Anton Semyonovich Makarenko and his ideas relating to the theory and methods of communist education
Р Е Ф Е Р А Т
для складання вступного випробування до магістратури
зі спеціальності 8.01010201 «Початкова освіта»
Тема: «Роль Антона Семеновича Макаренка у вітчизняній педагогіці»
Виконала
Бурдейна Леся Валеріївна
Київ - 2013
Introduction
The actuality of the work is predetermined by the fact, that the establishment and development of educational theory and the education system in the USSR was closely bound up with the scientific creativity and practical labours of an outstanding group of Soviet educators. Pride of place among the educators who fought actively to establish democratic ideas and principles in educational theory and practice belongs to Anton Makarenko (1888-1939); his name rightly figures high among the world’s great educators, and his books, published in editions of millions on all the continents of the globe, enjoy enormous popularity in the widest circles. Makarenko’s work is the subject of research in many countries of the world and efforts are made to apply his ideas creatively in the education of children today. On the other hand, it still happens – and not infrequently – that, in specialist and popular literature alike, the ‘Makarenko phenomenon’ is explained in a one-sided or sometimes erroneous manner.
For some reason, certain foreign students of Makarenko’s life and work consider that he was a ‘self-taught genius’, and portray his educational system without any reference to its historical links with the progressive education of past and present. This is to some extent due to the fact that in his published and widely known works, Makarenko himself makes comparatively few direct references to his attitude towards the world educational heritage and to his contemporary fellow-educators in the Soviet Union and abroad. The most recent Soviet research, however, based on documentary evidence, shows that despite his extremely modest origins and the difficult circumstances of his early years (his father was a painter and decorator and he himself began to work at the age of 17 as a teacher in an elementary school for the children of railway-workers), Makarenko was deeply versed in the history of education. Many important principles which he established theoretically and proved in practice are the development of the ideas of Pestalozzi, Owen, Usinskij, Dobroljubov and other distinguished past proponents of democratic education in the world.
One particular question to be considered is what should be thought of Makarenko’s literary works, and chiefly the three that have gained the widest readership: The Road to Life, Learning to Live and A Book for Parents. It would, of course, be wrong to draw a strict dividing line between Makarenko’s literary writings and his purely educational works in the form of articles, lectures and talks. Their ideological, educational and conceptual basis is identical, as is the aim assigned to them by the author himself, namely the education of a genuinely free and happy person. In addition, there are pages in Makarenko’s literary works where he rises to the heights of scientific educational thinking. At the same time, if we regard the literary heritage of Makarenko as factual material describing his working experience in the Gorky Colony and the Dzerzinskij Commune, we must remember that in The Road to Life, Learning to Live and other books the real facts are often generalized, displaced in time and sometimes interwoven with the author’s imagination. His literary works, therefore, usually do not provide a strictly scientific and objective basis for studying the real facts of his educational practice. This does not, of course, detract either from their literary value or from their importance to us as indicators of Makarenko’s educational ideas and his general philosophy.
Makarenko’s experience and theoretical legacy have lost none of their relevance for the teaching of young people today.
The aim of work is to investigate theoretical material and to analyse literary works on this theme.
The aim of work envisages the fulfillment of the following tasks:
1. To analyze the role of Anton Semyonovich Makarenko and his ideas relating to the theory and methods of communist education in pedagogic.
2. To describe educational collective as a main principle of Makarenko’s theory.
3. To identify the role of labour and production work in the process of education.
4. To characterise the perspectives in Makarenko’s pedagogy.
Anton Semyonovich Makarenko and his ideas relating to the theory and methods of communist education
Anton Semyonovich Makarenko (1888-1939) was a Ukrainian rural school teacher considered to be one of the founders of Soviet pedagogy. In 1920 the authorities charged Makarenko with developing a reformatory for children and adolescents who had been orphaned or displaced by the Russian civil war and who in many instances had turned to crime as a means of survival. Makarenko took over a dilapidated camp near Poltava in the Ukraine, and through many trials and struggles and much hard work on everyone’s part, he helped transform the camp into a functioning and self-sustaining youth colony known as the Gorki Colony and his students into qualified workers.
Makarenko’s outstanding educational work at the Gorky Colony (1920-28) and at the Dzerzinskij Commune (1927-35) likewise cannot be dissociated from the activities during the 1920s of schools and other educational establishments headed by such eminent and talented teachers as Sackij, Pistrak, Pogrebinskij and Soroka-Rosinskij. One must not, of course, underestimate the originality of Makarenko’s work and educational ideas. As we have said, he started along his creative path in the company of other educationists who had affirmed, in theory and in practice, the idea of a unified education based on work. Nevertheless, his ideas on many questions relating to the theory and methods of communist education went beyond current thinking and looked to the future of socialist education and teaching, noting the problems that would occur in their subsequent development [4, p. 38].
Makarenko’s ideas concerning the relationship between education and other disciplines, whether in the humanities (philosophy, ethics, aesthetics and psychology), or in the natural sciences (biology and physiology) deserve serious attention. More particularly, his far-reaching investigation of the essentials of a new, socialist pattern of moral and ethical relations led him to enunciate this very important idea: make as many demands as possible on a man, and at the same time show him as much respect as possible. Makarenko himself pointed out that from a genuinely humanitarian point of view, respect for and demands on a person were not separate categories and attitudes, but were dialectically related facets of an indivisible whole [2, p. 107].
