers will never change social media and computer games for textbooks.

Horizon

The lack of requirements for system knowledge immediately led to a reduction in subjects. As a result, everything that contributed to the development of one’s horizons in Soviet times was removed. Children, for example, are not taught astronomy, citing the fact that in America this subject is not included in the school curriculum, “but the GDP is several times greater than ours.” In addition, drawing has been removed from Russian schools, they say, they are now designing using CAD (system computer-aided design). Meanwhile, according to many mathematicians, it is drawing that develops geometric and spatial thinking.

Sport

Everyone knows that Soviet schoolchildren and schoolgirls went in for sports on a large scale. For example, but according to the GTO standards, in order to receive the silver “Brave and Dexterous” badge, students (boys) of grades 1-4 had to run 60 meters in 10.8 seconds, and a thousand meters in 5 minutes, and, of course, stretch on a high bar - 3 times.

Tenth-graders were presented with demands that most young men today cannot meet. To again receive “silver” in the third age level “Strength and Courage”, it was necessary to run three thousand meters in thirteen and a half minutes, and swim a “fifty-meter race” in fifty seconds. In addition, it was necessary to do nine pull-ups on the bar. Other tasks were also set: to throw a grenade weighing 700 g at 32 m (for young men); perform a shooting exercise from a small-caliber rifle (distance 25 m, 5 shots) with the result: from a TOZ-8 type rifle - 30 points, from a TOZ-12 type rifle - 33 points. According to statistics, there were more than 58 million people in the USSR in 1972-1975. passed the GTO standards, including the majority of schoolchildren.

The current GTO standards are clearly inferior to the Soviet ones. For example, a 17-year-old boy needs to run three kilometers in 14 minutes and 40 seconds to get silver, and just swim the fifty-meter race.

Unified State Exam and gold medal

The Soviet school gold medal was highly valued. “After the 10th grade, we passed 8 (!) compulsory exams (algebra test, oral geometry, essay, oral literature, physics, chemistry, history, foreign language), recalls Anna Ostrovskaya, a medalist at school No. 51 in Minsk (graduated in 1986). ). - Moreover, the written works of the medalists - composition and algebra - were checked by several commissions, both school and district. I remember we waited a very long time for this confirmation of grades. By the way, my classmate, an excellent student, was not given a medal in the end, but he entered the Moscow Medical Institute without it.”

According to the rules available at that time, medalists entered universities, having advantages over other applicants. They only had to pass a specialized exam. Gold medals became “thieves” already during the period of perestroika, with the advent of the first cooperatives, recalls history teacher Maria Isaeva, but I want to note that if university teachers had doubts about the medalist, serious checks and the strictest conclusions followed. When the feedback stopped working, then the school “gold” turned out to be fake.” As for the Unified State Exam, the entire history of this state exam is riddled with scandals and dramas, including those related to schoolchildren’s suicides. At the same time, university teachers have repeatedly expressed doubts about the reliability of these tests.

“Of course, the current school education system needs reform,” says professor and science theorist Sergei Georgievich Kara-Murza. - Unfortunately, we don’t see scientific discoveries world-class, made by graduates of Russian schools, although a lot of time has passed since 1992, which it is reasonable to take as a starting point. We have to admit a sharp deterioration in the quality of knowledge of modern children.”

“SP”: - What is the reason for this state of affairs?

Here it is logical to recall the background in order to assess the level of the problem. Before the Great Bourgeois Revolution, there were religious schools in France, the graduates of which, receiving a holistic view of the world, became individuals in the high sense of the word. The method of teaching had a university basis. After the bourgeois revolution, some children began to be taught according to the same university system, but at scientific picture peace. As a result, graduates of these elite lyceums had a systematic view of the order of things. The bulk of them studied at the school of the so-called second corridor, receiving a mosaic view of the world. The same problem became acute in Russia in the last third of the 19th century, when mass schools appeared. Our Russian intelligentsia, brought up on classical literature, rejected the division into “two corridors” - the elite and the masses.

The best minds in Russia believed that the school should reproduce a people united by a common culture. The intensity of passions around this problem can be judged by the participation of the tsar and military ministers in this discussion. After October revolution In 1918, the first All-Russian Congress of Teachers was convened, which decided that the school should be a unified and general education, university type. Now the unified approach to university-type education has been lost. This is, of course, a huge minus.

“SP”: - Was the Soviet Union the first country to introduce this system?

Yes, our country was the first to begin teaching children unified standard, without dividing children into elite and mass. Moreover, many specific points appeared. For example, children were not expelled for poor studies, but were placed under the patronage of excellent students, who gave them additional tutoring. I went through all this, and I will say this: by helping a friend, you begin to truly understand the subject. Most of our leading scientists and designers also went through the system of mutual assistance to their lagging schoolmates. I had to think about how to explain it to the poor student so that he would understand. Here it is also wise to remember penmanship. It turns out that the human brain has a special feedback with your fingertips. It is noted that in the process of penmanship, the mechanism of thinking develops. The Chinese have not abolished this subject, although their hieroglyphs are more complex than our Cyrillic alphabet. In general, the Soviet school had many positive features, which collectively educated the individual.

“SP”: - What about the Internet?

The Internet is a given of our time, and to deny it or, moreover, to prohibit it is stupidity. At the same time, it is necessary to develop effective mechanisms that would neutralize the negative impacts of the World Wide Web on children. This is very hard work which definitely needs to be done.

“SP”: - How do you see the future of our school?

I am sure that sooner or later the state will return to the positive experience of the Soviet school, which, in fact, we are seeing in some places. We simply have no other way, otherwise Russia will not survive in this brutally competitive world.

Alexander Sitnikov

How well schoolchildren were taught during the Soviet era and whether we should emulate the Soviet school today, Alexey Lyubzhin, an employee of the department of rare books and manuscripts of the Scientific Library of Moscow State University, a historian of Russian education, and the head of the humanities master's program at Dmitry Pozharsky University, told Lenta.ru (known in LiveJournal as philtrius ).

“Lenta.ru”: Is it true that Soviet education was the best, like everything in the USSR?

Lyubzhin: I didn't notice that. If the opinion about the superiority of Soviet education were even close to reality, it is logical to assume that Western countries would have to organize educational reform following the example of the USSR. But none of the European states - neither France, nor England, nor Italy - ever thought of borrowing Soviet models. Because they didn't value them highly.

What about Finland? They say that at one time she borrowed her techniques from us. At the same time, it is believed that today this country has no equal in terms of school education.

