DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

L. S. KOPYSOV

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

One of the most important features of the contemporary world is the accelerated development of the scientific and technological revolution. Its prospects and consequences in various social systems arouse unflagging interest not only among representatives of scientific thought, but also among statesmen and public figures, and among world public opinion. This interest is due above all to the prospects for resolving the principal contradiction in the world—the contradiction between the two world systems.

The question of which social system proves more effective in the development of social progress, in which of them the scientific and technological revolution has and will have the most favorable conditions for influencing the material and spiritual world of man—this question today stands at the center of world politics, economics, and ideology.

The scientific and technological revolution, being a dynamic process, exerts a great influence on all other aspects of social life. It has linked science, education, technology, production, and other social processes into a single whole.

Besides the development of science and technology, there is perhaps no other aspect of social development that it embraces as deeply and broadly as the sphere of education.

An extensive body of both Soviet and foreign literature has been devoted to the scientific and technological revolution, to the various systems of its interaction with other social processes and, in particular, with education.^1 A number of dissertations have been defended.^2

^1 On the problem under consideration, the following monographs and articles by Soviet authors attracted our attention: N. V. Markov, The Scientific and Technological Revolution: Analysis, Prospects, Consequences. Publishing House of Political Literature, Moscow, 1971; N. D. Gauzner, Scientific and Technological Progress and the Working Class of the USA. Moscow, “Nauka,” 1968; collection Socio-Economic Problems of Public Education. Moscow, “Prosveshchenie,” 1969; N. I. Dryakhlov, “The Scientific and Technological Revolution and the Nature of Changes in the Social Conditions of Human Labor,” Filosofskie nauki, 1971, No. 2; M. P. Kozlov, “The Influence of Scientific and Technological Progress on the Development of Workers’ Interest in Education,” in the collection: Problems of General Education among Workers of Industrial Enterprises of the Urals. Sverdlovsk, 1969; B. Volgin, “Some Questions of Higher Education under the Conditions of the Scientific and Technological Revolution,” Politsamoobrazovanie, 1970, No. 7; Z. I. Fainburg, V. M. Likhachev, “Education and the Cultural Level …”

An analysis of the state of education will make it possible to determine its place and role in the system of socialist social relations under the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution, the laws and distinctive features of its development, as well as those problems and tasks facing society with regard to improving education in accordance with the requirements of developing production and of all social life.

By “education” is understood the process and result of assimilating systematized knowledge, abilities, and skills.^3 And in the encyclopedic dictionary edited by B. A. Vvedensky it is defined as “the totality of systematized knowledge and the skills and abilities associated with them,”^4 that is, as the result of the process of instruction and study carried out both in educational institutions and through self-education. F. Batsik, in addition to the two aspects of this concept—the process and the result—distinguishes within it the general and the specific. The general consists “in the interaction of man with nature, in social practice, of which educational activity is also a part,” while the specific lies in the fact that education “makes it possible to reproduce human capacities at a higher level.”^5 Hence it follows that, despite differences in approaches to defining education, one thing is clear: it is a complex social phenomenon, expressed in a subjective-objective dynamic relation that enables a person to know and, while perfecting his spiritual world, practically transform nature and society in accordance with the known laws of material, spiritual, and social life. Apparently, it was in this broad sense that V. I. Lenin understood the term “education,” which he repeatedly used alongside “learning and upbringing.”^6

When we speak of education in society as a definite social phenomenon, this concept often appears to us as an integral one. In it we combine, besides the process and result, also the system.

The education system is the totality of institutions and measures that create the possibility of satisfying the educational and upbringing needs of society and the individual, or of social-class forces, in accordance with the character of the social relations of the given society.

Every education system is conditioned by features that arise from national traditions, the social-class essence of society, as well as by features that make it possible to define private or state, religious or secular systems, or, finally, by features arising from the character of knowledge: general and specialized (secondary, higher) education.

workers of industrial enterprises.—In the book: Social Problems of Labor and Production. Moscow, “Mysl,” 1969, and others.

^2 V. A. Severtsev. Social Questions of Soviet Public Education in the Period of the Full-Scale Construction of Communism. Moscow State University, 1965. F. Batsik. Education and Its Role in the Light of the Scientific and Technological Revolution. Moscow, 1968. E. M. Mirskii. The Requirements of Science for the Education System. M. P. Kozlov. Education as a Factor in Resolving Contradictions within the Productive Forces. Sverdlovsk, 1968. L. I. Sennikova. Higher Education as a Factor of Social Mobility. Sverdlovsk, 1968.

