Inside Russia's schools

Media

Part of Panorama

Title: Inside Russia's schools
Creator: Ollerenshaw, Kathleen
Language: English
Source: Panorama Volume XV (No.9) September 1963
Year: 1963
Rights
Abstract: A member of the Manchester Education Committee of Britain reports on Soviet vocational schools
Fulltext: ■ A member of the Manchester Education Commit tee of Britain reports on Soviet vocational schools. INSIDE RUSSIA'S SCHOOLS Kathleen Ollerenshaw An unimposing stone-faced building, a heavy door and then, just inside a dark en trance hall, a "shrine” .. we were entering Vocational Technical School Number One in Moscow. The "shrine,” the director explained later, is the focal point of the school. It is lined with trophies and prize lists and topped by the ubi quitous portrait of Lenin. The Red Flag stands in the centre guarded by a privileg ed pupil, A week later, as we went into the entrance hall of a new school in Leningrad, we were faced, on the wall, with an elaborately embossed "creed” — the code of con duct that pupils have to learn and recite. In a place of honour in these same schools we saw a dozen or so photographs with citations displayed in a fram ed merit board. The photo graphs were of the schools’ star pupils. The merit board was a feature of all the Russian schools we saw and a teacher whose record was outstanding was also includ ed on one. Ubiquitous, too, was the list of laggards, pin ned to school notice-boards for all to see. Our interpreter unblushingly remarked, "They are given the works” — presum ably by their fellow pupils. The merit boards provide a strong incentive for teach ers as well as for pupils. Teachers are paid a bonus for examination successes of the young people in their charge, and, in reverse, pu pil's failures influence in spectors’ reports on indivi dual teachers to be demoted or even to lose their jobs. These are some of the sym 26 Panorama bols of the motive force of Soviet education. Here a re ligion — Marxism-Leninism — is combined with material incentives and a deeply em bedded ideological fervoui to form an education system that is skilfully tailored to meet the needs of the State. The problems that beset us in Britain when attempt ing to plan manpower do not exist. In Russia it is sim ple: THERE IS A PLAN. This is known to everyone, displayed diagrammatically on public hoardings and giv en meaning as yearly targets are visibly met. In a country where the demands of the State over ride everything, manpower planning — even with a po pulation approaching 220 million becomes merely a matter of logistics. State ownership and control over the purse make planning still more precise. Through care ful streamlining of educa tion and training, and by re lating pay to education "grades,” each branch of the economy receives (more or less exactly) the intended quota of recruits. In theory, the fifteen sepa rate Republics of the U.S.S.R. have full legislative powers: there are separate Ministries of Education. In practice, all schools, together with timetables, curricula, textbooks, teaching methods and standards, are control led by the Ministry of Edu cation in Moscow. For high er and specialized secondary education there is one central Ministry only. . Compulsory full-time edu cation begins at seven. In 1958 Khrushchev recast the system, bringing a new em phasis to practical wdrk in factories, mines, farms, build ing or public services as a re quired ingredient of all se condary education. The se ven-year compulsory "incom plete secondary education” and the ten-year "complete secondary ducation’* are now being replaced by eight-year and eleven-year courses. With certain exceptions students may not enter higher educa tion until they have had oneand-a-half to two years’ fulltime employment — perhaps in office, farm or factory — as well as having a certifi cate of completed secondary education. School classes are un streamed, but promotion September 1963 27 each year is dependent on a pass mark and is not auto matic with age. A recent development, now going strongly ahead, is in special schools for those who show exceptional academic talent. Places are competed for at about the age of twelve. Exceptions are also made for those with special talent for art, music or ballet. “French schools” and “Eng lish schools” are also prov ing popular where selected children from the age of se ven have all lessons in the chosen language. At fifteen or sixteen about half of the pupils are siphon ed off from the main stream of secondary education into vocational technical schools. Th^se schools are directly as sociated with a particular en terprise — an automobile factory perhaps, a metal works or foundry, a collect ive farm, a hospital, a central post office. Their pupils are essentially craft apprentices undergoing compulsory training along with part-time education. Only a few, per haps one in ten in the lowest ablity ranges, go from the eight-year schools into jobs for which no preparatory training is required or given. In a vocational technical school specializing in com munications which we visited in Moscow, boys and girls were together in ordinary lessons, but all the vocational study was in single-sex groups. The reason appear ed to be that girls would not be able to lift heavy equip ment: instruction in tele vision repair work and cable laying was therefore reserved for boys. To balance this, girls only were allowed to learn how to install and re pair telephone exchanges. Strong boys were not to be "waited” in training to do work that girls could dol About half of all pupils in the vocational schools join evening courses in order to gain the certificate of cqmpleted secondary education. Yuri Gagarin was trained as a foundryman at a vocation al technical school, studied simultanously a t evening classes, and earned" himself a place in a specialized insti tute of higher education — and from there to the first manned sputnik. His por trait — a model for Soviet 29 Panorama youth — is in every voca tional school. This careful channelling of future craftsmen and tech nicians into distinct occupa tions is the foundation of the new economy. There is no thing haphazard; recruitment is not affected by booms and slumps, by adolescent fashions, parental preferences or other variable factors. Children are expected to do a prodigious amount of homework and there is prob ably a good deal of overwork and strain. Pupils have to clean their own classrooms, workshops and equipment — even coming in on Sundays to scrub floors and clean win dows — and are awarded me rit marks for this. Partici pation in inventors clubs, hobby cjubs and other outof-school activities is virtual ly compulsory. Marks are gained for examination suc cesses, for good behaviour, tidiness and good work in the clubs. All privileges de pend on obtaining good marks and the chidren we saw appeard to be working keenly and to be full of nor mal high spirits out of school. Whether those who are black-listed are teased, bul lied or merely sent to Coven try we could hardly ask. The education grade (on a six-point scale) determines admission to higher educa tion . and recruitment to all forms of employment. Al though grades can be im proved by part-time study at any age, wages depend on grades and, except in teach ing, do not normally increase with length of service. IJigher up the ability scale recruitment to technical posts and semi-professional occu pation (including nursing and most school teaching) is equally logical. There are teacher training "schools,” schools for nurses, schools of art and design, and schools which train officeworkers and aspirants to other com mercial or social work. In Tbilisi I visited a school which trained girls (no boys) for the printing trade. The 250 girls were being taught to become compositors, type setters, linotype operators, and printers — occupations which the unions in Britain restrict to men. My visit to this school was unscheduled, made at my own request and alone. Un expected, I was spared the September 1963 29 usual preliminary pep talk of prearranged visits and spared, too, the shadowing presence of "the party mem ber” to whom we had be come accustomed. Refreshments (at 11 a.m.l) were on the grand scale. This time there could be no hiding behind friends. The toasts — to Peace, to Friend ship, to Women the World Over had to be taken "bot toms-up” in glass after glass of Georgian champagne punctuated with cognac. My memories of that school are as rosy as the blooms snatched from the vase and thrust into* my arms as 1 left. Some of these schools are "technicums,” which rank higher than the vocational technical schools and pro vide completed secondary education together with tech nical or semi-professional training. Most recruit at 'seventeen or eighteen. In tending teachers have to do two years’ teaching as part of their training. The education in all tech nical schools is free and there are grants, but entrance is strictly competitive and by selection, and the numbers are controlled to meet plan ned needs. If recruitment for some occupation lags, grants are increased and other baits introduced. A student trying to live on an unsupplemented basic grant, unless home-based or receiving some parental as sistance, will have a tough time; the basic grant is suf ficient for only the frugal existence. Once the realms of higher education are reached, the controls which govern the precise allocation of profes sional manpower to meet the State plan are even more stringent. Places in higher education are restricted; there is competitive entry by g ra d e s; and differential grants between institutes of higher education and, more significantly, between sub jects. Mathematicians, for instance, receive up to 50 per cent more than the basic monthly grant. The arts people appear to see nothing unfair in this. “Why should the scientists not be paid more?” a girl studying languages in Lenin grad told me. "Their talent is not given to everyone and we need them.” 30 Panorama Among the few students permitted to proceed direct ly to higher education from school without time spent in employment, the majority are mathematicians and phy sicists; the Russian planners are too rational to waste available mathematical abi lity in routine production. The universities have no monopoly of prestige in Rus sia as they have here. Only one-sixth of higher education graduates are the products of universities as such, and of these one-half are mathe maticians or pure and appli ed scientists. All the major technologies — as also agriculutre, medicine, architec ture, most advanced foreign languages courses, training for social planners, econo mists or accountants — are provided' in separate, special ized institutes. Polytechnics which provide high-level courses in metal lurgy, engineering, building,* applied science and applied mathematics are increasing in number, but the greater part of higher education even in Moscow is still given in specialized institutes an alogous to our College of Aeronautics at Cranfield, to the Institute of Food Tech nology at Weybridge or to the Royal College of Art. Britain’s -shortage of uni versity places for qualified applicants is mirrored in Russia, but more sharply. In the U.S.S.R. there are three applicants for every full-time vacancy in insti tutes of higher education in cluding universties — and in Russia this is accepted as reasonable. Only half of all higher ducation students are on full-time courses: of the rest, about three-quarters are studying through corres pondence courses run by the universities and institutes themselves, and one-quarter at evening classses four nights a week. We asked a senior official of the State Committee on the Co-ordination of Re search and Development in Moscow in which areas they intended to expand higher education most notably. "To increase part-time evening and correspondence exten sion courses still further,” he told us. Correspondence courses are a