Nearing on the pedagogy developing through experimentation in early Soviet schools.

‘VIII. Experiments with Methods of Instruction’ by Scott Nearing from Education in Soviet Russia. International Publishers, New York. 1926.

VIII. EXPERIMENTS WITH METHODS OF INSTRUCTION.

The method of handling subject matter as followed out in the Soviet elementary schools makes them experimental in character. In a sense, each lesson is a joint experiment in which the students and the teacher select the subject matter. Each class keeps its record of daily progress. Each group decides within the bounds of the course of study, what it shall do.

Montessori’s system was based on the same educational principle. She gave the child a choice between different activities. Her plan was neither so thoroughly social nor so practical as that adopted in the Soviet Union, where the group method of selection is followed, and where the material selected comes from the community and not from cupboard.

Pupils, under the Soviet system, are investigating constantly. It might almost be called a method of research, applied to the elementary grades.

Work is done in groups, and on the basis of a division of labor. Thus, at the outset, the Soviet method differs from that followed in American schools. In the United States pupils are ordinarily expected to work individually. There are much fewer textbooks used under the Soviet system. There are not even reference books in many of the schools and on many of the subjects. The teachers and pupils together build the courses as they go.

Thus the Soviet method begins with the proposition that the school must work experimentally in all fields. The second proposition is equally important. The problems with which the work is done must be drawn from the normal life of the pupils.

Soviet pupils are therefore expected to look around them, and to understand what they see. This understanding comes from the application of the principles of scientific research to everyday affairs. “Everything is new with us, and it is not strange that we frequently fail to find in books the answers to questions and the solutions of problems that confront us; our children must seek to create, to propose a problem and to seek its solution through experimentation, thus obtaining the response of life and of nature.” (Programmes Officiels, supra. p. 54.)

How shall this response of life and nature be determined? Can undeveloped children understand and measure these responses? Are not such matters beyond child ken? Is it possible to provide a course of study that is within the reach of children and that will at the same time preserve their interest through the opportunities that it offers for initiative and for group activity?

Soviet educators have tried to answer these questions by dividing the course of study into a number of small units or concrete points of interest, each one of which is a rounded life experience. One of these points of interest is called a “complex.”

Soviet elementary education proceeds on the method of the study of complexes, each of which is “the body of concrete phenomena taken from reality and grouped around a definite idea or theme.” (supra. p. 13.) In western Europe, this would be called a centre of interest by educators, but under the Soviet interpretation, it is more than a centre of interest. It is a centre of life-activity.

“In school we must study life, reality. This imposes on us a certain method of instruction different from that which has been employed up to the present time. Until now pupils studied different topics without any connection between them…the programmes which we are proposing are not made up of subjects but of complexes.” (supra. p. 13.) Applied to the first grade of the village school, this organization of material by complexes is as follows: (supra. pp. 19-21.)

“First Year–I. Autumn-winter Trimester.

“1. The life of the child during the summer, before school. Conversations with the children.
a. Nature during the summer. The weather. Vegetation. Comparisons with autumn.
b. Occupations of the children during the summer; their work and play; the work of their families. Encourage the children to express themselves freely, in their simple child language, giving their observations, etc. Free hand drawing; representations and models of the themes being discussed. Additions and subtraction within the limits of one and twelve. (For instance, in comparing the composition of the families of pupils, the ages of the youngest in the families, etc.) Bring together in the school all of the things made by the children during the summer, and other things in a class museum that is connected with the discussion as to what the child did during the summer.
c. Study the composition of the child’s family.

