EDUCATION IN RUSSIA

(THE KHRUSHCHEV REFORMS OF 1953 – 1964)

After the death of Stalin in 1953, changes in official policy affected both education and science. The 20th Party Congress in 1956 paved the way for a period of reforms inaugurated by Nikita S. Khrushchev. The central idea was formulated as “strengthening ties between school and life” at all levels of the educational system. The Soviet reform influenced to a high degree similar reforms in the eastern European countries.

The old idea of polytechnical education was revived, but mainly in the sense of preparing secondary-school students for specialized vocational work in industry or agriculture. Since the early 1950s there had been a growing imbalance between the output of secondary-school graduates desiring higher education and the economic demands of skilled manpower at different levels. The educational reforms of 1958 pursued the aim of combining general and polytechnical education with vocational training in a way that directed the bulk of young people after the age of 15 straight into “production.”

The new structure of the school system after 1958 developed as follows: (1) the basic school with compulsory education became the eight-year general and polytechnical labour school, for ages seven to 15 (vosmiletnyaya shkola); and (2) secondary education, embracing grades nine to 11, was provided alternatively by secondary general and polytechnical labour schools with production training (srednyaya obshcheobrazovatelnaya trudovaya politekhnicheskaya shkola s proizvodstvennym obucheniem) or by evening or alternating-shift secondary general education schools (vechernyaya smennaya srednyaya obshcheobrazovatelnaya shkola).

The connection of study and productive work was to be continued during the course of higher education. Great emphasis was laid upon the further expansion of evening and correspondence education both at the level of secondary specialized education and at the level of the universities and other higher institutes. In the academic year 1967–68, 56.3 percent of all Soviet students in higher education (of the total number of 4,311,000) carried out their studies in this way.

The reform of 1958 also brought a transformation of the former labour-reserve schools into urban vocational-technical schools or rural schools of the same type (gorodskiye i selskye professionalno-tekhnicheskiye uchilishcha). As a rule these schools required the completion of the eight-year school, but in fact there were many pupils with lower achievements; the length of training was from one to three years, depending upon the type of career.

Besides introducing polytechnic education and productive labour, the Khrushchev reforms emphasized the idea of collective education from early childhood. Preschool education for the age group up to seven years was to be rapidly developed within the newly organized unified crèches and nursery schools (yasli i detskiye sady); and, as a new type of education, boarding schools (shkoly-internaty) that embraced grades one to eight or one to 11 had been created in 1956. Some party circles wanted this kind of boarding education for the majority of all young people, but development lagged behind planning, and the idea of full boarding education was later abandoned.

The polytechnization of the Soviet school system as it took shape during the Khrushchev period turned out, in the course of its realization, to be a failure. A revision of the school reform was carried out between August 1964 and November 1966 that brought about several important results: (1) the grade 11 of the secondary school (except for the evening school) was abolished; general education returned to the 10-year program; (2) vocational training in the upper grades was retained only in a small number of well-equipped secondary schools; and (3) a new curriculum and new syllabi for all subjects were elaborated. After 1958 hundreds of secondary schools for gifted pupils in mathematics, science, or foreign languages were developed, besides the well-known special schools for music, the arts, and sports. They recruited students mainly from the urban intelligentsia and were therefore sometimes criticized by adherents of egalitarian principles in education.

3.17. EDUCATION IN RUSSIA (1964 – 1984)

Leonid I. Brezhnev assumed leadership after Khrushchev retired in 1964. On Nov. 10, 1966, a decree was issued outlining the new policy in the field of general secondary education. A union–republic Ministry of Public Education was established to augment the already existing central agencies for higher and secondary specialized education and for vocational-technical training. The main aim of educational policy in the 1970s was to achieve universal 10-year education. In 1977 it was claimed that about 97 percent of the pupils who graduated from the basic eight-year school continued their education at the secondary level. An important step toward the realization of universal secondary education was the creation of secondary vocational-technical schools (srednye professionalno-tekhnicheskiye uchilishcha) in 1969. These schools offered a full academic program as well as vocational training. Preschool education for children under seven years of age was extended: enrollments in nursery schools, kindergartens, and combined nursery–kindergarten facilities increased from 9.3 million in 1970 to 15.5 million in 1983. The number of institutions for higher education also grew steadily (from 805 in 1970 to 890 in 1983), meeting regional demands. Day, evening, and correspondence courses were provided.

The quantitative gains achieved during this period were not matched by corresponding improvements in the quality of education. Government authorities, as well as teachers and parents, expressed growing dissatisfaction with student achievement and with student attitude and behaviour. The youngsters themselves often felt alienated from the official value system in education. Furthermore, there was a growing imbalance between the careers preferred by general-school graduates and the national economic requirements for skilled manpower—an unforeseen result of the policy of universal secondary education. Therefore, in 1977 the scope of labour training in the upper grades of the general school was enhanced in order to provide youngsters with a basic practical training and to direct them into so-called mass occupations after leaving school.

In 1984, two years after Brezhnev's death, new reforms of general and vocational education were instituted. Teachers' salaries, which had been lower than other professional incomes, were raised. The age at which children entered primary school was lowered from seven to six years, thus extending the complete course of general-secondary schooling from 10 to 11 years. Vocational training in the upper grades of the general school was reinforced. To meet the requirements of computer literacy, appropriate courses were introduced into the curricula of the general school, even though most schools lacked sufficient equipment. The main emphasis, however, was placed on the development of a new integrated secondary vocational-technical school that would overcome the traditional barriers between general and vocational education.

3.18. EDUCATION IN RUSSIA (1985 – 1992)

The 1984 reform of Soviet education was surpassed by the course of economic and structural reforms (perestroika) instituted since 1986 under the leadership of Michail S. Gorbachev. In February 1988 some earlier reforms were revoked, including the compulsory vocational training in the general school and the plans to create the integrated secondary school. Universal youth education was limited to a nine-year program of “basic education,” with subsequent secondary education divided into various academic and vocational tracks. The newly established State Committee of Public Education incorporated the three formerly independent administration systems for general schooling, vocational training, and higher education. Even more important was the rise of an educational reform movement led by educationists who favoured an “education of cooperation” (pedagogika sotrudnichestva) over the authoritarian and dogmatic principles of collective education that originated in the Stalin period. These theorists advocated individualizing the learning process, emphasizing creativity, making teaching programs and curricula more flexible, encouraging teacher and student participation, and introducing varying degrees of self-government in schools and universities as a part of the proclaimed “democratization” of Soviet society. Some of the proposals were approved by the State Committee; for example, the universities and other institutions of higher learning were granted some autonomy. Other proposals were tested by teachers in experimental groups.

In the non-Russian republics the language of instruction was a key issue. After the October Revolution of 1917, education in native languages was promoted. In the 1970s, however, the number of Russian-language and bilingual schools grew steadily at the expense of schools offering instruction in the native languages, even in territories with a majority of non-Russian ethnic groups. This Russification provoked increasing opposition, and in the late 1980s the central government made some political and educational concessions to the union republics. With the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 – 92, the future of education in the newly independent states and of what had been all-Soviet educational institutions became uncertain.

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