I cannot agree that Finland is beyond competition. This is due to the peculiarities of local education, which is designed not for high results of individuals, but to raise average level education of every citizen. They really succeed. First of all, Finland is a small country. That is, everything is easier to organize there. And secondly, very good people become teachers there. So the Finns manage to attract students through strong teachers, and not at all through a good program. But at the same time, higher education there is seriously sagging.

Many believe that the structure of Soviet education is rooted in the educational system Tsarist Russia. How much did we take from there?

Exactly the opposite - Soviet education is the complete opposite of imperial education. Before the revolution, there were many types of schools in Russia: classical gymnasium, real school, cadet corps, theological seminary, commercial schools, etc. Almost everyone who strived for it could study. There was “our own” school for all abilities. After 1917, instead of educational diversity, a single type of schools began to be introduced.

Back in 1870, in the book of the Russian historian Afanasy Prokopyevich Shchapov “Social and pedagogical conditions for the mental development of the Russian people,” the idea was expressed that the school should be the same for everyone and that it should be based on natural sciences. Which is what the Bolsheviks accomplished. General education has begun.

This is bad?

It was the primary school where basic literacy was taught that fit well into the concept of universal education. It was organized at the USSR level. Everything that came next was already fiction. The high school program offered everyone the same set of subjects, regardless of the abilities or interests of the children. For gifted children, the bar was too low, they were not interested, school only interfered with them. And the lagging behind, on the contrary, could not cope with the load. In terms of the quality of training, a graduate of a Soviet secondary school was equal to a graduate of the Imperial Higher Primary School. Before the revolution, there were such schools in Russia. Their training was based on primary school(from 4 to 6 years, depending on the school) and lasted four years. But this was considered a primitive level of education. And a diploma from a higher primary school did not give access to universities.

St. Petersburg, 1911. Students of the 3rd gymnasium in military affairs classes. Photo: RIA Novosti

Was your knowledge level insufficient?

The main skills of a graduate of a pre-revolutionary higher primary school: reading, writing, counting. In addition, the guys could pick up the rudiments of various sciences - physics, geography... There were no foreign languages ​​there, because the compilers of the programs understood that it would be fiction.

The preparation of a graduate of a Soviet school was approximately the same. The Soviet high school student knew writing, counting, and fragmentary information on other subjects. But this knowledge filled his head like an attic. And in principle, a person interested in the subject could independently assimilate this information in a day or two. Although foreign languages ​​were taught, the graduates practically did not know them. One of the eternal sorrows of the Soviet school is that students did not know how to apply the knowledge acquired within the framework of one discipline to another.

How then did it happen that the “attic” Soviet people invented the space rocket and carried out developments in the nuclear industry?

All developments that glorified the Soviet Union belonged to scientists with that pre-revolutionary education. Neither Kurchatov nor Korolev ever studied in a Soviet school. And their peers also never studied in a Soviet school or studied under professors who received a pre-revolutionary education. When the inertia weakened, the safety margin was exhausted, and everything fell apart. There were no own resources in our education system then, and there are none today.

You said that the main achievement of the Soviet school was the beginning. But many say that mathematical education was decently organized in the USSR. This is wrong?

This is true. Mathematics was the only subject in schools in the Soviet Union that met the requirements of the Imperial Secondary School.

Why her?

The state had a need to make weapons. Besides, mathematics was like an outlet. It was carried out by people who were opposed to other scientific fields because of ideology. Only mathematics and physics could hide from Marxism-Leninism. Therefore, it turned out that the country’s intellectual potential gradually artificially shifted towards technical sciences. Humanitarian sciences in Soviet times they were not quoted at all. As a result, the Soviet Union collapsed due to the inability to work with humanitarian technologies, explain something to the population, and negotiate. We can still see how monstrously low the level of humanitarian discussion is in the country.

1954 At the chemistry exam in the 10th grade of secondary school No. 312 in Moscow.

Photo: Mikhail Ozersky / RIA Novosti

Can we say that imperial pre-revolutionary education complied with international standards?

We have been integrated into the global education system. Graduates of the Sophia Fischer gymnasium (the founder of a private women's classical gymnasium) were accepted into any German university without exams. We had a lot of students who studied in Switzerland and Germany. At the same time, they were far from the wealthiest, sometimes on the contrary. This is also a factor of national wealth. If we take the lower strata of the population, the standard of living in Imperial Russia was slightly superior to English, slightly inferior to American and was on par with European ones. Average salaries are lower, but life here was cheaper.

Today?

In terms of education and knowledge, Russians are uncompetitive in the world. But there was also a “lag” during the USSR. Historian Sergei Vladimirovich Volkov notes that, unlike other countries, the Soviet elite had the worst education among the intelligentsia. She was inferior not only to academic circles, but also to any where higher education was needed. Unlike the West, where countries were run by graduates best universities. And after the collapse of the USSR, the model of Soviet universal education ceased to make sense. If a student is not interested because the subjects were taught superficially and for show, some kind of social pressure is needed so that the children still learn. In early Soviet times, the very situation in the country forced a person to become a loyal member of society. And then the pressure eased. The scale of demands crept down. In order not to deal with repeat students, teachers had to do pure drawing of grades, and the children could quite easily not learn anything. That is, education does not guarantee a career. In other countries this is practically not the case.

I, as the mother of a fourth grader, have the feeling that today, compared to Soviet period They don't teach it at school at all. The child comes home after school and the “second shift” begins. Not easy homework we do, but study the material that we are supposed to learn in class. Friends have the same picture. Has the program really become that complicated?

The school simply switched from normal education to controlled education. In the 1990s, this was a forced step on the part of the teaching community. Then the teachers were left in complete poverty. And the “don’t teach, but ask” method became the only way for them to guarantee income. For tutoring services, their student was sent to a colleague. And he accordingly did the same. But when teaching salaries in Moscow increased, teachers were no longer able and did not want to get rid of this technique. Apparently, it will no longer be possible to return them to the previous principles of education.

From my nephew’s experience, I see that they don’t teach him anything at school and they didn’t teach him anything, but they carefully ask him about everything. Tutoring is common in schools from the fifth grade, which was not the case in Soviet schools. Therefore, when they check a school and say: the results are good, you can’t really believe it. In our country, in principle, it is no longer possible to separate school and tutoring work.

Late 1990s. Students of a Moscow school Photo: Valery Shustov / RIA Novosti

Since the collapse of the USSR, Russia has undergone reforms to improve education almost every year. Have there really been no positive changes?

