Individual Planning as a Means of Students’ Self-Education

I. F. Livshits

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Scientific Communism)

The Essence of the Problem

Education in higher education has significant special features. One of them is that the student is at the stage of transition from youth to maturity. This increases the importance of self-education.

Self-education is the conscious, systematic activity of the individual directed toward self-improvement and self-development. It is carried out under the influence of the environment and of directed education, forming an organic component part of the process of education. This is a broad definition, corresponding to a holistic approach to the development of the personality. Such a definition does not exclude a more particular approach to self-education¹.

The significance of self-education is determined by the fact that the student’s inner world processes the influences coming from the environment and the pedagogical sphere not mechanically, but in its own way, in accordance with the individual structure of the personality that has been formed. The nature of the reaction to external influences largely determines the activity of the personality and its attitude toward the realization of its status, the performance of functions and social roles. This, to a considerable degree, determines the circumstance that, under relatively equal conditions created for the student, society obtains different results in the socialization of the personality in higher education.

Hence a problem of great social significance is

activation of the student’s personality on the basis of self-education, by turning it into a form of public education.

Naturally, there are many ways of activating the student’s personality through self-education. One of them is to increase the role of self-regulation in the development of the student’s personality. The objective basis of this process is laid down in the very specificity of the human being, for whom, according to I. P. Pavlov, the highest self-regulation is possible²). This possibility is realized through information, which acts as a source of development. Since the student, in accordance with the requirements of social and scientific-technological progress, must form and realize himself as a many-sided personality, he needs information from various spheres. By its nature it may be scientific, social, political, biological, machine-based, and so on. Information by itself cannot be realized automatically, but only within a system, in unity with organization and management³). In the system “student,” as in the system “human being” in general, this is unity with self-organization and self-management.

Since we may class the student as a type of self-organizing system, he possesses what is general and characteristic of such systems⁴). As a self-organizing system, the student is capable of actively interacting with the environment, of changing his structure as a whole or the structure of its individual elements under the influence of external impacts, thereby developing his personality.

Consequently, the essence of the problem consists in increasing the significance of self-organization and self-management in the processing of information, i.e., of all external influences upon the student’s personality. Here individual planning, as a form of social planning, can play its role.

Social planning reflects the nature of the socialist social order and is carried out at various levels—of society as a whole, of the social aggregate, and of the individual. The ultimate goal of social planning coincides with the ultimate goal of socialist society. V. I. Lenin regarded it as “ensuring the complete well-being and free all-round development of all members of society”⁵). It goes without saying that this ultimate goal cannot be realized at once, and is realized as a tendency, in which social planning is called upon to play a major role.

At the level of the social aggregate and of the individual, social planning is directed toward foreseeing desired changes in the qualities and properties of the socialist collective and of the individual personality⁶). It is also necessary in the student milieu, since the student’s activity is socially significant both in terms of realizing his present status and especially as a preparatory stage in carrying out future social roles. Therefore society is interested in ensuring that the spontaneous activity of the individual

²) I. I. Pavlov. Twenty Years’ Experience in the Objective Study of the Higher Nervous Activity (Behavior) of Animals, p. 364, Moscow, 1951.

³) L. A. Petrushenko. The Principle of Feedback, pp. 9, 10, Moscow, 1967.

⁴) B. G. Yudin. Methodological problems in the study of self-organizing systems. In: Problems of the Methodology of Systems Research, p. 360, “Mysl” Publishing House, Moscow, 1970.

⁵) V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, vol. 6, p. 232.

⁶) Social Management and Problems of Planning the Social Development of a Production Collective, p. 12, Lviv University Publishing House, 1969. L. N. Kogan. Social Planning, pp. 9, 10, Moscow, 1970.

to give public significance and organized forms to the student’s planning of his own development, without infringing upon the autonomy of the personality, its individuality.

Usually in the literature, social planning is associated with the development of the production collective, being regarded as a supplement to economic planning. Such a division is very conditional, but in a production collective it has its own basis. The division into economic and social planning loses its basis in a collective of students, where their development and formation as specialists take place intensively, above all in the sphere of academic labor, under the conditions of higher-education production. Therefore social planning must reflect both educational activity and all other aspects of the student’s development as a personality.

