It is interesting to read the testimony of Pavlenko or Chernov about how things really stood with Soviet education. There is another case that makes you think. Once, in the presence of Anna Akhmatova, they mentioned that Valentin Kataev “is still an intellectual.” The poetess chuckled and said that he was simply lucky - he managed to study at a pre-revolutionary gymnasium, where the knowledge was more extensive than in the USSR.

Throughout the entire period of its existence, the Soviet government gave education an almost leading role. Was this a strict necessity for the formation of the military-industrial complex or did the Bolsheviks really strive to raise “dark Russia” from its knees, which would have remained “with four classes of a parochial school”? This is a topic for a separate discussion. In any case, the cultural revolution, carried out by the early revolutionary government, set itself a very wide range of tasks.

A special role was assigned to the school - an instrument of communist education and an important educational institution. Lenin said that the victory of the revolution can only be consolidated by school, and all the achievements of Soviet power will be consolidated by the education of future generations. The Bolsheviks believed that only masses of educated people could build a socialist state.

The first stage of the existence of the Soviet education system was associated with the destruction of everything old and the elimination of widespread illiteracy of the population. Previous management structures were abolished, private educational institutions were closed, the teaching of ancient languages ​​and religions was banned, and a “purge” was carried out to remove unreliable teachers from teaching. It was believed that everything left over from tsarism was outdated. Therefore, there were many negative phenomena: tsars, generals, and Russian classics were removed from educational programs.

Was there free education?

There was free education in the USSR! Defenders of Soviet power love to mention this fact when there are not enough arguments. Yes, but this was not always the case, but only in the memory of these same adherents of the Soviets - grandparents who were born after the end of the war. In fact, tuition fees were only abolished in 1956, that is, three years after the death of the leader of the people, and under Stalin, paid education was the norm.

On this issue, both opponents and defenders of Soviet education are equally right. Paid education in the USSR began with Decree No. 638 of October 26, 1940. It was necessary to pay for knowledge not only in universities or special educational institutions, but also in high schools. The payment was abolished by a decree of the USSR Council of Ministers of 1956.

The program of Soviet Russia to eliminate illiteracy among the population was adopted in 1919 by the Ministry of Education. According to the program document, the entire population from 8 to 50 years old was obliged to learn to read and write in their native or Russian language. All literate persons were involved in training on the basis of labor service. The measure was forced: according to statistics, only 29.3% of men and 13.1% of women were literate. In Central Asia, literacy was 5% and 6%, respectively, in Siberia - 12%.

In literacy schools, students were taught to write and count, understand fonts, be able to make notes necessary in everyday life and official affairs, write percentages and integers, and understand diagrams. In addition, the basic principles of building the Soviet state were explained to people. The educational program introduced by the Ministry of Education brought results: by 1939, the literacy rate of the population aged 16 to 50 approached 90%.

Changing content and teaching methods

Even before the introduction of paid education in the USSR, the new state determined the ways of forming a school. The Soviet school was divided into two levels. The duration of training for the first was 5 years, for the second - 4 years. All citizens received the right to education without regard to nationality or gender. The unconditionality of secular education was put at the forefront. Educational institutions were assigned additional functions: production and educational.

In 1918, universities began to admit students without exams and without the need to provide a document on education. When enrolling, preference was given to peasants and workers, that is, the main social groups of the young state. The age limit for entering a higher educational institution was set at 16 years. The fight against illiteracy was declared a priority task.

In the second half of the 20s, the number of educational institutions (including the number of seven-year schools in the USSR) and students increased, and regular funding for education was established. The whole system, in its main features, had taken shape by 1927. Entrance examinations in universities were reinstated, student enrollment was reduced, but education was hampered by a shortage of qualified teachers.

In 1930, the decree “On universal compulsory primary education” affected all children from 8 years of age. From the 1930-1931 school year, it was compulsory to study for four years, and for teenagers who had not received primary education, an accelerated course (1-2 years) was established. All school curricula were revised, new textbooks were published, history teaching was restored, a class schedule was introduced, and the lesson became a form of organizing the learning process. A new generation of talented teachers began working in schools.