Spears were breaking all around important issues, but of the second order. The knowledge testing system is very important. But much more important is the program and set of subjects to study. And now we are thinking about how tougher exams can improve learning. No way. As a result, the complex Unified State Exam has only two options: either we must lower the bar so that almost everyone can get a certificate. Or the exam will simply turn into a sham. That is, we are again returning to the concept of universal education - so that exclusively everyone can receive a secondary education. Is it really necessary for everyone? Approximately 40 percent of the population can complete secondary education in full. The reference point for me is the imperial school. If we want to cover everyone with “knowledge,” the level of learning will naturally be low.

Why then in the world is the need for universal secondary education not only not questioned, but even a new trend has appeared - universal higher education for everyone?

This is already the cost of democracy. If we call simple things higher education, why not? You can call a janitor a cleaning manager, or make him an operator of a super-complex broom on wheels. But most likely it won’t make a difference whether he studies for about five years or immediately starts learning to operate the broom’s remote control on the spot. Formally, the Institute of Asian and African Countries and the Uryupinsk Steel University give the same rights. Both provide crusts about higher education. But in reality, some jobs will hire one graduate, but not another.

What should parents do if they want to educate their child normally? Where to go, what school to look for?

You need to understand that now there is no segregation of schools by program. Segregation exists based on whether the school has a swimming pool or a horse. We have 100 best schools, which are always in first place in educational rankings. Today they are replacing the missing secondary education system, as they are proving their superiority at the Olympiads. But you need to understand that studying there is not easy. They just don’t take everyone there. I don’t think that anything can be done with the current educational system in Russia. Today Russian education- This is a patient who needs a very difficult operation. But in fact, his condition is so fatal that he simply cannot tolerate any intervention.

Lately, many people have often asked themselves questions: why do we have such a low level of education and why many graduates cannot answer even the simplest questions from the school curriculum? What did they do after the collapse of the USSR with the previous education system? In the Soviet years, the personnel training of future specialists was radically different from the one that has reigned throughout the entire post-Soviet space today. But the Soviet education system has always been competitive. Thanks to her, in the 1960s the USSR came out on top in the ranking of the most educated states in the world. The country took a leading position 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 personnel really should decide everything? On the eve of the new school year, we’ll 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 persistent way - this is now the task” (I.V. Stalin, Speech at the VIII Congress of the Komsomol, 1928)

More than once different people They interpreted in their own way the words of Bismarck, who, regarding the victory at the Battle of Sadovaya in 1866 in Prussia’s war against Austria, said that it was won by the Prussian people’s 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 a short time take accelerated courses at military schools 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. C.R.S. (C.R.S. Congressional Research Service) Manders prepared a report for the NATO Science Committee on the topic “Science and technology education and personnel reserves in USSR". The following are excerpts from this report, the notes in square brackets are ours.

“When the Soviet Union was formed a little over 40 years ago, the state had to face enormous difficulties. The harvest of the Soviet south was destroyed by a plague of locusts, resulting in food shortages and low morale [note: no mention of the so-called "Holodomor"]. Nothing contributed to the defense except rational use territorial and climatic conditions. The state lagged behind in education and other social spheres, illiteracy was widespread, and almost 10 years later [this is 1929] Soviet magazines and print publications were still reporting the same level of literacy. Forty years ago there was a hopeless lack of trained personnel to lead the Soviet people out of a difficult situation, and today the USSR is challenging the US right to world domination. This is an achievement that has no equal in modern history...”

“Over the years, a significant share of trained personnel has returned 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 in Moscow state university train programming teachers."

“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 hold extreme views regarding 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 the 210 million people in the West work together with the same priorities and the same passion as their counterparts in the Soviet Union, they will achieve similar results. States that independently compete with the USSR are wasting their strength and resources in attempts that are doomed to failure. If it is impossible to constantly invent methods superior to those of the USSR, it is worth seriously considering borrowing and adapting Soviet methods."

And here's another opinion Western politician and a businessman about Stalin’s policies:

“Communism under Stalin won the applause and admiration of all Western nations. Communism under Stalin gave us an example of patriotism for which it is difficult to find an analogy in history. Persecution of Christians? No. There is no religious persecution. Church doors are open. Political repression? Yes, sure. But now it is clear that those who were shot would have betrayed Russia to the Germans.”

Now we can say with confidence that education in the USSR was at its best. top level, which is confirmed by the conclusion of Western analysts. It, of course, did not meet international standards in many ways. But now we understand well that this is a problem of “standards”. Because 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 qualify as literate at all. So-so... solid C students. Therefore, there is no doubt that the matter is not in ministers Fursenko or Livanov, that modern problem lies entirely in the system itself.

What was the Soviet education system, which was spoken of so respectfully in the West, and whose methods were borrowed both from 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. Some people agree with confidence, while others talk about the destructive impact of ideological principles. Without a doubt, propaganda existed, but also thanks to propaganda, illiteracy of the population was eliminated in record time, education became accessible to everyone, and until now there have not been as many Nobel laureates and winners of international Olympiads as there were annually in Soviet times. Soviet schoolchildren won international competitions, including natural sciences. And all these achievements arose despite the fact that general education in the USSR was established later than in Western countries for almost a century. The famous innovative teacher Viktor Shatalov (born in 1927) said:

“In the post-war years, the space industry arose in the USSR and the defense industry rose. All this could not grow out of nothing. Everything was based on education. Therefore, we can say that our education was not bad.”

There really were a lot of advantages. Let’s not talk about the mass character and accessibility of the school level of education: today this principle remains true. 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 accessibility. This right was constitutionally enshrined (Article 45 of the 1977 USSR Constitution). The main difference between the Soviet education system and the American or British was the unity and consistency of all levels of education. Clear vertical system(primary, secondary school, technical school, university, graduate school, doctoral studies) allowed me to accurately plan the vector of my education. Uniform programs and requirements were developed for each level. When parents moved or changed schools for any other reason, there was no need to re-study the material or try to understand 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 on 3-4 topics in each discipline. Textbooks in the school library were provided free of charge and were available to absolutely everyone.

It is a mistake to believe that in a Soviet school all students had the same level of knowledge. Of course, the general program must be mastered by everyone. But if a teenager is interested in a particular subject, then he was given every opportunity for additional study. Schools had math clubs, literature clubs, and so on.

