Introduction: Russian education: The past in the present

Educational Reform in Post-Soviet Russia: Legacies and Prospects

Volumn , Issue , 2004, Pages 1-20

  Eklof, Ben ^a  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84870865139     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203318676     Document Type: Editorial

References (50)

1. Among the most stimulating examinations of the collapse of the Soviet Union are Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (New York: Oxford, 2000)
2. Robert Service, Russia: Experiment with a People (London: Macmillan, 2002).
3. For an excellent comparative study of the human impact of the transition, see A Decade of Transition (UNESCO: Innocenti Center: Regional Monitoring Report #8, 1991).
4. For the most current data on poverty, see UNICEF, Innocenti Centre, Social Monitor 2003, pp. 5-6.
5. For the reforms in education, see Stephen Webber, School, Reform and Society in the New Russia (New York: St Martin's Press, 2000);
6. Jeanne Sutherland, Schooling in the New Russia: Innovation and Change, 1984-1995 (New York: St Martin's Press, 1999); and
7. I.D. Frumin, Vvedenie v teoriiu i praktiku demokraticheskogo obrazovémiia (Krasnoiarsk, 1998).
8. See Webber, School, Reform, and Society, pp. 46-7.
9. For an introductory survey of sources on this topic, see James Muckle, Education in Russia Past and Present: An Introductory Study Guide and Select Bibliography (Nottingham: Bramcote, 1993).
10. V.I. Charnoluskii, Osnovnye voprosy organizatsii shkoly v Rossii (St Petersburg: Znanie, 1909).
11. Larry E. Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917-1931 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991);
12. V.L. Soskin, Obshchee obrazovémiev Sovetskoi Rossii: Pervoe desiatiletie (Novosibirsk, 1992).
13. This assessment has been largely confirmed by the 2002 OECD PISA investigation http://www.pisa.oecd.org.
14. An excellent, concise examination of the problems facing the Soviet school at the close of the Brezhnev era is: John Dunstan, 'Soviet Education: Some Issues of the Eighties', in National Association of Secondary School Principals Bulletin 454 (1982), pp. 30-44.
15. See also Susan Jacoby, Inside Soviet Schools (New York: Schocken, 1984);
16. Mervyn Matthews, Education in the Soviet Union (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982); and
17. the several excellent essays in J.J. Tomiak (ed.), Western Perspectives on Soviet Education in the 1980s (New York: St Martin's Press, 1986).
18. This was the terminology of the reformers themselves, who argued that Stalinism had warped the human personality or even, through mass repression, 'distorted the genotype', and created a new type of drone (the sovok) or cog (vintik). Such hyperbole was characteristic of the intelligentsia under Gorbachev and in the early post-Soviet era. Some American Cold War scholars subscribed to a similar notion; in this view, the Soviet totalitarian experience had created a unique 'Homo Sovieti-cus'; but, as Priscilla Roosevelt observed after travelling to do research in Russia, she came to understand that 'most Soviet citizens were just normal people trying to deal with an abnormal situation'. 'Discovering Rural Russia: A Forty-Year Odyssey', in Samuel H. Baron and Cathy A. Frierson (eds), Adventures in Russian Historical Research: Reminiscences of American Scholars from the Cold War to the Present (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2003), p. 37.
19. See Ben Eklof, 'Introduction', in Ben Eklof and Edward Dneprov (eds), Democracy in the Russian School: The Reform Movement in Education Since 1984 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993).
20. For the Law on Education see Jan De Groof (ed.)s, Comments on the Law on Education of the Russian Federation (Leuven, Belgium: Acco, 1993). The law appears on pp. 117-62.
21. Webber, School, Reform and Society, pp. 51-78.
22. As the prominent leader of the Teachers' Union Vladimir Yakovlev lay dying of cancer in August 2003, the Minister of Education Filippov brought to his deathbed a copy of the new legislation, and Yakovlev's spirits were enormously lifted, according to Uchitel'skaia gazeta of 12 August 2003, pp. 2, 4, 6-7, 12-13.
23. For the new regulations see Obrazovatel'noe pravo (Supplement to Uchitel'skaia gazeta) 44 (30 October 2003).
24. An excellent discussion of this can be found in Frumin (Froumin), Vvedenie v teoriiu, and in his chapter in this volume. See also Webber, School, Reform and Society, esp. chapters 3 and 5-6; OECD, Reviews of National Policies for Education: Russian Federation (Paris, 1998), pp. 87-113 and 131-46.
25. On this, see Elena Kostiuk, 'Pervaia polosa. Istoriia s istoriei', Vremia MN, 31 August 2002, p. 1;
26. Natal'ia Savitskaia, 'Otkrytyi uchebnik', Nezavisimaiagazeta, 27 September 2002, p. 8.
27. See also the chapter by Vera Kaplan in this volume. Alas, the question of what version of history should be presented seems to be of less interest to the younger generation than to their parents, educators, or historians. Catherine Merridale reports that while older people in Russia are still preoccupied with the meaning of their Stalinist past, the young are overwhelmingly indifferent to history; it seems to have no bearing on their lives. Catherine Merridale, 'Redesigning History in Contemporary Russia', Journal of Contemporary History 1 ( 2003), pp. 13-28.
