Modern education system. Advantages and disadvantages

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

Of course, the truth lies far away from these stereotypes. If a certificate of completion of a Soviet school is a sign of the quality of education, it 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 amaze us no less strongly 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 the norm.

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

I smoothly move on to the essence of the post. Through the efforts of a team of authors, a long-overdue article on the pros and cons of Soviet education was created on the Patriot's Handbook. I am publishing this article here and ask you to join in the discussion - and, if necessary, even supplement and correct the article directly on the “Directory”, fortunately this is a wikiproject that is available for editing by everyone:

This article examines the Soviet education system from the point of view of its advantages and disadvantages. The Soviet system followed the task of educating and shaping individuals worthy of realizing for future generations the main national idea of ​​the Soviet Union - a bright communist future. This task included not only the teaching of knowledge about nature, society and the state, but also the education of patriotism, internationalism and morality.

== Pros (+) ==

Mass character. During Soviet times, for the first time in Russian history, 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 years of education behind them, because not everyone was able to complete a full course of schooling due to the war, mass relocations, and the need to go to work early. However, almost all citizens learned to read and write.
For mass education, we 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 already literate. The Bolsheviks, as a result, received a huge number of literate and trained teachers, and they only had to double the share 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, simultaneously creating and introducing alphabets and writing for these languages). Representatives of the outlying peoples were given the opportunity to learn to read and write, first in their native language, and then in Russian, which accelerated the elimination of illiteracy.

On the other hand, this same indigenization, partially curtailed in the late 1930s, managed to make a significant contribution to the future collapse of the USSR along national borders.

High accessibility 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 eroded, and by 1917, if they had money or special talents, representatives of any class could receive a good education. With the Bolsheviks coming to power, class restrictions were finally lifted. Primary and then secondary education became universal, and the number of students in higher educational institutions increased manifold.

Highly motivated students, public respect for education. Young people in the USSR really wanted to study. Under Soviet conditions, when private property rights were seriously 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: not everyone had enough health for Stakhanov’s manual labor, and for a successful party or military career it was also necessary to increase their level of education (illiterate proletarians were recklessly recruited only in the first decade after the revolution).

Respect for the work of teachers and lecturers. At least until the 1960s and 1970s, while the USSR was eliminating illiteracy and establishing a system of universal secondary education, the teaching profession remained one of the most respected and in demand in society. Relatively literate and capable people became teachers, moreover, motivated by the idea of ​​​​bringing education 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 Stalin’s time there were very good salaries (already under Khrushchev, however, the salaries of the intelligentsia were reduced to the level of workers and even lower). They wrote songs about the school and made films, many of which entered the golden fund of Russian culture.

Relatively high level of initial training of those entering higher education 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 size 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 recruited there was of higher quality and more capable. It is precisely this circumstance that is primarily associated with the complaints of modern teachers about the sharp drop in the level of training of applicants and students.

Very high quality higher 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, here too we must say special thanks to pre-revolutionary Russian science and higher education, which served as a solid basis for all these achievements. But it must be admitted that the Soviet Union managed - even despite the massive 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.

Satisfying the colossal state demand for new personnel in the context of a sharp growth in industry, army and science (thanks to large-scale state planning). During the course of mass industrialization in the USSR, several new industries were created and the scale of production in all industries was significantly increased, several times and tens of times. For such impressive growth, it was necessary to train many specialists capable of working with the most modern technology. In addition, it was necessary to make up for significant personnel losses as a result of revolutionary emigration, civil war, repressions and the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet education system successfully trained many millions of specialists in hundreds of specialties - thanks to this, the most important state tasks related to the survival of the country were solved.

Relatively high scholarships. The average stipend in the late USSR was 40 rubles, while an engineer's salary was 130-150 rubles. That is, scholarships reached about 30% of salaries, which is significantly higher than in the case of modern scholarships, which are large enough only for excellent students, graduate students and doctoral students.

Developed and free out-of-school 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 clubs, sections and electives, Soviet out-of-school education was free.

The best sports education system in the world. From the very beginning, the Soviet Union paid great attention to the development of physical education and sports. If sports education was just emerging in the Russian Empire, 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 Olympic Games: the Soviet team has consistently taken first or second place at every Olympics since 1952, when the USSR began participating in the international Olympic movement.

== Cons (−) ==

Low quality of humanities education due to ideological restrictions and cliches. Almost all humanitarian and social disciplines in schools and universities of the USSR were, to one degree or another, loaded with Marxism-Leninism, and during Stalin’s life, 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 on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)”, according to which the entire world history was presented as a process of maturing prerequisites for the revolution of 1917 and the future construction of a communist society. In the teaching of economics and politics, Marxist political economy occupied the main place, and in the teaching of philosophy - dialectical materialism. These directions in themselves are worthy of attention, but they were declared to be the only true and correct ones, and all others were declared either their predecessors or false directions. As a result, huge layers of humanities knowledge either dropped out of the Soviet education system altogether, or were presented in doses and exclusively in a critical manner, as “bourgeois science.” Party history, political economy and mathematics were compulsory subjects in Soviet universities, and in the late Soviet period they were among the least liked 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 was mainly came down to memorizing stereotyped phrases and ideological formulations).

Denigration 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 widespread than the post-perestroika denigration of Soviet history. Many pre-revolutionary statesmen were declared “servants of tsarism”, their names were erased from history textbooks, or mentioned in a strictly negative context. Conversely, outright robbers, like Stenka Razin, were declared “national heroes,” and terrorists, like the assassins 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 at universities at all, all history departments were closed, traditional patriotism was condemned as “great power” and “chauvinism,” and “proletarian internationalism” was implanted in its place. Then Stalin sharply changed course towards the revival of patriotism and returned history to universities, however, the negative consequences of the 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 is sharply divided into periods before and after the revolution, 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 a very 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 occupied first place in Europe in terms of the number of students at universities, so that there were a lot of specialists trained in tsarist times left 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 workload on the remaining teachers, but mainly due to the intensive training of new ones). Subsequently, however, the Soviet scientific and teaching cadres were seriously weakened during the repressions and ideological campaigns carried out by the Soviet government. 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 became a laggard. Due to the introduction of ideological struggle into science, many outstanding scientists of the humanities and social sciences 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 espionage for 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 a noticeable lag behind world science arose. The culture of scientific discussion was overly 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, opportunities for higher education in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. The so-called disenfranchised were deprived, including private traders, entrepreneurs (using hired labor), representatives of the clergy, and former police officers. Children from families of nobles, merchants, and clergy often encountered obstacles when trying to obtain higher education in the pre-war period. In the Union republics of the USSR, representatives of titular nationalities received preferences when entering universities. In the post-war period, a percentage rate for admission to the most prestigious universities was secretly introduced in relation to Jews.