However, there were specialized classes and specialized schools, where children had the opportunity to study certain subjects in depth, which was a source of special pride for parents of children who studied in a mathematics school or a school with a language focus. This instilled in both parents and children a sense of their own exclusivity and “elitism.” It was these children who in many ways became the “ideological backbone” of the dissident movement. In addition, even in ordinary schools, by the end of the 1970s, the practice of hidden segregation had developed, when the most capable children ended up in classes “A” and “B”, and class “D” was a kind of “sink”, which is the practice in today’s schools considered the norm.

Fundamentality and versatility of knowledge

Despite the fact that the Soviet school had a powerful range of leading subjects, including the Russian language, biology, physics, and mathematics, the study of disciplines that gave a systematic understanding of the world was mandatory. As a result, the student left school with almost encyclopedic knowledge. This knowledge became the strong foundation on which it was possible to subsequently train a specialist in almost any profile.

Collateral quality education there was a synchronization of acquired knowledge in different subjects through ideology. The facts learned by students in physics lessons echoed the information obtained in the study of chemistry and mathematics and were linked through the dominant ideas in society. Thus, new concepts and terms were introduced in parallel, which helped to structure knowledge and develop in children complete picture peace, albeit ideologized.

Availability of incentive and involvement in the learning process

Today, teachers are sounding the alarm: schoolchildren lack motivation to study, many high school students do not feel responsible for their own future. In Soviet times, it was possible to create motivation due to the interaction of several factors:

• Grades in subjects corresponded to the knowledge acquired. In the USSR, they were not afraid to give twos and threes even for a year. Class statistics, of course, played a role, but were not of paramount importance. A student with poor grades could be kept for the second year: this was not only a shame in front of other children, but also a powerful incentive to take up his studies. You couldn’t buy a grade: you had to study, because it was impossible to earn an excellent result in any other way.
• The system of patronage and guardianship in the USSR was an undeniable advantage. The 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. This was also a good school for strong children: in order to explain a subject to another student, they had to work through the material in detail and independently learn to apply optimal pedagogical methods. The system of patronage (or rather, assistance from elders to younger ones) trained many Soviet scientists and teachers, who later became laureates of prestigious international awards.
• Equal conditions for everyone. The social status and financial situation 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 a university without hiring tutors. Mandatory placement after college, although perceived as an undesirable phenomenon, guaranteed work and demand for the acquired knowledge and skills. This situation, after the coup d'etat of 1953, began to slowly change and by the 1970s, the children of the partyocracy became more “equal” - “those who are more equal” received places in the best institutions, many physics, mathematics, and language schools thus began to degenerate into “elite” “, from where it was no longer possible to simply remove the careless student, since his dad was a “big man.”

• The emphasis is not only on training, but also on education. The Soviet school embraced the student’s free time and was interested in his hobbies. Sections and extracurricular activities, which were mandatory, left almost no time for aimless pastime and generated interest in further study in various fields.
• Availability of free extracurricular activities. In the Soviet school, in addition to the compulsory program, electives were regularly held for those interested. Classes in additional disciplines were free and accessible to anyone who had the time and interest to study them.
• Financial support for students - scholarships amounted to almost a third of the average wages countries.

The combination of these factors generated 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 their profession was 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 whom one should emulate.

Being a teacher was considered an honor

There were reasons for this. High demands were placed on the personality of a teacher in a Soviet school. People who graduated from universities and had an inner calling to teach children came to teach.

This situation continued until the 1970s. Teachers had relatively high salaries even compared to skilled workers. But closer to “perestroika” the situation began to change. The decline in the authority of the teacher’s personality was facilitated by the development of capitalist relations. The focus on material values, which have now become achievable, has made the teaching profession unprofitable and unprestigious, which has resulted in the leveling of the true value of school grades.

So, Soviet education was based on three main pillars:

• 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 for children to study, thanks to the patronage of elders over younger ones and free extracurricular activities;
• respect for teachers' work and the school institution as a whole.

Looking at the Soviet education system from the “bell tower” of our time, we can note some shortcomings. We can say that they are something like a brick that we, many years later, could add to the temple of science built by the country.

Let's look at some imperfections that are better seen from a distance.

Emphasis on theory rather than practice

The famous phrase of A. Raikin: “Forget everything you were taught at school and listen...” did not appear out of nowhere. Behind it lies an intensive study of theory and a lack of connections between the acquired knowledge and life.

If we talk about the system of universal compulsory education in the USSR, it was superior to the education system foreign countries(and above all - developed capitalist ones) in terms of the breadth of the thematic spectrum and depth of study of subjects (especially mathematics, physics, chemistry, and other branches of natural science). Based on secondary education of a very high quality (by world standards of that era), USSR universities provided students with 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 the general defect of the Western-style education system, which has been characteristic of it since the second century. half of the 19th century century

Lack of “industry philosophies”

The common flaw of the Soviet and Western education systems is the loss of canons professional activity: therefore, what can be called the “philosophy of design and production” of certain technospheric objects, the “philosophy of operation” of certain devices, the “philosophy of healthcare and provision of medical care" and so on. applied philosophies - in training courses There were no Soviet universities. The existing 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 independently reach its understanding, and then only many years after receiving their diplomas.

But their understanding of this issue in the overwhelming majority of cases was not expressed in publicly available (at least among professionals) texts:

• partly because the few who understood this issue were mostly 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 maintained their monopoly on knowledge and the skills associated with it, since such a monopoly underlay 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 largely contradict the ideological guidelines of the apparatus of the CPSU Central Committee and the stupidity of the bureaucratic leaders higher in the hierarchy of power (in the professional sphere) .

In addition, those who were able to write such books, for the most part, did not hold high leadership positions, as a result of which it was not always “in their rank” to write on such topics in the conditions of the tribal system of the post-Stalin USSR. And those who were “in rank” in post-Stalin times were for the most part careerist bureaucrats, incapable of writing such vital books. Although books were sometimes published by bureaucrats that purported to fill this gap, they were essentially graphomania.

An example of this kind of graphomania is the book by the commander-in-chief of the USSR Navy from 1956 to 1985, S.G., which is still being advertised by many klutzes. Gorshkova (1910 - 1988) “The Sea Power of the State” (Moscow: Voenizdat. 1976 - 60,000 copies, 2nd updated 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 Fleet as a whole as the construction of a complex system designed to solve certain problems, in which all elements must be presented in required quantities and the relationships between 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, due to the feeble-mindedness of a careerist, he did not understand the vital inconsistency and mutual incompatibility of many of the positions expressed in it by the authors of different sections.

