EDUCATORS
Anton Makarenko (1888 — 1939)1
G.N. Filonov2
The establishment and development of educational
theory and the education system in the USSR
was closely bound up with the scientific creativity and practical
labours of an outstanding group of Soviet educators. Pride of place
among the educators who fought actively to establish democratic ideas
and principles in educational theory and practice belongs to Anton
Makarenko (1888-1939). His name rightly figures high among the world’s
great educators, and his books, published in editions of millions on all
the continents of the globe, enjoy enormous popularity in the widest
circles. Makarenko’s work is the subject of research in many countries
of the world and efforts are made to apply his ideas creatively in the
education of children today. On the other hand, it still happens — and
not infrequently — that, in specialist and popular literature alike, the
‘Makarenko phenomenon’ is explained in a one-sided or sometimes
erroneous manner.
For some reason, certain foreign students of
Makarenko’s life and work consider that he was a ‘self-taught genius’,
and portray his educational system without any reference to its
historical
links with the progressive education of past and present. This is to
some extent due to the fact that in his published and widely known
works, Makarenko himself makes comparatively few direct references to
his attitude towards the world educational heritage and to his
contemporary fellow educators in the Soviet Union and abroad. The most
recent Soviet research, however, based on documentary evidence, shows
that despite his extremely modest origins and the difficult
circumstances of his early years (his father was a painter and decorator
and he himself began to work at the age of 17 as a teacher in an
elementary school for the children of railway-workers), Makarenko was
deeply versed in the history of education. Many important principles
which he established theoretically and proved in practice are the
development of the ideas of Pestalozzi, Owen, Usinskij, Dobroljubov and
other distinguished past proponents of democratic education in the
world.
Examination of hitherto unpublished literary,
promotional and educational writings by
Makarenko, and of notes and documents from the educational
establishments that he directed,
provides further confirmation of the unwavering attention which
Makarenko devoted to the works of the leading Soviet educators of his
age — N.K. Krupskaya, A.V. Lunacarskij, P.P. Blonskij, S.T. Sackij and
others. Before the Revolution, and especially in the Soviet period, his
general philosophy and educational views were enormously influenced by
the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, and by the writings of the
outstanding humanist Maxim Gorky. Attempts to portray this most eminent
Soviet educator as an isolated ‘peak in an empty plain’ are thus quite
unjustifiable.
Equally untrue are the claims by some students of Makarenko’s work that
his activities and ideas were for a long time isolated from the world of
education and from progressive society in general. Even before the
Second World War, during Makarenko’s lifetime, his vitally positive and
optimistic ideas influenced such educators as Korcak and Freinet, who —
like Makarenko himself — have since acquired worldwide renown, while
Fucik, Herriot and many of the distinguished
foreigners who visited the Soviet Union during the 1930s noted the
outstanding results produced
by the teaching methods practised at the F.E. Dzerzinskij Commune, of
which he was the director.
Makarenko’s experience and theoretical legacy have lost none of their
relevance for the teaching of young people today.
Makarenko’s outstanding educational work at the
Gorky Colony (1920-28) and at the
Dzerzinskij Commune (1927-35) likewise cannot be dissociated from the
activities during the
1920s of schools and other educational establishments headed by such
eminent and talented
teachers as Sackij, Pistrak, Pogrebinskij and Soroka-Rosinskij. One must
not, of course,
underestimate the originality of Makarenko’s work and educational ideas.
As we have said, he
started along his creative path in the company of other educationists
who had affirmed, in theory
and in practice, the idea of a unified education based on work.
Nevertheless, his ideas on many
questions relating to the theory and methods of communist education went
beyond current thinking and looked to the future of socialist education
and teaching, noting the problems that would occur in their subsequent
development.
Among the current problems of socialist education in
which Makarenko’s theories exercise
an important influence are the relationship between education and
politics and between education and the other sciences, the logic of
educational theory, the essence of education, the relationship between
educational theory and practice, the role of education in the creation
of lifestyles, parallel educational activity, and the integration of
education with everyday life.
