Education of Teachers in Russia: (Contributions to the Study of Education)

EDUCATION OF TEACHERS IN RUSSIA

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EDUCATION OF TEACHERS IN RUSSIA Delbert H. Long Roberta A. Long Foreword by Gennadii Bordovskii

Contributions to the Study of Education, Number 75

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData

Long, Delbert. Education of teachers in Russia I Delbert H. Long, Roberta A. Long ; foreword by Gennadii Bordovskii p. cm.-(Contributions to the study of education. ISSN 0196-707X ; no. 75) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-313-31048-3 (alk. paper) 1. Teachers-Training of-Soviet Union. 2. Teachers-Training ofRussia (Federation) I. Long, Roberta. 11. Title. 111. Series. LB1725S65L66 1999 370'.71'1474c21 98-51636 British Libra7 Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright 0 1999 by Delbert H. Long and Roberta A. Long

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-51636 ISBN: 0-313-31048-3 ISSN: 0196707X First published in 1999 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America

@ The paper used in this hook complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (239.48-1984). 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright Acknowledgments

The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to use excerpts from the following material: Albert Shanker, “Where We Stand: Improving Our Schools,” New York Times, May 17, 1992. Copyright 0 American Federation of Teachers. Reprinted by permission of American Federation of Teachers. Delbert Long and Roberta Long, Education in the USSR, Phi Delta Kappa, 1980. Reprinted by permission of Phi Delta Kappa. Delbert Long, Educational Reforms in the Soviet Union, Comparative Education Center, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1985. Reprinted by permission of Comparative Education Center. Delbert Long, “Soviet Education and the Development of Communist Ethics,” Phi Delta Kappan (March 1984), vol. 65. no. 7. Copyright 0 Phi Delta Kappa. Reprinted by permission of Phi Delta Kappa. Delbert Long, Review of Chester Finn, We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our in Educational Studies (Spring 1992). Copyright 0 American Educational Studies Association. Reprinted by permission of American Educational Studies Association.

Future,

Delbert Long, Review of Ben Eklof and Edward Dneprov, eds., Democracy in the Russian School in East/West Education (Spring 1994). Reprinted by permission of Eastmest Education.

Delbert H. Long and Roberta A. Long, “Continuity and Change in Soviet Education under Gorbachev.” American Educational Research Journal (Fall 1990), vol. 27, no. 3. Copyright 0 1994 by the American Educational Research Association. Reprinted by permission of the American Educational Research Association.

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To Our Russian Friends

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Contents Foreword by Gennadii Bordovskii Acknowledgments

1. Tsarist Legacy Teacher Education Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution 2.

Teacher Education under Lenin and Stalin Historical and Educational Setting Preservice Training Inservice Training Conclusion

3. Teacher Education under Khrushchev and Brezhnev Historical and Educational Setting Preservice Training Inservice Training Conclusion 4. Teacher Education under Gorbachev and Yeltsin Historical and Educational Setting Overview of Teacher Training Preservice Training Inservice Training

xi ...

x111

1 15 26 33 41

45 53 62

69 75

101 109

148

Contents

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5. Teacher Education on the Eve of the 21st Century in Russia and the United States Teacher Training in America Recruitment and Retention of Teachers Preservice Training Inservice Training

169 176 179 198

Selected Bibliography

21 l

Index

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Foreword Education of Teachers in Russia

is an impressive book with several distinctive qualities that make it a welcome addition to the pedagogical literature on RussiadSoviet teacher education. Four qualities are especially pertinent. The book is comprehensive. Believing that to understand the present, one must understand the past, the Longs provide the reader with considerable background information. Chapter I of the book is devoted to teacher education from Alexander 11 to Lenin (imperial Russia). Chapters 2 and 3 cover the period from Lenin to Gorbachev (the Soviet period), and chapter 4 examines contemporary teacher education under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. In each of these chapters, the Longs interweave general, school, and teacher education history, showing the interrelationship among these three components. They give careful attention to each of the various levels of lifelong teacher education in the Russian Federation, starting with young people in secondary school pedagogical classes and pedagogical gymnasiums, and proceeding through pedagogical schoolslcolleges, pedagogical institutesluniversities, and various institutions of higher learning devoted primarily to the continuing education of practicing teachers. The book has a significant comparative-education component. In an everincreasingly global community, a comparative perspective is important for people in practically any field, and absolutely essential for educators. At the end of chapter 1, the authors describe briefly the similarities between Russian and American teacher education on the eve of the First World War. In the concluding chapter, the authors first describe 20th-century developments in American teacher training and then discuss in some detail the teacher-training problems and challenges that Russia and America have in common, making some suggestions, which, if acted upon, would constitute an important initiative toward improving the education of teachers in both our countries.

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Foreword

The Longs have no ax to grind. In their analysis and critique of teacher education in Russia, the Longs are informed, fair, and judicious. Over the past twenty years or so, the Longs have lived for extended periods of time in Russia, and their “insider’s’’ knowledge of Russian schools and teacher-training institutions is evident in this book and increases its credibility. They have a good feel for the Russian people and the intricacies, continuities, occasional violent ruptures, and not infrequent contradictions of the school and teacher education systems in Russia. The book shuns panaceas. The critique by the Longs in chapter 5 of Russian and American teacher education serves as a useful corrective to the theories of those educators and politicians in Russia and America who are prone to seek simplistic answers to complex problems. Education of Teachers in Russia should be of interest to scholars with a particular interest in the current teacher education scene in Russia and in the interrelationship over the years between government and society, schools, and teacher training. Since the Longs write in an interesting, jargon-free style and provide ample background information, the book should also appeal to general readers and college students with a serious interest in educational matters. I trust that the book will also be read by Russians and Americans involved in making educational policy in their respective countries. The Longs emphasize something that is too often ignored in national debates on school reform-that effective reform of schools must start with reform of teacher training. It is wishful thinking to assume that any country can have a first-rate school system without a first-rate teacher education system. Gennadii Bordovskii Academician and Professor, Rector, Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, St. Petersburg

Acknowledgments For their kind assistance, our thanks to: Our longtime Russian friends who not only introduced us to the rich cultural and intellectual life in their country, but also assumed the responsibility of “educating” us about Russia and its people: Jane Volokhotiuk, Nikolai and Galina Kashirinii, Vladimir and Anna Matveenko, Leonid and Ludmila Pospelovoi, Tamara Ruzhnikova, Vladimir and Anna Sharogradskii, Pave1 and Svetlana Shebshaevitch; Our professional colleagues in Russia-teachers and administrators in schools and universities-who graciously and unselfishly took not a little of their time to fill in the many gaps in our knowledge of Russian schools and teacher-training institutions: Natalia Druzhinina, former dean, Faculty of Primary School Education, Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia (HSPUR), St. Petersburg; M. C. Gavrilova, director, and Lida Tsyganova, deputy director, School-Gymnasium No. 67, St. Petersburg; Galina Golusheva, professor, Pskov Pedagogical Institute, Pskov; Alexander Kolechenko, director, Department of Pedagogy and Psychology, St. Petersburg State University of Pedagogical Art (SSUPA), St. Petersburg; Maya Pildes, director, Gymnasium No. 56, St. Petersburg; Olga Shilova, professor, HSPUR; Valerie Sydakov, rector, and Alexander Popov, prorector, Vologda Institute for the Raising of the Qualifications and Further Preparation of Teachers (IRQ), Vologda; Iurii Voronkov, director, General Education School No. 154, St. Petersburg; Tatiana Zorina, director, and Irina Koroleva, deputy director, Global Education School No. 631, St. Petersburg;

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Acknowledgments

Nina V. Bochkina, deputy chair, N o r t W e s t Department of the Russian Academy of Education, HSPUR; Gennadii Bordovskii, rector, HSPUR; A. G. Kazprzhak, director, Moscow City Pedagogical Gymnasium; T. V. Leont’eva, professor, HSPUR; Ludmila Matveeva, dean, Faculty of Primary School Education, HSPUR; Julia Turchaninova, deputy rector, Republican Inservice Educator Training Institute, Moscow; Alla Triapitsina, director, Department of Pedagogy, HSPUR, all of whom graciously submitted to lengthy, sometimes multiple-day, interviews; Yelina Smirnova, director, Vladimir Tumalev, professor, and Valentin Kurlov, professor, Department of Sociology, SSUPA, for their most valuable general assistance and for permitting us to join them in conducting some comparative sociological research of teachers in Russia and the United States; Nikolai Balandin, professor, IRQ, and deputy director of the Vologda Ministry of Education, Vologda Region; Nina Litvinova, vice-rector for international affairs, SSUPA; German M. Sheshin, director, and Olga Loseva, deputy director, Pedagogical College No. 2, St. Petersburg, for greatly assisting us in most phases of our research; Valentina Smorgunova, dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, HSPUR, for critical reading of the manuscript of this book, numerous interviews and discussions over an eight-year period, and frequent assistance in every phase of our research; Russian pedagogical students and teachers who completed questionnaires for our research; The administration of the University of Alabama at Birmingham for granting us sabbaticals that enabled us, in large part, to do the field work in Russia necessary for the writing of this book; The increasing number of excellent scholars in the social sciences who in recent decades have specialized in some aspect of RussiadSoviet education. Many of these scholars are cited in the notes within each chapter, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge our deep indebtedness to their specialized research. We appreciate the permission of the publishers concerned to reprint or adapt some paragraphs from the following previously published works: D. Long and R. Long, Education in the U S S R , Phi Delta Kappa, 1980; D. Long, Educational Reforms in the Soviet Union, Comparative Education Center, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1985; D. Long, “Soviet Education and the Development of Communist Ethics,” Phi Delta Kappan, March 1984 (copyright Phi Delta Kappa); D. Long, review of Chester Finn, We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future, in Educational Studies, spring 1992; D.Long, review of Ben Eklof and Edward Dneprov, eds., Democracy in the Russian School, in

Acknowledgments East/West Education,

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spring 1994. Also, D. Long, “Continuity and Change in Soviet Education under Gorbachev,” American Educational Research Journal, fall 1990, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 4 0 3 4 2 3 (copyright 1994 by the American Educational Research Association; adapted by permission of the publisher).

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1 Tsarist Legacy TEACHER EDUCATION PRIOR TO THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION How precious are the old institutions, the old traditions, the old customs.

Among the falsest of political principles is the principle of the sovereignty of the people.

-K.

P. Pobedonostsev, chief political advisor to Alexander I11 and Nicholas I1

The Russia inherited by Alexander I1 (1855-1881) was a far cry from the Russia that existed following the defeat of Napoleon. At that time the prestige and status accorded Alexander I (1801-1825) and his country could scarcely be higher. This high esteem evaporated during the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855), which embroiled Russia in the disastrous Crimean War (1853-1856), a war that revealed Russia as a “paper tiger.” Alexander I1 quickly made peace and announced that reforms would soon follow, and they did. By far the most significant was a brief manifesto in 1861 that abolished serfdom. Prior to the first attempt on Alexander’s life in 1866, there was a flurry of progressive, liberal educational acts on practically every phase of education. In 1858 there was a law that promoted education among girls, in 1861 a statute on universities that did away with the more repressive measures initiated during Nicholas 1’s reign, and in 1864 statutes on elementary and secondary schools (the gymnasium and progymnasium). The Public School Statute in 1864 reaffirmed the traditional goals of Russian elementary schools-to provide the population with religion, morality, and the

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Education of Teachers in Russia

three Rs. As in the past, primary schooling remained noncompulsory. The statute on secondary education, also in 1864, declared the aim of the gymnasium to be twofold: to provide pupils with a general education and to prepare them at the same time for the university. The gymnasium was to have a seven-year course of study, and the progymnasium was modeled on the German realschule; ancient languages were replaced with French and German, and considerable attention was given to drawing and design and to the natural sciences. Both the statutes on elementary and secondary schools, as well as the 1863 statute on universities, upheld the egalitarian principle that all schools should be open to people of all classes and faiths. However, with the exception of the gymnasium, which prepared its pupils for the university, none of the schools were designed to prepare pupils for the next higher-level school.’ In only one decade, from 1855 to 1865, the number of students in all Russian schools doubled even though the total population increased only 5.5 percent.’ With such an explosion of the number of pupils and students, the Ministry of Education was forced to give much greater attention than ever before to the recruitment and training of teachers. Under the leadership of A. V. Golovnin (1862-1866), a liberal, the Ministry of Education established three teacher seminaries and twelve pedagogical courses in universities, primarily for women. The course of study in the teacher seminaries was two years, and the curriculum was similar to that of the county elementary schools, with the addition of one brief course the second year in teaching methodology. Other than the methods course, subjects included divine law, Russian language, Church Slavonic language, geography, history, natural history, arithmetic, geometry, geodesy and linear drawing, singing, and penmanship. Ten days after the first of seven unsuccessful attempts on his life, Alexander IT lost his youthful ardor for liberal educational reform and replaced Golovnin with Count Dmitrii Tolstoi (1866-1880), the Oberprocurator of the Holy Synod.’ Though very conservative, Tolstoi did much to advance Russian teacher education in the last half of the 19th century. He believed that the key to advancing education without threatening social stability-that is, the obligatory triad of “orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationalism”-was for his ministry to exercise as much control as possible over all levels of Russian education. To do this he relied heavily on the work of ministry-appointed inspectors who supervised the work of teachers at all educational levels, primary school through the university. Tolstoi argued persuasively that both elementary and secondary school teachers should be prepared in institutions specializing in teacher training. First, he turned his attention to developing special normal schools for the preparation of gymnasium instructors. One of these new schools in St. Petersburg provided a four-year curriculum for graduates of the classical gymnasium or its equivalent. The institute prepared only teachers of history, the classics, and Russian literature because Tolstoi believed these were the teachers Russia needed most. The curriculum reflected this utilitarian objective. Reflecting Tolstoi’s bias for a clas-

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3

sical curriculum, the first two years of the program emphasized the study of Greek and Latin. In addition, students studied religion, Russian and Slavonic literature, French, German, history, pedagogy, and didactics. Only in the last two years did students specialize in the subject they planned to teach. At that point, they engaged in observation and student teaching in a gymnasium attached to the institute. Faced with a severe shortage of qualified teachers for village schools, Tolstoi became a strong advocate of special pedagogical training for village primary school teachers during the 1870s. In 1866, the Ministry of Education allocated 1 percent of its budget to teacher training; in 1879, 8 percent. Tolstoi used the additional funds to establish fifty teacher seminaries, most of which were set up in the borderlands of the empire, presumably to protect the trainees from possible infection with the revolutionary ideas embraced by many gymnasium and university students at the time. An educational statute in 1875, which governed teacher seminaries until 1917, demanded that every course in the seminaries be impregnated with a patriotic and moral purpose that developed in trainees a devotion to and love of the emperor, the fatherland, God, and the Orthodox Church, as well as a respect for their profession. The curriculum of the teacher seminaries was not sufficiently advanced to prepare teachers adequately for the new municipal schools, which in time replaced the old county schools. The county schools did not prepare pupils for transfer to a classical gymnasium, whereas the new six-year municipal schools did. To prepare teachers for the municipal schools, Tolstoi developed a new kind of pedagogical institution, the teacher institute. Upon graduation from a municipal school, a pupil could remain in this school an additional year, assisting a regular teacher. and then could enter a teacher institute. After completing a three-year course in the institute, a pupil received certification as a “teacher of urban schools.” Courses that were taught each year in the teacher institutes included divine law, Russian-language and Orthodox Church literature, arithmetic and algebra, geometry, history, geography, natural science, drawing and design, penmanship, singing, and gymnastics. Pedagogy and didactics were taught the last two years. In comparison with the seminary curriculum, the institute curriculum devoted more time to theory, mathematics, and natural sciences; a little less time to the study of language, history, geography, and penmanship; and much less time to divine law.4 As with the normal schools and the teacher seminaries, the teacher institutes had two purposes: to develop the student’s pedagogical abilities and political trustworthiness. Tolstoi equated good character with political trustworthiness. The primary duty of all of Tolstoi’s pedagogical institutions was the development not of mind but of good character. The Ministry of Education tried with some success to control every facet of the operation of its pedagogical institutions-the goals, curriculum content, structure, methods of teaching, and life of pupils in and out of class. The key to Tolstoi’s control apparatus was to provide

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Education of Teachers in Russia

prospective teachers and their instructors in the teacher-training institutions only with the information and pedagogical techniques essential to impart to their future pupils the knowledge and skills minutely prescribed by the Ministry. The reign of Alexander I1 was a time of momentous societal changes and significant progress at all levels of the educational enterprise. Peasants were freed, zemstvos (rural elective governmental organs) and dumas (urban elective governmental organs) created, railroads built, a Westernized judicial system established, military conscription democratized. Arts and theoretical sciences flourished, industrialization forged ahead, new social classes emerged, and peace reigned (with the exception of a one-year war with Turkey). More people from more different classes were being educated than ever before. Peasants, the Ministry of Education, and other ministries worked hard to promote literacy throughout the country. Pedagogy as a field of study gained some legitimacy, even in universities. Pedagogical journals proliferated. While the great majority of teachers still received pedagogical training in schools and gymnasiums, many now gained this training in institutions specializing in pedagogy. Though still in the stage of infancy, teaching was slowly gaining some of the features characteristic of a profession, such as certification of competency, professional congresses, and continuing education courses. Yet underlying all this social ferment and apparent progress in education and other fields was a smoldering uneasiness and dissatisfaction on the part of such disparate groups as the nobility, the peasants, the intelligentsia, the literati, and the more radically inclined students in gymnasiums and universities. The nobility wanted their traditional privileges restored, the peasants more land and no redemption payments, the intelligentsia more representative government, the literati no censorship, radical students the downfall of the monarchy. In 1881, a student terrorist threw a bomb at Alexander 11 and killed him. In the tsar’s pocket was a draft of a constitution that was to be published in newspapers the next day. The draft called for elected and appointed public representatives to participate in consideration of financial and administrative reforms. The new constitution was never published by Alexander’s successor, his son, Alexander I11 (1881-1896). Upon reading it, the new tsar, thirty-five years of age, scribbled on it with an apparent sigh of relief “Thank God that this criminal and hasty step toward constitution [sic] was not taken, and that this whole fantastic project was rejected.”5 Alexander I11 and his successor and son, Nicholas I1 (1896-1917), were both reactionaries. Being greatly influenced by Pobedonostsev and other reactionary advisors, Alexander 111 and Nicholas I1 (until the war with Japan in 1904) tried to put the public schools under the control of the Holy Synod. But failing in this effort, they did succeed in increasing the number of church schools, through public funding, from 4,500 in 1882 to 32,000 in 1894$ doing away with the autonomy of the universities and making them subservient to the regional curators appointed by the Ministry of Education; abolishing self-government of

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university students, prohibiting any kind of student meetings, and subjecting students to exceptionally strict scrutiny by supervisors and police spies; and reinjecting a strong class bias into the school system, which was most evident in the so-called Cook’s Circular of 1887, which stated: Gymnasiums and progymnasiums are freed from receiving the children of coachmen, servants, cooks, laundresses, small tradesmen, and the like, whose children, with the exception, perhaps, of those who are gifted with extraordinary capacities, ought by no means to be transferred from the sphere to which they belong, and thus [be] brought, as many years’ experience has shown, to slight their parents, to feel dissatisfied with their lot, and to conceive an aversion to the existing inequality of fortune which is in the nature of things unavoidable.’ At this time the government tried with some success to divide education into airtight compartments that, as a rule, kept students in the compartments designed for them. In spite of these reactionary moves, the government and the gentry-dominated zemstvos began to look at mass public education in a new light during the 1890s. In the quarter century after the emancipation of the serfs, the great expansion of literacy and schooling was due primarily to the efforts of the peasant community, not the elite. Educated Russians and officialdom joined forces to bring about universal elementary education only during the turbulent 1890s, a decade shaken by social upheavals and the decline of the military. The powers that be now began to treat the school as an important source of national strength and political stability.* Some statistics will give a better idea of the scope of the expansion o f public education during the last two decades or so of the tsarist regime. From 1894 to 1904 the total number of elementary schools increased from 36,000 to 8 1,000 and the number of pupils in them from 2,500,000 to 4,700,000. Commercial schools, first under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance and after 1905 under the jurisdiction of the new Ministry of Trade and Industry, numbered only 28 with 2,000 pupils in 1905. By 1917 there were 250 commercial schools with an enrollment of 60,000 pupils. From 191 l to 1915, elementary school enrollment increased 35.7 percent. In the last two decades of tsarist rule, enrollment in secondary schools nearly tripled in relation to the population as a whole, rising in 1895 from 13.3 pupils per ten thousand population to 36.0 per ten thousand in 1914.’ Enrollment in gymnasiums for girls increased from 137,000 in 1903 to 303,700 in 1913, which accounts in large part for the increasing feminization of the teaching profession from 1880 to 1914. Incredibly, on the eve of the First World War, the number of girls enrolled in gymnasiums exceeded by nearly seventy-one thousand the combined enrollment of boys in gymnasiums and progymnasiums. The increase of student enrollment in universities was also dramatic. In 1913 there were 35,700 university students. This

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Education of Teachers in Russia

number represents more than a 100 percent increase over the enrollment in 1900.lo The general breakdown of law and order following the war with Japan and the Revolution of 1905 forced Nicholas I1 to issue a manifesto in October 1905 that promised society full civil liberties and a popularly elected constitutional government. A s soon as the societal crisis was over, with the monarchy still intact, Nicholas reneged on many of his promises. Still, the very existence of the new legislature, the Duma, was of extraordinary importance to the advancement of public school education in Russia. Though the Duma had limited power, it provided a national forum for discussion of educational problems. Furthermore, this new legislature actually devised various schemes for amelioration of these problems. For example, the Ministry of Education introduced into the Second Duma in 1907 a bill calling for universal elementary education, free and accessible to all classes of children. Although the bill was not passed, the Ministry nevertheless began implementing many of its provisions, such as increasing the length of the primary school curriculum from three to four years. The Third Duma in 1912 made yet another attempt to establish a ladder system of schools, but failed. In 1915 the New Statute of Primary Schools was introduced into the Fourth Duma. For the first time in Russian history, this bill called for the gradual introduction of compulsory education. The bill did not become law due to the 1917 Revolution and subsequent dissolution of the Duma, but the principle of compulsory education was now established by the government and was, in time, acted upon by the Soviet government." Perhaps due in large part, paradoxically, to both the strong hand of Alexander 111, which preserved the status quo, and the weak hand of Nicholas 11, which encouraged societal unrest and turmoil, there were no earthshaking changes from 1881 to 1917 in the structure or curriculum of either the state's elementary and secondary schools or its traditional pedagogical institutions. In the early part of the 20th century, the primary school, grades one through three, devoted six hours each week to Bible study; three hours to Church Slavonic; eight hours to Russian; two hours to penmanship; five hours to arithmetic. The secondary school consisted of grades four through seven in three types of schools: new humanitarian, classical humanitarian, and progymnasium. Each of the three types of schools devoted approximately two hours of study each week to divine law; four to five hours to Russian language; three to four hours to mathematics; two to four hours to history; two to four hours to physics; three to five hours to modem languages. In addition pupils in the classical humanitarian school devoted five to six hours of study to ancient languages. While pupils in the new humanitarian school had only two hours of natural science in the sixth class and the classical humanitarian pupils had no work in this area, pupils in the progymnasium had two to three hours study of natural science each week. Pupils in the progymnasium also had two hours of chemistry in the fifth

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class, and math majors were provided an additional four to six hours of work in math and two hours in natural science. All three schools also required two hours of geographical study per week for two to three years.‘’ We see here the encyclopedic secondary school curriculum that had been the pride and bane of Russian and Soviet secondary education until the downfall of the USSR. As with the state’s elementary and secondary schools, there was no dramatic change in the goals, structure, or curriculum of the state’s traditional pedagogical institutions during the reigns of Alexander I11 and Nicholas 11.Teacher seminaries and teacher institutes continued to be the specialized pedagogical institutions that prepared teachers for elementary and secondary schools, and their number increased considerably. In 1917, when Russia was ruled by the Provisional Government, 15,571 teacher candidates were enrolled in 39 teacher institutes and 149 teacher seminaries. Universities also continued to prepare secondary school teachers, sometimes providing them with some work in pedagogy, sometimes giving them no pedagogical preparation. Most elementary school teacher candidates became teachers not by completing work in a specialized pedagogical institution, but by passing a qualification examination at the six-year municipal school level and serving a probationary period as an assistant to a qualified school teacher.13 Though there were few substantive changes from 1881 to 1917 in the initial preparation of teachers in seminaries, institutes, and universities, there was, especially during the last two decades of tsarist rule, a heightened interest not only in the initial training of teachers, but also in their continuing education and advanced training. At the turn of the century a group of professors at Moscow University became convinced that teaching would never become a real profession until pedagogical faculties were established throughout the country, and they developed a plan for this in 1904. Such faculties were needed, they believed, because teachers were abysmally ignorant of the most essential facts about the human organism. After 1905 the government agreed with the Moscow professors that higher education did not by itself prepare a person to be an effective teacher: “The University can transmit to young people knowledge in this or that area of science, it can arouse their interest and awaken in them the desire for self-improvement, but it cannot teach them to transmit their special knowledge to others. This must be the responsibility of institutions other than the one that young people enter for the sake of general higher education.”14 A few organizations responded to this challenge. The Ministry of War had long had a lively interest in modern pedagogical theories. In 1904 this ministry created in its pedagogical museum in St. Petersburg a section named after the famous mid-19th-century Russian educator K. D. Ushinskii and conducted for secondary school personnel in the cadet corps and the Ministry of Education the first systematic child psychology courses in Russia. In a few short years, these courses provided the foundation for creating a new institution called the

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Education of Teachers in Russia

St. Petersburg Pedagogical Academy. The academy accepted both men and women and provided a two-year course that led to the degree of doctor of pedagogy. In 1911 the P. G. Shelaputin Pedagogical Institute, named after its founder and financial benefactor, opened in Moscow and provided a two-year course for male Russian university graduates who were members of the Russian Orthodox Church. After taking introductory courses in history, logic, psychology, teaching methods, and pedagogical theory, the students concentrated in one of the following subject areas: classical languages, Russian language and literature, Russian and world history, natural history, or physics and mathematics. Upon completion of this course work, students practiced teaching in a progymnasium or gymnasium attached to the institute. In 19 12 a famous professor at Moscow University, G. I. Chelpanov, interested in the study of the psychological foundations of the concept of general education, having received permission from the Ministry of Education and funds from a local businessman, opened the Institute of Psychology. This institute was affiliated with Moscow University and provided a six-year program to its enrollees. In two years’ time there were over seventy students enrolled in the program. The increased interest in pedagogy and in psychology as a legitimate field of academic research and an essential tool for teaching effectiveness was paralleled by an increased interest on the part of teachers themselves-both secondary and elementary-in making their craft more of a profession. In the 1890s, teachers organized such things as mutual-aid societies that sponsored professional meetings and social gatherings where teachers could exchange ideas. These societies (together with zemstvos) also sponsored extremely popular summer courses for teachers that not only enhanced their teaching effectiveness, but also gave them a sense of solidarity and enhanced their commitment to teaching as a career. The modest mutual-aid societies of the 1890s provided the foundation for the development in 1905 of the All-Russian Union of Teachers and Activists in Public Education. By the end of that year, the union claimed thirteen thousand members. The Ministry of Education also became more active in the continuing education field. In 1909, for example, it established training courses for secondary school personnel in all cities with universities. Privately sponsored groups also made a significant contribution to the continuing education of teachers. The most active of these groups was a group of St. Petersburg citizens who called themselves the Permanent Committee for the Establishment of Courses for Teachers. In 1908 this committee provided a summer program for 575 teachers, and three years later 1,456 teachers from all over the country attended the program. By 1914 the instructional program was quite extensive, consisting of 140 hours of natural science, 122 hours of pedagogy, and 140 hours of humanities. There were also demonstration lessons on fourteen subjects, including statistics and experimental psychology. For a short period of time during and immediately after the revolution of

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1905, many rural teachers were for the first time valued members of their villages since they acted as intermediaries between the peasants of their village and the outside world, a troubled world that the peasants were trying hard to better understand. Many rural teachers gained the respect of the villagers by doing such things for them as drafting petitions to the tsar to redress their grievances. The move toward professionalism through teacher organizations soon received a crushing blow from the government. Once the government reestablished law and order in late 1905, it began to crush peasant unions and to arrest and dismiss activist teachers. Roughly one-third (twenty thousand) of the primary school teachers under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education lost their jobs in 1906-1907. The Union of Teachers was proscribed and many of the mutual-aid societies closed down. Summer courses were practically obliterated. After 1905 the government tried to further isolate rural teachers from members of their village by doing such things as prohibiting them to participate in village theater and other popular entertainment and disenfranchising them from participation in the Duma electoral process. So, on the eve of the 1917 Revolution, rural teachers-who comprised the bulk of Russian teachers-were once again viewed by peasants as outsiders, as bourgeois enemies of their popular interests.Is In sum, Alexander I11 and Nicholas I1 were narrow-minded reactionaries who did their best not only to reject further reforms, but also to restrict those already in place. Alexander 111, with his iron will and absolute conviction of the rightness of his policies, managed to preserve during his rule an essentially intact autocratic regime. With police, army, and spies, he effectively stifled for the time being the revolutionary movement that had flourished during the reign of Alexander 11. During Nicholas II’s reign, however, the revolutionary movement reemerged and gained impetus and power with the addition of a new element, the Marxists, who coalesced in 1898 and founded the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, the forerunner of the Communist Party. Under the inept Nicholas 11, the ancient tsarist dynasty steadily disintegrated and finally collapsed in 1917, immobilized, helpless to impose the restraints and controls essential to the survival of any society. In the end, the monarchy was crushed not only by Nicholas’s incompetence and the inherent contradictions and weaknesses of Russian tsarism, but also by the combined weight of many troubles: the military defeats of the First World War; general strikes of the railroad, postal, and other unions: extreme food shortages that prompted numerous disorders and riots; soldiers and sailors who either deserted or refused to quell the disorders; armed uprisings by workers and various revolutionary groups. The first revolution of 1917, the FebmaryMarch Revolution, resulted in establishment by the Duma of the Provisional Government, consisting primarily of liberal-minded people and dedicated, by and large, to democratic principles. This government, however, was weak, its members deeply divided. It committed

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at least one fatal mistake-it insisted on continuing Russian involvement in World War I, a war that was sucking the lifeblood out of the Russian people. Though weak, the Provisional Government might have withstood the assault of an ordinary, bumbling revolutionary group, such as the Decembrists of 1825. It could not withstand the assault of the Bolsheviks. Often in exile or in prison, the Bolsheviks were a small, tightly knit group of disciplined, fanatical conspirators who looked to Marxist ideology and conspiratorial revolutionary literature to guide and justify their actions. Buttressed by their popular slogan, “Peace, Land, Bread,” and led by a remarkable leader, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, the Bolsheviks soon toppled the Provisional Government and formed the world’s first communist political entity, called from 1917 to 1923 the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, and from 1923 to its demise the Soviet Union or USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). In comparison with the reign of Alexander 11,educational progress during the reigns of Alexander 111 and Nicholas I1 until 190.5 was rather limited. Still there were some bright spots. Vocational schools were established and commercial schools began to flourish. Quantitatively, schools and pedagogical institutions increased significantly, and considerable attention was now being given by zemstvos and teacher mutual-aid societies to development of continuing education programs for teachers. Women now constituted a valuable source of teachers for the public schools. After 190.5 a number of influential people, such as the Moscow professors mentioned earlier in this chapter, gave careful attention to problems of teacher education, and, of paramount importance, the government joined with elected officials to promote public education of all young people. In spite of this considerable educational progress, when the Bolsheviks came to power, they inherited a nation still populated for the most part with illiterate peasants. They also inherited, however, a unique state system of education developed over the years from 1700 to 1914 that provided a solid foundation for the system subsequently developed by the Communist Party and its leaders. Schools, universities, and pedagogical institutions under the tsars were organized from “the top down and the center outward”I6 and existed primarily to serve the interests of the state, not necessarily the interests of the individual. Schools at every level were expected to develop good citizens: people who willingly served the interests of the state. Before turning our attention to Soviet education, we would like, for comparative purposes, to conclude this chapter by touching briefly on some of the many things that the teacher education systems in Russia and the United States had in common from roughly 1861 to the end of the First World War (in chapter S we discuss in some detail the problems and challenges that these two systems have in common on the eve of the 21st century): The prevalent assumption among the general populace was that anybody who knew the school subjects and possessed sufficient strength “to keep order” could teach.

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Though the status and prestige of teachers were exceptionally low, the communities they served nevertheless made inordinate demands on their time, energy, and skill. Most teachers received no professional training in an institution that specialized in preparation of teachers. The number-one function of schools and their teachers-and the institutions that trained them-was not intellectual but moral: to develop good citizens. Institutions that prepared elementary school teachers emphasized review of subjects taught in elementary schools and how to teach them and tried hard to provide their trainees with the technical, classroom management skills so necessary to the survival of a first-year teacher. Academic education of elementary school teachers was inferior to that expected of secondary school teachers, and elementary school teachers were generally trained in different kinds of pedagogical institutions (in Russia, teacher seminaries and institutes; in America, normal schools and teacher colleges). Pedagogical preparation of teachers was much more stressed in institutions that prepared elementary school teachers than in those that prepared secondary school teachers. It was extremely difficult to recruit and retain high-quality, ambitious people in the low-paid, unprestigious occupation of public school teaching. Universities became increasingly involved in teacher education. Institutions that prepared elementary school teachers typically did not prepare their students for matriculation to an institution of higher learning. Increasing feminization of the teaching profession was prevalent in both countries but much more so in the United States. Continuing education opportunities for teachers expanded considerably and aided in the movement to professionalize teaching, as did development of teacher organizations and unions. The quality of most teacher education institutions was poor not only because they generally attracted a poor-quality student, but also because they received a much lower level of funding than most other educational institutions. Many graduates of pedagogical institutions, especially those that prepared secondary school teachers, had little interest in teaching and abandoned the field as soon as a better job came along. There were a number of remarkable men-for in Russia and James Carter in America-who

example, K. D. Ushinskii were thoroughly conver-

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sant with world pedagogical thought and practice and whose thoughts on schooling and teacher education are often as relevant today as they were when first written so many years ago. Elementary school teacher trainees were typically isolated from other kinds of mature students. Such isolation presumably enhanced their dedication to teaching as a profession and discouraged any questioning of the inviolability of the existing social order. What most distinguished teacher education in America and Russia during the late 19th century and the early years of the 20th was the difference in the goals of upbringing (development of character). In both America and Russia, teacher training institutions tried to instill in teachers the attitudes, values, and behaviors essential for good citizenship in their respective countries. Such teachers could then, in turn, exert a worthwhile influence on their future pupils. Because Russia and America had distinctive social, economic, cultural, religious, educational, and political traditions and institutions, it is understandable that the teacher training institutions in the two countries would strive to produce teachers with quite different attitudes, values, and behaviors. After the revolutions of 1917 in Russia and the conclusion of World War I in 1918, teacher education in America and Russia would continue throughout the 20th century to have many features-primarily problems and challengesin common, but the upbringing objectives of teacher training in the two countries during the Soviet period would become even more sharply divergent than during the tsarist regime.

NOTES 1. James C. McClelland, Autocrats and Academics: Education, Culture, and Socieo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 13. 2. William H. E. Johnson, Russia’s Educational Heritage (New York: Octagon Books, 1969), p. 145. 3. Except where otherwise noted, our comments on the teacher education work of D. Tolstoi draw on Allen Sinel, The Classroom and the Chancellery: State Educational Reform in Russia under Count Dmitry Tolstoi (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 75-76, 84, 184-185, 240-241, 243-244, 262. 4. F. G. Panachin. Pedagogicheskoe obrazovanie v Rossii: Istoriko-pedagogicheskie ocherki (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1979), pp. 84-85, 92-93. 5. Quoted in Hugh Ragsdale, The Russian Tragedy: The Burden of History (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), p. 103. 6. Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, 3d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 485. 7. Quoted in Johnson, Educational Heritage, p. 155. 8. Ben Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools: Oficialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy, 1861-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 472. in Tsarist Russia

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9. Johnson, Educational Heritage, pp. 195-196. 10. McClelland, Autocrats, pp. 36, 43-44. 11. Nicholas Hans, Histoly of Russian Educational Policy (1701-1917) (London: P. S. King & Son, 1931), pp. 211-221. 12. Johnson, Educational Heritage, p. 296. 13. Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools, pp. 194-195. 14. Quoted in Patrick L. Alston, Education and the State in Tsarist Russia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969), p. 229. Except where otherwise noted, the next six paragraphs in the text draw on this book, pp. 229-232, 241-243. 15. Scott J. Seregny, “Teachers, Politics and the Peasant Community in Russia,” in School and Socieg in Tsarist and Soviet Russia, ed. Ben Eklof (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), pp. 121-148. 16. Alston, Education, p. 243.

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Teacher Education under Lenin and Stalin HISTORICAL AND EDUCATIONAL SETTING Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. -George Orwell, 1984’

Lenin and Stalin were remarkable men who led their country successfully-the country survived-through some incredibly turbulent periods of history. During Lenin’s rule, the country that was to become the Soviet Union survived not only a second revolution instigated by Lenin, but also the last year of the First World War, a civil war from 1918 to 1920, a war with Poland, numerous peasant and worker uprisings, and civil strife on the part of some of the non-Russian nationalities. Stalin’s rule was equally tumultuous: in the 1930s, forced industrialization and collectivization of the peasants and political purges; in the ’40s and early ’50s, the Second World War, expansion of the Soviet empire into Eastern Europe, “cold war” with the United States and other Western European countries, and the beginning of the atomic age. The loss of life of Soviet citizens from the various wars, purges, and terror and collectivization campaigns staggers the imagination-some 40 to 60 million people. Keeping this figure in mind, one can appreciate Robert Kaiser’s observation that “rather than dream of how much better life could be, [Russians] worry about how it might get suddenly worse. This is the heart of Russian insecurity. Russians are not reaching for the stars; they are looking over their shoulders.”2 Born in 1870 in Simbirsk, Lenin led a comfortable and prosaic early life. His

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Education of Teachers in Russia

father was an inspector of schools and, as such, a member of the minor nobility. A bright student, Lenin graduated first in his class from secondary school and distinguished himself in the study of Latin and Greek. One might reasonably assume that he was destined for an academic career as a classicist. But at age seventeen he became a state criminal (due to the common tsarist and Soviet practice of guilt by association) because his much esteemed eldest brother, Alexander, a student at the University of St. Petersburg, was executed for his involvement in a plot to assassinate the tsar. Nevertheless, Lenin was permitted to enroll in the law faculty at the University of Kazan. However, he was expelled after three months for participating in an illegal student assembly and was banished from Kazan to his grandfather’s estate in the village of Kokushkino, where he joined his sister Anna, who had also been exiled there. Upon completion of this first of many exile sentences, Lenin made repeated efforts to reenter the university and eventually was permitted to take the law examinations, passed, and practiced law briefly from 1892 to 1893. He had started reading the books and articles of Karl Marx (1818-1883) during his exile to Kokushkino and soon became a hardcore convert to Marxist ideology and revolutionary activity. Throughout his career as a revolutionary and later as first head of the Soviet government, he, as well as Stalin, made many modifications in basic Marxist doctrine; but neither he nor Stalin ever abandoned this doctrine because, being the faithful messengers of the one true ideology and interpretation of history, they could and did use the ideology to unite their party members, justify their actions, and legitimize their rule. What was this doctrine that until the last few years so captivated not only Russians but thousands of people in other countries as well? Marx and his colleague Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), influenced by the dialectical philosophy of Hegel, were the last great system builders who presumed to explain “scientifically” the various stages of societal development. At every stage of development, they believed, society has two strata, the substructure and the superstructure. The substructure consists of the “modes of production,” the way people work, produce, and exchange goods and the social organization that follows from this. The superstructure consists of everything that composes the culture of a society-its politics, social manners, religious beliefs, aesthetic proclivities, property laws, and so on. In each stage of development, the substructure determines the character of the superstructure. As the substructure changes, so changes the superstructure. The motive force behind these changes is always the struggle between classes, between those who produce goods and those who expropriate the fruits of their labor. Thus far, four modes of production have produced four distinctive periods of history: primitive communism, characteristic of precivilization groups; the slave-holding society of ancient Greece and Rome; feudal society; and capitalist society, controlled by the bourgeoisie. The next and final stage of development was to be a communist society, which Marx and Engels believed loomed on the

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horizon, a society emancipated from all capitalistic ‘‘exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles. . . .”3 Lenin’s entire adult life was devoted solely to bringing about what he passionately believed to be the final, highest stage of historical development-the establishment of a communist society in Russia and throughout the world. He set about doing so with fanatical zeal, determination, and ruthlessness. Of singular importance to the future development of the Soviet Union was the publication in 1902 of Lenin’s book What I s to Be Done?4 This book delineated his theory of the party being the “vanguard of the proletariat,” that is, a small, tightly knit group of professional revolutionaries, typically intellectuals, who would in a “dictatorship of the proletariat” think and act on behalf of the workers. Against considerable opposition from many of his colleagues who wanted a large democratic party, Lenin’s theory of what a revolutionary party should be won out and was destined to be the model for the Soviet Communist Party from 1917 to the breakup of the USSR in 1991. Shortly after the Lenin-led Red guards and revolutionary soldiers and sailors overthrew the Provisional Government, Lenin forcefully disbanded the duly elected Constituent Assembly. which in its short-lived meeting clearly rejected Lenin’s concept of how the country should be governed. Thus ended any aspirations the liberal socialists might have had for a democratic government. Once in power, Lenin’s first objective was to get his country out of the war, which he did by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Next in order was winning the Civil War against the Whites, who were led by former tsarist generals and admirals. To do this, Lenin inaugurated a temporary emergency policy of “war communism” that had two prongs: private business and industry were expropriated by the government, and grain and other food products were forcefully requisitioned without payment from peasants. Peasants, who at Lenin’s urging in 1917 had seized the land of their former landowners, bitterly resented the requisitions and gave up their produce only at the point of a bayonet. After the Whites were defeated, peasants stiffened their resolve and simply refused to surrender their grain to the government. In the Tambov region, Alexander Antonov led an army of twenty thousand peasants in opposition to war communism. Threatened with massive peasant rebellions in other regions, Lenin, ever the pragmatist, capitulated, abandoned war communism, and adopted in March 1921 another temporary, emergency policy, the New Economic Policy (NEP). Under this quasi-capitalistic policy, the government retained control of such vital sectors of the economy as heavy industry, transportation, and communications, but light and consumer goods industries were now opened up for entrepreneurs. In place of forced requisitioning of farm produce, a graduated tax in kind was levied on peasants, which met with their approval, and they were now able to sell their produce on the open market. Relative peace reigned throughout the existence of the NEP, which lasted until 1928. Also during this period the unspeakable terror of the civil war ceased, peaceful relationships were

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established with the capitalist powers, and there was some semblance of freedom of expression. In 1922 Lenin suffered the first of several strokes that eventually left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak. As he became increasingly debilitated, his leading lieutenants-Leon Trotsky, Gregory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Joseph Stalin-started positioning themselves to replace him when he died, which he shortly did in 1924. Stalin, whose real surname was Dzhugashvili, was born on 21 December 1879, in the hilly region of Gori not too far from Tiflis (today Tbilisi), the capital of Georgia. His father was a cobbler and he and his wife were descendants of serfs. They were impoverished, barely literate, and did not get along with each other. When Stalin was fourteen, his deeply religious mother enrolled him in the Tiflis Theological Seminary, which he hated, ironically, because of its authoritarianism and constant spying on the students. Stalin was a good student academically but rebellious, and he left without graduating. He embarked on a revolutionary career that from 1902 to 1917 was marked by repeated arrests, imprisonment, and exile. After a long apprenticeship, his organizational work for the Communist Party in the provinces, especially his planning of robberies of government funds for party use, brought him to the attention of Lenin who appointed him to the powerful Central Committee in 1912. Stalin’s opponents made the fatal mistake of underestimating him, derisively dismissing him as a crude, uncultured “practical,” who concerned himself solely with mundane organizational matters of the party. Not for nothing was he nicknamed, behind his back, “Comrade File Cabinet.” His devotion to organizational matters, together with his unscrupulousness and political abilities, was their undoing. Appointed by Lenin in 1922 to be secretary-general of the Communist Party, Stalin alone had the power to appoint people throughout the country to positions in the party apparatus. In a few short years Stalin had packed the party machine with his own appointees, all of whom were dependent on him for retaining their positions. With Machiavellian skill, Stalin played his opponents one against the other, first eliminating Trotsky and then those who sided with him against Trotsky. By 1927 Stalin was clearly the unchallenged leader of the Soviet Union. At the All-Union Communist Party Congress on 27 December 1927, any deviation from the party line-as interpreted by Stalin-was condemned. In a few years he turned Soviet society upside down from what it had been under the NEP. The state-controlled by the party and soon to become totally subservient to Stalin-took charge of all public affairs and became the sole employer. No person was permitted to have a source of income independent of that provided by the state. In 1928 the NEP was replaced with the first Five-Year Plan, the purpose of which was to transform a backward country into a great power through industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. With prescience, Stalin declared in 1931 that his country had only ten years to change itself into an industrial

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power capable of withstanding an assault by Western industrial power. Ten years later Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Industrialization as planned by Stalin was dependent on collectivization. Workers were needed in the urban areas and they had to be fed. Just as Peter the Great (1682-172.5) uprooted thousands of peasants to build St. Petersburg, Stalin during the 1930s forced not thousands but millions of peasants to pack up their bags, move to industrial centers, and become factory workers. During Stalin’s reign, the urban population shot up by 45 million people. The 2.5 million small plots of land cultivated by peasants in 1929 were soon amalgamated into large, mechanized collective farms-some one hundred thousand by 19.52, a year before Stalin’s death. Peasants put up a fierce resistance to the collectivization drive, but they were no match for Stalin, who, as George Kennan observed, made brutality “into an end in itself.”5 H e beat them into submission by killing some ten million of them. Concurrent with the Five-Year Plan was intensification and expansion of the party and state propaganda apparatus created during Lenin’s rule. Over the years this apparatus became so all-encompassing that the Soviet novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn never tired of reminding the West that “you Westerners simply cannot grasp the power of Soviet propaganda.”6 The Communist Party has never made any distinction between propaganda and education and has always involved all state institutions, including schools and universities, in its propagation. The emphasis of Soviet propaganda during the first Five-Year Plan was, as it was in the previous decade, on the necessity of hard work to overcome backwardness.’ Whether out of fear or pride in advancing the country, many did indeed work hard, for there was a sharp rise in steel production during the initial Five-Year Plans, and by 1937 only the United States surpassed the Soviet Union in industrial output. For the true believer activists of the Communist Party, the 1930s were a time of great exhilaration. They believed their own propaganda. “Educating” the masses as to their responsibilities, they viewed themselves as an integral cog in the great movement to build a better world. For many people, however, it was yet another horrible “time of troubles,” this time marked by terror and purges. In the last half of the ’30s, Stalin staged show trials of old Bolsheviks and military leaders who were indicted on trumped-up charges of treason, terrorism, and espionage, forced through torture to abjectly “confess” their guilt, sentenced, and typically shot in the back of the neck within twenty-four hours, as were Zinoviev and Kamenev, the two men along with Trotsky who vied with Stalin for power after Lenin’s death. The purges were combined with a permanent reign of terror that encompassed every element of society. Especially marked for destruction were those who had ever crossed Stalin in any way, for Stalin was a product of the Caucasian bloodfeud tradition. “The greatest delight,” he is reported to have said, “is to mark one’s enemy, prepare everything, avenge oneself thoroughly, and then go to sleep.”8 The terror also engulfed thousands of people who minded their own

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business and did what they were told-in short, good Soviet citizens. As explained by Nadezhda Mandelstam, an exceptional chronicler of this period of time, the point of terror under Stalin was to arrest people “at random in order to instill fear into evevbody else.”’ Stalin used fear to subjugate the Communist Party, the Soviet elite, and the common man and woman to his will. Hitler attacked the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. As Napoleon, Hitler expected a quick, easy victory before the first snow fell. Like Napoleon, he suffered defeat, and for the same reasons. Russians on both occasions simply retreated, conserved their strength, and added new reserves to the army from the hinterlands. They forced the enemy to overextend their supply lines and to fight in a long, bitterly cold winter with inadequate food, clothes, and equipment. Upon conclusion of the war, the “Cold War” with the West began. Stalin’s paranoia increased. Enemies were everyplace. Scarce funds were still spent primarily on industry and the military rather than on consumer goods. Persecution of the Orthodox Church, which was relaxed somewhat during the war, resumed. The dreaded secret police, first established by Lenin as the Cheka, now called the KGB, continued vigorously to root out “enemies of the people” and to imprison or shoot them. People were still terrified to say anything that someone might construe as critical of Stalin. Under Stalin’s chief ideologue, A. A. Zhdanov, writers, poets, movie directors, playwrights, and composers were commanded to produce only works of art that furthered the goals of the new Five-Year Plan, which, as in the past, again stressed further industrialization of the country. The plight of writers during this dark period is summed up by a clandestine joke that lists the six commandments for Soviet authors:

1. Don’t think. 2. If you have to think, don’t talk. 3. If you have to talk, don’t write it down. 4. If you have to write it down, don’t publish it.

5. If you have to publish it, don’t sign it. 6. If you have to sign it, write a denial. Just as Stalin was planning a new purge movement, he unexpectedly had a stroke and died on 5 March 1953. Stalin was probably responsible for more deaths of his own people than any other man in world history; yet to the very end he retained the respect, trust, perhaps even love of many Soviet citizens from every walk of life. He tamed the unruly Russians, and he gave them pride in their country’s accomplishments. There were so many people at Stalin’s funeral, pushing and shoving, that over two hundred of them were trampled to death as they struggled to see his body in state. Even in death “the boss” could hurt you. Both Stalin and Lenin resorted to terror and lived and acted on the principle

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that the end justifies the means, the end being, for Lenin, establishment of a communist society and for Stalin, preservation of his personal power. Both were willing to obliterate or devastate entire classes of people, such as the nobility, kulaks (prosperous peasants), intelligentsia, and the officer corps. Together, they managed during their combined thirty-six years of power to stamp out whatever fledgling democratic aspirations people might have had. Lenin and Stalin equated propaganda with education and tried to mold the minds of people to their way of thinking. Both radically revised Marxist doctrine and used it to justify any action they wanted to take. Through their terror campaigns and insistence that people keep a close eye on their neighbors and report any suspicious actions to the police, both did much to cripple the psyche of the Soviet people, to degrade their sense of dignity, and to numb their sense of goodwill, compassion, and community with their neighbors. By force or persuasion, Stalin and Lenin involved party members and lesser bureaucrats in their nefarious acts, thus giving millions of Soviet citizens a personal stake in rationalization and perpetuation o f a dictatorial state that not only would keep quiet about their transgressions against human decency, but also would reward them for their subservience and obedience with perks not available to the common man and woman. Had Lenin lived longer, he no doubt would have joined Stalin and subsequent Soviet rulers in establishing a welfare state that tried, however imperfectly, to put into practice some of the egalitarian ideas of M a x . such as free education, free medical care, guaranteed job and pension, and affordable housing.

Education Turning now to education, we should note at the outset that Lenin was just as direct, blunt, and arbitrary on educational principles as he was on revolutionary principles. On 28 August 1918 he proclaimed that a public school system “divorced from life and politics is lies and hypocrisy” and that the new school system must be “part of the struggle for overthrowing the bourgeoisie.”1° This behest did not fall on deaf ears. The Soviet school system was from its inception a vital instrument of state policy. It was used by Communist Party leaders not only to provide the state with the trained manpower necessary to make it an ever greater industrial and military power, but to mold youth into adults who did not question the right of party leaders to control all property, all institutions, all forms of mass media-in essence, to control the thoughts, feelings, and actions of people. In giving the school system such an awesome responsibility, it is little wonder that Soviet leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev gave careful attention to educational matters and mounted periodic campaigns to reform their country’s educational system. The first such campaign was initiated almost immediately after Lenin and his Bolshevik followers seized power in 1917. The tsarist school system inherited by the Bolsheviks was clearly inappropriate for a revolutionary state founded

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on communist principles. Many Bolsheviks considered it a despicable institution. They condemned the hostile relationship between students and teachers, the excessive amount of homework, the harsh punishment, unreasonable examinations, rote learning, and drills.” But what most raised the ire of the Bolsheviks was their adamant conviction that the tsarist school system was an elitist, dualtrack, religious- and academic-dominated system that served exclusively the interests of the privileged classes. The tsarist general education system was quickly dismantled-at least on paper-and replaced with a single-track, secular “united labor school” that, in theory if not always in practice, introduced free and compulsory general and technical education; eliminated textbooks, homework, grades, examinations, corporal punishment, and teacher-dominated lessons; based its moral upbringing of children on communist, rather than religious, ethics; replaced lectures with more active, progressive methods of instruction;’? took into account local conditions and worked closely with the community it served; viewed a child as an individual requiring from the school full development of all the facets of hisher personality. In addition to providing children with basic knowledge, the united labor school had two other very important responsibilities: to inculcate in children the basic doctrines of Marxism-Leninism and to provide them with a polytechnical labor education. The basic doctrines to be instilled in pupils may be briefly summarized as follows: (1) There is no spirit; only matter exists. (2)Reality is basically dialectical; that is, everything in the world is interrelated, and necessarily so. (3) The good of the individual is always subordinate to the good of the collective. (4) The Communist Party and workers have identical aims. (5) Only the Communist Party can lead mankind to communism. (6) Communism will inevitably triumph throughout the world.I3 A s defined by Marx, polytechnical labor education “imparts the general principles of all processes of production, and simultaneously initiates the child and young person in the practical use and handling of the elementary instruments of all trades. . . . ” l 4 Marx’s assumption that polytechnism should combine “teaching and learning about economic production with practical work experience”’5 was endorsed by Lenin and by the commissar who headed the Commissariat of EnlightenmentEducation (Narkompros), Anatolii K. Lunacharskii. Polytechnical labor education is a simple concept that was generally accepted by Soviet political and educational leaders from 1917 to the breakup of the Soviet empire in 199 1. The problem, however, that bedeviled these same leaders

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was not with the pristine concept of polytechnism, but with the practical problem of determining how much emphasis should be given to the various components of the concept (knowledge of basic sciences and industrial processes, socially useful labor, production training, etc.) and how the concept should be applied in the public school system. Nicholas DeWitt is no doubt right in his assertion that “there is no aspect of Soviet education which has [over the years] caused so much controversy as polytechnical instruction.”16

Polytechnical Education The united labor school was divided into two levels. Level l provided a fiveyear course for pupils eight to thirteen; the second level, a four-year course for pupils thirteen to even teen.'^ Lunacharskii gave the word labor in the title of the united labor school a clearly polytechnical orientation. The goal of this school, as stated in the 16 October 1918 decree entitled “Basic Principles of the United Labor School” and signed by Lunacharskii, was “not at all to provide training in this or that trade, but to provide a polytechnical education that acquaints children in a practical way with the methods of the most important forms of work, partially in a school training workshop or on a school farm, and partially in factories, plants, and so on.”l8 In this same decree, Lunacharskii “energetically protested” against any attempt to introduce trade training into the level 1 school. He and other associates of like mind such as Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda K. Krupskaia, a powerful member of Narkompros, believed that early specialized vocational training limited a child’s career options. Lunacharskii argued that career options would remain open for a polytechnically trained youth of fourteen because a person so trained could “easily master any specialization.”I9 Lunacharskii had so little interest in monotechnical training in either the general or vocational school that he eliminated the lower-level vocational schools that typically accepted level 1 graduatex2’ This action and his general indifference to vocational training raised the ire of vocationalists, some of whom went to the other extreme. They demanded that polytechnism be replaced with monotechnism and that the age for student enrollment in specialized vocational training be lowered to twelve.” The argument between Lunacharskii and the vocationalists became so protracted and bitter that Lenin himself was forced to intervene in 1920. Lenin was a supporter of the polytechnical principle; but being a pragmatic man in charge of an impoverished country that demanded a great influx of trained workers, he conceded that the perilous economic situation dictated that students of age thirteen and fourteen be permitted on a temporary basis to enroll in specialized vocational training. In justifying this temporary measure, Lenin said: “This is of extreme importance. We are impoverished. We must have carpenters and metal workers immediately. Without question. All must become carpenters, metalworkers, etc., but they must also have a minimal amount of general and polytechnical education.”’2 Following Lenin’s attempt at mediation, the last two years of the general

24

Education of Teachers in Russia

education school were soon transferred to technicums (vocational/technical institutions that trained intermediate level specialists), and the truncated general education school, now a seven-year school, acquired during the late 1920s a strong production bias.’3 The new vocational school (fiabrichno-zavodskoe uchenickestvo, or FZU) that emerged, on the other hand, was forced to provide its students with a strong dose of general education. This new educational system was an anomaly because the general education school did not prepare its graduates for the university, and the graduates of the FZU normally did not go to work in industry (most workers received short-term on-the-job training in factories and plants). To prepare for the university, students had to enroll in a preparatory course or a workers’ faculty (~ubfuk).’~ As the polytechnical idea (broad technical education combined with general education) became dormant in both the general and vocational school, the idea of socially useful labor came to the fore and, during the first Five-Year Plan (1928-1932), reigned supreme. The project methodtheme, to be explained shortly, provided the structure for organizing the public work of the ~ t u d e n t s . ~ ~ Emphasis on socially useful labor and narrow vocational training during this period invariably lowered academic standards, which permitted the training of ordinary labor but prevented the training of technically trained personnel. As Stalin began after 1928 to expand industry and collectivize agriculture, it became increasingly evident that the economy now demanded a larger number of highly trained people with a solid background in mathematics and the sciences and that the educational system of the time could not meet this need. Under the new system that emerged during the 1930s, the general education school consisted of ten grades and once again prepared students for higher education, and the vocational school (FZU) abandoned its previous general education functions and began to prepare students strictly for employment in industry.

School Curriculum and Teaching Methodology Curriculum content and teaching methodology underwent some dramatic shifts during the short rule of Lenin and the very long rule of Stalin. By the beginning of the 1920s, some of the subjects traditionally taught in tsarist schools had been eliminated, such as philosophy, law, history (history was later restored in 1936), ancient languages, and religion. In place of history, a social studies program that presented the social sciences from a Marxist perspective was developed. Prerevolutionary subjects that remained in the curriculum had also to reflect a Marxist perspective. Music classes, for example, were to stress choral singing because it was believed this would foster a sense of collectivism among the pupils.26The academic program in the first few years of the united labor school was chaotic at best since there was no published curriculum and nothing was required. Narkompros, however, did publish a curriculum, though it was not required, at the beginning of the 1920-1921 academic year and distributed it to schools. No subjects were listed for first graders. All their time, fifteen hours per week, was to be devoted to various unnamed complex themes.