Before understanding the problems of developing the country's naval power, expressed in the works of Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union I.S. Isakova (1894 - 1967), S.G. Gorshkov was very far away, which had an extremely harmful effect on the defense capability of the USSR and its development 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 built a mighty fleet, 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 number and diversity, is truly a Fleet. The latter took place in the USSR, when the commander-in-chief of the Navy was S.G. Gorshkov, and it was very ruinous for the country and not very effective militarily.

Non-interference in technical issues of ideological bureaucracy

“How could it happen that the sabotage took such wide proportions? Who is to blame for this? We are to blame for this. If we had handled the business of managing the economy differently, if we had moved much earlier to studying the techniques of the business, to mastering technology, if we had more often and intelligently intervened in the management of the economy, the pests would not have been able to do so much harm.
We ourselves must become specialists, masters of the business, we must turn our faces to technical knowledge - this is where life pushed us. But neither the first signal nor even the second signal provided the necessary turn. It’s time, it’s high time to turn our face to technology. It’s time to discard the old slogan, the outdated slogan about non-interference in technology, and become specialists ourselves, experts in the matter, become complete masters of economic affairs.”

Slogan about non-interference in technical issues in the practice of time management civil war and the 1920s meant that a “politically ideological”, but illiterate and ignorant of technology, a person could be appointed as a leader, as a result of which “politically immature” and potentially counter-revolutionary professionals found themselves under his leadership. Next, such a leader set tasks for the professionals subordinate to him that were set for him by superior managers, and his subordinates, in turn, relying on their knowledge and professional skills, had to ensure their solution. Those. The “politically ideological” but not knowledgeable manager was responsible for the first stages of the full function of managing an enterprise (or a structure for another purpose), and the professionals subordinate to him were responsible for the subsequent stages.

• If the team leader and the professionals were conscientious or at least honest, and, as a result, ethically compatible in the common cause, then in this version the enterprise management system was workable and benefited both parties: the manager learned the business, subordinate professionals expanded their horizons, were drawn into political life and became citizens of the USSR (in the sense of the word “citizen”, understandable from N.A. Nekrasov’s poem “Poet and Citizen”) de facto, and not just de jure.
• If the manager or professionals turned out to be ethically incompatible due to dishonesty and dishonesty of at least one of the parties (be it the “ideological” leader or the professionals), then the enterprise management system to a greater or lesser extent lost its functionality, which entailed consequences that could be legally qualified as sabotage either by 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-marinist, and earlier - the professional military sailor L.S. Sobolev (1898 - 1971, was non-party) “Exam”. In this story, the “spirit of the era” is presented accurately in many aspects, but from the point of view of liberals - slanderously. However, this same “spirit of the era” was also “in civilian life”, therefore the system “political-ideological leader - subordinate professional specialists, apolitical and unprincipled” (the same as Professor Nikolai Stepanovich from A.P. Chekhov’s story “Boring” history") also worked in civilian life.

Essentially 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 be practically expressed in their mastery of the relevant technical knowledge and the application of this knowledge to identify and resolve problems of economic support for the policies 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.
Now let's turn to the speech of I.V. Stalin “New situation - new tasks of economic construction” at a meeting of business executives on June 23, 1931 (emphasis in bold is ours):

“...we can no longer make do with the minimum of engineering, technical and industrial command forces that we used to make do with before. It follows from this that the old centers for the formation of engineering and technical forces are no longer enough, that it is necessary to create a whole network of new centers - in the Urals, in Siberia, in Central Asia. We now need to provide ourselves with three times, five times more engineering, technical and industrial command forces if we really think about implementing the program of socialist industrialization of the USSR.
But we don’t need just any command and engineering forces. We need command and engineering forces that are able to understand the politics of the working class of our country, are able to assimilate this policy and are ready to implement it conscientiously» .

At the same time, I.V. Stalin did not recognize the party and its members’ monopoly on the possession of conscience and business qualities. In his same speech there is the following fragment:

“Some comrades think that only party comrades can be promoted to leadership positions in factories. On this basis, they often wipe out capable and enterprising non-party comrades, putting party members in first place, although they are less capable and uninitiative. Needless to say, there is nothing more stupid and reactionary than such, so to speak, “politics.” There is hardly any need to prove that such a “policy” can only discredit the party and alienate non-party workers from the party. Our policy is not at all to turn the party into a closed caste. Our policy is that there should be an atmosphere of “mutual trust”, an atmosphere of “mutual verification” between party and non-party workers (Lenin). Our party is strong in the working class, among other things, because it pursues precisely this policy.”

In post-Stalin times, if we relate to this fragment, personnel policy was stupid and reactionary, and it was as a result of it that M.S. ended up at the top of power. Gorbachev, A.N. Yakovlev, B.N. Yeltsin, V.S. Chernomyrdin, A.A. Sobchak, G.Kh. Popov and other perestroika activists are reformers and unable to put them in the place of V.S. Pavlov, E.K. Ligachev, N.V. Ryzhkov and many other “opponents of perestroika” and bourgeois-liberal reforms.

The mention of conscience as the basis of the activity of every person, and above all managers, in the conditions of the construction of socialism and communism contrasts with the statement of another politician that era.

“I free man,” says Hitler, “from the humiliating chimera called conscience. Conscience, like education, cripples a person. I have the advantage that I am not held back by any theoretical or moral considerations.”

The quote itself is from the report of I.V. Stalin at the ceremonial meeting of the Moscow Council of Working People's Deputies on November 6, 1941, dedicated to the 24th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
But A. Hitler is not an innovator in denying conscience. Nietzsche

“Have I ever felt remorse? My memory remains silent on this score” (Vol. 1. P. 722, “Evil Wisdom”, 10).

“Remorse is as stupid as a dog trying to chew a stone” (Ibid. P. 817, “The Wanderer and His Shadow”, 38)”

As a result of this, F. Nietzsche ended his life in a madhouse.

Communism translated from Latin into Russian means community, community; Besides, in Latin this word has the same root as “communication”, i.e. with communications, 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— a community of people based on conscience: everything else in communism is a consequence of the unity of conscience among different individuals.”

Low level of foreign language teaching

The lack of experience in communicating with native speakers gave rise to the study of languages ​​based on cliches that did not change in textbooks from year to year. Soviet schoolchildren, after 6 years of studying a foreign language, were still unable to speak it even within the confines of everyday topics, although they knew the grammar perfectly. The inaccessibility of educational foreign literature, audio and video recordings, and the lack of 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 citing foreign scientists in student and scholarly works became not only shameful, but also dangerous. The lack of fresh information has given rise to some conservation of teaching methods. In this regard, in 1992, when Western sources became available, the school system seemed outdated and in need of reform.

