Russia's New Schooling

SOVIET education today combines the rigorous European system with the mass education of the United States — a phenomenal attempt. By 1960 all Russian youth from 7 to 17 will be required to complete ten years of schooling. Such compulsory education is now in effect in most cities, or for about 70 per cent of the young people. Schools are in session six days a week. Students corresponding to our high school juniors and seniors are in class about seven hours a day and are expected to spend another four or five hours on homework. A tento twelve-hour day is regarded as normal. There are no drum majorettes.

American parents who have children in school today should read and pause over the requirements which are demanded of every boy and girl who has completed secondary education in Russia:

7 years, Russian language

3 years, literature: classical, Western European, Soviet

7 years, history and social studies with emphasis upon the U.S.S.R. and Communist Party

10 years, arithmetic and mathematics through trigonometry

5 years, physics

4 years, chemistry

1 year, astronomy

5 years, biology and botany

6 years, geography

6 years, foreign language: a choice of French, German, or English, if instructors are available

Students also work in such subjects as drawing, painting, singing, machine construction, woodworking, metalworking, and agriculture. Upon completion of ten years of schooling they must know how to drive an automobile, a truck, and a tractor.

Among the dozen ten-year schools I visited was Moscow’s Number 717. The director characterized the building as typical of the newer school plants. Although built only four years ago it looks forty or more years old. Architecturally the building is unimpressive. Construction is crude. In room after room the electric wiring is tacked along the walls. Much of the lighting comes from electric wires hanging from the ceiling with only a socket and bulb at the end.

This school opened in September, 1953, when only two of the three stories were completed. Because it was built in a rapidly growing community, it is already overcrowded and must operate on a double-shift basis to accommodate all the 1280 children. Some teachers work only on one shift; others divide their time between both. For grades one through four, a teacher handles all subjects for a group. Starting with grade five, or age eleven, each teacher instructs in one subject and generally follows the same children through from grade to grade. The teaching load varies from twelve to eighteen hours per week depending on the subject.

The curriculum of School 717, as for all others, follows that prescribed by the Minister of Education. Pupils in the tenth grade, for example, study Russian language and literature, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, a foreign language, astronomy, the history of Russia, psychology, electrical technique, drawing, and physical culture.

Student organizations in the school include the Young Communist League, the Pioneers, and a variety of committees. An executive committee is elected by pupils in the school. Members of this committee select their own chairman, an assistant to the chairman, and a secretary. Their functions include the supervision of all student organizations, maintenance of discipline between classes, and assistance for teachers in such extracurricular activities as drama, music, forensics, and the student newspaper. The organization and activities are obviously arranged to help develop good citizens for a Communist state, since both the Pioneers and Young Communist League are miniatures of the Communist Party.

This particular school was built by and belongs to the Machine Building Plant, the industry which dominates the neighborhood economy. Apparently the government decides which plants must provide schools, although not all schools are so sponsored. This means that the school is supported in part by the productive capacity of a given plant. It means also that the director of the plant organizes the vocational machine shops for the school, which the workers help to assemble on Sunday or their day off. Once the shops are assembled the parents may use them in the evening or after school hours.

Secondary School Number 157, which I visited in Leningrad, was much older but was exceptionally well equipped. In the physics classroom, for example, the teacher pressed a button to drop the shades and the room was dark. He pressed a second button and a slide of a hydraulic pump was projected on the screen. He pressed a third button and a motion picture showed the equipment in operation. All along one wall there was a cabinet filled with films, slides, and other visual materials readily at hand to be used for instructional purposes.

At this school, too, there were small rooms scattered throughout the building in which students could work on individual projects. In one I saw a student assembling tape-recording equipment so that he could record his own voice. I gathered from our conversation that he was interested in becoming a professional singer.

At a collective farm about seventy miles out of Moscow, the secondary school was a three-story building only five years old but in an exceedingly poor state of repair. Large chips of concrete were broken off the steps, and chunks of stucco had fallen off the outside walls. The interior of the building was wood frame with plaster walls.

The same curriculum was followed in this school but in a more limited way than in the big city schools. The same textbooks were used. Only one foreign language was taught. The rote memory system of teaching was dominant. The teachers, many of whom had only two years of trainingin a pedagogical institute, were not as well prepared as those in urban schools. About half of the pupils left school after the seventh year and went to work on a farm. Even with the limitations one would expect in a country district, it is well to compare this program with what we know to exist in the rural districts in America.

