Equality of opportunity to receive an education in the U.S.S.R. really exists to-day. This is important. But so is the kind of education that there is equality of opportunity to receive. While, in such a book as this, it is not appropriate to make a detailed study of the whole of the Soviet educational system, it is extremely important to examine it further, in so far as it provides the youth of the country not only with qualifications as future workers, but with the ability to fulfil the tasks of citizenship, to participate in running those concerns in which they are employed, to combat faults in the social organization of the community, and, in fact, to govern the country in which they live.
The young Soviet citizen, finishing his education, becomes a wage-earner in a State enterprise, or a member of a co-operative organization. For, at the present time, there are no longer private concerns which employ the labour of others. The young Soviet citizen, in either of these forms of organization, will be called upon to participate in running them. But he will participate in running these organizations in co-operation with others. He must, therefore, learn to accept responsibility— but responsibility to a group, to a collective.
If citizens are to participate effectively in running the country in which they dwell, they must have an appropriate education. Therefore, even in the elementary school in the Soviet Union the visitor is struck by the extent to which the student is treated as a citizen.
Corporal punishment is forbidden by law in the Soviet schools, and other punishment in any form is practically non-existent. The children are taught to look upon the teachers, not as vested with an almost supernatural authority, but as human beings like themselves, who have more experience. The headmaster or headmistress of a Soviet school is a senior comrade, who holds a position of such authority only by virtue of ability and good leadership.
Everything possible is done in the Soviet schools to bring the children into contact with the everyday life of the country. Their lessons include knowledge of current political questions and of industry and agriculture. In their spare time, facilities are provided in the schools and other institutions for hobbies such as natural history or engineering, literature or sport. The important fact in this connection is that the Soviet child is encouraged to take his hobbies seriously, and is given the possibility of doing useful work which may have positive value. Thus, groups of “Young Inventors” attached to Soviet schools, turn out some hundreds of inventions annually. And in the Moscow Zoo a group of child helpers participates in the research work that is being carried on there.
And once, on May and, a public holiday, the direction of traffic in the city of Kiev was in the hands of the children of the city. And the children in all the larger towns have their own theatres and cinemas, run by the Commissariat of Education in conjunction with the local school authorities.
At the children’s theatres the children are expected not only to be spectators but to criticize the performances and to make suggestions for their improvement. The Moscow children’s theatres arrange meetings between children and writers, at which writers read their latest children’s stories, and discuss their merits with the children prior to publication. The children learn to play a part in determining the kind of books that are going to be published for them.
These examples, taken at random from the life of Soviet children to-day, serve to emphasize the fact that the Soviet child is a citizen from his earliest days, receiving the respect of other citizens, and with the opportunity to utilize his or her spare time in some useful hobby which may be of actual scientific or artistic value.
But how is the life of the school itself organized?
To many teachers and parents in other countries it seems inconceivable that schools should be run throughout a vast country without the use of punishment and all the other devices for preserving the authority of the teacher to which we are accustomed in the rest of the world. But Soviet experience has proved conclusively, in a period of twenty years’ trial, that if children are treated as fellow citizens, and not as a kind of inferior being, they will behave as citizens. If an appeal is made to them as serious human beings, then they will answer by showing a sense of responsibility which can never be inculcated by the cane or by other forcible displays of the teacher’s authority and power.
If I were to draw a comparison between the typical Soviet school and the school in Britain, I would say from my own experience that the atmosphere of the Soviet classroom can only be compared with that of the British playing-field. All that voluntary discipline which is obtained in England, even among quite young children, in the sphere of games is obtained, in the U.S.S.R., in the actual work of learning. And when we ask how this comes about, I think we are bound to realize that in the British school, in general, it is only in the sports activities that the children are treated as citizens voluntarily carrying on certain social activities for their mutual benefit, whereas, in contrast to this, the ordinary school work is treated as a necessary 'evil’ enforced upon them by some higher authority.
In the Soviet school the greatest incentive is given to individual achievement, but only in such a way as is consistent with the developing of a team spirit. The marking of Soviet students does not consist of arranging them in order from first to last, but in classifying them into groups, marked “excellent,” “good,” “medium,” and “weak.” It is theoretically possible in any class for 100 percent of the students to obtain the mark of “excellent.” The good student is not prevented from obtaining the mark of “excellent” if someone else also does well, whereas, under the more antiquated system so common still in Britain, only one child can be first in the class, only one can be second, and so on. To the English child, marked in this way, it is of advantage not to help the others to do well; but the Soviet child gains no advantage whatever from other children in the class being marked “medium” or “weak.” In the U.S.S.R. there is not the individualistic system in which the success of one is obtained by displacing another from a leading position.
In addition to this, in the Soviet school collective competitions are regularly arranged between the different groups of students, for the best possible results in each class. While all the pupils in one class try to attain the individual achievement of “excellent,” the whole class competes with the other classes in the school for the maximum number of “excellents” and “goods” and for a minimum of “weaks.” This “Socialist Competition,” as it is called, emphasizes the Soviet class of children with something of the zeal for their studies as the English football team has for its game. And the result is that the best students voluntarily assist the weaker ones, in order that the best results may be obtained by the class as a whole.
It is these two features of the Soviet school system—the treating of all pupils as citizens, and giving them the opportunity to do useful work if they wish to do it—together with the organization of their work so as to introduce into it some of the fun that in Britain is associated purely with leisure, with activities rigidly separated from work, that lay the foundation for quite a different system of discipline in Soviet schools from that which exists in Britain.
