The Development, Present State and Prospects of the Systém of Literary Education

The study sums up the basic results of the analyses made of the development and present state of the system of literary education at schools providing a general education and it formulates prognostic suggestions for the creation of a prospective system of a socialist school of the future. In the analysis of the development and of the present state the author finds fundamental differences in the function and conception of the system in the bourgeois school and in the socialist school. Whereas the bourgeois school differentiated the pupils and endeavoured to suppress such contents and qualities of the literary education system as were related to social progress, the socialist comprehensive school, on the other hand, strives for the integrity of active literary education for all pupils with the possibility of it being continued and further developed at higher stages and in lifelong self-education. It can be seen, however, that little use has so far been made of the relations to out-of-school influences on the pupil and to the pupil’s own interests and activities, and that in vertical relationships of goals, teaching material, conditions and media, its planned functions have not yet been realised in an optimal manner. The knowledge of these facts results in the basic viewpoint of the prognosis of the prospective system, on whose function great social demands will be made. It will be necessary, first of all, to make the prospective system more demanding as to its content, in keeping with the needs and increasing significance of culture in a socialist society, and to make the pupils acquire more knowledge and skills. It will also be necessary for the prospective system to intensify its relations to out-of-school influences, to readers’ interests and children’s needs, in such a way as to create the necessary backing for the pupils’ own manifestations of their relationship to literature, e.g. in the choice of the reading matter, its acquisition, appraisal and understanding its meaning in accordance with the general objective of communist education. It will be necessary to complete the creation of a comprehensive system of the conditions and media which have a stimulating effect on the development of pupils’ abilities and concentrate on preparing the pupil for active life in a socialist society, his permanent appreciation of literature and his own cultural activity on a qualitatively desirable level.