AT THE end of the seventh and tenth grades, the Ministry of Education checks on the individual pupils throughout the country with state examinations. Seventh grade examinations are given during one week; tenth grade youngsters take examinations for one full month. The tests are mostly oral, with the exception of those in Russian language and literature. Russians do not believe in the effectiveness of written examinations and have no use whatsoever for our true-false, multiplechoice, or other types of objective tests. Questions are on ‘’tickets.” After drawing a ticket the student responds before his teacher and fellow pupils.

Admission to a university or institute of higher learning is based on these examinations, on scholarship records, and on such additional tests as the individual faculty may require. Only the “gold star” students are admitted without supplementary examinations. The “silver star” students take additional tests in the specialty of the particular faculty under which they will be studying. Quotas are established for each faculty by the Minister of Higher Education. Approximately one out of two or three applicants is admitted to the total university, but for some faculties selection is very rigid. For example, at the University of Leningrad last year one student was accepted from every twenty-one applicants in journalism.

If the student fails in admission to the university, he may not apply at any other institute for higher learning during the current year. This, of course, helps to prevent “shopping” among colleges by the student; and certain institutes do not therefore have to accept second-rate students. If the examinations for entrance are failed a second time, the student may not reapply.

Each time I asked how many of their top-ranking secondary school students went on for higher study, the reaction came in a squint of the eye, a wrinkled brow, or a facial twitch, and finally in words: “Practically all of the top-ranking students. Isn’t that what universities are for?”

Most students arc paid for going to the university according to their scholarship record, with payments ranging from 300 to 550 rubles per month. Three hundred rubles is the lowest wage paid to a worker. The woman who sweeps the streets receives 300 rubles per month. A student can live meagerly on this amount.

Even when a student is admitted to a university, he still has no free choice of subjects. Regardless of his specialty he is required to take courses in Marxism, the history of the Communist Party, philosophy, and a foreign language. He also must have a minimal amount of psychology and practice teaching; thus almost every university graduate is prepared to teach on the secondary level.

There is no teacher shortage in Russia. One teacher is provided for every twenty-two or twenty-three pupils in the secondary schools, but the present goal is to provide one for seventeen. And at the university or higher institute level, the budget is automatically set on the basis of enrollments to provide one teacher for every ten students. About 50 per cent of the university graduates go into teaching, and practically all of the graduates of the institutes of pedagogy become teachers. Emphasis at these institutes is on the subject to be taught, not on methods.

A high degree of specialization characterizes Russian education. Concentration in a particular field is exceptionally heavy. For example, in Moscow’s Institute of Foreign Languages, 880 students were specializing in English and devoting 80 per cent of their time for a full five years to English.

The Russian educational system is rigorous. It is also extremely rigid. The Minister of Higher Education is in complete charge of the universities and most institutes of higher learning, about 800 in number. He controls budgets, appointment of professors and key administrative officers, salaries, the curriculum, the textbooks, the selection of students, their placement upon completion of their course, and the state examinations.

I met with the Minister of Higher Education after visiting institutions of higher learning in Kiev, Leningrad, and Moscow, and we spent some time discussing rigidity. The Minister wanted to know how we handled textbooks for our courses. I explained that publishers were free to print any textbook, that each college and university and, in most cases, every professor selected the textbooks and reference books he wished to use, and that we encouraged the use of several textbooks from the elementary through the university grades.

“Is not that a waste of time, effort, and paper?” he asked. I pointed to the advantage of having students compare different points of view and approaches to a subject. To which he countered by saying that if you had “the best textbook” that anyone could possibly write, the student would learn more by studying it than by browsing around in a number of books. In Russia they make every effort to get “the best textbook” for each course.

The difficulty the Russians have in understanding variations in practice cropped up over and over again. When I explained the freedom our colleges have in setting admission requirements and selecting students, the Minister exclaimed: “It seems utter chaos to me.”

THE accomplishments of the Russian educational system are exceedingly impressive. Just forty years ago, at the time of the Revolution, somewhat more than half of the population was illiterate. Now illiterates form less than 5 per cent of Russia’s 200 million population, according to a recent UNESCO report. Russians naturally feel great pride in the educational system they have built in so short a time. The chairman of a collective farm explained that his education had extended over only three years and for just a few months of each year. W ith great pride, he exclaimed, “My sons and daughters now go to school for ten years, and, if they do well, they can go on to the university.” People in all walks of life share this regard for education.