The Soviet child, as a responsible citizen, and keen on the success of his or her work because it also means the success of the team in competition with other teams, is interested in having good results as an individual, and for the whole group. As a result, the desire to work has not to be enforced by punishment from above, any more than punishment proves necessary to make the boys of an English school take their football seriously.
In the English school, even where the use of the cane is common, it is not usually found necessary to employ it in order to stimulate concentration on such matters as football. The collective enthusiasm of the children themselves proves to be an adequate stimulus to each individual to exert the necessary energy. The slacker is reformed by the collective pressure of the other players, and the good player, in the interests of the team, coaches the weaker.
It is precisely this spirit which prevails in the Soviet school, not only within the limited sphere of sport, but throughout. And it is in such conditions that the relations of teacher to pupil are those of experienced adviser to willing learner, and that discipline is enforced almost entirely by the students themselves.
The Soviet classroom is a scene of collective team activity. The students elect their own leader, who is responsible for checking such matters as attendance and general discipline. A students’ committee decides matters of general importance to the class, and for the school as a whole there is an elected committee which is the recognized representative body of the students.
Under the leadership of this body groups of students, in their spare time, undertake various kinds of work in connection with the administration of the school. It is a common thing, in a Soviet school, to find a children’s sanitary commission that brings recommendations to the administration and to the other pupils concerning questions of cleanliness, and a kitchen committee that passes regular comment on the food supplied in the school dining-room. It is also common for the merits of teachers to be openly discussed at meetings, at which not only teachers have the right to criticize students, but students have the right to criticize the work of their teachers.
The Soviet teacher is also a member of the team—holding the office of “coach.” Here, too, the only apt comparison is with the sports activities in an English school. Whereas, on the one hand, we would find much scepticism in this country as to the advisability of pupils choosing their teachers, on the ground that they would choose those that gave them the least work, it would hardly be maintained that the boys in a school would not be capable of passing judgment on the question of which master was the best football coach.
In the latter case it would probably be generally agreed that the boys concerned would be good judges; whereas, in the former, it would be suggested that their judgment was quite unreliable. The only reason for this distinction, of course, lies in the justifiable assumption that, in general, in the English school, the children are not so interested in their academic learning as they are in their football. But in the U.S.S.R., with the status of children as described, and the competitive system in academic work having been developed along lines comparable only with sport activities in Britain, the spirit of the British playing-fields has been brought into the Soviet schools. If the playing-fields of Britain have been responsible for bringing up a race of Empire rulers, then the classrooms of the Soviet Union, by introducing that same spirit of collective sport into the work of the whole younger generation, is bringing up a race of people really capable of ruling, not an Empire, but themselves.
The Socialist competition between the classes of a Soviet school has been mentioned. It is important to note that, in this Socialist competition, the teachers are also participants. The children of the different classes compete against each other for the highest number of “excellents,” and the teachers of these classes compete against each other also for achieving the greatest number of “excellents” in the classes under their charge. In this way the children and teachers have the same common aim as is shared between the football team and its coach in an English school.
In order to check the results of this Socialist competition, regular meetings take place between teachers and pupils, together and separately, to discuss how the work is progressing. In such discussions the teachers’ methods may be discussed and criticized by the children. Further, in the Press, edited by the staff and children in Soviet schools, there is a vehicle for the written word. No Soviet schoolroom is complete without its wall-newspaper, a glorified notice-board, on which are pasted articles on school activities, and on matters of general local and national importance. Such newspapers are edited by the students and by the teachers, and contain full discussion of all problems facing the school.
A group of children, for example, may visit another school where the dining facilities are superior to their own. They return, and the wall-newspaper contains an article demanding that the school administration at once take steps to make the dining facilities as good as in the other school. Or members of the sanitary commission may find that the washing facilities in another school are better, and so, in meetings and in the wall newspaper, the demand is put forward that the administration take the necessary steps in their own school to improve conditions accordingly.
It is these children, and these students, trained to participate in the running of their schools and universities, who later go on to work in Soviet institutions of every kind. Clearly, such people would be intolerable employees for any ordinary employer of labour. Children, who, at school, have had their own representative committees which demanded that the administration improve the sanitary or feeding conditions, or supply better teachers, are not going to be docile wage-earners. They will tend to be disturbing elements, trade unionists always agitating for better conditions. Similarly, university students who, from the age of eighteen onwards become members of trade unions, and whose trade union committee puts forward all kinds of demands on the part of the students, are not, given their university training is over, going to be docile employees.
The type of person created by the Soviet educational system, then, is an intolerable type from the standpoint of any private employer. Such people, to use a common term, “would simply make a revolution.” And that is why, only in the U.S.S.R., and after the Revolution, an educational system has been developed which creates such people. For, in the U.S.S.R., the new system of production, where the power of the private employer has been first restricted, and then finally eliminated altogether, requires a type of citizen altogether different from the wage-earner of capitalist society.
This new type of citizen can only be understood when we know how he lives, and the conditions under which he works. Therefore, from the Soviet educational institutions let us now go with our young citizen to his first job, whether in a State institution or in a cooperative organization. We shall then see that the education of the Soviet school is a preparation for responsible citizenship in Soviet society.