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THAT LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE
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magazine, the radio, and even the bookshop, the theatre, the moving picture, Hterature, music, works of art and all agencies of entertainment.
The teacher has enormous authority over the child, being empowered to supervise his life in the home and in the community, even to the extent of granting or withholding permission to attend the cinema or other places of amusement. The Soviet educational system is thus a system of tremendous reach and power.
American formal education is limited to its school systems, which are taken to include nursery, grade, junior, high, trade, and church schools and colleges of higher learning. American teachers have no jurisdic tion over the student when he is away from school, as that right belongs to the student's parent or guardian.
Education in the Soviet Union is monolithic in control. Regardless of the forms of administration, which recognize the political divisions and subdivisions of the country, actual control of this vast educational sys' tem in all crucial matters is lodged squarely in the hands of the AH' Union Communist Party and its cen' tral organs. Teachers and educators are essentially technicians who trans' late into practice the general or specif' ic directives formulated by the Party leadership. Moreover, the masses of the people have no real voice in shap' ing educational policy. They accept the leading role of the Party. Here is perhaps the most essential feature of any totalitarian system of education.
The rewriting of the history text' books following StaHn's rise to power
clearly illustrates the way in which this form of control operates.
On May 16, 1934, the Soviet of People's Commissars of the Union and the Central Executive Committee of the Party adopted a resolution which called for the preparation of an en' tirely new set of textbooks to teach history in the schools. The resolution also provided for the appointment of groups of scholars and Party mem' bers to prepare outlines for the pro' jected volumes. A committee com' posed of the three most powerful men in the Soviet Union, Stalin, Kirov, and Zhdanov, was asked to examine and criticize the outlines. This the committee did with great vigor in three separate documents which were published and have since served as guides for the preparation of history textbooks.
Innumerable examples of the opera' tion of this monolithic principle in the shaping of educational matters both great and small can be cited. In the middle thirties, the doctrine of the "stable" textbook was adopted, which stated that a textbook should be prepared with great care under the close supervision of the highest author' ities, and then be adopted universally. And in the writing of a textbook, "Every word and every definition must be weighed," said Stalin, Kirov, and Zhdanov.
The point is emphasized in works on pedagogical methods, moreover, that the same line in all important doctrinal matters must be followed throughout the system and by all influences molding the character of the child. According to the Rules for School Children, which are taken very