Teacher Education under Lenin and Stalin

25

Second through ninth graders were to devote two to six hours per week to biology; five hours to native language and literature; five hours to mathematics; two to six hours to social-historical sciences; two hours to physical education. In addition, in grades six through nine, pupils were to devote three to four hours to physics; in grade seven, two hours to astronomy and meteorology; in grades six through eight, two to three hours to geography and two hours to foreign languages; in grades seven and eight, three hours to chemistry.” This teaching of separate subjects, however, was soon castigated by Narkompros. In the mid1920s, Narkompros energetically promoted adoption of a progressive method of instruction called variously the complex theme/method/system. Complex themes, such as ‘‘work in the home” and “my community,” were supposed to be socially significant and relevant to the child’s environment, personal needs, and interests. Each theme was to be studied under the broad headings of labor, nature, and society. Proponents of the complex theme assumed that the three Rs and knowledge of the academic disciplines would be picked up incidentally during the study of one of the themes. Students in the united labor school were also to be taught simple labor skills and were expected to engage in such socially useful labor as planting shrubs around the school and caring for the school vegetable garden. Schoolchildren were to have a voice in running the school, and teachers were to be their friends and helpers. Implementation of the laissez-faire educational system established by the Narkompros provoked almost immediately sharp criticism from parents, teachers, labor leaders, and party members. As a result, during the latter part of the New Economic Program certain modifications in the united labor school were made that enhanced the systematic organization and teaching of basic knowledge. However, with the inauguration of the first Five-Year Plan in 1928, which stressed rapid industrialization of the country, and the subsequent rallying of young people to help meet the objectives of the plan, these modifications were held in abeyance during the so-called “Cultural Revolution” period (19281931). During the Cultural Revolution, the project method was widely utilized in the schools. This method was based on the assumption that students would gain knowledge while working with other students and adults in achieving one of the goals of the Five-Year Plan, such as draining swamps (to eliminate disease) and eradicating illiteracy. It was no doubt rewarding and exhilarating for youngsters to play a significant role in combating serious societal problems, but they were not learning mathematics and the sciences very well. and the emerging industrial economy demanded thousands of highly trained specialists with a solid knowledge of these disciplines. By 1934, the structure of the Soviet educational system adopted a form that it would retain for about three decades: grades one through four, primary school; grades one through seven, incomplete secondary school: and grades one through ten, complete secondary school. Furthermore, in a series of decrees in the early and middle 1 9 3 0 ~ , ’the ~ Soviet state and Communist Party insisted that schools provide pupils with systematic knowledge of the traditional academic disci-

26

Education of Teachers in Russia

plines. Pupils now were to be obedient and to respect the authority of teachers. The project method was repudiated and the lecture became the basic teaching method. Grades, homework, examinations, and textbooks were reintroduced, and grades eight and nine, which during the late 1920s had been transferred to technical schools, were restored to the general education school, and grade ten was added. The upper grades of the rejuvenated general education school were geared to academically talented young people who were trained specifically for entrance into an institution of higher learning. Pedology, “the total study of a child with the help of such sciences as psychology, anatomy and physiology of children’s growth,”29 was abolished in 1936 and replaced with formal study of the instructional process. And, finally, in 1937, labor training was abolished from the general education school curriculum. In essence, the new school, which with minor modifications remained intact until shortly after Stalin’s death, had many of the same features as the detested tsarist school. The Soviet teacher education system developed, of course, along the same lines as the Soviet school system, passing first through a phase of radical experimentalism and then a phase of rigid traditionalism. Regardless of the phase, however, the ultimate goal of teacher educators, as propounded by Lenin, remained the same: to “train a new army of teachers and instructors who must be in close touch with the Party and its ideas, be imbued with its spirit, and attract the masses of workers, instilling the spirit of communism into them and arousing their interest in what is being done by the Communists.”30

PRESERVICE TRAINING During the first year or two of the Soviet regime, the institution most responsible for preparing elementary teachers was the teacher seminary, and the one most responsible for preparing secondary school teachers was the teacher institute. During the 1918-1919 academic year, Narkompros recommended to these two institutions a new syllabus. The syllabus for the teacher seminary included such subjects as manual labor, agriculture, pedagogy, methods of teaching, singing, music, graphic arts, physical education, psychology, hygiene, the history of socialism, sociology, Russian language, the history of literature, political economy, natural science, geography, history, astronomy, physics, and mathematics. The pedagogical council of each seminary was responsible for determining the content and sequence of these courses. The recommended syllabus for social science majors in a teacher institute included such courses as the methodology and techniques of teaching history, the theory and psychology of artistic creativity, political economy, sociology, historical geography, the history of world and Russian culture, the history of 19th-century world literature, the history of art, general linguistics, and the hisThese ’ students, as well as students in other areas tory of the Russian l a n g ~ a g e . ~ of specialization, would also take such general core subjects as pedagogy, pedagogical drawing, psychology, human anatomy and physiology, hygiene, phi-

Teacher Education under Lenin and Stalin

27

losophy, cultural history, the history of social thought, and a survey of the constitutions of foreign countries and the constitution of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). In the last two years of the program, students were supposed to work two or three hours a day in the united labor school. During the 1920s teacher seminaries were transformed into pedagogical technicums (which were called pedagogical schools in 1937),and teacher institutes were transformed into pedagogical institute^.^^ These two institutions remain to this day the basic components of the Russian preservice education system.

Pedagogical Technicums/Schools The technicums accepted students with an incomplete secondary education and prepared them in a four-year program (changed to a three-year program in 1932) to be kindergarten and elementary school teachers. At the beginning of the 1930s there were two hundred pedagogical technicums with an enrollment on average of about 140 students, half of whom were sons and daughters of peasants. The age of students in the technicums ranged from fifteen to nineteen. In the prerevolutionary teacher seminaries the curriculum focused primarily on subjects taught in the primary school such as penmanship, religion, mathematics, natural science, and the Russian language. Manual training and agriculture were offered as electives by some of the seminaries. The 1917 revolution broadened the curriculum considerably, providing not only psychology, pedagogy, and other standard subjects, but also political economy, economic geography, fundamentals of production, and the fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Prior to 1932, the pedagogical technicum curriculum had either an industrial or agricultural emphasis. Most of the technicums trained their students for rural schools and, naturally, had an agricultural emphasis. Labor training of the students consisted of production theory, a practicum, work in school shops, and work either in a factory or on a farm. The pedology course included consideration of the effect of labor on the physical and psychological development of a child, and the pedagogy course stressed the content, methods, theory, and history of the labor school. After 1932 interest in labor training plummeted until, in 1934, there was not even a course in the curriculum for fundamentals of prod~ction.~~ The pedagogical technicums devoted the first two years primarily to subjects taught in the upper grades of the complete secondary school, and the last two years were devoted primarily to pedagogical studies and practical experiences in a school. Starting in the first year of study in the technicums, trainees spent about two hours per week working in schools and other educational establishments. Pedagogical study consisted of two hours per week of anatomy and physiology the first year; in the second year, two hours of the fundamentals of pedology and hygiene; in the third year, four hours of pedology, hygiene, and

Education of Teachers in Russia

28

the methods of teaching various subjects; in the fourth year, four hours of pedology combined with work as a practice teacher in an experimental school.

Pedagogical Institutes Pedagogical institutes during the 1920s accepted graduates with a complete secondary education and prepared them to be secondary school teachers in a four- or five-year program (depending on whether they specialized in one or two academic disciplines). In the pedagogical institutes, little time was devoted to practical activities in a school setting, but students in these institutions were certainly kept busy meeting the demands of an encyclopedic curriculum, such as that provided by the biology and geography division of the Tver Pedagogical Institute during the 1923-1924 school year. The courses provided each year and the number of hours devoted to them each week were as follows: Cosmology (2),General Physics (3), General Chemistry (3), Introduction to Biology (3), Human Anatomy and Physiology (2), General Mathematics (2), Fundamentals of Sociology (2),Contemporary History (3), History Seminar (2), Introduction to Philosophy (2),Introduction to Graphics (3)) Second the Study of Art (2),the Origin of Religion (l), Language (3).

First Year:

Psychology (3), Logic (2), History of Educational Thought (2), Study of Local Lore (21, Anatomy and Physiology of the Child and Adolescent (2),Theory of Law and Government and Constitution of the USSR (l), Physics (3), Inorganic Chemistry (3), Mineralogy (2),Morphology and Taxonomy of Higher Plants (2), Mineralogy and Taxonomy of Lower Plants (2), Human Anatomy and Physiology (2),Invertebrate Zoology (4), Practicum in Geodesy and Cartography (2), Drawing (3).

Second Year:

Third Year: Educational Psychology (3), Organization of the School, in Connection with Observational Study (4), Principles of Labor Education (2), Physics (3), Organic Chemistry (4),Anatomy and Physiology of Plants (4),Vertebrate Zoology (4), Animal Physiology (4), Historical Geology (3),Analytical Chemistry for Biologists (4), Practicum in Organic Chemistry for Biologists (2), Meteorology and Geophysics for Geographers (2),Geographical Excursions, General Regional Geography, Anthropology (2). Fourth Year f o r Biology Division: Soil Science (l), Comparative Anatomy (2), Anatomy and Physiology of Plants (4),Seminar in General Biology (2),Physiological Chemistry (2),Special Sections of Botany or Biology (5). Methods of Biology (5),Biogeography (2). Fourth Year for Geography Division:

Soil Science (l), Climatology (2), Biogeography (4),Regional Geography (3), Ethnography (2), Anthropogeography (2), Economic Geography (3), Methods of Geography (3).

Teacher Education under Lenin and Stalin

29

In 1927 there were 57,722 students in 375 pedagogical technicums, and in 1928, 15,886 students in 27 pedagogical institutes and 9,000 students in 15 university educational faculties.34 Starting in 1930, these faculties evolved into independent pedagogical institutes. With the move in the 1930s toward universal seven-year schooling, another specialized teacher-training institution was created in 1934, the teacher institute. This institute recruited secondary school graduates and prepared them in a two-year program to teach in grades five, six, and seven. The number of teacher institutes rapidly increased during the late 1930s, with Over two hundred in 1939; but with the eventual achievement of universal sevenyear schooling, the number began to decline in the 1940s and plunged to zero in the 1950s. As in tsarist times, most teachers were not prepared in full-time study in specialized teacher-training institutions. The great majority of prospective teachers received their pedagogical training in one of three ways: (1) doing some practice teaching; (2) taking some pedagogical classes during a final year added on to the general education school; (3) enrolling in various courses, lasting from a few months to a year, provided by teacher-training institutions. Upon completion of one of these preparatory programs, the neophyte teacher could continue hislher education through correspondence courses or evening classes. During the 1920s and 1930s, party leaders and teacher educators faced three crucial, closely interrelated challenges: (1) to change the social composition of the teaching cadre; (2) to fill each classroom with a teacher; (3) to retrain classroom teachers. The first challenge was easier to resolve than the other two. The Communist Party claimed to have established the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat” on behalf of the toiling masses of the world. After frequent complaints about the low percentage of working-class youth in pedagogical institutions, the party demanded in 1929 that the percentage of worker-peasant youth in the first-year programs of pedagogical technicums and institutes be raised, respectively, to 65 percent and 80 percent. These young people were provided preparatory work in correspondence courses, evening schools, and three- to ten-month courses provided by the technicums and institutes. Workers’ faculties (rabfuki) were also established at pedagogical institutes to prepare working-class youth for entrance into their institutes. In combination, all these efforts paid off. In 1927 only 19.5 percent of entrants to pedagogical institutions were from the industrial class and 33.2 percent from the peasant class. In the 1930s, the percentage of workerpeasant youth enrolled in pedagogical institutions of higher learning and pedagogical technicums exceeded, respectively, 60 and 80 percent.35 The second challenge was to find a sufficient number of young people who could with a little training and indoctrination fill the classrooms of an incredibly expanding school system, provide children with the rudiments of reading, writing, arithmetic, and instill in them some of the basic ideas of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. In one five-year period, from 1932 to 1937, pupil enrollment in all schools shot up 38 percent, and in one year alone, from 1929 to 1930, enrollment c

30

Education of Teachers in Russia

jumped from 10.5 to 14 million pupils.36 Student enrollment in teacher-training institutions increased correspondingly. In the Russian Republic in 1928 there were only 20 pedagogical institutes with 17,345 students and 254 pedagogical technicums with 37,900 students. Only four years later there were 65 institutes with 29,124 students and 564 technicums with 143,000 students. Still, as in tsarist times, the specialized teacher-training institutions could not begin to meet the demand for teachers. In 1929 the teacher-training institutions could graduate only 15 percent of the 100,000 teachers needed. To alleviate this deficit, among other things, the Komsomol (Young Communist League) drafted many of its members and sent them to villages to open schools in huts formerly occupied by dispossessed kulaks.37 Some members of Narkompros making proposals for teacher education reform apparently shared the belief of one of the more radical educators, A. P. Pinkevich, that “the single correct path is to forget, for the time being, everything that was written in the field of e d u c a t i ~ n . ”Many ~ ~ believed that all teachers, including primary school teachers, should be prepared solely in institutions of higher learning-this at a time when it was hard to recruit even barely literate youngsters into a field that promised no more material benefits than the lowliest of occupations. Furthermore, the state gave such low priority to training of teachers that expenditure per student in a pedagogical technicum in the mid1920s was only eleven or twelve rubles a year. Frequently the same textbook had to be shared by five or six students. Students habitually struggled to get by with inadequate stipends, clothing, food, and housing. When dormitories were available, the sanitary conditions were so deplorable that in one technicum in 1926 on any given day about 57 percent of the students were For a short period of time, however, these ill-treated students played a significant role in running some of the newly organized teacher-training institutions, each of which could devise its own curriculum and set its own standards for admittance and graduation. In some of these institutions, diplomas, academic rank and degrees, lectures, separately taught academic disciplines, and even textbooks and lessons themselves were done away with. These radical innovations were, like those in the schools, gradually phased out in the decade of the 1920s and the first year or so of the 1930s. Still, Narkompros gave individual pedagogical institutions the right to compile their own curricula up to the 1930s and insisted that they prepare teacher trainees to use the complex method of instruction and to infuse their teaching with polytechnical principles. Furthermore, teacher trainees were to receive a heavy dose of productive training in a factory or on a farm. Productive training was so greatly emphasized that during the late 1920s and early 1930s (the period of the Cultural Revolution) most of the pedagogical institutes were converted into either three-year agriculturaVpedagogical or industriaVpedagogica1 institutes. In these new institutes agricultural practical work for students consisted of eighteen ten-day sessions; industrial work, nine ten-day sessions; and pedagogical practice, fifteen ten-day sessions. Less time was devoted to general educa-

Teacher Education under Lenin and Stalin

31

tion disciplines and to one’s area of specialization, and more time was allocated to Marxist-Leninist-oriented social sciences and practice teaching. Lectures were replaced with the brigade-laboratory method, which consisted of teams of students, led by a brigade leader, who worked together on some project for one to four weeks. Marks were given not to individual members of the brigade, but to the brigade as a whole. Students engaged in such core projects as “Let Us Help the Farm to Fulfill the Spring Sowing Plan” and “We Shall Struggle to Fulfill the Industrial and Financial Plan of Factory and Plant Bases for Production Practice.” Upon graduation, these neophyte teachers, most of whom were sent to villages, were expected along with their more experienced colleagues to act as a strike force to raise the level of party-mindedness of peasants. In this work, pedagogues were to stress the glorious future of collective farms by having their pupils take such dictations as “Parents, rush to join the collective farm and build socialism.”4o Just as the curriculum of the general education schools became standardized and controlled by Narkompros after the Cultural Revolution, so did that of the pedagogical institutions. In 1928 Lunacharskii was replaced by Andrei Sergeevich Bubnov as commissar of enlightenmentleducation. Bubnov started the process of restoring strong centralized control of schools and teacher-training institutions and turned both into acquiescent tools for carrying out Communist Party policies. An order by Narkompros in October 1931 tried to deprive pedagogical institutions and their graduates of any initiative: “Widespread use of methods and forms of organisation of pedagogical work without prior testing and verification must definitely cease. Before the introduction of any new method or new organisational form of teaching by a pedagogical institute or pedagogical technicum, Narkompros must grant its permission in the case of the first and a regional department of education in the case of the second.”41Henceforth, from the 1930s until the second half of the 1980s, emphasis in Soviet teacher-training institutions was upon political training and preparing students to present a good lesson. For students to present a good lesson, it was essential that they know their subject well and be able to present it clearly.“2 After the Cultural Revolution subsided, the specialized pedagogical institutes soon reverted to a single institution, called as before a pedagogical institute, and worked now under a syllabus that devoted 150 hours of study to such pedagogical topics as the significance, nature, and objectives of pedagogy; the public education system; school curriculum and syllabus; methods of teaching; forms of organizing educational work; textbooks; pupil discipline; extracurricular work (adult education); the teacher; the children’s communist movement; and organizational questions relevant to pedag0gy.4~ The new curricula for pedagogical institutes retained the traditional heavy class-attendance workload for students, five to six hours per day. Over the course of the four-year program, students studied some thirty academic disciplines and devoted 5,145 hours to classroom work. In the first and second years, one hundred hours were devoted to workshops and field trips, and in the third and fourth

32

Education of Teachers in Russia

years, three hundred hours each year were allocated to practice teaching. Three hundred hours were also specified the last year of study for a diploma project, which consisted of writing a thesis on some topic relevant to the teachinglearning process. Regardless of the area of specialization, all students had to take the following courses: pedagogy (200 hours), school hygiene (40 hours), teaching methods (200 hours), practice teaching (600 hours), elective courses (120 hours), pedology (80 hours). Notably little time was devoted to pedology, the study of children. As previously noted, in 1936 the study of pedology was forbidden by the state. The downfall of pedology contradicted the strongly held beliefs of such longtime Bolshevik educators as Krupskaia, who reaffirmed in 1933, a few years before her death, that teachers should not only know their subject well and be able to convey it effectively to students but should also know children: the stages of their physical, psychological, and mental development and the different levels of their practical experience^.^^ A solid core of pedagogical disciplines was developed during the 1930s consisting primarily of pedagogy, the history of pedagogy, and educational psychology. Books by P. P.Blonskii and A. P. Pinkevich were widely distributed, and the first systematic textbook of pedagogy by M. M. Pistraka was published. Some classic pedagogical works by Russians and foreigners (Chernyshevskii, Dobroliubov, Pisarev, Ushinskii, Komenskii, Pestalozzi, Owen, and Fourier) were also published. In an attempt to improve practice in schools, some research was devoted to finding ways of better coordinating the theoretical and practical preparation of a tea~her.4~

Daily Life of Teacher Trainees Life for a student in a pedagogical institution during the 1930s was not easy. Students were required to attend all class meetings, which meant five or six hours of classes a day. If they were late to class three times, they were expelled. All, regardless of area of specialization, had to attend excruciatingly boring classes on the principles of Marxism, dialectical materialism, historical materialism, the history of the Communist Party, and political economy. After classes were over, students had to attend one or more meetings relevant to such things as student production, current events, trade unions, and the Komsomol. Failure to attend these meetings was viewed as “academicism,” that is, isolation of the individual from public life. Such isolation represented the first step on the path to counter-revolution. Unauthorized student gatherings or parties held outside the dormitories were discouraged. And above all, students and their teachers as well had to watch very carefully what they said in or out of the classroom. Ivan Rossianin, a former instructor in a pedagogical institute during the Stalin regime, tells why such caution was essential: In the Herzen Teachers’ College [pedagogical institute] in Leningrad, in the school year 1937-38, an instructor at a seminar on principles of Marxism mentioned Trotsky as an open counter-revolutionary and enemy of

Teacher Education under Lenin and Stalin

33

the people. A naive freshman asked, “Isn’t such a judgment concerning a leader of the early days of the Revolution a result of Comrade Stalin’s personal attitude toward him?” There was an oppressive silence. The instructor took down the student’s name. Shortly thereafter the student was expelled and arrested.46 While development of preservice education certainly did not cease during the decade or so before Stalin’s death, there were no dramatic changes. During this period, Russians had little time or inclination to think hard about schools and training of their teachers. Their thoughts were, quite naturally, preoccupied with how to survive a brutal war and a painfully long recovery period after its cessation in 1945.

INSERVICE TRAINING The third challenge facing teacher educators was to retrain practicing teachers in the principles and methodologies of the united labor school and to inculcate in them a commitment to the ideas of the party. Many of these teachers were poorly qualified professionally and had, like most people of the time, little devotion to the Communist Party. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the party consistently called for improvement in the ideological retraining of teachers. As late as 1931 more than half of the elementary school teachers of grades one through four did not have a complete secondary education. and only a quarter of the secondary school teachers had a higher education, that is, graduation from a pedagogical institute or ~niversity.4~ During the second half of the 19th century, much attention was given by educational leaders to improving the general educational level and professional skills of the teaching cadre, but they failed to establish a system of continuing education. Starting in the early 1920s, educators gave increasing attention to development of a network of institutions devoted specifically to the lifelong education of schoolteachers and administrators. The first step, however, was to provide, as in tsarist times, many courses for teachers in the evenings, on the weekends, and during the summertime. These courses were provided primarily by local departments of education, with assistance from pedagogical institutions and other educational establishments, and were divided into three main divisions: pedagogical, political, and general educational. The courses were supposed to address the real needs of teachers in the newly established united labor school and included lectures on dialectical and historical materialism, political economy, pedagogy, psychology, school hygiene, and the history of the class struggle. There were also lectures on the disciplines normally taught in the secondary school. By the summer of 1919, two hundred of these courses were provided to teachers and the next summer, nearly three hundred. In Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg; in 1924, Leningrad; today, once again, St. Petersburg) alone 6,400 teachers enrolled in one or more of these courses. In 1921, the Third All-Russian Congress of the Union of Workers of Enlight-

34

Education of Teachers in Russiz

enment stressed the great need to the state of raising the qualifications of teachers and urged the development of a national system of continuing education of teachers. It took nearly a decade and a half to do so, but some preliminary steps were taken immediately. Beginning in 1923, pedagogical institutions, the Home of Workers of Enlightenment, experimental-demonstration institutions, pedagogical museums, teacher conferences, pedagogical practicums, and academic discipline societies became involved in raising the qualifications of teachers. In many provinces, certification commissions were established because most teachers were not formally qualified for the work they were doing. Especially troublesome to party officials-and, hence, educational officials-was the low “political literacy” of teachers. Nearly three out of four teachers were not able to answer the most elementary questions about the policies of the Communist Party. Also in 1923, Narkompros developed model academic plans and programs on continuing education to be used by provincial and district educational officials in the preparation and delivery of retraining courses for their teachers. The academic plan for two-month summer courses in the provinces and districts consisted of two cycles: pedagogy and political enlightenment. Each cycle had 170 academic hours devoted to it. Emphasis in the first cycle was on the study of physiology and educational psychology. Considerable attention was also given to how best to raise the pedagogical and cultural level of adults served by a particular school and how to work effectively with pupils outside the classroom and the school. Provision of these academic plans marked a significant step forward in retraining of teachers, but the plans did not adequately take into consideration the different qualification levels of teachers or the different subjects that they taught. Emphasis in the second cycle was on encouraging more active participation of teachers in the work of party organizations. Teachers were trained to become social “activists.” Rural teachers, for example, were prepared to conduct literacy campaigns: to propagandize progressive methods of farming and raising cattle; to engage in antireligion and culturallenlightenment work; to provide information and lectures to community members on health, hygiene, and sanitation; and to acquaint community members with Communist Party campaigns and policies. As in the 19th century, peasants did not always take kindly to outsiders who tried to remake them and their children. Teachers who tried to do so too vigilantly were not infrequently cursed, sometimes beaten, and occasionally killed. In 1924 Narkompros declared that retraining of teachers should not only draw them to party work, but also to production work. To achieve this second objective, a good portion of the course work for urban teachers was devoted to enhancing their knowledge of industrial production processes, and work for rural teachers was devoted to enhancing their knowledge of agricultural production processes. At the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1930-1931, 30 percent of the retraining courses for beginning teachers focused on the fundamentals of production and polytechnism.

Teacher Education under Lenin and Stalin

35

In the last half of the 1920s, various high-level courses were developed that focused on major problems of continuing education, preparation uf academic plans and programs for teacher training, development of materials and guidelines for independent study by teachers, and provision of advanced training for different categories of people, other than schoolteachers, involved in public education. In 1928 these courses were consolidated into a newly created institution in Moscow called the Institute for Raising the Qualifications of Pedagogues. An important task of this institute was to study the current educational and professional qualification levels of the schoolteachers and then, using this knowledge, to make appropriate adjustments to the content and methodology of academic plans and programs prepared for them. The content and methodology in the new plans and programs were henceforth differentiated depending on the level of preparation and interests of the teachers. For example, for teachers who already had some pedagogical training and a few years of teaching experience, emphasis in their programs was upon improving their upbringing skills in work with children outside the classroom and school building. For those who lacked this training and experience, emphasis was upon general didactical questions. In order to develop an appropriate curriculum and instructional materials for teachers, the first step taken by the professors in the institute was to ascertain the specific qualities that a Soviet teacher should have. The qualities they came up with changed little during the existence of the Soviet regime: Party mindedness and Communist conviction, devotion to the business of socialism, understanding of the policies of the Communist Party, active participation in societal life, [engagement in] creative research, broad erudition, deep knowledge of one’s subject and methods of teaching it, ability to understand and utilize knowledge o f the growth particularities of individual pupils in the teachinglupbringing process, knowledge of polytechnism and local lore, ability to win the love and respect of school children?* We should highlight here inclusion in the above list of the three qualities of creative research, broad erudition, and deep knowledge of one’s subject because these qualities are often omitted or little emphasized in lists of essential qualities for American teachers. In 1929 much attention was given in summer courses to improving the agroeconomic preparation of teachers in rural areas, that is, to acquainting them with progressive means of enhancing the productivity of newly organized collective farms. During this year it was proposed to give fifteen thousand teachers such training, the objective being to ensure that by the end of the first Five-Year Plan there would be in each school at least one teacher who was well acquainted with the economy in rural areas. In 1930 and 1931 comparable attention was given in summer courses to acquainting urban teachers with the fundamentals of industrial production. Nar-

36

Education of Teachers in Russia

kompros also organized throughout the country many two-day conferences dealing with questions of polytechnism followed up with a 144-hour course in which teachers studied in depth the fundamentals of production in factories, plants, state farms, and collective farms. Toward the end of the 1920s two types of continuing education programs were published: “programs-minimum” and “levels of self-education.” The programs-minimum dealt with the everyday problems facing a neophyte teacher, such as how to keep records, develop daily and long-range lesson plans, grade papers, work with parents, maintain discipline, conduct excursions to an industrial plant or collective farm, prepare audio-visual materials, and so forth. The levels of self-education program provided teachers with a systematic general education and a more in-depth knowledge of pedagogy and psychology. The levels of self-education program consisted of nine cycles devoted to such areas of study as social sciences, literature and language, physics and technology, chemistry and technology, methodics, and pedagogical skills. Much of the work in these cycles was designed to help teachers analyze practical school problems and propose solutions to resolve them. In the 1930s hundreds of thousands of teachers needed, in Panachin’s phraseology, “pedagogical first aid,” and in fact some three hundred thousand teachers in the Russian Republic alone passed through a retraining program of some sort during the first Five-Year Plan. Correspondence study was also widely utilized in raising the qualifications of teachers. Thirty-eight thousand teachers in the Russian Republic in 1931 were enrolled in correspondence courses, and two years later this number q u a d r ~ p l e d . ~ ~ By the late 1930s and early 1940s pedagogical institutes for the advanced training of teachers had been established in practically every population center in the Soviet Union. With their establishment, the Soviet Union now had a fledgling but genuine, stable system for enhancing the lifelong general education and pedagogicallpsychological skills and sensitivities of teachers. A number of Soviet educators wrote about problems of continuing education for teachers, including Krupskaia, who, being the wife of Lenin, understandably stressed the necessity of inculcating in teachers the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, imparting polytechnical knowledge, and developing the propaganda and agitational skills necessary to rally people to carry out campaigns dear to the heart of the party. She was also a strong advocate of improving the pedagogical and psychological knowledge and skills of teacher^.^'

Shatskii on Teacher Education One of Krupskaia’s most theoretically thoughtful and pedagogically astute colleagues at Narkonlpros was C. T.Shatskii, who stressed, among other things, the necessity of continuous interaction of theory and practice in the lifelong education and training of teachers. The purpose of courses for teachers, he believed, was to help them interpret pedagogical materials that they had collected

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37

and to draw from these materials theoretical conclusions, which they could then check in classroom practice. As teachers gain more experience, new problems arise, and they must then revise their theoretical postulates in light of their recently accumulated experience and test the postulates in classroom practice. For a true student of teaching, this interactive process of theory-practice/practicetheory must continue throughout a teacher’s career. According to Shatskii. practical work enables one to evaluate the effectiveness of theoretical course work. If practice does not improve, then either the teacher lacks the training necessary to understand the implications of the theory for classroom practice or something is wrong with the theory. In any case, theory without practice to check its efficacy, and practice without theory to illuminate it, can only promote stagnation in the professional development of a teacher. In short, a good teacher must be a combination resear~her/practitioner.~’

Makarenko on Teacher Education Another great educator during the Stalin period was Anton Makarenko. He believed that the object of educational research should not be the child, but instead what he called, rather vaguely, “educational facts (phenomena).” For this and other reasons, the dwindling number of old-time Bolsheviks who worked with Lunacharskii thoroughly disapproved of Makarenko, and Makarenko did not think much of them. Since Makarenko was clearly the educator most accepted by party officials and the most widely read and nationally well known Soviet educator from the 1930s on, his ideas on continuing education for teachers merit our attention. (His best-selling book for parents was as popular in Russia as Benjamin Spock‘s Baby and Child Care in America.) Makarenko never questioned publicly the ends of education propagated by the party, and he developed a methodology that contributed to their achievement. In his words. “the ultimate goal of all education including that within the family is to foster correct moral concepts and good behavior, which in all cases should correspond to the norms of communist m~rality.”~’In fairness to Makarenko, however, we should hastily add that he always gave primacy to fundamental human values such as respect for human dignity and the values of human life. His published works were widely read not only because his writing style was that of a skilled, imaginative novelist, but also because he gave much practical advice to teachers and parents, most notably about how to use the class and school collective and family collective-he insisted on a large family because without it there could be no collective-to develop in children and young people moral values and behavior appropriate for a good Soviet citizen, who, he argued, was “an energetic, active, circumspect and knowledgeable collectivist.”53 Makarenko was an optimist. He fervently believed that the only good society was a socialist society “in which the sharing of everything produces the necessities of life for all, thus allowing each person to develop both fully and freely

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Education of Teachers in Russia

without hindrances created by want.”54 Furthermore, he believed that education was the supreme instrument at hand to achieve a fully developed socialist society. Makarenko viewed society as totally monistic in nature. That is, all its parts-school, family, factory, collective farm, all social groupings-were indivisible, organically interrelated, and primarily educative. The objective of each social grouping, according to Makarenko, was to train the individual in group ways, to put the needs of the group above his personal needs.55 In essence, a person becomes a truly developed individual only by becoming a collectivist. Makarenko’s pioneering work in developing school collectives gave impetus and shape to the growth of collectives in Soviet schools over the next fifty years or so of the Soviet regime. Makarenko was born in a small town in Ukraine in 1888. He taught school for nine years and then in 1914 entered the Poltava Teacher Institute, which admitted people with some teaching experience in primary schools and trained them for work in secondary schools. He returned to teaching for a while, and then from 1920 to 1935 he was the director of two homes for wayward juveniles, first the Gorky Colony and later the Dzerzhinsky Colony. The latter colony was named after Felix Dzerzhinsky, the organizer and head of the first secret police, the Cheka (Extraordinary Commission for Suppression of Counterrevolution, Sabotage, and Speculation), and was supported by funds contributed by the Ukrainian Chekists. Young people in the Gorky Colony were primarily juvenile delinquents, and those in the Dzerzhinsky Colony were at first orphans and then youngsters who had problems with their parents. It was at these colonies that Makarenko developed his ideas on student collectives. His objective was not to develop the character of one individual, but that of a whole collective. When Makarenko first started teaching at the age of seventeen and for some time thereafter, he thought it best “to organize one person, educate him, then another, a third, a tenth, and having done so, there would be a good collective.” In time Makarenko came “to the conclusion that it was not necessary at times to talk with one pupil, but tell everybody, construct forms that would compel everyone to be part of the common movement. In this way we educate a collective, consolidate it, impart to it strength, after which it acquires tremendous educational force of its own accord.”56 Based on his years of experience at the two colonies, especially at the Dzerzhinsky Colony, Makarenko extrapolated and concluded that an effective school collective needed such features as: the pupil and teacher collectives working in close cooperation one with the other on all issues affecting the welfare of the school and the community it serves; a stable core of pupils and teachers because a smoothly functioning

collective takes years to develop;

Teacher Education under Lenin and Stalin

39

assumption by the schooUpedagogica1 collective of responsibility for coordinating the entire process of upbringing in the community, including the family and youth organizations; subordination of the will of the individual to the will of the collective; commitment to working “towards a common collective goal-common not just for a specific class but for the school as a whole;”57 adherence to values that are consistent with those of society at large; high expectations for students-“My basic principle . . . has always been: make the greatest demands on a person, while according him the greatest respect.”58 a strict regime that fosters the duty and discipline essential for meeting high expectations; educative labor, that is, labor that stresses concern for one’s fellow countrymen; various levels of self-governing bodies involving different groups of pupils and responsible for making most rules regulating the behavior of members of each group; strong traditions such as military games and ritual that distinguish one given school from another-“Nothing welds a collective together as well as tradition”;59 a healthy respect for the natural love of children and young people for

Play. In the summer of 1935, Makarenko was transferred from the Dzerzhinsky Colony to Kiev, where he assumed the position of deputy commissar of the department of labor colonies. This department was run by the Ukrainian People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), a descendant of the Cheka. During his two-year tenure in Kiev, Makarenko also directed a nearby children’s labor colony. In 1937, he moved to Moscow, where he wrote books as well as numerous articles and stories and, having gained considerable fame through his popular books, lectured widely throughout the country to teachers, parents of schoolchildren, and his numerous readers. In 1939, at the peak of his career and fame, he died at age 51 of a heart attack. In Makarenko’s many lectures to teachers and administrators, he stressed the importance of the school pedagogical collective as the foundation of their continuing-education efforts. In his own work with the teachers under his direction at the Gorky and Dzerzhinsky colonies, he stressed that now that they were actually working as teachers in a classroom, their real professional education would begin. No person was more convinced than Makarenko about what made a good school: a good pedagogical collective and continuous development of a teacher’s pedagogical skills. “Teachers should be trained,” Makarenko

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Education of Teachers in Russia

insisted, “not only educated.”6o Talent was not essential to effective teaching. Pedagogical skill was. In Makarenko’s words: [Mlastery [of pedagogical skills] must be put on a par with the collective. Honestly, I do not consider myself a talented teacher. I am telling you this bluntly. But I worked a lot, and believe I have a great capacity for work I worked to achieve that mastery, though at first hardly believing it existed, or whether one could speak of the so-called pedagogical talent. But can we afford to rely on an accidental distribution of talents? How many highly talented teachers have we got? And why should a child who landed with an untalented teacher suffer? And can the education of all Soviet children be built on the basis of talent? No, it cannot. . . . I’ve taught for 32 years, and every teacher who has worked for a prolonged period acquires expertise if he isn’t lazy.6’ Makarenko often reminded the teachers in his schools of the importance of “such trifles” as how to sit down in and get up from a chair at their desk, to stand, to smile, to modulate their voices and facial expressiom6‘ In short, Makarenko believed that teachers must develop many of the professional skills of a fine actor but that there must be a “connecting link” between acting and their personality. It is the personality of the teacher that exerts the greatest influence on the learning and behavior of students. While it is necessary to be a consummate actor, a teacher must, above all else, let hisher personality show through to the children.63 In work with his teachers, Makarenko set up theoretical situations for them to discuss, such as: “Imagine that a boy has stolen three rubles and that you have to bring up this subject with him. We shall listen and see how you talk to this boy and then we shall discuss how you talked to him-well or ineptly.” Makarenko complained that “training of this kind is not provided in our colleges and yet it is a most difficult undertaking to talk to a boy suspected of stealing, especially when it has not yet been established whether he actually did steal or not. Here the teacher requires not merely skill in voice-control or control of his facial expressions, but in logical deduction as Two other exceptionally important areas of pedagogical mastery that Makarenko discussed with his teachers were play and play acting. In his view it was mistaken “to consider play as just one of a child’s activities. For a child play is his normal activity, and a child should always be at play even when he is engaged in a serious task.”65 Makarenko insists, however, that no matter how pedagogically skilled a teacher may be, he or she must not act alone. To do so would be counterproductive to the welfare of the school at large. “There is nothing more dangerous, repugnant, and harmful,” Makarenko said, “than individualism and squabbling in the pedagogical collective.”66 A healthy school demands that the actions of individual teachers be consistent with those of other members of the pedagogical

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collective. A strong pedagogical collective is a stable collective-there are not many teachers in the school; they remain in the same school for many years; they are good friends in and outside school. Furthermore, they are united by Marxist-Leninist ideology and by common pedagogical perspectives and convictions, and they work hard to coordinate all their work with pupils and parents. Whatever criticisms can be lodged against Makarenko’s views on student and pedagogical collectives, and many can be made,67 his basic idea (shorn of its ideological baggage and condemnation of the evils of individualism) about the pedagogical collective is one that merits careful study by teacher educators in any country. This idea is that it is the entire school that educates, not just individual teachers, and that the school is most effective when the teachers in it have similar pedagogical ideas and convictions. Existence of this commonality of perspective is the first step toward forming a close-knit team of teachers capable of coordinating their teaching activities, such as development of a systematic program that ensures that pupils engage in different kinds of writing in every class on a daily basis. Such coordination, as Makarenko correctly notes, is difficult at best if there are too many teachers, their turnover rate is rampant, and their educational philosophies are irreconcilable.

CONCLUSION Makarenko’s life is yet another in the long line of educators in Russia and the Soviet Union who achieved much in spite of formidable obstacles. When Makarenko accepted the job as director of the Gorky Colony, he had never before worked with juvenile delinquents. Yet the great majority of his charges became worthwhile, productive citizens. Still, when he started his work at the colony, he had not the faintest idea how to proceed. He learned to cope through trial and error, and his many poignant writings attest to his ability to learn from his experiences in a thoughtful way. Leaders in every field of endeavor in the early years of the Soviet Union proceeded in much the same experimental way as Makarenko, and for the same reason-there were no guidelines for work in the first ever Marxist-Leninist-inspired society. When a state disdains history and is obsessed with a utopian dream, fumbling around trying to find one’s way is to be expected; such was the situation with education and teacher education in the first few decades of the Soviet regime. The British people are renowned throughout their history for their ability to surmount a great crisis by “muddling through.” Soviet education and teacher education muddled through crisis after crisis and somehow in the process managed to establish many schools with a Soviet orientation; to greatly increase the enrollment in them; to provide practically all children in the new state with the rudiments of knowledge; to find some kind of teacher to put in the burgeoning classrooms-some, at the lower end of the continuum, with little more education than their pupils, others, at the higher end of the continuum, with the high academic standards typical of the scholar-teachers in the tsarist classical gymnasiums. Throughout this stormy his-

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Education of Teachers in Russ

torical period starting with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and culminatin with the demise of Stalin in 1953, schools and the institutions that trained the teachers, in tandem with other state institutions, produced a predominantly li erate people capable of competing industrially and militarily with the Unite States and accepting, by and large, the society created for them by Lenin an Stalin. This was no small achievement.68

NOTES 1. Orwell’s novel 1984 was first published in 1949 and powerfully illuminates som dominant features of life in the Soviet Union at this time (George Orwell, 1984 [Ne1 York New American Library, 19611). 2. Robert G . Kaiser, Russia: The People and the Power (New York: Atheneun 1976), p. 274. 3. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in Th Soviet Crucible: The Soviet System in Theory and Practice, ed. Samuel Hendel (Prince ton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1967), p. 32. 4. V. I. Lenin, What Is to Be Done: Burning Questions of Our Movement (Mosco% Progress Publishers, 1973). 5. George F. Kennan, “The Confusion of Ends and Means,” in The Soviet Crucible p. 401. 6. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West (New York: Farrar, Straw and Gi roux, 1976), p. 116. 7. Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobi lization, 1917-1929 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 260. 8. Robert C . Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879-1929: A Study in History an1 Persona& (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973). p. 211. 9. Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Abandoned (New York: Atheneum, 1981), p. 571. 10. V. I. Lenin, “Rech’ na I vserossiiskom s”ezde PO prosveshcheniiu,” 28 Augus 1918, in V.I. Lenin o vospitanii i obrazovanii, comp. V. P. Gruzdev (Moscow: Pros veshchenie, 1973), p. 294. 11. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobiliv in the Soviet Union, 1921-193s (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 7. 12. “Obrashchenie narodnogo komissara PO prosveshcheniiu,” 29 October 1917 “Polozhenie ob edinoi trudovoi shkole rossiiskoi sotsialisticheskoi federativnoi sovetsko: respubliki,” 30 September 1918; “Osnovnye printsipy edinoi trudovoi shkoly,” 16 October 1918, in Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR: obshcheobrazovatel’naiashkola: Sbornik dokumentov, 1917-1973 gg. [hereafter cited as NO], comp. A. A. Abakumov et al. (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1974), pp. 7-9, 133-145. 13. Richard T. DeGeorge, Patterns of Soviet Thought: The Origins and Developmen1 of Dialectical and Historical Materialism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press: 1966), p. 234. 14. Karl Marx, The General Council of the First International, 1864-1866 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.), p. 345. 15. Editor’s introduction, Soviet Education 18 (December 1975): 3. 16. Nicholas DeWitt, “Polytechnical Education and the Soviet School Reform,” Harvard Education Review 30 (spring 1960): 96.

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17. “Ustav edinoi trudovoi shkoly,” 18 December 1923, in NO,p. 146.

18. “Osnovnye printsipy edinoi trudovoi shkoly,” 16 October 1918, in NO,p. 139. 19. Ibid., p. 138. 20. Iu. Borisov. “Moving to Unify the General Education and Vocational Schools,” Kommunist, no. 4 (1984): 69-74, text translated in Soviet Education 27 (April-May 1985): 42. 21. Iu. Borisov, “Realization of the Communist Party’s Program for the Development of Public Education,” Sovetskaia pedagogika, no. 7 (July 1983): 3-13. text translated in Soviet Education 27 (March 1975): 15. 22. V.I. Lenin, “0politekhnicheskom obrazovanii: Zametki na tezisy Nadezhdy Konstantinovny,” in V. I.Lenin o vospitanii i obrazovanii, p. 399. 23. Borisov. “Realization,” p. 15. 24. Fitzpatrick, Education, p. 234. 25. Ibid., p. 150. 26. Vladimir P.Borisenkov, “The Russian School: Past and Present,” Eastmest Education 15 (spring 1994): 25-26. 27. M. A. Prokof‘ev et al., eds., Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR 1917-1967 (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1967). p. 73. 28. “0 nachal’noi i srednei shkole,” 25 August 1931; “Ob uchebnykh programmakh i rezhime v nachal’noi i srednei shkole,” 25 August 1932; “Ob uchebnikakh dlia nachal’noi i srednei shkoly,” 12 February 1933; “Ob organizatsii uchebnoi raboty i vnutrennem rasporiadke v nachal’noi, nepolnoi srednei i srednei shkole,” 3 September 1935, in NO,pp. 156-161. 161-164, 164-165, 170-172. 29. 0.A. Abdullina, Obshchepedagogicheskaia podgotovka uchitelia v sisteme vysshego pedagogicheskogo obrazovaniia. 2d ed. (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1990), p. 63. 30. Lenin on Public Education (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 106. 31. Unless otherwise noted, our discussion henceforth in this section on preservice education draws upon F. G. Panachin’s book Teacher Education in the USSR: Historical Development and Current Trends in Pedagogicheskoe obrazovanie v SSSR (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1975, text translated in Soviet Education 19 (July-August 1977). 32. Prokof‘ev et al., Narodnoe obrazovanie, p. 164. 33. N.V. Kotriakhov, “Labor Polytechnical Training of Elementary Schoolteachers, 1921-1937,” ed. Larry Holmes, Eastmest Education 13 (fall 1992): 138-140. 34. Nicholas Hans and Sergius Hessen, Educational Policy in Soviet Russia (London: P.S . King & Son, 1930), p. 59. 35. Panachin, Teacher Education in the USSR, pp. 3943. 36. Feliks Aronovich Frandkin, “Soviet Experimentalism Routed: S. T. Shatsky’s Last Years.” in School and Society in Tsarist and Soviet Russia. ed. Ben Eklof (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), p. 166. 37. Ibid. 38. Quoted in Borisenkov, “The Russian School,” p. 25. 39. Larry E. Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917-1931 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 46; Panachin, Teacher Education in the USSR, p. 53. 40. Frandkin, “Experimentalism Routed,” p. 163. 41. Quoted in Frandkin, “Experimentalism Routed,” p. 163. 42. Victor Bolotov, “Reforming Teacher Training in Russia,” ISSENewsletter 1 (November 1991): 4.

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Education of Teachers in Russil

43. Panachin, Teacher Education in the USSR, p. 51. 44. N.K.Krupskaia. “Chem dolzhen vladet’ uchitel’, chtoby byt’ khoroshim sovet skim pedagogom,” in Khrestomatiia po istorii sovetskoi shkoly i pedagogiki, ed. A. N Alekseeva and N. P. Shcherbova (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1972j, p. 185. 45. Abdullina, Obshchepedagogicheskaia podgotovka. pp. 4041. 46. Ivan Rossianin. “Teachers’ College in the Soviet Union,” in Soviet Education ed. George L. Kline (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), p. 84. 47. Unless otherwise indicated, our discussion of continuing education in this sectior draws upon P. V. Khudominskii, Razvitie sistemy povysheniia kvalz3katsii pedagogicheskikh kadrov sovetskoi obshcheobrazovatel’noi shkoly 1917-1981 (Moscow: Peda gogika, 1986), pp. 24-72. 48. Khudominskii, Razvitie sistemy, p. 40. 49. Panachin, Teacher Education in the USSR, pp. 106, 109. 50. Ibid., pp. 209-210. 51. Khudominskii, Razvitie sistemy, pp. 4849. For Shatskii’s work as a teacher educator, also see G. Malinin, “Shatskii as an Educator and an Instructor of Teachers,” Narodnoe obrazovanie, June 1969, text translated in Soviet Education 12 (October 1970): 75-81. 52. Anton Makarenko, Selected Pedagogical Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1990j, p. 57. 53. Ibid., p. 53. 54. James Bowen, Soviet Education: Anton Makarenko and the Years of Experiment (Madison and Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press, 1962j, p. 177. 55.Ibid., pp. 173. 176. 56. Makarenko, Pedagogical Works, p. 63. 57. Quoted in Valentin Kumarin, comp., Anton Makarenko: His Life and His Work in Education (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 49. 58. Makarenko, Pedagogical Works, p. 61. 59. Quoted in Kumarin, Anton Makarenko, p. 54. 60. Makarenko, Pedagogical Works, p. 65. 61. Ibid., pp. 6 4 , 71. 62. Ibid., p. 64. 63. Kumarin, Anton Makarenko, p. 372. 6 4 . Ibid., pp. 368-369. 65. Ibid., pp. 369-370. 66. Quoted in Panachin, Teacher Education in the USSR, p. 226. 67. For example, in what we believe is not a completely fair assessment, James Bowen concludes in his study of Makarenko’s educational thought that “the whole nature of his system was in opposition to the development of individual vision, initiative, adaptability, invention, innovation” (Bowen, Soviet Education, p. 208). 68. Alex Inkeles and Raymond Bauer, The Soviet Citizen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959).

Teacher Education under Khrushchev and Brezhnev HISTORICAL AND EDUCATIONAL SETTING Immediately following Stalin’s death, the Soviet Union was ruled for a short period by a triumvirate consisting of Georgii Malenkov, Viacheslav Molotov, and the infamous secret police chief, Lavrentii Beria, who was soon accused of treason and executed. B y 1955, Malenkov and Molotov were replaced, and Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin ruled the country jointly for a short time. B y 1957, Khrushchev had become the new strong man; Bulganin was expelled from the party the following year and relegated to the same obscurity as Malenkov and Molotov. The successors to Stalin inherited from him a doctrine of infallibility-party leaders could do no wrong. Khrushchev did not burst the infallibility balloon, but he let a lot of air out of it with his denunciation of Stalin, first at a closed session of the 20th Communist Party Congress in 1956 and later at an open session of the 22nd Communist Party Congress in 1961. Khrushchev portrayed Stalin as an irrational, bloodthirsty megalomaniac whose “cult of personality” accounted in large part for many of the mistakes and weaknesses of the Soviet Union. Having blasted Stalin as a great tyrant, Khrushchev nevertheless claimed that Stalin’s overall policy was essentially correct, marred only by his personal defects, and that the new collective leadership would presumably keep a sharp eye on each other and stifle any personal aberrations that might adversely affect an otherwise good policy. In depicting Stalin’s criminal deeds during the purges of the O OS, Khrushchev was careful to absolve himself and his present-day colleagues from any culpability for them. Stalin, he claimed, kept his top lieutenants ignorant of his sundry nefarious actions.

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Education of Teachers in Russi

What Khrushchev’s motivation was in his sensational attack on Stalin is ur clear; what is clear is that his denunciation marked the first step in the unravelin of the infallibility halo assumed by the Communist Party and its leaders. Th step was an ominous one because the only claim to legitimacy the party ha was its cloak of infallibility. Khrushchev was born into a working-class family, and he never forgot hi humble origin. Alone among the leading party officials, he frequently visitet plants, factories, and collective farms, hobnobbing freely and openly with work ers and peasants, pumping them with questions about their work, living condi tions, and problems, and admonishing them about what they could do to improvl their productivity. Khrushchev was gregarious, a boltun (a windbag and a gos sip), and an inveterate braggart. H e was also crude, as the whole world founc out when he took off his shoe and banged it on the table in front of himself a a meeting of the United Nations in N e w York City. Like Stalin, however, Khru shchev was a shrewd politician who knew how to manipulate people and builc a political power base. Though he laughed readily, made friends easily, an( looked like a plump, lovable teddy bear in his frumpy, ill-fitting, Russian-madt suits, he was no angel. For his part in crushing the resistance of Ukrainiar peasants to collectivization during the 1930s, he was called “the butcher 01 Ukraine. ’ ’ Whatever else Khrushchev might have been, he was always energetic, optimistic, in a big hurry, impetuous, and a huge risk taker. He had ideas and he thought big. H e implemented, for example, a grandiose plan to cultivate huge areas of virgin lands in the Urals, Siberia, and Central Asia. Khrushchev wanted to shake things up, and he did. Khrushchev, to be sure, was a party man, but he wanted to shape it up to meet the new demands of the time. The Five-Year Plans initiated by Stalin were well suited to prodding a poorly educated populace into a crash program to lay the foundation for modernization. The plans were clearly inappropriate, however, for the complexities of a developed modern economy with an educated citizenry. Such people began increasingly to resent the rigid restraints of a state still insisting on the authoritarian, centralized, detailed planning of the economy and other areas affecting the life of the country. Furthermore, modernization demanded that peasants and workers have sufficient financial resources to become consumers and that industry provide them with quality goods worth purchasing-two prerequisites totally ignored by Stalin. Being a populist, Khrushchev tried to involve the masses of people in building a communist society, to form with them an alliance against the entrenched state and party bureaucrats, many of whom he quite rightly believed were indifferent to the needs of the common people. Khrushchev tried hard to improve the living standards of the working man and woman and to encourage industry to shift its focus from quantity of production to quality of production. H e and his reformminded colleagues also did much to abolish or curtail some of the worst aspects of Stalinism: rule by terror ceased: Stalin’s abhorrence of cosmopolitanism and

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anything foreign was rejected and replaced with careful study of the achievements of other countries; the extreme tension and persistent saber rattling between the West and the Soviet Union was for the most part replaced with a policy of dCtente, of peaceful coexistence and competition, such as in the area of space exploration; thousands of political prisoners were released; the rigid controls over intellectuals and creative artists were somewhat relaxed during most of Khrushchev’s rule; the secret police, now called the KGB, was stripped of most of its authority and put firmly under the control of the party: censorship was relaxed and the official ideology was not so strident and dogmatic; selected party members, scientists, performing artists, and other trusted citizens could now travel abroad; the rule of law and due process was no longer totally ignored; and in contrast to Stalin, who trusted no one, Khrushchev encouraged his colleagues to put their trust in the good sense of the young and the masses. Furthermore, for the first time in Soviet history, a high priority was given to the consumer, housing, and welfare needs of the common man and woman. With all these good things to his credit, why did so few people mourn Khn~shchev’s downfall? What accounts for this incongruity? Elizabeth Pond’s explanation is perceptive and judicious: The humanist intellectuals, who had him to thank for stripping away the dogma of the past, despised this grinning kopeck-pincher and blamed him for his latter-day crackdown on the arts. The professional politicians, who had him to thank for being able to sleep in their beds without straining to hear which floor the middle-of-the-night elevator would stop at, found him a troublemaker. The collective farmers, who had him to thank for stanching Stalin’s bleeding of the peasantry, considered him a robber of their private plots. The urban proletariat, which scorned his proffered alliance against the entrenched bureaucracy, thought him a buffoon who consorted with milkmaids and melon growers. The man in the street, who had him to thank for restoring trust and decency among friends, detested this “corn hick.” Khrushchev’s iconoclasm . . . belittled a giant whose medieval personal tyranny had itself demonstrated the greatness of the unruly Russians. . . . Khrushchev stole more than their tsar from the Russians when he toppled Stalin from his pedestal. He stole from them as well their myth of themselves. Many would never forgive him for wrenching away their figleaf of ignorance and awe.’ Khrushchev was removed from office by his colleagues in 1964. The new leadership accused Khrushchev of authoritarianism, ignorance, “hair-brained schemes,” subjectivism, and “mad improvisations,” and there was some basis for each of these charges.’ Khrushchev lived out his remaining years before his death in 1971 under loose house arrest in a compound of state-owned country villas in the village

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of Petrovo-Dalneie, not far from Moscow. The very fact that he was permittc to live out his remaining years in peace-rather than being tormented or shotis powerful testimony to the significant political changes he did so much I bring about. Upon Khrushchev’s removal, Leonid Brezhnev soon emerged as the ne Soviet leader. Brezhnev’s personality, leadership style, and the image he trie to project were quite different from that of his political mentor and predecesso Brezhnev looked the part of a leader. A political commissar during the Secon World War,he achieved the rank of major general at age thirty-eight. He wz ruggedly handsome, a man’s man devoted to soccer, hunting, and parachutinl attractive to women, well dressed, with impeccable manners. A moralist put licly, behind the scenes he loved the fast lane-alcohol, cards, beautiful womer yachts, Rolls Royces. Like his predecessors, Brezhnev was skilled at manipu lating men and the party to his will. Unlike them, however, he was, as one c his biographers points out, “unusually circumspect in his manipulation^."^ TI achieve his aims, he habitually preferred conciliation and arbitration. Unlike Khrushchev, who, like Stalin, established policy himself and then ex pected the party and state to carry it out, Brezhnev developed policy in closi collaboration and consultation with top leaders in the party, state, and scientific technical, and educational elite groups, and to a lesser extent with rank-and-fill communists.“ Brezhnev, however, did continue the personality cult tradition (tha is, glorification of the top leader) started and perfected by Stalin and retainec to a lesser degree by Khrushchev. Brezhnev was the “great compromiser.” He appeased the government anc party bureaucrats and other power blocs by abolishing the Khrushchevian re. organizational schemes and radical innovations that had so antagonized them He was also very conservative, in fact, the first conservative Soviet leader since the revolution. He maintained continuity with previous Soviet regimes and witlthe prerevolutionary Bolshevik heritage by promoting policies that reflected a commitment to such commonly agreed-upon principles as the inviolability of the leading role of the party in all areas of life, the efficacy of central planning of the economy, the practical benefits of a collectivist welfare state, and the necessity of ideological o r t h ~ d o x y Furthermore, .~ Brezhnev mollified the Stalinists by resurrecting the prestige of Stalin and some of his more reprehensible practices. Those who questioned the creeping rehabilitation of Stalin were branded enemies of the state and punished accordingly.6 The neo-Stalinist revival provoked the creation and rapid expansion of a dissident movement headed by such world-renowned figures as the scientist Andre Sakharov and novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Brezhnev’s response to the dissident movement was the same as that of the tsars-increased suppression and greater emphasis upon political orthodoxy. Such a reaction, of course, only fueled the movement as it did during the days of the monarchy. Brezhnev was neither a populist nor a radical reformer like Khrushchev, though he stressed throughout his reign the need for improved quality, effi-

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ciency, and productivity in the economy and all other areas of life. Brezhnev was also committed to shifting the balance of investment in favor of agriculture rather than heavy industry. The Soviet state and society during the Brezhnev regime was not as “stagnant” as Gorbachev later described it. Brezhnev did make changes, but they were made slowly and cautiously, and in sufficiently small steps so as to ensure no violent rupture of the status quo. For example, the increased funding of agriculture did indeed improve somewhat the living standard of the average Soviet citizen, but there was no fundamental change made in the inherently inefficient state-run collective farm system. For this, and other reasons, in Brezhnev’s last years of rule. as in Khrushchev’s, the economy began to gradually decline. Agricultural productivity lagged far behind the increased investment. The great effort to gain and then maintain military parity with the United States was an ever increasing drain on the economy. With the additional costs associated with the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the gradual economic decline turned into a tailspin during the late 1970s and early 1980s. During the 1980s. it became evident to some Soviet leaders that preservation of the Communist Party and state demanded something more than slow, cautious, gradual changes. Seventy-six years old, Brezhnev died in office on 10 November 1982. Most people in the Soviet Union were indifferent to his death, neither praising nor cursing him, simply shrugging their shoulders as if to say, “Who cares, the next one will be no better or worse.” Brezhnev was replaced with Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB. Andropov died after only fifteen months in office on 10 March 1984, and his successor, Konstantin Chernenko served an even shorter term. On Chernenko’s death on 10 March 1985, “ m i l S. Gorbachev became the new leader of the USSR and led the country for six years. Soviet people were not so nonchalant about his ouster in 1991.They loathed him. They blamed him for the disintegration of their once great, proud Soviet empire, which, if not always respected by some nations, was always feared by practically all nations, including the United States of America.

Education As should be expected in an authoritarian state, education under Khrushchev and Brezhnev reflected in no small degree their respective personalities and leadership styles and the broad policies they supported. Khrushchev, the precipitate radical reformer, made immediate radical reforms in education; Brezhnev, the cautious conservative, just as quickly revoked them as soon as he had the power to do so and called on schools to prepare young people to work harder with a greater commitment to quality and to the basic tenets of Marxist-Leninist ideology. In the early 19SOs, it became more and more clear to Soviet leaders that the critical need of the economy was no longer for a greater number of university-

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Education of Teachers in Russia

trained people. The educational system was now providing an adequate supply of such people. What was needed was a greater number of semiskilled laborers and middle-level trained technicians.’ Yet the Soviet secondary schools continued to train their students in the upper grades only for admission into an institution of higher learning. Political leaders began to criticize this practice. By the last half of the 1950s, the criticism greatly intensified and became more blunt. Without mincing words, Khrushchev and members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party condemned Stalin’s ten-year school for being snobbish, bookish, and remote from life. Khrushchev demanded that the ten-year school become an eleven-year school that would provide students in grades nine through eleven not only with a general education, but also with a vocational skill that would enable most of them to assume a job in the local economy immediately upon graduation.*Appropriately, the secondary school soon got a new name that, although ponderous, reflected what its functions were supposed to be: “secondary general education labor polytechnical school with production training.” Those pupils who did not desire to continue their education in the secondary school could, upon completion of grade eight, enter a vocational school or a technicum, or go to work. Khrushchev supported the development of boarding schools and prolonged day schools. And, of greatest importance, he took the first tentative steps toward differentiation of the educational process by creating some elective courses and a limited number of classes and schools that provided in-depth study of disciplines such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, and foreign languages, and of the arts, such as music and ballet. Khrushchev gave impetus to a curriculum differentiation movement that expanded steadily during the Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko regimes and exploded during the rules of Gorbachev.and Yeltsin. Under Khrushchev, polytechnical education returned to the new general education school with a flourish, this time under the guise of narrow production training, The return was short-lived. Soon after Khrushchev’s fall from power, in spite of the continuing labor shortage, most secondary general education schools no longer provided production training? Nevertheless, the idea that the secondary schools should provide all students with general education combined with a polytechnical education, to include socially useful labor and production training, was not abandoned; it began to reassert itself with greater power, as the following decrees and an educational law clearly reveal.

Decree of 23 February 1966

In this decree the Central Committee and Council of Ministers of the USSR required secondary students to receive a general, polytechnical, labor education, but vocational training was to be provided only if the necessary conditions permitted it, and the “necessary conditions” were sorely lacking in most secondary schools.1o

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Decree of 24 June 1972

The Ministry of Education and local public education agencies were instructed “to develop polytechnical instruction based on the close combination of the study of school subjects and the principles of modern production. Excursions by pupils to plants, factories, state farms and collective farms [were] to be conducted systematically,and pupils [were] to be familiarized with technological processes and the organization of labor at enterprises. . . . In conjunction with industrial and agricultural enterprises, training shops and school and interschool production-training workshops [were] to be set up and outfitted.”” Decree of 20 July 1973

The secondary school was supposed to prepare its pupils for “vigorous labor and public activity, and the conscious choice of an occupation.”1z Decree of 29 December 1977

There was no longer any doubt that polytechnical (or labor, as it began to be called) education would henceforth have a strong production-training basis. In this decree the USSR Central Committee and Council of Ministers complained that many school graduates enter life without proper labor training, lack an adequate understanding of the commonest occupations, and have difficulty in making the transition to work in the national economy. . . . In today’s conditions, when the transition to universal secondary education has been carried out in the country, secondary-school graduates should have acquired, during their term of study, a thorough knowledge of the fundamentals of the sciences and labor skills for work in the national economy, and they should have come close to mastering a speciJic occ~pation.’~ (Italics added.)