“2. Discuss the school and its work.
a. In order to decorate the school, have the children collect natural objects (beautiful foliage, mosses, nuts, mushrooms, stones). Changing color of the leaves in autumn. The fall of the leaves. Organize a corner of live vegetation in the class room.
b. Why do people come to school? Why are schools being set up all over the world? The school rules. Take advantage of the ordering of the class room and of its decoration to have the children count,–the furniture, the books, the equipment, etc. Problems with all of the operations in the limits of one and twelve. Decorative work. Free-hand drawing. Take advantage of posters and signs to have the children begin to read. Hygiene in the cleaning of the building; health rules (open windows, sprinkled floors, etc.). The use of the toilet.
c. Begin to habituate the children to organization (work, the plan of the day, discipline). Why is order desirable in the school? What does each member of the family do at home? Examine the division and organization of work in the family. Reading and writing; their importance; the intellectual pastimes of the family.

“3. Safeguarding the health of children.
a. Sickness and health. The diseases of children. Contagious diseases.
b. Measure the height and weight of the children (long measure, weights, the half, the quarter). Profit by the necessity of recording all of these measurements to continue the learning of reading and writing. Indispensable notions of hygiene: clean face, hands, ears, clothes, normal sitting position.
c. Protection of the school against contagious diseases. Observations of hygiene in the family of the child.

“4. The November Revolution.
a. Utilize the available natural material for the decoration of the school; profit by these decorations to make observations about nature. Accustom the children to the care of vegetation; not to break limbs; to care for new growth, etc.
b. Organization of the class work for the revolutionary celebration; the work of decoration; reading and writing revolutionary posters; learning revolutionary songs; group movements and discipline (for taking part in the demonstration, in the parade).
c. The life of workers (wage-earners and peasants) at present; under the Czar; landowners and capitalists.

“5. Preparation for winter.
a. Signs of the approach of winter; shortening of the days, study of the clock-hour, half-hour, quarter-hour; observations on the changing weather (storm, clouds, sun, rain)–preparation of a simple weather record; observe the flight of the birds, the fall of the leaves, where and how the insects and the animals hibernate.
b. (The children help get ready for winter.)
c. (Work of the families in getting ready for winter.)

“6. The environment in which the child finds himself in winter.

“7. Summary of the trimester; exposition; fete; report of the work done.”

It is unnecessary to go further with the detail. The work suggested under headings 5 and 6 above resembles that already given under numbers 1 to 5.

Two observations are appropriate: (1) If readers will turn to Chapter 2, and will compare the elementary village curriculum of Czarist days with the one just described, they may be able to form some idea of how far the schools of Russia have come in less than a decade. (2) The complex method has been followed with great fidelity; the whole course of study is drawn from the environment of the child; the outline is sufficiently elastic so that pupils and teacher are free, from day to day, to plan out just how the next steps are to be taken.

The plan for the remainder of the year is of the same general character: following nature; following the experiences of the child; following the activities of the family. Through the year, the child is asked to observe nature, himself, and his social surroundings; to analyze them; to discover their meaning. He is using the method of science, and in addition to working with the world of chemistry and mechanics, he is also turning the cutting edge of scientific investigation against social phenomena.

During my whole stay in the Soviet Union, I did not enter a single elementary school where this program, or some modification of it, was not being tried in the lower years.

With this field of activity in mind, the teacher and the class prepare a “working plan” which the class will follow. Such a sample plan is contained in the Programmes Officiels, (pp. 58ff). It is long, and is drawn up under six headings. In order to illustrate its character, I will quote one section:

“Example of working plan for the natural sciences; village school, second year, autumn-winter trimester.

“1. The life of the child during the summer vacation.

“2. Plan for coming work.
a. General subject. Organize the work of the class for the trimester; scientific, economic, school organization. Propose the general object; to study the life of vegetation and of domestic animals during the autumn and winter, and the work that they demand. Particular problems: study of a worker and of the conditions of his life during the winter. In connection with this prepare the work plan for the trimester; study of the forces and of the means of execution; division into groups and tasks for the various activities and observations. Decision as to the way in which reports on group work and on tasks shall be made.
b. Excursions. Study of the whole school and of the class. Study of the school grounds and a report on the improvements that should be made in them. If there are no school grounds, make an excursion into the village with the same object.
c. Work. Preparation of blanks on which work records are to be kept. Decoration of the class room, and its preparation for the year’s work.
d. Laboratory work and observations. Harvesting of wheat. Threshing. Compositions written on the work of the fields. The potato harvest. Elementary notions as to the way of calculating the year’s crop.
e. What the children should read and think. Reflect on the difference between individual and collective work. Causes of the present harvest. Influences of these causes on our lives.”

