FOR every child, starting school is a great, if sometimes terrifying, adventure. Yet it doesn't take many months of public-school life for most American children to come to hate it. Their original eagerness changes into boredom, while all the adventure left them is in scheming how to put it over on old Miss Cross-Eyes.
For the great majority of children in Soviet schools, the story runs otherwise. Take Kolya, Paul and Vera. They are in the third, fifth and sixth grades of one of the city's schools. Its exterior of red bride and white stone looks like dozens of modern school buildings in America. Perhaps, by way of equipment, it has less to offer than a modern American school or, in fact, than the best schools in Moscow and Leningrad. Likewise, the teachers of this small city are handicapped by lack of sufficient training.
Nevertheless, for our young Betkins, school remains an absorbing daily adventure. They are discoverers of exciting new worlds. They are forever pioneering.
Paul, Vera and Kolya, like American children, are busy mastering the Three R's. But sums and spelling are no ends in themselves, drilled into young minds by dull routine and memory work. Rather, they are acquired as byproducts growing out of their main stream of activities.
Go with Vera and her brothers for a day at school. Listen in on their classes, talk with their class-mates. You will discover the secret of the Soviet's success in winning the hearts of its children, in "teaching young ideas how to shoot."
When you ask Kolya, "What do you like best about your school work?" his answer comes guide: "Making things." Vera and Paul agree. "Yes, our shop work." Little Kolya has his hammer, the calendar he made for his mother and other proud objects of his handicraft. Paul and Vera are learning how to use plane and saw. No difference is made between boys and girls. They have produced small tools and cabinets, and some other things needed about the home or in the class rooms. In the higher grades, this work takes on a specialized, vocational character.
Next year, when Vera will be sixteen, her shop work will take place three mornings a week in the factory school for apprentices. Is she anxious for that time to come!
Besides the natural interest which every child has in using his hands and making things, this work has for the children the added incentive of being connected with the most interesting, central thing in the town's life--the factory.
A Soviet factory, as we have seen, is quite different from one in other countries. No longer a ruthless speed-mill from which wage slaves hasten to escape at the end of the day, it is a communal workshop with those at the machines its masters. A beehive of innumerable social activities, a pulsing dynamo from which the new socialist life radiates out in all directions. Labour has become, as Stalin recently expressed it, a thing of valour, of heroism, and honour.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" I ask the little Betkins. Eyes shining, they answer what I have heard from scores of Soviet youngsters. "Work, like Ma and Pa, in our machine factory."
Their parents nod, smiling--that is what they want, too. How many children in, the States, or their parents, would give the same answer? Of hundreds of American miners, textile workers, dockers, farmers and others I have talked with at different times, only the class-conscious worker answers as Olga and Ivan Betkin--not smiling, but grimly. He knows that for his boy and girl; the factory means--not opportunity, but hardship, unemployment, police clubs. Yet, he wants his child to be among those fighting to bring about a new world.
Village children, however, in the U.S.S.R., dream of becoming tractor drivers, managers of collective farms (kolkhoz). When a local kolkhoz purchases a new lot of cows--front page news--the whole school makes a trip of inspection.
Vera adds shyly, when you question heir further, that later on, she would like to study engineering, too, like Tonya and Victor. That is, if she proves herself a good worker, and has sense enough for all those figures! Anyway, whatever she does she'd never want to leave the factory.
Even now, the children are taking part in the life of their beloved factory. As Paul told us earlier, there are regular visits of their Pioneer troops during noon hours to the shops. They bring papers and books to the workers and push forward campaigns against slovenly work and tardiness. A straw banner with a tortoise they "award" with solemn speeches to the most backward department. The laggards, stung by the laughing jibes of their fellows, set out in real earnest to be rid of that banner. But the Pioneers only remove it from the department's doorway when it has caught up with its production program and set its house in order. They carry through whirlwind drives for collecting salvage--old scrap, paper and battles. In this way, Paul explains, they save their Soviet Government thousands of rubles.
There are many other ways in which Soviet schools are tied up with everyday life, so that the young Betkins know that what they learn and do is of immediate use, not only to themselves, but the community as well. Everywhere study and theory are tied up with practice. Science, for instance, is no dry set of formulae, nor merely a series of fascinating test tubes in the laboratory. There are expeditions into the factories and surrounding territory. Pests must be discovered and rooted out. The soil is studied, for these young scientists have the job of helping discover new resources far their country's developing industry.
Kolya, Paul and Vera look upon themselves as citizens who already have important tasks to fulfill. As members of that ten million army of Pioneers, their eagle eyes are always scouting to see that all Soviet laws and regulations for the protection of children are being carried out. There must not be a single case of child labour in Podolsk, and none going hungry, without shoes, or without places in which to play. Otherwise, the Pioneers will be heard from, making things hot.