The social practice of higher education is seeking ways to develop social planning among students. What is meant is the prospective planning of educational work and the commitments undertaken by student collectives and individual students.

It is generally recognized that the Lenin Test, conducted in the 1969/70 academic year, considerably increased the activity of students. It is becoming a permanent form for developing the social activity of young people and, in particular, of the student body. This intensifies the need to remove the negative features connected with the adoption and implementation of commitments.

In a generalized form, the negative features amount to the following.

First, the substantive basis of the commitments is narrow. It does not reflect the complex of basic connections that can ensure the solution of the task of training a specialist and the all-round development of the personality. This applies especially to the main sphere—the educational and upbringing process.

Second, the commitments adopted do not always reflect the unity of the interests of the collective and of the individual. They often do not proceed from the individual needs, interests, and capabilities of students. This leads to the leveling of commitments and to formalism in their fulfillment.

Third, since commitments are temporary and narrow in character, they do not sufficiently stimulate the student’s constant development. And finally, the commitments adopted are not always commensurate with the conditions for their fulfillment. It follows from this that commitments must be based on a firm, stable foundation—on individual planning.

Apparently, no distinction should be made between a student’s individual plan and a commitment. The individual plan itself constitutes a commitment that the student undertakes before society, the collective, and himself. The whole matter lies in the scientific basis for the adoption of commitments, their implementation, and the system of control on the part of the collective in which the student is included. In this connection it is necessary to consider the principles and preliminary conditions of individual planning, as well as the structure of the individual plan.

Principles of Individual Planning

The principles are determined by the demands of socialist society upon the individual at the stage of intensive social and scientific-technological progress and by the purpose of the student in socialist society, his status. They can serve as a guide for the student, being embodied in individual planning.

Individual planning must proceed:

1. From a holistic approach to the development of one’s personality, which is determined by the content of social orientation at the level of higher education and is objectively embedded in the very structure of the personality. A holistic approach presupposes that all of a student’s activity, his behavior, relations, and connections are conditioned by the task of training a specialist and the all-round development of the personality.

2. From the ability, amid the entire diversity of needs and interests, to single out the main thing, to go deeper into the main thing and subordinate the remaining spheres to it. This main thing is the educational and upbringing process in all its many-sidedness, which requires the all-round development of the personality, contributing to its further development. Activity in all other spheres must be correlated with the educational and upbringing process, enriching it in every possible way.

3. From the combination of the personal and the social, proceeding from the formula: personality—collective—society. This means that freedom should be sought in society, in its needs and interests—economic, socio-political, and spiritual—while forming in oneself the qualities of a citizen of socialist society. Hence arises the necessity of the practical participation of every student in social activity as a means of the self-realization of the personality and its development through the corresponding collective. It is precisely through collective community that the personality correlates its interests with the interests of society as a whole, realizing its whole self in the process of forming social relations.

4. From the necessity of continuous development, of constantly overcoming contradictions between the given and the actual state, which has a discrete character, promoted by the logic of the curriculum and the entire structure of the educational and upbringing process. Continuity and leap-like development must be extended to all spheres that contribute to the student’s development in addition to the educational process (social and labor activity, self-education).

5. From the necessity of a concrete approach to individual planning, proceeding from social needs, the conditions of the existing situation, and also from the particular features of the student’s personality, his needs, interests, and abilities. Concreteness is the manifestation of the individual in the realization of the general essence of the student’s social orientation.

Preliminary Conditions of Individual Planning

The initial principles by themselves cannot solve the problem of individual planning. It is to a large extent determined by preliminary conditions. To these we assign the student’s social orientation, a concrete orientation in the educational process, and the possibility of freedom of choice in the organization of activity in ...

extracurricular time, the interaction of the student with his primary collective.

1. By the very fact of entering a higher educational institution, each student already acquires a certain social orientation. But in most cases it is realized only in the most general form, and often is not realized at all, especially with respect to professional orientation. This leads to groping one’s way through the labyrinth of higher education, with all the resulting costs for the individual and for society.