Restrictions on familiarization with foreign scientific literature, restrictions on international communication of scientists. If in the 1920s. In Soviet science, the pre-revolutionary practice continued, involving very long foreign business trips and internships for scientists and the best students, constant participation in international conferences, free correspondence and an unlimited supply 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, the presence of foreign connections simply became dangerous for the lives and careers of scientists, since many were then arrested on trumped-up charges of espionage. At the end of the 1940s. During the ideological campaign to combat cosmopolitanism, it came to the point that references to the works of foreign authors began to be regarded as a manifestation of “adulation to 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 public access and sent to special storage facilities. This “turned out to be in the hands of the most mediocre and unprincipled scientists,” for whom “massive separation from foreign literature made it easier to use it for hidden 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 was 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 post-war period the West established the practice of involving foreign native speakers in teaching, as well as the practice of large-scale student exchanges, in which students could live in another country for several months and learn the spoken language in the best possible way, then the Soviet Union lagged significantly behind in teaching foreign languages ​​from -due to the closed borders and the almost complete absence of emigration from the West to the USSR. Also, for censorship reasons, the entry of foreign literature, films, and song recordings into 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 gave way to 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 one's own traditions was proclaimed, while attempts at new experiments began to be condemned in many cases (“Confusion instead of music”), and the borrowing of Western cultural techniques was subject to restrictions and persecution, as in the case of jazz and then rock music. Indeed, not in all cases, experiments and borrowings were successful, but the scale of condemnation and restrictions was so inadequate that it led to the disincentive of innovation in art and to the gradual loss of world cultural leadership by the Soviet Union, as well as to the emergence of “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 suffered seriously. In 1956, the USSR Academy of Architecture was reorganized and renamed the USSR Academy of Construction and Architecture, 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” in the USSR, a “gray present” was built.

Canceling the 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 curriculum and a textbook was published 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, providing skills in distinguishing between truth and lies, conducting discussions and resisting manipulation. Another important difference between the Soviet school curriculum and the pre-revolutionary gymnasium curriculum was the abolition of teaching 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 based on them; In addition, learning these languages ​​is good mental gymnastics and helps develop discussion skills. Several generations of outstanding 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 always insisted that the purpose of education is not only the transfer of knowledge and skills, but also the education of a moral, cultural person. In many ways, this problem was solved in the early USSR - then it was possible to solve the problem of mass child homelessness and juvenile delinquency that arose 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 cope with the education of morality, but in some ways even aggravated the problem. Many educational institutions of pre-revolutionary Russia, including church education and institutes for noble maidens, directly set themselves the main task of raising a moral person and preparing him either for the role of a spouse in the family, or for the role of “brother” or “sister” in the community of believers. Under Soviet rule, all such institutions were closed, specialized analogues were not created for them, moral education was entrusted to the ordinary mass school, separating it from religion, which was replaced by the 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 work collective. For the accelerated development of industry and science, this may have been a good thing. However, such an approach could hardly solve the problems of the high level of abortion (for the first time in the world legalized in the USSR), the high level of divorce and the general degradation of family values, the sharp transition to small children, 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 external education system 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 of boys and girls. One of the dubious Soviet innovations in education was the compulsory co-education of boys and girls instead of the pre-revolutionary separate education. Then this step was justified by the struggle for women's rights, the lack of personnel and premises for the organization of separate schools, as well as the widespread practice of co-education in some leading countries of the world, including the USA. However, the latest research in the United States shows that separate education increases student results by 10-20%. Everything is quite simple: in joint schools, boys and girls are distracted by each other, and noticeably more conflicts and incidents arise; Boys, right up to the last grades of school, lag behind girls of the same age in education, 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; adolescents’ self-esteem depends to a greater extent on academic performance, and not on some other things. It is interesting that in 1943, separate education for boys and girls was introduced in 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 close orphanages en masse 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, the main element in the re-education of former street children was labor, while pupils of labor communes were given the opportunity to self-govern 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 street children still had some experience of family life. However, later, due to the ban on child labor, this system was abandoned in the USSR. In the USSR by 1990, there were 564 orphanages, the level of socialization of orphanages was low, and many former orphanages ended up among the criminals and marginalized. 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 already close to completion.

Degradation of the system of secondary vocational education in the late USSR. Although in the USSR the working man was extolled in every possible way and blue-collar professions were promoted, by the 1970s. The system of secondary vocational education in the country began to clearly degrade. “If you do poorly at school, you’ll go to a vocational school!” (vocational technical school) - this is what parents told careless schoolchildren. They took into vocational schools those students who had failed and failed to enter universities, and juvenile criminals were forcibly placed there, and all this against the backdrop of a comparative surplus of specialist workers and the weak development of the service sector due to the lack of developed entrepreneurship (that is, alternatives in employment, as now, then there were no was). Cultural and educational work in vocational schools turned out to be poorly done; “vocational school students” began to be associated with hooliganism, drunkenness and a general low level of development. The negative image of vocational education in blue-collar occupations still persists in Russia, although qualified turners, mechanics, milling operators, and plumbers are now among the highly paid professions, the representatives of which are in short supply.

Insufficient education of critical thinking among citizens, excessive unification and paternalism. Education, like the media and Soviet culture in general, instilled in citizens faith in a powerful and wise party that leads everyone and 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 suppress the truth and harshly suppress alternative opinions. As a result, when, during the years of perestroika and glasnost, these very alternative opinions were given freedom, when previously suppressed facts about the history and modern problems of the country began to emerge en masse, huge masses of citizens felt deceived, lost confidence in the state and in everything that they were taught in school in many humanitarian subjects. 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 instill a sufficient level of caution, critical thinking, tolerance for alternative opinions, and a culture of discussion. Also, late-Soviet education did not help to instill in citizens sufficient independence, the desire to personally solve their problems, and not wait for the state or someone else to do 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 comprehensive conclusion due to its inconsistency.

Positive points:

Complete elimination of illiteracy and provision of universal secondary education
- World leadership in the field of higher technical education, in the 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, high level of motivation of teachers and students.
- High level of development of sports education, widespread encouragement of sports activities.
- The emphasis on technical education made it possible to solve the most important problems for the Soviet state.

Negative points:

Lagging behind the West in the field of humanities education due to the negative influence of ideology and the foreign policy situation. The teaching of history, economics and foreign languages ​​was especially 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 blame for the degradation of family values ​​and the general decline of 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 ideologization, as well as from obstacles to the development of 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 did not help 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 humanities and art.