So much for the first two steps in method: the division of subject matter into complexes and the preparation of a working plan. Now comes the third step. The teacher and the pupils, under this working plan, must carry on a series of projects.

Each complex, to be of use, must be convertible into a project. A project is an enterprise undertaken by an individual or a group. It may consist of a chemical analysis, or of the sanitary survey of a village.

The type of project that fits best into the Soviet educational program is the group or class project–a piece of work that a number of the pupils can do together, on the basis of a division of labor. In order to carry out such group projects, classes are divided into groups that vary in size with the character of the project. Each of these groups then goes to work on its assigned task. Ordinarily they do their work on a laboratory basis after the third or fourth year of the elementary school.

Thus, in theory as well as in practice, the school becomes an experiment station, in which groups of pupils and teachers are working on problems, and are seeking through the application of scientific method, for an answer. The problems are all of immediate and local interest.

Most Soviet school rooms are not yet equipped with tables and chairs instead of the old-time benches, but the number that are so equipped is growing very rapidly. In the lower grades (the first three or four years) the children work in the same room under the same teacher. In the higher grades they go from one laboratory to another studying some aspect of the complex or unit problem that is occupying them at the time.

There is a fourth stage in Soviet method–the report on work done. A project is not completed until it is carefully written up, and in the Soviet schools, writing up includes diagrams. A diagram is a schematic or pictorial presentation of information. Soviet students reduce the whole field of study to diagrams.

Diagrams begin with the first year. The children diagram heights, weights, family composition. They diagram the organization of the health service, of the Pioneers; of the student self-government; of the harvest. Diagramming is, of course, an essential part of modern scientific method, and since the introduction of the new education plan, Soviet students have been making diagrams. The result is that when I visited the Soviet schools the ordinary upper-grade student could read a diagram as readily as a trained mechanic reads a blue-print.

Successful diagramming is a relatively new art. It is being worked out in the school rooms all over the Soviet Union.

Methods of work, such as those that I have just been describing, have been tried in a few private and public schools in the United States. They are today being adopted and applied to the needs of millions of children in the Soviet Union. It goes without saying that a plan in so experimental a stage is not universally approved, but it has won the support of the great majority of teachers and educators with whom I talked.

Pupils also seem to like the new plan. It gives them both freedom and variety. They enjoy its elasticity, and the chance that it gives them to co-operate in the building of the course of study.

The greatest objection to the plan really comes from the teachers who are called upon to administer it, without any adequate preparation for subject matter and teaching method that are so utterly different from those that were current in Russia before the Revolution.

What does this plan mean to the teacher?  “It means that he must study the work profoundly; that he must learn to see what is going on around him; and to appreciate its significance. Without losing any time he must begin to study this domain–at the beginning as an apprentice with the pupils; he can learn much from the children; it is only necessary that he should make them talk, and then draw the conclusions and necessary deductions from these observations. But in addition to practical studies in this field in collaboration with his pupils, he must study the same subject individually, profiting by the experience of humanity, that is, from the book.” (Supra. p. 15.) The teacher can understand the book better than the children; he has had more experience; his horizon is larger; instead of asking them to read, at the outset it is he that must read and explain.

No instructor can do this work effectively alone. It must be directed by the local organizations of educational workers, acting in concert.

If the work is well done, the teacher will stimulate among his pupils a wish to learn. He will increase their desire for the understanding of life. “He will direct their instincts of investigation in such a way that he will make them ardent propagandists of science in their families.” (Programmes Officiels, p. 16.)

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.

PDF of later edition of book: https://archive.org/download/in.ernet.dli.2015.123754/2015.123754.Education-In-Soviet-Russia.pdf