Tax on education and culture

Since 1931, the “cultural tax” was introduced, that is, a tax on education and culture. This is the first step towards paid education in the USSR. Peasants were required to pay annually 20-80 rubles per yard. Rural residents also paid for the education of their children, collective farmers contributed to the cost of textbooks and notebooks, writing materials, repairs and construction of schools. This was a lot of money for the village.

“Change in tuition fees..” in 1940

The Council of Ministers of the USSR introduced paid education for high school students and university students. There was an official decree. From September 1, 1940, students studying in grades 8, 9, 10, or their guardians, were required to pay tuition fees. For schools in Moscow and Leningrad, the capital cities of the republics, it was 200 rubles per year, and in all other settlements - 150 rubles per year. At universities, tuition cost 400 rubles per year in Moscow, Leningrad and the capitals of the republics, 300 rubles per year in all other cities.

How big was this money for Soviet citizens? Formally, with an average income of 400-500 rubles per month, paying for training was not catastrophic. But if you look at the statistics, real income was not enough, and additional mandatory bond loans were levied (20-25% of wages). Thus, high school education cost 4% of a parent’s annual income per child, and university education cost 9% per year of study.

Paid education in the USSR was not only unaffordable for the majority of Soviet citizens. This was contrary to the 1936 Constitution. So in 1943, the Central Committee of the CPSU was forced to abolish payment based on nationality. The following were exempt from tuition fees:

• Turkmens, Uzbeks and Kazakhs living in the Turkmen SSR;
• Kabardians and Balkars studying at pedagogical institutes and living in the Kabardian SSR;
• Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tatars and Uighurs in the Kazakh SSR;
• Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Jews, Uzbeks, Karakalpaks living in the Uzbek SSR.

The era of universal free education

In 1940, education was made free of charge. It became universal and truly free only in the late fifties - the first half of the sixties. Since 1956, tuition fees in the USSR have been abolished.

“On strengthening the connection between school and life”

Under N. Khrushchev, the act “On strengthening the connection between school and life” was adopted, which actually forced people to pay for school education. Labor conscription was introduced for students in grades 9 and 10. Students were required to work in agriculture or manufacturing two days a week, and the results of their labor went towards paying for their education. To enter a higher education institution, a minimum of two years of work experience was now required. This reform was abolished immediately after the dismissal of Nikita Khrushchev. Education took its final modern form only under Brezhnev, that is, in 1966.

What is your first association with the Soviet school? Surely strict discipline and solid knowledge. Uniform for the whole country, and therefore carefully verified and infallible textbooks, a permanent school uniform and a strict but fair teacher - a dignified middle-aged woman, of whom even the parents of the students are afraid.

Decades later, the Soviet school appears in collective memory as something uniform, as a system with very precise and practically unchanged characteristics. But both reforms from above and personal innovations of teachers make it possible to evaluate the school system of the Soviet Union as a field of continuous experimentation.

First steps: unified labor school

The history of the Soviet school began with the experimental post-revolutionary decade. The first decision of the Soviet government on educational reforms was made in the decree on the separation of church from state and school from church. The entire education industry soon found itself in a dire situation that would seem familiar to educators in the 1990s. The old ideology has been rejected, which means that the old textbooks are unusable; all the rules - from admitting students to supplying schools - are changing.

In both cities and villages of the twenties, schools, especially small ones, often lived at the expense of the students’ parents: they provided heating, the necessary materials for classes and most of the teacher’s salary.

At the same time, it cannot be said that the Soviet government limited itself to repealing all previous laws and did not pursue its own educational policy. The Soviet school was built on the principle of a unified labor school. It was called unified because it replaced the previous class-based educational institutions. Social barriers between the village primary school, the real school and the gymnasium were destroyed. This does not mean that all schools became the same, but each of them now corresponded to a certain level of education, through which students could rise indefinitely. For example, the former primary school in the village was now considered a first-level school; Having graduated from it, the teenager could go to the district town and enter the seven-year school, which was considered a second-level school, and continue his studies from the level at which he graduated in the village. It was possible to complete secondary education in an advanced school, that is, a ten-year school.