Lack of home education and external studies

It is difficult to judge whether this is good or bad, but the lack of opportunity for strong students to pass subjects externally and move to the next grade hindered the development of future advanced personnel and made them equal to the bulk of schoolchildren.

Non-alternative co-education for boys and girls

One of the dubious Soviet innovations in education was the compulsory co-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 the organization of separate schools, as well as the widespread practice of co-education in some leading countries of the world, including the USA. However latest research in the same USA they show that separate education increases student results by 10 - 20%. Everything is quite simple: in joint schools, boys and girls are distracted by each other, and noticeably more conflicts and incidents arise; Boys, right up to the last grades of school, lag behind girls of the same age in education, since the male body develops more slowly. On the contrary, with separate education, it becomes possible to better take into account the behavioral and cognitive characteristics of different sexes to improve performance; adolescents’ self-esteem depends to a greater extent on academic performance, and not on some other things. It is interesting that in 1943, separate education for boys and girls was introduced in cities, which was again eliminated in 1954 after the death of Stalin.

Degradation of the secondary vocational education system in the late USSR

Although in the USSR the working man was extolled in every possible way and blue-collar professions were promoted, in the 1970s the system of secondary vocational education in the country began to clearly degrade, even despite the noticeable advantage that young workers had in terms of wages. The fact is that in the USSR they tried to ensure universal employment, and therefore they en masse took into vocational schools those students who had failed and failed to enter universities, and also forcibly placed juvenile criminals there. As a result, the average quality of the student population in vocational schools has fallen sharply. In addition, the career prospects of vocational school students were much worse than in the previous era: a huge number of skilled workers were trained during the industrialization of the 1930-1960s, the best jobs were taken, and it became more difficult for young people to get 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, but it is the service sector that creates greatest number jobs in modern developed countries (including places for people without higher or professional education). Thus, there were no alternatives in employment, as there are now. Cultural and educational work in vocational schools turned out to be poorly placed, students of “vocational school students” began to be associated with hooliganism, drunkenness and general low level development. “If you do poorly at school, you’ll go to a vocational school!” (vocational technical school) - this is what parents told careless schoolchildren. The negative image of vocational education in blue-collar occupations still persists in Russia, although qualified turners, mechanics, milling operators, and plumbers are now among the highly paid professions, the representatives of which are in short supply.

Perhaps the time will come when we will return to the experience of the USSR, mastering its positive aspects, taking into account modern requirements society, that is, at a new level.

Conclusion

Analyzing the current culture of our society as a whole, we can come to the conclusion that historically established societies on earth give rise to three levels of unfreedom for people.

Level one

It is inhabited by people who have mastered a certain minimum of commonly used socially significant knowledge and skills, but who do not know how to independently master (based on literature and other sources of information) and produce “from scratch” knowledge and skills that are new to them. Such people are able to work only in professions that do not require any specialized qualifications, or in mass professions that can be done without special costs labor and time to master on the basis of a universal educational minimum.

They are the most unfree, since they have practically no free time and are not able to enter other areas of activity except those that they have somehow mastered and in which they find 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 fairly high income, which allows them to have a certain amount of free time and use it at their own discretion. The majority of them also do not know how to independently master and produce “from scratch” new knowledge and skills, especially outside the scope of their professional activities. Therefore, their lack of freedom begins when the profession they have mastered depreciates in value, and they, not being able to quickly master any other fairly highly profitable profession, slide into the first group.

At this level, in the cultures of most civilized societies, individuals are given access to knowledge and skills that allow them to enter the sphere of government of overall social significance while remaining conceptually powerless. The term “conceptual power” should be understood in two ways: firstly, as that type of power that gives society a concept of its life in the continuity of generations as a single whole (i.e., determines the goals of society’s existence, ways and means of achieving them); secondly, as the power of the concept itself over society.

Level three

Those who are able to independently master previously developed and produce “from scratch” new knowledge and skills of social significance for them and society as a whole, and exploit them on a commercial or some other social status basis. Their unfreedom begins when they, without thinking about the objectivity of Good and Evil, about the difference in their meaning, fall consciously or unconsciously into permissiveness and begin to create objectively unacceptable Evil, as a result of which they are faced with a stream of circumstances that are restraining their activity - circumstances beyond their control - even murderous. These factors can be both intrasocial and general in nature, and can have a scale both personal and broader - up to the global.

Reaching this level is conditioned by mastering, among other things, managerial knowledge and skills, including those necessary for acquiring and exercising conceptual authority. In societies in which the population is divided into the common people and the ruling “elite”, in which an even narrower social group is reproduced from generation to generation, carrying one or another internal closed tradition of management, access to this level is blocked by the system of both the universal and “ elite" education. Access to it is possible either spontaneously (rare self-taught people are capable of this), or as a result of belonging to certain clans of those who carry internal traditions of management or the election of an individual by these clans to include him in their ranks. This blocking is not spontaneous and natural in nature, but is a purposefully built system-forming cultural factor, the action of which expresses the defense of their monopoly on the conceptual power of certain clan groups, which allows them to exploit the rest - managerially incapable - of society in their own interests.

Level of gaining freedom

The level of gaining freedom is one and only: a person, acting according to conscience, realizes the objective difference between Good and Evil, their meaning, and on this basis, having taken the side of Good, acquires the ability to independently master and produce “from scratch” knowledge and skills that are new to him and society in advance or as the situation develops. For this reason, it gains independence from corporations that have monopolized certain socially significant knowledge and skills on which it is based. social status their representatives. Let us note that in the religious worldview, conscience is an innate religious feeling of a person, “connected” to his unconscious levels of the psyche; on its basis, a dialogue between man and God is built, if a person does not shy away from this dialogue himself, and in this dialogue God gives everyone proof of His existence in full accordance with the principle “practice is the criterion of truth.” It is for this reason that conscience in the religious worldview is a means of distinguishing between objective Good and Evil in the specifics of the incessantly ongoing life of society, and a good person is a person living under the dictatorship of conscience.