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:

P3S. If you make sarcastic remarks about the Unified State Exam, please immediately indicate in the comments whether you tried to solve problems from the Unified State Exam personally, or whether “Moishe sang” to you about the Unified State Exam.

P4S. Just in case. The discussion page for the article on the Patriot's Handbook is located at this address.

On April 18, the early exam period ended. Experts state that there are no fundamental violations. But will established control over tests affect the knowledge of schoolchildren, which was not subject to doubt in Soviet times? Let's try to figure out 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 learning activities (UALs) are taken as a basis, which are understood as “general educational skills”, “general methods of activity”, “supra-subject actions” and so on. If you try to understand these phraseological units, 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 test their knowledge, the teacher encourages children to figure out topics on their own. In the end, federal state standards are loyal to negative results, in other words, to twos. In particular, the standards say that “failure to achieve these requirements by a graduate cannot serve as an obstacle to his transfer to the next level of education.” By the way, in the USSR poor students were kept 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 learn, study.” Meanwhile, teachers are sounding the alarm about the lack of high school students' sense of responsibility, which was typical of Soviet graduates. Many young people who graduate from modern schools exhibit the psychology of teenagers. Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, 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-cognitive” educational system adopted in the West influences adult life can be observed in 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 demand money from their parents for living expenses. Advisor to the Director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies speaks about this problem Igor Beloborodov: “The widespread post-adolescence is not a personal choice of Italians or Japanese, it is a deep deformation, the crisis is already in an advanced stage.”

Calligraphy: punishment or necessity?

The Western approach fundamentally contradicts Russian ethnopedagogy. For example, penmanship required children to persevere and concentrate. Calligraphy was the only subject inherited by the Soviet educational system from the Tsarist primary school. “In the memoirs of those who remembered pre-reform penmanship lessons (before 1969), the latter are very often depicted as punishment and a curse for a small person,” explains the 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 media anthropology and theory of mass communications wrote a lot about the dependence of the meaning of information on the nature of its media transmission. The educational role of penmanship 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 pre-revolutionary and Soviet times in this regard is higher than among children who went through 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, the ink blots end.” The school traditions of the Russian and then Soviet schools are 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 that took place in the USSR. This is especially evident now - in the era of the Internet. Despite all the technical advantages, the lack of self-censorship on the World Wide Web leads to the degradation of children's personality. “Uncontrolled Internet cripples a child’s soul,” teachers are sure, “schoolgirls organize selfie sessions, trying to shock the public. Boys become aggressive and cynical. They flaunt 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, everything that contributed to the development of one’s horizons in Soviet times was removed. Children, for example, are not taught astronomy, citing the fact that in America this subject is not included in the school curriculum, “but the GDP is several times greater than ours.” In addition, drawing has been removed from Russian schools, as they now design using CAD (computer-aided design). 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 sports on a large scale. For example, but according to the GTO standards, in order to receive the silver “Brave and Dexterous” badge, 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 most young men today cannot meet. To again receive “silver” in the third age level “Strength and Courage”, it was necessary to run three thousand meters in thirteen and a half minutes, and swim a “fifty-meter race” in fifty seconds. In addition, it was necessary to do nine pull-ups on the bar. Other tasks were also set: to throw a grenade weighing 700 g at 32 m (for young men); perform a shooting exercise 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 GTO standards, including the majority of schoolchildren.

The current GTO standards are clearly inferior 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 just swim the fifty-meter race.

Unified State Exam and gold medal

The Soviet school gold medal was highly valued. “After the 10th grade, we passed 8 (!) mandatory exams (algebra test, oral geometry, essay, oral literature, physics, chemistry, history, foreign language), recalls the medalist of secondary school No. 51 in Minsk Anna Ostrovskaya(1986 release). “Moreover, the written works of the medalists—composition and algebra—were checked by several commissions, both school and district. I remember we waited a very long time for this confirmation of grades. By the way, my classmate, an excellent student, was not given a medal in the end, 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 specialized exam. Gold medals became “thieves” already during the perestroika period, with the advent of the first cooperatives, recalls the history teacher Maria Isaeva, - but I want to note that if university teachers 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 false." As for the Unified State Exam, the entire history of this state exam is riddled with scandals and dramas, including those related to the suicides of schoolchildren. At the same time, university teachers have more than once expressed doubts about the reliability of these tests.

“Of course, the current school education system needs reform,” 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 admit a sharp deterioration in the quality of knowledge of modern children.”

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

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

The best minds in Russia believed that the school should reproduce a people united by a common culture. The intensity of passions around this problem can be judged by the participation of the tsar and military ministers in this discussion. 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 a university type. Now the unified approach to university-type education has been lost. This is, of course, a huge minus.

“SP”: — Was the Soviet Union the first country to introduce this system?

— Yes, our country was the first to begin teaching children according to a single standard, without dividing children into the elite and the masses. Moreover, many specific points appeared. For example, children were not expelled for poor studies, but were placed under the patronage of excellent students, who gave them additional tutoring. I went through all this, and I will say this: by helping a friend, you begin to truly understand the subject. Most of our leading scientists and designers also went through the system of mutual assistance to their lagging schoolmates. I had to think about how to explain it to the poor student so that he would understand. Here it is also wise to remember penmanship. It turns out that the human brain has a special feedback connection with the fingertips. It is noted that in the process of penmanship, the mechanism of thinking develops. The Chinese have not abolished this subject, although their hieroglyphs are more complex than our Cyrillic alphabet. In general, the Soviet school had many positive features, which together educated the individual.

"SP": - What about the Internet?

— The Internet is a given of our time, and to deny it or, moreover, to prohibit it is stupidity. At the same time, it is necessary to develop effective mechanisms that would neutralize the negative impacts of the World Wide Web on children. This is a very difficult job that definitely needs to 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 are seeing in some places. We simply have no other way, otherwise Russia will not survive in this brutally competitive world.

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

The famous innovative teacher Viktor Shatalov said: “In the post-war years, the space industry arose in the USSR and the defense industry rose. All this could not have grown out of nothing. Everything was based on education. Therefore, we can say that our education was not bad.”

There really were a lot of advantages. Let’s not talk about the mass character and accessibility of the school level of education: today this principle remains true. Let's talk about the quality of education: they like to compare this heritage of the Soviet past with the quality of education in modern society.

Despite the fact that the Soviet school had a powerful range of leading subjects, including the Russian language, biology, physics, and mathematics, the study of disciplines that gave a systematic understanding of the world was mandatory. As a result, the student left school with almost encyclopedic knowledge. This knowledge became the strong foundation on which it was possible to “build” anything and subsequently train a specialist in any field.