Law of 12 April 7984 In 1984,one year before Gorbachev’s accession to power, a major educational act stipulated that labor training, “given the necessary conditions,” must “conclude with the mastering of a specgic occupation and the passing of a skillcategory examination. , . .”I4 (Italics added.) Thus, we see that some form of labor education remained an integral part of Soviet education fully up to the time the Soviet state disintegrated. The big educational push during the Brezhnev regime in the 1960s and 1970s was for compulsory ten-year education for every normal child in the Soviet Union. The curriculum for an elite group of upper-grade young people was, of course, no longer appropriate for all pupils fifteen to seventeen years of age, and Soviet educators were forced, as were American educators during the early

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Education of Teachers in Russia

decades of the 20th century, to pay more attention to developing a curriculum suitable both for pupils intending, upon graduation, to enter the workforce and those intending to continue their education in a vocationaYtechnica1 school, a technicum, or an institution of higher learning. Teaching content had to be modified, and teaching methodologies had to be more differentiated. Attention also needed to be given to providing some elective courses for pupils and some individualization of the instructional process. To do all this-in combination with the steady vocationalization of the general education school-was a Herculean task, as daunting for Soviet educators as it was for American educators. By the beginning of the 1980s, universal complete secondary education had virtually been achieved in the Soviet Union. This was a notable accomplishment even though the level of knowledge of many of the secondary school graduates was highly suspect. The changes made to effectively educate all the youth, however, were inadequate. just as they have been in the United States to the present day. For example, from 1962 to 1985, there was only one curriculum program for all the Soviet kindergartens, and it was not modified at all from year to year. Nor did the standardized curriculum program for the general education school or methods of teaching change dramatically, though the minister of education, M. A. Prokof’ev, clearly recognized the need for changes in both areas and stressed that to update content would be much easier than to develop teaching methodologies designed to increase “the active thought process” of ~ u p i 1 s . lProkof’ev ~ often complained that many teachers taught according to the formula “Learn by heart, repeat over and over, and restate.”l6 The great push for universal complete secondary education also had its downside. As in the United States, so in the Soviet Union, the attempt to keep all youth in school for many years led to a decline in curriculum quality and academic standards. The curriculum was geared to the average student, thus depriving the below-average and above-average student of needed assistance and stimulus. Grades were inflated, and an inordinately high percentage of Soviet pupils graduated from the complete secondary school even though their knowledge was often of a very low level. Since pupils knew they did not have to work hard to graduate, their indifference to the academic demands of their teachers no doubt contributed to the increasing decline of the status of teaching as a profession. Another serious problem should be mentioned: the incredible inefficiency of the schools in preparing their charges for work in the economy. Vocational schools and vocational programs in secondary schools prepared pupils for trades that they typically did not pursue upon graduation. In general, educational legislation in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev period might be viewed as a continuing effort not only to improve the same phases of the educational system that would receive attention in any capitalist country (curriculum content, teaching methodologies, textbooks, teaching aids, education of teachers, etc.), but also to implement in a more comprehensive, coordinated manner the following educational principles:

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use of the school as an important weapon for promoting policies of the Communist Party; coordination of the work of the school with youth, community, and political organizations, and with industrial and agricultural enterprises; union of academic and ethical knowledge with practical application in “socially useful” activities: combination of polytechnical labor education with general education; combination of polytechnical labor education and aesthetic and general education with moral education; equation of moral education with the communist ethical system delineated by Lenin and use of the school in tandem with other state institutions to develop the “new Soviet man and woman.” Each of these principles was interpreted and implemented in Soviet schools in different ways and varying degrees over the years, but not one of them was ever abandoned in theory.

PRESERVICE TRAINING Khrushchev, it will be recalled, lambasted the Stalinist schools for their bookishness, elitism, and remoteness from daily life. Consequently, he changed the ten-year school to an eleven-year school called a general education labor polytechnical school with production training, a school in which graduates gained not only a general education, but also a skill proficiency in one of the common vocations. Teachers in such schools, of course, required a somewhat different training than those in the heavily academically oriented schools of the Stalin regime, and the teacher education institutions under Khrushchev responded accordingly. The most significant change in teacher-training institutions was, of course, the increased attention given to the polytechnical labor training of both prospective primary and secondary school teachers and the new requirement of production work for secondary school trainees in nine of the fourteen fields of specialization. The most stringent requirements were for those in the technical and labor disciplines. Students in these disciplines who had no previous work experience had to work seventy-one weeks, full-time, in a plant while continuing their studies at the pedagogical institute in evening classes. This requirement was reduced to twenty-one weeks for those students who had at least two years of work experience prior to admittance to the institute. Students specializing in the agricultural disciplines had to work twenty-one weeks on a collective farm or in an agriculturally related firm. While engaged in full-time work, these students

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Education of Teachers in Russia

would continue their studies at the institute through correspondence work. In the remaining fields of specialization, most students worked full-time in production work for only eight weeks. Upon completion of full-time production work, students took an examination and received a vocational rating.17 To prepare students for production work, new courses were added to the curriculum of pedagogical institutes. For example, agriculture was added to the biology faculty, drafting to the mathematics faculty, and electronics and industrial arts to the faculty preparing physics teachers. Because of the polytechnization of the schools, physics teachers now had the title of teacher-engineer.18 As in the past, pedagogical schools continued to train primary school teachers, and pedagogical institutes, secondary school teachers. Students in both institutions were divided into small groups, with twelve to fifteen in each group. Each group was under the supervision of a faculty member. Students in pedagogical schools completed their secondary school requirements and studied one of three foreign languages-German, French, or English. In addition to their Marxist-Leninist work, trainees took courses in psychology, pedagogy, the history of pedagogy, physical education, drawing, music, and methods of teaching the subjects taught in the primary grades. Throughout their program, much time was devoted to observation and practice teaching. In the pedagogical institutes, students took, in addition to classes in their areas of specialization, courses in Marxist-Leninist studies, physical education, and pedagogical studies consisting of courses in general pedagogy, psychology, school hygiene, the history of pedagogy, and methods of teaching their special subjects. The methods courses were taught not by professors in the department of pedagogy, but by professors in the student's faculty of specialization, such as the faculty of foreign languages or the faculty of mathematics. In comparison with the curriculum of the institutes during the Stalin era, the time devoted to pedagogical work was increased by about a third and the science programs reflected a distinctly vocational ~rientation.'~ More time in the pedagogical institutes was also allotted to student teaching and other practical experiences, totaling, in 1960, almost a full year. Starting the first year and continuing throughout the five-year program, teacher trainees assisted teachers in their work with the Pioneer organization. The aim of this work was to assist the trainees to study the characteristics of children of different ages. Such study was done in conjunction with course work in general and educational psychology. In the second and third years, trainees spent about six hours a week in a school, observing lessons, assisting the homeroom teacher, and actually presenting some lessons in various subjects. During the third and fourth years, the lessons were prepared and presented with the assistance of a professor from an institute. During the summer of their third year, trainees assisted teachers in their work with pupils in a Pioneer summer camp. In the fifth year, trainees devoted about three months to preparing lessons on their own and presenting them independently.*O

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The workload of trainees in pedagogical institutes continued to be heavy indeed. In 1964, for example, students spent thirty-six hours per week in class the first four years of their training and thirty hours during their final year.” Such work was severely criticized for its excessive abstraction, dryness, and poor teaching. Much of the student’s day was devoted to learning the “correct scientific approach” to the teaching of the various lessons pertaining to the subject or subjects of their teaching area of specialization. The thinking behind this approach is described succinctly by Brian and Joan Simon: Six research workers are attached to a school and supervise teaching to a whole class, a parallel class acting as the control group, but the actual teaching is done by the class teacher. . . . Every lesson given to a class is fully worked out and written out beforehand, after discussion between psychologists and the teacher, so that the script of the lesson covers every question, action and statement on the part of the teacher, together with the response expected from the children. This is, of course, a final stage in collaboration between psychologist and teacher who have initially discussed the full programme of lessons, and each group of lessons, before coming down to an original lesson in order to ensure a strictly controlled approach. The teacher then gives the lesson of which a complete record is made; everything that occurs is noted, in particular points of difficulty, so that if necessary the lesson can be repeated.22 The aim of the research workers was to construct an ideal lesson plan that could, after careful testing, be used by teachers of a particular subject in any school in the Soviet Union. Just as there was always only one correct answer to all historical questions in Soviet schools, supervisors of student teachers assumed that there was always only one correct way to teach a lesson; and in supervision of their student teachers, they insisted that the trainees learn in minute detail precisely how to teach this or that lesson. Such an approach, obviously, did little to develop the initiative, originality, and creativity of the trainees.23Little wonder that Khrushchev bitterly complained of the “excessive regimentation of the work of teachers and teaching staffs as regards the choice of forms and methods of education and ~pbringing.”’~He should not have complained, however. Such teacher behavior was ideally suited for molding children into the kind of citizens demanded by Soviet leaders-passive, quiescent people who think and act as they are told. In the last half of the 1960s, educators became increasingly aware of the great differences in how individual children learn at different stages of development, and there were calls for the “correct scientific approach” to be replaced with a more individualized approach to work with children. The “correct scientific approach,” however, died a slow death, holding on to life for nearly two decades with the tenacity of an operatic heroine who, having been fatally wounded,

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manages to sing her lover a long, impassioned aria before the curtain falls, signifying the end of the heroine and the opera. Other characteristics of and innovations in teacher education during the Khrushchev era may be noted briefly: The 20th Communist Party Congress in 1956 called upon the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (APS) and the pedagogical departments of pedagogical institutes to concentrate their attention on improving a) “content of general and polytechnical education in secondary school”; b) “organization and

methods in polytechnical instruction”; c) “scientific bases of communist education in school”; d) “research in the natural sciences and in the psychology of developmental and individual traits in children.”25 Reverting back to the first decade of Soviet education, more attention was now given in pedagogical institutions to enhancing a teacher’s psychological knowledge of the different stages of a child’s development.

A number of secondary schools, in collaboration with pedagogical institutions, added pedagogical classes during the eleventh year for training of future elementary school teachers. Universities continued to provide secondary schools with 15 to 20 percent of their teachers, but such teachers had little knowledge of pedagogy, psychology, or teaching methodology. As the official in charge of the curriculum for the faculties of the natural sciences at the University of Moscow put it, “Methods-of-teaching courses are not necessary in the secondary grades; it will be enough if the teacher knows his subject well. Practice will teach him how to teach.”26 Regardless of whether they wanted to teach or not, many university graduates were compelled by the state to work as teachers in secondary Various kinds of pedagogical practice were enumerated, but as one Soviet teacher educator said, little attention was given to “concrete pedagogical knowledge and skills” that should be “strengthened or gained by the students in the period of practice” or to “which didactical and upbringing means and methods must be assimilated by them.” The lack of clarity and “scientific” content of pedagogical practice made it difficult to evaluate effectively the results of pedagogical practice.28 Pedagogical institutions made a greater effort to combine theory and practice in the training of future teachers. Still, course work was by and large not well balanced and lacked logical sequence, and trainees continued to complain that there was little relationship between their theoretical study and practical work.

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Pedagogical institutes started giving some attention to developing the research interests and skills of classroom teachers. The APS of the Russian Republic, founded in 1943, had by this time clearly become the number-one institution in the Soviet Union devoted to pedagogical research and to training research workers in this field. Considerable effort continued to be made to raise the qualifications of teachers and to enhance their lifelong education. There was a great expansion of evening and correspondence work and self-education. With Khrushchev’s downfall in 1964 and Brezhnev’s eventual assumption of power, schools and teacher-training institutions gradually reverted to a greater degree of normalcy. Upper-grade pupils in the general education school were no longer required to gain a skill proficiency in some vocation, and prospective secondary school teachers were no longer required to engage in full-time production work in a factory or on a collective farm. Still, the move toward mandatory, universal secondary education for all children continued, and this put great demands on teacher education institutions. Now, these institutions were required not only to train many more teachers to fill the classrooms of an ever expanding pupil population, but also to improve their training and educational level so as to enable them to work more effectively with an increasingly diversified, knowledgeable, and sophisticated student body and community of parents. To resolve the second of these two tasks was exceedingly difficult and only limited progress was made in that regard. Teacher educators in collaboration with the state, however, had considerable success in resolving the first problem-to fill the classrooms with pedagogically trained teachers. The solution to the first problem was to recruit more offspring of workers and collective farmers into teaching. Pedagogical institutions did two things to achieve this objective. Starting in 1969 preparatory divisions were established in pedagogical institutions for working youth in factories and on collective farms. By 1970 there were 100 such divisions; by 1975, 118 with an enrollment of over eleven thousand; by 1978, 136 with an enrollment of approximately sixteen thousand. Furthermore, pedagogical institutes inaugurated a noncompetitive admission policy for youth from remote rural areas. Youth so admitted, however, had to agree to work for a certain period in schools in the same areas in which they grew up. By 1974 nearly 12 percent of all youth seeking admission to pedagogical institutes were admitted without having to take any kind of competitive examination. By 1979 roughly 65 percent of the enrollment in pedagogical institutes consisted of children of workers and collective farmers.” Thus, the social class composition of teacher trainees changed dramatically from the early 196Os, when most of these young people were children of white-collar professional^.^^ It should be noted, however, that the noncompetitive admission policy must have lowered the academic standards significantly in many pedagogical institutes.

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Education of Teachers in Russia

For the duration of the Brezhnev regime, primary school teachers continued to receive professional training for the most part in secondary-level pedagogical schools, though a growing number were obtaining a higher education in pedagogical institutes. Secondary school teachers continued to be trained in pedagogical institutes and universities, though the length of the program of study in the institutes was shortened from five to four years and most students specialized in one discipline rather than two or three related disciplines. Universities became much more actively involved in teacher education during the 1970s. Teacher educators were concerned with many problems of long duration. Some of these problems-though much attention was given to them-were impossible to resolve because they were peculiar to an authoritarian, communist society suffused with inherent contradictions such as the desire to teach children to think, but only within the confines of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Teacher educators could do little about other problems as well, such as how to attract top secondary school graduates into pedagogical institutions and motivate them to pursue teaching as a lifetime career or how to obtain adequate funds to provide teacher trainees with decent living quarters and classrooms, adequate instructional materials and equipment, and a sufficient number of well-qualified instructors skilled in both teaching and research. Few of the better high school graduates were attracted to a profession that demanded they work harder for less money than a blue-collar worker or even a street vendor selling ice cream, and pedagogical institutions always received less money than other Soviet educational institutions, thus ensuring their low status in the academic pecking order. Nevertheless, teacher education under Brezhnev did make significant progress, not so much in making dramatic changes in the ways teachers were prepared-such an approach would have been inconsistent with Brezhnev’s cautious, measured approach to change-but, rather, in a clearer recognition by many educators of what was wrong with their teacher education programs. The first step in effective reform in any field of endeavor, obviously, is a clear recognition of what the problems are. Soviet educators were increasingly vociferous about such problems of their country’s teacher education system as: the gap between pedagogical theory and classroom practice; the low academic qualifications and weak commitment to the teaching profession of many young people accepted into pedagogical institutions; the lack of interest of the APS in the problems of teacher education: the inadequate training of specialists in the APS and other pedagogical research institutions and their limited knowledge of pedagogy, the history of pedagogy, psychology, foreign languages, pedagogical theory, research methods, and lack of practical teaching experience; the low research productivity of instructors in pedagogical institutions;

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the inadequate preparation of schoolteachers-and their instructors in pedagogical institutions as well-in the pedagogical and psychological disciplines; the inability andor reluctance of teachers to engage in research that could broaden their educational perspective and sharpen their professional skills; the indifference of many teachers to the necessity of lifelong selfeducation; the lack of a mechanism to ensure that teachers work hard to improve their professional qualifications; the inadequate preparation of teachers to assume their upbringing responsibilities in and outside the classroom;” the deficient labor preparation of teachers; the meager pedagogical knowledge of the parents of schoolchildren; the low level of academic qualifications of most instructors in pedagogical institutions, especially those in the field of pedagogy; the insufficient training of school administrators; the meager attention to preparation of teachers to work in small ungraded primary schools and incomplete secondary schools in rural areas; the overemphasis in the practical work of teacher trainees in schools on simply copying the system of lessons proposed by their supervising teachers and method specialist^;^^ the stress in teaching aids on “reproductive actions” rather than on “creative tasks for the students concerning analysis, comparison, generalization, theoretical positions, interpretation of school practice, explanation and argumentation from their own point of view”;33 the overreliance on boring textbooks that ignored the achievements of modern psychology and encouraged students to study the writings of such educators as Makarenko and Sukhomlinskii in a “formalistic” manner, that is, without careful analysis of the applicability of their educational thought to pedagogical practice. Most of these problems existed long before Brezhnev and lingered on long after his demise. Teacher educators from 1964 to 1982 did not, of course, resolve the most serious of these problems, but they chipped away at them. Among the reform-minded teacher educators-it should be stressed here that among the many groups of educators in the Soviet Union, teacher educators were notorious for being the most conservatively inclined-there seemed to be common agreement that what most needed to be done to address many of their problems was (1) to improve the psychologicaVpedagogica1 and research knowledge of prospective teachers; (2) to motivate them and provide them with the intellectual

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tools necessary to continue their professional and cultural education throughout their working lives. In short, not a few teacher educators of the day seemed to be committed philosophically to that most arduous of all tasks in teacher training-to develop teachers who, in John Dewey’s words, would be “students of teaching,” people who were lifelong students of the teaching-learning process, people who continually reflected on what they should be doing and why. Teacher educators, to be sure, did not forget that a student of teaching had to possess the first two qualities of a good Soviet teacher: (1) “high ideals and communist morality”; (2)a “perfect mastery of the science that he teaches” and general erudition. However, they gave increasing attention to the third quality of a good Soviet teacher: “pedagogical sophistication,” which required “serious training in psychology and pedagogy” and all other aspects of pedagogical science, including its history and theory, didactics, and teaching and upbringing methods.34 Such training was a prerequisite for a person aspiring to be a student of teaching. Soviet teacher educators did a number of things to produce more students of teaching. A student of teaching is first of all a person who can think clearly for himself. Only a teacher who had himself mastered “the skills of active thought” could hope to develop the cognitive activity of children. Acting on this belief, the faculty at the Kuibyshev Pedagogical College wanted to “pedagogize” the teaching of general educational subjects and the specialized disciplines (those disciplines a teacher planned on teaching in school). They worked persistently “to incorporate the problem method of instruction into the educational process, to develop a love of knowledge, inquisitiveness, and active thought in the students: to develop variations in the resolution of mental problems; and to develop breadth and depth of observation and substantiation of judgment.” Professors did everything they could “to stimulate the student to search, to improve his knowledge on his own, and thereby to resolve the task of developing thought and those habits and skills without which the pedagogue’s work with the new syllabuses in the school is irnpos~ible.”~~ Starting around 1967, in the course on didactics much more attention was given to the psychological bases of the processes of instruction and ~ p b r i n g i n g . ~ ~ Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, the pedagogical practice of teacher trainees in schools was viewed by more and more educators as a way not only to develop sound pedagogical habits and skills, but also to strengthen and deepen the theoretical knowledge of students. In 1972 student practice teaching was divided into three stages: (1) familiarization practice, which was conducted the first two years of a trainee’s program and correlated with study of the theoretical disciplines in the educational psychology cycle; (2)summer teaching practice, which was done at the end of the second and third years and consisted generally of work as a leader in a Young Pioneer camp; (3) school-pedagogical practice, which was conducted during the third and fourth years and consisted of study of the class and school to which

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the trainee was assigned, supervision of extracurricular activities, participation in the teachers’ methods associations, and periodic teaching of various lessons.37 At some pedagogical institutions, supervision of the practice teaching of trainees was conducted by a “collective” consisting of a teacher of special disciplines (chemistry, history, mathematics, etc.), a specialist in pedagogy, a psychologist, a methods specialist, and an instructor of school hygiene.38 For each stage of pedagogical practice, different kinds of activities and tasks were distinguished, and a greater effort was made to provide the trainee with theoretical support for this or that activity, that is, to illuminate the close relationship between theory and practice.39 Reformist teacher educators hoped that such an effort would remind teachers of pedagogy and psychology “that they [were] not to prepare pedagogues and especially psychologists but teachers of a school, for which theoretical knowledge of these two subjects [served] as a basis for their academic-upbringing work.”4o One of the most characteristic features of the new approach in the 1970s in pedagogical institutes was a determined effort by pedagogues to strengthen the preparation of teachers in psychology and pedagogy. The study of the traditional pedagogical/psychological disciplines, such as school pedagogy, the history of pedagogy, general psychology, specialized teaching methods, and methods of upbringing work, was more systematized in all the years of a trainee’s study at an institute, and more time was given to the study of theory. New theoretical courses were included, such as introduction to pedagogy, developmental physiology, and developmental and educational p~ychology.~’ Starting in 1980 the syllabuses included criteria for evaluating the results of pedagogical practice:* In the early 1980s, the Institute of General and Educational Psychology, under the auspices of the APS began shifting its research focus from such mental functions as perception and memory to a more direct involvement in didactics and teaching methods. Rather than studying, for example, “the role of pupil memory in the eighth-grade social studies course,” the goal of the new research now was “to provide an integrated theory of step-by-step mental development within the school setting,” to identify “activities of the mind common to all school pupils at a given age level.” The pupil’s activity, rather than the teacher’s, now became the object of analysis for a growing number of psychological r e s e a r c h e r ~ . ~ ~ Shortly after Brezhnev’s assumption of power, teacher educators began to give much more attention to developing classroom teachers with research interests and skills. As an official with the Ministry of Education noted, “Today it is necessary to train the kind of teacher who is acquainted with the methods of scholarly research and with their application in a given branch of scholarship, who is able to perfect his knowledge and to rework scholarly information. selecting everything that can facilitate raising the scholarly level and the instructional quality of young people in Some specific steps taken to produce teacher-researchers were: (1) the expansion of pedagogical readings where tens of thousands of school teachers pre-

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sented papers on their work in their schools at meetings of their fellow teachers and other educational workers; (2)the establishment by the APS of the Institution of Scientific Correspondents, which by the early 1980s involved over five hundred teachers in various kinds of experimental work, testing curricula and textbooks, conceptualizing and introducing progressive techniques, and analyzing and processing research data; (3) the inauguration in 1973 of open contests for the best research reports by a teacher, with the reports by the winners being published by the APS;45(4) the establishment of student research societies in various pedagogical institutions; (5) the transformation of large pedagogical institutes from solely teacher-training institutions to scientific centers that supervised numerous scientific research laboratories. Many of these institutes had research divisions that operated on a contractual These efforts to produce more research-oriented teachers yielded some good results. For example, teachers at Moscow School No. 315, one of fifteen experimental schools attached to the APS, published during a ten-year period 4 brochures and 147 articles with their research associates at the APS. More than seven hundred of the teachers in these experimental schools conducted research with their APS associates, two hundred of whom worked in the experimental

INSERVICE TRAINING With the tremendous growth of the number of schoolchildren and teachers during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev regimes and the increasing educational and cultural level of pupils and their parents, the necessity and importance of lifelong education of teachers became ever more pronounced, and the country’s continuing education institutions responded by greatly expanding their activities. Preceding all this activity, however, was a change in philosophical perspective. It became more clearly recognized now that education of teachers had to be an unbroken, lifelong affair, starting in some cases in high schools that provided some pedagogical work for interested pupils, extending through preservice training institutions, and continuing during all the years of one’s active career as a teacher. And, ideally, each level and the work of each group, organization, and institution involved in teacher training had to be closely coordinated and interrelated. Continuing education-and teacher education in general-was now big business indeed in the Soviet Union. As early as 1967 there were seventy-eight institutes for the advanced training of teachers (instituty usovershenstvovaniia uchitelei [IUUs]) in the Russian Republic and twenty-six in the Ukrainian Republic. Annually in the Russian Republic over two hundred thousand teachers attended one- to two-month courses provided by these institutes and practically all teachers attended one or more of their short-term, thematic seminars.48 By 1981 the USSR had 188 institutes for the advanced training of teachers and over fifty faculties, under the auspices of pedagogical institutes and universities, for

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the advanced training of secondary school admini~trators.4~ Starting in 1966, faculties for the advanced training of teachers were established in the APS, in some of the leading pedagogical institutes, as well as in the country’s two leading universities, the Moscow M. V. Lomonosov University and the Leningrad A. A. Zhdanov Univer~ity.~’ From 1968 to 1982, some 765 methodological centers, under the jurisdiction of local boards of education, were opened in each city and district. In the country as a whole, there were, by the beginning of the 1980s, approximately five thousand methodological centers with a staff of thirteen thousand methodologists (rnet~disty).~~ The Pedagogical Society of the Russian Republic and its affiliates in the other republics were formed in 1960. Members of the Pedagogical Society, along with the six hundred thousand teacher members of the Knowledge (Znanie) society, were actively engaged in such activities as disseminating political, pedagogical, and scientific information among the people. Such activities, it was believed, enhanced the political consciousness of teachers and their sense of obligation to better the life of people in their community. By the mid-I970s, the Soviet Union had 228 people’s “universities” of pedagogical knowledge for teachers and school principals. These universities were generally in the more remote areas and were typically sponsored by a pedagogical institution and supplemented the work of the institution in raising the qualifications of teachers and principals. There were some four thousand people’s universities of various kinds spread throughout the country with an annual enrollment of more than a million people, many of whom attended a people’s university of pedagogical knowledge for parents, taught by schoolteachers and professors in the area of the ~ n i v e r s i t y . ~ ~ One of the more interesting developments of the period was the rapid expansion of so-called schools of advanced (or progressive) experience, first created in the late 1950s. In these schools, experienced, respected teachers shared their knowledge with a group of their younger colleagues. The schools were actually very small teacher societies of five to ten participants. Members of the society devised their own agenda, collectively planned lessons, conducted group and individual consultations, visited classes, discussed significant articles in pedagogical journals, assisted other colleagues in mastering basic pedagogical skills, and discussed timely problems of interest to members of the group.53 In keeping with the growing idea of an unbroken, interrelated link of lifelong education of teachers, the Soviet Union’s continuing-education system focused on many of the same concerns as the country’s pedagogical schools and institutes; that is, on such things as better inculcation into teachers of the fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist doctrine and improvement of their pedagogicall psychological, upbringing, and polytechnicalllabor knowledge and skills. Methodological specialists and professors in the IUUs also gave much attention to helping teachers merge theory and practice, use more active methods of teaching, and adjust their teaching to the particularities of their increasingly diversi-

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fied student body. Now, emphasis in classes at an IUU was supposed to be not on straight lectures, but on seminars and practical activities, on imparting to the teacher-students “a definite sum of knowledge” as well as a predisposition and a “striving for an unbroken self-education.” Furthermore, in promoting the lifelong self-education of teachers, instructors in the IUUs were supposed to stress the need for teachers to be “creative researchers.” The idea here was not for teachers to seek new knowledge as a research scientist would do, but rather for them to find better ways of applying the findings of research in the conditions of a “concrete class, a concrete school.” to apply research as “passed through a filter of their own individuality.” A particularly big challenge facing the IUUs was to retrain teachers to meet the demands of the new curriculum programs introduced by the Ministry of Education during the 1970s. During the ninth Five-Year Plan, in Leningrad alone, sixty-two thousand teachers were retrained.54 Another even greater challenge facing the IUUs was their assumption of primary responsibility for the new systematic recertification process of teachers, introduced in the Soviet Union in the first half of the 1970s and required for all teachers every five years. Teachers were evaluated in three areas: (1) their teaching and upbringing abilities; (2)their efforts to upgrade their professional qualifications; (3) and their participation in methods work. Panachin described this periodic certification process as follows: The teacher is certificated by a collective of authoritative specialists. Republic, territorial, and regional certification commissions thoroughly examine the materials submitted to them, evaluate the teacher’s performance, and determine whether he meets the requirements of the position he occupies. The person who is being certificated is entitled to express his comments on being summoned and to submit written objections for the commission’s consideration. The public nature of the certification process is entirely consistent with Lenin’s principles on working with cadres. The certification commission must assign one of the evaluations indicated in the statute to each teacher: “meets the requirements of the position occupied,” “meets the requirements of the position occupied with the proviso that he observe the commission’s recommendations (that he enroll in the correspondence division of a pedagogical higher education institution, that he engage in self-education, and so forth),” or “does not meet the requirements of the position occupied.”55 Should the evaluation by the commission of a teacher’s work be questioned, the teacher could appeal to a higher authority. At the conclusion of each fiveyear certification process, the best teachers were awarded the title of either “senior teacher” or “teacher-methods specialist.” The latter was the highest title. To qualify for the title of senior teacher, one had to have at least five years’ teaching experience, specialized pedagogical training, solid theoretical prepara-

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tion in the subject(s) taught, and a thorough mastery of appropriate teaching methods. This teacher had to work persistently to raise hisher ideological level and professional qualifications and be an excellent upbringer, an active participant in school methods work, an efficient organizer of a collective of pupils, an activist in community affairs, and an enthusiast in spreading pedagogical information among the general populace. A teacher-methods specialist was expected to have all the qualities of a senior teacher but at a much higher level, plus five more years of experience and professional training. In contrast to the senior teacher. whose work typically did not extend beyond a particular school and the community it served, the teachermethods specialist had to be an active participant in professional matters at the regional, territory, republic, and all-union levels. The first of the five-year cycles of teacher certification was completed in 1980, and during this time two million teachers were certified. Eighty-three percent of them satisfactorily met the requirements of the positions they occupied, one thousand were judged unfit, and three hundred thousand, though certified, had to improve their performance in weak areas. The IUUs played a significant role in helping teachers with deficiencies to eliminate them.56 In addition. these institutes provided on a continuous basis a wide variety of courses, seminars, and practicums for all teachers during the years in between the five-year certification process. A s in previous decades, during the 1960s and especially during the 1970s, the institutes tried to provide teachers with a differentiated program that took into consideration their preparation, experience, interests, and needs. For example, seminars were often conducted on problems identified by the teachers themselves and also on those uncovered by various evaluation and inspection groups and commissions. For highly qualified teachers, the institutes provided problem-type seminars, such as the “methods of study and generalization of progressive teaching experience.”57 In their work with schoolteachers, the IUUs put more emphasis than previously on developing the ability of teachers to engage in independent work and to encourage them to view such work as critical to their efforts to raise their ideologicaVpolitica1 level and their professional qualifications. To promote a teacher’s self-education, the institutes and the APS prepared model programs for the self-education of primary and secondary school teachers and school administrators. One of the areas most ignored over the years by pedagogical institutions was preparation of rural primary school teachers to teach all subjects to all children in grades one, two, and three and to prepare secondary school teachers in incomplete rural schools to teach not one but two or three, and sometimes four, different subjects. Some IUUs began to give attention to this most serious, longstanding problem by reworking special academic-thematic plans and programs of courses for rural teachers of primary classes and teachers of specific subjects.s8 In spite of the undeniable progress made during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev

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eras in preservice and continuing education, teacher educators and their institutions continued to be severely criticized for weaknesses even in those areas in which they tried to make significant improvements, such as providing teacher trainees and teachers with a solid pedagogical and psychological foundation and integrating their theoretical and practical experiences. According to Abdullina, herself a teacher educator, the main culprit for the problems plaguing teacher education was the “abstract character of the teaching of pedagogy, its childlessness, its orientation to some kind of average pupil, a pupil in general.”s9 In concluding this chapter, the following generalizations may be made about schooling and teacher education in the Soviet Union from Lenin to Gorbachev: The needs of the state, as defined by political leaders, determined educational policy. Schools at every level were expected to train young people to willingly serve the interests of the state; hence, the most important function of the schools and the teachers in them-as well as the institutions that trained teachers-was not intellectual but, rather, moral: to develop good citizens. The state recognized the importance of teacher education but funded teacher training institutions poorly and paid schoolteachers less than an average blue-collar worker. While the social status of teachers was higher than that of blue-collar workers, the status of teaching as a profession was low. The Soviet state had some highly thoughtful, progressive educational theorists and practitioners, such as Shatskii and Sukhomlinskii (whose ideas on teacher education we shall discuss in chapter 4), who continued the progressive tradition initiated by several pedagogues during the tsarist period. Pedagogical institutions, especially pedagogical institutes, were autocratic, dogmatic, and obsessed with routine, wordiness, scholasticism, and passive methods of instruction. Nor did they adequately combine the psychologicaVpedagogica1 preparation of students with practical observation and teaching experiences in a public school.

A general, comprehensive education-some criticized it as being “encyclopedic”-was an integral component of the curriculum of secondary schools and higher-level pedagogical institutions. Since schools were state controlled, abrupt shifts in educational policy often occurred when a new leader came to power; still, a few educational principles were never abandoned during the Soviet period. With few exceptions, the state had a serious teacher shortage problem, especially in rural areas.

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Prospective elementary school teachers were typically trained in secondary-level institutions and secondary school teachers in institutions of higher learning; thus, elementary school teachers had less academic education than secondary school teachers. Pedagogical schools put much more emphasis on the pedagogical preparation of their trainees than did those institutions that prepared secondary school teachers. Teaching as a lifetime career held little attraction for many graduates of pedagogical institutions, especially prospective secondary school teachers, and they abandoned the field as quickly as they could find a better job. All schools and teacher education institutions were under the control of the state, and the state was directly controlled by leaders of the Communist Party. Religious study was prohibited in all educational institutions, and atheism was an integral component of the curriculum in these institutions. Labor/polytechnical education was an integral part of general education schools and teacher-training institutions. Schools and teacher-training institutions were tuition free and open to children of Soviet citizens. With respect to equal educational opportunity, these schools and institutions were quite democratic. Classical study, so predominant in the tsarist gymnasiums and higherlevel pedagogical institutions, was no longer a significant feature of Soviet general education schools and teacher-training institutions. Pedagogy was generally recognized by institutions of higher learning as a legitimate field of study and research and as an important tool for teaching effectiveness. Institutions that prepared elementary school teachers were no longer dead-end institutions. Graduates of pedagogical schools could now continue their education in an institution of higher learning. A large majority of teachers were now women, and their parents belonged to the working class. Teachers had many opportunities for continuing education, and they were pressured by the mandatory five-year recertification process inaugurated in the early 1970s to upgrade their professional qualifications continuously. While most young people wanted to complete their secondary education in a general education school, about a third were shuttled off to a vocational school, where they could complete their secondary education and gain a skill proficiency in some common trade.

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Schools were most often criticized for their obsession with “scholasticism,” unthinking memorization. The minister of education, Prokof’ev, often complained that scholasticism was “a chronic disease of the school.” In the schools and pedagogical institutions, study of various disciplines, especially history and the humanities, continued to be impregnated with Marxist-Leninist doctrine.

As in tsarist times, universities continued to play an important role in 20 percent of these preparation of secondary school teachers-about teachers were graduates of universities. In the universities, they received a solid training in their academic area of specialization but very little training in the psychological and pedagogical disciplines. Unlike in tsarist times, practically every university student received some pedagogical training because the state, in times when the teacher shortage was especially critical, often forced many university students to teach for a specified period of time in a secondary school. Starting from the end of the Second World War (or the Great Patriotic War, as it was called in the Soviet Union) and continuing throughout the Soviet period, there was an intense struggle between proponents of greater equalization of educational opportunity and proponents of improving efficiency in the economy by differentiating the content and structure of schooling and by enhancing its vocational orientation.“” The long rule of Brezhnev was termed by Gorbachev the period of stagnation, but he overstated the case. There were slow, evolutionary changes in society-living standards, for example, improved-and in education as well. Though probably most teachers continued to teach as if there were only one correct way to do it, many teachers no doubt utilized new methods, devised by teacher innovators, that encouraged pupil participation and provided pupils with more feedback during each lesson.6‘ Special classes and schools also contributed to a greater differentiation of the curriculum, and the curriculum was streamlined by cutting out excessive amounts of subject matter that was too difficult for average students. After Stalin’s death, general education schools once again provided many pupils with vocational training in common trades, but the effectiveness of this training was of dubious value; around 1980, only 17 percent of secondary school graduates entered employment in a field compatible with the skill qualification they earned in More than anything else, economic factors, as interpreted by Communist Party leaders, determined what schools and teacher-training institutions did or did not do. By and large, reforms in schools were spurred not by teacher educators, but by party leaders. Typically, reforms in teacher-training institutions

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followed reforms in schools. Such a backward process was in keeping with the exceptionally conservative nature of Soviet teacher-training institutions, a conservatism that reached back to the early part of the 19th century. There was much talk about the necessity of schools and teacher-training institutions putting a greater emphasis on multiculturalism, as would befit a vast empire with many different nationalities and ethnic groups with their unique languages, histories, and literatures. In spite of the talk, the curricula of these institutions remained excessively dominated by Russian history, language, and literature. Though there were exceptions, teachers were trained to teach an abstract, normal pupil in an abstract, normal general education school. Little effort was made to prepare teachers to work with pupils with learning or emotional problems, with above-average or gifted pupils, with pupils in small rural schools or in vocational schools, with pupils enrolled in elective or in-depth classes, with parents or community organizations. The gap between what pupils were taught in their classes-that they lived in the best of all possible worlds-and the life they saw around them with their own eyes was so great that many of them became cynical and distrustful of their teachers, who, from conviction or fear of reprisal, insisted on lying to them.

CONCLUSION It is not surprising that Soviet citizens during the first half of the 1980s were proud o f their school system. Most Americans at the time felt the same way about their school system. Americans believed their public schools “Americanized” millions of immigrants, abolished illiteracy, provided the trained manpower to make America the leading industrial power of the world, and promoted the democratic way of life reflected in their constitution. With equal justification the Soviets were proud of the many accomplishments of their educational system. It is difficult for Americans to comprehend how culturally backward Russia was prior to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. We think of the great 19th-century Russian novelists and composers and wonder how it was possible for a backward country to have produced such creative geniuses as Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky. Nevertheless. in comparison with most Western European countries of the day, Russia was a cultural wasteland for the vast majority of people. On the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, most Russians were illiterate and impoverished. While it was not at all unusual for commoners to obtain a higher education, the dual-track system of education did make it very difficult for them to do so. Most teachers had little professional training and did not attend an institution of higher learning.

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By the end of the Brezhnev regime, the overwhelming majority of teachers had considerable professional training and general education in an institution of higher learning. In addition, they had many opportunities for lifelong education and for improvement of their qualifications. Illiteracy in the Soviet Union was negligible. Practically everybody had eight years of general education, and the great majority of the younger generation had ten years of general education. Some form of advanced education was available to most ten-year school graduates who had the ability to profit from it. Opportunities for lifelong learning were provided by a wide variety of institutions, in particular the large public lecture centers, called people’s universities, where anyone could attend a free lecture course on such areas of study as aesthetics, literature, art, history, political economy, natural sciences, international relations, and, notably, pedagogy for parents. In addition to increased educational opportunities, concerts, plays, ballets, and operas were inexpensive and accessible to the common man in the larger cities. Such cultural opportunities were, of course, very limited in the villages. Still, the Soviet village was not nearly as isolated culturally as the old Russian village. Practically every home in a Soviet village had a radio or a television set, and the government made a real effort to send to large rural centers touring symphony orchestras and ballet, theatrical, and operatic companies from cultural centers such as Moscow and Leningrad. Also, the number of libraries and museums increased dramatically after 1917, and books were inexpensive and accessible to Soviet citizens. It was a rare community that did not have a bookstore of some kind. While Brezhnev’s USSR was not a cultural paradise, it was far from being a cultural wasteland. The nation’s schools and other educational institutions did indeed raise significantly the cultural level of the Soviet people. Furthermore, the education system provided the trained manpower that enabled the Soviet Union to become one of the world’s great industrial and military powers. These were notable achievements, but the ultimate goal of Soviet education-to form a new Soviet man and woman-remained elusive. Constant demands by party and educational leaders throughout the Brezhnev regime to improve the upbringing process clearly indicated that many Soviet citizens were not sufficiently imbued with a communist worldview. Unlike previous generations, these citizens were now well educated and had access to non-state-controlled sources of information such as Radio Liberty and the underground press. Many had in fact become increasingly cynical and disillusioned with party leaders who continued to insist on the necessity of the big lie-that they ruled in the interests of the people and that no other people in the world lived as well as they. A joke of the time suggests the depth of this cynicism, as well as the dry humor of Russians:

A Moscow class was studying the United States. The teacher asked one of the students: “Ivan, what is the United States like?” Ivan answered: “The United States is a capitalist country that has millions of people

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unemployed and starving.” The teacher said: “And what is the goal of the Soviet Union?” Ivan answered: “The goal of the Soviet Union is to catch up with the United States.” Harrison Salisbury was prescient when he noted in 1965 that “education . . . is the Trojan horse of the Soviet system. By educating the populace and training the people to think, the Soviet leaders have set in motion forces which inevitably will change and modify the Soviet system and the Communist method of government.”63

NOTES 1. Elizabeth Pond, From the Yuroslavsky Station: Russia Perceived (New York: Universe Books, 1981), p. 219. 2. Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, 3d ed. (New York Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 602. 3. John Dornberg, Brezhnev: The Masks of Power (New York: Basic Books, 1974), p. 18. 4. Erik P. Hoffmann, “Changing Soviet Perspectives on Leadership and Administration,” in The Soviet Union since Stalin, ed. Stephen F. Cohen. Alexander Rabinowitch. and Robert Sharlet (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), p. 76. 5. Donald V. Schwartz, ed., Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: The Brezhnev Years, 1964-1981. vol. 5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982). p. 33. 6. Basil Dmytryshyn. USSR: A Concise History, 3d ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978). p. 332. 7. Nicholas DeWitt, Education and Professional Employment in the U.S.S.R.(Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 1961), p. 13. 8. “Iz direktiv XX s”ezda KPSS PO shestomu piatiletnemu planu razvitiianarodnogo khoziaistva SSSR na 1956-1960 gg.,” 14-25 February 1956; “Ob ukreplenii sviazi shkoly S zhizn’iu i o dal’neishem razvitii sistemy narodnogo obrazovaniia v strane,” 12 November 1958; “Zakon ob ukreplenii sviazi shkoly S zhizn’iu i o dal’neishem razvitii sistemy narodnogo obrazovaniia v SSSR,” 24 December 1958; “Polozhenie o srednei obshcheobrazovatel’noi trudovoi politekhnicheskoi shkole S proizvodstvennym obucheniem,” 29 December 1959, in Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR: obshcheobrazovutel’naia shkola: Sbornik dokumentov, 1917-1973 gg. [hereafter cited as NO], comp. A. A. Abakumov et al. (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1974), pp. 46-48, 48-52, 53-60, 203-210. 9. Iu. Borisov, “Moving to Unify the General Education and Vocational Schools,” Kommunist, no. 4 (1984): 69-74, text translated in Soviet Education 27 (April-May 1985): 44. 10. ‘‘0chastichnom izmenenii trudovoi podgotovki v srednei obshcheobrazovatel’noi shkole,” 23 February 1966, in NO, p. 219. 11. “Resolution on Secondary Education,” Pravda, 25 June 1972, p. 1, text translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press [hereafter cited as CDSP] 24 (17 July 1972): 14. 12. “The Principles of Legislation of the U.S.S.R. and the Union Republics on Public Education,” Pruvdu, 21 July 1973, pp. 1-3, text translated in CDSP 25 (29 August 1973): 13. 13. “In the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers,” Pravda.

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29 December 1977, pp. 1-2, condensed text translated in CDSP 24 (25 January 1977): 7. 14. “The Basic Guidelines for Reform in the General Education and Vocational Schools” [hereafter cited as “Basic Guidelines”], Pravda, 12 April 1984, pp. 3-4, text translated in CDSP 36 (30 May 1984): 16. 15. M. A. Prokof‘ev, “The School and Its Problems,” Sovetskaia pedagogika. March 1971, text translated in Soviet Education 14 (February 1972): 47. 16. M. Prokof‘ev, “The Party’s Decisions-The Main Reference Point.” Narodnoe obrazovanie, no. 9 (August 1983): 2-7, text translated in Soviet Education 27 (March 1985): 56. 17. Jaan Pannar, Ivan I. Bakalo, and George Z. F. Bereday, Modernization and Diversity in Soviet Education: With Special Reference to Nationality Groups (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), p. 153. 18. Gerald Read, “Trends and Problems in Soviet Education,” Phi Delta Kappan 22 (November 1960): 8 1. 19. For a complete curriculum (including total number of hours of lectures and seminars for each subject) for a teacher of two foreign languages enrolled during the late 1970s in the Moscow Lenin State Pedagogical Institute, see Mervyn Matthews, Education in the Soviet Union: Policies and Institutions since Stalin (London: George Allen & Unwin. 1982), pp. 120-121. 20. George Z. F. Bereday, William W. Brickman, and Gerald H. Read, eds., The Changing Soviet School (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1960), pp. 296-301; Gerald Read, “Trends and Problems in Soviet Education,” pp. 80-81. 21. F. G. Panachin, Teacher Education in the USSR: Historical Development and Current Trends in Pedugogicheskoe obrazovanie v SSSR (Moscow: Pedagogika. 1975), text translated in Soviet Education 19 (July-August 1977): 137. 22. Quoted in Avril Suddaby, “An Evaluation of the Contribution of the Teacherlnnovators to Soviet Educational Reform,” Compnrative Education 25 (February 1989): 248. 23. The Soviet Commitment to Education: Report of the First Educational Mission to the USSR (New York: Greenwood Press, 1959). p. 88. 24. Quoted in Suddaby, “An Evaluation,” p. 249. 25. “Pedagogical Science and the Teacher,” in Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, 19171967. ed. M. A. Prokof‘ev et al., text of chapter 5 translated in Soviet Education 11 (December 1968): 45. 26. Bereday, Brickman, and Read, Changing Soviet School, p. 294. 27. In 1968, 4,500 university students were assigned to work in schools; by 1977, their number had increased to nearly 20,000 (V. K.Rozov, “New Trends in the Development of Pedagogical Education,” Sovetskaia pedagogika, no. 2 [February 19791, text translated in Soviet Education 12 [January 19801: 37). 28. 0.A. Abdullina, Obshchepedagogicheskaia podgotovka uchitelia v sistenze vysshego pedagogicheskogo obrazovaniia, 2d ed. (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1990), pp. 5556. 29. Panachin, Teacher Education in the USSR, pp. 175-176; Rozov, “New Trends,” p. 38. 30. Joseph I. Zajda, Education in the USSR (New York: Pergamon Press, 1980). p. 226. 31. Stressing the high priority of this function, Panachin, deputy minister of education

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during the Brezhnev years, declared that “the core of the entire educational and indoctrinational mission in the pedagogical institutions of higher education is the training of the young teacher to fulfill an indoctrinational mission in the school and the society. Pedagogical institutions of higher education must train [each student as] a teackerindoctrinator, a teacher-propagandist,and a teacher-activist engaged in public life.”

F. G. Panachin, “Urgent Problems in Teacher Training in the Ninth Five-Year Plan.” Sovetskaia pedagogika, no. 6 (June 1972), text translated in Soviet Education 15 (July 1973): 14. 32. As two Soviet educators complained, “It is as if [the teacher trainee] is trained to work according to certain models and stereotypes, which does not lead to the formation of creative principles and lowers the theoretical level of his work.” S. P. Baranov and T. V. Volikova, “The Training of the Elementary School Teacher,” Sovetskaia pedagogika, no. 6 (June 1972), text translated in Soviet Edncarion 15 (July 1973): 93. 33. Abdullina, Obshckepedagogicheskaiapodgotovka. p. 54. 34. Panachin. Teacher Education in the USSR, pp. 161-162. 35. 0.Volodin, “The Pedagogical College and the School,” Narodnoe obrazovanie, no. 5 (May 1971). text translated in Soviet Education 15 (July 1973): 62. 36. Abdullina, Obshckepedagogicheskuiapodgotovka, p. 52. 37. Panachin, “Urgent Problems.” p. 12. 38. Baranov and Volikova, “The Training,” p. 93. 39. Abdullina. Obskchepedagogicheskaiapodgotovka, p. 56. 40. D. M. Zabrodin, “Aktual’nye zadachi pedagogicheskikh vuzov,” Sovetskaia pedagogika 12 (December 1983): 76. 4 I.Abdullina, Obskchepedagogickeskaia podgotovka, p. 42; Panachin, Teacher Education in the USSR, p. 143. 42. Abdullina, Obskchepedagogicheskaiapodgotovka, p. 56. 43. Editor’s introduction, Soviet Education 24 (May 1982): 4-5. 44. N. V. Aleksandrov, “Higher Pedagogical Education,” Sovetskaia pedagogika. no. 11 (November 1967), text translated in Soviet Education 1l (May 1969): 3 1, 45. M. I. Kondakov, “Pedagogical Science and the School,” in XXVl s”ezda KPSS i razvitie narodnogo obrazovaniia v SSSR, pt. 1, ed. M. N. Kolmakova and N. P. Kuzin (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1982), text translated in Soviet Education 26 (January 1984): 6869. 46. F. R. Filippov, “The Sociology of Education,” in Sotsiologiia obrazovaniia (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), text translated in Soviet Education 26 (October 1984): 88. 47. Kondakov, “Pedagogical Science and the School,” p. 68. 48. M. A.Prokof‘ev et al., eds., Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, 1917-1967 (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1967), pp. 170-171. 49. M. A. Prokof‘ev, “Quality and Once More Quality.” Uchitel’skaia gazeta, 26 May 1981, text translated in Soviet Education 24 (April 1982): 13. SO. Aleksandrov, “Higher Pedagogical Education,” p. 29. 5 1. P. V. Khudominskii. Razvitie sisterny povyskeniia kval$katsii pedagogickeskikk kadrov sovetskoi obskckeobrazovatel’noi skkoly, 1917-1981 (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1986), p. 131. 52. Panachin, Teacher Education in the USSR, pp. 189, 202-203. 53. Khudominskii, Razvitie sistemy, pp. 140-141; “The Public School Teacher,” in Prokof‘ev et al.. Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, p. 12. 54. Khudominskii, Razvitie sistemy, pp. 126-139.

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55.F. G. Panachin, “The Teacher: The Training and Retraining of Pedagogical Cadres,” in XXVI s”ezda KPSS i razvitie narodnogo obrazovaniia v SSSR (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1982), text translated in Soviet Education 26 (March 1984): 58-59. 56. Ibid., pp. 58-60. 57. Khudominskii, Razvitie sistemy, pp. 135-136. 58. In the 1980-1981 academic year there were 32,000 incomplete primary schools in rural areas. In 17,700 rural primary schools, there were fewer than 16 pupils. In 45.9 percent of the rural eight-year schools, there were no more than 101 pupils, which is an average of 12 pupils per grade (Khudominskii, Razvitie sistemy, p. 137). 59. Abdullina, Obshchepedagogicheskaiapodgotovka, p. 51. 60. For a discussion of this struggle, see John Dunstan, “Equalisation and Differentiation in the Soviet School 1958-1985: A Curriculum Approach,” in Soviet Education under Scrutiny, ed. John Dunstan (Glasgow: Jordanhill College Publications, 1987), pp. 32-69. 61. Suddaby, “An Evaluation,” p. 251. 62. Dunstan, “Equalisation,” p. 47. 63. Harrison E. Salisbury, Russia (New York: Atheneum, 1965), p. 39.

4 Teacher Education under Gorbachev and Yeltsin HISTORICAL AND EDUCATIONAL SETTING Russia has to make democracy with Russians. -David

Remnick

Our huge country is balanced on a razor's edge, and nobody knows what will happen to it tomorrow. "Boris Yeltsin

The former head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, replaced Brezhnev in November 1982. Fifteen months later Andropov died and was replaced by an elderly caretaker apparatchik, Constantin Chernenko, who being as physically debilitated and mentally obtuse as Brezhnev was in the last years of his life, died in March 1985, having served only thirteen months in office. Chernenko was replaced by Mikhail Gorbachev, who, at age fifty-four, was the youngest Soviet leader since Stalin. With the failure of the hard-line communists in August 1991 to oust Gorbachev and take over the government. the fifteen republics comprised by the old Soviet Union quickly became independent. By far the largest and most powerful of these republics, the Russian Republic, would now be known as the Russian Federation under the leadership of the first democratically elected leader in the one-thousand-year history of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, a onetime friend of and fellow reformer with Gorbachev, but after 1987, Gorbachev's nemesis and soon-to-be chief rival for power. Upon assumption of power, Gorbachev quickly put together a new governing

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team of younger, more reform-minded rising stars in the party machine. Among those recruited by Gorbachev was Boris Yeltsin, who first attracted the attention of the party for his drive, energy, and tough, efficient managerial style in directing the manufacturing and prefabricated housing establishment for the city of Sverdlovsk-an establishment that employed twenty thousand workers. Like Khrushchev, Yeltsin as politician was a people man. As first secretary, he met frequently with people from all walks of life, checked out for himself the quality and efficiency of various industries, social services, transportation services, produce stores, etc. He appeared on television and answered letters and phone calls from common men and women and told them what he would do to address their problems and needs. In short, he was a very different kind of Soviet politician-a populist. On the recommendation of the very conservative E. K. Ligachev. Gorbachev brought Yeltsin to Moscow and made him a candidate member of the Politburo and head of the Moscow Communist Party, in effect, mayor of Moscow, where he continued his populist ways with increased vigor and scope. Yeltsin’s populism and persistent criticism of the slow pace of reform efforts and the arrogance, political perks, and bureaucratic incompetence of the elite of the party soon made him anathema to Gorbachev and other party leaders who rightly viewed him as a threat to their unelected positions of power and privilege. Yeltsin, the great populist, became, as Bill Keller aptly put it, “the perennial skunk at the Communists’ garden party.”’ From the beginning to the end of his career as leader of the Communist Party and Soviet state, Gorbachev could not rid himself of Yeltsin, who, in Gorbachev’s judgment, did everything “noisily, rudely and unskillfully” in order to humiliate Gorbachev and “clip his wings.”’ Yeltsin thought the same of Gorbachev. Shortly after Gorbachev brought Yeltsin to Moscow, they began an intense struggle for power and ascendancy over one another. The first year in office, Gorbachev gave little indication that he would turn out to be a radical reformer and a democrat of sorts, a “democratic autocrat” as one Soviet legislator said. To be sure, Gorbachev’s career as Soviet leader had many zigs and zags and was punctuated with inconsistencies and contradictions; nevertheless, he did indeed change. Perhaps the most significant change in Gorbachev’s intellectual perspective was his increasing realization that “to put it bluntly, people need the truth.”3 And truth is what Soviet citizens started getting, in such quantity and so diametrically opposed to basic communist ideology that it sent many of them reeling in confusion and perplexity. For many years various Soviet leaders tried to initiate reforms to improve their economy, but nothing they tried succeeded very well. Out of necessity, Gorbachev introduced perestroika (restructuring), which he fervently hoped would get his country out of its economic doldrums. “The fundamental distinctive feature of perestroika,” Gorbachev believed, was “to unite as many like-minded people as possible in the effort to combat the phenomena that burden our life.”4 The first order of business was “to get the better of the

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command-and-administer system rooted in the Stalin years and the period of stagnation” (the Brezhnev era).5 Under the old system, party members treated people they were supposed to be serving with contempt. So treated, people despaired of improving their own lives and the society in which they lived. The most difficult challenge of perestroika was to unshackle grassroots initiative and endeavor. To do this, party members had to be law-abiding, open, and democratic, and treat people with dignity. Gorbachev wanted a person to feel that he was in charge everywhere-“‘at the factory, in the office, in his city, town, village, region and republic, to feel that he co-rules the country.’“j If people were to feel this way, Gorbachev believed, they would be encouraged to think for themselves in a critical, creative way that would benefit society at large. After the August coup in 1991, Gorbachev reiterated “in the most general terms” what perestroika meant to him: ‘economic freedom, political freedom, escape from isolation, and the inclusion of the country in the mainstream of civilization.”’ To gain the trust of the people, Gorbachev inaugurated a campaign for openness (glasnost), which initially endeared him to members of the intelligentsia. In a restructured society, Gorbachev stressed the need for the Communist Party to reform itself by, among other things, not meddling in the everyday affairs of state institutions, ministries, and enterprises that must put into operation party policies. Initially, Gorbachev did not waver in his belief in a single party, but in the early part of 1990 he declared that the Communist Party would henceforth compete with other parties in free elections.8 Acceptance of a multiparty system represented a drastic departure from basic Leninist thought and no doubt was one of the key factors that sparked the coup attempt of August 1991. Gorbachev began his career as a reformer slowly and tentatively, at first concentrating only on economic reform, but he soon realized that economic reform demanded reform in the social and political arenas as well. In 1986 Gorbachev called the world-famous scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov in Gorky and informed him and his wife that they had been freed from exile and could return to Moscow. On 27 January 1987, Gorbachev took a remarkable step for a communist and proposed the holding of real political elections with secret ballots. This same year he called an end to jamming the broadcasts of the BBC and the Voice of America; persecution of religious believers and the Orthodox Church diminished; publication of previously prohibited literary works began (in 1989 even Orwell’s 1984 was published in the USSR); and Gorbachev made headway in convincing the United States and Western European countries that Russia wanted peace and was no longer a threat to their security. “Gorbymania” spread throughout these countries. In England Gorbachev was more popular than the American president, Ronald Reagan. Also in 1987, on November 2, in a nationally televised speech, Gorbachev began in public what Khrushchev had started for a short period in closed sessions of the party elite-to open, if only a little, the door to history. Secondary

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school history examinations were canceled in May 1988 until such time as more accurate textbooks could be published. As noted in the government paper Zzvestia, the school history textbook at the time was “full of lies,” and it was unconscionable to test students on that version of history. In 1987, Gorbachev was at the height of his power and popularity, but his precipitate slide from this height was already foreshadowed by the events surrounding the Central Committee plenum of 21 October 1987. It should be no surprise that Yeltsin was at the center of these events. At this plenum, Yeltsin vilified the very man who encouraged Gorbachev to make Yeltsin a part of his new team, E. K. Ligachev, for his insistence on a slow pace of reform and for obstructing Yeltsin’s work as head of the Moscow party apparatus. And he chided those present for encouraging, by not criticizing Gorbachev, the development of yet another personality cult for a Soviet leader. Claiming that under such circumstances he was no longer able to work effectively as a candidate member of the Politburo and as “mayor” of Moscow, Yeltsin resigned both these positions. Incensed, first Gorbachev and then twenty-one other people vehemently denounced Yeltsin for his intemperate remarks. At the conclusion of the denunciations, Yeltsin knew that he had become, in his words, a political “corpse,” and for the next few months he was in a state of deep depression. What appeared at the time to be Yeltsin’s darkest moment as he stood disgraced at the plenum, buffeted by verbal abuse by even those he considered good friends, was in fact the cinder that lit the spark that propelled him in only four years to become first the president of the Russian Republic and then, with dissolution of the USSR, president of the new state, the Russian Federation. Though the plenum was a closed, secret session, news soon leaked out about Yeltsin’s obstinate, courageous defiance of the party elite, and overnight he became a hero to Muscovites, a “people’s David against the Party’s Goliath.”9 After being dragged out of a hospital bed by Gorbachev in November to face further denunciations by the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Partyan act that Yeltsin considered cruel, “inhuman and immoral””Ye1tsin soon recovered his competitive spirit and took his campaign for rehabilitation to the people, becoming in short order the most popular politician in the country. In his meetings with people he berated Gorbachev for his timidity, indecisiveness, and slow pace of reform and persistently reminded his audience of the dark motives of Ligachev. The more that Gorbachev and the party tried to silence or thwart Yeltsin’s comeback efforts, the more popular Yeltsin became with the man and woman on the street. Yeltsin was a master at plumbing the depths of resentment of the common people against abuses of power and privilege by their political leaders. In rapid succession, in 1989 Yeltsin was elected with a landslide vote-nearly 90 percent of the popular vote-to the Soviet parliament; in 1990 he was elected to the Russian parliament and subsequently was elected chairman of this body; and in 1991 he was elected president of Russia. He won all these positions through the ballot box. Gorbachev, on the contrary, never submitted his contin-

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uation in office to a vote by the people. Yeltsin’s popular mandate was a huge trump card that he held in his battle with Gorbachev for political supremacy. While Gorbachev’s popularity in Western Europe and in the United States has remained high to this very day, his prestige among his countrymen began to sink rapidly in 1988. Democracy, free speech, and elections set loose forces he could not control. He permitted the Eastern European countries to crawl out from under the Soviet mailed fist, but he tried, with force, to hold on to the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; Yeltsin as chairman of the Russian parliament undermined his efforts in this direction. Various ethnic groups within the Russian Republic itself began to clamor for more autonomy. By straddling the fence, neither fully endorsing the party apparatus nor the new parliamentary system, Gorbachev found himself without a powerful institutional base. He could not, as Hedrick Smith points out, “play both Luther and the pope, both Master Architect of reform and Father Protector of the system.”” In 1991, Gorbachev’s last year of power, the economy began to deteriorate, and the standard of living of the average Russian plummeted. As president of the Russian Republic, Yeltsin demanded that Gorbachev resign. Real power now passed from the president of the emasculated Soviet Union to the president of the Russian Republic. The August 1991 coup finished off Gorbachev and for a short period of time the Communist Party as well. From 19 to 21 August 1991, while Gorbachev was vacationing in the Crimea, a poorly planned and executed coup attempt was made by hard-line Communist Party officials, most of whom were appointed by Gorbachev and who composed his inner circle. They wanted to avert a proposed liberalized Union Treaty, scheduled for implementation on 20 August and to restore the country once again to traditional Communist Party values. For a while the situation was touch and go. The conspirators managed to keep Gorbachev isolated under house arrest in his mansion near the Black Sea. The coup leaders ordered tanks into Moscow, and they surrounded all the key points in the city-the newspaper offices, the television and radio stations, the White House where the parliament met, the Moscow City Hall. This was Yeltsin’s finest hour. He marched out of the White House, clambered on top of one of the tanks, and appealed to citizens to demand “a return of the country to normal constitutional development.”” The second night of the coup, throngs of everyday Russians defied a military curfew to defend makeshift barricades blocking the roads leading to the parliament. Soldiers refused to fire on their fellow countrymen. The next morning the coup unraveled, the leaders of the coup were imprisoned, the Communist Party and Soviet state were discredited, Gorbachev was released and returned to head a nation that unraveled almost as quickly as the coup. Shortly after the coup, the republics went their own way, and a very flimsy association called the Commonwealth of Independent States replaced the Soviet Union. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned. The next day, Gorbachev came to his office in the Kremlin to clean it out. His nameplate had already been removed from his door,

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and there was Yeltsin himself sitting at the desk in Gorbachev’s old office, presumably smug and with a smirk on his face. A year after Gorbachev’s resignation, Yeltsin launched a comprehensive economic reform designed to introduce a market economy as quickly as possible, on the theory that only “shock therapy” could get the country moving in the right direction. Such therapy has been exceedingly difficult for most Russians. We shall never forget a poignant experience that symbolized for us the present plight of most Russians. Coming out of a St. Petersburg subway station a few months ago, we were shocked to hear a magnificent soprano voice slicing through the den of hundreds of people haggling while buying vegetables, meat, and flowers from people manning the stalls surrounding the station. We shortly located the “voice” standing tall in a pretty but faded long dress at the entrance to the station, with great dignity and stage presence singing the beautiful deathscene aria from Verdi’s Aida. She was a retired opera singer, probably in her early sixties, whose life savings and pension had been eaten up by rampant inflation. In exchange for a few rubles that passersby might deign to give her, she rewarded them with glorious arias one after the other from the repertory of the world’s great operatic composers, and she sang them with the same precision and passion that she must have once exhibited on the operatic stage. We were saddened by her financial plight, but she sought no sympathy. She earned her few rubles with her professionalism and grit. Like all the Russians we know personally, she will survive and prosper-regardless. As Gorbachev did in his last year or two in office, Yeltsin in recent years has taken a turn to the right, alienating in the process the intelligentsia and prodemocratic forces. The economy has been bled dry by a small oligarchy of rapacious, billionaire bureaucrats-turned-businessmen who gained their illicit wealth the past five or so years by plundering the country’s natural resources. The gap between the rich and poor has widened to gargantuan proportions. The long, bloody war with Chechnya demoralized the Russian people and decimated their army, which was and is exceptionally poorly paid, fed, clothed, equipped, and led by its officers. The communist-dominated Duma has fought Yeltsin tooth and nail on practically every issue of major importance and, with the recent collapse of the stock market and ruble, has adamantly called for his ouster or resignation.” Corruption is rife in the government. The Mafia has infiltrated all levels of society. Power is increasingly gravitating not to the center, to the state government, but to the republics and to the powerful “oligarchs.” The executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government still function very ineffectively and with little coordination. Morally and culturally, the very worst of Western society has made powerful inroads into Russian daily life, thoroughly alarming and disgusting most middle-aged and elderly Russians. In a word, Russian society is chaotic and strikes many Russians as bordering on anarchy, and Yeltsin’s once considerable popularity among the common people has suffered accordingly. His popularity now is almost as low as was Gorbachev’s when he was ousted from power. Whether Yeltsin has the health and sufficient

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popular support and power to complete the next two years of his term of office is an open question. Though the future of Russia is uncertain and fraught with danger, it is well to remember that Russians have experienced and survived difficult times even more traumatic than the present, and this history suggests they may well in time surmount the present problems as well. Whatever Yeltsin and Gorbachev may or may not have accomplished, Yeltsin was fully justified in asserting in 1994 that people with an entirely new psychology have emerged in our country. They have the psychology of the muzhik, the sturdy Russian peasant, who does not expect anyone to help him and doesn’t rely on anyone-not the government, the parliament, or Yeltsin. . . . If you look around, you will see that there are such people now, mainly young people, in business, the media, the arts, science and culture, indeed everywhere. For the time being, they are not too conspicuous; they are too busy. But they exist. To put it bluntly, normal people-the kind of people who used to be crushed by the state-have begun to appear in our ~0untry.l~

Education In 1984, a year before Gorbachev came to power, the Central Committee of the Communist Party approved a new education law titled “The Basic Guidelines for Reform in the General Education and Vocational school^."'^ The “Guidelines” called for three major changes in the structure of the school system described in chapter 3. First, children would start school at age six, rather than seven, and would be required to complete eleven, rather than ten, years of general education. Primary school would comprise grades one through four; incomplete secondary, grades five through nine; complete secondary, grades ten and eleven. Second, the vocational schools would be consolidated into a single, relatively new institution called a secondary vocational-technical school. The length of study in this school for ninth-grade graduates of the general education school would be three years; for eleventh-grade graduates, one year. Third, in order to receive a secondary school diploma, all students-even those in the general education school-had to acquire a skill proficiency in some common occupation. Reminiscent of the 1964 Khrushchev educational reform, this law mandated for all young people in the Soviet Union a universal eleven-year general education program combined with universal vocational training.l5 The new plans called not only for doubling the amount of time devoted to labor education in the general education school, but doubling as well the enrollment in vocational schools and technicums.16 This heavy emphasis on labor education was dictated primarily by the demands of the economy. At the time, the Soviet Union was experiencing a severe labor shortage.17Roughly two-thirds of the graduates of the secondary general education school went directly to work in some enterprise without any voca-

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tional training.‘* The annual growth of the economy slowed from about 4 percent ’~ annual growth in the 1970s to about 2 to 3 percent in the early 1 9 8 0 ~ . The productivity of Soviet workers was only 50 to 60 percent that of American workers, and agricultural productivity was only 20 to 25 percent of the U.S. leveLmWhile the economy demanded more workers and fewer university graduates, the overwhelming preference of secondary school graduates was for a career requiring higher education rather than one requiring vocationalhechnical training. To a lesser degree, stress on labor education was also a result of ideological factors in that Marx and Engels proposed in the Manifesto ofthe Communist Party that academic education be combined with technical education, and labor education had always been basic to moral development in the Soviet Union. As far back as 1918, Lunacharskii, the minister of the Commissariat of EnlightenmentlEducation,proclaimed that “a really thoughtful and experienced pedagogue cannot help but note that to all three questions: how to educate the will, how to form character, how to develop a spirit of solidarity-the answer is one magic word: labor.”21 Other significant features of the “Guidelines” were calls for the following: provision of optional courses for pupils-but they had to be additional, more in-depth courses in technical areas and in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, social sciences, and the humanities;22 implementation in each grade of the principle of the unity of instruction and upbringing by instilling in pupils in history, social studies, literature, and other subjects the “ability to defend one’s communist convictions and implacability toward philistinism, parasitism and a consumer mentality ’’f3 improvement of the methods and means of instruction and the psycho1ogicaVpedagogicalstudy of schoolchildrenby insisting that teachers use more “active means of instruction,” accustom pupils to work independently with books, “increase the effectiveness of the lesson as the basic form of the organization of the instructional and upbringing process,” use more widely lectures and seminars in the upper grades, improve the organization of laboratory work, identify the “interests and inclinations” of children, study the “reasons for academic backwardness and shortcomings in behavior on the part of individual pupils,” and select the “most effective means of eliminating these phenomena’’;24 expansion of opportunities for teachers to select “optimal methods, ways and means of instruction, to more boldly introduce in practice the achievements of pedagogical science, and not to permit the petty regimentation of pedagogical activity”;u provision of future teachers by teacher-training institutions with the ‘‘most up-to-date knowledge and good practical preparation,” ensuring that they have practice teaching experience in a school during each year

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of their student career, providing them with the “fundamentals of modem production and the methods of vocational guidance for schoolchildren,” improving the content and organization of practical work, and expanding the teaching of logic, aesthetics, ethics, Soviet law, and methods of upbringing work;26 introduction in the ninth grade of a new two-year course on “The Fundamentals of Information Theory and Computer Technology.” The 1984 “Basic Guidelines” represented a distinct step forward in the evolution of state-approved progressive educational thought in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in spite of a number of progressive-sounding provisions, the “Basic Guidelines” were on the whole conservative, if not at times regressive, and bureaucratically inspired and implemented. Furthermore, just as in Khrushchev’s time, requiring all pupils to obtain both a solid academic education and a vocational skill was totally unrealistic. And of most importance, the school from 1984 to 1988 continued to serve primarily the current economic needs of the state, not the needs of children, parents, or the local community. As Gorbachev gradually expanded the emphasis of perestroika from exclusive focus on the economy to encompass political and social reform, the inadequacies of the “Basic Guidelines” for the new age of perestroika became increasingly evident to party leaders. In 1987 E. K. Ligachev, at the time second in command to Gorbachev, took the lead in blasting the schools, claiming that “the desire of the teacher to stand over a student, to control his every step is the scourge of our In 1988 S h a h Amonashvili, a leading Soviet teacherinnovator during the 1980s, seconded Ligachev’s harsh judgment of teachers: “For 60 years all we did was fulfill and execute directives. Our teachers are brilliant executors, the likes of whom we won’t find anywhere else in the world. For in their heads sits an inspector who, though he may never come to the teacher’s classes, they always bear in mind.”*’ Also in 1988, at a February plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Ligachev, who was, incidentally, the same man whose “dark motives” so infuriated Yeltsin, delivered a long, seminal speech on education that heralded some new directions for the school^.'^ Speaking on behalf of Gorbachev and the party leadership, Ligachev repudiated the 1984 reform, calling for development of different models of schools and for the right of schools to be creative and to select their own methods of teaching and upbringing, with the objective being to develop the individual abilities of their pupils.3o The plenum also called for the democratization of school management, diversification of the c ~ r r i c u l u m and , ~ ~ for an end to the close linkage of the school system with the system of employment. Vocational training for a skill qualification was henceforth to be an optional rather than a compulsory subject in the general education school. Once again the general education school was to focus on providing pupils with a broad general edu-

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cation and with some polytechnical work geared primarily toward orienting them to a future The February 1988 party plenum painted with broad strokes the general outline of the path that schools were to follow under Gorbachev and, with some notable exceptions, to a considerable extent under Yeltsin as well. Schools were to reflect trends in society at large-trends that were sparked and nurtured by Gorbachev himself and solidified by Yeltsin. The SovietRussian school under Gorbachev and Yeltsin was, in tandem with society, to become more open, more humane, more diversified, more decentralized, and more democratized. It was left to a number of outstanding “teacher-innovators” and two dynamic state educational leaders to take a small brush and fill in the details of the emerging new portrait of the SovietRussian school. The two state educational leaders were Gennadii Iagodin and Eduard Dneprov. Iagodin was the minister of the USSR State Committee for Public Education, a committee formed on 8 March 1989. In yet another in a long line of reorganizations of the Soviet educational bureaucracy, this committee replaced the USSR Ministry of Public Education, the USSR Ministry of Higher Education and Secondary Specialized Education, and the USSR State Committee for Vocational and Technical Education. With the downfall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the USSR State Committee for Public Education, of course, became defunct. When Yeltsin was elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet in June 1990, he appointed a kindred spirit, Dneprov, as minister of education of the Russian Republic, a position he held until late 1992. In speech after speech, Gorbachev reminded his audience that “the revolutionary changes toward which restructuring is directed are impossible without a revolution in the public consciousness, in people’s psychology and thinking.”33 As a strong arm of state policy, the school was expected to mold the psychology and thinking of young people in conformity with the basic tenets of perestroika. In particular, the school was to promote communist ethics, the human factor, and independent thinking.

Communist Ethics Prior to Gorbachev, Soviet teachers had a clear idea of what ethics they were to instill in children. In the “Moral Code of the Builders of Communism,” which they were required each year to teach to their students, and in all other writings on Soviet morality, one learned that whatever furthered the cause of building a communist society was moral. Who determined what furthered or hindered this cause? Soviet children and adults were told that the Communist Party had this right because its members understood the truths of MarxismLeninism and how these truths were to be used as a practical guide in building a society consistent with communist ethics. This understanding was presumably gained through years of training and practical experience in party affairs. A moral Soviet citizen, then, had to think and act in accordance with the dictates of the party. To think and act in this manner was to possess, in the hierarchy

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of communist virtues, the highest virtue. A person who possessed this virtue was commonly referred to, in party parlance, as “the new Soviet man”-one who had developed a communist worldview and acted in accordance with this worldview. To achieve a communist worldview, a Soviet youth had to develop some virtues that were common to good citizens in most societies. For example, children had to be honest, truthful, and helpful to others and work hard in school to develop intellectual, aesthetic, and physical abilities-that is, to develop a “comprehensive, harmonious personality.” Although these important virtues received considerable attention in Soviet schools, the virtues regarded as most integral to the development of communist ethics were the following: Love of

Labor. To overcome the economic backwardness of their country, Soviet authorities placed great emphasis on inculcating in people a love of labor. A true lover of labor was one who worked not for personal benefit but for the benefit of society. To do this, one had to develop “labor discipline,” which meant, when stripped of party jargon, the moral commitment to do willingly whatever task the party dictated, regardless of how difficult or unpleasant it might be. Patriotism.

A Soviet patriot was an internationalist who loved the military and the motherland and hated capitalists. Capitalists were to be hated not only because of their exploitation of the worker and their imperialistic designs, but also because of their propaganda efforts to exert a demoralizing influence on the thinking of Soviet citizens.

Atheism.

A good communist had to be an atheist. Religious faith was contrary to the materialistic doctrines of Marxism, and communists claimed that churches always supported elite classes that gained and sustained their power and wealth through the exploitation of the worker. To be an atheist, however, was not enough. The good communist had to be a militant atheist-not only renouncing all religious beliefs, but also striving to convince others to do the same. Collectivism. A collectivist was one who recognized that to develop a communist worldview was to develop a collective worldview. Such a view was the “enemy of individualism.” ln the Soviet Union an “individualist” was one who selfishly worked only for personal benefit; a collectivist worked to improve society rather than to improve his or her own well-being.

Because Gorbachev started questioning some hallowed tenets of Soviet ideology, teachers no longer received unequivocal guidelines about what values they were to inculcate in their students. Gorbachev and his followers were painfully aware that perestroika had engendered moral uncertainty among significant portions of the population, and the party had to work hard and fast to resolve

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such fundamental questions as: “How should we view society? What should we strive for? What do we renounce? What should we inherit and utilize, through restructuring, to achieve a qualitatively new stage of socialism?” Gorbachev warned party members that laxity in coming to grips with such questions was forming a “vacuum” that was being filled by various ideas and conceptions that were “remote from science and the vital interests of workers.”34 Gorbachev’s concern was dutifully seconded by leading educators who believed that teachers in teacher education institutions had to be prepared to answer such tough questions from students as: “What is Communism and Marxism-Leninism today? What are our ideas today? How are we to live? What are we to strive for?”35 This issue, however, was impossible for politicians and educators to resolve because of such irreconcilable dilemmas as: How could people be taught the importance of historical honesty when the party still exerted some control over the writing of history? How could people be taught pride in their country, which is essential for the healthy development of any people, when they were bombarded almost daily by new revelations from the media about horrors inflicted on the Soviet people by their once revered leaders? How could people be taught to reconcile increasing social and political democratization with the still predominant (though rapidly decreasing) control of the Communist Party? How could people be taught to reconcile freedom of choice with the state’s insistence on allocating manpower where only it deemed best?

The Human Factor Just as emphasis on the human factor was considered the key to unleashing the energies of the masses to implement perestroika, so was it the key to revitalizing the school system. What was wrong with society at large was what was wrong with education: the development of the human personality was stunted because of the command-and-administer system, whereby those in positions of authority made all decisions for their subordinates and insisted that they be carried out obediently without any consultation. The result was a large number of adults who were indifferent to raising socioeconomic life to a “qualitatively new level” and a large number of children who were indifferent to school. Such indifference accounted for much of the incredible waste of human and material resources that was endemic in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev never tired of stressing that “on the whole, our economy remains, in many respects, an extravagant one.”36 Seventy-two percent of the wholesale potato supplies in Moscow never made it to market, but ended up in city garbage dumps or as cattle feed. More than half of the country’s commodities rotted or rusted away in warehou~es.3~ Soviet citizens spent at least one hour a day in lines for food and two to three

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hours a day in lines for washing powder, clothes, tissue, and the like.38 Waste was also rampant in the schools. In Moscow only 10 percent of the graduates of the general education school continued to work in the specialty that they acquired in In the country at large, in 1986, only 24 percent of school graduates selected a vocation that corresponded to the trade that they learned in Of 4.5 million school graduates who were sent to their first job in 1986, only 200,000 had skills that corresponded to the qualification level listed on their work certificate by the In 1978, 31.9 percent of medal holders, presumably the brightest students, failed the examination for admission to teacher-training colleges in their chosen subjects?’ These figures are hardly surprising when one considers that nearly 40 percent of the country’s pupils had no desire to attend school and 50 percent were not satisfied with the knowledge that they acquired in While Soviet educators recognized that there was no panacea for overcoming the problems plaguing their schools, they echoed in speeches, articles, and books Gorbachev’s firm conviction that “dialogue rather than monologue” was the “essential element in a truly creative process of education and upbringing of young people.”44 This basic idea with all its many ramifications was widely publicized after Iagodin appointed Dneprov in 1988 to organize like-minded reformers into a cohesive, working group titled VNIK-shkola (Temporary Scientific Research Collective on the Schools), a group whose principles were summarized and promulgated, primarily by Dneprov, in a series of position papers published by the editor of the Teacher Gazette (Uchitel’skaia gazeta), Vladimir F. M a t ~ e e v In . ~ short ~ order, the VNIK-shkola group blossomed into the vanguard of a radical reform movement called the “pedagogy of cooperation,” consisting of reformers in the state educational bureaucracy and of prominent teacher-innovators such as Amonashvili, Volkov, Ivanov, El’in, Kurkin, Lytsenkova, Nikitina, Nikitin, Shatalov, and Shchetinin. The main thrust of the movement was to humanize the teaching-learning process.46 Supporters of the movement demanded first of all the dismantlement of the old Soviet systemone, in their judgment, so excessively centralized, authoritarian, bureaucratic, and impersonal that it totally ignored the needs and interests of students, teachers, parents, and the community at large. The second order of business was to replace this system with a Lincolnesque system “of the people, by the people, for the people.” In short, control of education should be returned to the people. Just as the policy of perestroika promoted plurality of thought in Soviet society at large, it also brought to the surface the diversity of thought that had always existed in the Soviet educational community. During the Gorbachev regime, there were many highly visible groups that had their own, often very distinctive, agendas for educational reform. In addition to the VNIK-shkola collaborators and teacher-innovators, the establishment of the Creative Union of Teachers provided a countervailing force to the official educational union. This new union was formed as the result of the activities of over five hundred Eureka clubs, which were semiautonomous groups of teachers interested in exploring

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new ideas and methodologies. Members of these clubs made no small contribution to the liveliness, timeliness, and muckraking propensity of the Teacher Gazette during its heyday from 1987 to 1989, at which time Matveev was removed from the editorship because he offended Ligachev. Matveev died soon thereafter, and the paper was taken over by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. To further humanize the educational process, Iagodin and other leading educators emphasized that five things needed to be done: 1. “The educational process should be governed by those who teach and Teachers should play a greater role in educate,” as Iagodin put assisting scholars in writing textbooks; participate in the selection and dismissal of administrators; choose the teaching methodologies and techniques that best suit their personalities and the needs, interests, and abilities of their students; select from two or more options the textbooks that are most appropriate for their classes; and vary the amount o f instructional time spent on particular themes. In short, the teacher was to be a “master of his profession.”48 2. To develop masters of their profession, teacher education institutions

and the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences must gear their research and teaching to assist teachers to be more creative, to acquire the social skills necessary to gain the respect of students (the Teacher Gazette printed excerpts from Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People), to work more closely with parents and community organizations. In essence, these institutions must be child- and peopleoriented, and they must help teachers to become similarly oriented.

3. The idea that all students should take the same academic program must be abandoned. Iagodin was forceful on this point. “It is essential,” he said, “that we finally realize that equality does not mean identicalness. . . . All children, all people are different.”49 He concludes from this premise that upper-level pupils should be able to choose a number of their subjects that are in accordance with their “own aptitudes and inclinations” or have a right to enroll in a school with a “special emphasis on mathematics, the humanities, technology, or profession~.’’~~

4. Committees consisting of students, teachers and other educational workers, parents, and representatives of various community organizations must be formed at all levels of the school system in order to further the democratization of educational administration. Such committees were established during the early years of Bolshevik rule but were abandoned during Stalin’s reign. Iagodin proposed that these new committees have considerable powers, such as hiring and firing of

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administrators and exerting significant control over expenditure of funds.5’ 5. Instruction in local cultures, histories, and languages must be expanded and improved. Iagodin, quite understandably in light of the tumultuous uprisings at the time in several Soviet republics, considered this a top priority in a multinational country such as the USSR.

Independent Thinking In spite of the glasnost campaign, the Soviet state under Gorbachev did not abandon its efforts to control within certain parameters what people thought. As Gorbachev put it, with a characteristic hard-line “kicker” after he professed a liberal sentiment, “We are for openness without reservations, without limitations. But for an openness in the interests of sociali~m.”~‘ The Soviet press, for example, could write about almost any contemporary topic and did so quite honestly, but reports on events not to the liking of the political leadership, such as nationalist unrest and ethnic strife, remained incomplete and highly biased.53 Since some reporters occasionally exceeded the boundary of what was acceptable, Gorbachev reminded them periodically that “no one is above control in our country. . . . This applies to the mass media. The Soviet press is not a private shop.”54 Still, there can be no doubt that Gorbachev very much wanted his fellow citizens to think more independently, creatively, and critically. Such people were essential if the socioeconomic life of the country were to improve. Gorbachev insisted that everybody “must learn the habit of criticism, the habit of comradely polemic.”55 Iagodin agreed. “We must learn,” he said, “to listen to others, to understand opposing views. This is the task of education.”56 It was not and is not today an easy task. Teaching children to think for themselves is difficult to do in any country, but in the Soviet Union it was doubly difficult because a long tradition-extending back to the early tsars-of ingrained anti-intellectualism had to be combated. Prior to Gorbachev’s ascension to power, the most fundamental objective of the school’s upbringing program was to teach children not to think for themselves, but to acquiesce in letting the state do this job for them. In school the child was to learn that there was only one correct answer for every question of importance to the state: socialism is noble, capitalism is wicked; atheism is good, religion is bad. To eliminate any doubt in the minds of students about what the conclusion should be, Soviet teachers were instructed to word their questions so that the question itself prompted the desired response: “The church claims that it always stood for the defense of the interests of its country and people. Prove that this is not so.”57 David Shipler. a former New York Times correspondent who spent four years in Moscow during the late 1970s, visited many Soviet classrooms, but in only one did he observe a teacher trying to teach students to think for themselves. It was in a tenth-grade English class in a school that specializes in teaching its

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students to speak English. The class was discussing Arthur Hailey’s novel The The teacher asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of Dr. Pearson’s behavior in this situation?” In Shipler’s words: “Nobody spoke. They searched the teacher’s eyes for clues to how they were to react. She gave none but prodded them smilingly to say what they thought. They looked at their fingernails, fidgeted with their pencils. Had she asked, ‘Why do you approve?’ or ‘Why do you disapprove?’ there would have been a flurry of raised hands.”58 A Soviet newspaper editor summed up bluntly the challenge facing educators under Gorbachev in promoting independent thinking among students and teachers alike: “When you have been told all your life you are a pig, you don’t suddenly start thinking for yourself just because somebody orders you to do so.”59

Final Diagnosis.

Reform Under Dneprov With the breakup of the Soviet empire and dissolution of the USSR State Committee for Public Education, Dneprov became the number-one educator in the Russian Federation. Although he endorsed practically all the reforms proposed by Iagodin, he pushed hard for some educational reforms that were just as controversial and questionable in Russia as in the United States, such as state support of private schools and encouragement of the proliferation of specialized schools catering to an elite clientele. Unlike Iagodin, who believed that educational reform followed reform of society, Dneprov strongly believed (as did a number of American educational philosophers during the first decades of the 20th century) that when the historical time was ripe for fundamental societal changes, such as it was during his ministry, educators and schools had to play a leading role in bringing about the desired changes. Giving a powerful voice in educational matters to students, teachers, parents, and community members, Dneprov believed, would obliterate the fourfold alienation of the traditional Soviet school-alienation of “the school from society, of the pupil from the school, of the teacher from the pupil, and of both teacher and pupil from educational activity.”6” At its best, the new system he had in mind would reflect in practice wholehearted dedication to key concepts such as: democracy,

primarily by taking the government out of the school, by involving the public in school governance, and by developing self-government and self-development in schools; humanization, primarily through application of a “consistent individualization of the entire educational process”; variability, primarily through encouragement of private schools, homeschooling, and the right of parents to choose the most appropriate kind of education for their children; multiculturalism, primarily by insistence on the right and, indeed, obligation of each region to have the kind of educational system it wants.

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The heart and soul of the new system would be its persistent focus on the child. To help him meet this challenge, Dneprov quickly purged the old guard from the ministry and appointed some of his VNIK-shkolucolleagues to key positions. His appointment as minister was passionately supported by his admirers and just as passionately opposed by his opponents, primarily the military (he wanted to take military training out of the schools), communists (he wanted to deideologize the schools), and conservative members of the educational bureaucracy (he was a serious threat to their job security). So, it is not surprising that his tenure as minister was rocky. Still, he can rightly claim some substantial achievements, by far the most important being, in Ben Eklof’s words, “a dismantling of the hierarchical structure of authoritarian controls in education unprecedented in Russian h i ~ t o r y . ” ~So ’ complete was the dismantling process that the Ministry of Education abandoned the most important source of control of any authoritarian organization-control of the purse strings. Under Dneprov’s leadership, the ministry apparently continued to fund vocational education, teacher training, and educational research but left funding of schools to local soviets. Control of education-including funding and curriculum-passed from the ministry to regional and local departments of education. Dneprov wanted “to see each nationality, each region, develop its own educational platform [kontseptsiia] and its own program of reform in accordance with local conditions.” The mission of the ministry, he insisted, “must be, above all, not to unify, but rather to stimulate in all possible ways the expeditious development of such programs.”62 The ministry, Dneprov believed, should henceforth be a nonauthoritarian body that administers “processes, not people,” provides expert advice and consultation to schools throughout the country,63inspires teachers and administrators by providing them with models of excellence in all fields of education, and ensures “the necessary conditions for successful completion of established minimal competencies . . . and for dynamic advance in education as a whole.”64 Much, though by no means all, of what Dneprov wanted for the new Russian school gained legal sanction when Boris Yeltsin signed into law in July 1992 new legislation called “The Law of the Russian Federation on Education.”65 This law opened the gate for profound changes in Russian education, most having to do with decentralization, with Dneprov’s adamant conviction that “the state monopoly of education is a variation on serfdom. It deprives the public of choice in education.”66 With this law the centralized control of the Ministry of Education over everything having to do with schools was broken. Parents now had the right to choose a state or private, nonstate school, or homeschooling for their children. Schools also had some choice with respect to the curriculum. The law mandated that the curriculum of all schools have three components: federal, regional, and local. The federal component, a core curriculum, determined by the Russian Ministry of Education, would be required in all schools in the country, thus making it relatively easy for a pupil to transfer to a school in another region. Responsibility for the rest of the curriculum content would be delegated to regional and local education authorities, who, pre-

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sumably, would make their portion of the curriculum relevant to the needs of children and youth living in their area of authority. The state reserved the right to set minimal educational standards and to monitor the level of academic achievement in schools by relying on a state certification agency independent of the public school administration. The law stipulated that education in the basic core curriculum set by the Ministry of Education would be free in public or private schools, but any additional courses provided children by the school had to be paid for by their parents. The age a child started school was left up to individual schools, but all children had the right to a general education-but not to a complete secondary education as in the past. Compulsory schooling was reduced from eleven to nine years, that is, to an incomplete secondary education. The new educational act also emphasized that educational goals, curriculum content, teaching methodologies, and interpersonal relationships among all constituents of a school were to reflect the highest principles of humanism, humanitarianism, and democracy. In sum, the Law of the Russian Federation on Education put its stamp of approval on the decentralization of educational administration, which is reflected today in differentiated curricula, teaching methodologies, and school types.67 Dneprov resigned in 1992 and became an advisor on educational matters to Boris Yeltsin. Evgenii Tkachenko replaced Dneprov as Minister of Education of the Russian Federation. Believing firmly that the time was ripe for societal change and that the school must lead the way in effecting this change, Dneprov was no shrinking violet as minister of education. Combative, polemical, a man in a hurry, Dneprov was not reluctant to castigate his opponents in the most unflattering terms. For example, he said that the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (since 1992, the Russian Academy of Education) suffers from “blind obedience to authority” and lethargic leadership and is ‘the source of dogmatic, myopic, conformist thinking, which in turn leads directly to paralysis.”68 Such language did not endear him to many educators, and many were no doubt happy to see his resignation and the appointment of Tkachenko, a man who believed in evolutionary rather than revolutionary educational change. Tkachenko continued to support key concepts of the Iagodin and Dneprov reforms, such as decentralization, diversity, differentiation, democratization, humanitarianism, and humanism, but he opted, as Iagodin did, for a slower, more measured pace of reform measures than that insisted upon by Dneprov. Furthermore, unlike Dneprov, who saw little worth preserving from the old Soviet school, Tkachenko wanted to preserve the many good things about the Soviet educational system. During his ministry, Tkachenko and his deputy minister of education, Victor Bolotov. stressed: c

establishment of educational standards that would “regulate only the core content and quality criteria common to the whole country, but not all elements of the curriculum, as before”; development of a training program for teachers and administrators that is both diversified and change oriented;

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development of federal, regional, and local components for the school curriculum; creation of a “consistent system of school accreditation, licensing, and teacher assessment, a system that does not contradict global norms”; greater recognition in the school curriculum of the “unparalleled variety of nationalities” in Russia, “more than 120 nationalities, as diverse as could be in their language, culture, and religion”; development of close ties between schools and social organizations, the purpose being to enhance their ability to cope effectively with the increasing number of disturbed children, potential dropouts, and juvenile delinquents; development on both the federal and regional levels of new content and technologies of education; writing of the new textbooks and teaching materials necessary for a diversified curriculum; development of mechanisms of assessment and evaluation, which is the primary means of protecting the public and gaining their support and cooperation; rejuvenation of vocational education programs; development of programs for gifted and handicapped children.69

Status of Schools What is the status of schools in Russia today? The quick answer is, the same status as Russian society in general. That is, it is a mixed bag, with many pluses and minuses, depending upon one’s educational perspective. Clearly, children and their parents have more choice with respect to curriculum and schools. Clearly, teachers have more choice concerning curriculum content and teaching methodologies. Clearly, in many schools, there is a much better rapport between teachers and students and the school and parents. Clearly, there is a greater effort among teachers to encourage their pupils to be creative and to think for themselves. Certainly, the old highly centralized Soviet educational system has been demolished. But a decentralized school system does not guarantee a quality education for all children any more than does its opposite, a centralized school system. To be sure, as one surveys the educational scene in Russia today, the panorama is indeed one of great diversity. It is a mecca for a staunch believer in the blessings of a decentralized school system. There is every possible kind of school. There are public and private schools, not infrequently in the same building. There are ordinary general education schools, some of which have intensified study of various disciplines. There are vocational schools, but youth avoid them unless there is no other choice. There are all kinds of schools with

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a special orientation, such as global education, English language, pedagogy, the humanities, mathematics, and the sciences. Some of these schools are called lyc6es and gymnasiums, just as during the tsarist times.70 There are special remedial schools as well as special schools for children with behavioral problems and for children with limited physical and mental abilities. The quality of teaching in the schools is as varied as the schools themselves. Whatever else can be said about the Russian educational system today, it is diversified, but it suffers from as many serious problems as those afflicting another decentralized educational system, the one in America.71 The move to a market economy has presented as many new challenges for the Russian school as it has for society at large. Anthony Jones suggests some of these challenges: competing for finances and students; finding ways to generate income instead of relying on the state to pay for everything; preparing students for dramatically altered employment opportunities (including that of unemployment); and ensuring that graduates are prepared for a career in which they will have to retrain constantly. Now rural schools have to prepare their students to be independent farmers instead of state workers, and teachers have to be able to talk to students about new careers as businessmen, social workers, and bankers.” Of the many challenges facing Russian schools today, some of the most pressing and complex have to do with funding, vocational training, societal probiems, national vision, the Ministry of Education, decentralization, equality of educational opportunity, rural schools, school history, preschool education, upbringing, and teacher training.

Funding By far the most pressing challenge facing Russian schools is how to get adequate funds to ensure a quality education for all children. From tsarist times through the Soviet period, inadequate funding has plagued the schools, but the problem has even intensified since the downfall of the Soviet state. From 1970 to 1992 capital investments in education declined from 7 percent to 3.4 percent. From 1992 to 1995, funds allocated for education plummeted from 2.1 percent to 1 percent of the consolidated budget and from 5.9 percent to 3.1 percent of the federal budget, that is, by almost half.73 Such a drop in funding, obviously, had and continues to have horrific consequences for the quality of Russian schooling. Teacher salaries are far below that given to the average worker. Many teachers have not been paid in months. Most have to moonlight in other jobs in order to make ends meet. The lament of a teacher from the provinces to a Moscow newspaper is not uncommon: “I spend four days a week teaching and three days trading in the market. I used to be embarrassed when I saw my

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students or their parents, but now I don’t care. I just tell them to step right up and offer them a good price.”74 School buildings, by and large, are in terrible disrepair, fit more for vermin than human beings-as are, incidentally, many school buildings in America. In 1996, 32 percent of schools in Russia needed major repairs and 4,122 were in a dilapidated condition. This same year, 5.2 million schoolchildren, 24.8 percent of the total number, attended school on the second shift, that is, after 12:OO noon, and .5 percent, on the third shift, starting in late afternoon.75 Books and instructional materials are in short supply. Textbook manuscripts are often left on the drawing board because there is no money, or paper, to print them. Shortage of teachers in a number of disciplines is becoming a critical problem. We interviewed eleven student teachers of English who were in their last year of study at the Herzen Pedagogical University. All loved teaching but not one was going to become a teacher. Who could blame them? They could earn ten times or so more money than teachers working as a translator or as an employee of an international firm requiring the services of a linguist. The consequences of a miserly funding policy was summed up succinctly by Dneprov: “Any state which pinches pennies on education is condemned to a perpetual game of catching Russia has been in a catch-up game ever since Peter the Great.

Vocational Training Soviet politicians and educators gave considerable attention to vocational education and polytechnical education, but starting around 1988, enrollment in vocational programs started dropping precipitately, as did emphasis on polytechnical education. The need for broad, quality vocational education and vocational orientation-an area in which polytechnical education can make a real contribution-has never been higher because the drop in compulsory schooling from eleven to nine years has put literally hundreds of thousands of school dropouts on the street (in 1993 approximately 1.4 million children of school age were not in with literally nothing to do but get into trouble, and a large number of them do indeed get into trouble. Tkachenko worked hard during his ministry to make vocational education a priority, but the going was slow, primarily because of the reluctance of employees to provide school trainees with experience and to assist educational institutions in developing their resources.78

Societal Problems According to a Russian sociologist, in addition to “child vagrants, indigent children, child criminals, rapists, and murderers,” there is now “purely juvenile organized crime, a purely juvenile black market. And it is not only an asocial environment that is being reproduced. It is the minor offspring of the most wellplaced families who are filling these ranks at an intense pace. This is an extremely alarming symptom. It tells us that the protective barrier of culture, the continuity of generations in the family and in society, are breaking down.’779 Tkachenko was alarmed, calling the “antisocial behavior of adolescents and

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young people” a “national disaster.” In his judgment, “the only way to put a stop to this precipitous moral decline of our young fellow citizens . . . is through joint efforts with structures of authority, related departments, and the community at large-everybody who cares about the children, adolescents, and youth of Russia.”80 In the United States, the high divorce rate tearing apart the sanctity of the two-parent family, rampant teenage pregnancy and alcohol and drug addiction, poverty, racial and ethnic and immigration problems-all these and other problems have forced teachers to act more and more as social workers, for they must, like it or not, cope somehow with the many problems that children bring with them to school from their homes and neighborhoods. Russian teachers must cope with similar kinds of problems. Americans and Russians have historically turned to the school to solve many of their societal problems, and they are doing so today. Like American schools, Russian schools must now work closely with social organizations to provide intervention and prevention of juvenile crime and other problems just noted, as well as deterioration of the health of their pupils. Like their parents, Russian children are incredibly unhealthy, with children having a health profile remarkably similar to people in their sixties.” Tkachenko noted that upon completion of schooling only 10 percent of children were judged to be adequately healthy; more than 40 percent of them had “chronic diseases”; and more than 7.5 million, one out of every three children in school, had some kind of mental or nervous disorder.’* Many schools now have polyclinics and school psychologists as well. The reasons for the health problem in Russia are many and complex, but four of the more important reasons may be stated simply: poverty (the deterioration of people’s diets); reliance on folk remedies; increase of diseases caused by social factors (tuberculosis, syphilis, drug and alcohol abuse, etc.); and unsanitary, disease-ridden polyclinics (the same injection needle is often used for several patients) with out-of-date equipment and manned by poorly paid, overworked personnel.

National Vision It is hard to read a scholarly book or serious novel by a Russian of the 20th or 19th century that does not mention the craving of Russian people for a few clear-cut grand ideas that could coalesce into a vision that gives meaning and purpose to their lives. In tsarist times it was the creed of orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality. In the Soviet period it was the Marxist-Leninist ideology that promised a better tomorrow, a socialist paradise on earth. There is no such vision today, but not because people do not want it. Yeltsin, for example, shortly after his reelection to the presidency on 3 July 1996, complained that Russia lacked a unifying sense of national purpose and asked his advisors and the country’s intellectuals to present to him within a year’s time a new national vision.83Victor Bolotov, first deputy minister in the ministries headed by both Tkachenko and his successor, believes the lack of a “coherent vision for the future of the country as a whole” has aggravated the educational situation in that “whereas

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in Soviet Russia there existed a well-known set of dogmas and myths that are now quite discredited, today’s thinkers have found nothing to replace these dogmas. More precisely, we have mutually contradicting and mutually exclusive visions. In this context, administrators and teachers are searching for their own answers to the vexing questions confronting society.”84

Ministry of Education The short tenure of recent ministers of education and the frequent reshuffling of the structure and responsibilities of the Ministry of Education make continuity of policy implementation exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, the federal Ministry of Education at present no longer funds local schools; hence, regional and local education authorities can and not infrequently do ignore, without serious repercussions, the recommendations of the ministry. One large regional education authority has its own educational law, which in some instances contradicts the 1992 federal law on education. It is hard to balance the needs of the state, region. and local communities with an emasculated state Ministry of Education. Balancing these needs is one of the most serious problems facing American education as well, but there is no hope at present for a stronger national department of education. It barely escaped being abolished by a Republicancontrolled Congress a few years ago.

Decentralization Decentralization, carried to an extreme-one regional education authority wanted to abandon entirely the teaching of Russian, and some schools excluded mathematics and sciences from their curriculum after pupils, allegedly, voted in school councils for easier subjects-makes it difficult for a child to transfer easily from a school in a given region to one in another, and Russians are becoming an increasingly mobile population, just as Americans are. Excessive decentralization also makes it exceedingly difficult to establish reasonable academic standards applicable for the country as a whole.

Equality of Educational Opportunity New types of state schools and private schools that charge fees have promoted a new kind of inequality in educational opportunity based not on political influ-

ence and privilege as in Soviet times, but on level of income. As in America, the children of well-to-do parents in Russia attend schools with better physical facilities, smaller classes, more highly trained teachers, more books and instructional materials, larger libraries, and a more comprehensive and advanced curriculum than that provided in schools attended by children of less well-off parents.

Rural Schools The poor quality of rural schools has been a serious problem, typically swept under the rug, for at least two hundred years. The typical village school has one

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or two rooms with often only one or two teachers teaching all subjects to all children in grades one through four. There is practically nothing to do in a village except watch television and drink vodka, and the latter is what most men and a growing number of women and teenagers do. The educational level of village inhabitants is low. Most are impoverished or very close to it. Few have any hope for a better tomorrow. In short, life in most villages in Russia is dismal, and few teachers who have any other choice want to teach in a small rural school. That is why the Soviet government literally forced teacher trainee graduates to teach the first three years after graduation in a school chosen by the state-invariably in a small. isolated rural school. Now, the seriousness of the problem of rural education is clearly recognized and more and more widely discussed, but what to do about it is uncertain because doing good things in one area can have adverse effects in another. For example, let us assume that a remarkable teacher in a village school can inspire her pupils to work so diligently as to enable them in a few years to graduate from a regional secondary school with honors, opening the possibility of further education for them. Presumably, parents should love her for accomplishing such miracles with their children. The reality is, as in tsarist times, that the parents probably hate her because their children will inevitably leave the village for a big city where they can get a job commensurate with their level of education. Nor is it probable that government officials would appreciate the teacher’s efforts either. They would probably harass her in some way-perhaps not paying her for a few months-for contributing to the further depletion of the number of agricultural workers in their district.

School History Gorbachev put much of the blame for the economic and ideological stagnation of the pre-Gorbachev era squarely on the shoulders of historians and history teachers in the public schools. Starting with the publication in 1938 of the History of the All-Union Communist Party, Short Course, the once honorable position of a historian plummeted to a new low, as is reflected in the Moscow jokester who asked, “What is the definition of a Soviet historian?” (The answer: “A man who can predict the past.”) The Short Course, as it was commonly called, was Stalin‘s interpretation of the Soviet regime and the Bolshevik Revolution, and the book of course glorified the role of Stalin in development of a communist society. Henceforth, there was little gap between the writings of professional historians and what history teachers in schools taught. Both the historian and the schoolteacher were to present a picture of the past that was monolithic and inexorably moving through various economic stages toward establishment of communism. This deterministic path toward communism, however, required the guidance of the Communist Party to keep the march of history from making unnecessary detours. History books and history teaching in schools existed primarily to legitimize the rule of the Soviet Communist Party. History also had the function of instilling in people patriotism, pride in the great achieve-

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ments of their country, and the need for social compatibility among the many nationalities of the Soviet empire. In short, history was to produce good citizens of the Soviet state, which meant they were to be passive and do willingly what the state told them to do. Janet Vaillant describes the history-teaching process in Soviet schools: For each grade, there was a single textbook that was translated into multiple languages and used throughout the vast Union. Teachers had guides that told them what, when, and how to teach, so that on each day the same class was to be taught in the same way throughout the country. Pupils were to record, memorize, and reiterate word for word what they read in their books and were told by their teachers. Exams tested their ability to reproduce what they had learned and often required that the very words of the text be repeated to oral examiner^.^'

5

During the pre-Gorbachev era, there was a great gap between what schoolchildren were taught by their teachers and their history books-the benefits of a Marxist-Leninist society-and what they observed in their everyday lives. The result was that pupils became passive, cynical, and contemptuous of teachers who lied to them. With Gorbachev’s opening the door to a more truthful rendering of Soviet history in 1988, history books and history teaching in schools started changing, at first slowly and tentatively, and then with galloping speed. The common joke making the rounds then was that the past was changing faster than the present. School history teachers in Moscow and surrounding areas met, under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, in October 1988 to discuss the content of textbooks. To a person, all the participants said neither they nor their pupils had any faith in the veracity of their history textbooks.86 By 1990, providing the schools with new, revised history textbooks became a top priority of the Ministry of Education. Now, textbooks and teaching methodology had to reflect the dramatic political, economic, and social changes introduced by Gorbachev. Now, there was increasing demand not only for more truthful textbooks, but also for textbooks and other “materials that would encourage pupils to be more active and independent, to work with primary sources, and that would require them to discuss and defend their points of view in class, thereby strengthening their abilities to think for themselves.” There has indeed been “an explosion of new ideas in the areas of history and social studies,” and the monopoly wielded by the Ministry of Education and its Academy of Pedagogical Sciences has been broken.87 But deciding what world history, Russian history, regional history, and local history should be taught and when, how long, at what grade levels, and in what proportion relative to one another is no less difficult and complex, and no less a political “hot potato,” in Russia than it is in the United States. Furthermore, history teachers in Russian schools have for the most part received little help from teacher educators in learning how to

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teach in such a way as to encourage the critical thinking abilities of their pupils. They have not received such instruction because many of their teachers in pedagogical institutions do not know themselves how to conduct discussions or to listen attentively to what their students have to say.

Preschools Once one of the best in the world, the preschool education system in Russia has fallen on hard times. In 1995,40.6 percent of the preschool buildings needed major repairs or to be torn down and replaced; 25 percent of the other preschool buildings did not have running water, sewer systems, or central heatings8 Teachers are paid a pittance, and the number of preschool institutions is decreasing each year at an alarming rate. In America and other countries, interdisciplinary teams of researchers in recent years have gathered a mass of data suggesting that the years most critical for the mental development of children are the first few years of their lives, that is, long before they enter the first grade. In light of this research, to slight the great importance of preschool education is not only shortsighted but unconscionable.

Upbringing Upbringing or character education has always been an integral function of tsarist and Soviet teachers. At present, upbringing, because of its sordid association with communist indoctrination, is at a low ebb. But the two-century-old tradition of combining academic and moral education in schools is embedded in the psyche of the Russian people, and it is not likely to disappear. In coming decades the viability and prestige of the upbringing function in schools will probably be revitalized. The form it will take is, of course, problematic, but one can surmise that three of the many components of upbringing will continue to be those stressed today-universal humanistic values, democratic values, and those values peculiar to the advancement of a market economy. How to promote these values in schools and other social institutions, however, is no easy matter, as Americans and people in similar societies well know. That the new Russian schools are continuing to be seriously involved in moral education is evident in the implementation of a new four-year social studies course, to cover grades eight through eleven, titled “Man and Society.” The course was designed to develop in children the qualities essential for a good citizen living in a humanistic, humanitarian, democratic, law-abiding state. In the judgment of Janet Vaillant, who has made a careful study of history and social studies teaching in Russian schools, “Man and Society” represents “a systematic effort to provide a new personal and social orientation that places the individual at the center of concern and offers young people the opportunity to discuss the ideas of great philosophers and to consider the historical path that has led to the present condition of Russia and the world. It is also intended to prepare them for the social, technological and environmental problems of the

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future.”89 Schools in any country, whether intentionally or not, impart values to children and young people. The kind of values that schools are uniquely suited to impart to children should be a subject for continuous, thoughtful discussion by all levels and groups of a society striving to be a more democratic country. The great need for Russian schools, parents, and other social organizations to be vitally concerned with values education is evidenced by the following:

A significant proportion of schoolgirls, some polls indicate 50 percent, say they would prefer prostitution over any other way of making a living.90 One out of two Russian children is set on becoming rich, and one out of twenty expresses no hesitancy to do anything necessary to achieve this goal. They are clearly reconciled to the criminalization of society.9’ In late 1992, only one out of three young people under the age of twentyfive put a high priority on ed~cation.~’ Citizens of the new Russia grew up with the idea that what was right could be determined only by the state; now they must wrestle “with the issues of right and wrong, good and bad.”93 Teacher Training

Intensification of the serious problems facing Russian schools has obviously also greatly intensified pressure on teacher educators to dramatically improve their programs for training teachers.

OVERVIEW OF TEACHER TRAINING In spite of persistent, often virulent, criticism of teacher training over the years by progressive Soviet educators, when Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he inherited a teacher education system that, from the perspective of party leaders, had done a credible job. With little money, poor physical facilities, limited technology, low social prestige, incredibly heavy teaching loads, teacher educators had somehow managed to put somebody-trained or otherwise-in front of children in the nation’s burgeoning classrooms, people who provided youth for the most part with the basic knowledge and ideological convictions demanded by party leaders. Alongside this rather remarkable achievement existed, however, in teacher-training institutions a Henry Ford assembly line mentalityuse identical parts and work processes to produce a standardized product, a Model T or a Model A. For whatever reason, ideological or professional, teacher-training institutions provided their trainees with one curriculum content and one teaching methodology for each school subject. The lesson, not the child, was all-important. A good lesson was good for any child in any school whether in an elite, academically oriented school in Moscow or a small, incomplete rural

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school in Siberia. In essence, teachers were prepared to teach a group of abstract pupils, not individual children. With such an orientation, teaching at pedagogical institutions and, consequently, at schools was often, at best, uninspired. Emphasis was on memorization and repeating back on examinations what the teacher and textbooks said, often word for word. Inspired teaching could prompt young people to think in unpredictable ways, and Soviet teacher-training institutions shunned it as much as did their counterparts during the days of the tsars. With perestroika, schools and the training of teachers in them obviously had to change. It was no small task to change either because both had been structured to resist change, especially the training institutions. In 1987, the anonymous compilers of a Ministry of Education report lamented that the training of teachers in higher educational institutions lacks almost totally such vital aspects as the development of teachers’ creativity. There is a predominance, of a half-century’s standing, of pedantic, uncritical dogmatism and dogmatic directives. The graduate of a higher pedagogical educational institution has no knowledge of schools but rather fears them, takes a long time to adapt to them, and is poorly prepared for working in a school with a small staff. In the teaching of disciplines there is a prevalence of abstract-theoretical matters, which take the place of direct involvement in pedagogical practice. At the same time, teachers with extensive experience rarely cross the threshold of the institute.94 Schoolteachers were as dissatisfied as the ministry with the institutions that trained them. At the beginning of Dneprov’s ministry, 83 percent of the schoolteachers in the Russian Federation were dissatisfied with the training they received in pedagogical institutions. An even larger percentage, 93.6 percent, were not happy with the various existing types of inservice training.95 Their dissatisfaction is understandable if Dneprov’s depiction of teacher training during his ministry is reasonably accurate: A key problem . . . is the primitive nature of the curriculum at teacher training institutions. At present most work being done in this area consists primarily of meaningless phraseology where, for example, it is stated that the graduate of the pedagogical institute should be characterized by “a love for children, the ability and need to give one’s all to them. . . .” There is little relationship between the general principles purportedly shaping teacher training, the actual course content of the training program, the curricula and the approaches employed. . . . . . . The present pedagogical institute takes no account of the present day proliferation of a diversity of levels and types of general and specialized education secondary schools; in fact it stands in the way of this diversity. . . . . . . Most works by scholars conceptualizing teacher training are obscure, pedantic and vapid.96

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At first Iagodin, then Dneprov and Tkachenko, called for fundamental restructuring of their country’s teacher education system. To get the reform ball rolling, Iagodin related what every one of fifty Soviet children who won a national television marathon confided to him: “I don’t like to go to school!” Dumbfounded by their confessions, Iagodin asked himself, “What needs to be done to ensure that our children run eagerly to school? This is the question of questions. What words will it take, what deeds, to bring to our schools kindness, good-heartedness, compassion, and the desire to understand children?” What must be done, he said, “is to make fundamental changes in the content and form of teacher training.”97 Two of the most important structural changes in teacher education were suggested by Dneprov and his associates at the Ministry of Education in 1991 and later adopted, with significant modifications, during the Tkachenko ministry. Dneprov and his associates wanted to provide prospective teachers with a complex of unbroken pedagogical education involving new or restructured institutions at different levels. (Though imperfectly realized this had been a longtime goal of many Soviet educators.) At the first level, students expressing an interest in teaching would be given rudimentary pedagogical knowledge and practical teaching experiences in the upper grades of selected general education schools. Having completed the general education school with a specialization in pedagogy, the teacher trainees would then enter either a pedagogical college for teachers of kindergarten and grades one through nine or a pedagogical institute for teachers of grades ten and eleven. Upon graduation from one of these institutions, the new teachers would then start work in a school and continue on a part-time basis their pedagogical education in universities of pedagogical mastery. These universities would be designed primarily to assist teachers during their first year or two on the job to make a smooth transition from student to full-time tea~her.~’ Several such universities have now been established, but in addition to assisting beginning teachers, they have retained their traditional function of inservice education and recertification of teachers and have added an important new function-conducting schoolbased research, often in conjunction with schoolteachers. Dneprov’s second proposal was to develop a countrywide network of regional pedagogical universities that would have the responsibility not only of preparing teachers, administrators, and researchers, but also of coordinating the activities of all the teacher education institutions within their respective regions. The objective here was to abolish the wasteful practice (endemic in the United States) of having each institution prepare teachers for the whole range of specializations necessary to the school. The first two such universities were established in Moscow and in St. Petersburg. Each year their number has increased. We shall shortly describe the regional pedagogical university in St. Petersburg as well as the university of pedagogical mastery in St. Petersburg. Structurally, what does the Russian teacher education system look like today? As mentioned, there are now pedagogical universities (some of which are regional or state universities) and various continuing education institutions and universities with several different titles. In addition to pedagogical classes in

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general education schools, there are a few pedagogical gymnasiums in major cities. Primary school and kindergarten teachers are still being trained for the most part in pedagogical schools, many of which have been transformed into pedagogical colleges, with an additional year of study and a more diversified curriculum and specializations. Secondary school teachers are still trained primarily in pedagogical institutes, universities, and, increasingly, pedagogical universities. The traditional institutes for teacher improvement, the IUUs, are being transformed into institutes for the raising of teachers’ qualifications, IPKUs, and a few into universities of pedagogical mastery (art). In this turbulent time of political, economic, social, and educational transformation, the IUUs-as well as the pedagogical schools/colleges, institutes, and universities-will no doubt face further reorganization in the near future. In 1994 the teacher education system in the Russian Federation consisted of 287 pedagogical schools and 75 pedagogical colleges, with an enrollment of around 237,000; 97 higher-education pedagogical institutions (two were international pedagogical universities; eighteen had university status; fourteen were state [or regional] pedagogical universities), with an enrollment of nearly 432,000; 90 institutes for the improvement of teachers (IUUs), most of which have new names such as university of pedagogical mastery (art), institute for raising of qualifications, center for development of education, and so A number of pedagogical institutes and universities are now moving from the traditional, rigid five-year program to a more flexible, multilevel program consisting of distinct stages. The first stage, consisting of a two-year program, is devoted primarily to a broad, general education. The second stage, also a twoyear program, concentrates on work in one’s teaching specialization and emphasizes psychological/pedagogical studies. Pedagogical practice is supposed to be an integral component of each stage. Graduates of the pedagogical colleges are entitled to enroll in the second-stage program of a pedagogical institute/ university. Those students who complete the first two stages, four years, are granted a bachelor’s degree and are entitled to work in a secondary school, but not as a fully qualified teacher. In the early 1990s, one of the two premier pedagogical institutions in Russia, the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia (HSPUR), located in St. 2 + 2 structure that approximated the American Petersburg, initiated a 2 system. During the 1994-1995 academic year, however, HSPUR and all other Russian universities made a significant change in the third stage of the multilevel system. Now the third stage, the postbaccalaureate level, consists of either a one-year or a two-year program. Graduates of the one-year program receive a specialist certificate. Teachers with a specialist certificate are qualified to work as a specialist in an ordinary secondary school. Nonpedagogical universities also award specialist certificates to people in such varied fields as law, medicine, engineering, and architecture. Graduates of the two-year program receive a master’s degree. The master’s degree program for teachers is much more research oriented than the specialist certificate program, and graduates of the master’s

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program are qualified to work in either a gymnasium or in an institution of higher learning-an institute or university. At HSPUR it is envisioned that 25 percent of their postbaccalaureate students will receive a master’s degree and the rest a specialist certificate. It should be stressed here that to become a fully qualified teacher in a Russian secondary school, one now must have either a specialist certificate or a master’s degree. While many Russian teacher-training institutions are in the process of implementing some variant of the structure just described, it must be pointed out that, often, local education authorities who hire their graduates, just as in the United States, are indifferent about the amount and quality of the preparation of their teachers. The objective of the authorities too often is simply to get adults into the classroom as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Though one can sympathize with their plight of coping with a severe teacher shortage, such an objective obviously weighs like an anchor on promotion of quality teacher education. Nevertheless, the emerging new structure should be a blessing to teacher trainees because it is designed at its best to take into account individual characteristics of trainees and to provide them with more flexibility and freedom of choice in making a commitment to a career. For example, development of reciprocity among pedagogical institutions is an important objective of the current teacher education reform movement. Presumably, students completing one level could pursue the next level at another comparable institution. Furthermore, it is envisioned that students completing one level of the program could, upon a change in their career preference, transfer to another major at another institution of equal rank without losing any time or credit. Such flexibility was nonexistent during Soviet times. Making the structural changes demanded by the new reforms will of course take time and will not be easy. Among other things, curriculum content appropriate for the traditional five-year pedagogical institute will have to be radically readjusted to make it suitable for a multilevel structure whereby upon completion of each level a student is qualified to work in different levels or kinds of educational institutions. Structural changes, however, will not be nearly as difficult to make as changes in the educational philosophy of schoolteachers and their professors.

