Page:Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky - Self-Education of the Workers.djvu/5



Socialist Russia is rapidly forging ahead in educational matters. The printing press is busy; schools and libraries open everywhere, in towns, in villages, and along railway routes. The cinema has dropped the "cowboy" film, and is turned to instructive purposes. Workers are actually learning foreign languages, during the evening, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

At the Congress of Public Instruction held in Moscow, Comrades Lunacharski and Oulianov (Mrs. Lenin) delivered two important speeches, explaining, in general lines, the policy of the Soviets towards education.

The Bolshevik revolution has given prominence to the question of education. The people made the revolution to conquer political power, economic independence, and the freedom of education. To conquer, even at one stroke, is not enough: one must organise.

The intellectuals, who gave their assistance to the Lvov and Kerensky régime, have refused it to the Government of the workers and peasants They have used sabotage against it. Nevertheless, we have been able to do much useful work, especially since February last. The old system of education has been completely abolished; the old educationists have been dismissed; the curriculum based on "Church and Latin" has been swept away. Co-education of both sexes has been introduced.

What will the "New School" be? It cannot, in any way, resemble that which the ruling class had organised for the "inferior" working people. In order to destroy this "class" education we have to adopt the principles of "one standard of education for all," without special privileges for any. The people being the principal factor in the production of commodities, it follows, of necessity, that the "new school" must be one that prepares the student to work. The teachers also must he persons able to work. The motto of the new school must be: "To live is to work." We therefore take "work" as the starting-point of our pedagogical system, as the chief subject of our teaching, aiming at the increase of technical