THE SOVIET RUSSIAN SCHOOL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19902, 23 September 1926, Page 10

THE SOVIET RUSSIAN SCHOOL.

THE EDUCATION OF COMMUNISM. (Translated by Dr R. Lawson from Die Brziehung, Leipzig, May, 1326.) II But they i:now in Russia that the communistic sentiment cannot bo propagated merely through so much more or less immediate preaching of it. Besides this, they know that habitudes are required, which must arise as a result of the genral school life. There must be habituation to communistic government and administration and habituation to communistic ideas of morality. And so all schools have a _ ompleto system of self-government. This is not to be likened to that of our (German) public schools, because the schools in Russia, even when considered from among the homes for orphans, which are only possible as boarding-places, are usually, as in England, day schools, which are associated with a boarding-place. Out-and-out boarding schools they don’t like, because of the obvious danger that those will separate their life from that of the community movement and cultivate an independence and outlook of their own. The self-government system of the community school of the Third Internationale in Moscow is typical. The school is first of all divided into several major education groups called ‘‘houses,’’ which are pietty much after the model of the English Howard plan. The children have, according to three different age-stages, different forms and practices of self-government. But within these stages they are mixed in “houses.” These houses are again divided into “rings” of ton pupils each, which bear revolutionary names—Flame of the Revolution, Liehkneeht. Rosa Luxcnburg, etc. At their head stands, on every occasion, a responsible loader. The loader's council of the undor-gronps is responsible for the whole “house.” It apportions the tasks in school and outside. All responsible offices are held by the eldest pupils, the “pioneers” of the first group. The leaders are elector! by the several groups and houses for a abort term —sometimes to retire except on urgent grounds it is only two months. These are not allowed to retire except on urgent grounds, which must also he accepted by the leaders’ council. The supremo leader, however, is not elected, but is appointed by the district bureau of the young “pioneers.” Therefore, also, any protest against him is to be announced through this body. He is the president of the general school assembly, which before all things effectuates the allocation of the individual pupils to the groups and is the final court of appeal inside the school. The special problems are settled in the "houses." In these there are in general three sections to be found. The political section looks after all the posters, wall-journals, and the establishment of the Lenin-room, etc. The section, or commission, for order and control determines the whole organisation of the work; the economic section has to do whatever is requisite for the physical and external needs of the school community.

This organisation m the purely communists school here treated of, to which go only the children of those who have gained notoriety by j .inning risks for communism, is characterised by the limits which it sets to selfVovernment. As in all Russian industrial corporations, which officially have indeed complete self-govern-ment, and choose their own leaders, yet the supreme head is chosen by the district organisation of the communist party and then for appearance sake elected in open ballot, so here also the highest court is no more the school community, but the organisation of the young “pioneers,” who by this means completely dominate the school spirit. Certainly a clever, but yet very transparent method of habituating the young to the dictatorship of the com-

munist partyl Though in other schools the self-govern-ment may be achieved quite differently as to details, the influence of the young “pioneers” is everywhere the same. In homo cases they have no division ' into “houses,” but under groups differently organised, which satisfy all the requirements of the community from the spiritual to the physical. They have usually as a court to give decisions on internal affairs or central committee (you can see the likeness to the constitution of the Soviet State) which is selected by a vote from the general school assembly, but the “pioneers” are, through the pupils who belong to this youthful group, again as before, the backbone of the self-government. It thus becomes pretty clear what a magnificent political purpose-organisation this scheme of self-government is. This spirit never

finds clearer expression than on special days and occasions, which in other ways express a happy love. And when you know that on these occasions plays are staged which were written by tho pupils themselves and always acted by them, whose contents are obviously taken from the revolution history with its previously sketched primitive contrast of “once” and “now,” when you get an experience of this, how at the beginning and end of every salutation in schools the Internationale resounds, then you know bow this life in the school must so. emphatically

hammer in all those unconsciously operating educative factors from the surrounding world of communism. Just as the nature of Communism is not completely exhausted in its party-polities Russian imprint, so in the same way there are obvious evidences of the successes and also of the designs of tho school which is oriented towards communism, but not bound in by narrow party-political schemes. If the school is really to present tho picture of a living communistic society, this necessarily implies from the economic viewpoint the' primacy of society over tho welfare and interest of the individual and m addition tc society as a being, it implies a social consciousness as the foundational

principle of the young community. No words are necessary to show the results produced by this all-embracing self-gpvcrn-ment, which puts every individual in the management and control of the school into a definite position amid the circle of his fellows and which demands of him a justification of all his executive acts before the narrower or wider circle he belongs to from time to time —right up to the lull circle of the whole assembled school community. This demand on the individual has a double insistence in case he is one of the leaders. In this way self-govern-ment strengthens the growth of duty and a sense of self-responsibility. All social powers that are in use amongst the pupils

are in this way nourished and are practised and alone prized—all individual guts mean an obligation to leadership, not a privileged right to strike out one’s own way to personal advancement over one s fellows. Doubtless an advance towards such an education is aided by tho sociability of the Russian who had not vet been’ over-indiviclualiscd through the modern industrial capitalistic development accordin': to the European model. Anyone who has seen these young people at work in the Russian schools or who has heard them speak in their assemblies feels that they are conscious not only of their partypolitical obligations, but that in a higher sense they conceive of their communistic obligation’s. Anyone who has had experience of this is bound to acknowledge fully with what enthusiasm they devote themselves to their task. . . , . The form of a communistic society is "rounded in free classification. Conscious compulsion, as 't was practised in the previous schools, with the object of bringing the individual into subordination to the rule of the society in which he must live, is therefore rejected as a means of coin-

munistic education. So the Russian school authority not only forbids corporal punishment, hut it punishes any teacher offending against the regulation with loss oi his position and a fine in the civil courts. So it comes about that in general all punishment is officially ruled out. An arrest also according to our method is inadmissible. The watchword is—not negatively through compulsion, but positively through it. is scope to be provided in the community for the operation of all powers. But, if these life-forms betray themselves as being too weak against a self-willed transgressor, what then? Is there also, then, no punishment brought in which is avthoritativelv administered? Everywhere that I inquired that is specially provided against, even in the homes for the “diflicuH to educate.” Vet it is certainly not correct. For it always came out on a closer questioning about those cases that deprivation of food along with having tne offenders committed to other homes was put in force, although everybody was very anxious to avoid using the 'word “punishment” (Strafe). There is no doubt that these cases are settled through external authority and not merely through the youth-community. Such cases arc, however, certainly very rare, and in general the community seem in such circumstances to have gone over to the practice of calling in the doctor —and