Sukhomlinskii on Teacher Education In our 1994-1996 surveys of teacher trainees, teachers, and professors in Pskov, Vologda, and St. Petersburg, Vasilii Sukhomlinskii was invariably the person most often mentioned as one who exerted a significant influence on their educational thinking. Being probably the most prominent Soviet humanist educator since the Second World War, his thoughts on education and teacher education are particularly supportive of present-day progressive educational thought in Russia. Sukhomlinskii was born in 1918 in the Ukrainian village of Pavlysh, became

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a primary school teacher at age seventeen, and later graduated as an external student from the Poltava Pedagogical Institute, the same institute where Makarenko completed his studies twenty years earlier. Upon graduation from this institute, Sukhomlinskii devoted the rest of his life to teaching and being a school administrator in the same region where he was born, in a region far away from the big cities. He wrote many articles and several books, probably the most famous book being To Children I Give M y Heart.lo0 Perhaps because Sukhomlinskiikept away from the big cities and the intrigues and machinations typically prevalent in national educational politics, he managed to keep on the good side of the powers that be. He was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor and was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR. Being a principal of a school for many years, Sukhomlinskii had much to say about the continuing education of teachers. The title of Sukhomlinskii’s book, To Children I Give M y Heart, sums up his educational philosophy. If there is one constant theme among the current crop of Russian educational reformers, it is the centrality of the individual child in the educational process. It is the child and the child’s interests, needs, aspirations, problems, and stages of emotional, physical, and intellectual growthnot academic content, not the lesson-that must be the center of attention in schools and in teacher-training institutions. Nobody in recent times in Russia has written more thoughtfully on the subject of the child than Sukhomlinskii. The title To Children I Give My Heart sounds “mushy,” but Sukhomlinskii was no starry-eyed idealist. For thirty-five years he was a frontline teacher and administrator in a primary school and a complete secondary school, that is, grades one through ten or eleven. To be sure, Sukhomlinskii did love children. He never got bored or “burned-out” with teaching because trying to better understand children was a lifelong endeavor, and it kept him intellectually alive and enthusiastic about his profession. He loved children but he demanded a lot out of them. They had to be disciplined, moral, kindhearted, lovers of beauty in the arts and in nature, activists engaged constantly in good deeds, and exceptionally hard workers who do not shy away from trying to conquer the impossible. The teacher’s great responsibility was to convince children that they could conquer the impossible and then help them to do it. The teacher instills this confidence in children the same way all great public school teachers of children do-by believing in a child’s ability to achieve the impossible; by instilling in them the desire to learn by appealing to their natural interests and by showing them how to learn and to have successes in learning on a daily basis; by showing them constantly in many ways that you are interested in them and believe in their natural gifts; by showing them that joy in learning or any other activity in life can come about only through diligence and hard work; by engaging children in activities that allow them to see the products of their labor; by treating children humanely and being sensitive to their inner world; by giving children quiet time in which to think and reflect on what they have been doing

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in class, or reading, or observing outside in walks in the forest or work in the flower garden, or listening to music or looking at paintings or drawings; by enlisting an active, steady involvement of parents in their child’s education; by tending and fostering “any spark of curiosity, inquisitiveness,or love of knowledge” wherever or whenever it can be found; by being so in love with knowledge and so enthusiastic about imparting it that a child cannot help but want the same joy derived from knowledge that the teacher has; by insisting that children devote a great amount of time to reading and writing; by being so erudite and broadly educated that one can make knowledge come alive for the child; by knowing the subject so well that one can concentrate during the lesson not on imparting subject matter, but on studying the mental activity of the pupils; by working together with children in activities that engross both them and the teacher; by coupling love of beauty with high moral ideas and actions; by firing the imagination of children by actively engaging them in music, art, and the reading of great literature. As principal, Sukhomlinskii would call in his administrative bursar each day before classes began and spend ten to fifteen minutes taking care of administrative matters and would spend the rest of the day working with teachers, pupils, and parents. In short he devoted practically all his time to being an educational leader and a teacher educator. As a teacher educator, Sukhomlinskii believed his job was to help teachers do well and, naturally, all the things just mentioned in the previous paragraph. He tried hard, however, to recruit for his school good teachers who had the potential to develop into excellent teachers. To Sukhomlinskii a good teacher was first of all one who loved children, understood them and took to heart their joys and sorrows, believed in their ability to become worthy men and women, and enjoyed working with them as one friend with another. Second, a good teacher had a firm grasp of the science of pedagogy, really loved the subject he taught, and kept up to date with its development, with its research, new discoveries, and achievements. He knew much more than his subject of specialization because the pupils had to view him as a well-informed, intelligent, thinking person who was in love with knowledge. The more erudite a teacher, the more able he is not only to instruct pupils but to educate them. For this reason, Sukhomlinskii believed, primary school teachers should have not only a good general education, but also a particular interest in some specific subject or field of knowledge. Third, a good teacher needed to know well psychology and pedagogy because without this fundamental knowledge, it is impossible to work effectively with children. Fourth, a good teacher was “completely at home’’ in some kind of handicraft or manual work. As a teacher educator, Sukhomlinskii believed that his most important task was to ensure that teachers become thoughtful researchers with a real thirst for knowledge. Creative teaching demanded teachers with such attributes. Research would promote ideas about teaching, and Sukhomlinskii was convinced that these ideas would inspire the collective and provide the stimulus for joint research work, which Sukhomlinskii considered the “most interesting and vital

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activity in school life.” Without a thirst for knowledge, a teacher, Sukhomlinskii believed, could not understand a child. His rationale for this belief was simple. A “true master of his profession, an artist, a poet of the classroom’’ has a wide range of knowledge, infinitely wider than the school curriculum, and thus during a lesson his attention is focused not on presentation of content but on the pupils, “their mental activity, their thought processes and the difficultiesthey encounter in their mental activity.” What must teachers do to gain knowledge and insight into the mental operations of children? The solution to Sukhomlinskii was reading. In Sukhomlinskii’s words, the real intellectual wealth of a teaching staff is “first and foremost their individual reading. The true teacher is a book-lover.” A principal who is a teacher educator will develop an intellectual climate in his school in which each teacher feels a strong need for wide reading. Sukhomlinskii obviously succeeded in encouraging his teachers to be book lovers. The personal libraries of his teachers totaled over forty nine thousand books. Individual teachers had a library of 1,000 to 1,800 books. Teachers, however, will not read widely if they have little time or energy. Hence, Sukhomlinskii stressed the necessity of relieving teachers as much as possible of everything not directly related to the teaching process. Sukhomlinskii well understood that the more a teacher was tied down with things extraneous to good teaching, the more apt he would be to become burned out and have nothing more to give to his pupils. Time, he repeated again and again, “is an all-important source of intellectual enrichment for the teacher.” The master teacher that Sukhomlinskii tried to develop is, with minor variations, the prototype of the kind of teacher that Russia’s educational reformers want their teacher-training institutions to produce. It is a tall order, but there is clearly a movement in this direction by many Russian teacher-training institutions, in spite of their severely limited human, physical, and financial resources. In general, according to Tkachenko, “our goal is not just to train teachers of a certain discipline, but directors of the educational process as a whole. We need teachers who are capable not just of transmitting knowledge and skills to students, but also of developing individual partnerships with students on the basis of their natural abilities and inclinations.”lol According to Tkachenko’s first deputy minister of education, V. Bolotov, the teacher education paradigm is changing from “know your subject and teach it well” to “know what your student is capable of, and know how to bring this out.”102More specifically, Tkachenko, Bolotov, and other educational reformers propose that pedagogical schools, colleges, institutes, and universities should: instill in prospective teachers the idea that a person is the measure of all things; encourage teachers to lecture less by providing them with training in the use of different kinds of teaching methodologies;

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humanize teacher education programs by giving prospective teachers much more voice in the way they are trained; empower teachers to work cooperatively with parents and the administration to provide students with an education that meets their particular needs; increase significantly the amount of work teacher trainees have in the pedagogical/psychological disciplines; blend theory with practice throughout a trainee’s preparation program; develop teachers who can think for themselves and at the same time respect people who think differently and who have the personal commitment and pedagogical skills to develop these qualities in their pupils; instill in teachers the capitalistic values necessary to the development of a market economy; encourage more teacher education institutions to boldly seek to restructure schools themselves; prepare teachers to work with pupils with very different intellectual aptitudes and talents; prepare teachers to work in different kinds of schools such as small rural schools, vocational schools, gymnasiums, and lyckes; prepare teachers to utilize computer technology in the instructional process; prepare teachers with two or more academic specializations; provide a continuous, articulated, interrelated teacher education program that caters to the lifelong personal and professional needs of teachers; provide teachers with the skills to conduct action-based research in their classrooms and schools; prepare teachers to play an important upbringing role in work with their pupils; provide teachers with some of the knowledge and skills that a social worker must have. Let us now look in more detail at each level of the emerging unbroken system of teacher education in Russia, consisting of pedagogical classes and gymnasiums, pedagogical schools and colleges, pedagogical institutes and universities, and continuing-educationinstitutions.

PRESERVICE TRAINING Having pedagogical classes in the upper grades of secondary schools is nothing new in Russia. Over a hundred years ago, the number of potential teachers

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graduating from schools with these classes was ten times greater than the number graduating from the specialized institutions that prepared primary school teache r ~ . Due ' ~ ~in part to the increasingly severe teacher shortage, there is renewed interest in encouraging school-age youngsters through pedagogical classes and pedagogical gymnasiums to consider teaching as a career. In Moscow, in 1995, there were two pedagogical gymnasiums and forty-five secondary schools with pedagogical classes. One of these schools, Moscow School No. 356, has four pedagogical classes, two in the ninth grade and one in both the tenth and eleventh grade^.'"^ In some subjects, such as Russian language or computer skills, pupils in the pedagogical classes are divided into two or three groups so they can get more individual attention from the teacher. In their last year of secondary schooling, pupils in the pedagogical class take such courses as basic skills and technologies of teaching, rhetoric, logic, pedagogy and psychology, basics of philosophy, and dancing and movement. Some of these subjects, as well as advanced college-level courses, are sometimes taught by professors, typically from the Moscow Pedagogical University. Practical work-always supervised by a teacher-is an integral part of the pedagogical program at School No. 356 and typically takes place after classes are over at 2:OO. In the first stage, ninth-grade pupils learn from tenth-grade pupils how to organize extracurricular activities for a junior class. In the next stage, each tenth grader becomes a leader of pupils in a junior class and teaches them how to organize all their extracurricular activities. The tenth-grade leaders also conduct permanent clubs, such as reading and sewing, and organize and maintain a broadcasting center housed in the school. In the third stage, emphasis in practical work shifts from extracurricular to curricular activities during the normal school day. Under the supervision of teachers and the school psychologist, senior pupils give sociometric tests in lower-level classes, prepare and conduct classes in the academic major they plan to pursue in an institution of higher learning, tutor groups of schoolchildren who are having problems with their studies, train the school team for various academic competitions, meet with former graduates who have entered a pedagogical institution, and serve as substitute teachers when teachers are ill. The teacher most responsible for working with the pupils in the pedagogical classes is called a curator. The curator is typically one of the most experienced, respected, popular teachers in the school. Having a reduced teaching load, she has extensive responsibilities in her work with the pedagogical class pupils and their parents. She helps pupils prepare their teaching lessons, attends the classes they teach, and provides the neophyte teacher trainees with constructive criticism. She also supervises the extracurricular and club work of her pupils and counsels and assists them in all spheres of school life. Prior to the graduation of her pupils, the curator evaluates their work and writes a letter of recommendation to a pedagogical institution. In a school with pedagogical classes, most pupils are not enrolled in these classes and probably have no interest at all in becoming teachers. In a peda-

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gogical gymnasium, however, presumably all pupils in the school have at least some interest in the possibility of becoming teachers. There are several pedagogical gymnasiums in Moscow and in St. Petersburg, and a few are scattered elsewhere throughout the country. We have visited a pedagogical gymnasium in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Moscow City Pedagogical Gymnasium and the Pedagogical Gymnasium No. 24. We were very impressed with the administrators, teachers, and pupils in both of these institutions. After an all-day visit to the pedagogical gymnasium in St. Petersburg, we typed up our notes of the visit: This pedagogical gymnasium is a public school, but one must pass an examination in order to get in. Everybody who gets in is, if older, interested in the possibility of becoming a teacher someday. Of course, the first graders obviously do not necessarily have such an interest, but apparently their parents do. Many parents no doubt just want to send their children to a gymnasium, which has better teachers, facilities, equipment, and supplies than most regular general education schools. And this gymnasium certainly had good physical facilities. The rooms were very large, very bright, well decorated, with a divan and a couple of easy chairs in several of the rooms we visited. We observed the following classes: French, English, mathematics, history, and music. With one exception, the classes were taught by vivacious teachers who definitely had the attention and interest of the students. We were particularly impressed with the music class. The teacher, a young man, was teaching first graders how to distinguish differences in the pitch of various notes. When he sang a certain note at one pitch, students were expected to stand up, at another pitch, to sit down, and so forth. No wonder Russians sing so well. These children were being taught the fundamentals of good musicianship at a very early age. Unlike typical general education schools, which have large classes from twenty-five to forty students, the classes we observed were quite small, eight to sixteen students. We now were escorted to the deputy director’s office, where we gathered the following information from a small group of people most directly involved in the school’s pedagogical program: 1) All

students in the upper grades must engage in pedagogical work.

2) Pedagogical work begins in the eighth grade and continues through the elev-

enth grade. In the eighth and ninth grades, students observe other teachers and work with younger children. Primarily, they are engaged in various kinds of upbringing work, playing games with children, supervising the lunchroom, supervising after-school activities for young children, etc. The pedagogical work of tenth- and eleventh-grade students is much more ambitious. 3) A special pedagogical course starts in the tenth grade and is presently taught by a professor from Herzen.

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a) Observe one lesson a week. b) Keep pedagogical diaries. We were told that it was legitimate for them to criticize their teachers. c) Attend methodology courses taught by the head teacher in each of the various disciplines. d) Attend regular group conferences conducted by the head of the pedagogical program at the gymnasium. e) Pass a leaving school examination consisting of mathematics, literature, pedagogics, and two other subjects of their choosing. The pedagogical examination is not given by anybody associated with the program at the gymnasium. It is given by independent professors at the Herzen Pedagogical University. f) Conduct all kinds of out-of-school activities with younger children. g) Work during the summer, prior to entering the eleventh grade, in one of the former Pioneer camps and/or in a detskii sad (kindergarten) four hours a day for twenty days. Students who complete the eleventh grade and pass all the examinations are given a special certificate that qualifies them as an assistant tutor who is permitted to work with children in preschools. Last year the school had thirty-nine graduates and twenty-eight actually entered some kind of pedagogical institution, and apparently a number of them passed the entrance examinations with distinction. It is now three o’clock and all upper-level students must go to the first of two annual pedagogical orientation sessions. The session was conducted primarily by the head of the pedagogical program at the gymnasium, the curator, and by a professor from the Herzen Pedagogical University, T. V. Leont’eva, who advises teachers and administrators on matters concerning the school’s pedagogical program. The professor, with a colleague, had just completed writing a manuscript on pedagogical schools in St. Petersburg, scheduled for publication in two to six months. We were invited to attend the orientation meeting. The purpose of the meeting was simply to inform students what pedagogical activities they would be engaging in the next few months. We were invited back the following day to meet with an English class of senior students. We talked a little about American schools and teacher education and then responded to their questions, and there were, to our surprise, quite a few of them. They were a bright, pleasant group of young people, and we enjoyed very much talking to them. If memory serves correctly, there was a paper shortage at the time, and publication of the Herzen professor’s book was held up for many months; then it came out in an edition of only 121 copies. It is unfortunate that so few copies

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were published because it is a very interesting book, especially in its discussion of the joint research projects conducted by gymnasium teachers and Herzen professors. For example, one research team is developing a packet of programs consistent with the academic plan of the gymnasium that focuses on the formation of the personality of pupils so that they are oriented not only to the pedagogical profession, but also to the “demands of modem society.”lo5 Another team is developing diagnostic methods and tools for determining at what level certain pedagogical skills and abilities should be fostered. Yet another team is trying to clarify on a continuum the interrelated responsibilities of curators, class leaders, and leaders of pedagogical practice. And there are many more research projects than those we have mentioned. The Herzen professor’s book describes in some detail the various courses provided to pupils by the gymnasium.’ob Ninth-grade pupils may take, for example, an elective course called “Fundamentals of Philosophical Knowledge.” The course is intended to help pupils develop “habits of independent, literate, philosophical thought.” The course consists of four parts. In the first part, pupils study mythology, which introduces them to the “emotional-imaginative structure and poetry of thought.” The second part is devoted to logic and rhetoric, to the study of formal logic rules and forms of thought. In this part, pupils learn “to adapt and persuasively lay out one’s own thoughts in speech.” In the third part, introduction to philosophy, pupils are acquainted with the basic “categories and principles of philosophy.” The fourth and concluding part acquaints pupils with the “basic stages of the development of philosophy based on the study of specific outstanding philosophers.” In the course on fundamentals of the methods of the upbringing process for pupils in grades eight through ten, pupils learn the “social significance of the teacher, upbringer, organizer of the children’s collective, of the creative personality who has mastered the pedagogy of cooperation.”’07 The course in world artistic culture is taken by pupils in both the tenth and eleventh grades. Pupils beginning this course already have a minimum knowledge of history and Russian literature. The course does not repeat what they already know in these two fields but, rather, supplements their knowledge and extends and deepens it through audiovisual aids, “demonstration of musical texts in lessons,” and “excursions to museums and visitations of theatrical spectacles and musical concerts.” All of the humanistic and pedagogical courses are oriented to the proposition “A person is a person.” In the fundamentals of pedagogy course for tenth and eleventh graders, pupils study the growth stages of children and young people; learn about the educational systems in different periods of history and compare these systems with their own; learn about the lesson “being the basic form of organization of the instructional-upbringing process in school-about the structure of the lecture, the kinds of lessons, preparation for the lesson and its complex analysis”; and learn about the responsibilities of different workers in the educational system. These are only a few of the many things pupils are ac-

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quainted with in the fundamentals of pedagogy course. Some of the persistent themes elaborated in the course are “the profession of a teacher,” “understanding of personality in pedagogy,” “understanding about the pedagogical system,” “the lesson in school is the basic form of organization of the instructionalupbringing process,” “understanding about growth,” “social intercourse.”108 As in schools with pedagogical classes, the curator at Pedagogical Gymnasium No. 24 is responsible not only for the pedagogical training of pupils in grades eight through eleven, but also for their overall development as human beings. The curator has wide responsibilities indeed. Her most fundamental responsibility is to know her pupils well; such knowledge is essential “to correctly bring up pupils.” She continues to study her teacher trainees during the entire course of their study at the gymnasium. Such study includes general information about the status of the academic progress of pupils; their relationship to studies; their relationship to work; their self-discipline, interests, and inclinations; their place in the class collective; the most fundamental features of personality-their moral qualities, particularities of character, temperament, and psychological processes. In studying the personality of her charges, the curator gets acquainted with the personal affairs of her pupils, meets with their parents, observes pupils in their pedagogical work, conducts “scientific experiments,” analyzes the results of compositions, creative work, notebooks, questionnaires, and sociometric studies, and discusses the work of pupils with teachers who work with the class.’09 Just as the curator must know well her young teacher trainees, the trainees themselves must learn how to study the class and pupils for whom they are responsible. To provide them with these skills is the first thing the curator does in accustoming the pupils to pedagogical activities. The most important thing the trainees must learn is that “it is necessary not simply to study school children but to find concrete ways of working with them, to take into consideration the growth and individual features of pupils.” In their study of children and consideration of what might or might not work in educationalhpbringing work with them, the trainees first find out everything they can about their class from the curator-how do they study, to whom do the children relate, who participates in the affairs of the class, who are the pupil-activists, who are the problem children-and they write down all this information in their “Daybook of Pedagogical Practice.” Then the trainee meets with each child as much as possible during breaks, in the cafeteria, in the lesson, and on the street. The trainee, with the assistance of the curator, develops and gives questionnaires to members of the class for whom he is responsible. From the questionnaire, the trainee finds out what each “child is interested in, whether he likes to study, what lessons he likes most of all, what lessons he likes least of all, with which other pupils he is most friendly, which activities conducted in class are most pleasing to him and most memorable.” On the basis of the trainee’s observation of children, meetings with them, and questionnaire data, the trainee writes a profile of some

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of the children. The next step is to plan activities suitable specifically for children in the class for which he is responsible.”’ Just as the Pedagogical Gymnasium No. 24 does, the Moscow City Pedagogical Gymnasium provides pedagogical training for pupils in grades eight through eleven. Their pupils may select one of three profiles: history/philology, physics/ mathematics, or geography/biology/chemistry. Emphasis in this gymnasium is also on the idea that “a person is a person.” Much attention is given to providing opportunities for teacher trainees to engage in morally worthwhile activities such as helping the elderly and invalids; to work together with teachers in planning and conducting theatrical productions, sport competitions, and meetings with active and retired teachers; to study the city of Moscow and its history; to attend plays and concerts; to make archeological expeditions to other cities.”’ Teachers in the school are expected to have a philosophical orientation similar to that of the leaders of the pedagogy of cooperation movement, and they are expected to develop their own teaching methodology and to realize that it is natural for it “to change not only from year to year, but even from lesson to lesson” because teaching methodology should depend not only on the class but on many other factors that are in a constant state of fluctuation.’” In grades eight through eleven, trainees are exposed to a very broad cultural program, for the reason given by the principal: “It is obvious . . . that we do not give the future teacher an essential general-cultural preparation. The student neither studies philosophy, as that word is normally understood throughout the world, nor ethics, nor aesthetics; the level of teaching of foreign languages is deficient. And consequently, we continue today to graduate from our higher institutions of learning, pedagogues not for tomorrow, not for today, but for yesterday.’’Il3 We visited the Moscow State Pedagogical Gymnasium in December 1995, in the midst of a heavy but beautiful snow storm. The gymnasium is one of ten experimental schools in Moscow, and it is supported by the Ministry of Education. The gymnasium is located in a very attractive large, red brick, five-story building that houses a modern television studio, a small planetarium, a physics laboratory, a computer classroom, and a magnificent archeological museum. Paintings, murals, and portraits of prominent scientists and educators adorn the walls on practically every floor. In our interview with the director of the school, A. G. Kasprzhak, a handsome young man with a vibrant personality, we found out, to begin with, that businessmen do not put their children into his gymnasium, as they do in practically every other kind of gymnasium. The reason, of course, is that teaching is a lowstatus profession and beneath the dignity of the new class of wealthy businessmen. “Our children,” Kasprzhak said, “come from families who are keeping the value of education. Before, we chose children with high learning motivation. Now we take children from families with an educational tradition, so our parents are teachers, doctors, engineers, researchers, sometimes military people. One of

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our main tasks now is to find new educational content so that it provides a wide humanitarian education on one hand and on the other hand helps pupils to make their own choices and decisions. We also try to provide them with such broad knowledge and skills that they will be sufficiently prepared to make more than one career choice because teacher training, well, teaching as a profession, doesn’t allow people to have many possibilities [in today’s world].” So, though the gymnasium tries hard to orient their teacher trainees to choosing education as a profession, to becoming a schoolteacher or educational researcher, the gymnasium, realistically, provides them with such a broad academic background that they can pursue a noneducation career in an institution of higher learning, should they so desire. In one of the first pedagogical courses that pupils take in the eighth grade, they are asked by the teacher to imagine themselves as teachers and pupils in a school in ancient Greece. One plays the role of the teacher and the rest, the role of pupils; and they try to imagine, built on their knowledge of ancient Greece, how the teacher teaches and how the pupils learn. In short, they are playing school. While this is a game, it is an integral part of the pedagogical curriculum. They not only play school in ancient Greece, but also in other countries at different historical periods. They make costumes appropriate for a particular country at a certain historical period, bring appropriate food, and so on. Focus is always on helping pupils understand the “main peculiarities of teacher-pupil communication.” Teachers try to explain to the pupils such things as: “all teachers are different, all children are different, and to become a teacher you have to be aware of that and to prepare yourself.” In the ninth grade, pupils are acquainted with the great pedagogues of the past and with their writings. Each year, different people are studied, depending on the interest of the children. This year (1995-1996), Plato, Rousseau, Sukhomlinskii, Makarenko, Ushinskii, and Kamenskii were studied. In the tenth grade, pupils participate in various workshops where they can get acquainted with such 20th-century educators as Rudolf Steiner and Maria Montessori. They also study contemporary Russian schools following the ideas developed by various teacher-innovators. These schools are called “author schools.” It is not obligatory for pupils to attend all these workshops, but they may attend any that interest them. According to Kasprzhak, the goals of the courses in the ninth and tenth years are quite different from the traditional pedagogical courses. We don’t try to make them learn pedagogical theory systematically. We want them to get acquainted with different theories or to get fascinated with them. Normally, when they start their work with one or another theory, this short course starts with an introductory lecture. Then they work with the original writings of one of the great pedagogues, not with a textbook. The next assignment is for them to find a place where an educational theory is actually being put into practice. For example, when they attended a workshop on Rousseau, one

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of the school principals here in Moscow came to the workshop, the last session of course, and told the children what ideas of Rousseau are actually implemented in his school. After attending numerous workshops over a two-year period, pupils select during their senior year a research topic relevant to their pedagogical training at the gymnasium and write a substantive paper on it. While writing the paper, pupils attend a course on research methodology, and they are assigned a tutor/ consultant who will assist them in their research and in writing the paper. Like pupils in the St. Petersburg Pedagogical Gymnasium No. 24, pupils in the Moscow City Pedagogical Gymnasium do a great deal of pedagogical work with younger children and much the same kind of work as the pupils in St. Petersburg. As much as possible, the teachers and the principal in Moscow try to put teacher trainees and younger children in natural situations where they interact freely with each other as friends. In the same way, teachers and their pupils try to meet together, to work together, to compete together as friends, as members of a family might do. John Dewey would nod in approval. He never tired of saying that a good school should resemble a good family.

Pedagogical SchooldColleges Over the past three decades, there have been periodic predictions by Soviet educators that the secondary specialized pedagogical schools would soon become as extinct as dinosaurs and primary school teachers would be trained in institutions of higher education, that is, in pedagogical institutes. However, pedagogical schools, many of which are now called colleges, have not in fact decreased but actually grown in number and student enrollment. In 1970, there were 263 pedagogical schools in the Russian Republic, with an enrollment of 179,000 students; in 1985, there were 314, with an enrollment of nearly 241,000 students. In 1992, in the Russian Federation, there were 352 pedagogical schools with an enrollment of over 283,000 ~tudents."~ While it is true that in recent years many pedagogical schookollege graduates continue their education in a pedagogical institute, and some receive all their training in a pedagogical institute, history suggests it would be imprudent to predict the demise anytime soon of the pedagogical schoolkollege. Our discussion of pedagogical schools/colleges-as well as of pedagogical institutes/universities and continuing-education institutions-will focus on St. Petersburg since we know the schools and teacher-training institutions in that city best, having lived there for three to five months each year from 1990 to the present. In St. Petersburg, there are eight pedagogical schools, seven of which are colleges-that is, five-year rather than four-year institutions that have a more extensive curricular offering than the pedagogical schools and that enable their graduates to enroll in the third-year program of a pedagogical institute/ univer~ity."~ In 1994, there were eight thousand students enrolled in these in-

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stitutions, and each year there are approximately 600 graduates with a primary school specialization and 1,500 graduates with a preschool upbringer specialization. Prior to 1992, practically all these colleges trained their students to become classroom teachers in the primary grades. Now, most of the colleges have a specialization in the so-called deficit specializations. For example, Pedagogical College No. 4 specializes in practical psychology; No. 6, in defectology for work with children of preschool age; No. 7, in a joint specialization of pedagogy of preschoolers and of young children; No. 1, in preparation of teachers of foreign languages (English, German, and French); No. 3, in preparation of music teachers. Pedagogical Colleges Nos. 2, 5, and 8 prepare classroom teachers for primary classes. One of the best of the pedagogical colleges in St. Petersburg is Pedagogical College No. 2. We have visited this college a number of times over the years, starting in 1990, and have always been most impressed with the quality and dedication of the director, German Mikhailovich Sheshin, deputy directors, the faculty, and the students. There is an exceptionally close relationship among students and members of the faculty and administration. The college is located not far from the Finland subway station on a pleasant street in a nice, almost idyllic area. The building, half of which is two stories and the other half three stories, is constructed of yellow brick and is in good repair. The college first opened in 1983 as a pedagogical school. In 1993 it became a college. During this ten-year period, the college graduated over 2,500 graduates specializing in primary school education. The great pride of the college, according to the director, is the large number of graduates who are working today as primary school teachers. Unlike some other pedagogical colleges we have been in, this college is unusually well equipped with a library of seventy thousand volumes, a television studio, personal computers, a theater, a music room, a local computer network, and many rooms organized for individualized projects. In addition to being prepared as primary school teachers, students may, if they wish, choose a supplementary specialization, such as organizer of excursion work with children, organizer of decorative-applied art, organizer of children’s theater, specialist in working with normal children who have learning problems, leader of an optional course titled “Speech and Culture of Society,” teacher of valeology (teacher of health), specialist in work with a class collective, and teacher of foreign languages in primary grades. The supplementary specializations are developed in connection with the timely problems and needs of the schools of the city. Students in the college who maintain a good record receive a stipend and some a state subsidy for food. Students in poor health are entitled to a pass to a sanatorium or a rest pension. The college also provides graduates with assistance in finding a teaching position. For example, each year in May, the college organizes what is called a “Bank of Young Specialists.” At this time, graduatesto-be meet with representatives of district organs of administration and with

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school principals. The college also provides students with detailed information about such new kinds of schools as gymnasiums, lycCes, and author schools. Entrance examinations are conducted starting on August 1 in Russian language (written), mathematics (oral), and various subjects relative to the teaching profession (oral). The professional examinations attempt to assess such things as the applicants’ ability to speak and express themselves clearly and logically, the extent of their sincerity and dedication to becoming a teacher, and their understanding of children. Applicants are given a hypothetical problem in a school setting and asked how they would respond to it. They are asked to comment on such topics as the personal qualities of their favorite teacher. The entrance examinations are waived for pupils who did well on exit examinations in general education schools with pedagogical classes or in a pedagogical gymnasium. Instructors from the college conduct six-month preparatory entrance examination courses for pupils in the pedagogical classes. Unlike most Russian pedagogical schoolskolleges, which are far from being selective (some provincial pedagogical schools have no entrance examinations), this college accepts only one of three applicants from the complete secondary school and one of two applicants from the incomplete secondary school. The most distinctive feature of this school is the firm commitment of its instructors to combine theory with practice during each semester of a trainee’s program. Graduates of the incomplete secondary school have some type of practical experience once per week during the second semester of the first year, such as observing and assisting an upbringer (a teacher in a preschool institution) in preparing for out-of-class work for holidays and other special occasions. In preparation for this work, students take a course in methods of upbringing work. Following this work, trainees have two semesters of experience working with a school class leader, an outstanding teacher who is responsible for counseling and organizing upbringing activities for students in all the classes in a particular grade. During the second semester of the second year, teacher trainees work in a prolonged day school and attend lectures that have a practical experience component to them. The second semester of the third year, trainees make seventyfive observations in primary schools, which may be in schools other than the two “basic” schools in which the trainees do their student teaching. (Basic schools are equivalent to American demonstration schools that have a cooperative relationship with a teacher-training institution.) Students make these observations with four or five other trainees, and they discuss their observations with one of the instructors at the pedagogical school. Also during the second semester of the third year, trainees give their own lessons in one of the basic schools: three in mathematics; three in native language (writing and reading); one lesson in each of the following: labor (handicrafts), painting and drawing, music, physical education, nature study; a special lesson in a prolonged day school or a walk outdoors; and a lesson about some-

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thing humorous. We observed several trainees teach one of these lessons. In a mathematics lesson, the lesson was observed not only by the regular teacher of the class, but also by the principal and two other teachers from the basic school, twelve or so of the teacher trainees, and the methodologist (metodist) from the pedagogical college, who the previous day had given a demonstration lesson at the college on how to teach math to six-year-olds. We had observed this demonstration lesson. The methodologist has a warm rapport with the teacher trainees. There are twenty-eight trainees in the class, all girls. In the lesson, the trainees act as if they are six-year-olds in what was called at the time class “zero.” The classroom in which the lesson is given looks like a regular classroom for a class of six-year-olds. The trainees stand when answering questions, just as children are expected to do. To begin with, the trainees show the methodologist the work they have prepared for use in a “zero” class to teach a lesson on the numerals one to ten. The work they have done is creative and should be appealing to little children, and the methodologist compliments them. She then proceeds to go through a thirty-five-minute lesson detailing step by step the possibilities for teaching a lesson in mathematics. She reviews the previous lesson on numerals from one to ten and then introduces the numeral “zero.” Then she talks about different ways to begin lessons and discusses oral exercises, whole-class activities, use of the text, and notebooks. She plays music while the trainees discuss with their desk partners how to teach a page from the mathematics book. The methodologist explains what to do with children who have trouble writing numbers-“Give all the pupils their own exercise” by asking them, “What can you use to represent numbers other than the number itself?” Then, she has her students show things from their “Make and Take” portfolios-things from real life to use for counting, such as mushrooms. She shows some commercial materials that are not very good and indicates that is why teachers should prepare their own visual aids. The methodologist now calls on a few students to give a fragment of a lesson. Other students act as pupils. The first teacher trainee tosses a ball to the “pupils,” and each one counts in consecutive order-forward and backward. Another trainee is at the board and has nine parrots on a wire. Each parrot has a number on it. But some of the numbers are out of order. So the task is to put the numbers in the correct order. Another trainee is standing by a bookcase with six matryoshka dolls on the top shelf. She has the “children” count them, then takes one off and puts it on the shelf below, asking the class how many are on the top shelf and how many on the second shelf. The methodologist concludes the lesson by commenting briefly on how to teach according to the educational philosophy of the teacher-innovator Amonashvili. For homework, the methodologist asks students to think of ways to teach the numeral “zero”; how to organize children for a lesson; what kinds of oral and practical work might be devised for the lesson; what kind of homework might be given; what kind of interesting questions might be given to the children.

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Now, back at the basic school, we and the large contingency of adults watch the young trainee begin her demonstration lesson on mathematics. Having observed the lesson by the methodologist, we have a good idea of what to expect. The trainee rings a little bell to start class. All the pupils immediately quiet down and stand and greet her. There are twenty pupils in the class. The children’s new teacher gives a little baton to the nearest child and asks him to say “one.” He then gives it to the next child, who is expected to say the next higher number, and so on until the number ten has been called out; then the next pupil who receives the baton is supposed to start the process of counting backward from nine to one. The pupils had no trouble doing this or any of the other activities provided them by the teacher. In the second of several varied activities, the teacher shows pictures, reads a related poem, and asks how many objects are in a couple of the pictures. The children respond by holding up the number of fingers that correspond to the number of objects. Now the young teacher points to the chalkboard, where she has placed a poster with eight movable fish in water. Above each fish is a movable number. The teacher asks the class to call out the number above each of the fish. Two fish do not have a number. She asks the pupils what numbers are missing. They literally yell out “three” and “four.” In the picture the fish are not in numerical order. The teacher calls on two children to place the fish in a straight, horizontal line. She puts a number above each fish, but puts nine after ten and asks the children whether she has put the numbers correctly above the fish, and they respond in one voice, ‘Nyet.’ The teacher holds up this equation on a card: 8 = 7 1; 5 = ? + 1 and, in unison, the children supply the missing number. The pupils now take out a box with different-colored squares, circles, and triangles, and the trainee asks pupils to take out seven round figures and then to take away one and tell her how many are left. It is now halfway through the lesson, and the teacher puts on a record of children’s songs and leads the class in time to the music in various exercises for several minutes. She puts a card on the board with the numbers zero through ten, with the even numbers colored green and the odd numbers colored black. The purpose of the exercise is to teach the class to add two or to subtract two. Throughout the lesson the teacher calls on many pupils who do not raise their hands. At the end of this part of the lesson, she asks how many pupils responded individually to one of her questions. All but two or three children raise their hands. The teacher uses much praise. The word molodets (fine person) is often used. The teacher now asks the pupils to open their mathematics book to page 27, and she teaches them how to properly write the numeral two. Three arrows in the book indicate the direction and number of movements involved in writing this numeral. She reads a short poem about writing to interest the children in the activity. As is evident from our classroom visitations, using a poem to enliven a lesson is a common practice in Russian classrooms. The teacher first asks the pupils to write the numeral two in the air; later they write it in their books. She picks up the mathematics notebook of one of the pupils who did a

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particularly good job of writing and shows it, walking around the room, to the other pupils. At the end of the lesson, the novice teacher gives a review of the lesson and asks all the children who answered one or more questions during the lesson to stand up. Practically every pupil stands up. Upon completion of the lesson, she and the other trainees, plus all the adults, congregate in a semicircle in a large hall area-with children on break running around, yelling, skipping, and in general having a good time-and an analysis and evaluation of the trainee’s lesson begins. First of all, the trainee stands in front of the group and explains her objectives for the class and how she tried to achieve them, what she thinks she did well, and what she needs to do better. The methodologist then takes the floor and asks each of the trainees to evaluate the lesson. The verdict is unanimous-otlichno, outstanding. We agree. Had she not done well on the lesson, she would have had to repeat it. If she had repeated the lesson three or four times and still done poorly, she would, presumably, have been dismissed from the pedagogical college. In their last year at the college, trainees do student teaching, which consists of six weeks, six days a week, twenty-four hours a week, of full-time teaching. They are expected to assume all responsibilities of a regular teacher. If a pupil is so unruly that a meeting with the parents is necessary, it is the student teacher’s responsibility to call the parents and to conduct the meeting-not the responsibility of the regular teacher of the class. After the student teaching, trainees have an oral examination in history, mathematics and methods of teaching it, Russian language and methods of teaching it, and in pedagogy and psychology. In all, over the five-year course of study, 542 hours are devoted to some kind of pedagogical practice. We have described in some detail the mathematics lesson presented by the teacher trainee and her preparation for it by the methodologist because it illustrates what Sovietmussian teacher educators have traditionally been most concerned with-the presentation of an interesting, systematic, highly organized lesson. In Soviet times, a good lesson far too often was a good lesson regardless of who the pupils were; today, of course, it is fully recognized, if not always practiced, that a good lesson must be adjusted to the needs, interests, and developmental level of individual children. This sensitivity to individual children was clearly shown by the teacher trainees from Pedagogical College No. 2 whom we personally observed in action. Before listing the subjects and the number of hours devoted to each in the curriculum program provided students enrolled in Pedagogical College No. 2, we would like to describe a most interesting event that we attended at the college on a Saturday in November 1995. The night before the event, the director of the college called and invited us to the college the next day to attend an event he promised would be of interest to us. He was right. The event, “Teacher’s Day” to honor teachers, was joined with a day of welcome to the new students of the college. The day was indeed of great interest to us because it helped

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explain why such a warm family atmosphere seemed to permeate this college. Perhaps more than anything else the college does, Teacher’s Day cements a close relationship between students and faculty. The event was an all-day affair, from 7:OO to 5:00, consisting of highly interesting, creative activities jointly organized by present and former students and members of the faculty. The day started with all the students, some 830, and the instructors meeting in the gymnasium for a welcome address by the director, a flute concert, and then a humorous skit in song by first-year students about the changes in their lives produced by the college and its teachers. In exaggerated form, gentle fun was poked at the more humorous peculiarities of various teachers and the director. Then each group, fifteen or so, put on a quick skit illustrating what they would be doing in their rooms after the breakup of the general assembly. Members of one such group, consisting of students, a teacher, and the assistant director of the school (a gracious lady who made all the arrangements for our visit of student teachers in action at the basic school), were dressed up as Gypsy fortune-tellers, with the teacher and assistant director wearing masks. When the adults appeared in their humorous garb, the young people literally howled in laughter. After everybody calmed down a little, the fortune-tellers sang a popular Gypsy song with the words of the refrain being, “If you want to know the future, come to our room.” Another group composed of former students now teaching or attending the Herzen Pedagogical University came on stage in costume and described their life in a summer camp for troubled, twelve-year-old children. One of the students formerly worked at the camp and another was an honor student at Herzen. All the “kids,” feeling no pain, were sprawled on the floor near an overturned vodka bottle. One of the delinquents dragged in the “director” of the camp (in fact, the real director of the college). He had a plastic sack over his head. And the hilarity continued for several minutes, with Sheshin enjoying himself as much as the students. Next, seven female students entered dressed in monastic garb. Very slow, solemn music was playing on a record player. Suddenly the music switched to a rollicking cancan by Offenbach. The girls flung open their robes and revealed garish, very short-dress costumes similar to those worn by 19th-century Parisian dance hall entertainers, and they started dancing the high-kicking cancan. And so it went until every group had advertised what their room would be doing for the rest of the morning. The general assembly broke up, and Sheshin accompanied us as we went from room to room, starting with the room with the fortune-tellers. As we passed the fortune-teller room, one of the student fortune-tellers, swaying her hips seductively, smiled ingratiatingly and twitched her forefinger at us, enticing us to enter. Inside, she told our fortunes. She told Roberta that her dearest wish would come true in the near future but that it depended purely on her, that she must be kind to people and help them. Delbert’s fortune was more mixed. He found out that he would have a very long love life and have many riches but, alas, there was also a dark cloud on the horizon.

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Something bad would happen, but not to worry, everybody has something bad happen to them. Simply love and always be happy. All in all, not bad fortunes, we mused as we left the room. We made a quick stop at the director’s office for some refreshments, and he told us they had the day primarily for everybody simply to enjoy themselves. He said the students had been preparing on and off for the day all during September and October. What was important about the day to Sheshin was that the day helped establish a warm, emotional atmosphere in the college. After the big celebration, everybody, students and teachers alike, he said, were more friendly and helpful to each other. Students and teachers need to be close and helpful to each other because the five-year curriculum for graduates of the incomplete secondary school is indeed formidable (the total number of hours for each subject is given in parentheses): General Education Block. Russian History (1 17), Social Studies (72), Literature (227), Foreign Language (231), Mathematics (264), Computer Science (72), Chemistry with a Section of Biology (129), Geography (58), Physics (117), Physical Education (334), Fundamentals of Life Safety (57). General Cultural Block. Fundamentals of the History of Philosophical Knowledge (82), History of Religion (36), Historical Study of Local Lore (108), World Artistic Culture (151), Speech and Culture of Social Intercourse (74), Literature of the 20th Century (51). Professional Block. History of Pedagogy (74), Pedagogy, Methods of Upbringing Work, Progressive Pedagogical Practice (244), Psychology (205), Pedagogical Art [skill, mastery, craft] (150), Anatomy, Physiology, Hygiene, Fundamentals of Medical Knowledge (72), Russian Language with the Methodology of Instruction (502), Calligraphy (37), Children’s Literature (184), Fundamentals of the Elementary Course in Mathematics (352), Natural Science with the Methodology of Instruction (159), Paintingmrawing with the Methodology of Instruction (215), Music with the Methodology of Instruction (178), Technical Means of Instruction with the Methodology of Their Utilization (36), Questions of Legal Rights in Public Education (36), Subjects in One’s Area of Specialization (138), Theory and Methods of Physical Upbringing (32), Practicum in School Trades with the Methodology of Labor Instruction (246), Rhythm and Choreography (188), Diploma [thesis] Work (216), Optional Subjects [such as Ethics and Aesthetics, Work with Parents, Fundamentals of PhoPedagogical Practice (542). tography] (l%),

In comparing this current five-year curriculum with the four-year curriculum in effect during the last year of the Soviet Union, the 1990-1991 academic year, we see such deletions and additions as follow:

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Deletions. Fundamentals of Soviet Law (l 15), Industrial Safety Measures

(33), Elementary Military Preparation (78), Fundamentals of Marxism and Leninism (190). (It is interesting to note, however, that as late as May 1993, the college still provided an optional course in Fundamentals of Scientific Atheism and that one of the three subjects on the state exit examination was Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism.)

Fundamentals of the History of Philosophical Knowledge (82), History of Religion (36), Historical Study of Local Lore (log), Questions of Legal Rights in Public Education (36), Diploma [thesis] Work (216).

Additions.

Consistent with the current push for more work for teacher trainees in pedagogytpsychology, the number of hours devoted to psychology has nearly doubled, increasing from 114 to 205 hours, and a new practically oriented course to be introduced into the curriculum next year for first-year students, Introduction to the World of Teaching, will rely heavily on the theory and practice of educational psychology and philosophy. We interviewed the psychologist at the college, who is also one of its two deputy directors, and all his comments were consistent with the general perspective of educators associated with the pedagogy of cooperation movement. In curriculum content and in spirit, Pedagogical College No. 2 impressed us as the kind of teacher-training institution that Russian educational reformers would like to see more of.

Pedagogical InstitutesAJniversities The history of the present Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia (HSPUR) is intertwined with the history of St. Petersburg. In 1770, at the urging of I. I. Betskoi, a prominent educational reformer under Catherine the Great, an educational house was established within the wall encompassing buildings now occupied by HSPUR. The educational house underwent many changes in function and name over two centuries, but its various siblings became increasingly involved in teacher education during the 19th century. In 1918 HSPUR bore the name Third Petrograd Higher Pedagogical Institute, which, after several other name changes, became known as the St. Petersburg Herzen Pedagogical Institute. In 1991, the institute was transformed into a university with the name Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. On 14 May 1997, the Russian minister of education and representatives of the Russian Federation government and parliament celebrated in St. Petersburg’s symphonic concert hall the two hundredth anniversary of the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. HSPUR is the oldest and largest pedagogical institution in Russia. It is the only university that prepares specialists to teach in the native languages of people living in the Far North, Far East, and Siberian regions. The university has many magnificent, historical buildings in the very heart of downtown St. Petersburg. In these buildings may be found the country’s largest university library:

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historical, geological, and zoological museums; an experimental factory; a television studio; an observatory; a sports center; agro-biological and geographical stations; a publishing house; a medical clinic; and student hostels. There are over twenty thousand students and 1,700 teachers and researchers housed in 105 departments. Of the teachers and researchers, there are two hundred full professors (all of whom have a Russian doctorate, which is awarded only to people with a long career of distinguished scholarship) and more than one thousand associate professors (all of whom have a candidate of science degree, which is roughly equivalent to an American Ph.D.). The academic year at HSPUR starts on September 1 and consists of two semesters, fall and spring, with a Christmas break beginning on December 23. After this break is the winter examination session, which lasts three weeks and consists of five tests and four examinations. The tests are evaluated according to a pass/fail system, and the examinations are graded according to the fivegrade system, with five being the highest grade and one the lowest. A student must pass all the tests in order to take the examinations. Students who do not pass an examination in a particular subject have the right to retake the exam one time during the examination session. But if they again fail an exam in the same subject, they must retake the exam after the session is over and be graded by a special committee. The spring semester begins on February l 1 and ends on June 1, after which begins the summer examination session, which, like the winter session, lasts three weeks and consists of five tests and four examinations. In July students have various internships. Students in the faculty of social sciences, for example, have an archeological internship, a museum internship, and a pedagogical internship working with schoolchildren in a summer camp. In August, students have a vacation. Throughout their studies, HSPUR students are required to write numerous papers that are supervised by professors who give lectures and conduct seminars. The seminars give students an opportunity to master the material presented in lectures. To prepare for the seminars, students must prepare themselves to answer questions given in advance to them by the instructor supervising the seminar. To answer the questions, students must attend the lecture and read supplementary literature and documents. The list of required literature and collections of documents is provided in “methodical booklets,” which students may obtain either in the faculty office or borrow in the university library. The most popular way of mastering knowledge is for students to make presentations at the seminars and to respond to questions and comments by the instructor and other students. Students have classes five days a week, and the workload is thirty-two hours of classes a week, with nearly half of this time devoted to lectures and the rest to seminars. A northlwest branch of the Russian Academy of Education (RAE;formerly the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences) was established in 1992 and is attached to the university. (The rector of the university, G. A. Bordovskii, is president of the presidium of the NortWWest Department [NWD] of the RAE.) Two years

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ago, we met with Nina V. Bochkina, who is deputy chairman of the NWD of RAE. Though quite young, she is also a full professor of comparative education in the pedagogical faculty at HSPUR, and her excitement about her dual responsibilities is palpable. Bochkina graciously provided us with detailed written information about the NWD and responded fully to our many questions. In her conversation with us she stressed that education in Russia could no longer be standardized; it had to become regionalized. Teachers have to be prepared to teach not only in St. Petersburg, but also in the villages and small cities in each of the different regions comprising north/west Russia. Developing strategies and processes for doing this, she said, is one of the most pressing challenges facing the NWD in its cooperative work with HSPUR and other educational institutions and organizations. The Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia is a leading center of international education with partnerships with many universities throughout the world, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and China. As previously noted, HSPUR has a 2 2 1 or 2 organizational structure (though some units of the university still have the standardized five-year structure), with the bachelor of education degree being awarded at the end of a fouryear course, and either a specialist certificate after an additional one-year course or a master’s degree after an additional two-year course. Bachelor candidates must also write a final paper and take final state examinations. Master’s candidates must write a substantial thesis and publicly defend it, then take state examinations in their major, philosophy, and a foreign language. Students with a master’s degree have the right to apply for entrance into a three-year graduate program (aspirantura), which culminates in the awarding of a candidate of science degree. a degree equivalent to the American Ph.D. A student working toward a candidate of science degree is called an aspirant. Aspirants of course must also make a public defense of their dissertation. Each year about two hundred candidate of science degrees are awarded at HSPUR. At present the Department of Pedagogy has one hundred aspirants. Upon successful completion of all course work and passing of required examinations, an aspirant must work in his area of specialization for a year and submit further evidence of his scholarly achievement to a committee in Moscow that is authorized to decide whether the candidate should be certified for the candidate of science degree. Most teachers in Russian universities possess the candidate of science degree. Russian universities. however, can also confer a doctorate, but this degree does not require completion of a specified program. In Russia the doctorate is awarded only to scholars who hold a candidate of science degree, have a distinguished scholarly record over a period of years, and who write and publicly defend a dissertation that makes a significant contribution to furtherance of knowledge in their area of academic expertise. In America, colleges and universities have assistant, associate, and full professors. In Russia only a person with a doctorate degree has the title of “professor.”

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We attended a doctoral dissertation defense at HSPUR by one of our friends, Vladimir Tumalev, a sociologist, and Delbert delivered a six-minute speech in support of Tumalev’s candidacy for a doctorate. We had done cooperative research on teacher education with Tumalev, and had read his dissertation and some of his other work. At the dissertation defense, Tumalev first summarized his dissertation; then members of the dissertation committee critically assessed it. After this assessment, Tumalev responded to the criticisms made by members of the dissertation committee. This process took over three hours. Then people in the audience. about thirty or so, were requested to ask questions and make comments. When nobody else wanted to say anything, after about four hours, members of the committee voted by secret ballot and our friend, by unanimous vote, successfully completed the first stage of defense of his dissertation. Now a higher and final dissertation committee in Moscow would, over the course of a year, study his dissertation, examine his credentials and publications, distribute a short version of his dissertation to appropriate departments in all universities in the country, and ask for any comments that specialists in Tumalev’s field might care to make. After the first of the two dissertation processes finally ended, everybody-including one professor who attacked Tumalev’s thesis for forty-five minutesretired to another nearby room that had been set up with sumptuous food and equally good liquid refreshments. Our friend survived both the party in his honor and the two-level dissertation defense process and is now a full-fledged professor at the St. Petersburg State University of Pedagogical Art. After finding out what was involved in getting a doctorate in Russia, we heaved a sigh of relief that American universities did not have a degree program higher than the Ph.D. The structure of the HSPUR is based on the idea of continuous pedagogical education, including preuniversity, university, and postuniversity stages, with each stage presumably taking into account the abilities and interests of individual students. Each of the 105 departments provide their students with studies in psychology, pedagogy, social sciences, and humanities. Students may receive teacher certification in one of the following subjects: Geography, Biology, Chemistry, Biology and Psychology, Regional Study, Tourism, Chemistry and a Foreign Language (Departments of Geography, Natural Science, Chemistry); Physics, Computer Science, Astronomy, Physics and a Foreign Language, Mathematics (Departments of Physics, Mathematics); Russian and Russian Literature, Russian as a Foreign Language (Departments of Philology, Russian as a Foreign Language); History, History and English, Law, Sociology, Economics (Departments of Social Sciences, Economics);

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English. German, French, Spanish, Portuguese (Department of Foreign Languages); Music, Fine Arts, Applied Arts, World Culture (Departments of Music, Fine Arts); Physical Education, Handicraft Education, Technical Disciplines (Departments of Physical Training, Industrial Education); Primary School with Specialization in Science, Mathematics or Humanities, Preschool Education, English at the Elementary Level (Departments of Primary School Education, Early Childhood Education); Special School and Preschool Institutions for Physically and Mentally Handicapped Children (Department of Training Teachers for Work with Handicapped Children). When the St. Petersburg Herzen Pedagogical Institute became a university in 1991, the Teacher Gazette carried articles by the rector, G. A. Bordovskii. and prorector, V. Kozyrev, of the new university, and they discussed what changes might be expected.’16 Bordovskii, to begin with, discussed the rationale for the university’s transition to a new multilevel organizational structure. “The school,” Bordovskii said, “needs today a specialist who is able to lean not on one method and program, but first of all on his own intellect and erudition. In order for it to flower, in our opinion, another kind of educational structure is absolutely essential. . . .” What was needed was a high-level university that supported all levels of an unbroken teacher education system, from pedagogical classes through postgraduate and nondegree work. The conception of such a university was worked out by Bordovskii and his faculty over a period of years. In his judgment, the conception is absolutely original, since simply nothing was copied. Nowhere in the world exists a high level pedagogical university of education. Pedagogical colleges exist attached to universities. But their graduates are not able to go into scientific work without supplementary preparation. What do we want to do? First of all to get away from a standard, thanks to which, each student entering into the first course knows precisely what diploma he will receive from here after five years. From this moment forward, he has, in essence no other choice. . . . to become a good teacher or [a poor one]. But in any case the diploma he receives will be a standardized one. Into the institution of higher learning enter very different people. For five years they all grow differently, define their interests in different ways. Taking this into account, the main principle of the new university we consider to be a staging or level process of education. [It is based on the idea] of gradual growth, which gives the possibility on any level [for the student] to cease-voluntarily or of necessity, to receive an appropriate diploma and to go to work. It is important constantly to pre-

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serve both for the student and for the university the possibility of selection. The so-called 2 2 2 system has been worked out with such a form that after the two years of study a person would be able to decide definitely whether pedagogy is his business, whether he correctly selected a field of study. The four-year course gives full general pedagogical education with the right of teaching in a secondary school and with the qualification of a baccalaureate degree. And those students who would like to work in various special schools, lyc6es and gymnasiums, to more deeply study foreign languages or new sciences, are able to continue their education and, after passing through a two-year supplementary course, to receive a [master’s degree]. . . . After the master’s course, it is possible to enter into a [Ph.D. program], to be occupied with serious scientific a~tivity.”~

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In the past, Bordovskii notes, once a student graduated from a pedagogical institute, the institute had nothing further to do with him. To remedy this failing, the university will create its own faculty for retraining of schoolteachers and the raising of their qualifications. Bordovskii does not believe that establishment of this faculty will “take away bread from the Institutes for Improving Teachers” because these institutes “are occupied with the mass preparation of teachers; we are able to fulfill ‘client’ orders; we try to take into consideration all the various arising needs of our clients, to develop and improve our own programs.””* The prorector for academic work, V. Kozyrev, proposes that the area of specialization of graduates of the new university demands mastery not of one subject but of two or three. Such mastery is consistent with his endorsement of the universalization of education concept. Universalization of institutions of higher learning “ought to be understood as the full choice of pedagogical specializations that correspond to the demands of society, of all kinds of schools, and of all educational systems.” Up to the present time, specializations provided students by the faculties were determined solely by a list of subjects in the school program, affirmed by the Ministry of Education. With such a system, the traditional pedagogical institute did not give and now does not give to the student himself the possibility independently and thoughtfully to build his own individualized process of study. Our students collide with unresolved difficulties not only in the selection of material concerning a basic subject, but also in the coordination of it with other disciplines, in the humanistic orientation of knowledge. Moreover, they, as a rule, do not receive elementary habits of intercourse with colleagues, administrators, parents, and, yes, even with children. We are trying to discard the authoritarian pedagogy of simply [cramming students with information]. This [kind of pedagogy] is being replaced with a pedagogy of cooperation, intercourse, a dialogic creativity. For work in such a regime, the teacher

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needs a more firm humanitarian, psychological preparation, a much broader educati~n."~ In 1996, Bordovskii came to Birmingham to sign a cooperative agreement with our university. As he was our houseguest for several days, we had an opportunity to interview the rector in some depth. We asked many questions, and he graciously responded at length to each of them. Following are only a few of the questions we asked and a small part of his responses to them. Question: What major changes have occurred in your institution during the past few years?

The most important, significant change is the appearance of academic freedom some years ago. This freedom allowed us essentially to do five things: first, to improve the content of education, that is, to make it more flexible and closer to the needs of contemporary life; second, to make new structural changes in the university-to develop a multilevel system of unbroken education for students, to develop new institutions within the university, such as the new international institute, to develop new faculties, new specializations, and new departments; third, to involve students actively in all aspects in development of the university; fourth, to encourage all units of the university to develop a spirit of cooperation, thus spawning new structural arrangements, and to encourage each unit and the new structures to develop close ties with nonuniversity associations, organizations, and institutions that have an educational function relevant to the work of the university; fifth, the process of academic freedom gave the university the possibility not only to change its own units and structures but to actually install nonuniversity organizations within the walls of the university itself, such as the NortWest branch of the Russian Academy of Education, an arrangement which enhances close collaborationbetween the academy, the university, the public school system, and other educational groups and organizations in the St. Petersburg region. Question: What are some specific examples of new features that have been added to your university in the past few years?

We have introduced a number of new specializations such as economics, business administration, and school administration. Also the curricular offerings in social sciences and humanities have been considerably expanded. In social sciences, for example, we now have specializations in sociology, political science, law, and other fields. Another new feature is a dramatic change in the orientation of our pedagogicallpsychological ed-

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ucation. Now personality is taken into account. The subject of research and of our teacher-training program is a real child with its problems. To prepare our students to cope with these problems, we have developed such prepares students in this spenew specializations as valeology-which cialization to promote the healthy development of children. I should also mention development of new specialties, common in other universities, but not previously in ours, such as social psychology and social work. [These new specialties enable our university to work closely with] more than fifty schools in St. Petersburg. Another new feature is establishment of a new organization called the Methodological Study Association. This association enables all the pedagogical universities in Russia to share their research experiences in pedagogical studies and, when feasible, to coordinate their research efforts. . . . One result of this association was the creation of the Center for International Educational Innovations. This center was organized by our university, with the assistance and advice not only of other pedagogical universities in Russia, but of the ministers of education in Russia, Belgium, Austria, and the Netherlands. Question: What in your judgment most needs to be done to improve preparation of teachers at Herzen? What obstacles must you overcome?

It is essential to change educational technology and to prepare new specialists and teachers to implement a new technology in their practical work. In development of a new technology, one of the most serious obstacles which must be dealt with is to find resources, material resources, money, because implementing new technologies and development of pluralism in education-development of a variety of specializations and curricula-demands much more money than that in the old system which had been in effect for so many, many years. During the Soviet period, it was not imperative that the university possess many instructional materials and technological aids because the educational system of this time was not diverse. It was a unique system without any pluralistic characteristics. There existed a standardized system of education throughout all of Russia. For example, there was only a single edition of one textbook on pedagogy for all the [higher-level pedagogical institutions in Russia], and it cost little money to print it. The [publishing] situation today has changed greatly. Now it is impossible to give lectures on pedagogics and to study pedagogics on the basis of just one textbook because you have to apply this science to different students, to the students of different faculties, different specializations, and these differences must be taken into account in giving lectures and organizing laboratories and seminars with our students. We must also take into consideration the specific national, cultural, and

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ethnic particularities in the development of schools in various regions of Russia. This is yet another reason why it would not be useful or helpful to use only one textbook [in the teaching of various disciplines] in our university. We need five, six, seven, or even more textbooks on pedagogics, and these books should not be printed in large numbers [as in the old days]. However, to print several different books for the study of pedagogics requires much more money than the printing of a single edition of one textbook. In part due to this additional expenditure, it is imperative that we establish new computer network links that connect all the educational institutions in Russia. Such a computer network would enable us to build up a comprehensive data bank of computer technologies applicable to pedagogy. Without such a data bank, it will be exceedingly difficult to develop the innovative technologies necessary for an educational process in the schools [that focuses on the child and his personal development]. Question: What do you consider the most distinctive feature or features about Herzen? That is, what sets it apart from other pedagogical universities?

First, the most distinctive feature of our university is the existence now, as in the past, of a large number of research schools, groups, and laboratories that [at their best try to coordinate their efforts]. Our researchers, individually and collectively, are well known in our country and abroad. No other pedagogical university has such a strong research emphasis. Second, our faculty has a great potential for development in an innovative direction. They are capable and ready for educational innovation. This readiness for innovation distinguishes our faculty from those in other institutions. The third distinguishing feature is the international flavor that permeates our university. We have more than sixty foreign university partners all over the world, and this [cooperative relationship] enriches the work of the university, of all our professors and other faculty members. And finally, we are involved in the retraining of schoolteachers and have the responsibility of directing the process of improving the level of education and research skills of teachers, specialists, and faculty members in all the pedagogical universities in Russia. Question:

There is much talk now in America about empowerment of teachers, about involving them in decisions that affect their professional lives, in curriculum making, hiring, evaluation, etc. Is empowerment of teachers important at Herzen? Empowerment of teachers is a controversial topic in Russia. . . . In Russian history there was a time [shortly after the 1917 revolution] when teachers

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were involved in the administration of schools, in curriculum making, in the development of new specialties, in the process of hiring people, in selection of principals and other officials. But this practice was soon abandoned. Of course, teachers should be involved in the life of the school, should be involved in discussion of the curriculum and have an important voice in professional decisions that affect the well-being of the school. They should be involved but not have the final say. [The school administration has the final say.] Our university employs faculty members who prepare schoolteachers not to be involved in the administration of a school-in such things as evaluating the work of teachers, in deciding what academic disciplines should be taught-but rather our faculty is responsible for providing teachers with a solid foundation in utilizing different technologies in different circumstances, in different schools, in different geographical regions, with different children under different multicultural situations. Question: In Russian and American literature, there is much discussion about making the child (his interests, needs, abilities) the number-one priority of the teaching-learning process in schools. What is Herzen doing to inculcate in students a commitment to this goal, to humanizing the teaching-learning process in school?

This, of course, is the most critical problem, especially in Russian schools. [We are far from solving this problem, but we are working hard on it.] Today we’re trying to implement the process of modernization of schools and modernization of the teacher-training process-to give the teacher the knowledge and vision of a child, his psychology, his needs, interests, his problems. We are trying to help teachers and future teachers to deal effectively with the many problems of children, to teach them how to involve children in the social life of the school and in society at large, in short, to make them good citizens of our country. To do this, our psychology has greatly changed; it has become more pragmatic, more informative, more school based, more necessary, for a teacher. Question: Would you please, if you are not reluctant to do so, evaluate or assess the work of the former ministers of education, Iagodin and Dneprov.

First of all, it’s necessary to say that Iagodin and Dneprov are the major reformers in Russian education, and they played a huge role in implementation of new educational ideas. They are closely connected with each other not only because they were ministers, not only because they were officials and state officers, but because they were connected ideologically as significant reformers and innovators and they played a huge role in

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educational reform. Speaking about the relationship between Dneprov and Iagodin, it is necessary to say that Iagodin greatly supported Dneprov. He backed Dneprov and he did much to help give him a chance to realize . . . his innovations in the sphere of education, but the results of their activities turned out to be quite different. Iagodin, in addition to being a great educator, was a very good state officer, a very good organizer. a very good manager and administrator in the sphere of education, and he was an excellent academician; so he knew how [administratively and politically to implement various educational reforms]. His ideas and his innovations, his recommendations, were based on a deep knowledge and understanding of the interrelationships and connections between education and the state and other institutions. Knowing well these intricate interrelationships, he was able to infuse the educational system with basic academic freedoms [and to bring it more in line with world academic and democratic standards]. Iagodin supported those educators who were famous for their innovations [those involved in the pedagogy of cooperation movement] and for their deep influence in the process of changing the school and education in general. He brought together these people and made them famous at the national level, gave them state support, widely publicized their ideas, and that is why the influence of these people greatly increased. As for Dneprov [it was he] who made our education free from the Marxist view, from the Marxist outlook, from the Marxist and Leninist dogmas which so influenced education and prevented it from going forward, from being free. As for the results of his work as minister, the following things might be said. When Dneprov became minister of education, I listened carefully to his words, [which I interpreted to mean] that he accepted the position in order to abolish it. Dneprov wanted to decentralize education, to eliminate control of it by the Ministry of Education, to broaden the scope of education. It was difficult, however, for him to implement his new ideas and innovations. Implementation of Dneprov’s reform program demanded considerable financial and human resources, and these were lacking. This is the main reason his reform efforts, in some respects, were believed to be a failure. [Let me give three reasons for this general perception of failure.] First, Dneprov abolished obligatory [complete] secondary education, that is, obligatory ten-year education. As a result, now 50 percent of [school-age] Russian children are out of school. . . . The result is that crime committed by young people has increased dramatically, and the educational system, in particular, is responsible for this increase. Second, in Russia we had a well-developed system of professional [vocational] schools and specialized professional colleges, in which we trained children (young specialists) to work in different branches of industry. Their training was [comparatively speaking] well supported with funds, materials, and human resources. The professional institutions were good institutions and did a very good job. Dneprov [in short] ruined

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these schools, and now these branches of industries which are crying for more specialists are forced to do without them because they are not being prepared anyplace. Third, the [broad-scaled diversification of educational institutions at all levels, involving new instructional materials, new subjects, new teaching specializations, etc.] was quickly implemented without adequate support-there were few good textbooks, for example, and in many cases no textbooks. Such deficiencies means that a good idea came to nothing. This was not, however, the personal fault of Dneprov. [He was simply caught up in a very difficult social, economic situation.] Dneprov was a great educational reformer, but we cannot overlook some of the adverse repercussions of his actions such as those I have just mentioned. In addition to our interview with the rector, we interviewed three other administrators at HSPUR: Ludmila A. Matveeva, dean of the Faculty of Primary School Education; Alla Prokof’evna Triapitsina, director of the Department of Pedagogy; Valentina U. Smorgunova, dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. We interviewed Matveeva and Triapitsina in the fall of 1994 and Smorgunova in the fall of 1995. Ludmila Matveeva greeted us warmly and started our meeting by giving us a historical overview of her faculty of primary school education; then she talked about the present program, trends, problems, and plans for the future. The primary school division was first opened in 1918, one of only two in the country. In the beginning, the division trained primary school teachers and specialists for kindergarten together but in 1974 became two divisions. The primary school division provided trainees with a four-year program that prepared them to teach all subjects normally taught in the primary school, including music. With implementation of the Education Law of 1984, the curriculum for primary school teacher trainees began to change, at first slowly and then with ever increasing speed. In fact, we had interviewed in 1991 the acting dean of the primary school faculty at the time, Natalia Druzhinina, and two weeks later, she sent us a note informing us of two or three changes that had taken place since our interview. Perhaps the most significant change in recent years was the addition of a fifth year to the curriculum program. The fifth year enabled the faculty of primary education to provide in-depth preparation for trainees in one of four supplementary areas of specialization: humanitarian cycle, English language, natural sciences and mathematics, and, the latest addition, aesthetics. The aesthetics subspecialization prepares trainees “to develop the soul of the childhis interests and tastes.” Students choosing this specialization are typically quite talented in music, drama, dance, art, or in some other artistic field. Courses that students take in each of these supplementary specializations are:

Humanitarian Cycle. Methods of Literary Reading (expression, etc.); Psychology of Reading for a Child; Historical Comments Relevant to the

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Teaching of the Russian Language; Linguistic Analysis at School; Methods of Teaching Literacy to Six-Year-Olds; Practical Stylistics of the Russian Language; Language Standards (norms) and the Culture of Speech; Methods of Teaching the Russian Language; Methodological Basics of a Russian-Language Textbook in a Four-Year School; LinguaMethodological Basics of Cultivation of Orthography; the Development of Speech. English Language. Introduction to the Theory of the English Language; Theory of the English Language; Theory of Translation; Practical Studies; Methods of Teaching a Foreign Language; Literature of Great Britain and the United States; Children’s Literature of Great Britain and the United States; Area Studies (study of different countries). Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

Geometry in the Elementary School; Regional Geography; General Ecological Ideas; Selective Questions of Mathematics and Theory of Mathematical Tasks; Informational Science for Teachers; Psychology of Mastering Mathematics; Practical Methods of Studying Nature; Learning of Knowledge and Skills by Young Children: Developmental Education in Lessons of Natural Science; Knowledge Continuum of Mathematics Between the Primary and Secondary School Grades; Methods of the Design and Organization of Textbooks in Primary Grades; Practicum on Extracurricular Activities; Ecological Education and Upbringing; Russian Literature in Children’s Reading.

Aesthetics.

Basics of Literary Taste and Techniques of Its Development; Russian Music and Folklore in Extracurricular Activities; Children’s Musical Theater and Aesthetic Education; Children’s Musical Creativity and Its Formation; Basics of Analysis and Interpretation of Musical Works; Structure, Diagnostics, and Methods of Development of Children’s Artistic Abilities (aptitudes); Folk Decorative Art in the Upbringing of Children; The Art of Words and the Culture of Communication; Experimental Studio for Gifted Children with Creative Talent, An Individualized Program.

Graduates of the five-year program receive a bachelor’s degree and diplomas certifying their qualifications as an elementary school teacher and a specialist in one of the four areas just mentioned. To graduate, however, students must successfully pass state examinations in the history of education, pedagogy and psychology, Russian language with methods of teaching it, and mathematics with methods of teaching it. Ludmila Matveeva was excited about the master’s degree program that was being implemented in certain faculties, including her own. Only faculties with at least one full professor could offer a master’s degree. The first master’s program in her department would be in child psychology, which would soon be followed by programs in children’s literature, methods of teaching the Russian language in primary schools, and methods of teaching mathematics in primary

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schools. To apply for the two-year master’s program, the student must have a bachelor’s degree. Graduates of the master’s program would be entitled to lecture in a university or institute, to continue postgraduate study, or teach in a gymnasium, lycCe, or other specialized school. She went on to say that every day they are trying hard to improve their work and to get students more actively involved in their self-education. All the heads of departments in her faculty are investigating new methodologies and holding seminars at schools with their students and their supervising teachers. Starting in the third year, students, in groups of six or seven, devote one day a week to practical experiences in different schools. Sometimes the student will teach a lesson in a school, and sometimes their professor will do so. Regardless of who teaches the lesson, a seminar is held immediately after the lesson, and everybody in the group critically analyzes it. Matveeva said they were starting to involve first- and second-year students in practical work in schools but that they needed to do this on a much greater scale. As with some other faculties in the university, Matveeva indicated her faculty was working on integrating certain subjects, especially theoretical and practical courses. For example, the Department of Russian Literature and the Department of Methods of Teaching Russian Literature were recently merged, and the research work of the students in this new enlarged department is jointly supervised by a content specialist and a methods specialist. Some courses in the process of being integrated are psychology and children’s literature, psychology and reading, psychology and mathematics. Matveeva concluded our interview by telling us about a recent innovationone that we thought to ourselves would have horrified professors during the Soviet period-that consisted of giving students twice a year a questionnaire to evaluate their professors. With a smile, Matveeva said, “Because of the student evaluations, teachers are doing a better job since department heads get the results of the questionnaires.” As we were leaving, Matveeva gave us a copy of the curriculum for students in her faculty and two years later gave us an updated copy. The following is the 1996 curriculum: General Education Subjects

Philosophy Ethics Aesthetics History of Civilization History of Russia History of Art Economics Conception of Natural Science

Hrs.

Semester

58

3

38

1

38

1

56

1

56

1

106

2, 3

38

1

52

2

Teacher Education under Gorbachev and Yeltsin

Mathematics Foreign Languages Information Science (computer) Physical Education Medical Knowledge (basic), Anatomy and Physiology (physical development of children) Socio-Cultural Practicum Optional Courses

139

240

1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4

34

2

222

148

1, 2, 3, 4

72

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (2-week

cycles) 68

2

76

4

Psychological/PedagogicalSubjects

General Psychology Age (growth) Psychology Pedagogical Theories and Systems of Education Pedagogical Theories and Systems of Upbringing History of Education Speech (basics of speech maintenance), Speech Skills, Rhetoric Educational Technology PsychologicalPedagogical Practicum Optional Courses

108

1,

2

38

3

57

3

68

2

56

1

38

3

38

3

133

3, 4

114

3, 4

80

10

Educational Foundations and Children ' S Literature

History of Education Comparative Education Sociology of Education Educational Psychology Legislative Laws Guaranteeing Education and Rights of Children Sociology and Economics of Education Ethno-Pedagogy Children's Literature Optional Courses

57

7

42

8

38

4

42

8

38

3

38

7

140

5, 6

160

7, 8

278

1, 2, 3, 4

36

5

Special Courses in Primary Education

Contemporary Russian Language Introduction to Philology

140

Land Study (geography) with Basics of Regional Geography Botany with Basics of Ecology Zoology with Basics of Ecology Defectology (special education) Family Pedagogy and Home Education Basics of Pedagogical Skills Psychology of Communication PsychologicalPedagogical Practicum Optional Courses Methods of Upbringing Work with Young Children Methods of Upbringing Work with Volunteer Organizations Methods of Upbringing Work with Children in the Extended Day Program Methods of Out-of-Class Reading Methods of Labor Education with Practice Methods of Music Education with Basics of Music Theory Methods of Art Education with Practice Methods of Russian Language Teaching Methods of Mathematics Teaching Methods of Natural Science Teaching Optional Courses

Education of Teachers in Russia 72

5

54

5

52

6

65

9

50

6

68

6

36

5

176

5,6

290

9, 10

56

4

36

5

34

6

38

7

74

4, 5

90

5

85

6

188

6, 7, 8

130 76

6, 7 7

345

8, 9, 10

Following our interview with Matveeva, we interviewed the director of the Department of Pedagogy, Alla Triapitsina, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Education, who exudes goodwill, energy, and a “can do” attitude. Her faculty of pedagogy provides pedagogical courses for students enrolled in all the other departments of the school. The most basic courses in this division are Introduction to Pedagogy, Fundamentals of Pedagogical Theory, Pedagogical Planning, and History of Russian Pedagogy. One or more of these courses are required in other departments.”’ In addition to these basic courses, the Department of Pedagogy provides numerous elective courses, which typically reflect the research interests of faculty members. A few of these courses are Pedagogy and Ethics, Democratization of the School, History of Educational Institutions in St. Petersburg, Education of Talented Pupils, and Juvenile Delinquency. The main objective of the Department of Pedagogy, Triapitsina said, is to provide students with practical pedagogical knowledge that has a solid theoret-

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ical basis. She noted that pedagogics, in comparison with the Soviet period, is more difficult for students today because they now must critically analyze theory and its relevance to classroom practice. The Department of Pedagogy has eleven full professors, thirty associate professors, and two assistant professors. Only the two assistant professors do not have either a candidate of science degree or a doctorate, so this is a highly credentialed department. Perhaps what most distinguishes this faculty from those in comparable institutions, in Triapitsina’s opinion, is its firm commitment to research. The faculty has the responsibility for planning pedagogical research activities for students in all departments of the university. Starting in the second semester, every student in HSPUR must conduct, under the supervision of a professor in the pedagogical department, some ‘mini” pedagogical research. All professors must not only teach and supervise student research, but also work in schools (“This is their moral responsibility”), serving as a consultant, and engage in research relevant to the needs of teachers. Often, when we visited a school in St. Petersburg, we would meet a professor from HSPUR doing consulting or conducting cooperative research with one or more schoolteachers. In keeping with the research emphasis, the Department of Pedagogy’s postgraduate program has greatly increased in enrollment in recent years. There are now over seventy students in the candidate of science program, that is, their Ph.D. program. Triapitsina invited us to attend a “progress report” meeting of all the students in this program and their supervisors. It was a very long meeting because all of the seventy-plus students had to report on their professional activities since the last such meeting: articles published, unpublished research, examinations taken and results, professional reading, and so on. Then the student’s major professor reacted to the report. Upon conclusion of the analysis, then and there the professor publicly assigned the student a grade from the fivepoint scale, with five being the highest grade. Most of the critiques were favorable, but not all. One student even received a two, which is a very poor grade indeed. The dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Valentina Smorgunova, is a longtime friend who helped us greatly in our research in St. Petersburg for this book. Over the years, we have had many discussions with her on Russian and American education and teacher education. Young, personable, with a razor-sharp mind, Smorgunova heads a large faculty with over 1,500 students. The social sciences faculty provides specializations in history, politology (political science), sociology, and law. The trend today in the Faculty of Social Sciences is to give students preparation in an “extra profession.” For example, many students majoring in history, political science, sociology, or law obtain an additional specialization in foreign languages. Thus, upon graduation, students are qualified to teach in two fields or to work in a number of nonteaching fields. A trained historian, for example, can teach history or foreign languages, work as a librarian, work as a specialist in archives, work as a tourist guide, or work in any number of business jobs requiring knowledge of one or more foreign languages. L

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According to Smorgunova, there are hundreds of institutions that prepare students to work only as a schoolteacher, but HSPUR has the quality of students, the physical and human resources, and the philosophical commitment to allow it to provide students with such a broad education that they are qualified in several fields of endeavor. “Education,” Smorgunova says, is a very broad notion; it is connected not only with the school-elementary, middle, and high school-and the university. Education takes place everywhere. While conducting an excursion in a museum, we are educating the visitors. When an archivist meets with visitors to the archives and with researchers, he is educating them in a particular area of research. And librarians and specialists in penitentiary education are all educators, so we conceive education in a very broad sense. To be sure, every student in our department receives the certificate of a teacher, every student. But the education he receives is so broad that it gives him a broader scope for using his abilities and his knowledge. That’s why we are not afraid that only 30 percent or 40 percent of our graduates become schoolteachers. We think that it’s good that they can work in other structures. They can work in museums and do their research work, or they can work in joint ventures with businessmen. They are very well prepared in education, in psychology, in pedagogy and fundamental education, and this education will support their work; in the end it will support the whole country to live a normal life because the country will receive highly qualified specialists who can flourish in a free-market economy. . . . Today, everybody must be flexible, to have the possibility to change his specialization. Every day new needs appear in society, and our education must be so fundamental, so deep, and so broad that we can adjust to these new needs, perhaps even making a change in occupation. Our university gives our students this flexibility. It’s, of course, a very big problem, how you prepare students for lifelong flexibility in a rapidly changing society. We appreciate the magnitude of the problem, and that’s why we are closely associated with the North/West Department of the Russian Academy of Education, which is located here in our university. Last year, for example, we had specialists from all over the world come here for a conference, sponsored by the academy and our university, on childhood, that is, on such topics as children’s literature, religion, psychology, stages of development, problems of handicapped, homeless, parentless children, and so on. We have also had an international physics conference and an international conference attended by many of the European education ministers. One day of this latter conference was devoted to our university. Their impression of our university was so favorable that they supported the creation in our university, connected with our branch of the Russian Academy of Education, of a new center called the European

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Center of Pedagogical Innovations. So you see, we are more than a little bit proud of our university. Smorgunova’s faculty has some serious problems that are not so serious in other faculties. For example, in other faculties there is some agreement about curriculum content, and there are reasonably adequate textbooks and other teaching materials. Content in history, however, is highly controversial in all elements of Russian society, and most instructors must teach without textbooks because there are few decent, new textbooks and the “old texts are horrible.” The textbook problem will be solved in the not too distant future because there are groups of professors writing them; but writing and publication of a textbook take a number of years. Deciding what history to teach, however, is a much more complicated, long-range problem that is plaguing American educators as well. In work with students, what Smorgunova would most like her faculty to do is to build a creative personality. In order to be creative, one must have knowledge and be flexible, that is, be open to consideration of all points of view on a subject. To accomplish this objective, we use the process of dialogue with students. This is the main method of education now. All our professors, except perhaps a few, are trying hard to use the method of dialogue. It is through dialogue that we help our students appreciate another position, a point of view other than their own, and to so organize their thinking process that they become more flexible and tolerant. Such people have the potential to be creative in all fields. It is, of course, an exceptionally difficult task to produce a creative person, but we’re trying to do it. For example, we are now teaching a new course called “History of World Civilization.” There are no textbooks, and we have ten of our professors teaching the first semester of the course. They teach their own historical period of specialization. Having ten different professors is not easy for our students; but each of our professors uses the dialogue approach, and we would like to think that it promotes the creativity and independent thinking of our students. We want our students to have both great knowledge and the ability not only to think for themselves, but to do so in a creative, original way. And one does indeed need great knowledge to pass the entrance examinations to any Russian university. According to Smorgunova, the examinations are the same and the procedures are the same in all Russian universities, and have been so for decades. The most basic examination that students must pass before being permitted to take additional examinations is a composition on some literary topic related to the 20th century or to the 19th century. (There is also a mathematics

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examination for students applying to departments where mathematics is an integral part of their curricula.) “It doesn’t matter,” Smorgunova says, “whether you are entering the faculty of physical culture or you are entering the drama department or you are going to be a teacher or a doctor or an architect or a veterinarian, it doesn’t matter-everybody must know the Russian language, not commit grammatical mistakes, and know Russian literature-possession of such knowledge and skills is a first step toward understanding of the world in which we live.” Smorgunova describes the process students go through in taking this examination thus: You sit in a room with one or two hundred other pupils, potential future students, and the instructor stands in front of you and opens a sealed envelope with three topics. In other examination rooms the instructor will also open a sealed envelope with three topics, but the topics will be different in each of the examination rooms. . . . In each envelope there is a topic on 19th century Russian literature and a topic on 20th century Russian literature. The third topic may be chosen by the student. For example, the student might write about what he considers to be evil in the world. But whatever topic he writes on must reflect his knowledge of Russian literature. For example, if he chooses to write about the problem of freedom, he must bolster his perspective on the problem by drawing upon the ideas on the subject of, say, Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. Who you draw upon is up to you. Elaborate precautionary measures are taken to ensure the secrecy of the examination topics and the anonymity of the student from those grading the examinations. The examinations are preserved for many years. The faculty in each department selects the examination committee; 50 percent are professors and the other half are schoolteachers. Most examinations are read only once, but those receiving the highest or lowest marks are read by two people. Students are not given any study questions to help them prepare for the examinations. They will be told, however, to be prepared to write on Pushkin, for example, and they will be told what works of his they should know. They will be told also what Russian-language grammatical rules they should know, but nothing else. Examples of some literature topics that questions would be based on are: the fate and destiny of Russian officers in Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace; heroes of contemporary life in the first half of the 19th century; the image of women in Russian literature of the second third of the 19th century; comparison of the treatment of women in the novels of the 19th century; description of the hard work of people in Siberia during the 1920s and 1930s, when they were building socialism. There are hundreds of other topics. According to Smorgunova, students taking the composition examination on literature “must know all the authors,” which requires preparing for this ex-

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amination for one or two years while still in secondary school. If an applicant for the Faculty of Social Sciences passes the composition examination, he must then take oral examinations in history, a foreign language, Russian literature, and Russian language. The student is also tested orally on his knowledge of morphology, phonetics, and syntax. In secondary school, Russian pupils devote six years of intensive study to these three areas of language analysis. If their knowledge in any one of these three areas is lacking, it is unlikely they will be admitted to a Russian university. According to Smorgunova the entrance examinations to the more prestigious universities-such as her own university, so rigorous and comprehensive that secondary school pupils HSPUR-are preparing for the exams typically engage a private tutor during their last year or two of high school if their parents can afford it. In addition to their regular classes at school during their senior year, they will also probably attend each Saturday from September 1 to June 1three two-hour special examination preparation courses provided by the university they hope to attend. A pupil seeking entrance to the Faculty of Social Sciences at HSPUR, for example, would attend two-hour lecture courses in literature, history, and the Russian language. Pupils who attend pedagogical classes at different secondary schools and pedagogical gymnasiums, incidentally, have the right to participate in the training examinations provided by all the faculties in Smorgunova’s university. Not surprisingly, once students are accepted into a quality university such as HSPUR, practically all of them graduate. In 1995, about 98 percent graduated from HSPUR, and in previous years the percentage varied from 88 to 99 percent; but Smorgunova assured us that “generally speaking it is rare for a person to be accepted into the university and not graduate.” When we consider all this preparatory work for the entrance examinations, it is little wonder that when Larry Holmes recently taught a history class in a Russian university, he was amazed at the great amount of historical knowledge possessed by his students.”’ In 1996 HSPUR had a three-stage curriculum plan for preparing students to teach history in grades five through eleven in secondary schools. The first two stages, it will be recalled, are two years each and culminate in the awarding of a bachelor’s degree, which permits a student to work in a secondary school, but not as a fully qualified teacher. To be a fully qualified teacher, one must have a specialist certificate or a master’s degree. Let us look first at HSPUR’s fouryear, bachelor’s degree curriculum plan for prospective history teachers: Psychological/PedagogicalSubjects

Hrs.

Semester

Pedagogy Psychology Informational Pedagogical Technology Special Course Cycle, at choice of students

159

2, 3, 4

173

1, 2,3

30

5

32

8

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Social/Humanistic Subjects

History of Philosophy Modem Philosophy Logic Ethnography and Ethnology Axiology of Personality Encyclopedia of Law Introduction to Political Science

104

1, 2, 3

54

4

34

1

34

1

70

3, 4

70

3, 4

34

3

Sociology Fundamentals of Economics Special Course Cycle, at choice of students

36

4

54

4

24

7

World Artistic Culture Modern Literature Process Professional Speech Culture Latin

70

1, 2

36

4

36

4

70

1. 2

Foreign Languages

756

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Physical Culture Medical Culture Special Courses at the Humanitarian Institute, at choice of students

280

1, 2, 3, 4

General Cultural Subjects

26

6

128

1. 2, 3, 7

542

1, 2, 3, 4

70

3. 4

70

1, 2

Special Historical Courses in the Faculty of Social Studies (First Level of Baccalaureate Study)

History of World Civilization Personality in History Historical Local Lore Special Historical Courses in the Faculty of Social Studies (Second Level of Baccalaureate Study)

Archeology Auxiliary Historical Disciplines History of Primitive Societies in the Territory of the Homeland History of Ancient Mankind Russian History History of the Ancient World and Middle Ages

30 26 30 30 392 150

Teacher Education under Gorbachev and Yeltsin

147

The New and the Newest History of the Countries of Europe and America The New and the Newest History of the Countries of Asia and Africa

224

7,8

112

7, 8

Source Study of Russian History Source Study of General History Methods of Teaching History Elective Courses (special courses and special seminars) Historiography of General History Historiography of Russian History Total No. of Hours

28

5,6

28

5.6

30

5,6

143

6, 7,8

24

7

16

8

4,295

In comparing this four-year curriculum with the five-year curriculum in effect in the 1990-1991 academic year, the greatest change in the current curriculum, of course, is the elimination of the Marxist-Leninist-oriented studies. These include History of the USSR (650 hrs.), Timely Questions of the Modem History of the USSR (40 hrs.), Political Economy (140 hrs.), History of International Relations and External Politics of the USSR (70 hrs.), History and Theory of the State and Law (310 hrs.), Basic Sociological and Scientific Socialism (80 hrs.), History of the Communist Party and Other Parties of Russia (120 hrs.), History of Religious and Atheistic Theory (63 hrs.). When the total amount of time devoted to studies with a Marxist-Leninist perspective is added up, it is a whopping 1,473 hours. Obviously, elimination of these studies has made it possible for HSPUR to make their curriculum much more diversified and flexible. There are a number of courses in the current curriculum that did not exist in the one in 1990-1991, such as Logic, Encyclopedia of Law, Sociology (Methods of Sociological Research was an elective), Axiology of Personality, Introduction to Political Science, Fundamentals of Economics, Modem Literature Process, Latin, Personality in History. There is another significant difference between the 1990-1991 and the present curriculum. In the earlier curriculum the students were permitted few electives; now HSPUR devotes 327 hours to courses of students’ own choice. In the second semester of their eight-semester bachelor’s degree program, history students engage in a three-week museum, archival, and local lore practicum. In the sixth semester, they have a five-week methodological practicum in a local school. During the summer of their third year, they work as upbringers with young people attending a youth camp. In their next-to-last semester, the seventh semester, they engage in student teaching for five weeks. During the second year, students work with a specialist in general history; the third year, with a specialist in the methodology of teaching history; and the final year, with a specialist in the student’s academic specialization. Seven weeks of the last semester of the four-year program are devoted to the writing of a thesis.

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Education of Teachers in Russia

As previously mentioned, to become a certified history teacher in a Russian secondary school, a student must complete an additional year of study leading to a specialist certificate or a two-year program leading to a master’s degree. The specialist program includes sixteen weeks of pedagogical practice at a school or schools and 650 hours of academic classes in the following subjects: actual problems of Russian history studies; actual problems of general history studies; methods of teaching of history; pedagogy; historiography of Russian history; historiography of general history; historical sources in Russian and general history; philosophy of history; elective courses; diploma work (a substantive research paper seventy to one hundred pages in length). With a specialist certificate, one is qualified to teach in the secondary grades of a general education school. The master’s program in history lasts two years, and students attend classes twenty hours a week. In addition to their work in history, they take courses in the humanities, such as comparative politics, modern trends in education, modern philosophy, history of the world, modern trends in philosophy in European thought. They also have work in computer technology and have eight weeks of student teaching in a gymnasium. A significant portion of the program-fourteen weeks-is devoted to writing compositions and preparation of a substantial thesis, approximately one hundred pages in length. They are assigned a thesis supervisor and must make a public defense of their thesis and pass a series of examinations before they can receive a master’s degree. With a master’s degree, one is qualified to teach in an institution of higher learning, in the secondary grades of a general education school, or in a special school such as a gymnasium or lycCe.

INSERVICE TRAINING Knowing of our interest in teacher education, a teacher friend of ours in St. Petersburg made arrangements in 1991 for us to meet with one of her former professors, an economist, Nina Litvinova, who at the time was vice-rector for international affairs of the Leningrad State Institute for the Improvement of Teachers. We were very early for our appointment with the vice-rector-we had to take two buses and the subway, and one never knows when a bus will come or whether it will be possible to get on it when it does come-and we waited for her in a large room she used as a meeting and reception room. While waiting, we picked up brochures on her institution and started reading them. The institute was founded in 1938 (though it has antecedents going back to the days of the tsars) and was transformed in 1992 to the St. Petersburg State University of Pedagogical Art (SSUPA). SSUPA is housed in a large, recently remodeled four-story building h a t e d a few blocks from the dual subway stations named after Dostoevsky and St. Vladimir, in one of the city’s most well known historic areas. There are 220 instructors, including 87 full professors, who, along with hundreds of experienced schoolteachers and a large number of

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149

associate professors from other institutions, provide courses, seminars, conferences, and other activities for approximately thirty thousand teacher-students each year. Educational work is provided for teachers who want to raise their qualifications for personal or certification purposes; for teachers who want to obtain a new specialization; and for people who have a higher-education degree but who want pedagogical training. Teachers working on certification typically take one course a year, either meeting once a week throughout the school year or taking a full-time two-week or month-long course during school vacation. Typically they have per year 20 hours of general science study; 20 hours of pedagogicaVpsychologica1 study; 5 to 20 hours of mental health improvement for teachers and students; and 110 hours of study of the subject they are specializing in. Programming at SSUPA is very flexible and, upon request, may focus on group needs of teachers in a particular school. In 1992, the university started preparing students for a candidate of science degree in pedagogical studies. The university has a publishing house and a number of research centers. As other universities we have studied, SSUPA has a strong research emphasis. The quiet, peaceful “reading” room we were sitting in was suddenly transformed into a beehive of activity when the doors of the room were flung open and in rushed Vice-Rector Nina Litvinova, an imposing, statuesque middle-aged lady, precisely on time for our appointment, leading several other people into the room. As she exploded into the room, speaking with such machine-gun rapidity that we suspected even the Russians with her could not always understand her, she simultaneously, it seemed, greeted us effusively, ordered some tea and snacks, asked her secretary to call somebody long-distance, and gave some instructions to her administrative assistant. Sitting now with us at the conference table, Litvinova took the long-distance call that had just been connected and then turned her attention to us but had to say a few words to some faculty members who popped in from time to time to ask her about something or other. In short, Vice-Rector Litvinova was, and is, a human dynamo of energy and enthusiasm for her work and instituteluniversity. After finding out what we wanted-to learn more about continuing education for teachers at her institution-she made several phone calls and wrote messages to some other people and had them delivered. Accustomed as we were to dealing with lethargic Russian bureaucrats, we were astonished to be told by Litvinova after about fifteen minutes or so that arrangements were complete. Arrangements were made for us to meet with the directors of various departments, such as the Department of Pedagogy and Psychology, and with professors and their students at Herzen as well as with some principals of schools doing some particularly interesting things. Apprised of our interest in recent research on Russian teacher education, Litvinova marched us down to the university library, introduced us to the librarians, seated us at a table, fully expecting us immediately to get to work, and we did so, fearful that we might be reprimanded if we did not do so. The library is one of the best pedagogical libraries in Russia, and we remain grateful to this day for the un-

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selfish, excellent help that the librarians provided us in the course of the next five or six weeks. The first professor we had an appointment with was the director of the Department of Pedagogy and Psychology, Alexander K. Kolechenko. We especially looked forward to meeting him since the study of psychology had been frowned upon for so many years during the Soviet regime. We first met with Kolechenko in January 1991. He is a good-looking man in his forties. Bright and energetic, he was, among other things, literally developing from the ground up a three-year graduate program in social-school psychology for practicing teachers. Teachers in this program attend class at the institute one day a week, on their off day at school, or they have an intensive course every day for a month during the month of June. Our meeting with Kolechenko and some of his faculty lasted about four hours. After this meeting we met with one of his classes consisting of teachers with different areas of specialization, all of whom, however, were preparing to become social-school psychologists. We were placed on a stage in front of the class, about fifteen students and four or five professors, and they asked us some questions; we asked them some as well. One of our questions was what theoretical psychologists they followed. We were told that they were not advocates of any particular school, but according to Kolechenko, who talked to us later, they were most inspired by members of the pedagogy of cooperation movement, the so-called teacher-innovators whom we have already mentioned several times. They were also inspired by such American humanistic psychologists as Carl Rogers. All claimed to be cognitive psychologists; no one claimed to be a behaviorist. When we asked the students why they wanted to become school psychologists, the main reason seemed to be that they wanted to be able to work with students on an individualized basis. When members of this class graduate and become school psychologists, they will earn more than the average teacher, will not have to teach classes, and will be considered part of the administrative team. After the class was over, we retired to Kolechenko’s office to have refreshments and to meet again with some of his faculty members. The consensus was that these psychologists wanted to develop the personality of their students so that they in turn would develop the personality of schoolchildren. They also stressed that it was necessary in today’s society to attack educational problems with a team consisting of such people as a school psychologist, doctor, policeman, judge, organizer of extracurricular activities, teachers, administration. parents, and so on. In subsequent meetings with Litvinova over the years, she arranged for us to spend several weeks traveling by train to some provincial cities, where we visited local cultural sites of historical interest, such as the estate of Pushkin, and met with numerous school and teacher education officials; to deliver a series of lectures, four hours a day for two weeks, on American education, to students in one of Litvinova’s classes for school principals; to deliver lectures to physics teachers in Vologda and English teachers in Velikie-Luki, in the Pskov region;

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to conduct joint research on Russian and American teacher education with members of her university’s sociology department. One of the most enjoyable, enlightening experiences that we had in St. Petersburg consisted of our numerous meetings and even a field trip with members of the SSUPA Department of Sociology, in particular our good friends E. E. Smirnova, V. V. Tumalev, and V. F. Kurlov. Though we are not sociologists, we shared the same interests as they in problems affecting the work of teachers and their lifelong education. They developed a superb, comprehensive questionnaire that they gave to over 1,500 teachers in St. Petersburg, a questionnaire that we translated into English and also gave to 200 high school teachers in the greater Birmingham, Alabama, metropolitan area. In our numerous discussions about the results of these questionnaires, we both broadened our perspectives about the life of teachers in our two countries. We do not have firsthand knowledge about how other sociology departments in Russian pedagogical institutions operate, but we can state with certainty that while faculty members in the SSUPA sociology department, ten or so in 1996, pursue their individual research interests, they also work together as a teamall members of the faculty-on clearly defined, large-scale, long-range research projects such as the one just mentioned. The work of this department indicates the strong emphasis by the UPA administration in recent years on research relevant to the teaching profession. We do not want to leave the impression that a teacher’s continuing education is provided exclusively by teacher-training institutions. Much of this education is provided by schools themselves, by teachers and administrators in them, and by methodologists and other specialists working for local school districts. For example, in the second half of the 1980s, a large number of independent teacher organizations sprouted up all over the Soviet Union, many of which adopted the title Eureka Club. In time, these clubs coalesced and formed a new teacher union called the Creative Union of Teachers. Members of these clubs were typically teachers with a proclivity for innovation and change, and they focused much of their attention on matters relating to teacher education. In addition to the more formal Eureka Clubs, there exists in many Russian schools one or more very small informal groups of teachers who meet regularly, perhaps once every two to four weeks, to discuss and plan what they can do to improve their teaching effectiveness. We have met several times with some of these small teacher groups and have been very impressed with the innovative work engaged in by most of these groups. To give some idea of the multiplicity of continuing-education activities that Russian teachers engage in, we asked some of our schoolteacher/administrator friends in St. Petersburg and Vologda to describe their school and the things they engage in to further their lifelong education. All of their reports revealed schools that were exceptionally creative and innovative, none more than the St. Petersburg Global Education School.

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The St. Petersburg Global Education School The Humanitarian Gymnasium of Global Education (HGGE), formerly School No. 631, was founded in St. Petersburg in 1992 by a group of enthusiastic teachers, with Tatiana Zorina as its head. The main goal of the school is to develop the global awareness of the pupils with particular emphasis on democratic, ecological, and cross-cultural issues. In structure, the HGGE is a typical Russian school with students of three main age groups: ages seven to nine (grades one to three); ages ten to fourteen (grades five to nine); and high school students ages fifteen to seventeen (grades ten to eleven). (Many Russian schools at present do not have a fourth grade.) In addition to meeting the national standards of the Russian Ministry of Education, the curriculum includes many subjects to reflect the school’s global concept: foreign languages (English from the first grade, German and French from the fifth, Japanese as an optional subject), health, ecology, global studies, British studies, American history, world literature, dancing, world culture, the history of English, and others. The school has approximately 650 pupils, two classes of each grade with 30 pupils per class. There are seventy full-time teachers, mostly women, who all have higher education (university or a pedagogical instituteluniversity) and five of whom have master’s degrees. Most part-time staff are university teachers. Pupils are admitted on a competitive basis. They are first tested by school psychologists and then by elementary school teachers. All children have primary literacy before entering school. That is, they can read, write, and do simple arithmetic. At the end of the ninth grade, all pupils must take examinations in Russian (composition and grammar), mathematics, and English. Usually only students who achieve grades of four or five on their examinations continue their studies at high school; the rest “try their luck” at another school or educational institution, such as a vocational or professional school. The school provides “professional” training for pupils to “give them help in finding their place in the real world.” Some learn tour guiding and conduct tours of the city, its museums, and suburban residences. Members of the Reporters Club work for different newspapers; the Baby-sitters Club learns to teach English to small children. Others learn business English, have computer studies, learn to type, and then do useful work for the school during summer practice in June. The HGGE is one of twelve pilot global education schools in Russia, the first in St. Petersburg. The school serves as the center for global education in the city, and the administration “cares deeply about the professional development of the staff.” Teachers engage in research on global studies, publish some of their own books, and take part in special monthly seminars on global education. In addition, they participate in monthly “share” meetings to talk about their experiences, new ideas, and problems they may be having. Teachers take part in all kinds of seminars provided by the University of Pedagogical Art, the Russian Academy of Education (of which the principal is a corresponding mem-

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ber), and the All-Russian Center of Global Education in Riazan’. They participate in seminars sponsored by the British Council, the American Cultural Center, the Moscow Human Rights Center, the American Federation of Teachers, and many others. Each year, in June, about 10 percent of the staff takes courses relevant to particular areas of specialization. A number of teachers have participated in international seminars and conferences in the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Finland. HGGE provides professional seminars for teachers in the district, city, North-West region, and from all over Russia. Irina Koroleva, a teacher and a former deputy director of HGGE, who, along with the principal, provided us information about HGGE, is founder and president of a grassroots group called the St. Petersburg Center of Concerned Teachers. This is an informal group with no legal status that was established as a forum for teachers of English. They hold monthly meetings to share experiences and frequently invite foreign visiting scholars, teachers, and consultants to speak to the group. Koroleva says most of the educational reforms in Russia affected high school students and she thinks this is too late, so her group started with a kindergarten teachers’ exchange. With support from members of the group, a number of English teachers in St. Petersburg are now incorporating a “whole language” philosophy into their teaching of English in kindergarten and primary school. They produce many of their own materials and have established a lending library of American children’s books. This same group, under the leadership of Koroleva and in cooperation with the Alabama Reading Association, began the St. Petersburg Reading Council, an affiliate of the International Reading Association. They, too, meet monthly to exchange ideas and study materials received from the International Reading Association. Representatives from a number of schools attend these meetings. We asked Koroleva questions concerning the specific continuing-education activities for teachers at HGGE beginning with special assistance to first-year teachers. She said department heads work closely with beginning teachers, acquainting them with curriculum content. Of great importance, first-year teachers must, according to Koroleva, read a lot about global education and think of ways to integrate their subject and the content of each lesson, each thematic unit, into the general school curriculum. Department heads will observe their lessons and help them to do this. Assistance is provided for second- and third-year teachers through workshops. For example, we have weeks of different subjects, that is, weeks of integrating subjects around a theme. We plan it carefully and discuss with each teacher what she could do with her class. We also have biweekly one-hour department meetings where a lot of different problems are discussed, where teachers share experiences, report on some new methodology, or review new literature in the field. Once every two months the school librarian informs teachers about new arrivals in the

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library. All of our teachers are now working on the probation of nontraditional textbooks, especially for social studies and the sciences. This work is sponsored by the Soros Foundation. Koroleva said that during a typical school year, all teachers at HGGE will engage in the following regular continuing-education activities provided by the school administration, the Center of Concerned Teachers, department heads, and the district educational board: teachers’ meeting, two hours a week; department meeting, two hours each month; teacher workshop, two hours per month. Teachers with five or fewer years of experience will have one lesson a month that is analyzed by the head of the department and sometimes the district or city inspector. Demonstration lessons of teachers with more than five years of teaching experience are discussed at department meetings. When asked what she considered to be the greatest strength of the continuingeducation program provided by her school, Koroleva responded, “A real teacher is always a learner. The ability to learn at school is greatly appreciated by almost every teacher.” And the greatest weakness? “Lack of time! Teachers are overloaded!”

The Republican Inservice Educator-Training Institute About halfway through a trip to Russia, during the academic year of 19951996, we dropped by to say hello to German Sheshing, the director of Pedagogical College No. 2 in St. Petersburg. In his office, he introduced us to a guest from Moscow, the vice-rector of the Republican Inservice EducatorTraining Institute in Moscow, Julia I. Turchaninova. She invited us to visit her and her institute in Moscow for a few days, which we did shortly thereafter. It was she who took us to visit the Pedagogical Gymnasium in Moscow, and it was she who provided us with some hard-to-find recent materials on teacher education published by the Russian Ministry of Education. It was also she who gave us one of the most interesting interviews we have had with anybody in Russia. Turchaninova speaks excellent English, and she exudes the quiet confidence of all real reformers-absolute faith that she can indeed make a difference in the training of teachers. Here is our interview with her, with some minor editing on our part: First, I’ll say a few words about the position of my institute in the network of teacher training and a few words about changes that have been made recently. The Republican Inservice Educator-Training Institute is the central training institute for the network of [retraining] teacher-training institutes in Russia. This network includes about one hundred regional institutes. Our institute was founded in 1928, and the current managing team came in 1991. I was one of these people. Our students are educators who work at all levels of education, and they come to us essentially for retraining.

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They include managers [school principals and their assistants], teachers, and people working in central administration. We provide them with retraining seminars lasting from five or six days to several months. Different departments work with different school subjects and with management, law, economics, pedagogy, and psychology. The main thing that is happening now is that we are trying to change the educational mentality (the worldview of educators) in general because to help them find their way in a changing society, we must help them to rethink and to rebuild their teaching and managing strategies, and so on. The other main direction of our work is connected with just transferring information about the world situation in education, which was always closed for our educators. You can’t understand what you’re doing when you can’t see from a different point of view. We try to help our educators here in Russia to become knowledgeable about other educational models and [to assist them in developing strategies to change our educational system for the better].

Question: Is this true in all your departments? Research programs and international psychology and management deparments, philosophy, history, all these departments are involved in an international program now. What’s most important in what we’re trying to do-to develop an educational mentality-is to help Russian educators to understand that they are not as responsible now for the future of children as they believed they were during the last seventy years or so. [During the Soviet period] schools were told to be responsible for the whole life of a person, and not just during school years, but during a person’s entire future life. We think that the main thing is to help them understand that their role is far more modest-the real role is not a global role, but one that focuses on today’s life of the child-this is the important thing today. In fact [this modest but vitally important role] is what makes this institution different from other institutions and their training programs. The main thing happening in teacher education now, I think, is the change in the structure of teacher education-we are trying to implement the Western two-stage model of teacher education with bachelor’s and master’s diplomas. I am absolutely sure that this model, in the sense of quality, is better than the one we had before. Changing the structure makes people think about what they’re doing and makes them try to restructure and think of better ways of doing things. When the change period ends, when things come to some stable configuration again, the results will not, however, necessarily be better. I’m absolutely sure about it, but in the actual process of changing, some positive results can be obtained [because

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in the process of changing, people are forced to think about what it is they are doing and should be doing]. They’re also trying-the Ministry [of Education], I mean-is trying to implement some standards of teacher education. Question:

Are those standards elaborated? Are they in writing?

Yes, they are now. Well, at least, the main subject fields are now being standardized and procedures for implementation are being elaborated. This will lead to some changes in the system, but I don’t think the changes will lead to better results. We are facing the same difficulties in teacher ed that the whole world is, so the quality of teacher education is poor all over the world, and the problem of improving it is the world’s problem. Question:

I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying you can’t improve the standards of education unless first you improve teacher education? Of course. To improve teacher education means to change. First, to have some really new concept of teacher education; that is, we must first of all have an adequate concept of teacher education. Second, we must retrain an enormous number of people teaching in teacher education, the teacher trainers themselves. For example, take our Department of Pedagogy and Psychology. In the past two years, we have had 260 people teaching in this department [some full-time and many part-time instructors]; yet the total number of people teaching pedagogy and psychology in teachertraining institutions in Russia is roughly 40,000 people. [Neither I nor my colleagues will live long enough to retrain this vast number of teachertraining instructors.] And this is the basic problem. [To change the mentality of schoolteachers, we must first change the mentality of their instructors in teacher-training institutions.] So, I think that the most important development will be connected with some pilot project based on very new ideas on teacher education, and I really hope some brave person will come up with some new concept of teacher education and manage to jump over all the bureaucratic barriers and implement the new conception. I don’t seem to be the one myself. Question: What are some of the kinds of things being proposed for teacher education?

Well, in general there are two main models of teacher education in the world: a college model and a university model. In the college model, we integrate psychological and pedagogical study with [general education

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and specialized subject matter preparation-history, mathematics, etc.] throughout a student’s career at the college. In the university model, we first provide [general education and specialized subject matter preparation] and then the psychofpedagogical part of education. Throughout the world, there are countries in which these models compete one with the other. In some countries, the college model dominates; in other countries, the university model dominates. It’s interesting to observe that in countries where the college model dominates, many reformers believe that the university model must be better, and they elaborate national reforms of teacher ed consistent with the university model. The countries with a university model look at the countries with the college model and think that’s probably better, and they elaborate national reforms calling for a shift to the college model, but in fact the results are the same. We don’t have a single teacher-training institute in the world famous for its high results in teacher training. It’s funny. In both models, we don’t manage to grasp the essence of the teaching profession. Our work doesn’t focus on the heart of the teaching profession in either [the university or college model]. Question:

And what do you consider this essence to be?

I don’t know [exactly], but I just feel that we are out of it because [if we cannot achieve significant results in various facets of teacher training, we simply are not taking] the proper road. There must be something eluding us, and we must someday find it. Question:

What do you think the essence of the teaching model should be?

I have my own vision. The Ministry of Education is nowadays an institution that has the right to legitimize some innovations or changes. For example, some teacher-training institutions want to develop their own individual curricula, and this can be allowed by the local ministry, assuming that the curriculum plan has been legitimized by the Ministry of Education. This seems to be the only point of their real power in education. Question:

You mean, to legitimize innovative programs?

Precisely-[to legitimize innovative programs] proposed by different people, administrations, institutions, and so on, and, you know, [the Ministry of Education is] totally out of money. In Russian jokes they say the one who pays, orders the music; and when they don’t pay, they may pretend to order the music, but the music is played not by them and not by the

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order. [In short, the Ministry of Education does not have much real power anymore. Real power is in the hands of local education administrators because it is they, not the Ministry of Education, who almost completely provide financial support for educational institutions in their city or region.] In years past, I consulted with the Ministry frequently. Now, I haven’t been there once since the 1st of September [four months ago]. I have nothing to decide with them. They’re not the ones to decide. Question: But your institute is under the ministry, isn’t it? Directly under the ministry, but still they cannot do as they did before. . . . They can issue an order that school officials [in various cities and regions] must come to a retraining program; but people in the provinces simply don’t have any money to travel to Moscow, and they just don’t come. So, you see, the ministry has lost all mechanisms of power in fact, and because of this total lack of money, they cannot create any new mechanisms. Roughly speaking, they cannot feed whom they want to feed. . . . Question: If the ministry has so little real power, how can it enforce these standards?

I don’t know. All over the country people are speaking about those standards, but nobody’s seen them. I just came from Riazan’, and no one there has seen them. For example, to get the standards they have to pay a crazy sum of money for a number of brochures describing the standards in different subjects, and the schools just can’t pay that money. [How can school employees, many of whom have not received a paycheck in months] be expected to meet standards which they have never seen? Question: So, schools aren’t accountable to anyone for the standards? But schools would like to have them? Yes-so I must say again. I’m not very competent in the field of standards. I’m not interested in the problem, in fact. I like the Dutch system of standardizing education. They don’t make standards for every year. They make standards for stages of education, and that gives freedom to schools. For example, when a child is twelve years old and leaves primary education, he must meet the standard for that stage. How you do it and what your strategy is, is up to the school. This I like, but the way we’re doing it here, making standards in every subject for every year, is just crazy. So, to get back to teacher education. Basically, our Department of Pedagogy and Psychology is working in five territories of Russia with wide

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groups of educators including people from all levels of education-and parliament as well-starting with preschool education up to teacher training and local educational management. I’ve just come from Riazan’, where we had a week’s seminar for Riazan’ educators. The initiative for organizing these seminars was taken by a group of graduates from our previous year’s program, and they managed to solve an almost unsolvable problem-they managed to entice a broad cross-section of Riazan’ educators, on vacation, to participate in our seminar. We had about two hundred people from all educational levels working together during some days of school vacation, and all of these people came to our lectures and seminars from 9:OO A.M. to 8:OO or 9:OO P.M. every day. We will have another seminar in Riazan’ in January. . . . In the first seminar, we gave a home assignment-to write a recommendation for themselves to be accepted to the next seminar. On this basis we will select ninety to a hundred applicants and invite them to some residence for our next seminar. Some of them wrote whole copy books about the time they were student teachers. It’s so difficult to read all those stories of unhappy and lonely lives of teachers who had no one with whom to discuss their deepest problems and who were so happy to have an opportunity to really experience [in our seminar] something very personal and new as learners. I’m absolutely certain that without new learning experiences for teachers, we can’t expect them to produce new learning experiences for children. Teachers have to experience something new as learners, and this is the most important thing that is happening in Riazan’. Question:

What kind of innovations are you trying, suggesting?

Innovation in a concrete school/establishment is not my business-people who come to my course become, or start to respect themselves as, educators if their worldview is adequate to the demands of current life. If they experience new ways of learning and teaching, they will find a way of implementing innovations in their particular school. [What innovations they implement] is none of my business. I don’t know what their resources are. I don’t know whom they work with. I don’t know their relationship with their particular administration. I cannot advise on that. I have to get involved in the situation, to observe it myself. I can’t say something definite. I can only say something in general. I just meet a person who lives his or her life in education. I meet him as a person with personal problems. If he becomes okay with himself, he finds a way to make people around himself, children included, a little happier and life a little easier, but it’s his job to find ways to do this. I help to give him energy and strong points to decide himself to take freedom and use it and take responsibility. I always tell them [to reach for the stars]. It’s your decision. It’s your de-

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cision how far you go in the struggle [for good education]. You have to decide what you want. You’ve got to be okay with yourself. If you can’t do anything with yourself, how can you do anything with anyone else? First, try with yourself. Put yourself in the place of the child and try to feel how it feels, and if it feels bad, don’t do it. My philosophy of education is very simple. I don’t take a metodist [methodologist] with me to my seminars. Too many people want to talk about methodology and nothing else. Very few people talk about philosophy of education, so this is what we’re doing, trying to get to the essence of teaching from our own personal standpoint, our own connection with the world, with people around us, our colleagues, pupils. [We’re trying to develop] in teachers a philosophical point of view, a psychological point of view. But as for particular methods and procedures, there is a lot of literature on the subject, and anybody can find what they need when they know where they stand [philosophically and psychologically]. The problem is that [we’ve lost a philosophical perspective that demands action on the part of individual teachers]. We must take responsibility, initiative, not wait for support, not expect that we will be supported. If you think this or that should be done, do it. This is where we’re working. We have a fantastic team [of people who conduct the seminars], a very cozy group; and we hope to create in a couple of years an international group of trainers and an international group of participants for our seminar-educators from all levels and different countries-put them all together to do the same thing we are now doing in Riazan’. I have colleagues in Holland, Sweden, and Belgium who are ready to join me in this venture.

Question:

How would you describe a great teacher?

Great teachers make decisions constantly. We have one genius in our department. He has worked with children for thirty years. He created a group called Hope. All children from the neighborhood-children with difficult lives from difficult families-come every day to stay with him and grow up with him. He doesn’t understand anything about what he does, but he speaks, he tells stories about particular children, but his life is just an everyday-I don’t know the English word for it-but the word I want is what a hero does. Every day for thirty years he has worked with deprived children. He has no family of his own, he’s handsome, an absolute child, absolutely fantastic. Last year in March we celebrated his fiftieth birthday. You can’t imagine-crowds, literally thousands of people, came to congratulate him on his birthday. Every deprived child in the district just knows where to go-to him.

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Question: What about support for computers and other technology?

For the last two years we don’t get money for things like that, and it’s a real problem; but, well, people try to find ways to deal with the situation, to survive in the situation. Our work for the last two years was sponsored by the Soros Foundation. We got about four hundred thousand dollars from the foundation for books and other expenditures associated with our work. What was the money spent for? We had our seminars. We had people coming to our seminars from all over Russia, so the institutions that sent them had to pay only traveling costs, and once they set foot in Moscow, they were on our account. From Soros money, we paid lodging, teachers, books, everything. So each seminar last year, they came three times; each time they left with a pile of new books. Our institute received none of this money. The Ministry [of Education] pays only our salaries, so we have to look elsewhere for money to pay for other things. That’s why we moved to Riazan’ last year. In provincial regions it’s a hundred times cheaper for them to pay for ten people from our team to come there than to pay for one hundred people to come to Moscow. So when we work in Riazan’, we don’t get paid for teaching. We continue to receive only our regular institute salary. Riazan’ does pay, however, our traveling and lodging expenses. This week we spent in Riazan’. [Next week we will conduct the same kind of seminar in Cherepovets and then in Irkutsk in Siberia.] We chose these cities and regions because many of our last year’s graduates are there, and they took the initiative to organize the whole thing. . . . The ministry is trying to develop and to support the development of psychological services in education, and I think they’re making the greatest mistake possible in this field because the whole training of psychologists for education is organized in a way that presumes that the main client is a child. This is totally wrong as far as I see it because it will take generations and generations to educate a sufficient number of psychologists to reach out and to help every child, and I’m absolutely convinced that the main client of the educational psychologist should be an adult involved in education-teachers, parents, educational administrators. These are the adults who are making neurotics out of our children, so these adults should be the main clients of the educational psychologist. There is no team in Russia now who can start training educational psychologists for adults. That’s the program we’ll start in Riazan’. So, we shall train the first group of educational psychologists to be adult oriented, and I hope this is really the orientation [that we shall soon adopt throughout Russia in our training of school psychologists]. Our backgrounds are in existential philosophy, humanistic psychology. Our basic approach is one my husband [a professor in Turchaninova’s institute] developed. He

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worked out a kind of theory which he calls the theory of humanitarian systems. He incorporates in his theory a very broad basis of existential philosophers and psychologists, such as Rogers, Maslow, etc. Let us conclude our discussion of contemporary teacher education in Russia by quoting from an article by Turchaninova on a problem that has been disconcerting, if not demoralizing, to the more fainthearted among Russian teacher educators: Part of the challenge [to teacher educators] is that teaching is strongly related to personality, a dynamic about which we know very little. . . . We do not know how people develop and gain the individual characteristics and peculiarities we observe. We do not know what different people need for their education. We don’t know how personal education and experience evolve over time but we can do our best to help them happen. To enhance personal education in my opinion, means to provide conditions for a personality to gain what it needs, although we may not know what it is. We can create as diverse and rich educational environments as it is possible in each institution. If this environment were rich enough for every person coming to our programs to find something (content, a method, or psychological support) or somebody (a teacher trainer or a consultant) to help solve their personal and professional problems, we would help a teacher to enrich their life experience. To make the educational environment rich means to fill it with different educational models, different teaching styles and different views on education. I’m sure we can provide more options and greater meaning if we stop pretending to know the complete parameters of preparing teachers. When we introduce such an environment to the teacher, to become a traveler in this educational country, we need to believe that an adult is quite able to find the way with a good map. Let the teacher make responsible choices. Let them become self-reliant. Offer help when it is needed. But let us not decide what a teacher must do or must become. A teacher has to learn the way in order to be happy, responsible, creative.”* Teacher education in Russia has many problems, but,’ as our interviews suggest, lack of imaginative, thoughtful teacher education leaders is not one of them.

NOTES 1. Bill Keller, “Without Yeltsin I s the Party Over?” p. 15. 2. Mikhail

Gorbachev,

Memoirs

New York Times, 1July

(New York: Doubleday, 1995), p. 680.

1990,

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3. M. S. Gorbachev, “Democratization Is the Essence of Perestroika and Socialism,” Moscow News, document supplement, 31 January-7 February 1988, p. 4. 4. Mikhail Gorbachev. “Success of Perestroika in Hands of People,” Moscow News, document supplement, 24 April-l May 1988, p. 4. 5. Mikhail Gorbachev, “Mikhail Gorbachev’s Interview with ‘Der Spiegel’ Magazine (FRG), Moscow News, document supplement, 13-20 November 1988, p. 2. 6. Mikhail Gorbachev. “A High Level of Interaction and Trust,” Moscow News, document supplement, 14-21 December 1986, p. 7. 7. Mikhail Gorbachev, The August Coup: The Truth and the Lessons (New York: Doubleday. 1995), p. 104. 8. “Excerpts from Gorbachev Speech on Presidency,” New York Times, 16 March 1990, sec. A, p. 6. 9. Hedrick Smith, The New Russians (New York: Random House, 1990), p. 449. 10. Ibid., p. 560. 11. David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New York Vintage Books, 1994), p. 466. 12. Some astute American observers of the Russian scene also believe that Yeltsin’s resignation would be in the best interests of the Russian people. See. for example, David Remnick, “Decline and Fall,” New Yorker, 7 September 1998, pp. 6-7. 13. Boris Yeltsin, The Struggle for Russia (New York: Times Books, 1994), p. 146. 14. “The Basic Guidelines for Reform in the General Education and Vocational Schools” [hereafter cited as “Basic Guidelines”], Pravda, 12 April 1984, pp. 3 4 , condensed text translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press [hereafter cited as CDSP], 36 (30 May 1984): 12-20. 15. “Basic Guidelines,” pp. 13-14. 16. F. G. Panachin, “Reforma shkoly i kommunisticheskoe vospitanie uchashchikhsia,” Vospitanie shkol’nikov, no. 6 (November-December 1984): 4; “Basic Guidelines.” p. 13. 17. Yuri Kanin. “The Economy and Well-Being,’’ Moscow News, 6-13 January 1985, p. 12. 18. V. P. Tomin, Standards of Public Education in the U.S.S.R. (Moscow: Finances and Statistics, 1981), (pt. 1 translated in Soviet Education 26 (May-June 1984): 51. 19. Leslie Gelb, “What We Really Know about Russia,” New York Times Magazine, 28 October 1984, p. 78. 20. “Changing the Guard,” Newsweek, 25 March 1985, pp. 26-27. 21. “Osnovnye printsipy edinoi trudovoi shkoly,” 16 October 1918, in Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR: obshcheobrazovatel’naia shkola: Sbornik dokumentov, 1917-1973 gg., comp. A. A. Abakumov et al. (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1974), pp. 142-143.

