The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 1, 1925, Page 14

The New Schools in Soviet Russia 3) Morris Backall I visited the Pegi Serene School” |i in Moscow on Chliebnaia Street. It occupies two buildings; one for the first “stupen” (stage), and one build- ing for the second stage. I found three hundred and eighty nine chil- dren mostly of workers, playing joy- fully, sitting in their classroom, but always doing something, always creat- ing. You could feel that the new spirit and new life takes hold of the entire school work. The teacher in the class- room, as well gs in the play hall is not a superior, but a friend and helper of the children, It was the old and able teacher Va- selievna who has been teaching for the last thirty years whom I met first, and her deep eyes stimulate the entire atmosphere of the school with their friendly looks. Gives Teachers Chance. She feels that the Soviet govern- ment is giving the teacher as well as the children the first chance jin the world to create a new education, a new kind of children who will build a new world and be able to absorb and solve the difficult problems of life and society. From the very beginning the Luna- charski school as well as all other schools that I visited impresses the American with its difference and nov- elty. It calls out the immage of our school life in America where every- thing is conservative, old and narrow, where the curriculum in American schools are relics of the middle age; where the pupils are quiet and dry and scared. In Russia the school rooms are full of life, full of move- ment, full of joy. The pupil is merely a membey, an equal one of the crea- tive life. Work—Nature—Society. The system of the Lunacharski school is the educational system of the (Gus) government educational system. It con- sists of three primary elements. First, work; second, nature; third, society. Work: -The..spinit.of work is the eentral ore -in*the°edutational life of the school. The child studies the work shops, industrial history of its surrounding, starting with its district, going to its city and then state and government. The school itself has work instru- ments like weaving, carpentry, shoe making, and so on. The child gets a knowledge how to produce, how to organize and how to study labor and its problems. Study Evolution of Social ‘Life. But, as a school system, the method of study in the Lunacharski school as well as in all other schools of So- viet Russia is the new method of com- plex study. The child begins with the very simple beginning and goes through the entire evolution of hu- man effort, for instances, house build- ing. Therchild learns that the first house was a cave, then a tent, then an improved kind of tent, small peas- ant house, up to modern apartment buildings. The same is applied to the metal industry which developed out of a stone knife. The method of education in its pre- liminary work. is so combined and | gives the child such a vivid picture of life that beginning from a house the School as well as in all other schools in Soviet Russia study their reading, | awakened to nature, to work and to writing and arithmetic, not through Society, which they are reproducing books but from actual life, from ac- lin color and line and rythm. You see tual contact with realities, therefore | |pictures on the walls of the schools their study has not merely a practical | lot the open field, of the peasant work- value, but it is a part of their own | ling on the field, of workefs in shops life. ang of movements of the streets. The The children in the Lunacharski|s@ries they write are full of the very School, according to the educational life that Surrounds them and through program of the Soviet Government are |which they give expression of their socially organized. First, in a “san- | knowledge — in language, in their tion and fantasy and interest are gins its studies from the village. kom” (sanitary committee), which | work. takes care of the sanitary condition of the children, and teaches that they should have clean hands, feet and dress. Second, a “belkom” (a com- and underwear of the children should be kept clean. Third, a “choskom” (house committee) which takes care of the building and school materials. Study Peasant Life. The school of the second stage be- The life of the village in fall and all activi- ties connected with agricultural life of that period of the year are explain- Study of Labor Stimulates. The children of the city comifig to | the village participate in the life of the peasant and at the end of the sem- mittee for laundry), so that the towels|ester they bring back to the,city a knowledge of the life of the village, together with botanical atlases and collections that they created during the summer months. Generally near the village a factory stands and the children of the Lunacharski School get acquainted also with the life and work of the factory. The. children of the school. of the second stage do advanced work in the child studies, not merely work, how ajed. The holiday of harvest, of taking |different occupations of which they the grain to the city, the problem of ;get only a glimpse in the first stage house is made, but also the evolution of social life, when people lived in caves, then in tents, small peasant houses, modern houses and apartment buildings. Together with this, chil- dren study the complex of modern speculation with the products of the peasants in capitalistic states and the changes that took place in Soviet Rus- sia are gone into. In this way the child gets a know- of the school life. Different groups of children study different. occupations. Every