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

Today, teachers are sounding the alarm: schoolchildren lack motivation to study, many high school students do not feel responsible for their own future. In Soviet times, it was possible to create motivation due to the interaction of several factors:

1. Grades in subjects corresponded to the knowledge acquired. In the USSR, they were not afraid to give twos and threes even for a year. Class statistics, of course, played a role, but were not of paramount importance. A poor student could be kept for the second year: this was not only a shame in front of other children, but also a powerful incentive to take up his studies. You couldn’t buy a grade: you had to study, because it was impossible to earn an excellent result in any other way.

2. The system of patronage and guardianship in the USSR was an undeniable advantage. The weak student was not left alone with his problems and failures. The excellent student took him under his care and studied until the poor student achieved success. This was also a good school for strong children: in order to explain a subject to another student, they had to work through the material in detail and independently learn to apply optimal pedagogical methods. The system of paternalism educated many Soviet scientists and teachers, who later became laureates of prestigious international awards.

3.Equal conditions for everyone. The social status and financial situation of the student’s parents did not in any way affect the results at school. All children were in equal conditions, studied according to the same program, so the road was open to everyone. School knowledge was enough to enter a university without hiring tutors. Mandatory placement after college, although perceived as an undesirable phenomenon, guaranteed work and demand for the acquired knowledge and skills.

4. Emphasis not only on training, but also on education. The Soviet school embraced the student’s free time and was interested in his hobbies. Sections and extracurricular activities, which were mandatory, left almost no time for aimless pastime and generated interest in further learning.

5. Availability of free extracurricular activities. In the Soviet school, in addition to the compulsory program, electives were regularly held for those interested. Classes in additional disciplines were free and accessible to anyone who had the time and interest to study them.

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

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

A teacher in a Soviet school is an image with a high social status. Teachers were respected and their profession was treated as valuable and socially significant work. Films were made about the school, songs were composed, presenting teachers in them as intelligent, honest and highly moral people whom one should look up to. Being a teacher was considered an honor.

There were reasons for this. High demands were placed on the personality of a teacher in a Soviet school. People who graduated from universities and had an inner calling to teach children came to teach.

This situation continued until the 1970s. Teachers had relatively high salaries even compared to skilled workers. But closer to “perestroika” the situation began to change. The decline in the authority of the teacher’s personality was facilitated by the development of capitalist relations. The focus on material values, which have now become achievable, has made the teaching profession unprofitable and unprestigious, which has resulted in the leveling of the true value of school grades.

So, Soviet education was based on three main pillars:
1. Encyclopedic knowledge achieved through comprehensive training and synchronization of information obtained as a result of studying various subjects.
2. The presence of a powerful incentive for children to study, thanks to paternalism and free extracurricular activities.
3. Respect for teachers’ work and the school institution as a whole.

Looking at the Soviet education system from the “bell tower” of our time, we can note some shortcomings. We can say that they are something like a brick that we, many years later, could add to the temple of science built by a great country.

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

1. Emphasis on theory rather than practice. The famous phrase of A. Raikin: “Forget everything you were taught at school and listen...” did not appear out of nowhere. Behind it lies an intensive study of theory and a lack of connection between the acquired knowledge and life. However, the lack of practical experience did not prevent us from raising great designers and engineers.

2. Low level of teaching foreign languages. The lack of experience in communicating with native speakers gave rise to the study of languages ​​based on cliches that did not change in textbooks from year to year. Soviet schoolchildren, after 6 years of studying a foreign language, were still unable to speak it even within everyday topics, although they knew the grammar perfectly. The inaccessibility of educational foreign literature, audio and video recordings, and the lack of need to communicate with foreigners relegated the study of foreign languages ​​to the background.

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

4. Lack of home education and external studies. It is difficult to judge whether this is good or bad, but the lack of opportunity for strong students to pass subjects externally and move to the next grade hindered the development of future advanced personnel and made them equal to the bulk of schoolchildren.

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

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

Of course, the truth lies far away from these stereotypes. If a certificate of completion of a Soviet school is a sign of the quality of education, it 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 amaze us no less strongly 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 the norm.

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

I smoothly move on to the essence of the post. Through the efforts of a team of authors, a long-overdue article on the pros and cons of Soviet education was created on the Patriot's Handbook. I am publishing this article here and ask you to join in the discussion - and, if necessary, even supplement and correct the article directly on the “Directory”, fortunately this is a wikiproject that is available for editing by everyone:

This article examines the Soviet education system from the point of view of its advantages and disadvantages. The Soviet system followed the task of educating and shaping individuals worthy of realizing for future generations the main national idea of ​​the Soviet Union - a bright communist future. This task included not only the teaching of knowledge about nature, society and the state, but also the education of patriotism, internationalism and morality.

== Pros (+) ==

Mass character. During Soviet times, for the first time in Russian history, 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 years of education behind them, because not everyone was able to complete a full course of schooling due to the war, mass relocations, and the need to go to work early. However, almost all citizens learned to read and write.
For mass education, we 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 already literate. The Bolsheviks, as a result, received a huge number of literate and trained teachers, and they only had to double the share 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, simultaneously creating and introducing alphabets and writing for these languages). Representatives of the outlying peoples were given the opportunity to learn to read and write, first in their native language, and then in Russian, which accelerated the elimination of illiteracy.

On the other hand, this same indigenization, partially curtailed in the late 1930s, managed to make a significant contribution to the future collapse of the USSR along national borders.

High accessibility 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 eroded, and by 1917, if they had money or special talents, representatives of any class could receive a good education. With the Bolsheviks coming to power, class restrictions were finally lifted. Primary and then secondary education became universal, and the number of students in higher educational institutions increased manifold.

Highly motivated students, public respect for education. Young people in the USSR really wanted to study. Under Soviet conditions, when private property rights were seriously 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: not everyone had enough health for Stakhanov’s manual labor, and for a successful party or military career it was also necessary to increase their level of education (illiterate proletarians were recklessly recruited only in the first decade after the revolution).

Respect for the work of teachers and lecturers. At least until the 1960s and 1970s, while the USSR was eliminating illiteracy and establishing a system of universal secondary education, the teaching profession remained one of the most respected and in demand in society. Relatively literate and capable people became teachers, moreover, motivated by the idea of ​​​​bringing education 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 Stalin’s time there were very good salaries (already under Khrushchev, however, the salaries of the intelligentsia were reduced to the level of workers and even lower). They wrote songs about the school and made films, many of which entered the golden fund of Russian culture.