These “levels” and “types” did not appear by chance: the word “class” was not used, students were divided into groups. Student committees and school-wide councils were supposed to contribute to the expulsion of authoritarianism not only from the language, but also from the real life of schools. How informal and stormy the social life of schools in the 1920s was can be read in Nikolai Ognev’s story “The Diary of Kostya Ryabtsev.”

From Ognev’s book one can also glean some ideas about experiments in teaching. Kostya Ryabtsev’s school lives according to the Dalton plan: students complete weekly and monthly assignments, consulting with teachers in “laboratories.” Not every school allowed a full-fledged experiment, but the rejection of the traditional subject system was universal. Even small rural schools, whose teachers could hardly be suspected of being innovative, moved from subjects to “complexes.” For example, first-stage students studied their region as an integral topic: geographical features, climate, flora and fauna, modern population, historical details, and economic portrait. The teacher reported something, the students had to obtain some data themselves through surveys or observations of nature. Changes also occurred in assessment: by the end of the 1920s. The “brigade method” spread, when students took tests not individually, but in groups.

The portrait of the Soviet school of the 1920s looks like the realization of the most daring utopian proposals. Follow not the textbook, but reality, give project assignments, stimulate teamwork - why not the program of some quantorium? Reforms in practical pedagogy were accompanied by a scientific boom, although not everything that psychologists and pedologists managed to create reached schools. Already in the early 1930s. experiments began to wind down.

Why did this happen? The new image of the school, which emerged by the end of the 1930s, corresponded to the ideology of “socialism in a single country” much more than the Dalton Plans and free school councils, where the student could criticize the teacher.

But the reasons for the turn of school policy in a conservative direction were partly economic. New methods required significant financial support both at the school level and in teacher education. Therefore, the People's Commissariat of Education took a simpler path: a uniform system of teacher training, uniform programs and textbooks for the whole country, unity of command at school, discipline in the classroom. Having established the tightest possible control over education, the government was able to train an army of young teachers in a short period of time and introduce universal primary education.

Thaw as a premonition

The model of the Soviet school during the Stalinist period strongly resembled the pre-revolutionary gymnasium, where communist ideology replaced the Law of God. The similarity intensified when senior classes became fee-paying (since 1940) and separate education for girls and boys was introduced (from 1943 to 1954 only in cities). But already in the second half of the 1940s. changes have begun at school.

Attempts to reform the school were caused by real problems of post-war society: the school had lost its role and significance. During the war, few teenagers had the opportunity to attend school, and already in 1946, universities faced a shortage: they had no one to enroll in the first year.

In addition, discipline in the classrooms became noticeably worse, students attended classes less often, and in villages and small towns parents again stopped sending their children to school because their labor was needed at home - or simply because the children did not have any clothes, no shoes.

For some time, authoritarian disciplinary measures continued to be introduced (for example, the new Rules of Student Conduct required unquestioning submission of the student to the teacher), but other proposals were also made. Already in 1944, People's Commissar of Education V.P. Potemkin announced the slogan of “fighting formalism” in teaching. The point was to burden students less with cramming definitions and rules, and to focus them more on understanding the topic, retelling it in their own words, and conducting laboratory and practical classes. Criticism of “formalism in education”, which ignores the interests, inclinations and characteristics of the child, immediately appeared in the press.

One of the main innovations in pedagogy in the late 1940s. turned out to be a requirement for an “individual approach”, caused by the widespread repetition of years in the post-war years. Standard programs did not work in classes made up of mixed-age students who had years out of school behind them. During several discussions in the Ministry of Education with the participation of expert practitioners, the formulation “individual approach to each student” was born. Pedagogy includes ideas of respect for children's inner world and cognition as a creative process. It is no coincidence that one of the most popular books among teachers of this time was F. Vigdorova’s story “My Class”. The heroine of the book goes from memorized methods to understanding each student, to human relationships with children and their families.

In practice, the main efforts of the Ministry of Education were related to the material support of schools, training a large number of new teachers and eliminating the backlog of program requirements. How did this affect teachers?

