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Comparison and problems of the Soviet and modern education systems in Russia. The education system in the USSR Education in the Soviet school pluses and minuses

This topic is of interest not only to the expert community. On Internet forums, former graduates actively recall their school years, highlighting the pros and cons of Soviet education. To summarize the statements, people think the following about the Soviet school project:

pros- a solid theoretical base, versatility and encyclopedic knowledge, high pedagogical culture of teachers, the school provided not only education, but also upbringing;

minuses- lack of understanding of the connection between the acquired knowledge and everyday life, the prevalence of cramming over comprehension, the atmosphere of authoritarianism, the ideologization of humanitarian subjects, very poor training in foreign languages, the system did not focus on an independent search for knowledge.

Natural Science Profile

Physical and mathematical training in the Soviet school was really strong. Experts and graduates themselves agree on this. Zhores ALFEROV, Nobel laureate, graduate of Minsk secondary school No. 42, cites the following arguments: “When we first launched Sputnik in 1957, Kennedy said that “the Russians did not win with rockets, but at the school desk.” In the Soviet system of school education, as a result, serious education won with a very powerful part of the main subjects: language, literature, mathematics, physics, biology.

“In the post-war years, the space industry arose in the USSR, the defense industry rose. All this could not grow out of nothing. Everything was based on education. Therefore, it can be argued that our education was not bad, ”the physicist supports the opinion. knownteacher-innovatorVictorSHATALOV, but he sees the reason for the success of Soviet education in a somewhat different way: “The strength of our school was that a huge number of children “from the plow and the machine” went into science. The roads were open to anyone. But the relatively high level of our education lasted somewhere until the 60-70s, then the “undermining” began, - the teacher shared in an interview.

Belorussianscientist-physicistAlexander KULMINSK(graduated from school in 1978), today a professor at a university in the United States, believes that the Soviet school was strong in practice: “It provided a versatile education, developing curiosity and teaching to look more broadly at the world around us (of course, subject to some interest). The school definitely helped me in the development of a scientific career. School education allowed me to go to university without any external support, despite the fact that I studied at a regular high school in a small town. Comparing his education with modern school education in the United States, the scientist emphasizes that in American schools the student can choose the level of study of the subject in accordance with his desires and abilities, he has a great interest in learning, since much needs to be mastered independently during extracurricular time. This is a big plus, but this was not the case in the Soviet school. At the same time, in the United States, in order to get a school certificate, one must pass tests only in certain subjects chosen independently, which leads to a narrower education, ”the expert told AiF.

Some experts believe that the flow of strong mathematicians in Soviet schools is a merit not only of education, but also of the country's policy of mass involvement of children in chess.

Humanitarian component

Everything is much more complicated here. It is undeniable that the teaching of history and even literature was ideologized. For a long time, Platonov, Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, Mandelstam and others were not studied in the Soviet school, Kafka was secretly copied by hand, since there was one book for the whole city, in contrast to the huge circulation of works of socialist realism. Saved only by a powerful layer of classical literature. According to scientificleaderInstitutedevelopmenteducationHigherschoolseconomyRFIsakaFRUMIN, cultural canons based on Russian literary classics pulled people out of the swamp of ideology. They even tried to give a "clear direction" to scientific disciplines. DoctorhistoricalSciencesMichaelGELLER in Machine and Cogs. The History of the Formation of the Soviet Man” quotes the following from documents of 1977: “The study of the cycle of biological disciplines entails the belief in the absence of a divine principle in nature, helps to form a firm atheistic position.” It is clear that in this state of affairs, the skills of critical thinking - what is considered necessary today in the formation of an educated person - were not discussed in the Soviet school.

- If we talk about the ideology of education then and now, then the Soviet school had, of course, more lofty goals, but theory is one thing, and practice is another, - believes candidatepedagogicalSciences,docentSvetlanaSCHUMANN.- The school realizes the goals that the state sets before it. Today, this is “obtaining the material”, in the USSR the goal (ideology) was “the formation of a comprehensive, harmoniously developed personality”. Unfortunately, neither then, nor now, scientists, teachers, school teachers did not understand and do not understand exactly how to do this. Modern teachers are torn apart by contradictions: whether they should form a "dealer", "seller", or a Personality. But the economy is “made” by people. And if we want to eliminate the problems that exist in society, we must form a Personality out of each person.

It seems that with the latter we both had and still had problems.

CONNECTION OF TIMES

Soviet schoolchildren often won Olympiads. What is the picture today? According to official data, in 2014 at the International Mendeleev Chemistry Olympiad for schoolchildren, Belarusians received 1 gold, 5 silver and 1 bronze medals. At the International Mathematical Olympiad in Cape Town (South Africa), in which 560 schoolchildren from 101 countries took part, our children won five medals, at the Biology Olympiad in Bali (Indonesia), which brought together students from 61 countries, Belarusians won three medals: 1 silver and two bronze. Belarusian schoolchildren returned from the International Physics Olympiad in Astana (Kazakhstan) with four silver medals. Also, our students brought 4 medals from the Chemistry Olympiad in Hanoi (Vietnam), a silver and two bronze medals from the Olympiad in Informatics in Taipei (Taiwan), a silver medal from the Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics in Suceava (Romania).

FROM THE HISTORY

In 1918, the "Regulations on a unified labor school" was adopted. All the "attributes of the old school" were eliminated: exams, lessons, homework, studying Latin, student uniforms. The management of the school was transferred into the hands of the "school team", which included all the students and all school workers - from the teacher to the watchman. The word "teacher" was canceled: he became a "school worker" - "skrab". Direct leadership was carried out by the "school council", which included all the "skrabs", representatives of students (from the age of 12), the working population and the department of public education. In the 1930s, all experiments in the field of teaching methods and programs were curtailed and declared a “leftist deviation”, and the autonomy of the school was a “counter-revolutionary manifestation”.

Soviet education in certain circles is considered to be the best in the world. In the same circles, it is customary to consider the current generation as lost - they say, these young "victims of the Unified State Examination" cannot stand any comparison with us, the technical intellectuals who went through the crucible of Soviet schools ...

Of course, the truth lies far away from these stereotypes. A certificate of graduation from a Soviet school, if it is a sign of the quality of education, is only in the Soviet sense. Indeed, some people who studied in the USSR amaze us with the depth of their knowledge, but at the same time, many others no less amaze us with the depth of their ignorance. Not knowing Latin letters, not being able to add simple fractions, not physically understanding the simplest written texts - alas, for Soviet citizens this was a variant of the norm.

At the same time, Soviet schools also had undeniable advantages - for example, teachers then had the opportunity to freely give deuces and leave “not pulling” students for the second year. This whip created the mood necessary for study, which is so lacking now in many modern schools and universities.

