Page:Education and Art in Soviet Russia (1919).djvu/39

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ually changes it to a special scientific instruction, in the higher stages.

13. Whereas the old school was ever national and chauvinistic in character, the new school must be, in form and substance, a true national school—instructions conducted in the mother tongue, a thorough knowledge of the home country's physical and social conditions—but it must also be an international school as regards principles and methods.

14. Striving towards a harmonious synthesis of a broad educational culture with a thoroughgoing vocational training, educating the students in the spirit of the international solidarity of labor, only the socialist school has the right to say that it does not turn a human being out a skilled laborer but creates a man.

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Document No. 9 shows how the teacher has been stimulated to take a real interest in the school work, in its curriculum, and in the ultimate welfare of the children, a thing which, under capitalist society, it may be frankly said he never does. But not only is the teacher made into a real teacher by the Soviet methods, but janitors, firemen, and other school employees are to have their tasks dignified and rendered less sordid by actual pleasant and official contact with the student body. The article by A. Okunkoff, which is printed as Document No. 10, is from the pen of a specialist in education, and deals specifically with the question: "How shall the janitor be made a human being, instead of a tyrant over teachers and pupils, as in America?"

From "Narodnoye Prosvieschenye" (People's Education) Issue
No. 10.

DOCUMENT No. 10

The Workers' School and the School Servants

By A. Okunkoff

The old school system, which is now departing into the sphere of oblivion, was a reflex of the dominant class relations and, therefore, the economic system of the school and, in particular, of the town school, even in its details, moved largely along the

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