On the one hand, the teacher was entrusted with additional responsibilities: he was still responsible for the progress of students, but it was impossible to inflate grades, and inspections from various regulatory bodies became more strict and meticulous than ever. On the other hand, the requirement for an “individual approach” meant that successful non-standard methods received the right to life as part of the teacher’s creative work. Moreover, the country has adopted the practice of collecting information about the experience of the best teachers. It was summarized both in special training manuals and on the pages of the Teacher’s Newspaper. Calls for abandoning formalism and vague ideas for school reform found a response within the teaching community. It was in the late 1940s - early 1950s. Many teachers began their work, who later became famous as innovative teachers, authors of “pedagogy of cooperation.”

Hidden diversification

An attempt at large-scale school reform occurred in the USSR only in 1958 - the so-called “polytechnization of the school.” Neither the concept nor the term were new to the USSR. From the very first years, the Soviet school developed as a labor school, which included in the program, in addition to the fundamentals of science, the development of practical skills. The slogan of the 1958 reform was “overcoming the separation of school from life.” From that time until 1966, when the reform was curtailed, a considerable number of hours in secondary school (according to some by-laws, up to a third) were devoted to industrial practice. Since there was no space in school buildings to create workshops, school leaders followed a simpler path: “school production teams” were sent to existing production facilities. Many schoolchildren of these years remembered trips to factories and poultry farms with entire classes.

Eight years of secondary education became mandatory, as did 1-2 years of work experience in production for all high school graduates. Without this, it was impossible to enter a university, and school graduates often went to the enterprise only to work out the required time. They were not interested in their work and quit without regret.

As modern researchers note, the main problem of the reform was the lack of clear requirements for the level of knowledge of a school graduate. Did the student have to have a profession or learn the skills necessary for low-skilled work? Students had to be prepared for practical activities, but for what, no one knew.

Students had to be prepared for practical activities, but for what, no one knew.

Simultaneously with the reform and partly under its influence, another innovation arose in the USSR: schools for gifted children. In the Soviet school, which was outwardly subject to uniform laws, hidden diversification continued: the original approaches of the best teachers developed, and now schools for children gifted in mathematics and natural sciences. Created by large universities in their own interests, these schools fell outside the general requirements of “polytechnicization.” An example is the system of mathematical schools, the program of which prepared students to study at serious technical universities and to enter academic science.

A powerful debate flared up in the press on the issue of creating mathematics schools, since the separation of the “elite” of the most capable students into separate schools was contrary to the nature of Soviet education. But the interests of progress turned out to be higher. At first, mathematics and programming classes arose in large schools in Moscow and Leningrad, and then physics and mathematics boarding schools were opened in the Novosibirsk Academic Town, at Moscow State University, and several specialized schools in the capitals. The students of these schools actually mastered a university curriculum in physics and mathematics with a greatly reduced humanities block. Most Russian winners of the world's most prestigious mathematics award, the Fields Medal, studied in Soviet mathematics schools.

Pedagogy of cooperation

During perestroika, the main demands and proposals for school renovation came from the lips of the teachers themselves: innovative teachers who had proven the effectiveness of their methods over the previous several decades. But it would be wrong to think that the development of innovative pedagogical ideas in the 1960-1970s. was carried out only by the efforts of a few single practitioners in different parts of the country. By this time, several research institutes had been formed within the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR: the theory and history of pedagogy, teaching methods, psychology and defectology. The ideas of psychologization of pedagogical approaches and practices, early identification of abilities, early professionalization developed in the interaction of scientists and practitioners.

However, it was the practitioners who most clearly expressed themselves during perestroika. Innovative teachers published their “Peredelkinsky Manifesto” in 1986. The meeting, which resulted in a report that went down in the history of pedagogy under this name, was attended by S. N. Lysenkova, V. F. Shatalov, E. N. Ilyin, Sh. A. Amonashvili and other pedagogical figures and teachers.

What ideas did the manifesto proclaim? First of all, he was not a beautiful fantasy. His conclusions came from decades of work by innovative teachers in different schools across the country. The changes caused by universal compulsory secondary education, and then by the virtual abolition of repetition, put teachers in a situation where weak students no longer dropped out of school. As in the post-war period, teachers throughout the USSR saw that standard methods did not work for the entire class. Innovative teachers showed themselves not in closed math schools that gathered the best, but by working with everyone who came to class.