Let's get right to the point of the post. A long overdue article on the pros and cons of Soviet education was created on the Patriot's Handbook by the efforts of a team of authors. I am publishing this article here and I ask you to join the discussion - and, if necessary, even supplement and correct the article directly on the Directory, since this is a wiki project that is available for editing to everyone:

This article examines the Soviet education system in terms of its advantages and disadvantages. The Soviet system followed the task of educating and shaping a personality worthy of realizing for future generations the main national idea of the Soviet Union - a bright communist future. This task was subordinated not only to the teaching of knowledge about nature, society and the state, but the education of patriotism, internationalism and morality.
== Pros (+) ==
Mass character. In Soviet times, for the first time in the history of Russia, almost universal literacy was achieved, close to 100%.
Of course, even in the era of the late USSR, many people of the older generation had only 3-4 grades of education behind them, because far from everyone was able to complete a full course of schooling due to the war, mass migrations, and the need to go to work early. However, virtually all citizens learned to read and write.
For mass education, one must also thank the tsarist government, which in the 20 pre-revolutionary years practically doubled the level of literacy in the country - by 1917, almost half of the population was literate. The Bolsheviks, as a result, received a huge number of literate and trained teachers, and they only had to double the proportion of literate people in the country for the second time, which they did.
Wide access to education for national and linguistic minorities. During the process of so-called indigenization, the Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 1930s. for the first time introduced education in the languages of many small peoples of Russia (often creating and introducing alphabets and writing for these languages along the way). Representatives of the outlying peoples got the opportunity to become literate, first in their native language, and then in Russian, which accelerated the elimination of illiteracy.
On the other hand, this very indigenization, which was partially curtailed in the late 1930s, managed to make a significant contribution to the future collapse of the USSR along national borders.
High availability for the majority of the population (universal free secondary education, very common higher education). In tsarist Russia, education was associated with class restrictions, although as its availability grew, these restrictions weakened and blurred, and by 1917, with money or special talents, representatives of any class could receive a good education. With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, class restrictions were finally lifted. Primary and then secondary education became universal, and the number of students in higher educational institutions increased many times over.
High motivation of students, respect of society for education. Young people in the USSR really wanted to study very much. Under Soviet conditions, when the right to private property was severely limited and entrepreneurial activity was practically suppressed (especially after the closure of artels under Khrushchev), getting an education was the main way to advance in life and start making good money. There were few alternatives: far from everyone had enough health for Stakhanov’s manual labor, and for a successful party or military career it was also necessary to improve their level of education (illiterate proletarians were recruited without looking back only in the first decade after the revolution).
Respect for the work of the teacher and teacher. At least until the 1960s and 1970s, while illiteracy was being eliminated in the USSR and the system of universal secondary education was being established, the teaching profession remained one of the most respected and in demand in society. Comparatively literate and capable people became teachers, moreover, they were motivated by the idea of bringing enlightenment to the masses. In addition, it was a real alternative to hard work on a collective farm or in production. A similar situation was in higher education, where, in addition, during the time of Stalin there were very good salaries (already under Khrushchev, however, the salaries of the intelligentsia were reduced to the level of workers and even lower). Songs were written about the school, films were made, many of which were included in the golden fund of national culture.
Relatively high level of initial training of students entering higher educational institutions. The number of students in the RSFSR at the end of the Soviet era was at least two times lower than in modern Russia, and the proportion of young people in the population was higher. Accordingly, with a similar population in the RSFSR and in the modern Russian Federation, the competition for each place in Soviet universities was twice as high as in modern Russian ones, and as a result, the contingent was recruited there with a better and more capable one. It is with this circumstance that the complaints of modern teachers about a sharp drop in the level of preparation of applicants and students are primarily associated.
Very high quality technical education. Soviet physics, astronomy, geography, geology, applied technical disciplines and, of course, mathematics, were without a doubt at the highest world level. The huge number of outstanding discoveries and technical inventions of the Soviet era speaks for itself, and the list of world-famous Soviet scientists and inventors looks very impressive. However, even here we must say special thanks to pre-revolutionary Russian science and higher education, which served as a solid foundation for all these achievements. But it is impossible not to admit that the Soviet Union succeeded - even despite the mass emigration of Russian scientists after the revolution - to fully revive, continue and develop at the highest level the domestic tradition in the field of technical thought, natural and exact sciences.
Satisfaction of the state's colossal demand for new personnel in the face of a sharp increase in industry, the army and science (thanks to large-scale state planning). In the course of mass industrialization in the USSR, several new branches of industry were created and the scale of production in all branches was significantly increased many times and dozens of times. Such impressive growth required the training of many specialists capable of working with the most modern technology. In addition, it was necessary to make up for significant losses of personnel as a result of revolutionary emigration, civil war, repressions and the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet education system successfully coped with the training of many millions of specialists in hundreds of specialties - thanks to this, the most important state tasks related to the country's survival were solved.
Relatively high scholarships. The average scholarship in the late USSR was 40 rubles, while the salary of an engineer was 130-150 rubles. That is, scholarships reached about 30% of salaries, which is much higher than in the case of modern scholarships, which are large enough only for honors students, graduate students and doctoral students.
Developed and free extracurricular education. In the USSR, there were thousands of palaces and houses of pioneers, stations for young technicians, young tourists and young naturalists, and many other circles. Unlike most of today's circles, sections and electives, Soviet extracurricular education was free.
The world's best sports education system. From the very beginning, the Soviet Union paid great attention to the development of physical culture and sports. If in the Russian Empire sports education was only in its infancy, then in the Soviet Union it reached the forefront in the world. The success of the Soviet sports system is clearly visible in the results at the Olympics: the Soviet team has consistently won first or second place in every Olympics since 1952, when the USSR began to participate in the international Olympic movement.
== Cons (−) ==
The low quality of liberal arts education due to ideological restrictions and clichés. Almost all the humanities and social disciplines in schools and universities of the USSR were to one degree or another loaded with Marxism-Leninism, and during the life of Stalin - also with Stalinism. The concept of teaching the history of Russia and even the history of the ancient world was based on the “Short Course in the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks”, according to which the entire world history was presented as a process of maturing the prerequisites for the 1917 revolution and the future building of a communist society. In the teaching of economics and politics, the main place was occupied by Marxist political economy, in the teaching of philosophy - by dialectical materialism. These directions in themselves are worthy of attention, however, they were declared the only true and correct ones, and all the others were declared either their predecessors or false directions. As a result, huge layers of humanitarian knowledge either completely fell out of the Soviet education system, or were presented in a dosed and exclusively critical way, as “bourgeois science”. Party history, political economy and diamat were compulsory subjects in Soviet universities, and in the late Soviet period they were among the least loved by students (as a rule, they were far from the main specialty, divorced from reality and at the same time relatively difficult, so their study is mainly came down to memorizing formulaic phrases and ideological formulations).