highly developed and im portant feature of Soviet edu cation. No particular virtue September 1963 31 appears to be attached to having been ‘exposed to the atmosphere o f university life,” but then no university life as we know it at its best exists in Russia. Exposure to factory or office life, allied with, continued study and in struction, is regarded as more valuable. All correspondence stu dents go to a parent institute on paid leave for four weeks during the summer vacation for practical work in work shops and laboratories. This means that higher education establishments (and voca tional schools) are far more heavily used than equivalent buildings in Britain. “Alter nating-shift” courses, evening classes, a five-and-a-half-day week throughout term and correspondence students in during vacations means that buldings, apart from a fourweek break in August, are in almost continuous use. All teaching appointments in Russia are subject to review every five years. An army of inspectors is ready to descend without warning on any lecture or classroom. Teachers have no freedom to experiment with syllabuses or methods, but they are given real in centive (promotion or cash) to make suggestions for im provements. In Moscow we visited a centre for scientific and tech nical education where me thods study is done and vi sual aids are devised. We interrupted a group of teach ers who had come in for a refesher course from local schools (where there is shift working in the schools this is simple to arrange). Al though we were many times assured that there is no short age of teachers (and no short age of money for education) and all classes in the voca tional schools we visited had twenty-four or fewer pupils, many teachers double-bank with evening or other teach ing in order to augment their incomes. Women hold many posts of high administrative and professional responsbility in education and outside it, but not in the same numbers as men. Opportunities for wo men, as indeed for all sec tions df the community, are geniunely equal, but there are, as in this country, mark ed sex preferences between subjects. 32 Panorama Biology laboratories will commonly be filled with wo men only: physics laborato ries with men. Only one in five mathematicians and phy sicists at Moscow State Uni versity are women, but four out of five of all higher edu cation students reading eco nomics and more than twothirds of those reading me dicine are women. The professional women whom we met were welldressed generally with severe hair styles, but with lipstick, nail varnish and high-heeled shoes. The head of an en gineering training depart ment of a vocational school in Moscow was positively fancily dressed, with frills, curls and stiletto heels that seem ed a danger as she picked her way between closely-aligned milling ' machines —though perhaps this was in honour of our visit. The girls in the workshops wore their regulation bandeax but, defying safety, most of them allowed fringes to have full p 1 ay. In class rooms, lectures and offices bouffant *hair styles, pretty dresses and fashionable shoes are usual — something that is difficult to square with the poor quality of goods in the shops; but one explanation may be that more girls are taking up home dress-mak ing and, of course, there is a black market. Even the newest buildings are not up to our standards. Although some administra tive rooms are very grand (particularly when in a con verted palace or stately home), the working condi tions in some of the insti tutes are terrible. Work shops, laboratories, libraries are good, very fully equip ped and heavily used, but lighting everywhere is be neath our requirements and sanitary arrangements are atrocious. But then neither lighting nor plumbing are priorities — their turn will no doubt come. The system is so openly based on selection by. compe tition, on marks, grades, pay ment by results and other material incentives that the Western visitor tends to be irritated after only a short time. What happens to those who go to the wall of whom we are told nothing? What is the suicide rate? — another Jorbidden question. But material incentive is 33 not the whole of it. There is also a geniune thirst for knowledge and an enthu siasm for education that can not fail to impress. A very real seriousness of purpose is evident everywhere. The wholly rational ap proach to p 1 a n n i n g, the straightforward answers giv en to our often naive ques tions, befogged as we Britons are by traditions, conventions and vested interests, came as a series of shocks. And, in the end, the questions re main. Can tight controls and the concentration of directive ta lent in the centre — appro priate when Russia was edu cationally an undeveloped country — continue indefi nitely? There are already at tempts t,o liberalize the sys tem and to delegate more powers to the separate Re publics. Is this compatible with Communism? Can they resolve the tensions between local initiative and central control? (For that matter, can we in Britain?) In Russia, at the slightest sign of recalcitrance or de viation from a currently ap proved party line, the brakes can be clapped on, the pro cess reserved. The future development of the Soviet educational system — which, within its limits, seems at present to work with un doubted efficiency — is, like everything else in the U.S.S.R. dependent on the evo lution of ideological Com munism itself. — The Lon don Times, August 11, 1963. Those who give their votes before they hear the debate, and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not capable of doing. To prepare such an assem bly as this, and endeavour to set up the declared abettors of his own will, for the true representatives of the people, and the lawmakers of the society, is certainly as great a breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subvert the government, as is possible to be met with. — John Locke. 34 Panorama
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