Makarenko’s ideas concerning the relationship
between education and other disciplines,
whether in the humanities (philosophy, ethics, aesthetics and
psychology), or in the natural sciences (biology and physiology) deserve
serious attention. More particularly, his far-reaching investigation of
the essentials of a new, socialist pattern of moral and ethical
relations led him to enunciate this very important idea: make as many
demands as possible on a man, and at the same time show him as much
respect as possible. This idea is occasionally criticized by some modern
educators for putting the principle of demanding something of people in
such a prominent position in the ‘demand-respect’ dyad. Makarenko
himself pointed out that from a genuinely humanitarian point of view,
respect for and demands on a person were not separate categories and
attitudes, but were dialectically related facets of an indivisible
whole.
Makarenko’s views on the nature of the relationship
between education and psychology, biology and — more specifically —
physiology are extremely important in tackling the theoretical
problems of education, as is his associated criticism of the
methodological ideas of paedology. As we know, paedology laid claim to
being the fundamental Marxist science of children, supposedly using the
combined evidence of all the social and natural sciences about the
formation of the young person. The science of education, on the other
hand, was assigned the role of a purely
applied, technical discipline which, on the basis of the theoretical
material of paedology, was
expected to issue recommendations regarding actual teaching methods in
school. In a number of his books and lectures (including Report to the
Ukrainian Educational Research Institute, 1928;
Experience of Working Methods in a Children’s Labour Colony, 1931-32;
Teachers Shrug Their
Shoulders, 1932) Makarenko criticized the sociology- and biology-based
ideas of paedologists,
with their vulgar notions of the ‘primacy’ of environment and
inheritance and their appeals for the passive following of what they
termed the ‘nature of the child’, associating them with the theorists of
‘free education’. He further criticized paedocentrism and
underestimation of the educational role of the teacher and the
children’s collective and of the emerging personality’s own activity.
While fighting for a purpose-oriented education that
would shape man and be answerable to society for the results, Makarenko
did not repeat the limited views of French materialists who
contended that ‘education is all’. In Makarenko’s view, the power of
education in a socialist society was increasing with the skilful use by
teaching specialists of advances in psychology, biology, medicine and
all the human sciences, which were required to play an auxiliary role in
the practical organization of the educational process and in educational
research. The problem of educational logic was held by Makarenko to be
closely bound up with a grasp of the essence of education.
Calling education ‘the most dialectical science’, he worked on the assumption that:
education is a process that is social in the broadest sense....With all the highly complex world of ambient activity, the child enters into an infinite number of relationships, each of which constantly develops, interweaves with other relationships and is compounded by the child’s own physical and moral growth. All this ‘chaos’ is seemingly quite unquantifiable but nevertheless gives rise at each particular instant to definite changes in the personality of the child. To direct and control this development is the task of the teacher.3
This understanding of the essence of the educational process also prompted Makarenko’s criticism of the illogicalities of traditional educational theory as reflected in mistakes of the deductive prediction, isolated means and ethical fetishism types. This gave rise to the now classical statement:
the dialectical character of educational action is so great that no single means can be projected as positive if its action is not controlled by all the other means simultaneously applied....An individual means may always be both positive and negative, the decisive point being not its direct logic but the logic and action of the entire system of harmoniously organized means.4
Makarenko’s tenets of educational logic are becoming particularly relevant now that an integrated approach is being applied to the educational process as a whole, this approach being based on an understanding of the process of education as a complex dialectical whole made up of mutually complementary components and fashioned into an orderly, harmoniously functioning system as a result of the purposeful endeavours of educators drawing upon knowledge of the general objective principles governing the formation of the personality.