Blackening of history and distortion of moral guidelines. In the USSR, school and university teaching of history was characterized by denigration of the tsarist period in the history of the country, and in the early Soviet period this denigration was much more ambitious than the post-perestroika denigration of Soviet history. Many pre-revolutionary statesmen were declared "servants of tsarism", their names were deleted from history books or mentioned in a strictly negative context. Conversely, outright robbers, like Stenka Razin, were declared "people's heroes", and terrorists, like the murderers of Alexander II, were called "freedom fighters" and "advanced people." In the Soviet concept of world history, a lot of attention was paid to all kinds of oppression of slaves and peasants, all kinds of uprisings and rebellions (of course, these are also important topics, but by no means less important than the history of technology and military affairs, geopolitical and dynastic history, etc.) . The concept of "class struggle" was implanted, according to which representatives of the "exploiting classes" were to be persecuted or even destroyed. From 1917 to 1934 history was not taught in universities at all, all historical departments were closed, traditional patriotism was condemned as “great power” and “chauvinism”, and instead “proletarian internationalism” was implanted. Then Stalin abruptly changed course towards the revival of patriotism and returned history to universities, however, the negative consequences of post-revolutionary denial and distortion of historical memory are still felt: many historical heroes were forgotten, for several generations of people the perception of history was sharply torn into periods before the revolution and after, many good traditions have been lost.
The negative impact of ideology and political struggle on academic staff and individual disciplines. As a result of the revolution and civil war in 1918-1924. about 2 million people were forced to emigrate from the RSFSR (the so-called white emigration), and most of the emigrants were representatives of the most educated segments of the population, including an extremely large number of scientists, engineers and teachers who emigrated. According to some estimates, about three-quarters of Russian scientists and engineers died or emigrated during that period. However, already before the First World War, Russia ranked first in Europe in terms of the number of students in universities, so there were a lot of specialists trained in tsarist times in the country (although, for the most part, quite young specialists). Thanks to this, the acute shortage of teaching staff that arose in the USSR was successfully filled in most industries by the end of the 1920s (partly due to an increase in the load on the remaining teachers, but mainly due to the enhanced training of new ones). Subsequently, however, the Soviet scientific and teaching staff were seriously weakened during the repressions and ideological campaigns carried out by the Soviet authorities. The persecution of genetics is widely known, due to which Russia, which at the beginning of the 20th century was one of the world leaders in biological science, by the end of the 20th century moved into the category of lagging behind. Due to the introduction of ideological struggle into science, many prominent scientists of the humanities and social areas suffered (historians, philosophers and economists of a non-Marxist persuasion; linguists who participated in discussions on Marrism, as well as Slavists; Byzantologists and theologians; Orientalists - many of them were shot on false charges spying on Japan or other countries because of their professional connections), but representatives of the natural and exact sciences also suffered (the case of the mathematician Luzin, the Pulkovo case of astronomers, the Krasnoyarsk case of geologists). As a result of these events, entire scientific schools were lost or suppressed, and in many areas there was a noticeable lag behind world science. The culture of scientific discussion was excessively ideologized and politicized, which, of course, had a negative impact on education.
Restrictions on access to higher education for certain groups of the population. In fact, the opportunities to receive higher education in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s were almost non-existent. the so-called dispossessed were deprived, including private merchants, entrepreneurs (using hired labor), representatives of the clergy, and former policemen. Children from families of nobles, merchants, clergy often faced obstacles when trying to get a higher education in the pre-war period. In the union republics of the USSR, preferences for admission to universities were received by representatives of titular nationalities. In the post-war period, the percentage rate for admission to the most prestigious universities was tacitly introduced in relation to Jews.
Restrictions on acquaintance with foreign scientific literature, restrictions on international communication of scientists. If in the 1920s In Soviet science, pre-revolutionary practice continued, involving very long business trips and internships for scientists and the best students, constant participation in international conferences, free correspondence and unlimited flow of foreign scientific literature, then in the 1930s. the situation began to change for the worse. Especially in the period after 1937 and before the war, having foreign connections became simply dangerous for the lives and careers of scientists, since so many were then arrested on trumped-up charges of espionage. In the late 1940s in the course of the ideological campaign against cosmopolitanism, it came to the point that references to the works of foreign authors began to be regarded as a manifestation of "cow-worship before the West", and many were forced to accompany such references with criticism and stereotyped condemnation of "bourgeois science". The desire to publish in foreign journals was also condemned, and, most unpleasantly, almost half of the world's leading scientific journals, including publications like Science and Nature, were removed from the public domain and sent to special safekeeping. This “turned into the hands of the most mediocre and unprincipled scientists”, for whom “mass separation from foreign literature made it easier to use it for covert plagiarism and pass it off as original research.” As a result, in the middle of the 20th century, Soviet science, and after it education, in conditions of limited external relations, they began to fall out of the global process and "stew in their own juice": it became much more difficult to distinguish world-class scientists from compilers, plagiarists and pseudoscientists, many achievements of Western science remained unknown or little known in the USSR. » Soviet science has been corrected only partially, as a result, there is still a problem of low citation of Russian scientists abroad and insufficient familiarity with advanced foreign research.
Relatively low quality of teaching foreign languages. If in the West in the post-war period the practice of attracting foreigners - native speakers to teaching, as well as the practice of large-scale student exchange, in which students could live in another country for several months and learn the spoken language in the best possible way, was established, then the Soviet Union lagged far behind in the teaching of foreign languages from -for the closed borders and the almost complete absence of emigration from the West to the USSR. Also, for censorship reasons, the flow of foreign literature, films, and recordings of songs to the Soviet Union was limited, which did not at all contribute to the study of foreign languages. Compared to the USSR, in modern Russia there are much more opportunities for learning languages.
Ideological censorship, autarky and stagnation in art education in the late USSR. Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and the early USSR were among the world leaders and trendsetters in the field of artistic culture. Avant-garde painting, constructivism, futurism, Russian ballet, the Stanislavsky system, the art of film editing - this and much more aroused admiration from the whole world. However, by the end of the 1930s. the variety of styles and trends was replaced by the dominance of socialist realism imposed from above - in itself it was a very worthy and interesting style, but the problem was the artificial suppression of alternatives. Reliance on their own traditions was proclaimed, while attempts at new experiments began in many cases to be condemned (“Muddle instead of music”), and borrowings from Western cultural techniques were subjected to restrictions and persecution, as in the case of jazz, and then rock music. Indeed, experiments and borrowings were not successful in all cases, but the scale of condemnation and restrictions were so inadequate that this led to the discouragement of innovation in art and the gradual loss of world cultural leadership by the Soviet Union, as well as the emergence of an "underground culture" in the USSR.
Degradation of education in the field of architecture, design, urban planning. During the period of Khrushchev's "fight against architectural excesses" the entire system of architectural education, design and construction was seriously affected. In 1956, the Academy of Architecture of the USSR was reorganized and renamed the Academy of Construction and Architecture of the USSR, and in 1963 it was completely closed (until 1989). As a result, the era of the late USSR became a time of decline in design and a growing crisis in the field of architecture and the urban environment. The architectural tradition was interrupted and was replaced by the soulless construction of microdistricts inconvenient for life; instead of a “bright future”, a “gray present” was built in the USSR.
Cancellation of teaching of fundamental classical disciplines. In the Soviet Union, such an important subject as logic was excluded from the school curriculum (it was studied in pre-revolutionary gymnasiums). Logic was returned to the program and a textbook was released only in 1947, but in 1955 it was removed again, and, with the exception of physics and mathematics lyceums and other elite schools, logic is still not taught to schoolchildren in Russia. Meanwhile, logic is one of the foundations of the scientific method and one of the most important subjects that gives skills to distinguish between truth and falsehood, to conduct discussions and resist manipulation. Another important difference between the Soviet school curriculum and the pre-revolutionary gymnasium was the abolition of the teaching of Latin and Greek. Knowledge of these ancient languages may seem useless only at first glance, because almost all modern scientific terminology, medical and biological nomenclature, and mathematical notation are built on them; in addition, the study of these languages is a good gymnastics for the mind and helps to develop the skills of discussion. Several generations of prominent Russian scientists and writers who worked before the revolution and in the first decades of the USSR were brought up in the tradition of classical education, which included the study of logic, Latin and Greek, and the almost complete rejection of all this hardly had a positive effect on education in the USSR and Russia.