“We do not go with the subject to the students, but with the students - to the subject,” they declared in the manifesto.

The main principle of the pedagogy of cooperation was to instill in each student the confidence that he would achieve success and understand the most difficult topic. The teacher’s task is to organize work with students of different abilities, without dividing them into groups, without making those who are lagging behind feel second-class. Each of the innovative teachers came up with the idea of ​​a supporting diagram that would help the student, when answering, remember and present the main idea of ​​the topic. The most famous is the system of reference signals by V. F. Shatalov.

A key tenet of collaborative pedagogy has been promoted by learning without pressure - especially for young children in primary school, where strictness and bad grades only discourage them from ever learning. No one gave grades as bad, some completely abandoned grades in elementary school. Other important ideas were dividing the material into large blocks, teaching ahead of time (the most difficult topics appeared 50 or 100 lessons before the program reached them), matching the lesson form to the content, and freedom of choice for students, sometimes even in choosing homework. Each of the innovative teachers used one or another form of student assessment of each other's work, but none of the children gave each other grades - they learned to analyze and discuss, and not just award points.

The pedagogy of cooperation included the principles of creative self-government and social work, as well as broad intellectual development. The authors of the “Peredelkinsky Manifesto” considered the Leningrad “Frunze Commune” to be one of the most successful examples of the creative development of children in real and useful matters for society. She inspired the whole movement of communards, widespread in the USSR in the 1960s, when, it would seem, there was enough social pressure in the pioneer organization. Summer labor camps and gatherings were perceived by the Communards as a more useful activity than the traditional pioneer activity; Participants in the movement developed a deeper understanding of responsibility, sincerity, and belonging to a team.

The pedagogy of cooperation made itself known during perestroika, but it was a deeply Soviet phenomenon on collectivist principles. Certain techniques and methods of innovative teachers have entered the practice of subject teachers, and self-government systems in universities and schools are still being built on the principles of the communard movement, but most Russian schools and teachers after the collapse of the USSR did not have the resources for pedagogical experiences. The course towards identifying elite, “special” schools continued, and it was in them that the experimental heritage of innovative teachers was applied to the fullest extent.

You can get acquainted with the academic research of the Soviet one in the collective monograph “Islands of Utopia: Pedagogical and social design of the post-war school (1940 - 1980s).” - M.: New Literary Review, 2015. In 2015, we published materials based on this monograph.

Modern schoolchildren are lucky. They sell briefcases and backpacks of different sizes and shapes, bright markers, funny pens, sharpeners in the shape of animals and cars, and the school uniform itself can be chosen to be comfortable and fashionable. Everything was different in our childhood. But childhood is childhood, and we were happy with what we had: notebooks, book covers, counting sticks, stencils... And, comparing with the modern attributes of school, we remember them now with a smile.

Diary and blotter.

The notebooks were simple, without drawings or inscriptions. On the reverse side were printed rules of conduct for schoolchildren, a multiplication table, or, at worst, the words of songs: “Soar with bonfires, blue nights,” “Victory Day,” “Eaglet,” “Birch and mountain ash,” “Where the Motherland begins.” , Anthem of the USSR. For some reason, the notebooks were in dirty, sad colors: blue, pink, green, yellow. It’s still a mystery to me why the checkered notebooks didn’t have margins? They had to be drawn by ourselves, and always with a red pencil, and not with a pen.

For some time we wrote with ink: first with fountain pens, which we dipped into sippy inkwells (they stood on every desk, and dead midges were always floating in them). No matter how neat and tightrope walker you were, you still couldn’t avoid blots on your desk or notebook. Later, stylus pens replaced the perpetually leaking automatic ink pens (dropper and threaded). By the way, fountain pens could be found at the post office and in savings banks back in the late eighties; they were used to fill out receipts and write telegrams.