Also of particular current interest are Makarenko’s
views regarding the relation of educational theory and practice in a
socialist system of education: ‘I consider that we are living in an age
where practical workers are making remarkable amendments to the premises
of the different
sciences.’5 The habitual involvement of the working public in
the practical construction of socialism through the use of scientific
advances, which in Makarenko’s time was a mere project, has of course
become the general rule in today’s developed socialist society. Having
accurately observed this trend, Makarenko sharply reacted against
attempts by paedologists to deduce particular principles about the
development of the child’s personality from general sociological,
psychological, biological and other assumptions not put to the test of
experience. ‘A basis for...an educational law’, he wrote, ‘should be
provided by the induction of total experience. Only total experience,
verified as it progresses and in respect of its results, and only the
comparison of integral complexes of experience can provide us with the
material for selection and decision.’6 At the same time,
Makarenko by no means regarded the role of induction in learning the
laws of education as exclusive and universal, but only something linked
with deduction. In educational research, ‘as in any other area,’ he
continued, ‘experience arises from deductive conclusions, which are
significant well beyond the initial instant of experience and remain
guiding principles throughout’.7
Of exceptional interest to the modern theory and
practice of education are those ideas of
Makarenko’s that have become known in educational literature as ‘ideas
about the unity of a child’s education and life’ and ‘education by
parallel activity’. As a matter of fact, they could be merged in the
general issue of ‘way of life and education’. It has long been a tenet
of traditional educational theory worldwide that the chief educator of
man is life itself, and this fundamentally materialistic notion served
as a basis for the principle of conformity to nature in teaching and
education (Jan Komenski, Johann Pestalozzi, Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Friedrich Diesterweg). It stands to Makarenko’s credit alone, however,
that he actually established a system of education built upon the
educationally effective organization of the entire life of the pupils.
In this he was not passively following the ‘nature of the child’ but was
aiming for the maximum development of each individual so as to produce a
strong and creative personality prepared for life in every way.
Observing the unprecedented increase in the
educational opportunities offered by every
aspect of the way of life of children and young people in the Soviet
Union, Makarenko urged that
there should be no waiting for life itself to yield its fruits
spontaneously in the form of the people necessary to society, but that
not only the instruction and work but the entire life of the younger
generation should be organized within an integral educational process.
This idea found a clear
practical application in the life of the educational institutions that
he directed. The objective features of present and future Soviet general
education — as reflected in the transition to universal compulsory
secondary education, implementation of the principle of combining
education with labour and varied creative activity for children, the
prospect of single-shift studies in all schools and the consequent
possibility of meeting the public’s needs regarding the organization of
extended and full-day activity — make it possible to assert that the
pre-conditions genuinely exist for the widespread and constructive
application in schools of the idea for the educationally effective
organization of every aspect of children’s lives, which is one of the
central ideas in Makarenko’s legacy.
While stressing the importance of Makarenko’s
contribution to the elucidation of a number
of problems concerning educational methods, it must be noted that this
aspect of his scientific work needs deeper and more comprehensive
analysis. This mainly concerns the nature of Makarenko’s contribution to
the elucidation of the methodological problems of the educational
collective and methods of organizing the educational process.
In this connection, it should be noted that the very
term ‘educational collective’ is directly
associated with Makarenko’s name and has now gained wide recognition in
progressive education. Makarenko examined such aspects of the
educational collective as unity of external and internal relations, and
the organizational structure of the collective, with its traditions,
style and tone. In the life of the educational collective Makarenko
included all relations and types of activities that were typical of a
democratic society. Of great topical interest are his ideas regarding
the development of the educational functions of the collective and its
transformation from an object of the activities of educators into an
actively operating agent organizing its own life.
These assumptions join up with the views expressed
by Makarenko regarding the unity of the methods of educating and those
of studying children. The traditional assumption in the past was
that only when the child had first been studied could he be educated.
New social conditions and the new challenges facing education have
forced substantial changes in these ideas. Where Makarenko played a
pioneering part was in his idea of studying children in the process of
being educated, a process involving the active transformation of their
way of life and influencing their consciousness, feelings and conduct.
In this case, the functions of studying the children’s collective and
the personality and individuality of the individual child become part
and parcel of the actual methods of education. It is wrong,
incidentally, to make out that Makarenko regarded the collective as a
mere instrument of mass education; the unity of education through
collective and individual action is a distinctive feature of his
educational system.