Relatively high level of initial training of those entering higher education 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 size 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 recruited there was of higher quality and more capable. It is precisely this circumstance that is primarily associated with the complaints of modern teachers about the sharp drop in the level of training of applicants and students.

Very high quality higher 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, here too we must say special thanks to pre-revolutionary Russian science and higher education, which served as a solid basis for all these achievements. But it must be admitted that the Soviet Union managed - even despite the massive 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.

Satisfying the colossal state demand for new personnel in the context of a sharp growth in industry, army and science (thanks to large-scale state planning). During the course of mass industrialization in the USSR, several new industries were created and the scale of production in all industries was significantly increased, several times and tens of times. For such impressive growth, it was necessary to train many specialists capable of working with the most modern technology. In addition, it was necessary to make up for significant personnel losses as a result of revolutionary emigration, civil war, repressions and the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet education system successfully trained many millions of specialists in hundreds of specialties - thanks to this, the most important state tasks related to the survival of the country were solved.

Relatively high scholarships. The average stipend in the late USSR was 40 rubles, while an engineer's salary was 130-150 rubles. That is, scholarships reached about 30% of salaries, which is significantly higher than in the case of modern scholarships, which are large enough only for excellent students, graduate students and doctoral students.

Developed and free out-of-school 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 clubs, sections and electives, Soviet out-of-school education was free.

The best sports education system in the world. From the very beginning, the Soviet Union paid great attention to the development of physical education and sports. If sports education was just emerging in the Russian Empire, 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 Olympic Games: the Soviet team has consistently taken first or second place at every Olympics since 1952, when the USSR began participating in the international Olympic movement.

== Cons (−) ==

Low quality of humanities education due to ideological restrictions and cliches. Almost all humanitarian and social disciplines in schools and universities of the USSR were, to one degree or another, loaded with Marxism-Leninism, and during Stalin’s life, 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 on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)”, according to which the entire world history was presented as a process of maturing prerequisites for the revolution of 1917 and the future construction of a communist society. In the teaching of economics and politics, Marxist political economy occupied the main place, and in the teaching of philosophy - dialectical materialism. These directions in themselves are worthy of attention, but they were declared to be the only true and correct ones, and all others were declared either their predecessors or false directions. As a result, huge layers of humanities knowledge either dropped out of the Soviet education system altogether, or were presented in doses and exclusively in a critical manner, as “bourgeois science.” Party history, political economy and mathematics were compulsory subjects in Soviet universities, and in the late Soviet period they were among the least liked 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 was mainly came down to memorizing stereotyped phrases and ideological formulations).

Denigration 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 widespread than the post-perestroika denigration of Soviet history. Many pre-revolutionary statesmen were declared “servants of tsarism”, their names were erased from history textbooks, or mentioned in a strictly negative context. Conversely, outright robbers, like Stenka Razin, were declared “national heroes,” and terrorists, like the assassins 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 at universities at all, all history departments were closed, traditional patriotism was condemned as “great power” and “chauvinism,” and “proletarian internationalism” was implanted in its place. Then Stalin sharply changed course towards the revival of patriotism and returned history to universities, however, the negative consequences of the 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 is sharply divided into periods before and after the revolution, 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 a very 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 occupied first place in Europe in terms of the number of students at universities, so that there were a lot of specialists trained in tsarist times left 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 workload on the remaining teachers, but mainly due to the intensive training of new ones). Subsequently, however, the Soviet scientific and teaching cadres were seriously weakened during the repressions and ideological campaigns carried out by the Soviet government. 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 became a laggard. Due to the introduction of ideological struggle into science, many outstanding scientists of the humanities and social sciences 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 espionage for 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 a noticeable lag behind world science arose. The culture of scientific discussion was overly 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, opportunities for higher education in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. The so-called disenfranchised were deprived, including private traders, entrepreneurs (using hired labor), representatives of the clergy, and former police officers. Children from families of nobles, merchants, and clergy often encountered obstacles when trying to obtain higher education in the pre-war period. In the Union republics of the USSR, representatives of titular nationalities received preferences when entering universities. In the post-war period, a percentage rate for admission to the most prestigious universities was secretly introduced in relation to Jews.

Restrictions on familiarization with foreign scientific literature, restrictions on international communication of scientists. If in the 1920s. In Soviet science, the pre-revolutionary practice continued, involving very long foreign business trips and internships for scientists and the best students, constant participation in international conferences, free correspondence and an unlimited supply 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, the presence of foreign connections simply became dangerous for the lives and careers of scientists, since many were then arrested on trumped-up charges of espionage. At the end of the 1940s. During the ideological campaign to combat cosmopolitanism, it came to the point that references to the works of foreign authors began to be regarded as a manifestation of “adulation to 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 public access and sent to special storage facilities. This “turned out to be in the hands of the most mediocre and unprincipled scientists,” for whom “massive separation from foreign literature made it easier to use it for hidden 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 was 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 post-war period the West established the practice of involving foreign native speakers in teaching, as well as the practice of large-scale student exchanges, in which students could live in another country for several months and learn the spoken language in the best possible way, then the Soviet Union lagged significantly behind in teaching foreign languages ​​from -due to the closed borders and the almost complete absence of emigration from the West to the USSR. Also, for censorship reasons, the entry of foreign literature, films, and song recordings into 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 gave way to 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 one's own traditions was proclaimed, while attempts at new experiments began to be condemned in many cases (“Confusion instead of music”), and the borrowing of Western cultural techniques was subject to restrictions and persecution, as in the case of jazz and then rock music. Indeed, not in all cases, experiments and borrowings were successful, but the scale of condemnation and restrictions was so inadequate that it led to the disincentive of innovation in art and to the gradual loss of world cultural leadership by the Soviet Union, as well as to the emergence of “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 suffered seriously. In 1956, the USSR Academy of Architecture was reorganized and renamed the USSR Academy of Construction and Architecture, 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” in the USSR, a “gray present” was built.