^3 See: Pedagogical Encyclopedia. Moscow, 1966, p. 142.

^4 Encyclopedic Dictionary. 1964, ed. by B. A. Vvedensky.

^5 F. Batsik. Education and Its Role in the Light of the Scientific and Technological Revolution. Author’s abstract. Moscow, “Mysl,” 1968, pp. 4, 7.

^6 See: V. I. Lenin. “The Tasks of the Youth Leagues.”—Collected Works, vol. 41, pp. 301, 312, 315.

The system of education is created in society in order to satisfy the needs of economic, cultural, and political life. Its internal organization corresponds to the interests of those socio-class forces that dominate in society. They also determine the ideological orientation of the educational aspect of education.

In contrast to the socio-class limitations of the bourgeois system of education, the socialist system guarantees the possibility of education for all strata of society. Its characteristic features are universality, unrestricted access for all strata and groups regardless of their class, national, and other affiliations, at all levels of the entire system of education, through various forms, including self-education.

The socialist system of education makes it possible to carry out the process of expanded reproduction of the labor force in a new qualitative state (at a higher level), in accordance with the requirements of the scientific and technological revolution. The most important consequence of the development of science and technology has been the growth in society of the share of “knowledge-intensive” types of labor, as well as the further intellectual enrichment of the content of modern physical labor on the basis of the newest mechanized and automated technology, on the basis of science.

Scientific thought has begun to penetrate ever more deeply into various aspects of production, enriching it with scientific achievements and promoting its development at a higher level. The Marxist doctrine of the possibility of transforming science into a direct productive force is becoming a reality in our time. But science becomes a highly productive force only when its achievements, as a result of education, become the possession of man, as one of the elements of the productive forces, and when man sets them in motion. I. A. Maizel is undoubtedly right when he sees in science a “human essential force,” his “actions and thought.”¹ Science, as N. V. Markov writes, serves as the basis for the development of the personal elements of the productive forces, being embodied in the knowledge, experience, skill, qualification, and creative initiative of people.² Consequently, science is thought embodied in human knowledge and, at the same time, his action. Scientific thought requires action. Having been assimilated by the person of production, it must be applicable to it, embodied in it.

The scientific and technological revolution perfects the instruments of labor, gives rise to new types of qualifications associated with a higher level of education. Each of its achievements increases the base for the development of science and technology itself, the base of production. Therefore, modern production requires a change in the subjective side of the productive forces from the point of view of their general-educational range and professional preparedness; it requires the mass training of people with secondary and higher specialized education. A working person, armed with scientific knowledge, experience, and skills and using the newest technical achievements in production, is capable of yielding an immeasurably higher productivity of labor.

Education, its definite level, and the entire multilayered system of personnel training have a direct relation to the state of the productive forces of society. “To the extent,” writes

N. D. Gauzner, “in which education becomes the basis of production qualification, it is transformed into a sphere of productive labor”⁹. Education leads to an increase in the share of aggregate productive labor in society. Therefore, raising the level of education is a most important feature of the development of the productive forces of socialist society, a most important indicator of its maturity.

“The development of fixed capital,” wrote K. Marx, “is an indicator of the degree to which universal social knowledge... has been transformed into a direct productive force, and hence an indicator of the degree to which the conditions of the social life process itself have been brought under the control of the general intellect and transformed in accordance with it”¹⁰.

This proposition, fully applicable to the conditions of socialism, defines with complete clarity the place of education in the system of social relations, its role in transforming knowledge into a productive force through the appropriate training of cadres.

But the place and role of education in the system of social relations is determined not only by this. The scientific and technological revolution is inseparably connected with social progress; it accelerates it, exerting an influence on various aspects of social life. The development and improvement of socialist social relations act as the background and as the condition that create favorable soil for the progress of science and technology. Both of these processes have as their primary foundation the human being, who appears as the main spring driving all social progress. As a social being, the human being must be the bearer of a certain level of social knowledge corresponding to the given state of production and of all social life. Therefore the unfolding of the essential powers of the human being as the chief productive force, as the creator and transformer of nature, is directly and immediately connected with education. Education acts as one of the factors in the dialectical interconnection and mutual conditioning of scientific-technological and social processes, as a means of forming the social relations of the human being and developing his personal and social abilities and qualities. Education has a decisive role in forming the spiritual world of the human being, his worldview. It promotes the cultural growth of all working people and leads to the overcoming of their professional limitation and social isolation, to an increase in socio-political activity. Under the conditions of communist construction, education, being the possession of all people, accelerates the process of eliminating the distinctions between mental and physical labor, between town and countryside, and social-class distinctions.