Together with teachers and parents, they are members of the "Friends of Children"--an All-Union organization that receives financial and other support from the government. Dues are three cents a month. Last year their section purchased new equipment for the school shop.
In the Podolsk school hallways and class rooms we notice many Fed banners, calling "Everybody prepare for the school elections." "Every parent a shock brigader," and "To increase out self-discipline--this is the duty of every student."
Paul directs us to a meeting of the student committee--a body composed of sixteen class presidents. Their student chairman is presiding. No teachers or supervisors are towering about. They are discussing their reports to the coming student body conference, and preparations for the elections. This is a far call from the sham self-government that most students wise-cracked about in our school days.
After the meeting they group around us, competing for their chance to put questions about children in the United States.
We ask Alexander Prekov, representative of the sixth graders, how their committee works. His serious black eyes gleam in a mischievous face. The typical school boy, even to his unruly hair. "Well, our main job is to see there're no hooligans in oar school,' he replies promptly. "You know, those playing hookey, shirking their lessons and all that." Another boy interrupts, "If a student comes late, or won't study we call him in, and talk it over. Sometimes there may be a reason, something wrong at home. Then we help him. If he is just trifling, we see he falls in line."
"What about the teachers?" we ask. A fair-haired girl laughs softly. "Most of them are all right. We take up many questions with them about how our class work is conducted." "For instance?" we urge. "Well," she answers, "not long ago, the students complained that the arithmetic teacher wasn't teaching them so they could get it. We took it up with the teachers committee. Now things are better."
One of the teachers who has come in during the discussion adds, "Galya is right. We teachers find there is much we can learn from our students. Our relations are far healthier and more pleasant than in the old days. I have been teaching twenty years, I speak from experience."
We go with him to the teachers' rest room to hear more of their slant on the Soviet school. "No doubt this type of school taxes our resources and ingenuity, the way the old methods never did," they agree. "We can't always measure up. Yet it is far more interesting. Our students are on their toes." The younger teachers cannot imagine teaching in an old type of school.
As,for difficulties, there are many of them.
"Often we run short of materials. And at the rate this town grows, and babies appear," a bob-haired, athletic girl puts in, "our classes will run too large. We can't expand fast enough. We've 1,800 pupils and 7 teachers, which makes an average of 32 apiece. Some classes run as high as 40. We aim to keep 35 as the maximum, and even this is too many." Before the revolution, Podolsk had 16 teachers and only one grammar school. Most of the workers' children were lucky if they got enough schooling to enable them to write their names.
The teachers are proud of the Podolsk region's record, which they have all done their share to achieve. Including all the neighboring villages and agricultural regions of this district, there is a hundred per cent record of school-age children at school, while illiteracy, which formerly ran high, is rapidly approaching zero.
The teaching norm, we learn, is four hours a day, with the fifth hour a rest period. About three hours in every five days are given to social work. All are striving to increase their training. The minimum required of those teaching the lower grades is roughly equivalent to our high school certificate, while those in charge of classes from the fifth grade up must finish' a three year course at the university. Salaries run according to training, from ninety to three hundred rubles, with the average around a hundred and fifty. In the nearby villages, teachers have their apartments provided; in Podolsk they take rooms with families living in the workers' town or city. Hot breakfasts are served them at school, and they have the privilege of eating in the factory dining room.
Last year Soviet teachers received a wage increase amounting to thirty per cent, and were put in the same category as industrial workers. This carries many privileges such as the right to buy in the closed co-operative stores. "Still, we don't deny there is room left for improvement," they say frankly.
"What about American teachers?" they ask, "Is it true that in Chicago, Memphis and many cities the teachers aren't receiving their wages?" Things are otherwise with them. All belong to the union, which signs a collective agreement with the Soviet Department of Education every year, specifying wages and working conditions.
An oldtimer remembers, "During the war years, our wages were held up too. That was the time the Podolsk teachers talked of joining with Moscow, in a strike."
Another question--"What about American school children now that there is so much unemployment?"
Hearing, they exclaim, "In such a rich country, what a scandal!" Russians love this word, emphasizing its last syllable with telling effect. Comrade Portiov, a round-shouldered little woman, hurries off to the office, returning with a primly written list of figures. "See, here is an account of the amount of clothing and meal tickets distributed in out school, during this term." The Soviet Government takes upon itself to see that every school child has the proper clothes and food. As all parents have work, it is only where a man is a poor farmer or unskilled worker with a large family that such help is necessary. In that case, tickets are issued to the child for what is needed.
We read over the list.
Eight hundred and ninety pairs of shoes, 1,040 suits and dresses and 55 overcoats distributed at reduced prices.
One hundred and thirteen meal tickets and 125 pairs of shoes distributed free.
They begin an animated discussion of international politics. Only six of the fifty-seven ate Party members and two are Comsomols; Yet these teachers are quite definite in their conviction that the Soviet State with its socialist program offers the only reasonable, scientific way for securing human progress and cultural advance.