Canceling the 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 curriculum and a textbook was published 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, providing skills in distinguishing between truth and lies, conducting discussions and resisting manipulation. Another important difference between the Soviet school curriculum and the pre-revolutionary gymnasium curriculum was the abolition of teaching 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 based on them; In addition, learning these languages ​​is good mental gymnastics and helps develop discussion skills. Several generations of outstanding 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 always insisted that the purpose of education is not only the transfer of knowledge and skills, but also the education of a moral, cultural person. In many ways, this problem was solved in the early USSR - then it was possible to solve the problem of mass child homelessness and juvenile delinquency that arose 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 cope with the education of morality, but in some ways even aggravated the problem. Many educational institutions of pre-revolutionary Russia, including church education and institutes for noble maidens, directly set themselves the main task of raising a moral person and preparing him either for the role of a spouse in the family, or for the role of “brother” or “sister” in the community of believers. Under Soviet rule, all such institutions were closed, specialized analogues were not created for them, moral education was entrusted to the ordinary mass school, separating it from religion, which was replaced by the 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 work collective. For the accelerated development of industry and science, this may have been a good thing. However, such an approach could hardly solve the problems of the high level of abortion (for the first time in the world legalized in the USSR), the high level of divorce and the general degradation of family values, the sharp transition to small children, 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 external education system 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 of boys and girls. One of the dubious Soviet innovations in education was the compulsory co-education of boys and girls instead of the pre-revolutionary separate education. Then this step was justified by the struggle for women's rights, the lack of personnel and premises for the organization of separate schools, as well as the widespread practice of co-education in some leading countries of the world, including the USA. However, the latest research in the United States shows that separate education increases student results by 10-20%. Everything is quite simple: in joint schools, boys and girls are distracted by each other, and noticeably more conflicts and incidents arise; Boys, right up to the last grades of school, lag behind girls of the same age in education, 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; adolescents’ self-esteem depends to a greater extent on academic performance, and not on some other things. It is interesting that in 1943, separate education for boys and girls was introduced in 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 close orphanages en masse 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, the main element in the re-education of former street children was labor, while pupils of labor communes were given the opportunity to self-govern 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 street children still had some experience of family life. However, later, due to the ban on child labor, this system was abandoned in the USSR. In the USSR by 1990, there were 564 orphanages, the level of socialization of orphanages was low, and many former orphanages ended up among the criminals and marginalized. 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 already close to completion.

Degradation of the system of secondary vocational education in the late USSR. Although in the USSR the working man was extolled in every possible way and blue-collar professions were promoted, by the 1970s. The system of secondary vocational education in the country began to clearly degrade. “If you do poorly at school, you’ll go to a vocational school!” (vocational technical school) - this is what parents told careless schoolchildren. They took into vocational schools those students who had failed and failed to enter universities, and juvenile criminals were forcibly placed there, and all this against the backdrop of a comparative surplus of specialist workers and the weak development of the service sector due to the lack of developed entrepreneurship (that is, alternatives in employment, as now, then there were no was). Cultural and educational work in vocational schools turned out to be poorly done; “vocational school students” began to be associated with hooliganism, drunkenness and a general low level of development. The negative image of vocational education in blue-collar occupations still persists in Russia, although qualified turners, mechanics, milling operators, and plumbers are now among the highly paid professions, the representatives of which are in short supply.

Insufficient education of critical thinking among citizens, excessive unification and paternalism. Education, like the media and Soviet culture in general, instilled in citizens faith in a powerful and wise party that leads everyone and 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 suppress the truth and harshly suppress alternative opinions. As a result, when, during the years of perestroika and glasnost, these very alternative opinions were given freedom, when previously suppressed facts about the history and modern problems of the country began to emerge en masse, huge masses of citizens felt deceived, lost confidence in the state and in everything that they were taught in school in many humanitarian subjects. 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 instill a sufficient level of caution, critical thinking, tolerance for alternative opinions, and a culture of discussion. Also, late-Soviet education did not help to instill in citizens sufficient independence, the desire to personally solve their problems, and not wait for the state or someone else to do 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 comprehensive conclusion due to its inconsistency.

Positive points:

Complete elimination of illiteracy and provision of universal secondary education
- World leadership in the field of higher technical education, in the 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, high level of motivation of teachers and students.
- High level of development of sports education, widespread encouragement of sports activities.
- The emphasis on technical education made it possible to solve the most important problems for the Soviet state.

Negative points:

Lagging behind the West in the field of humanities education due to the negative influence of ideology and the foreign policy situation. The teaching of history, economics and foreign languages ​​was especially 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 blame for the degradation of family values ​​and the general decline of 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 ideologization, as well as from obstacles to the development of 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 did not help 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 humanities and art.

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.

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

Of course, the truth lies far away from these stereotypes. If a diploma of completion of a Soviet school is a sign of the quality of education, it 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 amaze us no less strongly 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 the norm.

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

I smoothly move on to the essence of the post. Through the efforts of a team of authors, a long-overdue article on the pros and cons of Soviet education was created on the Patriot's Handbook. I am publishing this article here and ask you to join in the discussion - and, if necessary, even supplement and correct the article directly on the “Directory”, fortunately this is a wikiproject that is available for editing by everyone:

This article examines the Soviet education system from the point of view of its advantages and disadvantages. The Soviet system followed the task of educating and shaping individuals 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 teaching knowledge about nature, society and the state, but also to nurturing patriotism and internationalism and morality

== Pros (+) ==

Mass character. During Soviet times, for the first time in Russian history, 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 years of education behind them, because not everyone was able to complete a full course of schooling due to the war, mass relocations, and the need to go to work early. However, almost all citizens learned to read and write.
For mass education we must also say thanks to the tsarist government, which 20 pre-revolutionary years, the literacy level in the country practically doubled - by 1917, almost half of the population was already literate. The Bolsheviks, as a result, received a huge number of literate and prepared teachers, and they only had to double the share of literate people in the country for the second time, which they did.

Broad 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, simultaneously creating and introducing alphabets and writing for these languages). Representatives of the outlying peoples were given the opportunity to learn to read and write, first in their native language, and then in Russian, which accelerated the elimination of illiteracy.

On the other hand, this same indigenization, partially curtailed in the late 1930s, managed to make a significant contribution to the future collapse of the USSR along national borders.

High accessibility 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 eroded, and by 1917, if they had money or special talents, representatives of any class could receive a good education. With the Bolsheviks coming to power, class restrictions were finally lifted. Primary and then secondary education became universal, and the number of students in higher educational institutions increased manifold.

Highly motivated students, public respect for education. Young people in the USSR really wanted to study. Under Soviet conditions, when the right to private property was seriously 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 earning good money. There were few alternatives: not everyone had enough health for Stakhanov’s manual labor, and for a successful party or military career it was also necessary to increase their level of education (illiterate proletarians were recklessly recruited only in the first decade after the revolution).

Respect for the work of teachers and lecturers. At least until the 1960s and 1970s, while the USSR was eradicating illiteracy and establishing a system of universal secondary education, the teaching profession remained one of the most respected and in demand in society. Relatively literate and capable people became teachers, moreover, motivated by the idea of ​​​​bringing education 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 Stalin’s time there were very good salaries (already under Khrushchev, however, the salaries of the intelligentsia were reduced to the level of workers and even lower). They wrote songs about the school and made films, many of which entered the golden fund of Russian culture.