In the atheistic worldview, the nature and source of conscience are not knowable, although the fact of its activity in the psyche of many people is recognized by some schools of atheistic psychology. We can talk about conscience and freedom in the indicated sense as a self-evident fact, without going into a discussion of theological traditions of historically established concepts of religion, if circumstances do not favor this; or if you have to explain this problem to materialist atheists, for whom turning to theological issues is a known sign of the interlocutor’s inadequacy, or to idealist atheists, for whom the interlocutor’s disagreement with their accepted religious tradition is a known sign of possession and Satanism.

In accordance with this non-economic and non-military-technical task in its essence - the task of changing the current concept of globalization to the righteous concept of the system universal compulsory and professionally specialized education in the country was oriented under the leadership of I.V. Stalin's goal was for everyone who is capable and willing to learn to acquire knowledge that would allow them to reach at least the third level of unfreedom, including the acquisition of conceptual power.

Although the gradation of levels of unfreedom shown above and the phenomenon of conceptual power in the era of I.V. Stalin was not realized, however, this is exactly what he wrote about directly in the terminology of that era, and this can be clearly understood from his words:

“It is necessary... to achieve such cultural growth of society that would provide all members of society comprehensive development their physical and mental abilities so that members of society have the opportunity to receive an education sufficient to become active workers social development…» .

“It would be wrong to think that such a serious cultural growth of the members of society can be achieved without serious changes in the present state of labor. To do this, you must first reduce the working day to at least 6, and then to 5 hours. This is necessary to ensure that members of society receive enough free time necessary to receive a comprehensive education. To do this, it is necessary, further, to introduce compulsory polytechnic training, 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. To do this, it is necessary to further radically improve living conditions and raise the real wages of workers and employees at least twice, if not more, both through a direct increase in money wages, and especially through a further systematic reduction in prices for consumer goods.
These are the basic conditions for preparing the transition to communism.”

Real democracy, which is based on the availability for mastering knowledge and skills that allow for the full management function in relation to society, is impossible without the development of the art of dialectics (as a practical cognitive-creative skill) by sufficiently wide layers in all social groups as the basis for the development of conceptual authority.

And accordingly, dialectical materialism was included in the USSR as a standard of both secondary (later becoming universal) and higher education, due to which a certain number of students in the process of becoming acquainted with “diamatism” developed in themselves any kind of personal culture of dialectical knowledge and creativity, even with that dialectics in “diamat” was crippled by G.V.F. Hegel: reduced to three “laws” and replaced by a certain logic, in the form in which 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 dominance of Marxism, which distorted the worldview and brought it into conflict with conscience, which was also facilitated by the principle of “democratic centralism” that underlay the internal discipline of the CPSU (b) - the CPSU, the Komsomol and the Pioneer organization, Soviet trade unions, which became an instrument of subordination of the majority to the not always righteous will and essentially mafia discipline of the leading minority.

But even with these vices, the education system in the USSR still did not prevent the breakthrough to freedom of those who lived under the rule of the dictatorship of conscience and belonged to Marxism and the internal discipline of the party and those controlled by the party leadership public organizations as a historically transitory circumstance, and to conscience as an enduring basis, on the relation to which the essence and fate of every individual and every society is built.

And ensuring the effectiveness of the education system as a means of innovative development of the economy at a faster pace and economic support of the country’s defense capability is a means of solving the above-mentioned I.V. Stalin's main task: so that everyone could become active figures in social development.

If we talk about the development of the Russian education system in the future, then - based on what has been said above - it can only be expressed 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 mastering the curriculum.

At the same time, education (in the sense of providing access to the development of knowledge and skills and assistance in their development) is, without alternative, associated with the upbringing of younger generations, since access to the only level of freedom is not only the possession of certain knowledge and skills, but also the unconditional self-subordination of the will of the individual. conscience, and this is the topic of raising each child personally in accordance with the specific circumstances of his life.

Afterword

Soviet school teachers provided basic knowledge in their subjects. And they were quite enough for a school graduate to enter higher education on his own (without tutors or bribes). educational institution. Nevertheless, Soviet education was considered fundamental. The general educational level implied a broad outlook. There was not a single school graduate in the USSR who had 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. Look! This is how our mothers and grandmothers knew how to write. 1960-70 in the USSR... And this was written not with a ballpoint pen, but with a fountain pen!

Congratulations to you all on the Day of Knowledge!

Minister of Education and Science that Russian schools need to return to the best traditions of Soviet education - “the best in the world.” According to her, education has lost a lot in recent years by abandoning its conservative line of behavior. Teachers from Yekaterinburg responded to her call. They developed a project according to which it is necessary to return classical Soviet teaching methods to schools, as well as “year-tested” Soviet textbooks. An employee of the Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts of the Scientific Library, a historian of Russian education, and the head of the University’s Master’s program in the humanities spoke about how well schoolchildren were taught during the Soviet era and whether we should emulate the Soviet school today.

“Lenta.ru”: Is it true that Soviet education was the best, like everything in the USSR?

Lyubzhin: I didn't notice that. If the opinion about the superiority of Soviet education were even close to reality, it is logical to assume that Western countries would have to organize educational reform following the example of the USSR. But none of the European states - neither France, nor England, nor Italy - ever thought of borrowing Soviet models. Because they didn't value them highly.

What about Finland? They say that at one time she borrowed her techniques from us. At the same time, it is believed that today this country has no equal in terms of school education.

I cannot agree that Finland is beyond competition. This is due to the peculiarities of local education, which is designed not for high results of individual individuals, but to raise the average level of education of each citizen. They really succeed. First of all, Finland is a small country. That is, everything is easier to organize there. And secondly, very good people become teachers there. So the Finns manage to attract students through strong teachers, and not at all through a good program. But at the same time, higher education there is seriously sagging.

Many believe that the structure of Soviet education has its roots in the educational system of Tsarist Russia. How much did we take from there?

Exactly the opposite - Soviet education is the complete antipode of imperial education. Before the revolution, there were many types of schools in Russia: classical gymnasium, real school, cadet corps, theological seminary, commercial schools, etc. Almost everyone who strived for it could study. There was “our own” school for all abilities. After 1917, instead of educational diversity, a single type of schools began to be introduced.

Back in 1870, in the book of the Russian historian Afanasy Prokopievich Shchapov, “Social and pedagogical conditions for the mental development of the Russian people,” the idea was expressed that the school should be the same for everyone and that it should be based on the natural sciences. Which is what the Bolsheviks accomplished. General education has begun.

This is bad?