The USSR Ministry of Education allowed the use of ballpoint pens only in the late 70s. Of course, this was a breakthrough, all the children of the vast Motherland breathed a sigh of relief. And only now do you understand that an ink pen is expensive and stylish, and calligraphy is an art from which the Japanese, for example, still earn good money.

In order not to wait for the ink to dry, the page was blotted with a special piece of paper that was in each notebook - a blotter. This is an absolutely wonderful item that has gone into oblivion along with ink pens. And what a kind word it is - a blotter.

The pink, blue or lilac leaf was always covered in writing and drawings, and in general there were a lot of uses for it: cool airplanes were made from blotter paper, because the paper was lighter, crib sheets, and New Year’s snowflakes also turned out great. And notes for girls or boys! They silently fell into the “object of sighs,” unlike heavy paper leaves.

Boys, as a rule, quickly used this leaf, and not quite for its intended purpose: they chewed it in order to launch a ball through a tube at a neighbor. Unhappy modern children, what do they spit at each other?

School uniform

If you ask 40-year-old women what color they dislike most in clothing, 90% of them will answer: “Brown.” The reason for this is the Soviet school uniform: a creepy brown dress and a black apron. I still shudder at the memory of the touch of these prickly clothes (the dress was made of coarse wool) on my body. And note, it was worn all year round: in autumn, winter and spring. It was cold in winter and hot in spring in these clothes. What kind of hygiene are we talking about? I remember at one time they sold special tabs with cellophane, which were sewn into the armpit area of ​​dresses so that white salt stains from sweat would not appear.

A brown dress was supposed to be paired with a black apron and brown (black) bows - what a color combination! The festive school clothing set included a white apron, tights and bows.

In order to somehow diversify the boring uniform, mothers and grandmothers “had a blast” with collars and aprons: they were sewn from the finest lace, imported guipure, crocheted, they came up with styles of aprons with “wings”, with frills, etc. Sometimes there were simply masterpieces of handmade sewing. The girls tried to decorate their school clothes as best they could: pinned brooches, made leather appliqués, sewed in beads (however, strict teachers forced all this splendor to be removed, they also used a ruler to measure the length of the dress from the knee to the hem - God forbid it was a millimeter higher than it should be according to the instructions of the Ministry of Education).

Some parents managed to get a “Baltic” uniform through connections; it was a pleasant chocolate color and was made not from wool, but from some soft material. To be fair, I note that the Soviet uniform was made in different styles: a pleated skirt, tucks, pleats, etc. were used. And still we hated the uniform, fortunately it was abolished in the mid-80s... Although now sometimes I look at old photos and, comparing with the current school uniform, I think: maybe there was something in those dresses with aprons? Stylish and noble.

The collars had to be washed and sewn on every week. This, of course, was terribly stressful, but from the height of my current mind I understand that it was a good lesson in cleanliness for the girls. How many 10-12 year old girls can sew on a button and wash their own clothes?

But what was truly wonderful in those years were the milk shortcakes in the canteen! Amber in color, fragrant, crumbly! And very affordable in price - only 8 kopecks.

Yes, there were buns with jam, poppy seeds, cinnamon, muffins, sour cream and cheesecakes, but for some reason these are the shortcakes that come to mind.

High school students sported briefcases - black or red, and for junior school students satchels were indispensable. They were made of smelly leatherette, and the fastener buttons in them immediately broke. But the backpacks themselves were incredibly durable: they were used to ride down ice slides, sitting or on their stomachs, they fought with them, they were thrown into a pile after school, when it was necessary to urgently assemble a team to play Cossack robbers. But they didn’t mind, they lived and served for a whole year.

Nowadays, simple pencils (soft and hard) can be bought in any stationery department, but then the Czechoslovak Koh-i-noor pencils were considered the best pencils. They were brought from abroad or obtained through connections in a department store. They were made, by the way, from Californian cedar (at least in the past). How many of these yellow sticks with gold letters and gold pimples on the tip we made during our studies!

Of course, a convenient thing, but very heavy. Especially for the student sitting in front - if he spun around and interfered with the lesson, he was hit on the head with a stand along with a book.

