1
ON PUBLIC EDUCATION IN FREE CHINA
By L. Dubrovina
The delegation of cultural figures, scientists and artists from the U.S.S.R. spent 35 days in new, free China last autumn.
In every town in which the delegation stayed, there were meetings of leading officials of local public education bodies. The directors and teachers of the state and private schools, the professors and lecturers of the pedagogic educational institutions and universities took part in the meetings. In Tsinan, the educational activists of the whole of Shantung province were present. General reports dealing with the experience of public education in the U.S.S.R. were delivered at the meetings or replies were given to questions raised by the Chinese comrades...
Numerous questions reflected the profound interest of the audience, its warm desire to learn about the experience of the construction of Soviet schools, the reforms made in the field of culture in the Soviet Union, reflected the desire to interpret profoundly the paths of the development of Soviet culture, to understand the features of principle of Soviet ideology, to realise the superiority of Soviet culture over bourgeois culture to the limit.
These are the most important questions raised at the meetings taken in a generalised form:
U.S.S.R.
1. What are the relations between politics and culture in the
2.
What is the role of the Party and Party organisations in the
management of education.
3. The system of public education in the U.S.S.R., its differences in principle and advantages in comparison with the system of public education in the countries of capitalism.
46 The philosophical and theoretical foundations of contemporary Soviet pedagogic science.
5. What are the successes in various fields of the culture and public education in the U.S.S.R. and the ways by which they were achieved.
6. Relate the difficulties which had to be overcome in the formerly most backward national republics, and the results achieved in these republics, particularly in creating their scripts and literature.
7. What are the content and methods of teaching in contemporary Soviet schools.
8. The system of working class education and cultural-political work among adults, the changes in the form of this work in recent years.
9. The experience of the Soviet Union in the liquidation of illiteracy, in making the Soviet country completely literate.
10.
The social-political, legal and material position of teachers and professors in the Soviet Union.
Together with these and other general questions, a multitude of particular questions were raised. They were all of a businesslike, concrete nature.