Problems with the education of moral values, partial loss of the educational role of education. The best Soviet teachers have always insisted that the goal of education is not only the transfer of knowledge and skills, but also the upbringing of a moral, cultured person. In many ways, this task was successfully solved in the early USSR - then it was possible to solve the problem of mass child homelessness and juvenile delinquency that developed after the civil war; managed to raise the cultural level of significant masses of the population. However, in some respects, Soviet education not only failed to educate morality, but in some ways even exacerbated the problem. Many educational institutions of pre-revolutionary Russia, including church education and institutions for noble maidens, directly set themselves the main task of educating a moral person and preparing him either for the role of a spouse in the family, or for the role of a “brother” or “sister” in the community of believers. Under Soviet rule, all such institutions were closed, specialized analogues were not created for them, the education of morality was entrusted to an ordinary mass school, separating it from religion, which was replaced by propaganda of atheism. The moral goal of Soviet education was no longer the education of a worthy member of the family and community, as it was before, but the education of a member of the working collective. For the accelerated development of industry and science, perhaps this was not bad. However, such an approach could hardly solve the problems of a high level of abortions (for the first time in the world legalized in the USSR), a high level of divorces and a general degradation of family values, a sharp transition to having few children, growing mass alcoholism and extremely low life expectancy for men in the late USSR by world standards.
Almost complete elimination of home education. Many outstanding figures of Russian history and culture received home education instead of school, which proves that such education can be very effective. Of course, this form of education is not available to everyone, but either to relatively wealthy people who can hire teachers, or simply to intelligent and educated people who can devote a lot of time to their children and personally go through the school curriculum with them. However, after the revolution, home education in the USSR was by no means encouraged (largely for ideological reasons). The system of external studies in the USSR was introduced in 1935, but for a long time it was designed almost exclusively for adults, and a full-fledged opportunity for external education for schoolchildren was introduced only in 1985-1991.
Non-alternative co-education for boys and girls. One of the dubious Soviet innovations in education was the compulsory joint education of boys and girls instead of pre-revolutionary separate education. At that time, this step was justified by the struggle for women's rights, the lack of staff and facilities for the organization of separate schools, as well as the widespread practice of co-education in some of the leading countries of the world, including the United States. However, the latest research in the same US shows that separate education improves student outcomes by 10-20%. Everything is quite simple: in joint schools, boys and girls are distracted by each other, there are noticeably more conflicts and incidents; boys, up to the last grades of school, lag behind girls of the same age in learning, 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, self-esteem of adolescents is more dependent on academic performance, and not on some other things. Interestingly, in 1943, separate education for boys and girls was introduced in the cities, which, after the death of Stalin, was again eliminated in 1954.
The system of orphanages in the late USSR. While in Western countries in the middle of the 20th century they began to massively close orphanages and place orphans in families (this process was generally completed by 1980), in the USSR the system of orphanages was not only preserved, but even degraded. compared to pre-war times. Indeed, during the struggle against homelessness in the 1920s, according to the ideas of Makarenko and other teachers, labor became the main element in the re-education of former homeless children, while the pupils of labor communes were given the opportunity to self-government, in order to develop skills of independence and socialization. This technique gave excellent results, especially considering that before the revolution, civil war and famine, most homeless children still had some experience of family life. However, later, due to the prohibition of child labor, this system was abandoned in the USSR. By 1990, there were 564 orphanages in the USSR, the level of socialization of orphanage residents was low, and many former orphanage children fell into the ranks of criminals and outcasts. In the 1990s the number of orphanages in Russia almost tripled, but in the second half of the 2000s, the process of their liquidation began, and in the 2010s. it is close to completion.
Degradation of the system of secondary vocational education in the late USSR. Although in the USSR they extolled the worker in every way and promoted working professions, by the 1970s. The system of secondary vocational education in the country began to clearly degrade. “If you study poorly at school, you will go to vocational school!” (vocational technical school) - something like this parents said to negligent schoolchildren. In vocational schools they took poor and triple students who did not enter universities, forcibly placed juvenile criminals there, and all this against the background of a comparative surplus of specialist workers and poor development of the service sector due to the lack of developed entrepreneurship (that is, alternatives in employment, as now, then there were no It was). Cultural and educational work in vocational schools turned out to be poorly organized, students of “vocational schools” became associated with hooliganism, drunkenness and a general low level of development. The negative image of vocational education in working specialties persists in Russia to this day, although qualified turners, locksmiths, millers, plumbers are now among the highly paid professions, whose representatives are in short supply.
Insufficient education of critical thinking among citizens, excessive unification and paternalism. Education, as well as the media and Soviet culture in general, instilled in citizens faith in a powerful and wise party that leads everyone, cannot lie or make major mistakes. Of course, faith in the strength of one's people and state is an important and necessary thing, but in order to support this faith, one cannot go too far, systematically hush up the truth and severely suppress alternative opinions. As a result, when during the years of perestroika and glasnost, these very alternative opinions were given freedom, when previously hushed up facts about the history and modern problems of the country began to massively emerge, huge masses of citizens felt deceived, lost confidence in the state and in everything that they were taught in school in many humanities. Finally, citizens were unable to resist outright lies, myths and media manipulation, which ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR and the deep degradation of society and the economy in the 1990s. Alas, the Soviet educational and social system failed to bring up a sufficient level of caution, critical thinking, tolerance for alternative opinions, and a culture of discussion. Also, the education of the late Soviet model did not help to instill in citizens sufficient independence, the desire to personally solve their problems, and not wait until the state or someone else does it for you. All this had to be learned from the bitter post-Soviet experience.
== Conclusions (−) ==
In assessing the Soviet education system, it is difficult to come to a single and exhaustive conclusion due to its inconsistency.
Positive points:
The final eradication of illiteracy and the provision of universal secondary education
- World leadership in the field of higher technical education, in natural and exact sciences.
- The key role of education in ensuring industrialization, victory in the Great Patriotic War and scientific and technological achievements in the post-war period.
- High prestige and respect for the teaching profession, a high level of motivation of teachers and students.
- High level of development of sports education, wide promotion of sports activities.
- The emphasis on technical education made it possible to solve the most important tasks for the Soviet state.
Negative points:
Lagging behind the West in the field of liberal arts education due to the negative influence of ideology and the foreign policy situation. The teaching of history, economics and foreign languages was particularly hard hit.
- Excessive unification and centralization of school and, to a lesser extent, university education, coupled with its small contacts with the outside world. This led to the loss of many successful pre-revolutionary practices and to a growing lag behind foreign science in a number of areas.
- Direct guilt in the degradation of family values and the general decline in morals in the late USSR, which led to negative trends in the development of demography and social relations.
- Insufficient education of critical thinking among citizens, which led to the inability of society to effectively resist manipulation during the information war.
- Art education suffered from censorship and high ideological content, as well as from obstacles to mastering foreign techniques; one of the most important consequences of this is the decline of design, architecture and urban planning in the late USSR.
- That is, in its humanitarian aspect, the Soviet education system ultimately not only failed to solve the key tasks of preserving and strengthening the state, but also became one of the factors in the moral, demographic and social decline of the country. Which, however, does not negate the impressive achievements of the USSR in the field of the humanities and arts.