Some students of the experience and theoretical
views of Makarenko narrow down his
understanding of the essence of the educational collective by focusing
only on the criterion of
togetherness, that is, the direct association between pupils within the
collective. Makarenko indeed attached definite importance to
intra-collective association and to intra-collective relations in the
formation of the pupil’s personality. In his early years of work in the
Gorky Colony he even somewhat exaggerated the importance of togetherness
for creating the ethos of the collective, and he himself made reference
to this at a later stage. But Makarenko viewed intra-collective
association in conjunction with the collective’s external links, to the
wealth and variety of which he attached the utmost importance. The
external links of the collective with a wider society, provide, in
Makarenko’s view, the main source of those influences that are necessary
to the full development of each individual. The root of a man’s
formation should be the life of society in all its varied
manifestations. Association and relations within the collective
represent a distinctive ‘mechanism’ for processing information arriving
from outside, a ‘mechanism’ that helps each individual to react
selectively to the influences of the outside world and to form within
himself typical and individual personality traits. In just such an
approach lies the key to Makarenko’s ideas about the collective as a
method ‘which, being general and unique, at the same time provides an
opportunity for each separate personality to develop its own specific
features and maintain its individuality’.8
The attempt is sometimes made to interpret
Makarenko’s ideas about the formation of the
personality in the collective as an encouragement to suppress the
freedom of the child and
subordinate him unconditionally to the demands and will of the
collective. Such an interpretation seems to be an extremely one-sided
depiction of the relations that actually existed between the collective
and the individual personality in Makarenko’s experience. In conflict
situations, when the collective clashed with an individual opposed to
the opinion of the community, ignoring his obligations in the
collective, being capricious and trying to put anarchy in the place of
discipline, the question of coercion did indeed arise. In these
situations as well, however, reaction to the individual was humane and
based on the unity of showing respect and making demands. In normal
circumstances in the usual educational process, relations between the
collective and the individual were built on the unity of their interests
and defence by the collective of the rights of each pupil. The older and
stronger could not harm the younger and weaker. Such was the firm
tradition of the collective and anyone contravening it bore the weight
of common reprobation. Not only therefore did the collective not
suppress but it genuinely promoted the freedom of each emergent person.
Makarenko assigned a special place in the life of
the educational collective to labour, combined with instruction in the
fundamentals of science and a broad socio-political and moral education.
His basic ideas regarding labour education may be summarized as follows:
Labour becomes an effective means of communist education only when it
forms a part of the general educational
process; at the same time, this has no meaning unless all children and
adolescents are involved in types of socially useful work suited to
their age.
There must be a combination of such types of work as: compulsory participation in self-help and productive labour organized on the most modern technical basis possible; selectively performed creative technical work; and unpaid work for the common good. Only when all the above types of work are combined in the educational process do children and adolescents acquire the whole range of attitudes that permit a balanced, genuinely free development of the personality.
The pupils’ labour collective and its constituent bodies and representatives must to an ever-increasing degree be given the role of responsible organizers of their own labour activity, and a decisive role in matters of profit distribution and wages, in the use of a wide range of material and moral incentives, and in the organization of consumption.
At the same time, a critical look needs to be taken
at the assertion by some specialists that
Makarenko’s experience provides a model for the organization of the
educational process in which the costs of education are met out of
profits from the pupils’ productive work. Makarenko was never in favour
of the school ‘paying its way’, and he took the view that the most
important thing was that the life of the collective should be organized
in an educationally sound fashion so as to allow the personality to
develop in a full and harmonious way. The economic results of the
pupils’ activity were subordinate to that requirement. The fact that the
pupils in the Gorky Colony and the Dzerzinskij Commune did four hours of
productive work per day was regarded by Makarenko as a measure made
necessary by the particular difficulties of the USSR in the period
following the civil war. He considered that the amount of time allotted
to labour should not be out of proportion to the amount of time spent on
study, sport, art, games and social activity, while the economic effect
of the pupils’ labour should lie in their familiarization with
production relations, distribution and consumption patterns, but by no
means in ‘paying their own way’.
Nowadays, the ‘number one problem’ is how to provide
pupils in general schools with labour training and education for life,
to teach them how to make an informed choice of a career that will suit
their individual inclinations and abilities and also match the demands
of society. In such
circumstances, this part of Makarenko’s legacy is assuming an extremely
important role, both as
regards the practical side of schoolchildren’s labour associations and,
in particular, we suggest, as regards the organization of the
corresponding educational research.
Makarenko was one of the first Soviet educators to urge that the activities of various educational institutions — i.e., the school, the family, clubs, public organizations, production collectives and the community existing at the place of residence — should be integrated. In this connection, he laid special emphasis on the leading role of the school as an educational and methods center having the most highly qualified and proficient educational staff.