Makarenko’s military approach to organization, discipline, and punishment soon raised eyebrows within the Ukrainian People’s Commissariat for Education, and conflicts over matters of pedagogy and politics ensued. In the search for a new Soviet approach to education, the authorities had championed an educational theory known as ― pedology. This theory, which was heavily influenced by the work of American educator John Dewey, emphasized individual human development and project learning. Arguments centered on whose methods could truly be considered most in line with the requirements of a new communist society.
Makarenko’s tenets of educational logic are becoming particularly relevant now that an integrated approach is being applied to the educational process as a whole, this approach being based on an understanding of the process of education as a complex dialectical whole made up of mutually complementary components and fashioned into an orderly, harmoniously functioning system as a result of the purposeful endeavours of educators drawing upon knowledge of the general objective principles governing the formation of the personality [3, p. 233].
Of exceptional interest to the modern theory and practice of education are those ideas of Makarenko’s that have become known in educational literature as ‘ideas about the unity of a child’s education and life’ and ‘education by parallel activity’. As a matter of fact, they could be merged in the general issue of ‘way of life and education’. It stands to Makarenko’s credit alone, however, that he actually established a system of education built upon the educationally effective organization of the entire life of the pupils. In this he was not passively following the ‘nature of the child’ but was aiming for the maximum development of each individual so as to produce a strong and creative personality prepared for life in every way [1, p. 56].
While stressing the importance of Makarenko’s contribution to the elucidation of a number of problems concerning educational methods, it must be noted that this aspect of his scientific work needs deeper and more comprehensive analysis. This mainly concerns the nature of Makarenko’s contribution to the elucidation of the methodological problems of the educational collective and methods of organizing the educational process.
2. Educational collective as a main principle of Makarenko’s theory
In this connection, it should be noted that the very term ‘educational collective’ is directly associated with Makarenko’s name and has now gained wide recognition in progressive education. Makarenko examined such aspects of the educational collective as unity of external and internal relations, and the organizational structure of the collective, with its traditions, style and tone. In the life of the educational collective Makarenko included all relations and types of activities that were typical of a democratic society. Of great topical interest are his ideas regarding the development of the educational functions of the collective and its transformation from an object of the activities of educators into an actively operating agent organizing its own life [7, p. 28].
These assumptions join up with the views expressed by Makarenko regarding the unity of the methods of educating and those of studying children. The traditional assumption in the past was that only when the child had first been studied could he be educated. New social conditions and the new challenges facing education have forced substantial changes in these ideas. Where Makarenko played a pioneering part was in his idea of studying children in the process of being educated, a process involving the active transformation of their way of life and influencing their consciousness, feelings and conduct. In this case, the functions of studying the children’s collective and the personality and individuality of the individual child become part and parcel of the actual methods of education. It is wrong, incidentally, to make out that Makarenko regarded the collective as a mere instrument of mass education; the unity of education through collective and individual action is a distinctive feature of his educational system.
Students must experience on their own how disinterest in classroom learning will have repercussions on the job — if such consequences are orchestrated by instructors, students will not take them seriously. Only associations formed by the students themselves can make classroom learning relevant, and students can realize only on their own how their learning gives them more occupational flexibility and stability for the future. The key is not to link, combine, and contextualize school and work but to exploit both to their full potential and then let students create the appropriate context [3, p. 150].
Some students of the experience and theoretical views of Makarenko narrow down his understanding of the essence of the educational collective by focusing only on the criterion of togetherness, that is, the direct association between pupils within the collective. Makarenko indeed attached definite importance to intra-collective association and to intra-collective relations in the formation of the pupil’s personality. In his early years of work in the Gorky Colony he even somewhat exaggerated the importance of togetherness for creating the ethos of the collective, and he himself made reference to this at a later stage. But Makarenko viewed intra-collective association in conjunction with the collective’s external links, to the wealth and variety of which he attached the utmost importance. The external links of the collective with a wider society provide, in Makarenko’s view, the main source of those influences that are necessary to the full development of each individual. The root of a man’s formation should be the life of society in all its varied manifestations. Association and relations within the collective represent a distinctive ‘mechanism’ for processing information arriving from outside, a ‘mechanism’ that helps each individual to react selectively to the influences of the outside world and to form within himself typical and individual personality traits. In just such an approach lies the key to Makarenko’s ideas about the collective as a method ‘which, being general and unique, at the same time provides an opportunity for each separate personality to develop its own specific features and maintain its individuality’ [2, p. 309].
As a result, Makarenko consistently railed against and rejected the complex method and kept school and work separate. In the Gorki Colony and the Dzerzhinsky Commune, students spent part of the day in school and part of the day at work. They were encouraged to excel in both, but no effort was made to create a formal connection. Work matters were kept out of the classroom, and academic issues were not introduced into the workplace unless students themselves desired to make the needed connections to solve problems at work.
The attempt is sometimes made to interpret Makarenko’s ideas about the formation of the personality in the collective as an encouragement to suppress the freedom of the child and subordinate him unconditionally to the demands and will of the collective. Such an interpretation seems to be an extremely one-sided depiction of the relations that actually existed between the collective and the individual personality in Makarenko’s experience. In conflict situations, when the collective clashed with an individual opposed to the opinion of the community, ignoring his obligations in the collective, being capricious and trying to put anarchy in the place of discipline, the question of coercion did indeed arise. In these situations as well, however, reaction to the individual was humane and based on the unity of showing respect and making demands. In normal circumstances in the usual educational process, relations between the collective and the individual were built on the unity of their interests and defence by the collective of the rights of each pupil. The older and stronger could not harm the younger and weaker. Such was the firm tradition of the collective and anyone contravening it bore the weight of common reprobation. Not only therefore did the collective not suppress but it genuinely promoted the freedom of each emergent person.