PS. By the way, about logic. A textbook of logic, as well as other entertaining materials on the art of civilized discussion, can be found here.

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This article examines the Soviet education system in terms of its advantages and disadvantages. The Soviet system followed the task of educating and shaping a personality worthy of realizing for future generations the main national idea of the Soviet Union - a bright communist future. This task was subordinated not only to the teaching of knowledge about nature, society and the state, but the education of patriotism, internationalism and morality.
== Pros (+) ==
Mass character. In Soviet times, for the first time in the history of Russia, almost universal literacy was achieved, close to 100%.
Of course, even in the era of the late USSR, many people of the older generation had only 3-4 grades of education behind them, because far from everyone was able to complete a full course of schooling due to the war, mass migrations, and the need to go to work early. However, virtually all citizens learned to read and write.
For mass education, one must also thank the tsarist government, which in the 20 pre-revolutionary years practically doubled the level of literacy in the country - by 1917, almost half of the population was literate. The Bolsheviks, as a result, received a huge number of literate and trained teachers, and they only had to double the proportion of literate people in the country for the second time, which they did.
Wide access to education for national and linguistic minorities. During the process of so-called indigenization, the Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 1930s. for the first time introduced education in the languages of many small peoples of Russia (often creating and introducing alphabets and writing for these languages along the way). Representatives of the outlying peoples got the opportunity to become literate, first in their native language, and then in Russian, which accelerated the elimination of illiteracy.
On the other hand, this very indigenization, which was partially curtailed in the late 1930s, managed to make a significant contribution to the future collapse of the USSR along national borders.
High availability for the majority of the population (universal free secondary education, very common higher education). In tsarist Russia, education was associated with class restrictions, although as its availability grew, these restrictions weakened and blurred, and by 1917, with money or special talents, representatives of any class could receive a good education. With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, class restrictions were finally lifted. Primary and then secondary education became universal, and the number of students in higher educational institutions increased many times over.
High motivation of students, respect of society for education. Young people in the USSR really wanted to study very much. Under Soviet conditions, when the right to private property was severely limited and entrepreneurial activity was practically suppressed (especially after the closure of artels under Khrushchev), getting an education was the main way to advance in life and start making good money. There were few alternatives: far from everyone had enough health for Stakhanov’s manual labor, and for a successful party or military career it was also necessary to improve their level of education (illiterate proletarians were recruited without looking back only in the first decade after the revolution).
Respect for the work of the teacher and teacher. At least until the 1960s and 1970s, while illiteracy was being eliminated in the USSR and the system of universal secondary education was being established, the teaching profession remained one of the most respected and in demand in society. Comparatively literate and capable people became teachers, moreover, they were motivated by the idea of bringing enlightenment to the masses. In addition, it was a real alternative to hard work on a collective farm or in production. A similar situation was in higher education, where, in addition, during the time of Stalin there were very good salaries (already under Khrushchev, however, the salaries of the intelligentsia were reduced to the level of workers and even lower). Songs were written about the school, films were made, many of which were included in the golden fund of national culture.
Relatively high level of initial training of students entering higher educational institutions. The number of students in the RSFSR at the end of the Soviet era was at least two times lower than in modern Russia, and the proportion of young people in the population was higher. Accordingly, with a similar population in the RSFSR and in the modern Russian Federation, the competition for each place in Soviet universities was twice as high as in modern Russian ones, and as a result, the contingent was recruited there with a better and more capable one. It is with this circumstance that the complaints of modern teachers about a sharp drop in the level of preparation of applicants and students are primarily associated.
Very high quality technical education. Soviet physics, astronomy, geography, geology, applied technical disciplines and, of course, mathematics, were without a doubt at the highest world level. The huge number of outstanding discoveries and technical inventions of the Soviet era speaks for itself, and the list of world-famous Soviet scientists and inventors looks very impressive. However, even here we must say special thanks to pre-revolutionary Russian science and higher education, which served as a solid foundation for all these achievements. But it is impossible not to admit that the Soviet Union succeeded - even despite the mass emigration of Russian scientists after the revolution - to fully revive, continue and develop at the highest level the domestic tradition in the field of technical thought, natural and exact sciences.
Satisfaction of the state's colossal demand for new personnel in the face of a sharp increase in industry, the army and science (thanks to large-scale state planning). In the course of mass industrialization in the USSR, several new branches of industry were created and the scale of production in all branches was significantly increased many times and dozens of times. Such impressive growth required the training of many specialists capable of working with the most modern technology. In addition, it was necessary to make up for significant losses of personnel as a result of revolutionary emigration, civil war, repressions and the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet education system successfully coped with the training of many millions of specialists in hundreds of specialties - thanks to this, the most important state tasks related to the country's survival were solved.
Relatively high scholarships. The average scholarship in the late USSR was 40 rubles, while the salary of an engineer was 130-150 rubles. That is, scholarships reached about 30% of salaries, which is much higher than in the case of modern scholarships, which are large enough only for honors students, graduate students and doctoral students.
Developed and free extracurricular education. In the USSR, there were thousands of palaces and houses of pioneers, stations for young technicians, young tourists and young naturalists, and many other circles. Unlike most of today's circles, sections and electives, Soviet extracurricular education was free.
The world's best sports education system. From the very beginning, the Soviet Union paid great attention to the development of physical culture and sports. If in the Russian Empire sports education was only in its infancy, then in the Soviet Union it reached the forefront in the world. The success of the Soviet sports system is clearly visible in the results at the Olympics: the Soviet team has consistently won first or second place in every Olympics since 1952, when the USSR began to participate in the international Olympic movement.
== Cons (−) ==
The low quality of liberal arts education due to ideological restrictions and clichés. Almost all the humanities and social disciplines in schools and universities of the USSR were to one degree or another loaded with Marxism-Leninism, and during the life of Stalin - also with Stalinism. The concept of teaching the history of Russia and even the history of the ancient world was based on the “Short Course in the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks”, according to which the entire world history was presented as a process of maturing the prerequisites for the 1917 revolution and the future building of a communist society. In the teaching of economics and politics, the main place was occupied by Marxist political economy, in the teaching of philosophy - by dialectical materialism. These directions in themselves are worthy of attention, however, they were declared the only true and correct ones, and all the others were declared either their predecessors or false directions. As a result, huge layers of humanitarian knowledge either completely fell out of the Soviet education system, or were presented in a dosed and exclusively critical way, as “bourgeois science”. Party history, political economy and diamat were compulsory subjects in Soviet universities, and in the late Soviet period they were among the least loved by students (as a rule, they were far from the main specialty, divorced from reality and at the same time relatively difficult, so their study is mainly came down to memorizing formulaic phrases and ideological formulations).