This is the second most important aspect determining the place and role of education in the system of social relations, its function.

The unity of these two aspects, conditioned by the unity of social and scientific-technological progress, makes it possible to determine the most important law-governed pattern of education, namely that education is inherent in a definite socio-economic system, is organized by it and serves it. It is called upon to satisfy the multifaceted demands of scientific and technological progress and of economic and social life.

⁹ N. D. Gauzner. Scientific and Technological Progress and the Working Class of the USA. Moscow, “Nauka,” 1968, p. 148.

¹⁰ K. Marx. Critique of Political Economy, — Voprosy filosofii, 1967, No. 7, p. 120.

A universal condition and regularity in the development of education is the movement of knowledge toward the higher forms of human cognition, to the level of scientific knowledge. Through education there takes place the process of the materialization of science, while the process of production, from the “simple process” that it was before, is transformed into a “scientific process”³. All this determines the scientific character of education, for the universal activity of people will increasingly be transformed, under the conditions of society’s movement toward communism, into scientific, creative activity.

The most important law of the process of education is the law of correspondence between the educational system and the level of scientific knowledge, the given age-specific characteristics and the degree of the individual’s preceding preparation, so that in the process of instruction the main contradiction may be successfully resolved—the contradiction between the capacity for assimilation and that which must be assimilated.

Education as a process requires of the individual definite efforts in attaining the goal. Therefore the constant, purposeful performance of study work in the process of instruction is an internal regularity of education.

The scientific and technological revolution, by making definite demands on education, itself, in turn, exerts a substantial influence upon it; it determines a definite modification of the laws and processes of education. The most important features of this modification are the use of cybernetic and other electronic devices that facilitate the process of instruction and promote rational methods of assimilation. Intelligent machines come to the aid of the biological properties of memory. Programmed and audiovisual methods of teaching begin to play an essential role; new theories of instruction appear⁴.

The scientific and technological revolution, being an objective process, has brought to life another objective process—it has compelled all conscious members of society under socialism to take up study.

Taking into account the objective requirements of the scientific and technological revolution and the tasks of communist construction, as defined by the Party Program, the CPSU and the Soviet government devote primary attention to the development of public education. A vivid testimony to this is the expansion of the material and technical base of education, the growth of the network of general-education and specialized secondary and higher educational institutions, and the successful implementation of the gradual transition to universal secondary education—a transition which, as noted in the decisions of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU, must for the most part be completed during the period of the Ninth Five-Year Plan.

The successes of public education under socialism are clearly visible in the example of our country. The results of the cultural revolution testify to the correctness of the Party’s general line in the field of public education. In the USSR, 79 million people were covered by various forms of instruction in 1970, including 49.4 million in general-education schools, 4.6 million in higher educational institutions, 4.4 million in technical schools and other specialized secondary educational institutions, and 2.4 million people in vocational-technical schools. By means of individual, brigade, and course instruction directly at enterprises, in institutions and organizations, as well as in

more than 18 million people were trained in new occupations and upgraded their qualifications on collective farms.^13 Pre-revolutionary Russia, where, as V. I. Lenin wrote, “the masses of the people... were robbed in the sense of education, enlightenment, and knowledge,”^14 has vanished into oblivion.

The growth of secondary and higher education is highly effective. If in 1939, per 1,000 employed persons there were 13 persons with higher education and 110 persons with secondary (complete and incomplete) education, then in 1970 the corresponding figures were 78 and 575 persons.^15 As noted in L. I. Brezhnev’s report to the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU, during the eighth five-year plan more than 7 million specialists with higher and secondary specialized education were trained in the country.^16 And over the period 1918–1970, 9,131 thousand specialists with higher education alone were graduated.^17 Alongside the general-education school, vocational-technical schools are developing broadly; they are increasingly being transformed into educational institutions where students receive a completed secondary education and vocational training.

In addition to these basic forms of the education system, a system of various courses for general-cultural and production purposes has become widespread, not to mention such an important system as the system of political education. All this indicates that one of the most important features of the development of education is its universality, realized through the broad development of various forms of general-education and specialized training.