Programs of education, if they are based on a holistic approach², help the student consciously acquire a social orientation, penetrate the logic of socialization in higher education, which is realized both in terms of preparing a specialist and in terms of the development of the personality³.

The student becomes aware of the goals of education in accordance with the main directions—professional, ideological-political and moral, aesthetic, labor education, and physical development; he clarifies the tasks and means.

The study of the program and guidance by it must become a mandatory requirement for every student, since this has practical significance in planning and a certain socio-psychological significance, because in this way the student becomes imbued with a greater understanding of the social significance of student activity, and his new social position becomes larger in his own eyes, which is one of the serious stimuli in positively correlating the personal with the social.

1. Since the educational and upbringing process is the basic field in which the student’s activity unfolds and his socialization proceeds, he must, naturally, have a concrete conception of his immediate active-creative role in the study of this or that subject, in carrying out an assignment, and in participating in the corresponding seminar, practicum, or conference. Meanwhile, the prompt communication of specific assignments for all elements of the educational process at the very beginning of the semester (in the first two weeks) is still far from becoming the norm. This introduces arrhythmia into the student’s activity and is a serious obstacle to individual planning.

2. The richness of the student’s connections is not limited to the educational process. There also exist numerous other aspects of needs, interests, and activity. Although they are realized during extracurricular time, they are in many respects connected with the student’s main function. A serious obstacle is the absence of that set of objects where the student can apply his efforts on the basis of freedom of choice. The leading role is to be played by the subject of administration at all levels, beginning with the department and ending with the primary student collective, organizing, in accordance with the program of education, the content of activity, and outlining the spatial and temporal connections in which the student’s needs and interests are realized. In this connection it is necessary to create a stable system of organizational forms for introducing students to multifaceted creative activity. A student of any year, from the very begin-

during the semester must have an idea of what means are offered to him by the department and by public organizations. The organization of public assignments is a matter of special concern, since the small involvement of students in public work is largely connected with the absence of a set of assignments.

1. The student is an individual, but at the same time he is a member of a collective, and above all of the primary student collective. Relations between him and the collective yield positive results when they are based not on formal interconnections, but on interaction. A concrete manifestation of interaction is the relationship between group planning and individual planning.

The purpose of the group plan is to organize the life activity of the collective and to coordinate the efforts of all public organizations that are part of the primary student collective, i.e., the study group. In drawing up the plan, the group proceeds from the educational program, accumulated experience, possibilities and traditions, and from the specific tasks carried out by the Komsomol organizer, the trade-union organizer, the group monitor, the organizers of cultural-mass and sports work, etc. The student takes part in drawing up the plan, shows his initiative and, on the basis of it, as well as of the preliminary conditions mentioned above, draws up an individual plan. The group plan is subsequently corrected on the basis of individual plans and approved at a group meeting. Such an approach is a manifestation of the principle of democratic centralism under the conditions of the primary student collective.

Structure of the Individual Plan

An individual plan includes, above all, substantive connections. They may be concentrated around the main directions of the student’s activity. The basis for differentiation into directions is provided by the means through which the student’s social orientation is realized. This makes the differentiation itself rather conditional, but it is necessary in order to clarify the ways and methods of achieving the goal and to introduce greater specificity into the planning itself. Conventionally, seven directions may be distinguished in the student’s activity, namely:

1) implementation of curricula and academic programs; 2) acquisition of research skills; 3) self-education; 4) public activity; 5) labor activity; 6) general cultural development; 7) physical development.

In accordance with this division, the individual plan may consist of seven sections.

Section I. The formation of a specialist and the development of the personality occur through subject-related activity, the basis of which is the educational process. In it all directions of upbringing are manifested. This makes it necessary to assign the central place in the individual plan to the implementation of curricula and academic programs.

On the basis of calendar plans for all elements of the educational process, the student determines the specific deadlines for completing academic assignments, drawing up, as it were, an individual network schedule.

The student also plans the final result of his activity, i.e., the quality of passing credits and examinations in the forthcoming

examination session. This strengthens responsibility and obligation, stimulates critical self-reflection on methods of assimilating educational material. The orientation toward passing examinations with quality (excellent and good marks are meant) fosters positive volitional qualities of the personality and constantly impels self-control.