Blackening of history and distortion of moral guidelines. In the USSR, school and university teaching of history was characterized by denigration of the tsarist period in the history of the country, and in the early Soviet period this denigration was much more ambitious than the post-perestroika denigration of Soviet history. Many pre-revolutionary statesmen were declared "servants of tsarism", their names were deleted from history books or mentioned in a strictly negative context. Conversely, outright robbers, like Stenka Razin, were declared "people's heroes", and terrorists, like the murderers of Alexander II, were called "freedom fighters" and "advanced people." In the Soviet concept of world history, a lot of attention was paid to all kinds of oppression of slaves and peasants, all kinds of uprisings and rebellions (of course, these are also important topics, but by no means less important than the history of technology and military affairs, geopolitical and dynastic history, etc.) . The concept of "class struggle" was implanted, according to which representatives of the "exploiting classes" were to be persecuted or even destroyed. From 1917 to 1934 history was not taught in universities at all, all historical departments were closed, traditional patriotism was condemned as “great power” and “chauvinism”, and instead “proletarian internationalism” was implanted. Then Stalin abruptly changed course towards the revival of patriotism and returned history to universities, however, the negative consequences of post-revolutionary denial and distortion of historical memory are still felt: many historical heroes were forgotten, for several generations of people the perception of history was sharply torn into periods before the revolution and after, many good traditions have been lost.
The negative impact of ideology and political struggle on academic staff and individual disciplines. As a result of the revolution and civil war in 1918-1924. about 2 million people were forced to emigrate from the RSFSR (the so-called white emigration), and most of the emigrants were representatives of the most educated segments of the population, including an extremely large number of scientists, engineers and teachers who emigrated. According to some estimates, about three-quarters of Russian scientists and engineers died or emigrated during that period. However, already before the First World War, Russia ranked first in Europe in terms of the number of students in universities, so there were a lot of specialists trained in tsarist times in the country (although, for the most part, quite young specialists). Thanks to this, the acute shortage of teaching staff that arose in the USSR was successfully filled in most industries by the end of the 1920s (partly due to an increase in the load on the remaining teachers, but mainly due to the enhanced training of new ones). Subsequently, however, the Soviet scientific and teaching staff were seriously weakened during the repressions and ideological campaigns carried out by the Soviet authorities. The persecution of genetics is widely known, because of which Russia, which at the beginning of the 20th century was one of the world leaders in biological science, by the end of the 20th century moved into the category of lagging behind. Due to the introduction of ideological struggle into science, many prominent scientists of the humanities and social areas suffered (historians, philosophers and economists of a non-Marxist persuasion; linguists who participated in discussions on Marrism, as well as Slavists; Byzantologists and theologians; Orientalists - many of them were shot on false charges spying on Japan or other countries because of their professional connections), but representatives of the natural and exact sciences also suffered (the case of the mathematician Luzin, the Pulkovo case of astronomers, the Krasnoyarsk case of geologists). As a result of these events, entire scientific schools were lost or suppressed, and in many areas there was a noticeable lag behind world science. The culture of scientific discussion was excessively ideologized and politicized, which, of course, had a negative impact on education.
Restrictions on access to higher education for certain groups of the population. In fact, the opportunities to receive higher education in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s were almost non-existent. the so-called dispossessed were deprived, including private merchants, entrepreneurs (using wage labor), representatives of the clergy, and former policemen. Children from families of nobles, merchants, clergy often faced obstacles when trying to get a higher education in the pre-war period. In the union republics of the USSR, preferences for admission to universities were received by representatives of titular nationalities. In the post-war period, the percentage rate for admission to the most prestigious universities was tacitly introduced in relation to Jews.
Restrictions on acquaintance with foreign scientific literature, restrictions on international communication of scientists. If in the 1920s In Soviet science, pre-revolutionary practice continued, involving very long business trips and internships for scientists and the best students, constant participation in international conferences, free correspondence and unlimited flow of foreign scientific literature, then in the 1930s. the situation began to change for the worse. Especially in the period after 1937 and before the war, having foreign connections became simply dangerous for the lives and careers of scientists, since so many were then arrested on trumped-up charges of espionage. In the late 1940s in the course of the ideological campaign against cosmopolitanism, it came to the point that references to the works of foreign authors began to be regarded as a manifestation of "cow-worship before the West", and many were forced to accompany such references with criticism and stereotyped condemnation of "bourgeois science". The desire to publish in foreign journals was also condemned, and, most unpleasantly, almost half of the world's leading scientific journals, including publications like Science and Nature, were removed from the public domain and sent to special safekeeping. This “turned into the hands of the most mediocre and unprincipled scientists”, for whom “mass separation from foreign literature made it easier to use it for covert plagiarism and pass it off as original research.” As a result, in the middle of the 20th century, Soviet science, and after it education, in conditions of limited external relations, they began to fall out of the global process and "stew in their own juice": it became much more difficult to distinguish world-class scientists from compilers, plagiarists and pseudoscientists, many achievements of Western science remained unknown or little known in the USSR. » Soviet science has been corrected only partially, as a result, there is still a problem of low citation of Russian scientists abroad and insufficient familiarity with advanced foreign research.
Relatively low quality of teaching foreign languages. If in the West in the post-war period the practice of attracting foreigners - native speakers to teaching, as well as the practice of large-scale student exchange, in which students could live in another country for several months and learn the spoken language in the best possible way, was established, then the Soviet Union lagged far behind in the teaching of foreign languages from -for the closed borders and the almost complete absence of emigration from the West to the USSR. Also, for censorship reasons, the flow of foreign literature, films, and recordings of songs to the Soviet Union was limited, which did not at all contribute to the study of foreign languages. Compared to the USSR, in modern Russia there are much more opportunities for learning languages.
Ideological censorship, autarky and stagnation in art education in the late USSR. Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and the early USSR were among the world leaders and trendsetters in the field of artistic culture. Avant-garde painting, constructivism, futurism, Russian ballet, the Stanislavsky system, the art of film editing - this and much more aroused admiration from the whole world. However, by the end of the 1930s. the variety of styles and trends was replaced by the dominance of socialist realism imposed from above - in itself it was a very worthy and interesting style, but the problem was the artificial suppression of alternatives. Reliance on their own traditions was proclaimed, while attempts at new experiments began in many cases to be condemned (“Muddle instead of music”), and borrowings from Western cultural techniques were subjected to restrictions and persecution, as in the case of jazz, and then rock music. Indeed, experiments and borrowings were not successful in all cases, but the scale of condemnation and restrictions were so inadequate that this led to the discouragement of innovation in art and the gradual loss of world cultural leadership by the Soviet Union, as well as the emergence of an "underground culture" in the USSR.
Degradation of education in the field of architecture, design, urban planning. During the period of Khrushchev's "fight against architectural excesses" the entire system of architectural education, design and construction was seriously affected. In 1956, the Academy of Architecture of the USSR was reorganized and renamed the Academy of Construction and Architecture of the USSR, and in 1963 it was completely closed (until 1989). As a result, the era of the late USSR became a time of decline in design and a growing crisis in the field of architecture and the urban environment. The architectural tradition was interrupted and was replaced by the soulless construction of microdistricts inconvenient for life; instead of a “bright future”, a “gray present” was built in the USSR.
Cancellation of teaching of fundamental classical disciplines. In the Soviet Union, such an important subject as logic was excluded from the school curriculum (it was studied in pre-revolutionary gymnasiums). Logic was returned to the program and a textbook was released only in 1947, but in 1955 it was removed again, and, with the exception of physics and mathematics lyceums and other elite schools, logic is still not taught to schoolchildren in Russia. Meanwhile, logic is one of the foundations of the scientific method and one of the most important subjects that gives skills to distinguish between truth and falsehood, to conduct discussions and resist manipulation. Another important difference between the Soviet school curriculum and the pre-revolutionary gymnasium was the abolition of the teaching of Latin and Greek. Knowledge of these ancient languages may seem useless only at first glance, because almost all modern scientific terminology, medical and biological nomenclature, and mathematical notation are built on them; in addition, the study of these languages is a good gymnastics for the mind and helps to develop the skills of discussion. Several generations of prominent Russian scientists and writers who worked before the revolution and in the first decades of the USSR were brought up in the tradition of classical education, which included the study of logic, Latin and Greek, and the almost complete rejection of all this hardly had a positive effect on education in the USSR and Russia.
