История: факты и символы (Sep 2023)

The contradiction of the public education reform in the USSR at the end of the 1950s. - early 1960s.

  • V. N. Gorlov

DOI
https://doi.org/10.24888/2410-4205-2023-36-3-159-171
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 0, no. 3
pp. 159 – 171

Abstract

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Introduction. The relevance of the topic of the article is due to the importance of the Soviet education system in the development of Russian society, despite political, economic and social changes in society. The article analyzes the reasons for the reform of public education in the USSR in the late 1950s – early 1960s, examines the concept of polytechnic training in Soviet secondary schools in the late 1950s, combining schooling with productive labor. The concept of polytechnic training in Soviet secondary schools stimulated the reform of public education. The restructuring of secondary and higher education was designed to play a major role in eliminating the essential difference between physical and mental labor, in creating the conditions necessary for the country's transition to communism.Materials and methods. This study is based on an analysis of documents related to party office work in the 1960s-80s: decrees, resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee of the CPSU. The methodological basis of the research is a complex of general scientific, special historical methods, as well as the theory of modernization. The retrospective method, evaluating events and phenomena in their historical development, played a big role. A comparative analysis made it possible to compare the documentation of different times in order to establish the qualitative level of the changes taking place in the USSR in the field of education.Results. The article analyzes the problems of the formation of the Soviet polytechnic school. In the conditions of a planned economy, technical schools and vocational schools of the USSR trained specialists primarily for the needs of Soviet industry. The role of public education, the increase in the number of extended-day schools and boarding schools is considered. The inconsistency of the reform of public education in the USSR, which did not bring the expected results, is analyzed. The emphasis on the polytechnic school did not allow the development of the scientific component, interfering with the intellectual development of school students, the education reform led to a deterioration in the quality of the study of basic sciences.Conclusion. The article uses special historical methods: comparative historical, retrospective, chronological. The study was carried out on the basis of a problem-historical analysis taking into account the social conditions of that time.

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