Section II. Since the inculcation of research skills becomes an organic component of the training of a specialist and the most important means of a person’s self-development, the planning of this section is of fundamental importance and should be carried out progressively from the first year onward.

With the help of the general-theoretical, general-engineering, and specialized departments and the departments of the social sciences, problem laboratories, and the Scientific Research Sector, the student chooses a form of individual or collective scholarly work, beginning with in-depth study of the relevant literature or the preparation of abstracts and ending with the independent completion of a scientific investigation. For the lower years, an acceptable form of gradually introducing students to scientific work is circles in general-theoretical and social disciplines, as well as participation in competitions aimed at developing interest in individual academic disciplines.

Participation in the competition in the social sciences for the best student research paper can become a stable and effective form of the ideological and political education of students in all years.

Section III. The knowledge obtained in the process of instruction cannot satisfy all the educational needs of the individual. Under the influence of the educational process, social activity, and other forms of communication, and of the mass media, the student develops needs and interests in studying the relevant information. In some cases these may be directed toward deepening engineering training through the additional study of a specific academic discipline or disciplines related to it; in others, they may be connected with the desire to learn about phenomena of the historical process, various forms of the sociopolitical life of society, trends in art and literature, and the study of foreign languages.

The striving for self-education, if it is not detrimental to engineering training, should be encouraged and find reflection in the individual plan. One must proceed from the fact that the capacity for self-education in the modern dynamic era is becoming an essential quality of the engineer’s personality. This is conditioned by the constant renewal of scientific and engineering knowledge.

Section IV. Social activity must be regarded by the student as a sphere in which the formation and development of his civic qualities take place and his preparation for performing the organizational and educational functions of an engineer in production is carried out. The point is not what character the assignments have—permanent or temporary—but it is important that they be performed systematically, with initiative, and reflect both social and personal interests. Of no small importance in this regard is the increasing complexity of social assignments from year to year and their novelty. Naturally, the student should plan this section with the help of the Komsomol and trade-union activists, the curator, and, in the senior years, with the support of the Party activists and the specialized departments.

In the literature one occasionally encounters the idea of a supposedly declining social activity of students in the senior years. If there is indeed a certain decline in social activity, it is connected not with the nature of the student, but with shortcomings in the organizational work of public organizations. One of the most serious manifestations of these shortcomings is the narrow range of public assignments, which prevents many students from being drawn into serious public work.

Section V. Work activity outside the educational process has become widespread. The purpose and motives of such student labor vary. It may be voluntary collective labor as part of construction or virgin-land detachments, on construction sites of the institute, the city, or the north of the region. It may be work at a department, in a problem laboratory, or in a research institute, contributing to the fulfillment of state-budget or contract-based scientific topics. Labor in plants, factories, and institutions has also developed to a certain extent in connection with shortages in labor resources. In all cases, the student’s labor is socially significant, and, if it does not harm the performance of the student’s main function—study—and the development of his personality, it receives recognition and support. It seems to us that the student should plan production activity, since part of the time budget is spent on it, which naturally influences, in either a positive or negative way, the formation of the individual structure of the personality.

Section VI. General cultural development should contribute both to the all-round development of the personality and to the acquisition of the necessary engineering knowledge. It is also aimed at satisfying the specific interests of the individual, his “hobbies.”

In this section, aesthetic education occupies an essential place. The student should strive to form aesthetic views and tastes, to develop a sense of beauty. The paths may be very diverse: the formation of aesthetic knowledge through elective courses in aesthetics or self-education; an in-depth study of technical and industrial aesthetics; purposeful reading of fiction in certain genres or on certain problems. Naturally, mass communication media can provide great assistance in this respect, and especially visits to art exhibitions, the cinema, and the theater.

It is good if the plan contains a concrete practical orientation for aesthetic development. What is meant is participation in various forms of artistic creativity and artistic amateur activity, in the preparation of concerts, reports, debates, discussions, etc. Practical activity should find its expression in the aesthetics of everyday life in the broadest sense.