At all levels the teacher occupies a position of great prestige. With the possible exception of top party leaders, no one is held in higher regard than the university professor, especially in the sciences and engineering. The teacher symbolizes Russia’s hopes for an improved economy, for position in the world, for a rise in the population’s level of thinking and living. He is the instrument of change and progress and is treated accordingly.

The university professor’s economic reward is equivalent to that of a manager of a large manufacturing plant. Apparently only top party leaders earn more. The professor’s base pay is 6000 rubles per month or, at the official rate of exchange, 1500 dollars. In addition, he receives compensation for any outside engagements, for serving as a consultant to industry or government. If he writes a book, he gets 2000 rubles for every twenty-three typewritten pages. If he is elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, he is paid 2500 rubles per month for life, and in the higher category of membership, “academician,'’ he receives 5000 rubles. This adds up impressively, and means that a top-ranking professor and “academician” might make as much in Russian values as the head of General Motors does here. The professor in Russia has no medical expenses, no expenses for the education of his children; his taxes and rent are relatively low, while some other costs of living are higher. His economic position in society becomes more meaningful by contrasting his income with that of the practicing lawyer or doctor, whose income ranges from 3200 to 4000 rubles per month without the opportunities for additional income.

Soviet educational leaders are not at all satisfied with their school program. They are continually trying to improve it. Directors of secondary schools, for example, reported that their students’ current work load is too heavy; it may impair the health of the pupils. Something must be done to extend it over eleven years or to reduce the amount of required work, particularly in the upper years.

Some educators insisted that quality must be improved; there must be a better balance between technical and general education; there must be better means for developing the individuality and personality of pupils.

At the university or higher institute level, criticism was even sharper. Rectors of the universities of Kiev, Leningrad, and Moscow all stressed the need for establishing a higher level of competence, particularly in the scientific fields. They felt their equipment inadequate to the task they were trying to perform. Rector A. D. Alexandrov at Leningrad complained about the methods of teaching. He said they attempted to stuff the student like a sausage and then at the end of five years tie it up with a diploma!

Vechaslav Yelutin, Soviet Minister of Higher Education, joined the rectors in urging a broader program and more and better textbooks brought up to date. He stated that the ablest teachers seem to be attracted to certain centers of learning, and consequently distribution of quality is not equitable throughout the country. Furthermore, he thought that an effort should be made to associate teaching with practice. Russian educators arc most eager to learn about other systems of education and constantly requested more information about schools in the United States. Many of them asked for an exchange of students and faculty. We are the only capitalist nation refusing such cooperation. An exchange arrangement was made between the Universities of Chicago and Moscow which bogged down on the U.S. fingerprinting requirement. Mr. Yelutin extended a general invitation to American students to come to Russia. He said to me, “You are afraid your students will become Communists if they study here. We are not afraid that our young people will become capitalists if they study in the United States.”

It is my impression that a student completing the Russian secondary school at the age of seventeen probably has an education equivalent to that which we provide by the end of the first two years of college. Over a period of years the Soviet emphasis on science will naturally develop a nation whose people are informed in an important field in this technological age. We might well ask ourselves whether, with only 4 per cent of our high school students receiving as much as one semester’s instruction in physics during the school year 1955-1956, our nation will be equally informed.

Of a total of 2.5 million graduates from Russian schools of professional or higher education, about 1.5 million, or 60 per cent, are scientists and engineers. In contrast, we have 5 million such graduates, of which 1.5 million, or 30 per cent, are scientists and engineers. In addition, the current rate of producing these specialists in the Soviet Union is about two and a half to three times our rate of production. This is not to argue for one moment that we should immediately convert our schools into one large physics laboratory, or attempt to imitate the Russian education. Rather, we should ask ourselves how to provide the best education for our young people, who live in a scientific world but who, I venture to suggest, want more than just scientific training. We must provide balance and not fail by default in any important area of human knowledge.

The critical teacher shortage in the United States, although it was foreseen a decade ago, has become more acute each year. The increase in the number of inadequately prepared teachers, the relative deterioration of teachers’ salaries, crowded classrooms, and the need for double sessions — these are frightening symptoms for the richest nation on earth. We must clarify our goals, reconsider our programs of education, and apply our ingenuity now to provide schools and teachers for our times. The dramatic ways in which Russia has laid claim to world supremacy in science may well prove to be the spur to our own greatest period of educational advance.