Problems with the education of moral values, partial loss of the educational role of education. The best Soviet teachers have always insisted that the goal of education is not only the transfer of knowledge and skills, but also the upbringing of a moral, cultured person. In many ways, this task was successfully solved in the early USSR - then it was possible to solve the problem of mass child homelessness and juvenile delinquency that developed after the civil war; managed to raise the cultural level of significant masses of the population. However, in some respects, Soviet education not only failed to educate morality, but in some ways even exacerbated the problem. Many educational institutions of pre-revolutionary Russia, including church education and institutions for noble maidens, directly set themselves the main task of educating a moral person and preparing him either for the role of a spouse in the family, or for the role of a “brother” or “sister” in the community of believers. Under Soviet rule, all such institutions were closed, specialized analogues were not created for them, the education of morality was entrusted to an ordinary mass school, separating it from religion, which was replaced by propaganda of atheism. The moral goal of Soviet education was no longer the education of a worthy member of the family and community, as it was before, but the education of a member of the working collective. For the accelerated development of industry and science, perhaps this was not bad. However, such an approach could hardly solve the problems of the high level of abortions (for the first time in the world legalized in the USSR), the high level of divorces and the general degradation of family values, the sharp transition to having few children, the growing mass alcoholism and the extremely low life expectancy of men in the late USSR by world standards.
Almost complete elimination of home education. Many outstanding figures of Russian history and culture received home education instead of school, which proves that such education can be very effective. Of course, this form of education is not available to everyone, but either to relatively wealthy people who can hire teachers, or simply to intelligent and educated people who can devote a lot of time to their children and personally go through the school curriculum with them. However, after the revolution, home education in the USSR was by no means encouraged (largely for ideological reasons). The system of external studies in the USSR was introduced in 1935, but for a long time it was designed almost exclusively for adults, and a full-fledged opportunity for external education for schoolchildren was introduced only in 1985-1991.
Non-alternative co-education for boys and girls. One of the dubious Soviet innovations in education was the compulsory joint education of boys and girls instead of pre-revolutionary separate education. At that time, this step was justified by the struggle for women's rights, the lack of staff and facilities for the organization of separate schools, as well as the widespread practice of co-education in some of the leading countries of the world, including the United States. However, the latest research in the same US shows that separate education improves student outcomes by 10-20%. Everything is quite simple: in joint schools, boys and girls are distracted by each other, there are noticeably more conflicts and incidents; boys, up to the last grades of school, lag behind girls of the same age in learning, 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, self-esteem of adolescents is more dependent on academic performance, and not on some other things. Interestingly, in 1943, separate education for boys and girls was introduced in the cities, which, after the death of Stalin, was again eliminated in 1954.
The system of orphanages in the late USSR. While in Western countries in the middle of the 20th century they began to massively close orphanages and place orphans in families (this process was generally completed by 1980), in the USSR the system of orphanages was not only preserved, but even degraded. compared to pre-war times. Indeed, during the struggle against homelessness in the 1920s, according to the ideas of Makarenko and other teachers, labor became the main element in the re-education of former homeless children, while the pupils of labor communes were given the opportunity to self-government, in order to develop skills of independence and socialization. This technique gave excellent results, especially considering that before the revolution, civil war and famine, most homeless children still had some experience of family life. However, later, due to the prohibition of child labor, this system was abandoned in the USSR. By 1990, there were 564 orphanages in the USSR, the level of socialization of orphanage residents was low, and many former orphanage residents fell into the ranks of criminals and outcasts. In the 1990s the number of orphanages in Russia almost tripled, but in the second half of the 2000s, the process of their liquidation began, and in the 2010s. it is close to completion.
Degradation of the system of secondary vocational education in the late USSR. Although in the USSR they extolled the worker in every way and promoted working professions, by the 1970s. The system of secondary vocational education in the country began to clearly degrade. “If you study poorly at school, you will go to vocational school!” (vocational technical school) - something like this parents said to negligent schoolchildren. In vocational schools they took poor and triple students who did not enter universities, forcibly placed juvenile criminals there, and all this against the background of a comparative surplus of specialist workers and poor development of the service sector due to the lack of developed entrepreneurship (that is, alternatives in employment, as now, then there were no It was). Cultural and educational work in vocational schools turned out to be poorly organized, students of “vocational schools” became associated with hooliganism, drunkenness and a general low level of development. The negative image of vocational education in working specialties persists in Russia to this day, although qualified turners, locksmiths, millers, plumbers are now among the highly paid professions, whose representatives are in short supply.
Insufficient education of critical thinking among citizens, excessive unification and paternalism. Education, as well as the media and Soviet culture in general, instilled in citizens faith in a powerful and wise party that leads everyone, cannot lie or make major mistakes. Of course, faith in the strength of one's people and state is an important and necessary thing, but in order to support this faith, one cannot go too far, systematically hush up the truth and severely suppress alternative opinions. As a result, when during the years of perestroika and glasnost, these very alternative opinions were given freedom, when previously hushed up facts about the history and modern problems of the country began to massively emerge, huge masses of citizens felt deceived, lost confidence in the state and in everything that they were taught in school in many humanities. Finally, citizens were unable to resist outright lies, myths and media manipulation, which ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR and the deep degradation of society and the economy in the 1990s. Alas, the Soviet educational and social system failed to bring up a sufficient level of caution, critical thinking, tolerance for alternative opinions, and a culture of discussion. Also, the education of the late Soviet model did not help to instill in citizens sufficient independence, the desire to personally solve their problems, and not wait until the state or someone else does it for you. All this had to be learned from the bitter post-Soviet experience.
== Conclusions (−) ==
In assessing the Soviet education system, it is difficult to come to a single and exhaustive conclusion due to its inconsistency.
Positive points:
The final eradication of illiteracy and the provision of universal secondary education
- World leadership in the field of higher technical education, in natural and exact sciences.
- The key role of education in ensuring industrialization, victory in the Great Patriotic War and scientific and technological achievements in the post-war period.
- High prestige and respect for the teaching profession, a high level of motivation of teachers and students.
- High level of development of sports education, wide promotion of sports activities.
- The emphasis on technical education made it possible to solve the most important tasks for the Soviet state.
Negative points:
Lagging behind the West in the field of liberal arts education due to the negative influence of ideology and the foreign policy situation. The teaching of history, economics and foreign languages was particularly hard hit.
- Excessive unification and centralization of school and, to a lesser extent, university education, coupled with its small contacts with the outside world. This led to the loss of many successful pre-revolutionary practices and to a growing lag behind foreign science in a number of areas.
- Direct guilt in the degradation of family values and the general decline in morals in the late USSR, which led to negative trends in the development of demography and social relations.
- Insufficient education of critical thinking among citizens, which led to the inability of society to effectively resist manipulation during the information war.
- Art education suffered from censorship and high ideological content, as well as from obstacles to mastering foreign techniques; one of the most important consequences of this is the decline of design, architecture and urban planning in the late USSR.
- That is, in its humanitarian aspect, the Soviet education system ultimately not only failed to solve the key tasks of preserving and strengthening the state, but also became one of the factors in the moral, demographic and social decline of the country. Which, however, does not negate the impressive achievements of the USSR in the field of the humanities and arts.