Relatively high level of initial training of those entering higher education 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 share of young people in the population was higher. Accordingly, with a similar population size 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 recruited there was of higher quality and more capable. It is precisely this circumstance that is primarily associated with the complaints of modern teachers about the sharp drop in the level of training of applicants and students.

Very high quality higher 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 looks very impressive and inventors. However, here too we must say special thanks to pre-revolutionary Russian science and higher education, which served as a solid basis for all these achievements. But it must be admitted that the Soviet Union managed - even despite the massive 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.

Satisfying the colossal state demand for new personnel in the context of a sharp growth in industry, army and science (thanks to large-scale state planning). During the course of mass industrialization in the USSR, several new industries were created and the scale of production in all industries was significantly increased, several times and tens of times. For such impressive growth, it was necessary to train many specialists capable of working with the most modern technology. In addition, it was necessary to make up for significant personnel losses as a result of revolutionary emigration, civil war, repressions and the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet education system successfully trained many millions of specialists in hundreds of specialties - thanks to this, the most important state tasks related to the survival of the country were solved.

Relatively high scholarships. The average stipend in the late USSR was 40 rubles, while an engineer's salary was 130-150 rubles. That is, scholarships reached about 30% of salaries, which is significantly higher than in the case of modern scholarships, which are large enough only for excellent students, graduate students and doctoral students.

Developed and free out-of-school 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 out-of-school education was free.

The best sports education system in the world. From the very beginning, the Soviet Union paid great attention to the development of physical education and sports. If in Russian empire, sports education was just 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 Olympic Games: the Soviet team has consistently taken first or second place at every Olympics since 1952, when the USSR began participating in the international Olympic movement.

== Cons (−) ==

Low quality of liberal arts education because of ideological restrictions and stamps. Almost all humanitarian and social disciplines in schools and universities of the USSR were, to one degree or another, loaded with Marxism-Leninism, and during Stalin’s life, 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 on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)”, according to which the entire world history was presented as a process of maturing prerequisites for the revolution of 1917 and the future construction of a communist society. In the teaching of economics and politics, Marxist political economy occupied the main place, and in the teaching of philosophy - dialectical materialism. These directions in themselves are worthy of attention, but they were declared the only true and correct ones, and all the others were declared either their predecessors, or in false directions. As a result, huge layers of humanities knowledge either dropped out of the Soviet education system altogether, or were presented in doses and exclusively in a critical manner, as “bourgeois science.” Party history, political economy and dialogue were compulsory subjects in Soviet universities, and in 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 complex, so their study mainly came down to memorizing template phrases and ideological wording).

Denigration of history and distortion of moral guidelines. In the USSR school and university The teaching of history was characterized by the denigration of the tsarist period in the history of the country, and in early Soviet During this period, this denigration was much more widespread than the post-perestroika denigration of Soviet history. Many pre-revolutionary statesmen were declared “servants of tsarism”, their names were erased from history textbooks, or mentioned in a strictly negative context. Conversely, outright robbers, like Stenka Razin, were declared “national heroes,” and terrorists, like the assassins 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 in universities not taught in general, all history faculties were closed, traditional patriotism was condemned as “great power” and “chauvinism,” and “proletarian internationalism” was implanted in its place. Then Stalin sharply changed course towards the revival of patriotism and returned history to universities, however, the negative consequences of the 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 is sharply divided into periods before and after the revolution, many good traditions have been lost.

Negative influence of ideology and political struggle for academic personnel 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 a very large number of scientists and engineers. and teachers. 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 occupied first place in Europe in terms of the number of students at universities, so that there were a lot of specialists trained in tsarist times left 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 workload on the remaining teachers, but mainly due to the intensive training of new ones). Subsequently, however, Soviet scientific and teaching cadres were seriously weakened during the repressions and ideological campaigns carried out by the Soviet government. 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 became a laggard. Due to the introduction the science of ideological struggle affected many outstanding scientists of the humanities and social sciences (historians, philosophers and economists of a non-Marxist persuasion; linguists who participated in discussions on Marrism, as well as Slavists; Byzantine scholars and theologians; orientalists - many of them were shot on false charges of espionage for Japan or other countries due to 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 a noticeable lag behind world science arose. Overly ideological and politicized there was a culture of scientific discussion, which, of course, had a negative impact on education.

Restrictions on access to higher education for certain groups of the population. In fact, opportunities for higher education in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. The so-called disenfranchised were deprived, including private traders, entrepreneurs (using hired labor), representatives of the clergy, and former police officers. Children from families of nobles, merchants, and clergy often encountered obstacles when trying to obtain higher education in the pre-war period. In the Union republics of the USSR, representatives of titular nationalities received preferences when entering universities. In the post-war period, a percentage rate for admission to the most prestigious universities was secretly introduced in relation to Jews.

Restrictions on familiarization with foreign scientific literature, restrictions on international communication of scientists. If in the 1920s. in Soviet science, the pre-revolutionary practice continued, involving very long foreign business trips and internships for scientists and best students, constant participation in international conferences, and free correspondence and unlimited the arrival 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, the presence of foreign connections simply became dangerous for the lives and careers of scientists, since many were then arrested on trumped-up charges of espionage. At the end of the 1940s. during the ideological campaign to fight with cosmopolitanism it got to the point that references to the works of foreign authors began to be regarded as a manifestation of “adulation to 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 public access and sent to special storage facilities. This “turned out to be beneficial to the most mediocre and unprincipled scientists,” for whom “massive separation from foreign literature made it easier to use it for hidden 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. In the post-Stalinist period, the situation with the “puppeting” of Soviet science was only partially corrected, as a result there is still a problem of low citation of Russian scientists abroad and insufficient acquaintance with advanced foreign research.

Relatively low quality of teaching foreign languages. If in the post-war period the West established the practice of involving foreign native speakers in teaching, as well as the practice of large-scale student exchanges, in which students could live in another country for several months and learn the spoken language in the best possible way, then the Soviet Union lagged significantly behind in teaching foreign languages due to closedness borders and the almost complete absence of emigration from the West to the USSR. Also, for censorship reasons, the entry of foreign literature, films, and song recordings into the Soviet Union was limited, which is by no means didn't help learning foreign languages. Compared to the USSR, in modern Russia there are much more opportunities for learning languages.