group reports its accomplishments and prob- loms to the other group, and so every plufnbing, how at the beginning water |ledge of buying and selling and ex-|child is confrited with the entire sit- was brought from the river and how |change through a plain example of the people living in big apartment build-|jife of\peasant, the life of the village ings and hotels are able to get modern ‘and the city, and also of the problem comforts. Children works in the shops of co-coperative in distinction from of the school; children visit small/!private business. shops outside and factories and all modern big industries. They study the whole evolution of society, of la The children of the Lunacharski uation of labor. It is in Soviet Russia where the spirit of labor dominates the entire Ife of the community, where labor came to the forefront of political eco- nomic, educational and artistic life School, as well as children of all the /that the children can realize the value other schools in Soviet Russia are |as well as the necessity to study it, bor and of nature, combining the three ‘taken out for three months of sum-|with that/love that I could find there. and uniting the efforts of the child | mer to the villages of Russia. They |With them it isn’t mere theory but a through one channel, beginning with ,work out a plan, then they go out to ‘stimulation to the entire life of child- the house, then with the district, the observe.and study, then they write ‘hood. city, state, .government, and then in jreports and stories and poems, then the higher grades the whole world. they paint. Contact With Realities. The children in the Lunacharski| Study The Revolution. The children in the schools of So- It is wonderful to wee the paintings jyiet Russia are studying the holidays of these children, how their imagine-|before the Revolution and the holidays 8 after the Revolution, They express It also in painting and in writing their stories, The third year the children study the development of factories, transportation, culture, public utilities in the state. They begin with the times of the czar and end with. the development of the same institutions in Red Moscow. The fourth year the children study rot only the development of the en- tire life of industry in S: S$: 8. \R., but the struggle between -peasantry: in the .. \terest of the working class combined with the peagantry and the present motto “with the face to the village.” Children Help Controlling. In the fifth, sixth, -seventh and eighth grades of the second stage the |children studying advanced mathema- itics, physics, chemistry, also through ithe method of complex. The Lunacharski’ School as well as all experimental schools in Russia, which are very many, took over from America the “Dalton Plan” which gives the child self control over its studies. The child itself takes care of the results of its studies and regis- ters itself the outcome of its daily studies, daily attendance, hours devot- ed to each study, which is determined beforchand through a plan, and each child learns to be responsible for it- self and to take account of its un- ¢development. Orphans Get Best Treatment. There are thirty-three experimental ischools in Moscow alone and they are very many experimental stations in Soviet Russia. Each and every school is doing its work through a general plan, but finding new methods how to make the general program more ef- jfective and more beneficial to both |children and society. There are Youth Organizations in the Lunacharski School which are to be found also in every school of | the country. © A ‘young: pupil, was shown to me as ‘the chairman of ‘the = “komsomol” organization. I asked him how he was. getting along and he - answered, “I live better than anyone, they all respect me,” and I was won- dering why he is treated better than anyone and I asked him, “Why, are there any privileges?” And he flushed and answered, “I am an orphan on both sides, I have no father and no mother,” and I understood that this youth who would be an outcast in a capitalistic state fecls more than any- one, the spirit of a communistic’ gov- ernment. Ideals of Youth. He explained to me: that their or- ganization consists of fifty members and they have also one hundred and ~ twenty pioneers. They organize de- bates and lectures and they are in- terested in the life of the children in America, in Germany. He told the dreams they dream of a new world and their readiness to help humanity, so I understood the ideal that Soviet ‘Russia gives to its youth in the in- terest that awakens in the young gen- eration to all phases of life, all phases of humanity. There are 250,000 teachers in Soviet Russia living, teaching in the farthest corners of the big land; some of them teach for months at a time in. lamp lighted rooms in distant Siberia; most of them work in villages among peas- ants, but all of them have the divine feeling that they are molding a new personality of collective life, of crea- tive forces, a generation which owill astound the world with its » idealism, - Teachers Support Soviets, — At the last All-Russian Soviet con- vention of Teachers which was held in Moscow the teachers expressed their willingness and readiness to help the government of Russia in its edu- cational efforts, notwithstanding the fact that only from eight to ten per- cent of the bulk of the teachers are communists but they all feel that only the present Soviet Government of Russia is able to cope with the educa- tional situation in Russia and is able to organize the most modern ‘school system in the world. village against the landowner’, how - . /the workers develop and how the In-