28. A.A. Preobrazhenskii and B.A. Rybakov, Istoriia Rossii: Uchebnik dlia 6-7 klassov obshcheobrazovatel'nykh uchrezhdenii (Moscow: Russkoe slovo, 1997).
29. On the controversy connected with an attempt to introduce the course entitled, Foundations of Russian Orthodox Culture, see the Memorandum of the Ministry of Education of 13 February 2003, N 01-51-013 entitled 'O dopolnitel'nykh raz"iasneniiakh k pis'mu Minobrazovaniia Rossii ot 22 oktiabria 2002, # 14-52871n/16 "O primernom soderzhanii kursa-Osnovy pravoslavnoi kul'tury"'; http://www.edu.ru/legal/public/defult.asp?WCI=Document&no=1492246.
30. UNESCO, Innocenti Center, Social Monitor, 2003, p. 83 http://www.unicef-icdc.org/publications/).
31. The best source on this topic is A Decade of Transition, chapters 1 -2 and 4. See also OECD, Reviews of National Policies for Education, pp. 55-86.
32. For data on the 49,980 pre-school institutions in Russia, enrolling 4.2 million children, see Uchitel'skaia gazeta 47 (18 November 2003), pp. 1, 6-7. Of this number about 40,000 are now the property of municipalities.
33. Reviews of National Policies for Education: Tertiary Education and Research in the Russian Federation (Paris: OECD, 1999).
34. Eighty per cent of private universitites specialize in law or economics (Uchitel'skaia gazeta 33 (12 August 2003), p. 19).
35. See Olga Bain 'The Costs of Higher Education to Students and Parents in Russia: Tuition Policy Issues', International Higher Education 11 (Spring 1998), pp. 6-8.
36. As Dmitry Suspitin writes, 'many "private" higher education institutions in Russia are heavily dependent on interlocking relationships with the government'. As he points out, the state is often involved in funding, supporting and giving access to physical plants and facilities. Over half of Russia's 500 private institutions have actually been founded by ministries or state research academies: they are 'typically housed within public institutions, sharing libraries, sports facilities, dormitories, research laboratories, and other assets'. Even those established by private businesses 'give a misleading impression of independence from state-run organizations' and are 'in reality closely linked to governmental structures through networks of formal and informal connections'. 'Russian Private Higher Education: Alliances with State-Run Organizations', in International Higher Education 33 (Fall 2003), p. 16.
37. For a recent study of the professoriate in Russia, based upon systematic survey research, see Frants Sheregi, Sotsiologiia obrazovaniia: prikladnye issledovaniia (Moscow: Akademiia, 2001). Chapter 6 is devoted to conditions of research; chapter 7 to a composite profile of faculty.
38. see Bryon MacWillams in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 December 2001, 'For Russia's Universities, A Decade of More Freedom and Less Money', and 'Corruption, Conflict and Budget Cuts Afflict Academe in Former Soviet Republics'.
39. For changes underway in European universities in the past decade, see the article by Barbara Sporn, 'Convergence or Divergence in International Higher Education Policy: Lessons from Europe', 'Ford Policy Forum 2003: Exploring the Economics of Higher Education' (Forum for the Future of Higher Education, Cambridge, MA, 2003).
40. Moskovskii Komsomolets, 20 March 2003.
41. Informika, 4 April 2003; Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 4 June 2003; http://www.edu.ru/index.php?page_id=5&topic_id=3&date=1049054400&sid=137.
42. In fairness, it should be pointed out that some reformers believe that equity must decline, at least initially, if the post-Soviet states are to rebound, and be competitive in global markets. According to this approach, school policies should be oriented toward grooming a new élite to run the country in a competent, ethical, and transparent way. On this, see Cathy Wanner, 'Educational Practices and the Making of National Identity in Post-Soviet Ukraine', Anthropology of East Europe Review 2 (Autumn 1995).
43. Stephen T. Kerr, 'Demographic Change and the Fate of Russian Schools', REECAS Newsletter (Jackson School, University of Washington), Summer 2001, pp. 10-14.
44. A.L. Andreev, 'Society and Education: A Sociocultural Profile of Russia', Russian Education and Society 1 (November, 2003), pp. 5-22.
45. The article was originally published in Pedagogika 6 (2002), pp. 20-9.
46. A comparative survey of public vs. private outlays on education in former 'east bloc' countries can be found in UNICEF. Innocenti Center Social Monitor, Social Monitor 2003, p. 7. According to this study, 'the extent of the willingness of parents in the CEE/CIS to seek good education for their children was one of the striking findings of the analysis'.
47. For more on the Modernization Programme, see the Khronika (Chronicle) of Russian and Eurasian Education 1 (Spring 2003);http://www.indiana.edu/~isre/ISRENewsletter.htm.
48. Results of the 2003 exams can be viewed at http://www.vestniknews.ru/news/#v1068373655.
49. Two early articles calling for a more positive assessment of the Soviet educational tradition than was current during the perestroika era are Sergei Kurganov, 'Nas russkomu nauchit Vashington, ili chem Rossiia otlichaetsia ot Mozambika', Uchitel'skaia gazeta 41 (1991), and
50. Valerii Soifer, 'Who Offers a Better Education, the USA or Russia', Izvestiia, 15 November 1995. Since then, émigré correspondents regularly write on schools in Europe and the United States for the readers of Russian periodicals.