The School Reform at the Present Stage of Socialis Construction

The question of the content and the methods of upbringing and education is one of the most important pre-requisites for the solution of the problems that a socialist school involves. A very substantial problem is the one concerning basic subject-matter.
The concept of »basic, subject-matter« embraces a wide range of problems involving syllabi, curricula and textbooks. At the present time this problem comes to the forefront of pedagogical thinking, because general educational schools suffer from an excessive amount of subject-matter, which often results In the subject-matter being merely temporarily memorized. In addition, this one-sided memorizing formalism has an adverse influence on the training of the mind; the functions of the higher nervous activity do not develop those dynamic, aspects of thinking which arc decisive for a scientific grasping of reality. It is, above all, the spirit of inquiry, the desire to get to know the new, the satisfaction and enjoyment resulting from the discovery of knowledge, the forming of habits of analytical, inductive, and deductive processes of thinking, processes of abstraction and generalization. The fact that such mental operations should, as far as the character of the subject permits, be preceded, or simultaneously accompanied by practical activities — that is the very essence of the new look in education, which substantially diferentiates the socialist educational system from the previous classbiased educational systems.
In other parts of the article the author analyses-the objectives and the means of socialist upbringing, education and instruction, their changes conected with the present school reform. Special attention is given to the analysis of textbooks from the viewpoint of basic subject-matter.
Finally he shows the roads to be taken In the extensive research work which aims at working out the theory of basic subject-matter in all subjects.