I personally didn’t know how to use this gadget, but for many botanists in those years it was indispensable. In Soviet times, when there were no computers yet, and the first electronic calculators were a curiosity, mathematical calculations were performed on it. The rulers were of different lengths (from 15 to 50-75 cm), and the accuracy of the calculations depended on it.

Using a ruler, you could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, exponentiation and root extraction, calculating logarithms and working with trigonometric functions. They say that the accuracy of operations could reach 4-5 decimal places!

For me, all these manipulations with the ruler were a very difficult matter, but it is impossible to overestimate its role in the life of mathematics students of those years. Recently I heard from one woman that her husband taught her to use a slide rule so that she could calculate the number of loops while knitting. “For me, even today, this thing is indispensable in drawing up various proportions,” the woman is sure.

I don’t like sharpeners; as a child, my dad taught me how to brilliantly sharpen pencils with a blade or a sharp knife. There were few sharpeners in those days, and they usually sharpened cruelly. By the time you achieve the “correct” lead, the pencil will run out, the only exception being a desktop mechanical device for sharpening pencils.

What can you not find in the schoolbag-satchel of a schoolchild of all times! But today you definitely won’t see such a funny toad toy, which was used during breaks and in after-school classes.

Each of us has our own memories of that time - bright and not so bright. What do you remember from your school childhood?

The education system in the USSR in official documents was called the public education system. Since its inception in 1917, its main task has been to educate and educate the younger generation in accordance with the communist ideology that determined the life of society. The main moral goal of Soviet education at all levels - from kindergarten to university - was considered to be the preparation of a worthy member of the work collective, together with the entire country, building a “bright future”. Throughout the entire period of the existence of the Soviet educational system, the teaching of not only the humanities, but also the natural and even exact sciences was subordinated to these guidelines.

Preschool

The first stage of the state public education program was preschool institutions. They opened throughout the USSR from the first years of its existence: the country of Soviets under construction required millions of workers, including women. The problem of “who should a young working mother leave her child with” was not relevant - it was successfully solved by kindergartens and nurseries that accepted babies from the age of two months. Later, preschool institutions were an important part of the system of universal secondary education, compulsory for every Soviet citizen since 1972.

There were no private kindergartens in the Soviet Union. All institutions were municipal (state) or departmental - belonging to enterprises: factories, collective farms, factories, etc. They were supervised by local education and health authorities.

The state not only built preschool institutions everywhere, but also almost completely financed the maintenance of children and the educational process. Parents were partially reimbursed for food costs, which were calculated taking into account the total salaries of the baby’s father and mother. There were no “voluntary-compulsory” contributions for curtains, blankets, carpets, books, pots, and so on. Large and low-income families were exempt from paying for kindergarten services.

The extensive system of preschool institutions in the USSR consisted of:

• from the nurseries - the smallest ones were brought up in them - from two months to three years;
• kindergartens - they accepted three-year-olds and, until the age of seven, prepared them for entry into first grade, gradually moving them from the junior group to the middle, senior and preparatory groups;
• nurseries and kindergartens - plants that united the two previous types of institutions under one roof.

Experienced teachers and nannies worked with preschool children. Children were taught a healthy lifestyle, and cultural development kept pace with the directives of the Communist Party and government regulations that governed the entire education system in the USSR.

School

During the existence of the USSR, the secondary school was transformed several times in accordance with the realities of changing life, all modifications were aimed at increasing the level of education of new generations.

In the first years of Soviet power, general and vocational education were not separated: in the unified nine-year labor schools of the RSFSR, mastering the basics of theoretical knowledge and crafts took place in parallel. Training was conducted in two stages: the first - five years, the second - four years. Additionally, in 1919, workers' faculties were opened at secondary specialized and higher educational institutions - workers' faculties that prepared illiterate proletarians and peasants for studying at universities. They existed until the mid-30s and were abolished as unnecessary.

In 1932, secondary education in the USSR became ten years and three stages:

• primary - from 1st to 4th grade;
• incomplete secondary - from 5th to 7th;
• middle - 10 classes.

During the Great Patriotic War, two types of specialized schools appeared in the USSR education system:

• Suvorov and Nakhimov schools, which trained applicants to higher military educational institutions;
• schools for working and rural youth, created so that workers could receive secondary education in the evening and by correspondence.