Ideological censorship, autarky and stagnation in artistic 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 gave way to 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. Was proclaimed reliance on their own traditions, while attempts at new experiments began in many cases to be condemned (“Confusion instead of music”), and the borrowing of Western cultural techniques was subject to restrictions and persecution, as in the case of jazz and then rock music. Indeed, not in all cases experiments and borrowings were successful, but the scale of condemnation and restrictions was so inadequate that this led to to disincentivize innovations in art and to the gradual loss of world cultural leadership by the Soviet Union, as well as to the emergence of “underground culture” in the USSR.

Degradation of education in the field of architecture, design, urban planning. During the period of Khrushchev’s “struggle” with architectural"excesses" seriously damaged the entire system of architectural education and design and construction. In 1956, the USSR Academy of Architecture was reorganized and renamed the USSR Academy of Construction and Architecture, 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” in the USSR, a “gray present” was built.

Canceling the 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 curriculum and a textbook was published 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, giving skills in distinguishing between truth and lies, in conducting discussions and opposition manipulation. Another important difference between the Soviet school curriculum from pre-revolutionary the gymnasium was the abolition of teaching 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 based on them; In addition, learning these languages ​​is good mental gymnastics and helps develop discussion skills. Several generations of outstanding 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 always insisted that the purpose of education is not only the transfer of knowledge and skills, but also the education of a moral, cultural person. In many ways, this problem was solved in the early USSR - then it was possible to solve the problem of mass child homelessness and juvenile delinquency that arose 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 cope with the education of morality, but in some ways even aggravated the problem. Many educational institutions of pre-revolutionary Russia, including church education and institutes for noble maidens, directly set themselves the main task of raising a moral person and preparing him either for the role of a spouse in the family, or for the role of “brother” or “sister” in the community of believers. Under Soviet rule, all such institutions were closed, specialized analogues were not created for them, moral education was entrusted to the ordinary mass school, separating it from religion, which was replaced by the 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 work collective. For the accelerated development of industry and science, this may have been a good thing. However, such an approach could hardly solve the problems of the high level of abortion (for the first time in the world legalized in the USSR), the high level of divorce and the general degradation of family values, the sharp transition to small children, 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 external education system in the USSR was introduced in 1935, but for a long time it was designed almost exclusively for adults, and a full-fledged opportunity external training for schoolchildren was introduced only in 1985–1991.

Non-alternative co-education of boys and girls. One of the dubious Soviet innovations in education was the compulsory co-education of boys and girls instead of the pre-revolutionary separate education. Then this step was justified by the struggle for women's rights, the lack of personnel and premises for the organization of separate schools, as well as the widespread practice of co-education in some leading countries of the world, including the USA. However, the latest research in the United States shows that separate education increases student results by 10–20%. Everything is quite simple: in joint schools, boys and girls are distracted by each other, and noticeably more conflicts and incidents arise; Boys are lagging behind in their studies right up to the last grades of school. from girls the same age, since the male body develops more slowly. On the contrary, with separate training, it becomes possible to better take into account the behavioral and cognitive characteristics of different sexes to improve performance; adolescents’ self-esteem depends to a greater extent on from academic performance, and not from some other things. It is interesting that in 1943, separate education for boys and girls was introduced in 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 close orphanages en masse 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, in times of struggle with homelessness in the 1920s, according to the ideas of Makarenko and other teachers, labor became the main element in the re-education of former street children, while pupils of labor communes were given the opportunity to self-govern 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 street children still had some experience of family life. However, later, due to the ban on child labor, this system was abandoned in the USSR. In the USSR by 1990, there were 564 orphanages, the level of socialization of orphanages was low, and many former orphanages ended up among the criminals and marginalized. 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 already close to completion.

Degradation of the system of secondary vocational education in the late USSR. Although in the USSR they extolled the working man in every possible way and promoted working professions, by the 1970s. The system of secondary vocational education in the country began to clearly degrade. “If you do poorly at school, you’ll go to a vocational school!” (vocational technical school) - this is what parents told careless schoolchildren. They took into vocational schools those students who had failed and failed to enroll in universities, and juvenile criminals were forcibly placed there, and all this against the backdrop of a comparative surplus of specialist workers and the poor development of the service sector due to lack developed entrepreneurship (i.e. alternatives in employment, as it is now, it was not then). Cultural and educational work at the vocational school turned out to be poorly organized, and “vocational school students” began to be associated with hooliganism, drunkenness and a general low level of development. The negative image of vocational education in blue-collar occupations still persists in Russia, although qualified turners, mechanics, milling operators, and plumbers are now among the highly paid professions, the representatives of which are in short supply.

Insufficient education of critical thinking among citizens, excessive unification and paternalism. Education, like the media and Soviet culture in general, instilled faith in citizens into a powerful and a 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 suppress the truth and harshly suppress alternative opinions. As a result, when, during the years of perestroika and glasnost, these very alternative opinions were given freedom, when previously suppressed facts about the history and modern problems of the country began to emerge en masse, huge masses of citizens felt deceived, lost confidence in the state and in everything that they were taught in school in many humanitarian subjects. 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 instill a sufficient level of caution, critical thinking, and tolerance to alternative opinions, discussion culture. Also, late-Soviet education did not help to instill in citizens sufficient independence, the desire to personally solve their problems, and not wait for the state or someone else to do it for you. All this had to be learned from the bitter post-Soviet experience.

== Conclusions (−) ==

It is difficult to come to a consensus in assessing the Soviet education system and comprehensive conclusion in view of its inconsistencies.

Positive points:

Complete elimination of illiteracy and provision of universal secondary education
- World leadership in the field of higher technical education, in the natural and exact sciences.
- The key role of education in ensuring industrialization and victory in the Great Patriotic War and scientific and technical achievements in the post-war period.
- High prestige and respect for the teaching profession, high level of motivation of teachers and students.
- High level of development of sports education, widespread encouragement of sports activities.
- The emphasis on technical education made it possible to solve the most important problems for the Soviet state.

Negative points:

Lagging behind the West in the field of humanities education due to the negative influence of ideology and foreign policy situations. The teaching of history, economics and foreign languages ​​was especially 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 blame for the degradation of family values ​​and the general decline of 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 ideologization, as well as from obstacles to the development of 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 did not help 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 humanities and art.

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:

P.P.S. "Tails" on Election Day fritzmorgen I decided not to release them; without the political component they would have turned out too bland. However, taking this opportunity fritzmorgen asks you today to vote not with your heart, as in 1996, but still with your brain.

P3S. If you make sarcastic remarks about the Unified State Exam, please immediately indicate in the comments whether you tried to solve problems from the Unified State Exam personally, or whether “Moishe sang” to you about the Unified State Exam.

P4S. Just in case. The discussion page for the article on the Patriot's Handbook is located at this address: