After leaving universal schooling at around 15, Soviet students went into ‘professional schools’, often connected to factories and workplaces, to learn a trade or continue on into higher education.

‘V. Professional Schools (High Schools)’ by Scott Nearing from Education in Soviet Russia. International Publishers, New York. 1926.

V. PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS (HIGH SCHOOLS).

Professional schools are the second rung on the Soviet educational ladder. By the time the children finish the elementary school, at fifteen or sixteen, they are expected to pick out the lines of activity that they wish to follow. Then, during the next two or three or four years, they study and work along the line of this profession.

The professional schools are of three main classes: (1) peasant schools, in rural centres and villages, devoted to the chief rural and village occupations; (2) city schools, in industrial centres, taking up the professions that are connected with industry, commerce, transport, education and government; and (3) factory schools, organized in connection with some productive enterprise, and training the apprentices in that enterprise. In January, 1924, there were 317,842 children in the professional schools. The number is greater at the present time, as additional professional schools were opened during 1924 and 1925.

Professional schools in the Soviet Union, with the exception of two or three items, are very similar to the agricultural and technical high schools of the United States. The exceptions are: (1) the practical work that is required of the students during their school course; (2) the work done in the factory schools, and (3) the organization among the students, and the student representation in the governing committees of the schools.

Vladikavkaz, a small city in the North Caucasus, had five professional schools: a school of transport; an industrial school; an agricultural school; a pedagogical school; a music school. Students entered these schools at about fifteen or sixteen, and remained in them four or five years. All were organized on the same general lines.

There were 130 students in the school of transport, taking a four year course. In addition to the regular  academic work in mathematics, history, economics, chemistry, physics, and the like, each student was expected to do two kinds of practical work; during the school term he was assigned part time work in the railroad shops. I saw a number of these students working on car construction. They were doing the work that would be assigned to an apprentice in a machine shop. After the completion of their four years in the school, they were expected to spend two apprentice years in the branch of railroading along which they had been specializing. At the end of this apprenticeship they were supposed to be technically trained for that class of railroad work.

Students in the agricultural school were required to do the same type of academic and of practical work. They spent about eight months of the year in the school, and the three summer months were spent on the farm.

The best equipped professional school that I saw in the Soviet Union was the First Commercial Economic Technical School of Moscow. This school was under the wing of the Moscow Board of Trade, and in addition to the funds which it received from the educational authorities, it was very generously subsidized by that organization. Beside a large and well-equipped building, the school had an exceptionally fine commercial and industrial museum.

Students entered this school at about fifteen, after having completed the labor school. They remained three or four years.

The whole school was organized on the Dalton Plan. In February, 1925, this plan had been introduced in all courses except foreign languages. When I visited the school in the fall of 1925, commercial arithmetic and book-keeping were still taught on the old class-room basis. In the remainder of the school the students were working at tables which seated six or eight. The classes that I visited seemed to be run on a very high level. The teacher was nowhere offensively in evidence. Ordinarily he was working at a table with one of the student groups. Discipline was excellent, but with no evidence of the exercise of authority.

Dalton record methods were used. A very complete card record was kept by students assigned to the task. The work was done in a four week cycle.

Students seemed to be very enthusiastic about the plan. The teachers were far from having the same faith in it, but they were glad to try it out. Certainly if it has any virtue for the Soviet professional schools, it will be demonstrated here. It will never have a more favorable test.

Students in this school were organized in each class, as a student body, in trade unions and politically. Class organization was simple. Each group of students had its representative, and the representatives from the six groups in the freshman class constitute a board responsible for discipline and for the standards of student work. As there were 1100 applicants for admission in the fall of 1925, and as only 222 were accepted, it was comparatively easy to put pressure to bear on individual students to maintain their standards of work. All local cases of discipline or of poor work were supposed to be handled locally by these group and class representatives.

The entire student body was also organized, with an executive committee of seven, an academic committee, a culture committee, and a committee on economic activities. The student body also selected its representatives on the general school committee and on the school executive committee.

Two trade unions had branches in the school: the commercial workers and the food workers. All students belonged in one or the other of these unions, depending on the line of work they were following in the school. Among the 540 students in the school, there were 175 members of the Young Communists.

The spirit in the school seemed to be excellent, and the relations between the faculty members and the student body were intimate and easy. This is one notable feature of all Soviet schools, particularly above the elementary schools. There is little or no formality in the contacts between the faculty and the students. All are very close to a basis of social equality.

Factory schools are professional schools that are directly connected with some productive enterprise. They take children of about 14 or 15–usually the apprentices in the factory–and train them for two, three or four years. The students spend approximately half of their time in the school and half in the factory.

Like the rabfac, the factory school was designed to meet a special need for technical workers. Many of the foreign technicians who were at work in Russian industries left Russia at the outbreak of the war, in 1914. Others, who were native born, sided with the business classes and left after the Revolution. Great numbers of skilled workers were killed during the Civil War, which was fought with particular bitterness in regions that were strongly industrialized. Meanwhile, despite all of these losses, there had been an expansion of Soviet industrial activity in some directions, and a revival in others, with a corresponding demand for skilled people. How was this demand to be met? The ordinary processes of education were too slow, so the Soviet authorities took two short-cuts: on the one hand they sent workers directly from the factories into the rabfacs for specialized technical training; on the other hand they took the boys and girls who were entering industry as apprentices, and gave them a technical training in factory schools.

Soviet factory schools were usually under the joint direction of the educational authorities, the factory committee (of the workers), and the factory administration. The educational authorities worked out the educational principles and the course of study; the factory committee and the factory administration supervised the work of the school, and the factory provided the money for the support of the school. Frequently, the economic and technical experts from the factory taught in the school.

Student bodies in the factory schools generally were limited to the number of apprentices allowed for that particular trade. For example, in a factory school in a Stalinov metal factory, there were 930 students in the school, and 11,000 workers in the factory. The number of apprentices in this factory was limited to 8 per cent of the total number of workers; but “We are very short of trained people here, and the demand for skilled workers is growing. The factory management has decided, with the consent of the factory committee, representing the workers, how many additional trained persons will probably be needed here in the next three or five years, and on this basis, the number of students in the school has been fixed. The factory administration needs a reserve of trained people, and everyone is agreed that this is the soundest way to get it.” This was the explanation given by the director of this Stalinov factory school.

Among the 930 students in this school, only 28 were girls. Ages ranged from 14 to 18. The course was two years for commercial students, three years for students of metallurgy and four years for students of mechanics.

School work consisted of drawing, mathematics, economics and science. Four hours of each day were spent in the school and four hours in the factory. Class work was carried on in the old-fashioned way. The laboratory method of teaching academic work had not yet penetrated this school.

During the year 1925 students were accepted only on the provision that they had completed four years of the elementary schools. During the previous year there were no academic standards of admission. If the present plan is carried out the requirement for the next year will be five years in the elementary school. The standard will be raised one year for each year that the school runs. In the course of two more years, therefore, no apprentice can be accepted in this factory who has not completed the equivalent of the whole seven years of the elementary school. Thus a definite academic standard is being placed behind industrial work.

Nearby, in a smaller industrial town, I visited a mine school. It was operated on the same principle as a factory school, except that the students, all boys, were preparing for work in a mine, instead of in a factory. (Incidentally, so far as I remember, this is the only school that I saw in the Soviet Union that was not co-educational.)

An old machine shop, connected with a mine that had been destroyed during the Civil War and never reopened, had been rebuilt, in part. Some of the machinery had been rehabilitated; the teacher and the students had made a planing machine for their wood-shop and a foot-power hammer for their forge-shop. The machine shop was well equipped with made-over machines.

Students spent three years in this school. During the first year they worked four hours a day in the shops and four hours in the class rooms. During the next two years, they spent four hours a day in the mines, and four hours in the class rooms. The shop work consisted, for the most part, in making iron and wood equipment needed about the mine. There were few “exercises.” The whole plant was conducted on an extremely practical basis.

Miners’ sons have first choice when there are any openings at this school. The mine provided for the entire up-keep of the school as a means of getting the necessary number of skilled men ready for mine work.

The school director laughed about his home-made equipment. “The whole place was tumbling down,” he said. “We took it over and did what we could with it. It was that or nothing. Thus far our standards are low. We merely require the students to read and write and do simple arithmetic, but before we get through with them, they have a pretty good elementary knowledge of social and natural science, beside their practical knowledge of mine and machine technique.

“Year by year we are raising these standards,” he went on. “It will be only a few years until every man who enters this mine will be technically trained before he goes to work, and will be at the same time well enough educated to be a very useful citizen.”

Far more highly developed was the factory school connected with the Red October Candy Factory in Moscow. The proportion of student body to workers was much smaller–four per cent of the total number of workers, and the limit was rigidly maintained.