22. “On the Further Improvement of the General Secondary Education of Young People and of Working Conditions for the General Education Schools,” Pravda, 29 April 1984, pp. 1, 3, condensed text translated in CDSP 36 (6 June 1984): 16. 23. “Basic Guidelines,” pp. 13, 15. 24. “On the Further Improvement of the General Secondary Education of Young People,” p. 17. 25. Ibid. 26. “Basic Guidelines,” p. 18; “On Measures to Improve the Training and Advanced Training of Teaching Personnel in the System of Education and Vocational-

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Technical Education and Their Working and Living Conditions,” Pruvda, 15 May 1984, pp. 1-2, condensed text translated in CDSP 36 (13 June 1984): 14. 27. “Perestroika shkoly-na uroven’ sovremennykh trebovanii,” Nurodnoe obruzovanie 11 (November 1987): 5. 28. “Through Humanization and Democratization toward a New Quality of Education,” Pruvdu, 21 December 1988, p. 3, excerpts of text translated in CDSP S2 (January 1989): 4. 29. E. K. Ligachev, “On the Course of Restructuring the Secondary and Higher Education System and the Party’s Tasks in Carrying It Out,” Uchitel’skaia gazetu, 18 February 1988, pp. 1 4 , text translated in Soviet Education 31 (April 1989): 6-67. 30. John Dunstan, “Clever Children and Curriculum Reform: The Progress of Differentiation in Soviet and Russian State Schooling,” in Education and Sociezy in the New Russia, ed. Anthony Jones (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 199S), p. 82. 31. John Dunstan, “Soviet Upbringing under Perestroika: From Atheism to Religious Education?” in Soviet Education under Perestroika. ed. John Dunstan (London and New York Routledge, 1992), p. 81. 32. Friedrich Kuebart, “Reforms in Soviet Vocational Education: The Interface of Economic, Labour and Educational Policies,” in Soviet Education under Perestroika, Dunstan, pp. 128-133. 33. Mikhail Gorbachev, “Increase the Intellectual Potential of Restructuring,” Pravda, 8 January 1989, pp. 1-4, condensed text translated in CDSP 41 (1 February 1989): 6. 34. Mikhail Gorbachev, ‘‘Perestroika raboty partii-vazhneishaia kliuchevaia zadacha dnia,” Uchitel’skai guzetu, 20 July 1989, p. 2. 35. “Pedagogicheskoe obrazovanie: real’nosti i nadezhdy,” Sovetskaia pedagogiku, 3 March 1989, p. 91. 36. Mikhail Gorbachev, “The Fundamental Issue in the Party’s Economic Policy,” Moscow News, document supplement, 30 June-7 July 1985, p. 2. 37. P. H. Clendenning, “Ministers Address Crisis in Agriculture,” Soviet Observer, 25 April 1989, p. 3. 38. Alexander Kabakov, “Humiliation,” Moscow News, 19-26 March 1989, p. 5. 39. B.N. El’tsin, “Reform of the School: Ways of Accelerating It,” Uchitel’skuiu guzeta, 25 September 1986, pp. 1-2, text translated in Soviet Education 31 (February 1989): 79. 40. S. Shcherbakov, “Novyi uchebnyi god,” Narodnoe obrazovanie 9 (September 1986): 8. 41. Sergei Voronitsyn, “The School Reform Enters a New Phase,” Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, 18 August 1986, p. 3. 42. Friedrich Kuebart, “Aspects of Soviet Secondary Education: School Performance and Teacher Accountability,” in Quality of Life in the Soviet Union, ed. Horst Herlemann (Boulder, Colo., and London: Westview Press, 1987), p. 87. 43. “Soglasno statistike,” Uchitel’skaia gazeta, 29 June 1989, p. 2. 44. Quoted in A. B. Orlov. “Problems of Restructuring the Teacher’s PsychologicalPedagogical Training,” Voprosy psikhologii, no. 1 (January 1988): 16-26, text translated in Soviet Education 6 (June 1989): 56. 45. VNZK consisted of seven departments, thirty laboratories, and more than 190 educators. For their proposals on educational reform, see “Polozhenie o srednei obshcheobrazovatel’noi shkole,” Uchitel’skuiu gazetu, 16 August 1988, p. 2; “Polozhenie

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o raionnom (gorodskom) sovete PO narodnomu obrazovaniiu,” Uchitel’skaia gazeta, 18

August 1988, p. 2; “Kontseptsiia obshchego srednego obrazovaniia,” UchiteE’skaiagazeta, 23 August 1988, pp. 2-3. 46. For a joint statement by the most prominent figures in the pedagogy of cooperation movement, see Sh. Amonashvili et al.. “The Methodology of Reform: Report on the Third Meeting of Experimental Educators in Moscow,” Uchitel’skaia gazeta, 19 March 1988, pp. 2-3. text translated in Soviet Education 31 (July 1989): 64-77. 47. Gennadii Iagodin, “Discussing Soviet School Reform,” Soviet Life 10 (September 1988): 11. 48. V. Shadrikov. “Shkola: vremia obnovleniia,” Narodonoe obrazovanie 9 (September 1988): 11. 49. Gennadii Iagodin. “Cherez gumanizatsiiu i demokratizatsiiu k novomu kachestvu obrazovaniia,” Uchitel’skaia gazeta, 11 April 1989, p. 3. 50. I. Khankhasaeva, “Much Work Lies Ahead,” interview with G. Iagodin, Uchitel’skaia gazeta. 23 April 1988, p. 3, text translated in Soviet Education 4 (April 1989): 87. 51. “Polozhenie o raionnom,” p. 2; “Shkol’nyi sovet: prava i obiazannosti,” Uchitel’skaia gazeta, 24 August 1989. p. 2. 52. Gorbachev, “Democratization Is the Essence.” p. 3. 53. Vera Tolz, “The Development of Glasnost’ in 1988,” Report on the USSR, 3 February 1989, p. 9. 54. Gorbachev, “Democratization Is the Essence,” p. 3. For examples of Gorbachev’s efforts to control the press, see “Reining in the Press,” Soviet Observer, 21 December 1989. p. 2. 55. “Mikhail Gorbachev’s Closing Speech at the 19th All-Union Party Conference,” Moscow News, document supplement, 17-24 July 1988, p. 2. 56. Iagodin, “Cherez gumanizatsiiu,” p. 1. 57. V. A. Krutetskii, Psikhologiia obucheniia i vospitaniia shkol’nikov (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1976), p. 206. 58. David Shipler, Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams (New York: Penguin Books, 1984). p. 65. 59. Don Barnett, “Inside the Veil of Glasnost,” Soviet Observer, 31 March 1989, p. 6. 60. Ben Eklof and Edward Dneprov, eds., Democracy in the Russian School: The Reform Movement in Education since 1984 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993), p. 68. 61. Eklof and Dneprov, Democracy, p. 20. 62. Ibid., p. 35. 63. Ben Eklof. “From the Editor,” ISSE Newsletter 1 (July 1992): 14. 64. Eklof and Dneprov, Democracy. p. 100. 65. “Zakon Rossiiskoi Federatsii ob obrazovanii,” Uchitel’skaia gazeta, 4 August 1992. For a discussion of this law, see Brian Holmes, Gerald H. Read, and Natalya Voskresenskaya, Russian Education: Tradition and Transition (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1995), pp. 298-307. 66. Eklof and Dneprov, Democracy, p. 74. 67. Holmes, Read, and Voskresenskaya, Russian Education, pp. 301. 315. 68. Eklof and Dneprov, Democracy, p. 60. 69. Evgenii Tkachenko, “Education Reform in Russia,” ISRE Newsletter 3, nos. 1

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and 2 (1994): 14-17; Victor Bolotov, “The Challenge of Educational Reform in Russia,” 3, nos. 1 and 2 (1994): 3-7. Tkachenko was minister of education until the summer of 1996. In August 1996, the Ministry of Education was consolidated with the State Committee of Higher Education and was renamed the Ministry of General and Professional Education. Yeltsin appointed Vladimir G. Kinelev head of this newly formed ministry. Thus far, Kinelev’s efforts at educational reform have been strenuously resisted both by educators and the general public. On resistance to Kinelev’s reform efforts, see Natalya Gridneva, “Haste, Disparate Ideas Mar School Reform Plans,” KommersantDaily, 1 October 1997, p. 3, condensed text translated in Current Digest of the PostSoviet Press (29 October 1997): 10-11; Maria Nikolayevna Lazutova, “Education Reform Is a Failure,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, 14 January 1988, p. 8, excerpts translated in Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press (4 February 1998): 16. 70. For the basic curriculum of general education schools and those with a special emphasis, see A. G. Kasprzhak and M. V. Levit, Bazisnyi uchebnyi plan i rossiiskoe obrazovanie v epokhu peremen (Moscow: MEROS, 1994). 71. The Russian Federation had in operation during the 1995-1996 academic year 68,400 daytime general education schools, with an enrollment of 21.5 million pupils; 913 gymnasiums, with 739,000 pupils; 568 lycCes, with 391,000 pupils; 525 nonstate general education schools, with 45,800 pupils. Eight thousand three hundred of the state schools provided in-depth study of individual subjects (Albert Likhanov, “The Situation of Children in Russia: The Process of the Demographic Aging of the Population I s Continuing,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 21 November 1996, p. 6, excerpts translated in Current Digest ofthe Post-Soviet Press 48, no. 48 [1996]: 9). For a frank assessment of all Russian educational levels, including teacher education, see Victor A. Bolotov, Elena A. Lenskaya, and Valentin N. Shaulin, eds., “The Reform of Education in New Russia: A Background Report for the OECD Review of Russian Education,” ISRE Newsletter 6, no. 2 (fall 1997): 9-62. 72. Anthony Jones, “The Educational Legacy of the Soviet Period,” in Education and Society in the New Russia, ed. Anthony Jones (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), p. 14. 73. Gennady Ryabov, “Reforms in Russia’s Education System,” lSRE Newsletter 5 (spring 1996): 20; Inga Prelovskaya, “Russian Schools Have Managed to Survive to Start of School Year,” lzvestia, 29 August 1995, p. 1, text translated in Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press 47, no. 35 (1995): 20. 74. Vera Iliukhina, “Sowing Reason, Goodness and Eternal Values,” Russian Life 38 (November 1995): 5. 75. Likhanov, “Children in Russia,” p. 9. 76. Eklof and Dneprov, Democracy, p. 101. 77. Evgenii Tkachenko, “The Humanization of Russian Education,” Narodnoe obrazovanie, no. 6 (June 1995): 4-8, text translated in Russian Education and Society 38 (October 1996): 49. 78. Ali Nassor, “Education Keeps Up with the Times: Interview with Russian Education Minister, Yevgeny Tkachenko,” St. Petersburg Press, 20-26 September 1994, p. 7. 79. Quoted in Jones, “Educational Legacy,” p. 9. 80. V. M. Borisov, “An Interview with E. V. Tkachenko,” Pedagogika, no. 3 (March 1993): 34-37, text translated in Russian Education andSociety 36 (August 1994): 48.

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81. In our remarks on the Russian school and social problems, we have relied primarily on Jones, “Educational Legacy,” pp. 3-24. The entire January 1998 issue of Russian Education and Society is devoted to discussion of the health of Russian children. 82. Tkachenko, “Humanization,” p. 48. 83. Julia Rubin, “Yeltsin Wants New National Vision for Russia, Asks Advisers for Help,” Birmingham News, 3 August 1996, sec. B, p. 8. 84. Bolotov, “Educational Reform,” pp. 6-7. 85. Janet G. Vaillant, “Reform in History and Social Studies Education in Russian Secondary Schools,” in Education and Society, Jones, p. 142. 86. William B. Husband, “Secondary School History Texts in the USSR: Revising the Soviet Past, 1985-1989,” Russian Review 50 (October 1991): 474. 87. Vaillant, “Reform in History,” p. 144. 88. Likhanov, “Children in Russia,” p. 9. 89. Janet G. Vaillant, “Reform of Civic and Social Studies Education in Russian Secondary Schools,” ISRE Newsletter 3, nos. 1 and 2 (1994): 26. 90. Nicholai D. Nikandrov, “Russian Education after Perestroika: The Search for New Values,” International Review of Education 41, nos. 1 and 2 (1995): 54. 91. “Russia’s School Kids Eye Wealth,” Moscow Tribune, 12 September 1995, p. 6. 92. Nikandrov, “Russian Education,” p. 57. The percentage of youth valuing education will probably start going up since many Russian businesses now are demanding more highly trained personnel. 93. Craig R. Whitney, “Back in the USSR: The New Ideas Are Visionary, but Not Very Visible,” New York Times, 29 January 1989, sec. E, p. 2. 94. “Place School Restructuring on the Level of Today’s Requirements: Summaries of the USSR Ministry of Education.” Uchitel’skaia gazeta, 14 July 1987, pp. 1-2, text translated in Soviet Education 31 (March 1989): 44-45. 95. Eklof and Dneprov, Democracy, pp. 212-213. 96. Ibid., pp. 212-214. 97. G. A. Iagodin, “Only a Free School Will Educate a Free Person,” Sem’ia, 5-11 February 1990, pp. 8-9. text translated in Soviet Education 33 (July 1991): 38. 98. E. D. Dneprov, V. C. Lazarev, and V. S. Sobkin, eds.. Rossiiskoe obrazovanie v perekhodnyi period: programma stabilizatsii i razvitiia (Moscow: Ministerstvo obrazovaniia RSFSR, 1991), pp. 220-221. See also “Programma deiatel’nosti Ministerstva obrazovaniia RSFSR PO obespecheniiu sistemy pedagogicheskogo obrazovaniia,” Uchitel’skaia gazeta, 11-18 June 1991, p. 5. 99. Pedagogicheskoe obrazovanie Rossii: Sbornik normativnykh dokumentov (Moscow: Ministerstvo obrazovaniia Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 1994), p. 31. 100. Vasily Sukhomlinsky, To Children I Give My Heart (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981). In our discussion of Sukhomlinskii’s ideas on education, we rely primarily on V. Sukhomlinsky on Education (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977). All Sukhomlinskii quotes in the text are from this book. 101. Tkachenko, “Education Reform in Russia,” p. 15. 102. Victor Bolotov, “Reforming Teacher Training in Russia,” ISSE Newsletter 1 (November 1991): 5. 103. James Muckle and Vladimir Prozorov, “Teacher Education in the Republic of Karelia: A Russian Case Study,” Journal of Education for Teaching 22 (January 1996): 34. 104. Our discussion of Moscow School No. 356 relies on Elena I. Pavlova, “Precol-

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lege Teacher Training for High School Students: Phenomenon of Russian Educational System,” Action in Teacher Education 17 (summer 1995): 63-65. 105. T. V. Leont’eva and V. H. Moiseeva, Pedagogicheskaia gimnaziia No. 24,SanktPeterburga nu Vasil’evskom: kniga dlia direktorov shkol, zanimaiushchikksia OER (St. Petersburg: RGPU imeni A. I. Gertsena, 1993), p. 9. 106. For the complete curriculum of the gymnasium, see Leont’eva and Moiseeva, Pedagogicheskaia girnnaziia, pp. 26-28. 107. Ibid., pp. 4041. 108. Ibid., pp. 43, 4547. 109. Ibid., p. 61. 110. Ibid., pp. 6849. 111. A. G . Kasprzhak, Pedagogicheskaia gimnaziia (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1992), p. 3 1. Our discussion of the Moscow City Pedagogical Gymnasium relies on this book and on our interview with the author, A. G. Kasprzhak, who is also the director of the gymnasium. 112. Ibid., p. 31. 113. Ibid., p. 45. The most recently published curriculum of the Moscow City Pedagogical Gymnasium may be found in Sovremennaia gimnaziia-ckerez universal’nost’ k mnogoobraziiu: Sbornik (Moscow: TOO “Charli,” 1996). pp, 175-180. 114. Obrazovanie v Rossiiskoi Federatsii v 1992 godu (Moscow: Respublikanskii informatsionno-izdatel’skiitsentr. 1993), p. 111. 115. For a description of the specialized secondary pedagogical institutions in St. Petersburg, see Pedagogicheskie uchilishcha Sankt-Peterburga (St. Petersburg: SanktPeterburgskii gosudarstvennyi univeresitet pedagogicheskogo masterstva, 1994). 116. G. A. Bordovskii, “Bakalavry i magistry,” Uchitel’skaia gazeta, 3-10 December 1991, p. 8; V. Kozyrev, “. . . Na dude igrets,” Uchitel’skuia gazeta, 3-10 December 1991, p. 8. 117. Bordovskii, “Bakalavry i magistry,” p. 8. 118. Ibid. 119. Kozyrev, “. . . Na dude igrets,” p. 8. 120. For a detailed description of these courses, see T. K. Aleksandrova et al., eds., Bazovoe pedagogicheskoe obrazovanie (pedagogicheskii aspekt): Materialy k uchebnym programmam (St. Petersburg: Obrazovanie, 1993). 121. Larry Holmes, “My Year in Rostov-na-Donu,” ISRE Newsletter 2 (fall 1993):

9. Holmes was also impressed with the ability of his students to consider points of view different from their own. 122. Julia I. Tourchaninova, “In-service Teacher Training for the 21st Century,” Wingspan 10 (January 1995): 10-11.

Teacher Education on the Eve of the 21st Century in Russia and the United States TEACHER TRAINING IN AMERICA Education reform is an especially difficult area; it is strewn with pitfalls because, before you can reform education, you have to reeducate the educators. -Sir Karl Popper

In this concluding chapter we shall do two things: (1) touch on the highlights of teacher education development in the United States from roughly 1918 to the present, with emphasis on those features that most distinguish this development from that in Russia; (2) discuss the common challenges and problems facing reform of teacher education in both Russia and the United States. As Americans welcomed the 20th century, they could rightfully boast, and being Americans many did, that no country in history had ever educated so many of its citizens for such a long period of time as did the United States. To cope with the avalanche of students flooding into public schools, educators developed an organizational model for schools that resembled, in cost effectiveness and efficiency, Henry Ford’s assembly line production of Model T and Model A automobiles. Schools became graded, based on age, and in time had three levels: elementary school, grades one through six; junior high, grades seven through nine; high school, grades ten through twelve. A prescribed amount of time was devoted to the study of each subject in the curriculum. Students proceeded in lockstep fashion from one grade to the next, with the same precision and inflexibility as a Model T Ford being put together on an assembly line. The teaching method typically utilized was lecture, and the objective was to give

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children the information and skills they needed to become productive workers on the farm and in the sprawling new industries in urban areas. Intellectual and social demands on schools in the early years of the century were not exorbitant-simply give children basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills and a disposition to work hard and conscientiously. Furthermore, at the elementary school level, it was widely believed that practically anybody with a high school education and acquaintance with a few “tricks” of the teaching trade could teach. High school teachers, it was believed, needed more knowledge of the subjects they were going to teach but could learn how to teach them, for the most part, on the job. Urbanization, industrialization, and new international responsibilities thrust upon Americans during and after the First World War, however, did demand more highly educated citizens than thought necessary during the 19th century, and this in turn required better-educated, better-trained teachers. Unlike Russia and the Soviet Union, which continued throughout the 20th century to prepare prospective elementary and secondary school teachers separately in improved, specialized teacher-training institutions, the United States responded to the challenge of raising teacher education standards by gradually eliminating specialized teacher-training institutions and requiring prospective elementary and secondary school teachers to be prepared together in colleges and universities that did not specialize in pedagogy. Hence, during the first five or six decades of the 20th century, we see a transformation of teacher-training institutions from normal schools to teacher colleges, and then finally to universities and colleges. By 1920 most state universities had a department of education staffed by professors of education. Professors in the arts and sciences had little respect for this new breed of professor. There were several reasons for this. People hired for education positions in colleges and universities were often graduates of normal schools and teacher colleges, not of universities. Many were not scholars but practitioners, such as school superintendents. Many-unlike their Russian counterparts-lacked a solid background in a recognized academic discipline. In their classes they sought to give secondary school teachers the same kind of insight into child development as that of elementary school teachers. They insisted that all teachers should have some knowledge of how to teach and of the foundations of education: the history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology of education. Then, as today, many professors in the arts and sciences denied that pedagogy was a legitimate field of study at the university level. They insisted that requiring prospective high school teachers to take work offered by education professors, whom they considered poorly educated, was a waste of time. In spite of the coolness, and sometimes hostility, between professors of education and their colleagues in the arts and sciences, departments of education continued to proliferate and expand in number of faculty, students, and curricular offerings. Whatever shortcomings the new professors of education may have had, it cannot be denied that it was they-not the arts and sciences professors who ignored problems of public school and teacher education--who led the

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battle to raise both the professional and the general education requirements for teachers. They had considerable success in this effort. In 1870 most teachers had only a few years of elementary schooling. In 1900 not one state required high school graduation and professional training for certification of teachers. By 1925 both were required by twenty-one states. In 1950 only twenty-one states required elementary school teachers to have a college degree, and six states did not require a degree for secondary school teachers. Today, all elementary and secondary school teachers in public schools are required to have a bachelor’s degree, and over a fifth of the states require a master’s degree for teacher certification. The move to preparing teachers in colleges and universities explains in part the Lynds’ observation in their classic sociological study of the 1920s that Middletown teachers had, in comparison with the previous generation of teachers, more formal book training and less work with schoolchildren.’ Instructors in normal schools and the early teacher colleges were practically oriented and concentrated on preparing their students for work in public schools, providing them with practical experiences working with children in schools. In contrast, education professors in departments, schools, and colleges of education in universities-as well as many professors in teacher colleges trying to become universities-sought status and prestige by emulating their colleagues in the arts and sciences. These professors concentrated their energies and talents not on the preparation of public school teachers but on the production of scholarly research, most of which had little to do with schools or teacher training. As it turned out, this concentration did not gain the respect of their noneducation colleagues, and it alienated public school teachers, who rightly assumed that many of their education professors had little interest in their preparation or in the public school problems they would have to contend with. For example, even in their research, education professors were concerned more with investigating problems related to students and their learning rather than to teachers and their teaching effectiveness. Prospective teachers, understandably, wanted their professors to train them to become effective teachers in real classrooms with real students. For some years now, all teachers in America, elementary and secondary, have been trained in institutions of higher learning. These may be public or private, but the great majority of American teachers are prepared in large state universities. In compliance with state certification requirements for teachers, institutions of higher learning require teacher candidates to have a general education and to acquire a professional education that includes an area of specialization. While the number and kind of course requirements vary considerably from one university to another, most universities require teachers to devote roughly an equal amount of time to general and professional education. General education consists of course work in mathematics, the humanities, the social, natural, and physical sciences, and, occasionally, foreign languages. In the professional education component, students in elementary and secondary programs take courses in the foundations of education and in the techniques and

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methods of teaching. Both foundation and methodology courses are often combined with a series of laboratory experiences involving work with children in public schools. The area of specialization for secondary school teachers consists of ten to fifteen courses in the academic discipline in which they plan to teach. The area of specialization for elementary school teachers consists of taking one or more courses relevant to each of the subject areas typically taught in an elementary school: reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, music, art, and physical education. Prospective teachers conclude their professional work with a two- to four-month supervised teaching experience in a public school. The general education courses for elementary and secondary school teachers, as well as the area of specialization courses for secondary school teachers, are taught by professors in the arts and sciences. All other courses required for teachers are generally taught by professors of education. Unlike in Russia, where specialized institutions provide continuing education for teachers, most of the continuing education for American public school teachers is provided by the same colleges and universities that prepare undergraduate students to become teachers. A large percentage of public school teachers, both elementary and secondary, either have received or are currently working on a master’s degree. Local school districts, as in Russia, provide various kinds of inservice workshops and seminars for teachers, but this work is typically organized without input from teachers and does little to enhance their teaching effectiveness. The great majority of school district officials in America have assumed that teacher education is the responsibility of colleges and universities and, consequently, have spent little money on and devoted little attention to either the preservice or inservice training needs of their teachers. In Chicago, for example, only l percent of the school budget is devoted to professional development. The new demands on schools during the 19th century-promotion of equality of opportunity, morality, democracy, the free enterprise system, to name but a few-remain in force today. but many more have been added. In some states, schools are expected to enhance their students’ religious beliefs by teaching “scientific creationism” as an alternative theory to Darwin’s evolutionary theory. In all states schools have been expected to promote racial integration, primarily by bussing. Schools are expected to teach young people how to drive carefully. Schools must provide scientific facts that presumably will encourage students to avoid liquor, cigarettes, drugs, and an imprudent sexual life. Schools are expected to discipline children who are products of parental neglect. Schools are expected to serve a custodial function by keeping all young people in school until the age of eighteen, even though many have no desire to be there. And, if a Florida judge had his way, schools would have primary responsibility for teaching students to be law-abiding citizens. In sentencing a sixteen-year-old boy for robbing and murdering an elderly widow, this judge pleaded for a state statute that would require schools to teach students to respect the law.’

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Just as in Russia, so in America, it seems that whatever societal problem exists, most people immediately look to the schools to solve it. This unrealistic view of the school by Americans and Russians has contributed to the present lack of clarity about what schools should do and has complicated the process of preparing teachers in both countries. Schools represent but one of several powerful educational influences in any community in Russia or America-the home, church, formal and informal youth organizations, government, judiciary, mass media, to name a few-and children and youth spend most of their time not in schools, but outside them. For this reason it is imprudent to give too much credit or too much blame to schools for the successes or failures of society. Ultimately, it is always society at large that determines the quality of schools and the teachers in them. As Thucydides so aptly put it so many centuries ago, “What is honored in a country will be cultivated there.” At present, the chief characteristic of American teacher education is precisely the same one as for American public school education in general, and that is its extreme diversity and decentralization. In the United States, education of every kind and at all levels is primarily a function not of the federal government, but of the fifty states and of the over five thousand local school districts. Because of this decentralization and unequal educational funding patterns, it is possible to find every possible kind of school in every state, ranging from the very best to the very worst school imaginable. And the same thing can be said about American colleges, universities, and teacher education programs. In most states, it is not the teaching profession, but the state legislature, that controls licensing of teachers and approval of teacher-training programs in colleges and universities. In well-established professions, such as law, medicine, architecture, and engineering, it is the profession that determines training programs for prospective members and licensing of those who successfully complete the program and pass the national professional examinations. Legislators, however, by and large tell “schools of education who they can teach, what they can teach, how they can teach, and even, how long they can teach it,”3 and they generally make most of the decisions about licensing of teachers. Furthermore, while there is a national body that accredits teacher education institutions, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), only three states in 1991 required NCATE accreditation in order for their teacher-training institutions to stay in b u s i n e ~ s .NCATE, ~ in spite of its considerable efforts and successes over the years in raising standards for teachers, is, inexplicably, not always supported even by professional educators. For example, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS)founded in 1987 to establish a system of voluntary certification on a national basis for outstanding teachers-recently refused to require candidates seeking their certification to have graduated from an accredited teacher education program (only 500 of the 1,300 teacher-training institutions are accredited by NCATE). Furthermore, the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) voted in 1995 against a resolution requiring institutions to be

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approved by NCATE by 2001 in order to be a full member of the association. Such actions by NBPTS and AAC’IF are clearly detrimental to the drive to making teaching a legitimate profession. The diversity of American schools and teacher preparation programs is so great that it is difficult to generalize about either. One thing, however, can be said with confidence: Most schools beyond the primary level and teachertraining institutions-in spite of great social, economic, and technological transformations-have changed little over the past fifty or more years. According to Education Week’s recent, impartial analysis of the condition of public education in the fifty states: “There are to be sure several thousand schools in the U.S. that have begun to evolve into institutions that embody best practices and the lessons of research. But most schools-in the way they are organized and run-remain much as they were half a century or more ago.”’ In her study of secondary schools, Linda McNeil observed that teachers delivered lectures in which they did practically all the talking and questioning. History lessons “consisted mostly of teachers’ writing lists on the board for students to copy and memorize.” What appeared to be a press to get through basic facts in order “to lay the groundwork for deeper study was not preparation for study-it was the study itself.” In these classes “students were assigned almost no writing or reading” and the “well-stocked social studies resource library was rarely if ever mentioned.” In one social studies class there were “only a dozen student questions or comments in an entire semester.” All the teachers-and these were teachers in “good” schools, preparing most of the students for college-were obsessed with pouring factual information into their students and having them repeat it back on tests. McNeil concluded that “the model of the school as factory remains the dominant pattern of high school organization today.”6 The teacher education program in most universities and colleges is essentially the one described by James Conant in his study of American teacher education in 1963,’ and that program was essentially the same as that provided by colleges and universities in the 1930s, except that then the overall education was probably better than now since professors, unlike now, took teaching seriously.8 As the philosopher Robert Nisbet observed in a chapter he contributed to a book on great university teachers: At Berkeley in the early 1930s, when I was an undergraduate, almost all student ratings, sober or beery, ranked Frederick J. Teggart among the outstanding teachers on the campus. That was a substantial honor then, for undergraduate teaching was taken seriously. No matter how illustrious one might be as scholar or scientist, the reputation for giving a good course, above all for being a stimulating lecturer, meant a good deal to the faculty and therefore to the students. The time hadn’t yet come at Berkeley-or at any other university in this country, so far as I knowwhen teaching below the graduate level would be regarded as demeaning,

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would be stigmatized by faculty efforts to escape it, and when freshmen and sophomores would be consigned to the ministrations of the immature or incompetent. . . .

Teachers, of course, teach as they are taught, and many of the professors observed by teacher trainees in undergraduate school are not professors of education (or professors of pedagogy in Russia), but professors of the arts and sciences. In the past decade or so a number of reports were published that focused national attention on the need for reform of schools and the training of teachers for them. A Nation at Risk, the 1983 report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, during the Reagan presidency, declared that the American educational system was so bad that had a foreign power thrust it upon its citizens, it would have been cause for a declaration of war. Neither President Ronald Reagan-who fought hard, but failed, to abolish the Federal Department of Education-nor any president since has offered to provide schools or teachers with the resources needed for real educational reform (and the same can be said of all Russian and Soviet leaders this century). Still, this highly controversial report provoked Americans to start thinking seriously about their schools and the teachers in them, and this stimulus was all to the good because a number of other reports soon followed.1° The most recent report on teacher education, What Matters Most: Teaching f o r America’s Future,” was the result of a two-year study by a twenty-sixmember panel, chaired by North Carolina governor James B. Hunt and financed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The report was published in late 1996 and urges policy makers, philanthropic foundations, and educational institutions to work together to ensure that by the year 2006 every child has a competent, caring, and qualified teacher. This call to action is an important step in the right direction since it is based on the assumption, supported by numerous studies, that the most important strategy f o r achieving the nation’s educational goals is to recruit, prepare, and support excellent teachers f o r e v e q school. (Leading Russian educators have long sup-

ported this strategy, but political leaders have given them little support or resources to implement it.) According to the report, “Our society can no longer accept the hit-or-miss hiring, sink-or-swim induction, trial-and-error teaching, and take-it-or-leave-it professional development it has tolerated in the past. . . . What is required is a great national crusade united behind the proposition that competent teaching is a new student right.”” Such a crusade is welcome and needed as much in Russia as in America, but getting it off the ground and sustaining it will not be easy. Educational reformers in these two countries face some formidable, more or less common problems, which we shall discuss under the following three headings: (1) Recruitment and Retention of Teachers; (2) Preservice Training; (3) Inservice Training.

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RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION OF TEACHERS Throughout the 20th century, there have been periodic teacher shortages in both Russia and America, but not for long at any one time. Educational policy makers in both countries solve the recurring crisis with a simple expedientrather than raising teacher standards when there is a teacher shortage, both countries hire people with poor professional qualifications. In the former Soviet Union, thousands of university students without any pedagogical training, were conscripted for two or three years of duty as secondary school teachers. Still today, university graduates with little pedagogical training constitute a significant proportion of Russian schoolteachers. In the United States, the problem of putting a well-qualified teacher in every classroom is as difficult as in Russia. In Nebraska there is currently a widespread shortage of substitute teachers, and the state school board is considering a proposal that would require only two years of college credit for those desiring to work as substitute teacher^.'^ Nationwide, more than 12 percent of beginning teachers enter the classroom without any professional training, and 14 percent have not fully met state standards. More than fifty thousand people in the United States start teaching each year a large percentwith only an emergency or substandard 1 i ~ e n s e .Furthermore, l~ age of teachers do not even have a minor in the subjects they teach. Richard Ingersoll, who did a recent survey for the U.S. Department of Education on outof-field teaching, sums up the seriousness of the problem: Over one-quarter of all secondary school students enrolled in math classes are taught by teachers who do not have at least a college minor in mathematics. The situation is worse within broad fields, such as science and social studies, which include many disciplines. Teachers in these departments are routinely asked to teach any of a wide array of subjects within the field. For instance, even at the 12th grade level, 41 percent of all secondary school students enrolled in physical science classes (chemistry, physics, earth science, or space science) are taught by teachers without at least a minor in any of these physical sciences. Moreover, a stunning 54 percent of all history students in this country are taught by teachers without at least a minor in history. The actual numbers of students affected are not trivial. For example, over 4 million students per year are taught secondary school English by teachers without at least a college minor in English, literature, communications, speech, journalism, reading, or language arts.’5 President Clinton, who has done some good things for education, nevertheless diminishes the importance of professionally qualified teachers through his continued support of the poorly conceived, Peace Corp-type volunteer program called “Teach for America,” a program that places untrained college graduates in urban classrooms.16 The National Teacher Examination now has a performance component that

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requires prospective teachers to demonstrate their teaching skills; yet, only 30 percent of the country's school districts require teacher candidates to pass this e~amination.'~ Furthermore, the two teacher labor unions in the United States, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which together speak for roughly 80 percent of all U.S. teachers in collective-bargaining negotiations, have, typically, strenuously resisted any kind of testing of teachers. Considering these statistics, it is understandable that an academically talented high school graduate interested in teaching will think long and hard about pursuing a profession with such variable and often low academic and professional standards. Good students want to be proud of their profession. There are a number of other factors that discourage an above-average high school student from pursuing a career in the teaching profession-as it now exists in Russia and the United States-but four are particularly significant. First, from Lenin to the present, the SovieURussian government has paid workers and technicians considerably more than teachers and other members of the intelligentsia. Seventy-five percent of teachers in Russia (65 percent in the United States) are women. In the past the best of Soviet women, like women in the United States, entered teaching because they had few other options. But today there are a number of more appealing, lucrative options for women. With the current proliferation of private tutoring, private schools, small business enterprises, and multinational joint business ventures in Russia and the opening of the professions and trades to women in the United States, women in both countries can now make much more money than public school teachers and can do so more and more frequently in occupations with more status than teaching. Second, not only are salaries for teachers abominably low, but teaching in both Russia and America is essentially a dead-end profession-as long as one remains a classroom teacher. The salary of teachers ready to retire is not significantly greater than it was when they first entered the classroom. And when inflation is considered, teachers not infrequently made more their first year of teaching than in the year of their retirement. In the United States the only way for a teacher to make a good salary and gain prestige is to abandon teaching and become a school administrator. Furthermore, more so in the United States than in Russia, outstanding teachers receive little, if any, more salary than competent or incompetent teachers. Third, the physical working conditions for teachers in Russia and the United States are poor at best and often abominable. Iagodin, who was acutely sensitive to the relationship between good teaching and adequate funding, once lamented: "We talk about the individualization of the academic process, about computerization. But of what significance are these talks if in a school where students are jam-packed, there is not one [computer], if there is no running water, no sewage, and many other deficiencies."" American schools are not this bad off, but many are in deplorable condition. A conservative estimate of the cost of putting American school buildings into good condition is $112 b i l l i ~ n . ' ~ Fourth, with a little investigation high school graduates contemplating teach-

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ing as a career will soon discover that pedagogical institutions in Russia and departmentskhools of education in American colleges and universities are sorely underfinanced in comparison with other institutions and departments/ schools. In the United States, in the 1984-1985 academic year, the cost of educating a teacher in undergraduate school was nearly half that of the cost of educating a K-l2 student.20 In this same year, a major state university spent from 50 to 60 percent more on educating engineers and business graduates than on educating teachers.21 In Russia, teacher-training institutes receive three times less money than other institutions of higher learning, and the latter are much more poorly financed than those in Western Europe and in America.” Richard Wisniewski and Edward Ducharme’s characterization of funding of teacher education in America is equally applicable to Russian teacher education: “Preparing teachers on the cheap has been and remains one of our profession’s dirty little secret^."'^ The net impact of all these factors is waste of human resources. In 1988, roughly half of the graduates of higher pedagogical institutions in Russia ended up not working in education.24 In 1994, out of 1,208 graduates of the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, only 187 accepted a job in their area of specialization. As one of these students explained: “Iwould like to live a full life here and now, but how is this possible on the pay of a teacher? I would like to work as a translator in a foreign firm. My acquaintances teach in [private language] courses or engage in private tutoring. Some work as governesses in rich families.”25 The teacher education graduates who do become teachers often quit after a few years, thus creating a serious teacher shortage problem. In 1994 Russia had a shortage of 81,600 teachers.26 A deputy minister of education warned in 1995 that if the teacher shortage continued at the present rate, there would be a 50 percent shortfall of teachers by the year 2005.” The shortage of qualified teachers in Russia is understandable. Shortly before the breakup of the Soviet empire, three hundred thousand teachers had to wait in line for permanent living quarters, a fifth of all city teachers lived in dormitories, and a third of rural teachers lived in a corner of a room provided by the public.28 In recent months there have been regional and national teacher strikes demanding not only a better annual salary, but also wages that had not been paid for months on end. (The average salary for teachers in 1995 was As a teacher in roughly fifty-five dollars a month; in 1996, seventy Moscow lamented, “Financial problems are always on our minds. We’re all tired of just surviving, of suffering.”30 The incredible waste of funds involved in preparing a large percentage of teachers who do not teach or who soon leave the field is not a problem limited to Russia. For example, in Wisconsin in 1985, only 29 percent of the graduates from public-supported schools of education actually took jobs as teacher^.^' In the United States nationwide, roughly 30 percent of college graduates certified to teach do not become teachers, and of those graduates who do teach, nearly half abandon the teaching profession within five years.32

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In those countries that provide good working conditions for their teachers and pay them as much as or more than people with comparable educational qualifications-Japan pays its teachers almost as much as doctors and lawyers, and Switzerland pays experienced teachers three times more than the average industrial wage-recruitment of quality people into teaching, and keeping them there, is not a significant problem. Americans and Russians have yet to take to heart Harry Judge’s common-sense observation that “only when a significant number of prospective teachers can anticipate lifelong rewards comparable to those available to their contemporaries in other activities will a sufficient number of smart people wish to become teachers.”33 A first step in giving the general public in both countries a greater appreciation of the importance and complexity of good teaching is for teacher-training institutions to set high standards of admittance to their programs for prospective teachers. What Ralph McDonald, the executive secretary of the National Commission on Teacher Education and Professional Standards from 1946 to 1951, had to say on this subject is just as appropriate today as it was shortly after the Second World War: So long as teacher preparing institutions admit just any student who applies for admission, or even the average student, we shall have a poor quality of teacher education. . . . If we permit it to be weighted down by low standards, teaching will not have a chance to gain public esteem or adequate financial support. Our experience shows that high standards of admission mean, over the years, a steadier and a larger supply of qualified teachers. It is sometimes assumed that the way to meet a teacher shortage is to lower standards of admission and thereby increase the potential supply by making a greater number of people eligible. This is just the reverse of the truth. Most of the states and school systems which have had the greatest turnover and the greatest number of emergency teachers have been among those which have the lowest standards. . . . We can learn a profound truth from the history of professional progress in medicine, law. and dentistry. It is clear from the experiences of those professions that respect follows the enforcement of high standards. . . . High standards are one key to good teaching. They are the one road to public esteem. They are also the sound approach to the securing of public support which will ensure adequate salaries and good working conditions. Any plan for educational advancement which does not rest on high standards of admission to teaching is like a house built upon the

PRESERVICE TRAINING For teacher education to thrive in Russia or America, teacher educators must gain the respect of teachers, the general public, and the powers that make and

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enforce educational policies. A step in the right direction would be for teacher educators to give sustained, careful attention to such topics as: the art of teaching and the empowerment of teachers; educational philosophy; comparative education; classroom and school research; values; and computer technology. There are many things teacher educators have little or no control over, but they can do something about each of these topics. Perhaps the biggest problem in teaching the art of teaching in both the United States and Russia is that a significant proportion of the general populace and many of the arts and sciences professors simply do not believe that it can be taught by anyone, in particular by professors of education (in the United States) or professors of pedagogy (in Russia)-those people who specialize in the study of the teaching-learning process. In neither country are professors required to have any training prior to employment at an institution of higher learning in any pedagogical subject, including how to teach a subject. The only requirement for employment is whether one knows the subject matter in hisher area of academic specialization sufficiently well to obtain an advanced degree. The ability to convey the subject matter in a meaningful way to students is rarely considered a prerequisite for employment. The belief, extending back several centuries in both countries, is that the professor can pick up the “tricks” of teaching on the job. This canon has filtered down into training expectations for public school teachers. Many legislators in the United States and people in positions of influence, such as national columnists, typically concede that teachers may profit from some student teaching and perhaps a methodology course, but further than this they seldom go. Columnist Neal Pierce’s views on the subject are representative of those of many arts and sciences professors and other members of the intelligentsia. In pondering the kind of training U.S. teachers need for a reformed educational system, he proclaimed: “What about teaching qualifications? The answer could be a bachelor’s degree and three months of intensive teacher training but not the whole nine yards of teacher college courses required by school bureaucracies.”35 The low esteem of many Americans and Russians for the art of teaching accounts in large measure for the low prestige and support of teacher education in both countries. The depth of the low esteem of teacher education in America can be gauged by what James Kilpatrick, one of the country’s most widely read newspaper columnists until his recent retirement, said about it in his review of Richard Mitchell’s The Graves of Academe. Kilpatrick praises Mitchell for treating “the educationists of our land with the contempt they so royally deserve” and concludes that the first step in improving teacher education is to abolish all schools of education.36 John Silber, former president of Boston University and unsuccessful candidate for governor of Massachusetts, asserted that “the willingness to endure four years in a typical school of education . . . often constitutes an effective negative intelligence test.”37 According to George Stephanopoulos, former senior advisor to President Clinton, “The surest way to ruin a good young teacher is to have that person complete teacher training.”38 Perhaps the

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most vitriolic critic of teacher educators, Thomas Sowell, national columnist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, flatly assertscontrary to the evidence, incidentally3’-that “by virtually every test ever administered over the past several decades, people coming out of schools of education are the dregs of the college population.”40 Even the former deputy of the U.S. State Department of Education under President Reagan, Chester E. Finn. Jr., joins this chorus of critics who insist that there is just reason why schools of education “are so widely despised.”4’ Teacher education in Russia is not so roundly and publicly condemned as it is in the United States by such frequent guests of the media as Finn and Silber. but there is no question that it occupies the same low position on the academic totem pole as does American teacher education. The low status results first of all in the large number-especially in the United States-of teacher education institutions and programs, irrespective of whether there are sufficient human, physical, and financial resources to ensure that the programs and institutions are of high quality. In the United States more than 70 percent of all four-year colleges and universities, some 1.300, prepare teachers, and only 500 of these institutions are nationally accredited by NCATE. By way of comparison, there are only 174 law schools, 127 programs in medicine, 92 programs in architecture, and 383 baccalaureate degree programs in nursing.42 Second, the low status of teacher education makes it easy for state officials to treat teacher educators as second-class citizens and to give them less money for their programs than other The result is that administrators cannot recruit the quality faculty they need or provide the faculty they have with a reasonable workload that enables them to give the individual attention to students that a quality program demands. Without adequate staff it is unreasonable to expect teacher educators to be very effective in achieving the oft stated goal in both the United States and Russia of combining theory and practice for teacher trainees from their first to last course. To do so in Moscow, for example, would require the assignment and supervision of five thousand to eight thousand trainees, which works out to be approximately twenty-five to thirty trainees in every school in the city. Exasperated Russian educators wonder where they are to get the numbers of qualified people in public schools and teacher education institutions necessary to supervise adequately such a large number of trainees. They wonder, as does John Goodlad about American teacher education, how their training programs can be very effective without the human and financial resources necessary to individualize the programs, as is done in the United States in programs to train physician^.^^ In both Russia and America the demands on the professional skills of teachers are great; yet, in both countries secondary school teachers are given insufficient work in the psychological-pedagogical disciplines that have the potential to give them the skills and intellectual perspective necessary to meet societal demands. In Russian pedagogical universities and institutes, 18 percent of a teacher trainee’s curriculum is devoted to psychological-pedagogical work.45 This per-

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centage is considerably lower in nonpedagogical universities, which prepare roughly 20 percent of Russian secondary school teachers. In the United States secondary school teachers typically take only seven semester credit hours of work in teaching their discipline and four hours of work in educational found a t i o n ~ Furthermore, .~~ even this small amount is being decreased by state law in such large states as California and Texas. In California, regardless of the program, a student may not take more than nine semester hours of education courses prior to student teaching; and in Texas no more than eighteen semester hours of education courses, including student teaching, may be required for a teaching certificate?’ Such legislation is inexplicable when one considers, for example, the many professional skills that an “empowered” teacher must possess. An empowered teacher is one who is professionally involved in practically everything going on in and outside of school that affects student learning and the teaching profession. Practically everybody involved in education in America, and many in Russia, believes that an essential prerequisite to effective school reform is to empower teachers. (Our interview with Rector Bordovskii suggests that the degree to which a Russian teacher should be empowered is a more controversial subject in Russian educational circles than it is in America, but certainly Bordovskii and other leading Russian educators want a much more empowered teacher than in the past.) The rub is that neither Russian nor American teachers have been trained to assume responsibility for anything outside of their classroom. As John Goodlad noted in his comprehensive study of American teacher education, “We found it to be almost impossible to get from students [in schools of education] during hundreds of hours of interviews a vision of responsibilities extending beyond the c l a s ~ r o o m . ” Chester ~~ Finn suggests what some of these responsibilities might be. He expects teachers not only to “vary their pedagogy to suit the abilities, backgrounds, and interests of their students,”49 but also to be able to:

develop a “school community” in which teachers “share a belief structure, a value system, a consensual rather than hierarchical governance system, and a set of common goals that blur the boundaries between their private and organizational lives”;50 “work collegially to establish curricula for their subjects from kindergarten through twelfth grade”;’l “tailor instructional strategies to the capabilities and preferences of the staff as well as the values of parents”;52 “engage parents and ~ o m m u n i t y ” ; ~ ~ “link the school’s efforts with those of other agencies, from police to child-welfare authorities”:54

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“decide what their school will specialize in” and how it will “distinguish itself from others.”ss To do all these things well requires highly sophisticated skills and a great breadth of imagination and intellectual and professional perspective, but Finn does not expect prospective teachers to gain any of this in a teacher preparation program. In fact, he does not believe prospective teachers need any professional training in college. What skills or insights they need can be picked up on the job. Such a view has long been held by professors in Russian universities. In the 1950s an official in charge of the curriculum for the natural sciences faculties at the University of Moscow declared that “methods-of-teaching courses are not necessary in the secondary grades; it will be enough if the teacher knows his subject well. Practice will teach him how to teach.”s6 (About 20 percent of Russian secondary school teachers, it will be recalled, are trained in universities, not in pedagogical institutions.) Such a position, however, is adamantly repudiated by such prominent Russian educators as F. G. Panachin: “First and foremost, the teacher himself must be an expert on all phases of pedagogical science-history, theory, didactics, methods of teaching and upbringing, as well as the psychology and physiology of children and youth. It is essential to renounce the harmful, widespread theory that the important thing is for the young specialist to know his subject, and that ‘everything else will fall into place,’ will come by i t ~ e l f . ” ’In ~ America, as long ago as 1913, the first president at Teachers College at Columbia University. James Russell, noted that one should “know better than to turn loose the average college graduate on unoffending children. The college department of mathematics does not consider its graduates engineers, nor the department of physiology its graduates physicians. Why should you think the college student of Latin a fit teacher of Latin?”58 In contrast to Panachin and Russell, Finn’s “rule of thumb is simple: Any well-educated adult of sound character, who knows a subject and is willing to try teaching it to children, should be a candidate for entry into the classroom.”59 Such a simplistic view of teacher preparation and of teaching as a profession encourages proliferation of a sad practice, endemic in New York City and other large urban centers. It is no secret that the great majority of uncertified teachers on emergency certificates teach in central cities, where the most highly skilled, experienced teachers are most needed. In New York City alone, of 4,600 uncertified teachers that were hired for the 1988-1989 school year, more than three-fourths had little or no training and only one out of five received mentoring or similar assistance on the job.60 This is the real world of public school education in America, and in Russia it is the real world of public school education not so much in urban as in rural areas, where elementary school teachers must teach all subjects to all children, not infrequently in two or three different grades. The intellectual and pedagogical demands on such a teacher are at least as great as those on secondary school teachers in American inner-city schools. Perhaps

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there is a good reason why poorly trained or completely untrained teachers should be foisted on children until such time as they find out whether they have what it takes to be a teacher, but it is doubtful that the children suffering in a class of a new teacher who did not have what it takes could name one. The irrationality and unconscionableness of this common practice in American and Russian education over the years was noted with some passion and indignation over 170 years ago by the father of American teacher education, James Carter: We require experience in all those, whom we employ to perform the slightest mechanical labour for us. We would not buy a coat or a hat of one, who should undertake to make them without a previous apprenticeship. Nor would any one have the hardihood to offer to us the result of his first essay in manufacturing either of these articles. We do not even send an old shoe to be mended, except it be to a workman of whose skill we have had ample proof. Yet we commit our children to be educated to those, who know nothing, absolutely nothing, of the complicated and difficult duties assigned to them. Shall we trust the development of the delicate bodies, the susceptible hearts, and the tender minds of our little children to those who have no knowledge of their nature? Can they, can these rude hands finish the workmanship of the Almighty? No language can express the astonishment, which a moment’s reflection on this subject excites in me.61 There is yet another powerful reason for having in every classroom in Russia and America a well-qualified teacher. According to Arthur Wise and Linda Darling-Hammond, two of the most knowledgeable American teacher educators, “The weight of research indicates that fully prepared and certified teachers are more effective in producing student learning than teachers without this training. Furthermore, this research shows that, beyond basic subject-matter knowledge, it is the extent of pedagogical training that makes the difference in teacher effectiveness.”62 Teacher educators cannot wave a magic wand to stop political bodies from permitting school boards to hire unqualified teachers; they can, however, begin the slow process of gaining the respect of these two groups of people by, first, raising admission standards to their institutions, and, second, by rededicating themselves to what their most important function should be-to prepare trainees to be effective teachers in the classroom and to assume the responsibilities of an empowered teacher, that is, to do the kinds of things demanded by Finn. What specifically might teacher educators do, given sufficient human and financial resources? Combine theory and practice in most professional courses. This, of course, is the oldest, most persistent, most complex problem that has plagued both Russian and American teacher education decade after decade. Clearly, trainees should be provided with theoretical knowledge relevant to the teaching profes-

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sion, in particular psychological knowledge of children. Seymour Sarason reminds us that what teachers need to know are concrete children, in concrete classrooms, in concrete (no pun) schools, in a particular neighborhood populated by individuals and families who may or may not vary in race, ethnicity, religion, and social class. When you seek to enter the world of children, you find that it is a world that encompasses far more than the subworld of the classroom. For productive assimilation of subject matter, it is necessary but not sufficient to know that larger world. Beyond knowing is translating. . . . The goal is not to enter the world of students, period. The goal is to enter and utilize it to engender the willing pursuit of further knowledge. How to enter that world is in no way given by the nature of mathematics. . . . There are always two subject matters: the kind we label math, history, social studies, science, or literature, and the kind we call children. The former cannot tell you how to approach the latter; the latter is the road map to the assimilation of the former.63 Since teaching skill is content specific-that is, a good first-grade teacher will not necessarily be a good fifth-grade teacher or vice versa-trainees need experience working with students at different grade levels in different kinds of schools and communities. Prepare trainees to survive the first year of teaching by giving them the most essential understandings and numerous, complex skills that an experienced teacher must have. Typically, there is no “break-in,” adjustment period for new

teachers in Russia or America. They are expected, quite unreasonably, to have the same kind of highly sophisticated skills and professional attributes as an experienced teacher. It is unreasonable to expect neophyte teachers to perform as effectively as seasoned “pros.” Still, if new teachers are to survive the first year, they must have basic psychologicallpedagogical knowledge and rudimentary pedagogical skills, techniques, and methods that have proved effective in promoting student learning. Furthermore, no longer should neophyte teachers be expected, as they are in America, to make their own “curriculum.” Trainees must know the content of the curriculum they will be teaching, and they must have some of the basic skills necessary to present it to children so that they will want to learn it. In short, as Makarenko stressed, a teacher must be not only educated but trained. The word training has an unjustified stigma in educational circles in America. It should not have. American doctors are well educated, but they are also well trained in the techniques of their craft. Teachers should also be well educated and well trained. Too often teachers enter the classroom not knowing how to make a lesson plan, handle discipline problems, talk with parents, ask different questions on different levels of complexity, work with small groups of children, analyze learning difficulties, grade papers, give different kinds of tests, conduct

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field trips, involve students with widely different ability and achievement levels in overcrowded classrooms, use computers and other instructional aids as teaching resources, lead discussions, and on and on. As one American teacher put it, “Ididn’t have any ‘nuts and bolts’ knowledge to carry into battle.”64 Lack of technical knowledge often overwhelms beginning teachers and drives many of them from the profession. To be sure, teachers do need to be “students of teaching” and to develop a clear vision of what schools at their best should be-only with a predominance of such teachers can schools improve-but they also need at least three other things: basic skills that will enable them to survive the first year or two of teaching in schools as they are; a large stock of teaching techniques and methodologies that have proved

effective in increasing student learning (the big problem here is that pointed out by Arthur Powell: Unlike some other fields, education has not learned how “to codify, preserve, and transmit the lore of successful experience”);65 a coherent curriculum that has continuity from month to month and year to year-it is indefensible to force teachers, on their own recognizance, to continually reinvent the curriculum wheel. The United States is the only industrialized country in the world that demands that teachers be, essentially, their own curriculum makers. Instill in trainees the conviction that all normal children can learn

if

they

have the opportunity and encouragement to do so. This

is especially important in America, where too often it is assumed that the ability to learn is innateone either has the ability or does not. Such a harmful assumption should be replaced by the belief that any normal child or youth can learn with hard work. Japan and other Asian countries, as well as a number of European countries, have proved that most students can achieve a high level of knowledge if it is expected of them by teachers and society at large, and if teachers are adequately trained to steer this hard work in the right direction. Teach trainees how to work collaboratively with colleagues in conducting action research that focuses on enhancing student learning. Makarenko insisted

throughout his teaching career that it was the entire school that educates, not just individual teachers, and that effective schools are those that have teachers with similar pedagogical ideas and convictions and a commitment to improve not only their own teaching, but also teaching throughout the school. For teachers to develop this commitment and unanimity of pedagogical perspective, they must have the opportunity, encouragement, and training necessary to work together on issues affecting the welfare of the school and the community it serves.66 In the short period of preservice training, teacher educators of course cannot develop the social intercourse and research skills of their students to a

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high level, but they can provide students with elementary training in these two areas, training that can be perfected over the years through inservicc training. Furthermore, teacher educators can arrange for teacher trainees to observe over time, and perhaps to participate in as well, cooperative teams of teachers engaged in conducting some kind of action research. What do we mean by action research? According to Ann Bradley and Jeanne Ponessa, two reporters for Education Week, this is a term that is often used “when teachers put their heads together to examine a problem and come up with a solution.” Bradley and Ponessa give an example of action research: Prompted by disappointing 3rd-grade scores on a state assessment, teachers at Selma (Ore.) Elementary School have been working all year on a literacy project. The school’s nine teachers, along with the principal and other staff members, analyzed their reading program, identified barriers to reaching their goal, and brainstormed about how to remove them. They next devised a plan of action, assigned tasks, and began working to solve their problem. As part of the research, teachers toured the 150student school, took an inventory, and devised a sign-out system that makes reading materials more widely available.67 Sukhomlinskii argued that involvement of teachers in “action research” should be an ongoing, permanent feature of a good school. Today, many leading Russian and American educators agree with him. Provide trainees with a sense of purpose or, “philosophy of education.” Years ago, K. D. Ushinskii noted the close connection between the philosophical sciences and education and believed strongly that philosophical thought should direct and serve as the foundation of education. This idea, however, was by and large ignored by subsequent Russian and Soviet educational policy makers. Only recently have some Russian teacher-training institutions started to pay attention to philosophy of education; their counterparts in America, however, have in recent years virtually ignored the teaching of philosophy of education. Teachers in Russia and America need teaching skills, to be sure, but they also need preparation that will enable them to participate actively in the never-ending national debates about what schools should be doing. Courses in philosophy of education, if well taught by a trained philosopher knowledgeable about public schools and teacher training, can help prepare them for this debate. Such courses, according to Charles Silberman, should develop the ability and the desire of teachers “to think seriously, deeply, and continuously about the purposes and consequences of what they do-about the ways in which their curriculum and teaching methods, classroom and school organization, testing and grading procedures, affect purpose and are affected by it.”68 Philosophy courses are important, but their significance will be impaired if a coherent philosophy of education does not permeate a teacher-training institution. Unfortunately, Russian and American teacher-training institutions are rarely

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centers of intellectual ferment. They should be. If trainees are to gain a vision of what education at its best should be, their professors must have this vision. Ideally, all professors in institutions that prepare teachers should possess a philosophical habit of mind and should strive conscientiously to develop this same habit in their trainees. The need for teacher trainees and teachers to develop a philosophical habit of mind is suggested by an observation of Stephen Kerr, who in 1990 attended a two-week Eureka-Avant Garde seminar in Estonia that was organized for experienced teachers who sought additional ideas and guidance about how to do things differently in their classrooms: Fourteen seminar members listened as Lidiia Konstantinovna Filiakina, a dynamic teacher who works at Tubel’skii’s school in Moscow, guided them through a discussion. The questions were deceptively simple, but they made the audience uncomfortable: “What is a pupil?” she asked. “How should a classroom be organized?” “What kind of voice do you use when talking with pupils?” The intent was to encourage those present to think not only about what they were doing, but why, and to what effect. It was a disconcerting experience, and only about five of the group participated actively. Some of the responses suggested why reflecting on these questions was so difficult, so essential-“A pupil is someone who learns what I say”; “If I let one child leave the room without permission, then they’ll all want to, and what would happen then?” Much time was spent raising these teachers’ awareness that kids are people, that how children feel about school can affect what they learn, and that there is more than a single way of teaching.69 Introduce prospective teachers to the fundamental principles of conducting group discussions and give them as much experience as possible in participating in them and conducting them. We have observed hundreds of secondary school

teachers teach in the United States and many in Russia. Most of the American teachers had no idea how to involve their students in a fruitful discussion that enhances their knowledge and understanding of the subject matter at hand, and most of the Russian teachers did not even attempt to conduct a discussionthey were not taught to do so in their teacher-training institution^.^^ Teachers, of course, must learn many different teaching methodologies, but if they are to put into effect ideas propagated by members, say, of the pedagogy of cooperation movement, they must, above all, learn how to conduct discussions. Coaching students effectively and giving a sparkling, interesting, well-organized lecture require skills of a high order but not nearly as high as those required for conducting a good discussion at any educational level, for reasons given by Jacques Barzun, a prominent historian who taught for many years at Columbia University and author of, among other books, one of the classics on teaching:

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Handling a discussion group requires a special talent. . . . Here the drama is more subtle [than in a good lecture] but equally imperative. The hour’s discussion must not go off in all directions like a leaky hose. It must have a pattern, beginning at a given point and logically reaching another, from which to start again the next day. Now it is relatively easy to impose a pattern on a lecture; the scheme of it can be written out beforehand and even memorized, because no one will interfere with it. But in a discussion, every one of twenty-five or thirty men has a right to shove the tiller in any direction he pleases. Since there must be an atmosphere of freedom, the instructor must not act like a priggish moderator with a gavel. He must be willing to go up sidetracks and come back. His imagination must swarm with connecting links, factual illustrations, answers to unexpected questions. He must moreover know how to correct without wounding, contradict without discouraging, coax along without coddling. . . . 71 Provide teachers and teacher educators with knowledge of education in countries other than their own. Practically all the great Russian educators have stressed the importance of educational policy makers enriching their understanding of the possibilities of Russian education with a careful study of the teaching/ learning process in other countries. Such knowledge is equally important for classroom teachers who need as broad a perspective as possible about children and about what and how to teach them. In the 19th century leading Russian and American educators were well acquainted with the achievements of pedagogical science in countries throughout the world. This familiarity greatly diminished in both countries throughout most of the 20th century. Over the past few years, many Russian educators have become very interested in what other countries are doing with their schools. Thus far, however, Russian teacher-training institutions provide teacher trainees with little work in comparative education. In America, though there are a number of “comparative education” experts, few colleges require undergraduate teacher trainees or administrators to take any course in comparative education. As Philip Altbach, one of the best of these experts, noted: “Foreign experts are always studying American schools, American corporations, and American science. They feel that they have much to learn from us. They read our books and translate them for wider dissemination. But Americans seldom take seriously the experiences of other countries.”72 The late Albert Shanker, longtime director of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, often bemoaned the provincialism of American educators and American society in general on educational matters around the world, especially in countries competing with us economically. He argued that the best way to improve schools is to learn from our competitors (nations such as Germany and Japan), to find out what they are doing that enables their students to achieve at higher levels than American students. In 1992 he noted some of the

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most important differences between the traditional schools in the competitor nations and those in America: Schools in these countries are run by professionals, with relatively little interference by lay persons. Schools are financed nationally or regionally. As a result, the disparity between wealthy and poor schools that is so destructive and shocking in the U.S. does not exist. For the most part, there is a national curriculum. Teacher training, textbooks and assessments are geared to this curriculum. If students move from teacher to teacher or school to school, there is continuity. Assessments are curriculum-based and challenging. Teaching to the test is something positive when you have really good tests. These countries produce a higher percentage of students at top levels of achievement. Also, teaching is a relatively prestigious-in Japan, very prestigious-profession, so they can guarantee that all classrooms have teachers who have attained high levels of excellence. Like us, these countries track their students. However, we begin as early as first grade and they hold off until later. This means that all their kids get a more or less equal start. Ours don’t. All these countries have clearly visible consequences for student performance. There are strict college-entry standards and clear employment standards. Students work hard, and their teachers and parents push them because success is rewarded in all tracks. Schools are relatively safe and free from disruption because the legal system supports school regulations needed to maintain a proper educational atmo~phere.’~ Historically, Shanker’s description-with a few notable exceptions, such as teaching being a prestigious profession-would be applicable to Russian schools. But since the collapse of the Soviet empire, Russia has hastily adopted some American practices of questionable value, such as decentralized school administration, regional and local financing of schools, and reduction of the national Ministry of Education to a role not much more significant than that played by the American Federal Department of Education. Hence, it might behoove Russian educators to slow down a little in their reformist zeal until such time as they have studied more carefully the consequences of some educational practices in America and in other countries with recognized “good” educational systems. Perhaps in Russia and America, the most immediate need is to make comparative education an important component in the training of teacher educators so that they will in turn make comparative education an integral component in the training of schoolteachers and school administrators.