Some contemporary researchers are over-literal in repeating individual thoughts of Makarenko about the school as a mono-collective, universalizing his idea of associations of different age-groups of children and adolescents, and trying to copy specific organizational forms peculiar to the experience of the Gorky Colony and the Dzerzinskij Commune. It should be remembered that Makarenko himself drew attention to the need to use educational methods that related to the actual circumstances in which the educational process was being organized. The working conditions of modern general schools and other educational institutions naturally call to a great extent for a method other than that followed by Makarenko in the colony and the commune.
As he noted, ‘Other experience is possible and, had
I had it, I would perhaps think differently.’9
This remark by Makarenko must be borne in mind today when we analyze
particular educational works of his. The thoughtful reader of today must
be taught to distinguish what in hese works is still of lasting
significance, reflecting general principles of educational theory and
method, and what bears the hallmark of Makarenko’s period, being
relevant only to those specific conditions which were the background to
his experience.
One particular question to be considered is what
should be thought of Makarenko’s literary works, and chiefly the three
that have gained the widest readership: The Road to Life, Learning
to
Live and A Book for Parents. It would, of course, be wrong
to draw a strict dividing line between
Makarenko’s literary writings and his purely educational works in the
form of articles, lectures and talks. Their ideological, educational and
conceptual basis is identical, as is the aim assigned to them by the
author himself, namely the education of a genuinely free and happy
person. In addition, there are pages in Makarenko’s literary works where
he rises to the heights of scientific educational thinking. At the same
time, if we regard the literary heritage of Makarenko as factual
material describing his working experience in the Gorky Colony and the
Dzerzinskij Commune, we must remember that in The Road to Life,
Learning to Live and other books the real facts are often
generalized, displaced in time and sometimes interwoven with the
author’s imagination. His literary works, therefore, usually do not
provide a strictly scientific and objective basis for studying the real
facts of his educational practice. This does not, of course, detract
either from their literary value or from their importance to us as
indicators of Makarenko’s educational ideas and his general philosophy.
One important function of educational science is to
direct practical work not towards the slavish copying of specific forms
of educational activity, but towards the creative application of the
main ideas of eminent bygone educators, both in the conditions actually
found in the modern school
and family and in the activities of clubs and voluntary organizations,
labour collectives and other
social educational institutions. For instance, the experience and ideas
of Makarenko have now
become especially topical again in connection with the development of
self-government, as has his understanding of the role of the most active
members in the collective of an educational
establishment. Attention must obviously be focused in this connection
not on such specific forms of work as the system of reports and rosters
in the commune, the activity of the Council of
Commanders, and the various standing and temporary commissions, but on
such fundamental
principles as the involvement of all pupils without exception, including
juniors, in various
organizational functions in primary and general collectives, and the
conferment of real responsibility on the collective and its subsidiary
bodies for the decisions taken, for their implementation and for the
monitoring of that implementation.
It may today legitimately be maintained that a more thorough and scientifically based approach is needed to Makarenko’s ideas. This is because the progress made by the socialist education system and educational theory since Makarenko’s day enables a more objective answer to be given to the question of the enduring ideological substance of those ideas.
While not setting out to make a detailed critical
analysis of modern works on Makarenko, we must just point out that the
formation of Makarenko’s ideas was a lengthy and complex process of
creative quests and fortunate discoveries. At the same time, he had to
overcome those mistakes
and aberrations that are inevitable in the life of anyone who does not
follow the beaten track but
boldly makes his own way towards the truth.
The emergence and development of Makarenko’s
educational system was not until recently the subject of any special
historical and educational research. It would be wrong to suppose that
back in the pre-revolutionary period or even in the early years
following the October Socialist
Revolution Makarenko had fully come into his own as an outstanding
educator of our times. There had, for example, been elements of pupil
self-government in his teaching experience before the Revolution.
However, in the difficult early years of work in the Gorky Colony
Makarenko basically cultivated only the active participation of a few
senior, most authoritative colony members, on whom he relied when
organizing the collective. Such an approach inevitably led to the
formation in the collective of ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements, as is
also frequently the case in modern educational practice. And only in the
second half of the 1920s did Makarenko begin to develop the activities
of the general assembly of colony members, which became the supreme
collective organ of self-government, giving practically every colony
member a hand in organizing the manifold affairs of the collective.