In 1958, the structure of secondary education changed: the first three became primary grades, the fourth to eighth grades became secondary, and the ninth and tenth grades became senior.

In the same year, the first technical schools opened, and factory apprenticeship schools (FZU), which trained skilled workers on the basis of primary education, were replaced by vocational schools (vocational schools), where one could enroll after 8 grades to acquire a labor specialty.

To provide support to single-parent, large and low-income families, a system of boarding schools was developed, in which children lived during the working week, studying as in a regular school, and were sent home on weekends. Extended day groups have been introduced in all secondary schools so that children without grandparents can stay at school after school until the evening, eating well and doing homework under the supervision of teachers.

The secondary education system in the USSR, reformed in 1958, remained unchanged until the collapse of the country and was recognized by many foreign authoritative educators as the best in the world.

Higher

The pinnacle of the education system in the Soviet Union is a complex of higher educational institutions that produced highly qualified and comprehensively developed specialists for every sphere of the national economy. More than eight hundred universities and institutes operated successfully in the country:

• polytechnics;
• agricultural;
• pedagogical;
• medical;
• legal;
• economic;
• arts and culture.

The institutes trained personnel mainly for industry, and the universities were mainly engaged in training specialists in the humanities and natural sciences.

Universities produced competent professionals and at the same time served as a base for scientific work, since they were equipped with research classes and laboratories where experiments were carried out and the development of production equipment and household appliances was carried out. Students actively participated in innovative activities, but their main activity was systematic study. Young people were paid a stipend, the amount of which depended on their academic performance and social work load.

In order to increase the accessibility of higher education to all segments of the population, the USSR began to use correspondence education for the first time in the world.

Despite the ideological nature of the education system in the USSR, its effectiveness, especially the quality of engineering and technical training, was noted even by political opponents of the Soviet Union.

In record time, illiteracy was eliminated and education became accessible to all.
There were many Nobel laureates and winners of international Olympiads. Soviet schoolchildren won international competitions, including in natural sciences.

The famous innovative teacher Viktor Shatalov said: “In the post-war years, the space industry arose in the USSR and the defense industry rose. All this could not have grown 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.

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 “build” anything and subsequently train a specialist in any field.

The key to quality education was the synchronization of acquired knowledge in different subjects. The facts learned by students in physics lessons echoed the information obtained in the study of chemistry and mathematics. Thus, new concepts and terms were introduced in parallel, which helped to structure knowledge and form a holistic picture of the world in children.

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:

1. 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 poor student 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.

2. 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 paternalism educated many Soviet scientists and teachers, who later became laureates of prestigious international awards.

3.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.

4. Emphasis 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 learning.

5. 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.

6. Financial support for students - scholarships amounted to almost a third of the country's average salary.

The combination of these factors generated a huge incentive to study, without which Soviet education would not have been so effective.

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 look up to. 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:
1. Encyclopedic knowledge achieved through comprehensive training and synchronization of information obtained as a result of studying various subjects.
2. The presence of a powerful incentive for children to study, thanks to paternalism and free extracurricular activities.
3. 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 a great country.

We will not touch upon the problem of the abundance of ideology and the subordination of the humanities to it. To criticize the ideological system of that time today is the same as criticizing the history of one’s country. Let's look at some disadvantages that can serve as invaluable experience for us.

1. 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 connection between the acquired knowledge and life. However, the lack of practical experience did not prevent us from raising great designers and engineers.

2. Low level of teaching foreign languages. 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 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.

3. Lack of access to foreign literature. The Iron Curtain created a situation in which citing foreign scientists in student and academic papers became not only shameful, but also dangerous. The lack of a fresh stream of information has given rise to some conservation of teaching methods. In this regard, in 1992, when Western trends became available, the school system seemed outdated and in need of reform.

4. 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.

But no matter how hard we try today to find the “fly in the ointment” in the Soviet education system, its advantages remain obvious. Perhaps the time will come when we will return to the experience of the USSR, mastering its positive aspects, taking into account modern requirements of society.

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