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Listen carefilly to what teachers have to say about improving teacher education. Just as schoolteachers should listen carefully to their students, teacher

educators should listen carefully to their clients-teacher trainees and practicing teachers. With the possible exception of Russian primary school teachers trained in pedagogical schoolskolleges that focus on preparing their trainees to teach, Russian and American teachers strongly believe that the teacher-training institutions that trained them should be more committed to preparing them for the practice of teaching. Teacher educators in colleges and universities in America and in pedagogical instituteshniversities in Russia, on the other hand, have over the years been much more interested in the study of theories of teaching and learning that teachers typically consider remote from the everyday realities of elementary and secondary schools. Teachers in both countries believe that overemphasis on theory in their teacher-training institutions has resulted in their inadequate preparation for the classroom. What teachers are demanding are the systematic, details for putting a theory into action and the means-specific, structural methodologies, various kinds of equipment, and high-quality teaching materials-to do so. It seems that modern-day teacher educators have too often ignored the admonition of such classic teacher educators as Carter, Ushinskii, Shatskii, and Sukhomlinskii that good teacher educators must be both theoreticians and practitioners and that they must provide prospective teachers with both theory and practice in a coordinated way. As Ushinskii noted, “A normal school without a practical school attached to it is the same as a medical faculty without a clinic; but pedagogical practice alone without theory is the same as quackery in medicine.”I4 In a recent survey of American teachers by the Council for Basic Education, their responses suggest three major changes to teacher preparation: (1) require teachers to know well the content of subjects they plan to teach; (2)teach pedagogy always in the context of academic content; (3) provide teacher trainees with numerous, varied school-based experiences. The responders also recommended that trainees be required to have at least a B average in an academic major; that they not be allowed to graduate without first passing an exit examination that assesses the breadth and depth of their knowledge of the subjects they plan to teach; and that the pedagogy courses offered by a teachertraining institution be jointly developed by a team of classroom teachers, teacher educators, and professors in the arts and sciences. It was also suggested that the pedagogy courses be taught at the same time that trainees are having practical experiences in schools so that they can see how pedagogical ideas are applied If medical, law, engineering, and business schools igin a classroom ~etting.’~ nored suggestions by their graduates, they would soon be out of business. Survival is a powerful reason why teacher educators should listen very carefully to what their graduates have to say about their training. Encourage teacher educators to do more and better-qualityresearch, focused primarily on improving teaching effectiveness. What Kenneth Wilson, a Nobel

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Prize winner in physics, and Bennett Daviss said recently about educational research is equally applicable to Russia: “Teachers learn no repertoire of research-based classroom performance and management techniques that have proved to be consistently effective. Their profession has no structures through which to broadcast new understandings when knowledge of pedagogical methods or the psychology of learning advances.”76 To be sure, the knowledge base for teacher education has improved in the past decade or but still there is much that teacher educators-not only in Russia and the United States, but throughout the world-do not know or know very imperfectly, for example: What specific knowledge and skills must a teacher master in order to enhance student learning? What should be the relationship between the professional and nonprofessional aspects of a prospective teacher’s training? How many years of training are desirable for primary and secondary school teachers? Should the length of time be different, as in Russia, or the same, as in the United States? Which parts of educational theory should trainees master before becoming a teacher, and how should this theory be correlated with practice? What is the relationship between knowledge or skill mastery and subsequent success in practice? What kind of work should schools and teachers do with parents, and how do different kinds of work affect student learning? What kinds of cooperative arrangements between public schools and teacher-training institutions are most effective in enhancing the knowledge and pedagogical skills of teacher trainees and classroom teachers? What school structures and teacher workloads best promote student learning? How do different kinds of mentoring programs for beginning teachers affect student learning and retention of teachers? How can teachers best be prepared to do research and to be critical interpreters of educational research? What effect do research skills have on teaching effectiveness? In addition to preparing classroom teachers, what other school-related jobs-curriculum specialist, school research coordinator, ‘educational designer,” “educational troubleshooter,” community liaison, etc.should teacher-training institutions prepare teachers to assume? What are the fundamental ideas of academic disciplines taught in schools, and when and how should these ideas be presented to students of different ages, intellectual abilities, and socioeconomic backgrounds?

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None of these questions has an easy, simplistic answer. For teacher education to rise in public respect, teacher educators must base their actions on a solid foundation of knowledge supported by quality research. This means that teacher educators must be not only good teachers, but active researchers as well. Sukhomlinskii was a superb model of the kind of teacher educator now needed in both Russia and the United States. Production of a large number of educational researchers in teacher-training institutions will not be easy in Russia or America. (It should not be forgotten that many Russian educational researchers are associated not with traditional teacher-training institutions, but with the Russian Academy of Education.) Most teacher educators have done little substantive research; and even if they had the desire and training to do so, most have little time to do it. In America, for example, education professors typically have a heavier teaching load than their colleagues in the arts and sciences, and they must, in addition, supervise student teaching and consult with schools. In Russia, the workload for professors is even heavier than that of their American counterparts. Per year, faculty in In some pedapedagogical institutes meet classes at least 750 to 850 gogical institutes, the professor has face-to-face contact with students as much as 38 hours a week.79 Furthermore, some Russian lecturers insist that they will defend to “the last drop of their blood” thirty-plus hours per week of face-to-face contact with students.80 Not only does such an attitude and workload make it almost impossible for most professors to do substantive research work; it also makes it difficult for students to have sufficient unencumbered time to think seriously about what it is they are learning. In our survey of over seventy students in their last year at Pedagogical College No. 2 in St. Petersburg in 1995, practically every one of them spoke highly of their training, but almost to a person they complained that they had no time to do anything except attend classes-some seven or eight forty-five-minute classes a day-and prepare for classes, that they were exhausted much of the time. They go to bed very late, from midnight to 2:00, and they “hate to get up.” Few “jump out of bed eager for a new day”; all want to sleep longer, and some dream of the weekend when they can sleep in. Overloading of students at all educational levels has a long tradition in Russia. Now that it is no longer necessary to keep students so tired that they have no energy to hatch subversive ideas, reconsideration of this tradition is in order. If the status of schools is dependent on the status of teacher education, and if the status of teacher education is dependent on a fund of reliable, quality research data that supports the specific ways teacher educators prepare teachers to enhance student learning, promotion of educational research should be a high priority of government in both Russia and America. At present, it is not. In Russia even the most prestigious scientific institution in the country, the Academy of Sciences, is suffering a severe crisis of lack of funds to do its work effectively. In America, the average federal agency in 1991 spent 4.7 percent of its budget on research and development, while the Department of Education

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spent only .8 percent. Furthermore, the federal government spends three times more money on research in agriculture and twenty-one times more in space research than it does on research devoted to improving schools.81 Most people in Russia and America would probably agree that educational research should be an interdisciplinary effort, but long-range, interdisciplinary research requires financial support, and researchers, quite naturally, engage in research that is adequately funded. In America, and probably in Russia as well, there is not a ‘single study available to demonstrate that variations in the content and process of teacher education made a difference in how well teachers taught.”82 Such knowledge obviously is prerequisite to improvement of teacher education. Yet, long-term, large-scale, well-funded research efforts to improve education of teachers have no precedent in either the United States or in Russia. One is forced to agree with Del Schalock that “until such efforts are undertaken, and accompanied by research on the benefits and costs that accrue, teacher education will never progress in either its form or effectiveness far beyond what it is today.”83 Help teachers to assume an “upbringing” role with their students. There is too much anecdotal testimony to deny that teachers do exert some influence, often decisive, on the development of the character of their students. It is desirable that this influence be conscious and in the right direction. Our survey of American teachers in the greater Birmingham, Alabama, metropolitan area and our study of teachers in St. Petersburg with our Russian colleagues indicated that the great majority of teachers in these studies took very seriously their responsibility to instill worthwhile values in their students. Furthermore, parents in both Russia and the United States want teachers to help them in developing the character of their children, and with good reason. Participation of young people in both countries in juvenile delinquency and serious crimes is reaching epidemic proportions. William Bennett, former secretary of education under President Reagan, noted that “we desperately need to recover a sense of the fundamental purpose of education, which is to engage in the architecture of souls. When a self-governing society ignores this responsibility, it does so at its What kind of values might teacher educators help their trainees to instill in children? This is a difficult question because many values are very controversial in both countries. Teachers, obviously, cannot teach values contrary to those held dear by the community served by their schools. But there are a number of values that they can help instill in children that most could agree on. Let us mention a few. What better way to start than with that most basic of values, the value that provides the lubricant essential for humans to communicate with and learn from one another? We are spealung, of course, of politeness, or manners. Edmund Burke once said that “manners are of more importance than laws.” It is distressing to us to visit classrooms where teachers permit students to be rude and inconsiderate to one another, and sometimes even to the teachers themselves.

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When teachers permit this kind of behavior from students, they have abandoned their role as “architects of souls.” Suzanne Fields, a national columnist, noted that “manners and respectful gestures, such as opening car doors, a man standing when a woman enters the room, walking nearest the curb (where the water from the street splashes him, not her) and giving up a seat to a woman on a crowded bus are all gestures gone the way of fluffy pantaloons on piano legs.” Fields concedes that ‘Victorian morality,’ and the ‘code of the gentleman’ sprouted hypocrisy and double standards, as every liberated one of us knows.” But she points out that “such scruples spawned civilizing side benefits, too” such as teaching young boys and men to respect women. She then gives a number of examples of what happens when boys are not taught this respect. A playground sport now includes a recreational pastime called “penetrating rape.” A twelve-year-old girl in Yonkers, New York, told police how eight boys, ages nine to thirteen, threw her down on the ground and-while six other girls held her-aggressively fondled her. Two fourteen-year-old girls in Montclair, New Jersey, say they have been gangraped three times by boys, some of whom were in the seventh grade, twelve or thirteen years old. Fields concludes that “the breakdown of manners and the destruction of traditional morals in bourgeois society knocked woman off her pedestal. Modern young men in groups are kicking her beyond recognition.”85 Teaching boys to respect girls is particularly important in Russia, where male chauvinism still reigns supreme. Teachers, of course, can do more than teach their students good manners. In a hundred or more ways every week, teachers can help mold the character of children by showing them clearly that: “

self-control is the first step toward achieving any goal; actions have consequences; hard work pays off; people will treat you as you treat them; listening carefully, as Lord Chesterfield wrote his son, is the “mark of a civilized man”; being kind to other people, especially to those who are different in some way from you, will make you feel good and make the world a little bit better place in which to live.

As we all know, the best way for teachers, or anybody else, to teach children worthwhile values is for teachers to model those values themselves. Perhaps the two most important things that teachers can model for their students is a deep reverence for life in all its manifestations and a passion for learning and for sharing knowledge with other people. One way teacher educators can assist teacher trainees to assume upbringing responsibilities is to acquaint them with

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the writings of Sukhomlinskii, who, it will be recalled, stressed that teachers should couple love of beauty with high moral ideas and actions. He taught his teachers to use art to develop compassion and empathy in their students. H e taught them techniques to enlarge the capacity of their students to feel and sense nuances of emotion and to discern loneliness, humiliation, bewilderment, sorrow, and suffering in the eyes of others. Russian and Soviet teacher educators have had much experience with helping teachers fulfill upbringing responsibilities, but this is a field that has been virtually ignored by American teacher educators. It merits their careful attention. Provide teachers with fundamental knowledge of computers and how they can be applied to enhance the instructional process. Educators have always accepted new technologies with great reluctance. Socrates opposed writing because it would impair the ability to remember things; professors opposed printing of textbooks because it would threaten their authority; and so on up to the present day. This is unfortunate. In a March 1997 interview with Rodney Riegle, a pioneer in development of computer-oriented courses for prospective teachers, graduate teachers, and administrators, he stressed that the educational implications of the computer revolution are as momentous and far reaching as those introduced by the printing press. The printing press democratized accessibility of knowledge, but computer technology, Riegle believes, can democratize accessibility of knowledge even more so than the printing press. H e does not believe computers will replace teachers, of course, but they can greatly supplement their work. In Riegle’s judgment, teacher educators have a great responsibility to prepare teachers who not only know computers, but also know specifically how to use them to increase their teaching effectiveness. For example, teacher educators might show teachers how computers can, in the words of former education editor of the New York Times, Edward Fiske:

“[be] the most important new technology for writing instruction since the invention of the pencil-maybe even more so. Learning to write is essentially self-editing. The craft requires writing and rewriting. For little children, the biggest obstacle to learning to write is the physical act of moving the pencil across the paper, but computers make this unnecessary. For older students word processing allows endless revisions. . . .” “[be] powerful tools for working the curriculums of schools away from rote learning and toward the problem-solving skills that students will need in the workplace of the future. . . .’ ’ “promote the value of respect for diversity. Whereas teacher talk appeals to the minority of students who learn best by hearing abstract ideas, computers offer a dazzling array of visual images. For a generation that has grown up on television and music videos, the significance of this is considerable. Moreover, since computers are inherently social devices-

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a document on a computer screen is public property-they enhance cooperative learning. Students work together naturally on computers.” “make possible the creation of knowledge on the part of the student, not simply the dissemination of knowledge by teachers. . . . Technology helps the teacher to create an environment in which kids can build connections, not simply parrot their teachers, and to create knowledge that is new even to the teacher.” “[promote] networks of learners . . . across town or around the world.” “transform virtually all aspects of the factory-model The old factory-model of school that has hung on tenaciously in Russia and America throughout the 20th century is clearly no longer appropriate as we approach the 21st century. Just as the shift of the agricultural age to the industrial age demanded educational change, so shall the shift from the industrial age to the computer age. Rather than being tuba players at the back of bands in a festive parade-as teacher educators, for the most part, have always been in both Russia and America-they can be drum majors and lead the bands by making sure that prospective teachers understand the Internet, in particular the World Wide Web and e-mail; acquire skill in three important areas: acquiring information, analyzing it, and communicating it-in short, teachers need to become information-skill experts as this is essential for education in a computer age; not merely become tolerant of computer technology and the changes it portends, but embrace it enthusiastically as an essential tool for enriching their education and that of their pupils; understand children as they relate to machines, and vice versa; learn how to analyze software and use it for instructional purposes; are familiar with different kinds of specialized computers as they come on the market, with their capabilities and potential instructional use. Deans in schools of education in the United States and rectors in teachertraining institutions in Russia must, of course, have professors who understand technology and its instructional use. This will require massive retraining of most professors in both Russia and America, and it will require that new faculty members possess the necessary computer-instructional knowledge and skills. Furthermore, deans and rectors who take the computer revolution seriously should, in Riegle’s judgment, hire as the number-two administrator a person who is an expert not only in computer technology, but also an expert in the instructional process. A final point: Schools must be adequately equipped with computers if educators are to lead a technological revolution in school reform.

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The quantity and quality of computers in American schools are woefully inadequate; many Russian schools have only one computer for the entire school, and often not even one.

INSERVICE TRAINING Makarenko believed that the real professional education of teachers began once they started teaching full-time in a school. We believe that preservice teacher education is exceptionally important, but there is much truth to Makarenko’s belief. One of the great defects in teacher education in both Russia and America is the lack of a serious commitment by school systems to the lifelong professional development of their teachers. Why is this commitment so important? To put it simply, student growth is dependent on teacher growth. As stressed by Seymour Sarason: “ l f t h e collegial conditions do not exist wherein teachers can learn, change, and grow, they cannot create and sustain those conditions f o r productive learning in their students. ”

The big problem, Sarason believes, is that “it has not been instilled in teachers that it is their professional and ethical responsibility to forge a collegiality productive for their and their students’ personal, social, and intellectual development. The preparation of teachers is exclusively concerned with their responsibility to students, not with the responsibility of teachers to themselves and their colleague^."^^ In the section on preservice training of teachers, we discussed the necessity of teacher-training institutions addressing this problem in their work with teacher trainees. These institutions need to continue this work with practicing teachers. Having an appropriate philosophical perspective, however, is only the first step. The second crucial step involves, primarily, school districts in America and education committees in Russia. School districts and education committees are roughly equivalent, though there are significant differences. Education committees, unlike school districts, are an integral part of local governments; that is, the St. Petersburg education committee, headed by a president, is subordinate and responsible to the mayor of this city. Being a part of city governments, education committees do not have as much freedom of action as do many school districts. However, whatever their differences may be, if teacher education is to improve significantly in Russia and the United States, school districts/education committees (SDECs) must give teachers the support, incentive, and time essential for teachers to advance their professional development and that of their colleagues. Thus far, the overwhelming majority of SDECs in America and Russia have not done this. First, SDECs provide practically no financial support for professional development. In the United States, for example, only .5 percent of school district budgets are allocated to professional development.x8Second, there is little financial incentive for teachers to engage in professional development that specijically enhances their teaching effectiveness. Third, teachers

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have hardly any time during the regular workday “to come together to study each other’s work and help each other to become better teachers.”s9 Secondary school teachers in Russia, theoretically, are supposed to teach only eighteen hours a week, but all teach far more than this for the simple reason that they get paid more money for teaching an overload of classes. Most teach practically every period, as do American teachers. Russian primary school teachers have a little more free time than their American counterparts because specialists provide instruction to their pupils in physical education, music, and foreign language. Still they have little time for planning and consultation with their colleagues, and American primary school teachers barely have a free minute during the day when they are not teaching or supervising children. In contrast, it is rare for a teacher in China to teach classes more than three hours a day. In Japan it is the law that teachers may teach children no more than four hours a day. Albert Shanker flatly asserts that “teachers in the United States are teaching longer and harder than teachers anywhere else in the world”90 and then backs up his assertion with some statistics. An international survey of hours taught by American teachers and those in schools in fifteen European countries (Russia was not included in the survey) showed that in spite of all other countries having a longer school year, American teachers, at all levels, teach hundreds of hours more per year than teachers in other countries. The Americans, for example, have 1,019 hours of classroom instruction per year in the upper grades of secondary school; the mean for teachers in other countries is only 745 hours. American teachers work far fewer days per year than other teachers in the survey but teach far more hours during the school year. What accounts for this apparent paradox? The answer obviously is that they teach more class periods every day of the school year. In other countries, the fifteen to twenty hours a week that a teacher is not instructing a class is devoted to professional development-discussing with other teachers how better to plan their lessons, to measure student progress, to confer with parents, to improve teaching techniques and methodologies, to conduct a group or class discussion, and so on. The workday of American and Russian teachers is about the same as that of teachers in Europe and Asian countries such as Japan. The big difference is that American and Russian teachers do their planning alone at home, and other teachers do it together at school, as part of their regular workload. For example, one of the hardest teaching skills to learn is how to ask good questions at different levels of complexity and for different purposes. According to Harold Stevenson and James Stigler, who made a fascinating study of Japanese and Chinese education, “in the United States, the purpose of a question is to get an answer. . . . In Japan, teachers ask questions to stimulate thought.” To formulate such questions is very difficult, and American and Russian teachers must gain this skill by themselves. In Japan, teachers spend a great deal of time working together to decide specifically what kinds of questions for specific academic material will best get

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students involved in thinking and discussing the material. Teaching students to think takes time, and Japanese teachers-unlike their American and Russian colleagues, who too often are in a great hurry to speed through the lesson in order to “cover” the material-give their students time to think, reflect, and discuss. In short, they want students to understand the material?’ When Japanese teachers devote considerable time to resolving how best to ask thought-provoking questions relevant to this or that academic content, it is an example of “action research” at its best, which should result in teaching that enhances student learning. As we all know, Japan is at the top or near the top in all international assessments of student learning. An important by-product of teachers having the time and administrative support to engage in classroom-oriented action research projects is that in countries such as Japan, teachers are building up an admirable technical culture. Most Japanese schools, for example, are equipped with a twenty-volume reference work titled Arithmetic and Mathematics Educational Practice Lectures. This collection has over three thousand articles-written not by university professors of mathematics, but by some six hundred schoolteachers who have been nominated for this honor by university professors and boards of education throughout the country. Multiple volumes are devoted to discussions of how best to teach various mathematics skills, and there are articles on making lesson plans, setting goals for a lesson, evaluating student performance, using equipment in class, understanding trends in mathematics education, and so on. Every Japanese school has comprehensive reference materials such as this. There is no legitimate reason why every school in Russia and America should not have the same kind of material. And there is no legitimate reason why Russian and American teachers should not have the time, support, and incentive to engage in action research, which at its best could raise their morale, stimulate their intellectual faculties, make them part of a team with common goals, hone the skills essential for an “empowered” teacher, and most important of all, enhance their teaching effectiveness. What else might SDECs do to be more actively involved in teacher education? First of all, they must declare to the communities they serve that if they are to enhance student learning, they must make professional development of their teachers a priority. This means allocation of substantial funds to professional development and restructuring how schools are organized and run so that teachers have the opportunity to grow continuously. This means that inservice education must receive careful attention from teachers, administrators, and school board members in order to make it a highly planned, systematic process that always focuses on the real, practical needs of classroom teachers. Second, SDECs should develop a mentoring program for first- and secondyear teachers. We don’t expect new doctors to have all the polished skills of experienced doctors. They are inducted into full membership in their profession slowly through an internship and a residency program. Nor should we expect

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neophyte teachers to assume immediately the full responsibilities of experienced teachers. Just as doctors do, young teachers need time and mentoring if they are to cope successfully with the many demands of teaching. Third, SDECs should be as actively involved in preservice teacher education as in inservice teacher education. This means that preservice preparation of teachers should be a dual responsibility of school districts and schools of education in the United States and education committees and pedagogical institutions in Russia. SDECs should make being a supervisor of teacher trainees involved in field experiences and student teaching an honor to be sought after by the best teachers in the school district. To be a good supervising teacher takes time, energy, considerable human-relations skills, and commitment. Such requirements cannot be met if teachers do not have sufficient time during the school day to even prepare adequately for their own lessons. School districts could honor supervising teachers by paying them substantially more than regular teachers, by reducing their teaching load, and by providing them, in collaboration with teacher-training institutions, specialized training appropriate for a supervising teacher. Fourth, SDECs should make it possible for meritorious teachers to acquire specialized skills that will permit them not only to remain in the classroom with a reduced teaching load, but also to serve as their schools’ specialists in such areas as curriculum development, research design, student evaluation, community relations, community educational resources, school of educatiodpedagogical institution relations, and so on. And finally, SDECs should start treating teachers as professionals by doing such big things as actively involving them in all school reform efforts and by providing them with principals who-like Sukhomlinski-devote practically all their workday to being teacher educators. School districts can also do a number of smaller-but very important-things such as providing teachers with: (1) private offices, even if no more than a cubby hole, and telephones; (2)a wellstocked professional library; (3) a room specifically designed for teachers to engage in action research projects; (4) a clean, attractive, well-maintained school building on property that is well landscaped and pleasing to the eye; (5)a routine system of getting into the hands of teachers the results of research relevant to teaching effectiveness; (6) the funds and free time necessary to attend workshops and seminars that focus on enhancing teaching effectiveness; (7) the technological means necessary for communication with other teachers in the district, state, nation, and world; (8) a teachers’ lounge with some comfortable chairs where teachers can catch their breath and, yes, perhaps close their eyes and rest for a few minutes-good teaching is extraordinarily hard work. It is unlikely that any conscientious teacher, at any educational level, from kindergarten to graduate school, would disagree with Barzun’s claim that “steady teaching is a task that would fray the nerves of an ox. . . . ” 9 2 Responsibility for inservice education should not, of course, be limited to

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public schools. Teacher-training institutions, which play the predominant role in preservice teacher education, should continue to have important inservice responsibilities as well, such as: continuing the effort, started in undergraduate school, of encouraging teachers to devote much of their time and energy to advancing their own professional development and that of their colleagues; updating teacher qualifications and skills through courses, seminars, workshops, and conferences; utilizing public school teachers as instructors at their institutions; preparing, in cooperation with public schools, outstanding teachers to specialize in such roles as coordinator of school research and coordinator of community resources; assisting SDECs in acquainting teachers with the results of research relevant to the classroom; providing teachers with the knowledge and skill necessary to plan, conduct, and evaluate classroom-oriented action research;93 conducting joint research with teachers; providing interested teachers advanced training in master’s and doctoral degree programs; preparing outstanding teachers to become principals with a teacher education orientation; designing, conducting, and analyzing sociological studies of teachers and the teaching profession. There is yet another component of inservice teacher education that must not be overlooked: local, state, and national teacher organizations or unions. Historically, national teacher organizations in both Russia and America have paid little attention to teacher education. This is unfortunate and probably accounts in large part for the low prestige of the teaching profession in both countries. If schoolteaching is ever to become a profession with status and prestige, teacher organizationslunions must make teacher education its number-one priority by insisting upon such things as high standards for entrance into and graduation from teacher-training institutions, high standards for inservice programs, and high standards for initial and advanced certification of teachers, including comprehensive testing of academic and pedagogical knowledge and teaching abil-

it^?^ To conclude, teacher education in both Russia and America impresses us as heading in the right direction with increased calls from leading educators and teacher educators for high standards and emphasis on:

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empowering teachers; coordinating theory and practice; adjusting content to the needs, abilities, and interests of children and young people: teachers assuming responsibility for their own professional development and that of their colleagues; teacher education being the responsibility of all professors in teachertraining institutions; the cooperative, dual responsibility of school districts and schools of education in the United States and education committees and pedagogical institutions in Russia for teacher education; training of school administrators to be instructional leaders; involvement of parents and the community at large in enhancing the learning of children and young people. Advancement of teacher education in Russia and America on the eve of the 21st century will be slow and uncertain. At the moment, though Russian educators are insistent on the need for school and teacher education reform, politicians in Russia have displayed little interest in schools and even less interest in teacher education; but this should turn around once the country gains a little more political and economic stability. America, for the time being, is more fortunate. Politicians are at least talking about the need for reform of schools and teacher education. For example, on a program televised by C-Span on 5 November 1997, North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt spoke on behalf of the National Goals Panel in Washington, D.C. and stressed that the most important needs of American education were high standards, accreditation of all schools of education, proliferation of professional development schools, inauguration of mentor programs for first-year teachers, and rewarding of teachers for their knowledge and teaching skill. The interest of Hunt and a number of other governors in school and teacher education reform is a hopeful sign. We believe that in this chapter we have made some suggestions that, if acted upon by Russian and American teacher-training institutions and school districts/ education committees, should propel them in the right direction a little faster. The speed and magnitude of school and teacher education reform are, of course, ultimately dependent upon society at large in both the United States and Russia. To have great schools and teachers on a wide scale in both countries is attainable-but only if this objective becomes a national priority. In the small country of Finland, 99 percent of the people are literate and have a high school diploma. Teachers are paid nearly as much as doctors and lawyers, and there is great competition to enter a university and become a teacher. Much the same thing can be said about Japan and some other countries in Europe and Asia. In these countries the populace honors their schools and the teachers in them. In these

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countries the teaching profession has status and prestige. In France, for example, the national newspaper Le Monde ranked the country’s universities on the basis of the quality of their preparation of secondary school teachers. In America and Russia, the teaching profession has little status and prestige, but it can have these if people really want it. Of one thing we can be sure. Reform of schools in Russia and the United States will remain a pipe dream without reform of teacher education. As Kevin Ryan noted over twenty years ago, “While teacher training has its fads and frills, it is basically an unglamourous subject. It is, nevertheless, a burning presence that lurks at the edge of all proposals to improve schools and cannot be ignored.”95 It is unfortunate that so many people in Russia and America minimize the complexity of the art of teaching and the importance of teacher education. Rather than chastising teacher educators who over the years have accomplished much with scant resources, the prudent course would seem to be to proclaim that good teacher-education is essential for the improvement of public school education and then set about in earnest to develop in teacher education institutions and public schools teacher-training programs worthy of a professional teacher-programs that give prospective and practicing teachers a compelling vision of what education at its best should be and the skills, knowledge, and intellectual perspective necessary to make this vision a reality in the schools where they work.

NOTES 1. Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in American Cul-

ture

(New York: Harcourt. Brace and Company, 1929), pp. 206-207. 2. Birmingham News, 25 October 1977. p. 4. 3. Lynn Olson, “Reformers Seek to Untangle Web of Rules, Regulations to Improve Quality, Spark Innovation in Teacher Training,” Education Week, special report, 13 March 1991, p. 31. 4. Ibid., p. 36. 5. “Quality Counts: A Report Card on the Condition of Public Education in the 50 States,” Education Week, special supplement, 22 January 1997, p. 48. 6. Linda McNeil, “Contradictions of Control, Pt. 1: Administrators and Teachers,” Phi Delta Kappan 69 (January 1988): 333-339. See also Linda McNeil, “Contradictions of Control, Pt. 2: Teachers, Students, and Curriculum.” Phi Delta Kappan 69 (February 1988): 432-438. 7. James B. Conant, The Education of American Teachers (New York: McGrawHill, 1970). 8. For a discussion of the poor quality of teaching in American universities, see Integrity in the College Curriculum: A Report to the Academic Conzmunity (Washington, D.C.: Association of American Colleges, 1985); Charles J. Sykes, Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1988). The Sykes book is overly polemical but essentially accurate. 9. Robert Nisbet, “Teggart of Berkeley,” in Masters: Portraits of Great Teachers, ed. Joseph Epstein (New York: Basic Books, 1981), pp. 69-70.

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10. Tomorrow’s Teachers: A Report of the Holmes Group (East Lansing, Mich.: Holmes Group, 1986); A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century (New York: Carnegie Corporation, 1986); President’s Commission on Teacher Education, Teacher Education for the Twenty-First Century: An Agenda for Improving Teacher Education

(Washington, D.C.: American Association of State Colleges and Universities, 1992). Some excellent individually authored books were also written on reform of teacher education. See, in particular, Geraldine Joncich Clifford and James W. Guthrie, Ed School: A Brief for Professional Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); John I. Goodlad, Teachers for Our Nation’s Schools (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1990); Seymour B. Sarason, The Case for Change: Rethinking the Preparation of Educators (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993). 11. What Matters Most: Teaching for America ’ S Future (Woodbridge, Va.: National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future, 1996). 12. Quoted in Ann Bradley, “Teaching Focus Called the Key in Reform Push,” Education Week, 3 September 1996, p. 14. 13. Jeanne Ponessa, “Nebraska Mulls Hiring Substitutes without 4-Year Degrees,” Education Week, 22 January 1997, p. 8. 14. “Quality Counts,” p. 40. 15. Richard M. Ingersoll, “Putting Qualified Teachers in Every Classroom,” Education Week, 11 June 1997, pp. 46, 60. 16. Dennis L. Evans, “Unqualified Teachers: A Predictable Finding,” Education Week, 30 October 1996, p. 36. 17. “Quality Counts,” pp. 40-41, 54. 18. Gennadii Iagodin. ‘ ‘Cherez gumanizatsiiu i demokratizatsiiu k novomu kachestvu obrazovaniia,” Uchitel’skaia gazeta, 11 April 1989, p. 1. 19. “Quality Counts,” p. 54. 20. W. Robert Houston, “Lessons for Teacher Education from Corporate Practice,” Phi Delta Kappan 68 (January 1987): 392. 21. Edward R. Ducharme and Russell M. Agne, “Professors of Education: Uneasy Residents of Academe,” in The Professors of Teaching: An Inquiry, ed. Richard Wisniewski and Edward R. Ducharme (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). p. 80. 22. Jeanne Sutherland, “Perestroika in the Soviet General School: From Innovation to Independence,” in Soviet Education under Perestroika, ed. John Dunstan (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 21-22. 23. Richard Wisniewski and Edward R. Ducharme, “Where We Stand,” in The Professors of Teaching, Wisniewski and Ducharme, p. 156. 24. I. Khankhasaeva, “Much Work Lies Ahead,” interview with G. Iagodin, Uchitel’skaia gazeta, 23 April 1988, p. 3, text translated in Soviet Education 4 (April 1989): 87. 25. V. V. Tumalev, Uchitel’stvo v situatsii sotsial’no-politicheskikhperemen: determinanty peremen v zhiznedeiatel’nosti uchitel’stva, pt. 2 (St. Petersburg: SanktPeterburgskogo universiteta ekonomiki i finansov, 1995), p. 37. 26. Viktoria Molodtsova, “Why Are Schoolteachers Leaving the Profession?” Rossiiskaia gazeta, 2 February 1996, p. 7, excerpts of text translated in Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press 48, no. 6 (1996): 10. 27. Stephen L.Webber, “Demand and Supply: Meeting the Need for Teachers in the ‘New’ Russian School,” Journal of Education for Teaching 22 (January 1996): 14.

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28. Iagodin, “Cherez gumanizatsiiu,” p. 1. 29. While university teachers make more money than schoolteachers, their remuneration is also very low. According to V. Smorgunova, dean at HSPUR, the salary for a lecturer at her university (an assistant professor in America) in the 1996-1997 academic year was roughly $80 to $100 a month; that of a docent (an associate professor), around $168; and that of a professor (a full professor), around $200. 30. Ann Bridgman. “School Reform Russian Style,” Teacher Magazine 5 (March 1994): 22. 31. Martin Haberman, “An Education Platform in Search of a Candidate Who Wants to Win,” Phi Delta Kappan 69 (March 1988): 522. 32. Willis D. Hawley, “United States,” in Issues and Problems in Teacher Education: An International Handbook, ed. Howard B. Leavitt (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), p. 253; Linda Darling-Hammond, “Achieving Our Goals: Superficial or Structural Reform,” Phi Delta Kappan 72 (December 1990): 291. 33. Harry Judge, “Reforming Teaching Education: A View from Abroad,” Education Week, 24 June 1987, p. 32. 34. Ralph W. McDonald, “The Slow Climb Upward,” in Journey to Now: 19461961: The First Fifteen Years of the Professional Standards Movement in Teaching as Rejected in Keynote Addresses of the Executive Secretaries of the National Commission on Teacher Education and Professional Standards of the National Education Association of the United States (Washington, D.C.: National Education Association of the United

States, 1961), pp. 10-12. 35. Neal Pierce. “Public Charter Schools: An Idea Whose Time Has Come,” Birmingham News, 12 June 1991, sec. A, p. 11. 36. James Kilpatrick, The Daily Oklahoman, 21 December 1981, p. 14. 37. Quoted in Chester E. Finn, Jr.. We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 44. 38. “Educators Disagree over Whether Private Schooling Is Better,” Birmingham Post-Herald. 7 January 1993, sec. A, p. 6. 39. Hawley, “United States.” pp. 252-255. 40. Thomas Sowell, “When Good Schools Fill Up, Just Create More of Them,” Birmingham News, 30 April 1993, sec. A, p. 9. 41. Ibid. 42. Gary Sykes, “Teaching and Professionalism: A Cautionary Perspective,” in Crisis in Teaching: Perspectives on Current Reforms, ed. Lois Weis et al. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). p. 264. 43. Houston, “Lessons for Teacher Education,” p. 392. 44. “Pedagogicheskoe obrazovanie: real’nosti i nadezhdy (tvorcheskaia vstrecha: MGPI im. V. I. Lenina-‘Sovetskaia pedagogika’),” Sovetskaia pedagogika 3 (March 1989): 91; John Goodlad. “On the Cultivation and Corruption of Education,” Educational Forum 42 (March 1978): 276. 45. The source for the 18 percent figure is V. Smorgunova, dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, HSPUR. 46. Donald R. Cruickshank. Research That Informs Teachers and Teacher Educators (Bloomington, Ind.: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, 1990), p. 113. 47. Robert A. Roth, “The Teacher Education Program: An Endangered Species,” Phi Delta Kappan 71 (December 1989): 320. Contrary to what a long line of harsh critics of American teacher education would have the general public believe, most teacher ed-

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ucation graduates do not condemn their professional training. In fact, they believe their work in education departments to be as rigorous as that in most of the arts and sciences disciplines and their education professors to be the best of all their teachers. See Cruickshank, Research, p. 113. Furthermore, our recent surveys of over 200 teacher trainees and 157 teachers in St. Petersburg revealed-contrary to practically every SovietRussian study on the subject-general satisfaction with their training in pedagogical schools/ colleges and institutes. Of course our data may be skewed simply because our respondents may not have wanted to criticize their own to a “foreigner.” 48. John I. Goodlad, “Connecting the Present to the Past,” in Places Where Teachers Are Taught, ed. John I. Goodlad, Roger Soder, and Kenneth A. Sirotnik (San Francisco and Oxford: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1990), p. 29. 49. Chester E. Finn, Jr., “A Fresh Option for the Non-College Bound,” Phi Delta Kappan 68 (November 1986): 237. SO. Chester E. Finn, Jr., “Toward Strategic Independence: Nine Commandments for Enhancing School Effectiveness,” Phi Delta Kappan 65 (April 1984): 519. 51. Diane Ravitch and Chester E. Finn, Jr., What Do Our 17-Year-OldsKnow (New York: Harper & Row, 1987). p. 229. 52. Finn, Take Charge, p. 267. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid., p. 266. 56. George Z . F. Bereday et al., eds., The Changing Soviet School (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1960), p. 294. 57. F. G. Panachin, “Urgent Problems in Teacher Training in the Ninth Five-Year Plan,” Sovetskaia pedagogika, no. 6 (June 1972), text translated in Soviet Education 19 (July 1973): 6. 58. James E. Russell, “Professional Factors in the Training of the High School Teacher,” Education Review 45 (March 1913): 234. 59. Finn, Take Charge, p. 268. 60. Darling-Hammond, “Achieving Our Goals,” p. 291. 61. Quoted in David B. Tyack, ed.. Turning Points in American Educational History (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967), p. 153. 62. Arthur E. Wise and Linda Darling-Hammond. “Alternative Certification Is an Oxymoron,” Education Week, 4 September 1991, p. 46. 63. Sarason, The Case for Change, pp. 227, 233-234. 64. Diana Wyllie Rigden, “How Teachers Would Change Teacher Education: A Survey’s Results Lend Support-and a Voice-to the National Commission’s Findings,” Education Week, 11 December 1996. p. 48. 65. Quoted in Clifford and Guthrie, Ed School, p. 33. 66. Susan J. Rosenholtz. “Political Myths about Education Reform: Lessons from Research on Teaching,” Phi Delta Kappan 66 (January 1985): 349-355. 67. “Inquiring Minds: Creating a Nation of Teachers as Learners,” Education Week, special report, 17 April 1996, p. 49. 68. Charles E. Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom: The Remaking of American Education (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 472. 69. Stephen T. Ken, “Beyond Dogma: Teacher Education in the USSR,” Journal of Teacher Education 42 (May 1991): 343. 70. At a summer 1991 seminar for American and Russian history teachers at Harvard

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University, Janet Vaillant, who organized the seminar, noted that “most of the Russian teachers with whom we were working thought that open-ended discussion used up valuable time that might better have been spent learning facts” (Janet Vaillant. “Inside Soviet Schools: History Classes,” ISSE Newsletter 1 [July 19911: 28). 71. Jacques Barzun, Teacher in America (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), pp. 40-41. 72. Philip G. Altbach, “Needed: An International Perspective,” Phi Delta Kappan 71 (November 1989): 244. 73. Albert Shanker, “Where We Stand,” New York Times, 17 May 1992. sec. E, p. 7. 74. A. I. Piskunov, ed., K. D. Ushinsky: Selected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), pp. 52-53. 75. Rigden, “Teacher Education,” pp. 48, 64. 76. Kenneth G. Wilson and Bennett Daviss, Redesigning Education (New York: Henry Holt. 1994), p. 150. 77. For knowledge-base research see W. R. Houston, ed., Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (New York: Macmillan, 1990); M. C. Reynolds, ed., Knowledge Base for the Beginning Teacher (Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press, 1989); Herbert J. Walberg, “Productive Teaching and Instruction: Assessing the Knowledge Base,” Phi Delta Kappan 71 (February 1990): 470-478. 78. Kerr, Beyond Dogma, p. 338. 79. James Muckle and Vladimir Prozorov, “Teacher Education in the Republic of Karelia: A Russian Case Study,” Journal of Education for Teaching 22 (January 1996): 34. 80. Ibid. 81. Wilson and Daviss, Redesigning Education, p. 154. 82. Hawley. “United States,” p. 249. 83. Del Schalock, “Methodological Considerations in Future Research and Development in Teacher Education,” in The Education of Teachers: A Look Ahead, ed. Kenneth R. Howey and William E. Gardner (New York: Longman. 1983), pp. 4244. 84. William J. Bennett, “Is Our Culture in Decline?” Education Week, 7 April 1993, p. 32. 85. Suzanne Fields, “Not Only Will ‘Boys Be Boys,’ but Boys Also Can Be Brutal,” Birmingham News, 19 July 1993, sec. A, p. 7. 86. Edward B. Fiske, Smart Schools, Smart Kids: Why Do Some Schools Work? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), pp. 157-162. For additional information on computers and teacher education, see Millicent Lawton, “Computers Have Little Use without Teacher Training, Study Says,” Education Week, 9 July 1997, p. 8; Mary Ann Zehr, “Teaching the Teachers,” Education Week, 10 November 1997, pp. 24-26. In the rest of this section on computers, we draw heavily on our interview with Riegle. 87. Sarason, The Case for Change, p. 114. 88. Wilson and Daviss, Redesigning Education, p. 89. 89. Ibid., p. 87. 90. Albert Shanker, “Where We Stand,” New York Times, 28 May 1995, sec. E, p. 7. 91. Harold W. Stevenson and James W. Stigler, The Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education (New York: Summit Books, 1992). pp. 157-160. 92. Barzun, Teacher in America, p. 29. 93. For a discussion of teachers as researchers, see Vivian Fueyo and Mark A. Koor-

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land, “Teacher as Researcher: A Synonym for Professionalism,” Journal of Teacher Education 48 (November-December 1997): 336-344. 94. For a critique of America’s two major national teacher organizations (NEA and AFT), see Robert W. Kasten, “An Oligopoly with a Unique Agenda: America’s Major Teachers’ Unions Are Out of Step with Their Counterparts Worldwide,” Education Week, 19 February 1997, pp. 32, 44. 95. Kevin Ryan, ed., Teacher Education (Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education, 1975), p. ix.

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Selected Bibliography Included are only English-language works actually cited in this book that were especially helpful to the authors in the writing of the book. Alston, Patrick L. Education and the State in Tsarist Russia. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969. DeWitt, Nicholas. Education and Professional Employment in the U.S.S.R.Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 1961. Dunstan, John, ed. Soviet Education under Scrutiny. Glasgow: Jordanhill College Publications, 1987. . Soviet Education under Perestroika. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. Eklof, Ben. Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy, 1861-1914. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Eklof, Ben, ed. School and Society in Tsarist and Soviet Russia. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Eklof, Ben. and Edward Dneprov, eds. Democracy in the Russian School: The Reform Movement in Education since 1984. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993. Fitzpatrick. Sheila. Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921-1934. London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Goodlad, John I. Teachers for Our Nation’s Schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1990. Hans, Nicholas. History of Russian Educational Policy (1701-1917). London: P. S. King & Son, 1931. Hans, Nicholas, and Sergius Hessen. Educational Policy in Soviet Russia. London: P. S. King & Son. 1930. Holmes, Brian, Gerald H. Read, and Natalya Voskresenskaya. Russian Education: Tradition and Transition. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1995. Holmes, Larry E. The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917-1931. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991.

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Johnson, William H.E. Russia’s Educational Heritage. New York: Octagon Books, 1969. Jones, Anthony, ed. Education and Society in the New Russia. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995. Leavitt, Howard B., ed. Issues and Problems in Teacher Education: An International Handbook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992. Makarenko, Anton. Selected Pedagogical Works. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1990. Matthews, Mervyn. Education in the Soviet Union: Policies and Institutions since Stalin. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982. McClelland, James C. Autocrats and Academics: Education, Culture, and Society in Tsarist Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Panachin, F. G. Teacher Education in the USSR: Historical Development and Current Trends. Translated in Soviet Education 19 (July-August 1977). Originally published as Pedagogicheskoe obrazovanie v SSSR. Moscow: Pedagogika, 1975. Sarason. Seymour B. The Case for Change: Rethinking the Preparation of Educators. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993. Sinel, Allen. The Classroom and the Chancellery: State Educational Reform in Russia under Count Dmity Tolstoi. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973. Sukhomlinsky, Vasily. To Children I Give M y Heart. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981. V. Sukhomlinsky on Education. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977. Zajda, Joseph I. Education in the USSR. New York Pergamon Press, 1980.

Index AACTE (American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, United States), 173-74 Abdullina. 0.A., 66 Academy of Sciences, 193 AFT (American Federation of Teachers, United States), 177. 189 Alexander I, 1 Alexander 11, l a , 10 Alexander 111, 4-10 Altbach, Philip, 189 Amonashvili. Shalva, 83, 120 APS (Academy of Pedagogical Sciences), 56-58, 62, 65, 88, 92 Arithmetic and Mathematics Educational Practice Lectures, 200

Atheism, 85 Baranov, S.P,, 73 n.32 Barzun, Jacques, 188-89, 201 Bennett, William, 194 Blonskii, P. P,. 32 Bochkina, Nina, 126-27 Bolotov, Victor, 92-93, 96-97, 108-9 Bolsheviks, 10, 19, 21-22 Bordovskii, Gennadii, 126, 129-36, 182 Bradley, Ann, 187

Brezhnev, Leonid, 48-53, 57-59. 68, 70 Bubnov, Andrei, 31 Burke, Edmund. 194 Carter, James, 184 Certification, 7. 64-65, 149 Challenges, facing contemporary Russian education, 94-105 Character education: under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, 82, 84-86. 89. 98-101, 194-96; under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, 59, 70-71; under Lenin and Stalin, 19-21, 24, 31, 33, 35-36, 39; under the tsars, 3-4, 10, 12; United States, 194-96 Chelpanov, G. I., 8 Collective, school, 38-41 Collectivism, 19, 24, 49, 85 Colonies, Dzerzhinsky and Gorky, 38-39 Committees, educational, 88-89 Communist Party: Bolsheviks overthrow Provisional Government, 10; control of student life, 32-33; education policy, 21-23, 33-35, 53, 67, 83-84; ethics, 84-86; infallibility, crack in doctrine of, 45; Lenin molds the party, 17; reform, 77-78; representative of working

214

people, 29; Soviet propaganda, 19-22; use of history to legitimize party rule, 98-100 Comparative education, 189-90 Complex themes, 24-25 Computers, 196-98 Congress, Third All-Russian of the Union of Workers of Enlightenment, 33-34; 20th Communist Party, 56 Cook’s Circular, 5 COUP(1991), 79-80 Creative Union of Teachers, 151 Cultural Revolution, 25, 31, 34 Curator, 110, 112, 114-15 Curriculum, school, 2, 27, 88-89, 152; differentiation, 50; federal, regional, and local components, 91-92; primary school, 6; progymnasium and gymnasium, 6-7; secondary school, 6-7; standards, 156, 158: and teaching methodologies, 24-26 Curriculum, teacher education, 64, 91, 101-5, 163 11.19; deficiencies, 102-3; Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, 104-5, 13643, 14549; institutes for raising the qualifications of pedagogues, 35-36; Moscow City Pedagogical Gymnasium, 115-17: Moscow Lenin State Pedagogical Institute, 72 n.19; Moscow School No. 356, 10; normal schools, 2-3; Pedagogical College No. 2, 119-20; Pedagogical Gymnasium No. 24. 112-14; pedagogical institute for the advanced training of teachers, 36; pedagogical institutes, 28, 31-32, 54-55; pedagogical technicumd schools/colleges, 27-28, 54; P. G. Shelaputin Pedagogical Institute, 8; St. Petersburg State University of Pedagogical Art, 149; teacher institutes, 3, 26-27; teacher seminaries, 2,26-27; United States 170-72 Darling-Hammond, Linda, 184 Daviss, Bennett, 191-92 Decentralization, of schools, 97 Decrees and statutes, 1-3, 6, 23, 25-26, 50-5 1

Index

Degrees and certificates, 137-38; bachelor of education, 127; candidate of science, 127-28, doctorate, 127-28; doctor of pedagogy, 8 ; master’s, 1045, 127-28, 137; specialist certificate, 104-5 Department of Pedagogy, 14041 Department of Pedagogy and Psychology, 149-50, 155-56, 158-59 Department of Sociology, 151 Dewey, John, 60, 117 DeWitt, Nicholas, 23 Dialogue, key to creative educational process, 87-88 Discussions, conducting group, 188-89 Dneprov, Eduard, 84, 87. 90-92, 95, 102-3 Doctoral dissertation defense, 127-28 Druzhinina, Natalia, 136 Duma, educational role of, 6, 9 Dunstan, John, 74 n.60 Economy and education, 8687; market, 94 Education, lifelong, 59-60, 70 Eklof, Ben, 91 Engels, Friedrich, 16-17, 82 Enrollment, pedagogical institutions, 7, 27, 29-30, 57, 104, 117-18 Enrollment, schools, 2,5-6, 29-30, 74 n.58, 166 n.71 Equality, of educational opportunity, 2, 67-68, 88, 97 Ethics, communist, 22, 84-86 Eureka clubs, 87-88, 151 Examinations, 119-22, 126, 137. 141, 143-45; United States, 176-77 Faculty for advanced training of teachers, 63 Faculty of Primary School Education, 13640

Faculty of Social Sciences, 14148 Fields, Suzanne, 195 Filiakma, Lidiia, 188 Finland, prestige of schoolteachers, 203 Finn, Chester E., Jr., 181-84 Fiske, Edward, 196-97

215

Index

Five-year plan, 18-20, 24-25, 35-36, 46, 64 France, emphasis of universities on preparation of secondary school teachers, 204 Funding, pedagogical institutions, 3, 30, 58, 91, 198, 200-201; United States. 172, 177-78 Funding, schools, 91, 94-95 FZU (vocational school), 24 General education labor polytechnical school with production training, 50, 53 Generalizations, schools and teacher education: Lenin to Gorbachev. 66-69; present and near future, 2024; tsarist period, 10-12 Glasnost, 89-90 Goals, education and teacher education: 1855-1917, 3-4, 10, 12; 1917-1985, 31-37; 1985 to present, 89-93, 108-9, 114-19, 129-31. 14043, 150-52, 155: United States, 169-70 Golovnin, A. V., 2 Goodlad, John, 181-82 Gorbachev, Mikhail: assumption of power, 49; and education, 81-90; historical and educational setting, 75-81: and teacher training, 101-3; and teaching of history, 77-78, 98-100 Governance, of teaching process, 88 Graduate programs, 104-5

141. 14345: goals, 129-31, 140-41. 143; structure, 104-5, 128-31: teacher education, unbroken, 129-30; universalization of education, concept of, 130-31 Humanitarian systems. theory of, 161-62 Humanization, of educational process, 8689, 134 Hunt, James, 175 Iagodin, Gennadii, 84, 88-89. 103 Ingersoll, Richard, 176 Inservice training, 7-9, 3341, 62-69, 148-68, 198-210 Institute of General and Educational Psychology, 61 Institute of Psychology, 8 Institute for Raising the Qualifications of Pedagogues, 35 Institute of Scientific Correspondents, 62 Instruction, individualization of, 55,64, 68 International program, 127, 155-56 IPKU (institute for the raising of teachers’ qualifications), 104 IUU (institute for the advanced training of teachers), 62-65. 104 Japan, teacher education, 199-200 Jones, Anthony, 94 Judge, Harry, 179

History of the All-Union Communist Party, Short Course, 98 How to Win Friends and Influence People, 88

Kaiser, Robert, 15 Kasprzhak, A. G., 115-17 Kerr, Stephen, 188 Khrushchev. Nikita, 45-50. 53,55,81 Kilpatrick, James, 180 Kinelev. Vladimir, 165-166 n.69 Kolechenko, Alexander, 150 Komsomol (Young Communist League), 30 Koroleva, Irina, 153-54 Kozyrev, V., 129-31 Krupskaia, Nadezhda, 23, 32, 36 Kuibyshev Pedagogical College, 60 Kurlov, V. F., 151

HSPUR (Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia), and teacher education, 99-105, 12548; changes, recent and proposed, 131-33; distinctive features. 126, 132-33; examinations, 126,

Labor, socially useful, 24-25 Labor education, 27, 30-31. 81-82. See also Labor, socially useful; Polytechnical education

Health of schoolchildren, 96 HGGE (Humanitarian Gymnasium of Global Education), 151-54 Higher education, prestige of, 101, 167 n.92 Historical and educational setting, 1-12, 15-26, 45-53, 75-101 History, school, 24, 98-100

216

Index

Laws, educational: Basic Guidelines for A Nation at Risk, 175 Reform in the General Education and NBPTS (National Board for Professional Vocational Schools (1984), 81-83, 136; Teacher Standards, United States), 173Law of the Russian Federation on Edu74 cation ( 1992), 9 1-92 NCATE (National Council for AccreditaLegislation, and educational principles, tion of Teacher Education, United 52-53 States), 173-74, l81 Lenin, Vladimir Il’ich, 10, 15-18, 20-24, NEA (National Education Association, 26 United States), 177 Leont’eva, T. V., 112-13 NEP (New Economic Policy). 17-18 Lesson, components of good, 122; demon- Nicholas I, 1 stration, 120-22 Nicholas 11, 4-10 Ligachev, E. K., 76, X3 Nisbet, Robert, 174 Litvinova, Nina, 148-5 1 Number, of pedagogical institutions, 27. Lunacharskii, Anotolii, 22-23, 31, 37. 82 29-30, 62-63, 104, 117-18, 166 n.71; of schools, 4-5, 74 n.58, 166 11.71; of Makarenko, Anton, 3741, 185-86, 198 universities, 5-6 Mandelstam, Nadezhda, 20 Marx, Karl, 16, 21-22, X2 Organizations, teacher, 7-8, 63, 202; Marxism, 16-17, 21, 58 United States, 177, 202 Marxism-Leninism, 16-17, 22, 68, 76 Orwell, George, 15 Marxists, 9 Matveev, Vladimir, 87-88 Panachin, F. G., 64, 72-73 n.31, 183 Matveeva, Ludmila, 136-38 Patriotism, 85 McDonald, Ralph, 179 Pedagogical classes, in secondary schools, Methodologist, 119-20 56, 110 Methodology, 24-26, 35; active means of Pedagogical College No. 2. 118-25 instruction, 82-83; correct scientific ap- Pedagogical colleges/schools/technicums, proach, 55-56; dialogue process, 143; 26-28, 30, 54, 58, 60, 103, 117-25, learning to teach on the job, 183; self193 education 115, 138; standardization, Pedagogical education, unbroken, 103 101-2 Pedagogical gymnasium, 104, 110-17 Ministry of Education, 1-6, 8, 91-92, 97. Pedagogical Gymnasium No. 24, 111-15 102, 157-59, 165-66 n.69, 190 Pedagogical institutes, 27-32, 54-55, 1 0 3 4 Ministry of War, 7-8 Pedagogical Society of the Russian ReMitchell, Richard, 180 public, 63 “Moral Code of the Builders of Commu- Pedagogical universities, 103-4, 125-54 nism,” 84-86 Pedagogization, of teaching process, 6061 Moscow City Pedagogical Gymnasium, 111, 115-17 Pedagogy of cooperation movement, 87, Moscow School No. 315, 62 165 n.46 Moscow School No. 356, 110 Pedagogy/psychology, 181-85; emphasis Multiculturalism. 69 on personality, 113, 130-32; gaining legitimacy as field of study, 4, 7-8, 36, Narkompros (Commissariat of Enlighten60-61, 67, 125 menfiducation), 22, 24-26, 30-31, 33- Pedology, 26-27, 32 36 People’s university, 70; of pedagogical National vision, 96-97 knowledge, 63

Index

Perestroika (restructuring), in education, 76-77, 83 Permanent Committee for the Establishment of Courses for Teachers, 8 P. G. Shelaputin Pedagogical Institute, 7-8 Philosophy of education, 160, 187-88 Pierce, Neal, 180 Pinkevich, A. P,. 30, 32 Pioneer organization, 54 Pistraka, M.M,, 32 Pobedonostsev. K., 4 Polytechnical education, 22-24. 50-51, 53-54 Ponessa, Jeanne, 187 Powell, Arthur, 186 Practical experience, 54, 61, 110, 117, 119-22, 137-38, 191 Preschool, 100 Preservice training, 2-8, 10-12, 26-33, 53-62, 10948, 179-98 Production training, in pedagogical institutions, 30-3 l Profession, teaching, 4, 8-9, 11, 34; United States, 173-74 Professional development, as a priority, 200 Professor, 127, 137, 193; United States, 170-72, 174-75 Project method, 25-26 Prokof'ev, M.A., 52, 68 Propaganda, Soviet, 19, 21 Provisional government, 9-10, 17 Psychological services, 161-62 Psychologists, training of, 161-62 Questions, asking different kinds, 199-200 Rabfaki (workers' faculty), 29 RAE (Russian Academy of Education), 126-27, 142, 193 Ranks, of schoolteachers, 64-65 Reagan, Ronald, 175 Recruitment and retention, of teachers, 175-79 Reign of terror, 19-20 Religion, 67, 77 Republican Inservice Educator-Training Institute, 154-62

217

Research, 57-59, 61-64, 104, 107. 117. 141, 191-94; United States, 171, 184, 191-94, 208 n.77, 209 n.93, 186-87 Revolution, 1905, 6 Revolution, 1917, 9-10 Revolutionary movement, 9 Riegle, Rodney, 196-97 Rossianin, Ivan, 32-33 Rural school, 97-98 Russell, James, 183 Sakharov, Andrei, 77 Salaries, 177-79. 201, 2034, 206 n.29 Salisbury, Hamson, 71 Sarason, Seymour, 185, 198 Schalock, Del, 194 Schools, 1-2, 4-7, 10, 21-26, 49-54, 81101 Schools, of advanced (progressive) experience, 63 School systems, inefficiency, 87; principles, 90-91 SDECS (school districts/education committees, Russia and United States), 198202 Secret police, 20, 38, 4 5 4 6 Shanker, Albert, 189-90, 199 Shatskii, C. T.,36-37 Sheshin, German, 118, 123 Shipler, David, 89-90 The Short Course, 98 Silber, John, 180 Silberman, Charles, 187 Simon, Brian, 55 Simon, Joan, 55 Smirnova, E. E.,151 Smorgunova, Valentina, 136, 14145 Social class, of teachers, 29, 57 Societal problems, 95-96, 167 11.81 Soros Foundation, 154, 161 Sowell, Thomas, 181 Specialization, area of, 118, 128-29, 132, 136-37, 14143 SSUPA (St. Petersburg State University of Pedagogical Art), 148-51 Stalin, Joseph, 15, 18-21, 24-26 Status, schools, 93-101; teacher education, 179-82, 2024; teacher education

218

in the United States, 179-81; teachers, 58, 67, 70 Stephanopoulos, George, 180 Stevenson, Harold, 199 Stigler, James, 199 St. Petersburg Center of Concerned Teachers, 153 St. Petersburg Pedagogical Academy, 7-8 Structure, school system, 25, 81; teacher education system, 27, 58, 103-5 Students, attitude toward school, 87 Student teaching, 54, 60-61, 122 Sukhomlinskii, Vasilii, 105-8, 187, 193, 196, 201 Survey, of teachers in Birmingham and St. Petersburg, 194 Teacher education: common characteristics in tsarist Russia and the United States, 10-12; comparable problems and challenges in the Russian Federation and the United States, 175-204; lifelong, 62, 66, 103, 109, 128; models, 156-57; overview under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, 101-5; universities, 7, 63 Teacher education, reforms and innovations, 53, 56-62, 68, 87-93, 103, 105, 108-9. See also Bordovskii, Gennadii; Dneprov, Eduard; Iagodin, Gennadii; Kolechenko, Alexander; Kurlov, V.F., Makarenko, Anton; Matveeva, Ludmila; Moscow City Pedagogical Gymnasium; Pedagogical College No. 2; Pedagogical Gymnasium No. 24; Smorgunova, Valentina; Sukhomlinskii, Vasilii; Tkachenko, Evgenii; Triapitsina, Alla; Turchaninova, Julia Teacher Gazette, 87-88 Teacher institute, 3 4 , 26-27, 29 Teachers’ Day, 122-24 Teacher seminary, 2-3, 26-27 Teacher seminary, 2-3, 2627, 29 Teacher trainees, administrative role, 7273; daily life, 32-33; relationship, with faculty, 188; workload, 31-32, 55, 193 Teaching, art of, 180-98; scientific approach, 55

Index

Teaching process, standardization, 59-60, 69 Textbooks, 59, 98-99, 132-33, 143 Theory and practice, 56-61, 63, 119, 138, 14041, 181, 184-85, 191 Thinking independently, 89-90 Titles, of schoolteachers, 64-65 Tkachenko, Evgenii, 92-93, 95-96. 103, 108-9, 165-66 n.69 To Children I Give My Heart, 106 Tolstoi, Dimitrii, 2 4 Triapitsina, Alla, 140-41 Tumalev, V. V., 128, 151 Turchaninova, Julia, 154-62 United labor school, 22, 33 Universal complete secondary education, achievement of, 52, 57 University, 56, 58, 68, 72 n.27 University of pedagogical knowledge, 63 University of pedagogical mastery, 103 Upbringing. See Character education Ushinskii, K. D., 187 Vaillant, Janet, 99-101, 208 n.70 VNIK-shkola(Temporary Scientific Research collective on the Schools), 87, 91, 164-65 n.45 Vocational education, 58, 68, 81, 83, 91, 93, 95 Volikova, T. V., 73 n.32 Waste, human resources, 178-79 What Is to Be Done: Burning Questions of Our Movement, 17 What Matters Most: Teachingfor America’s Future, 175

Wilson, Kenneth, 191-92 Wise, Arthur, 184 Yeltsin, Boris, 84, 91, 163 11.12; climbing ladder to presidency, 78-81; and education, 95-105, rivalry with Gorbachev, 75-76, 78 Zemstvo, 5 Znanie (Knowledge) Society, 63 Zorina, Tatiana, 152

About the Authors DELBERT H. LONG is Professor Emeritus, School of Education, University of Alabama, Birmingham. ROBERTA A. LONG is Professor Emeritus, School of Education, University of Alabama, Birmingham.