On the System of Educational Aims at the Gymnasium (Senior High School)

The general aim of Communist education — universally and harmoniously developed man — has, in Socialist pedagogy, a crucial and integrating function for deriving partial aims which are set foth in the project documents on education at all types and grades of schools. One of the most difficult problems is to give these aims concrete forms and structures and to put them into practice in the educational work of the school.
On the basis of the example of the aims set forth in the syllabi for gymnasiums (senior high schools) and on the basis of the teaching experience some problems are analysed, such as the vagueness of the aims, lack of inter-connection between initial aims, general and follow-up, partial aims, mistaking aims for content, reducing the requirements for the development of the pupil‘ s personality to the development of some intellectual aspects only, and the like. Effective incorporation of the aims into the gymnasium^s educational work presupposes a systematic elaboration aim categories to follow up on the general, intermediate and resultant aims, from the incipient project documents via syllabi, textbooks and the teachers* individual thematic plans to the realization of the aims in the process. It is also essential that the structure of aims should include, besides the accentuated demands on knowledge and skills, also other aspects of the pupiPs personality, such as the development of capabilities and interests and the formation of character, attitudes and convictions. The elaboration of educational aims in the above-mentioned directions and the strengthening of the function of intermediate aims can exercise considerable influence on the character, progression and results of the gymnasium‘s educational work.