On April 18, the exam was completed ahead of schedule. Experts ascertain the absence of fundamental violations. But will the well-established control over tests affect the knowledge of schoolchildren, which in Soviet times was not questioned? Let's try to understand 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 educational activities (UUD) are taken as the basis, which are understood as “general educational skills”, “general methods of activity”, “above-subject actions”, and so on. If you try to understand these phraseological units, then 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 check their knowledge, the teacher invites children to deal with topics on their own. After all, federal state standards are loyal to negative results, in other words, to twos. In particular, the standards state that “failure to achieve these requirements by a graduate cannot serve as an obstacle to transferring him to the next level of education.” By the way, in the USSR, losers were left 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 study, study." Meanwhile, teachers are sounding the alarm about the lack of sense of responsibility among high school students, which was typical for Soviet graduates. Many young people who have graduated from a modern school have the psychology of teenagers. 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. How the “self-learning” educational system adopted in the West affects adult life can be observed in the 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 require money from their parents for living. The adviser to the director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies speaks about this problem Igor Beloborodov: "The endemic post-adolescence is not a personal choice of Italians or Japanese, it is a deep deformation, the crisis is already at an advanced stage."

Calligraphy: punishment or necessity?

The Western approach fundamentally contradicts Russian ethnopedagogy. For example, calligraphy required perseverance and concentration from children. Calligraphy was the only subject inherited by the Soviet educational system from the tsarist elementary school. “In the memoirs of those who remembered the pre-reform calligraphy lessons (before 1969), the latter are very often depicted as a punishment and a curse on a little person,” explains a 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 medial anthropology and the theory of mass media, wrote a lot about the dependence of the meaning of information on the nature of its medial transmission. The educational role of calligraphy 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 the pre-revolutionary and Soviet era in this respect is higher than that of children who went through the 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, ink blots end.” The school traditions of the Russian and then the Soviet school have been completely ousted 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, which took place in the USSR. This is especially evident now - in the era of the Internet. With all the technical advantages, the lack of self-censorship on the World Wide Web leads to the degradation of the child's personality. “The uncontrolled Internet cripples the child’s soul,” teachers are sure, “schoolgirls arrange selfie sessions, trying to shock the public. Boys become aggressive and cynical. They flaunt their cruelty." According to the general opinion of educators, children suffer from Internet addiction. Such teenagers will never exchange social networks and computer games for textbooks.

Horizon

The lack of requirements for system knowledge immediately led to a reduction in subjects. As a result, they removed everything that in Soviet times contributed to the development of horizons. Children, for example, are not taught astronomy, motivated by the fact that in America this subject is not included in the school curriculum, "but the GDP is many times greater than ours." In addition, drawing was also removed in Russian schools, they say, now they are designing using CAD (computer-aided design systems). 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 mass sports. For example, but according to the TRP standards, in order to receive the silver badge “Brave and dexterous”, 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 crossbar - 3 times. Tenth graders were presented with demands that are beyond the power of most of today's young men. To get again the “silver” of the third age level “Strength and Courage”, it was necessary to run three thousand meters in thirteen and a half minutes, and swim the “fifty-meter race” in fifty seconds. In addition, it was required to pull up on the crossbar nine times. Other tasks were also set: to throw a grenade weighing 700 g at 32 m (for boys); perform an exercise in shooting from a small-caliber rifle (distance 25 m, 5 shots) with the result: from a rifle of the TOZ-8 type - 30 points, from a rifle of the TOZ-12 type - 33 points. According to statistics, there were more than 58 million people in the USSR in 1972-1975. passed the TRP standards, including the majority of schoolchildren.

The current TRP standards are clearly losing 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 "fifty meters" - just to swim.

USE and gold medal

The Soviet school gold medal was highly valued. “After the 10th grade, we passed 8 (!) compulsory exams (an algebra test, oral geometry, composition, oral literature, physics, chemistry, history, a foreign language), recalls the medalist of school No. 51 Minsk Anna Ostrovskaya(1986 release). - Moreover, the written works of the medalists - the composition and algebra - were checked by several commissions, both school and district. I remember waiting for this confirmation of the assessments for a very long time. By the way, in the end, my classmate, an excellent student, was not given a medal, 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 profile exam. Gold medals became “thieves” already during the period of perestroika, with the advent of the first cooperatives, - recalls the history teacher Maria Isaeva, - but I want to note that if the teachers of the university had doubts about the medalist, serious checks and the most stringent conclusions followed. When the feedback stopped working, then the school "gold" turned out to be fake. "As for the Unified State Examination, the whole history of this state exam is riddled with scandals and dramas, including those associated with schoolchildren's suicides. At the same time, university teachers have repeatedly expressed doubts about the reliability of these tests.

“Certainly, the current school system needs to be reformed,” says professor, science theorist Sergei Georgievich Kara-Murza. “Unfortunately, we do not see world-class scientific discoveries made by graduates of Russian schools, although a lot of time has passed since 1992, which is reasonable to take as a starting point. We have to state a sharp deterioration in the quality of knowledge of modern children.

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

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

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

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

- Yes, our country was the first to start teaching children according to a single standard, without dividing children into elite and mass. Moreover, there were many specific moments. For example, children were not expelled for poor study, but they were placed under the patronage of excellent students, who additionally worked with them. I went through all this, and I will say this: helping a friend, you begin to truly understand the subject. Most of our leading scientists and designers also went through a system of mutual assistance to their lagging behind school comrades. I had to think how to explain to the loser so that he would understand. It is also reasonable to recall calligraphy here. It turns out that the human brain has a special feedback with the fingertips. It is noted that in the process of calligraphy the mechanism of thinking develops. The Chinese did not abolish this subject, although their hieroglyphs are more complicated than our Cyrillic alphabet. In general, the Soviet school had many positive features, which together brought up the personality.

"SP": - And the Internet?

- The Internet is a given of our time, and denying or, moreover, prohibiting it is stupidity. At the same time, it is necessary to develop effective mechanisms that would neutralize the negative effects of the World Wide Web on children. This is a very difficult job that must 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 observe here and there. We simply have no other way, otherwise Russia will not survive in this cruel competitive world.