Experience with the development of a real collective
also led Makarenko to hit on the form of organization consisting of
composite ad hoc groups of pupils set up to perform specific items of
socially useful work. The leaders of such groups (detachments) were as a
rule chosen from those
who were not normally considered as ‘active’ pupils. This gradually made
it possible to involve
everyone in running the collective and in leadership, and at the same
time it bypassed the privileges of the elective body and prevented its
members from coming to think that they belonged to an élite. In this
way, the organization of the life of the pupil collective assumed a
genuinely democratic and, at the same time, human character.
The present exceptional interest in Makarenko’s
ideas may be explained by the fact that his
experience and theoretical views are highly relevant to those tasks with
which Soviet education is concerned in practice today. This gives modern
Makarenko studies not just an academic but an
applied and operative character. In the first ten to fifteen years after
Makarenko’s death many
practising educators were basically attracted only by specific details
of his educational technique, and the application in schools of his
ideas was mainly confined to imitation of individual outward
manifestation of his system. In recent decades, however, there has been
an ever more persevering and widespread endeavour on the part of
creative practising teachers to penetrate the substance of the theory
and method of the educational collective, and the methods and procedures
that have emerged from its educational experience.
The creative application of Makarenko’s ideas in
individual schools had taken place even earlier. For example, in School
No. 12 of the city of Krasnodar, the director of which for over thirty
years was F.F. Brjuhoveckij, an eminent teacher and candidate of
pedagogical sciences, the work of
unifying, moulding and educating teachers and pupils alike was marked by
the conscious
application of a number of principles of Makarenko’s system: development
of self-government;
cultivation of traditions of collective life; unity of the learning,
labour, social, aesthetic and sporting activities of pupils in and out
of school and in clubs at the place of residence. There are a number of
examples of such schools, each of which found its own approach to the
application of Makarenko’s ideas in the education of children and
adolescents. In the last twenty years, however, the use of these ideas
in modern educational practice has taken on new features.
The most notable factor is the widespread character
of this movement. Many educational
collectives in the Rostov, Voronezh and Lvov regions, the Stavropol
territory and such major cities as Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev are
carrying out a select programme of varied work based on the study and
creative practical application of the ideas of Makarenko. In this
creative educational activity there is no set pattern and no move
towards unification. Many Moscow schools, for instance, are devoting
special attention to development of collective learning by pupils; in
Stavropol schools, well-deserved recognition has been bestowed on the
activities of pupils’ labour associations; and in schools in the
Voronezh and Lvov regions, hobby clubs for children and young people
have been extremely successful. At the same time, this selective
approach to the use of Makarenko’s ideas in modern education does not
lead to any one-sided copying of his system, or individual components of
it, and their exaggerated development. Modern education is marked on the
whole by a striving towards variety in the content and form of the
educational process, with abundant methods of controlling the process.
Another feature of modern Makarenko studies in the
Soviet Union is the study and application of Makarenko’s ideas in close
conjunction with the traditional and modern heritage of domestic and
world educational theory. The experience and ideas of Makarenko can only
be truly understood and really creatively assimilated if account is
taken of their historical roots, their origin and the fullness of their
ties with school and educational science in Makarenko’s time, and their
influence on the subsequent development of educational theory and
practice. It is also important to note that modern Makarenko scholarship
is, as we understand it, not so much the activity of a comparatively
restricted circle of professionally concerned educators and researchers
as the large-scale creative work of teachers, students and broad social
groups, which include: Makarenko detachments of young workers,
employees, students and senior schoolchildren
helping to organize the leisure time of children and adolescents at
home; Makarenko branches of
the educational community familiarizing a mass audience of parents with
the ideas of that eminent worker for socialist education; and school
clubs, museums and other independent associations bearing Makarenko’s
name.
A prerequisite for the success of such a
large-scale, creative and social educational movement is of course
professional research work proper, involving the search for new sources,
textual analysis and a thorough study of all the facts helping us to
understand and explain the origin of Makarenko’s educational system,
together with its formation and development in changing
historical circumstances. It must be remembered, however, that if it is
confined to a narrow circle of specific scientific interests and does
not have many links with practical matters and life, such research work
may turn into fruitless scholasticism and abstract theorizing. The unity
of theory and practice was the most important methodological principle
of Makarenko’s entire system. It also remains an unchanging condition
for the success of that varied activity of researchers, practising
educators and society at large, who together are engaging in a creative
quest under modern conditions — but based on Makarenko’s principles —
aimed at improving the modern educational process.