It was the primary school where basic literacy was taught that fit well into the concept of universal education. It was organized at the USSR level. Everything that came next was already fiction. The high school program offered everyone the same set of subjects, regardless of the abilities or interests of the children. For gifted children, the bar was too low, they were not interested, school only interfered with them. And the lagging behind, on the contrary, could not cope with the load. In terms of the quality of training, a graduate of a Soviet secondary school was equal to a graduate of the Imperial Higher Primary School. Before the revolution, there were such schools in Russia. Education in them was based on primary school (from 4 to 6 years, depending on the school) and lasted four years. But this was considered a primitive level of education. And a diploma from a higher primary school did not give access to universities.

Was your knowledge level insufficient?

The main skills of a graduate of a pre-revolutionary higher primary school: reading, writing, counting. In addition, the guys could pick up the rudiments of various sciences - physics, geography... There were no foreign languages ​​there, because the compilers of the programs understood that it would be fiction.

The preparation of a graduate of a Soviet school was approximately the same. The Soviet high school student knew writing, counting, and fragmentary information on other subjects. But this knowledge filled his head like an attic. And in principle, a person interested in the subject could independently assimilate this information in a day or two. Although foreign languages ​​were taught, the graduates practically did not know them. One of the eternal sorrows of the Soviet school is that students did not know how to apply the knowledge acquired within one discipline to another.

How then did it happen that the “attic” Soviet people invented the space rocket and carried out developments in the nuclear industry?

All developments that glorified the Soviet Union belonged to scientists with that pre-revolutionary education. Neither Kurchatov nor Korolev ever studied in a Soviet school. And their peers also never studied in a Soviet school or studied under professors who received a pre-revolutionary education. When the inertia weakened, the safety margin was exhausted, and everything fell apart. There were no own resources in our education system then, and there are none today.

You said that the main achievement of the Soviet school was the beginning. But many say that mathematical education was decently organized in the USSR. This is wrong?

This is true. Mathematics is the only subject in schools in the Soviet Union that met the requirements of the Imperial Secondary School.

Why her?

The state had a need to make weapons. Besides, mathematics was like an outlet. It was carried out by people who were opposed to other scientific fields because of ideology. Only mathematics and physics could hide from Marxism-Leninism. Therefore, it turned out that the country’s intellectual potential gradually artificially shifted towards technical sciences. The humanities were not valued at all in Soviet times. As a result, the Soviet Union collapsed due to the inability to work with humanitarian technologies, explain something to the population, and negotiate. We can still see how monstrously low the level of humanitarian discussion is in the country.

Can we say that imperial pre-revolutionary education complied with international standards?

We have been integrated into the global education system. Graduates of the Sophia Fischer gymnasium (the founder of a private women's classical gymnasium) were accepted into any German university without exams. We had a lot of students who studied in Switzerland and Germany. At the same time, they were far from the wealthiest, sometimes on the contrary. This is also a factor of national wealth. If we take the lower strata of the population, the standard of living in Imperial Russia was slightly superior to English, slightly inferior to American and was on par with European ones. Average salaries are lower, but life here was cheaper.

Today?

In terms of education and knowledge, Russians are uncompetitive in the world. But there was also a “lag” during the USSR. The historian notes that, unlike other countries, the Soviet elite had the worst education among the intelligentsia. She was inferior not only to academic circles, but also to any where higher education was needed. Unlike the West, where countries were run by graduates of the best universities. And after the collapse of the USSR, the model of Soviet universal education ceased to make sense. If a student is not interested because the subjects were taught superficially and for show, some kind of social pressure is needed so that the children still learn. In early Soviet times, the very situation in the country forced a person to become a loyal member of society. And then the pressure eased. The scale of demands crept down. In order not to deal with repeat students, teachers had to do pure drawing of grades, and the children could quite easily not learn anything. That is, education does not guarantee a career. In other countries this is practically not the case.

As the mother of a fourth-grader, I have the feeling that today, compared to the Soviet period, they don’t teach at all at school. The child comes home after classes - and the “second shift” begins. We don’t just do homework, but study the material that we are supposed to learn in class. Friends have the same picture. Has the program really become that complicated?

The school simply switched from normal education to controlled education. In the 1990s, this was a forced step on the part of the teaching community. Then the teachers were left in complete poverty. And the “don’t teach, but ask” method became the only way for them to guarantee income. For tutoring services, their student was sent to a colleague. And he accordingly did the same. But when teaching salaries in Moscow increased, teachers were no longer able and did not want to get rid of this technique. Apparently, it will no longer be possible to return them to the previous principles of education.

From my nephew’s experience, I see that they don’t teach him anything at school and they didn’t teach him anything, but they carefully ask him about everything. Tutoring is common in schools from the fifth grade, which was not the case in Soviet schools. Therefore, when they check a school and say: the results are good, you can’t really believe it. In our country, in principle, it is no longer possible to separate school and tutoring work.

Since the collapse of the USSR, Russia has undergone reforms to improve education almost every year. Have there really been no positive changes?

Spears broke around important issues, but of a secondary order. The knowledge testing system is very important. But much more important is the program and set of subjects to study. And now we are thinking about how tougher exams can improve learning. No way. As a result, the complex Unified State Exam has only two options: either we must lower the bar so that almost everyone can get a certificate. Or the exam will simply turn into a sham. That is, we are again returning to the concept of universal education - so that exclusively everyone can receive a secondary education. Is it really necessary for everyone? Approximately 40 percent of the population can complete secondary education in full. The reference point for me is the imperial school. If we want to cover everyone with “knowledge,” the level of learning will naturally be low.

Why then in the world is the need for universal secondary education not only not questioned, but even a new trend has appeared - universal higher education for everyone?

This is already the cost of democracy. If we call simple things higher education, why not? You can call a janitor a cleaning manager, or make him an operator of a super-complex broom on wheels. But most likely it won’t make a difference whether he studies for about five years or immediately starts learning to operate the broom’s remote control on the spot. Formally, the Institute of Asian and African Countries and the Uryupinsk Steel University give the same rights. Both provide certificates of higher education. But in reality, some jobs will hire one graduate, but not another.

What should parents do if they want to educate their child normally? Where to go, what school to look for?

You need to understand that now there is no segregation of schools by program. Segregation exists based on whether the school has a swimming pool or a horse. We have 100 best schools, which are always in first place in educational rankings. Today they are replacing the missing secondary education system, as they are proving their superiority at the Olympiads. But you need to understand that studying there is not easy. They just don’t take everyone there. I don’t think that anything can be done with the current educational system in Russia. Today Russian education is a patient in need of a very difficult operation. But in fact, his condition is so fatal that he simply cannot tolerate any intervention.