This factory school was organized in three departments: technology, mathematics and social science. There were six groups of students in the school when I visited it. Each group elected a group bureau of three students which was responsible for: the discipline of the group; the care of the apparatus and materials used by the group; and for the preparation of materials and apparatus for the coming lesson of the group.

The student-group organization was established to facilitate the work of both students and teachers. It familiarized the students with the materials and apparatus that the group was using, and it relieved the teachers of many of the details of laboratory work. This was important as a part of the teaching staff of the school was drawn from the research department of the factory.

When students went into the factory for their four hours per day of factory work, they were directly under the control of a foreman whose business it was to see that the work of the apprentices was carried out according to their educational program. I went through the factory with this educational foreman. He was responsible to the school staff, and not to the production department.

These student-apprentices started their factory work in the first wage category. In this factory, those in the first category received 18.72 rubles per month. By the time they had finished the school, they were at least as high as the sixth category. The school aimed to provide a training that would enable good students to go directly into the tenth category. (Highly skilled work.)

Students in another Moscow factory school, connected with the Trekhgornaia Textile Factory included all of the factory apprentices. This factory accepted as apprentices only those who were willing to take the factory school course. There were 300 students in this school–working under excellent conditions.

“The school has two aims,” said the Director. “Industrially we want to make a good worker. Socially, we want to make good citizens and good communists of the students. We therefore combine industrial theory and practice with a thorough grounding in social science.”

The school gave a three year course. There were no workshops in its equipment. All of the technical bench training was given in the factory.

Another Moscow factory school, connected with the Amo Automobile Factory, had an extensive shop equipment, and some very good class rooms, organized on the laboratory plan. The director of this school was a woman, and a considerable number of girls were working in the metal and wood shop with the boys. All factory apprentices were required to attend this school for three or four years.

The large electric equipment factory in Kharkov maintained a factory school, an evening two-year course for technical training of its own workers, a school for illiterates, and a school for young children. I went out alone to visit this factory, and when I got to the gate, I asked for the factory school. The gateman directed me, but I found myself in the school for young children. I went into an office, got a new set of directions, and reached the evening technical school. At the third attempt, I reached the right school.

There were 360 students in this factory school–8 per cent of the total number of workers. The basis of selection was: 50 per cent from among the children of workers in this factory; 25 per cent from among children that had done the work of the city schools, and 25 per cent from the families of unemployed workers.

Students in the school were in the first wage category, receiving 15.80 rubles per month. Their school course was four years. At the end of that time they were usually receiving from 40 to 45 rubles per month, plus a bonus based on production. One third of the students were girls. All were required to have the equivalent of the first four years of the elementary schools.

The school began in 1922 with 18 students. When I saw it, there were 360 students and 18 teachers.

Positions in these factory schools are eagerly sought. In the first place, all of the students receive enough for the work they do in the factory to provide them with a considerable part of their living. In the upper years of the school, they are paid as much as unskilled workers in the plant. By the time they have finished the school, they are virtually guaranteed a place in the factory, and at a wage well above the average of the plant. If they display any aptitude they can soon become skilled workers.

From the standpoint of the factory, the factory schools guarantee an adequate supply of trained workers, who have received their practical work in the factory and who have done their school work under its direction. Furthermore, the factory school is a good selection point. The factory workers and the factory administration both have a chance to look over their future fellow workers while they are being trained.

Students in the professional schools are between fourteen and twenty. They are therefore in the same age group as American high school students. But unlike American high school students, they are not only expected to handle school discipline, but to take a part in maintaining the academic standing of the school body and to participate in the administration of the school.

When I walked in, unannounced, to talk to one of the teachers in the Red October Factory School, he greeted me, spoke about the work his class was doing (in the decomposition of water) and then went with me into another part of the school, leaving the class he was teaching without any comment. It was a group of husky fifteen year old boys and girls, and I looked for trouble.

“In whose charge did you leave that class?” I asked him.

“In their own charge, of course,” said he.

“Is someone there responsible for the class?”

“Certainly, each group has its responsible committee. We shall soon hear from them. It is time for school to close.”

Before we had been talking five minutes this committee came to announce to the teacher that the hour was up, and to ask whether there was anything further for the class to do that day. The teacher answered in the negative, and the committee went back and dismissed the class.

When I went to visit the First Commercial Economic Technical School of Moscow I was taken into the office of the principal. Later, he showed me through the school. After I had been talking to him for about an hour, one of the students came in, introduced himself as an officer of the student body, and asked me whether I would have time to step into the student headquarters after I was through talking with the principal. Of course I went.