There is a need for further creative study of
Makarenko’s ideas and for the preparation for
publication of archive material which has not yet been fully circulated
and which throws light on
many important problems of educational theory and practice. A start has
been made on preparation of a new scholarly edition of the collected
works of Makarenko, which it is intended to complete for the centenary
of his birth; and basic research has been undertaken on the experience
and views of the outstanding Soviet educator as an integral part of the
experience of Soviet education and educational theory as a whole.
Nothing of all this detracts, however, from the importance of what has
already been done as regards making varied use of his experience and his
literary and scientific works in order to improve socialist educational
science.
As shown by recent research in the Soviet Union, by
A.A. Frolov, F.I. Naumenko and others, there is still a great deal of
unpublished Makarenko material. There are many dozens of documents
concerning Makarenko in the Central State Archives of Literature and Art
of the USSR. Makarenko material is also to be found in the archives of
Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov, Poltava
and Kremenchug, and in major libraries and museums. In conjunction with
the published works of Makarenko, the vast amount that has been written
about his life and activity, and special research, this new material
enables a more thorough study of his legacy to be continued.10
At the same time, new research by Makarenko
specialists in no way reduces the significance of what has been done
earlier in this area. An important contribution has been made by
students of the practice and theory of Makarenko such as I.F. Kozlov,
A.G. Ter-Gevondjan, E.N. Medynskij, N.A. Ljalin and V.A. Suhomlinskij.
Constructive work has been done in this respect by the staff of the
laboratory of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, who included I.A.
Kairov, G.S. Makarenko, V.E. Gmurman, M.D. Vinogradova and a number of
other scholars specializing in
education. Equally important is the investigation of specific problems
of educational theory and
method directly connected with the creative legacy of Makarenko. This
concerns problems of
school discipline (E.I. Monoszon, L.E. Raskin), the collective and
school self-management (T.E.
Konnikova, V.M. Korotov, S.A. Mal’kova, L.I. Novikova) and many others.
Emphasis must finally
be laid on the enormous interest and importance attaching to study of
the experience and
theoretical works of Makarenko abroad, in countries with differing
social and political systems and their own traditions regarding the
education of children and young people, and a host of differing
conceptions with regard to educational theory. This growing interest is
one sign of the undeniable trend towards closer contact between people
and state systems in the modern world, a matter in which both science
and art have a pre-eminent part to play.
Notes
1. This profile was first published in Prospects, vol. 11,
no. 3, 1981, under the title ‘The Educator Marenko.’
2. G.N. Folinov (Russian Federation). Ph.D. Member of the Academy of
Pedagogical Sciences and member of the editorial board of the review
Pedagogika. For more than twenty years he was a member of UNESCO’s
International Jury on Literary Prizes. His numerous publications have
been concerned with human beings in a changing world and relations
between the individual and society. Recent publications in Russian
include Educating the Pupil’s Personality (1985) and
Educating Citizens at School (1990).
3. Anton Makarenko, Collected Works in Seven Volumes, 2nd ed., Vol.
IV, p. 20, Moscow, 1957.
4. Anton Makarenko, Collected Educational Works in Two Volumes, Vol.
I, p. 258.
5. Ibid., p. 261.
6. Ibid., p. 13.
7. Ibid., p. 14.
8. Ibid., p. 37.
9. Ibid., p. 73.
10. See A.A. Frolov, ‘Unpublished Archive Material as a Source for Study
of the Experience and Theoretical Views of A.S. Makarenko’, in
Pedagogiceskoe nasledie A.S. Makarenko i sovremennaja skola [The
Educational Legacy of A.S. Makarenko and Modern Education], p. 81-6,
Voronezh, 1981.
This feature: Prospects: the quarterly review of comparative education (Paris, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education), XXIV, 1/2. 1994. pp.77–91.
©UNESCO:International Bureau of Education, 2000. This document may be reproduced free of charge as long as acknowledgement is made of the source.