In mastering culture, the depth and breadth of interests and their development are especially important.

Section VII. Physical development is a necessary component of the all-round development of the personality. It has great social significance, since it facilitates the more optimal fulfillment by the individual of all social roles. Therefore, planning physical development has sufficient grounds.

The student plans his physical development in the system of sections for selected sports or individually. He also has

more opportunities to participate in DOSAAF sections for technical sports.

Thus, all sections of the individual plan are in unity and are directed toward the realization of the task of training a specialist and the all-round development of the personality.

The content of the sections must be expressed in concrete means, which may gradually be specified or take various forms of implementation. The definiteness of the plan is strengthened by indicating the place where a given means is to be implemented, the periodicity, and the time allotted. As concrete sociological studies conducted in various regions of the country show,9) in addition to 6 hours of compulsory classes, a student spends 3–4 hours a day on independent preparation. Altogether, the necessary expenditure of time amounts to about 21 hours. Thus, approximately 3 hours of free time remain on average.

Consequently, for the implementation of the individual plan a student may spend 6–7 hours from his daily time budget. This includes the hours allotted to independent preparation and free time.

The individual plan is drawn up for a semester. The results of its fulfillment are summed up at a group Komsomol–trade-union meeting 4 times a year: in the middle of the autumn semester (on the anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution), at the beginning of the spring semester (the results of the plan’s fulfillment are summed up and a new individual plan is approved), on the anniversary of V. I. Lenin’s birth, and at the beginning of the next academic year. Fulfillment of the study plan is taken into account in the student’s attestation.

Such is the structure and mechanism for drawing up the individual plan.

Individual planning reflects the general line toward prospective planning of student education in higher education. It is the initial level of prospective planning, corresponding to the aim of education and creating possibilities for transforming education into a firm basis for the formation of the individual structure of personality, corresponding to the requirements and ideals of the socialist social order.

Naturally, individual planning is probabilistic in character, and its results are closely connected with the activity of all links of the educational system. In organizing individual planning, considerable difficulties are inevitable; they arise from the need to create the appropriate objective conditions and are connected with the inevitable overcoming of a certain psychological barrier.

Hypothetically, there are grounds to suppose:

1. Individual planning is capable of stimulating in the student needs and interests in cognition, labor, and communication, thereby promoting the development and self-expression of the personality.

2. Individual planning may promote the growth of manageability as a general tendency of socialist society, since individual planning is, in essence—

9) Youth, Its Interests, Aspirations, Ideals, p. 311, published by the Central Committee of the Komsomol, “Molodaya gvardiya,” 1969.

...to society, decision-making by the individual, and acts as the initial stage of his or her self-regulation and self-management, at the same time impelling the individual toward self-discipline and self-control—necessary social qualities.

1. Individual planning, when systematically organized, can lead to an increase in the creative role and activity of the student himself in the process of upbringing, which is in keeping with the strategic task of expanding and developing democracy throughout the entire system of socialist society.

2. Individual planning and the corresponding monitoring of plan fulfillment can play a major role in obtaining additional information about the student, in creating an objective basis for ideas about his motives, attitudes, and value orientations, and about the direction of his activity. The absence of sufficient information about the student is a serious obstacle to the optimal management of instruction and upbringing in higher education.

3. Individual planning, combining the requirements of the social systems into which the student is included and the needs of the individual, can to a large extent help strengthen the university collective and, especially, the primary student collective.

The organization of individual planning for students requires the creation of a specific methodology and the conducting, on its basis, of a social experiment.

1. See: A. G. Kovalev, Psychology of Personality, p. 329, Moscow, 1970; Dictionary of Ethics, p. 269, Moscow, 1970. ↩

2. See: I. F. Livshits. “On the Content of Higher-Education Programs for the Education of Students.” In: Social Questions of the Development of Science and Higher Education. Izvestiya TPI, vol. 220, Tomsk, 1970. ↩

3. See: I. F. Livshits. “On the Content of the Student’s Social Orientation.” Reports of the Third Scientific Conference of the Departments of Social Sciences, Dedicated to the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of V. I. Lenin, Tomsk, 1970. ↩