The students had an excellent, well-equipped room. There were thirty or forty members of the student body in the room, and without any formality they began to ask questions. First, they wished to know how American students were organized and what kinds of activities were carried on by these student organizations; second, whether the Dalton Plan was a success in the United States; third, whether there was any immediate prospect of the United States recognizing the Soviet Republic, and fourth, what the chances were for the development of a radical tendency in the American labor movement.

These students were organized in each group, as a whole student body, in trade unions, and many of them were members of political organizations. I asked the student representatives with whom I talked whether there was much interest among the students in these organizations. He assured me that there was. The assistant director of the school who was standing by shook his head: “The trouble is,” said he, “to get the students to take an interest in anything else.”

This school was directed by a school committee made up as follows: all the teachers (55); one student from each class (18); a representative of the commercial trade union; a representative of the Board of Trade; a representative of the technical workers (janitors, clerks, etc.) in the school. The executive committee of the school consisted of the principal, two assistants, a member of the teaching staff, selected by the teachers, and a representative of the students.

The school committee of the Trekhgornaia Textile Factory School consisted of: the director; all of the teachers (20); the five students who were members of the student executive committee; an executive committee of three, who are members of the school committee, selected by a committee composed of one representative of each shift of students in the factory; a representative of the factory management; a representative of the culture sub-committee of the workers’ factory committee; a representative of the Young Communists. Thus the educational authorities (who appoint the school director), the student body, the productive side of the industry, the workers in the industry, and the political interests of the workers were all represented in the school management.

At Stalinov the school committee of the factory school was made up in about the same way. On it were: the director; all of the teachers (30); 8 representatives of the students; a representative of the Communist Party; a representative of the Education Workers’ Union; a representative of the Central Labor Union; a representative of the Young Communists; a representative of the factory management, who in this case was an economic expert attached to the factory, and three representatives of the technical workers in the school. The director of the school, who was the chairman of this school committee, was appointed by the educational authorities.

Students in professional schools were frequently members of some political or economic organization. For example, in the class which entered the First Commercial-Technical School of Moscow in the Fall of 1925 there were 222 students: 90 boys and 132 girls. Eight of these entering students were members of the Communist Party, and 104 were Young Communists. Many of the students in this school also belonged to the trade unions that corresponded to the professional work they were learning.

All students in the factory schools belonged to the unions. At the electrical manufacturing plant in Kharkov, all of the students in the factory school were members of the Metal Workers’ Union. At the Trekhgornaia Textile Factory in Moscow I was told that “the students become members of the union when they enter the school.” At each factory school that I visited there was a union organization corresponding with the work done in the factory that supported the school. All such student members of trade unions paid one per cent of their income as dues to the union.

Professional school facilities are still very limited in the Soviet Union. As far as buildings and equipment are concerned, most of them cannot compare with the newer agricultural and technical high schools of the United States. Certain features of the Soviet professional schools are worthy of note, however: (1) Their work is more specialized, and is aimed more definitely at training the students for some technical position. In the United States many of the high schools train for college. The Soviet professional schools train definitely for work. (2) The laboratory method and the Dalton Plan have been adopted very largely, and the indications are that this tendency is on the increase. This is true in the factory schools as well as in the regular professional schools. (3) The factory schools, under their joint control, are a guarantee of a very high standard of technical and social training in the next generation of Soviet workers. (4) Through all of the professional schools the organization of the student body, for the carrying on of student activities, for the maintenance of discipline, for participation in school administration and for assistance in maintaining the academic standards of the pupils, is quite without parallel on any large scale in the United States.

Foreword, I A Dark Educational Past, II The Soviet Educational Structure, III Pre-School Educational Work, IV Social Education—The Labor School, V Professional Schools (High Schools), VI Higher Educational Institutions, a. Higher Technical Schools (Colleges), b. Universities, c. Institutes, VII Experiments With Subject-Matter—The Course of Study, VIII Experiments With Methods of Instruction, IX Organization Among the Pupils, X The Organization of Educational Workers, XI Higher Education For Workers, XII Unifying Education, XIII Socializing Culture.

International Publishers was formed in 1923 for the purpose of translating and disseminating international Marxist texts and headed by Alexander Trachtenberg. It quickly outgrew that mission to be the main book publisher, while Workers Library continued to be the pamphlet publisher of the Communist Party.

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