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Soviet Union [USSR] Philosophy and Aims
The philosophical underpinnings and ultimate goals of Soviet
education were closely interwoven and could be expressed through
two Russian words: vospitanie (upbringing or rearing) and
obrazovanie (formal education). Marxist-Leninist ideology,
the philosophical foundation of Soviet education, stressed the
proper upbringing of youth to create the
"new Soviet man" (see Glossary). To this end, the school
system bore the lion's share of
forming character by instilling and reinforcing Marxist-Leninist
morals and ethics, beginning with preschool and kindergarten and
continuing throughout the entire schooling process. Lenin stressed
the moral goal of education, declaring after the Bolshevik
Revolution: "The entire purpose of training, educating, and
teaching the youth . . . should be to imbue them with communist
ethics." The schools taught children key
socialist (see Glossary)
virtues, such as love of labor, the atheist
(scientific-materialist) view of life, Soviet patriotism and
devotion to the homeland, and the primacy of the collective,
namely, the need to place the interests of society before those of
the individual.
The extent to which Soviet education bore the responsibility
for the rearing, or socialization, of youth set it apart from
contemporary Western education systems and led many Western
observers to see a similarity between modern Soviet schools and
American parochial schools of the past. Another uniquely Soviet
feature was the close integration of the schools with other major
areas of society--cultural, political, economic, and mass media--
all of which served to reinforce the political indoctrination
process.
The role of the family in child-rearing was not ignored,
however, and beginning in the 1980s Soviet leaders renewed emphasis
on the family's central role in character formation. Parents were
encouraged to create a nurturing and loving environment at home and
to cooperate actively with the schools, which generally led the
way, in fostering in their children the personal qualities
considered essential to a communist morality: "Soviet patriotism,
devotion to socially useful labor, and a feeling of being part of
a social group."
The task of molding the "builders of communism" was advanced as
well through extracurricular activities centered on youth
organizations that had close ties to the CPSU. Almost all
schoolchildren belonged to these groups: the Young Octobrists, for
ages six to nine, and the Pioneers, ages ten to fifteen. Most of
the students in the upper classes of secondary school belonged to
the
Komsomol (see Glossary) for ages fourteen to twenty-eight,
which was specifically tasked with providing active assistance to
the CPSU in building a communist society. To this end, Komsomol
members supervised and guided the two younger groups in a wide
range of activities, including labor projects, sports and cultural
events, field trips, summer camp programs, and parades and
ceremonies commemorating national holidays (for example, May Day
and Lenin's birthday), to develop in them proper socialist behavior
and values and to attract them, even at these early stages, to
"socially beneficial" work.
In addition to molding socialist morality, Soviet schools
provided formal academic education, transmitting the knowledge and
skills to provide the nation's economy with a qualified and highly
skilled labor force needed to sustain the country in a modern
technological age. The dual concept of rearing and educating was
brought together as well in the notion of "polytechnical
education," which stressed the inclusion of practical training at
all levels of schooling. The polytechnical approach to education,
which had waxed and waned since the era of Khrushchev, was
receiving renewed emphasis in the late 1980s under Gorbachev.
Polytechnical schooling had three key components:
cognitive--gaining knowledge about production sectors and
industrial processes and organization, production tools and
machinery, and energy and power sources; moral--developing respect
for, and dedication to, both intellectual and physical endeavor and
eradicating the distinction between mental and manual labor; and
practical--acquiring sound work habits through direct involvement
in the production or creation of goods and services. A
polytechnical approach was important not only to provide the
dedicated, highly technically trained, and productive workers
needed to realize Gorbachev's program of economic restructuring and
modernization but also to adhere to a central, publicly stated, aim
of higher education, namely, the creation of a classless society.
Data as of May 1989
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