DOCUMENT No. 9
Declaration of Principles of a Socialist School
At the All-Russian Congress of Teachers-Internationalists, held 1n Moscow on June 6, 1918, there was discussed and adopted a declaration of principles of a Socialist school, which runs as follows:
1. Socialism—is a maximum imaginable realization for our epoch in the collective life of humanity, of an intelligently directed coordination of labor—mental, physical, organizing and executive.
2. Within this organization of labor, the best possible system of organization of knowledge, as the best means of cultural development, is a uniform secular school, with free tuition, and compulsory for all children and youths, a working school based on the principle of self-reliance and self-activity.
3. The object of such a school is to pass each individual, regardless of his natural endowments, through a complete cycle of knowledge—beginning with general educational work in the primary stages of the school and progressively advancing towards specialization in the higher and final stages.
4. In a society of toilers the task of caring for children is the duty of its members from the moment determined by science. Therefore, the infants are taken in charge of communal nurseries; young children—by the so-called "kindergartens"; children of primary school age—by the school-communes; and youths—by a free university.
5. A school-commune—where instructions are of a greater duration as compared with other schools, aspiring to realize the ideal of synthetic knowledge and harmonious social intercourse within its inner organization—must serve as a laboratory for the preparation of those social forms which are most appropriate for the contemporary cultural epoch.
6. The function of the State—which in the past was omnipotent and pursued the policy of subjugation of society and domination over it through school institutions—now becomes simpler and more dignified: from a despot over science the State becomes its protector, desirable—during the first28