Another feature of education under the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution is the development of evening and correspondence study. The favorable conditions for evening and correspondence study in our country make it possible for working and rural youth to improve and raise the level of their education and qualifications, and to keep pace with the demands of the scientific and technological revolution. The various branches of the modern national economy are increasingly beginning to show, as N. V. Markov notes, a need for workers with secondary specialized education. This is required, for example, by 90% of occupations in ferrous metallurgy and 80% in machine building.^18 At the Nizhny Tagil V. I. Lenin Metallurgical Combine in 1968, workers in such branches of production as furnace workers of blast-furnace shop No. 1, teemsters of open-hearth shop No. 2, machinists of the distributor in the converter shop, and operators of the rolling shop had an average number of years of schooling of 10–11.^19

The number of workers who have completed evening (shift) ten-year schools, correspondence and evening technical schools and higher educational institutions is increasing. Indicative in this respect are data for enterprises in Sverdlovsk, Perm, and Leningrad, where, among the total number of workers continuing their studies, the largest percentage (up to 58%) falls in the age range from 19 to

^13 Report of the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR, “The Five-Year Plan: The Completing Year.” Pravda, 1971, February 4.
^14 V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 23, p. 127.
^15 Report of the Central Statistical Administration under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, “The Population of Our Country.” Pravda, 1971, April 17.
^16 Materials of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU. Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature, 1971, p. 85.
^17 The USSR in Figures in 1970: A Brief Statistical Handbook. Moscow: Statistika, 1971.
^18 N. V. Markov, The Scientific and Technological Revolution: Analysis, Prospects, Consequences. Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature, 1971, p. 100.
^19 M. N. Rutkevich, F. R. Filippov, Social Changes. Moscow: Mysl, 1970, p. 161.

29 years old, and among them those studying in technicums and higher educational institutions make up 26–29%.^20

Under contemporary conditions, as R. Richta shows, the gap between a discovery and its introduction into production has been reduced from 37 years (fifty years ago) to 9–14 years. This means that in the course of his life a person may experience 3–4 fundamental upheavals in production following one another.^21

The scientific and technological revolution, leading to qualitative changes in the basic assets of production, to the emergence of highly mechanized and automated equipment, new industries and technological processes, gives rise to the objective task of professional training and retraining.

“In our time,” said L. I. Brezhnev at the XXIV Congress of the CPSU, “development is taking place so rapidly in all fields that the education received in youth is only a base that requires the constant replenishment of knowledge.”^22 Hence follows the necessity of a constant combination of labor and education that provides knowledge.

The dialectic of the unity of labor and knowledge presupposes their mutual conditioning and dynamism. People in various spheres of activity, in various industries and professions, in order to function successfully, consciously, and creatively in society, must combine in their life practice two basic types of labor activity: professional labor and educational labor.

The unity of professional and educational labor, as an objective condition and law-governed pattern in the development of social life, is the most important requirement of the contemporary scientific and technological revolution. In accordance with these requirements, a broad network of production training is being created at enterprises and in institutions. One example: as A. Kireev reports,^23 almost 50 professions can be acquired in the training complex of the Sayano–Shushenskaya Hydroelectric Power Station. These are professions that reflect the state of contemporary construction processes: erectors, drivers, universal crane operators, tractor drivers–bulldozer operators, compressor operators, and others. Such examples are not isolated; they can be found at every large enterprise.

The scientific and technological revolution and contemporary conditions of production have increased the requirements and, accordingly, the desire to raise the level of general education and qualifications. One of the main reasons arousing the interest of young people, and in particular of young workers, in education is the awareness of the objectivity of these requirements.

Studying the motives of young workers who continue their studies in evening school, Yu. R. Vishnevsky^24 comes to the conclusion that the majority—

^20 See data from sociological studies: M. N. Kozlov, “The Influence of Scientific and Technological Progress on the Development of Workers’ Interest in Education,” in: Problems of General Education among Workers of Industrial Enterprises of the Urals. Sverdlovsk, 1969, p. 21; Z. I. Fainburg, V. M. Likhachev, “Education and the Cultural Level of Workers at Industrial Enterprises,” in: Social Problems of Labor and Production. Moscow, “Mysl,” 1969, p. 287; A. G. Zdravomyslov, V. P. Rozhin, V. A. Yadov, Man and His Work. A Sociological Study. Moscow, “Mysl,” 1967, p. 268.

^21 R. Richta, “The Scientific and Technological Revolution and the Development of Man,” Voprosy filosofii, 1970, no. 2, p. 61.

^22 L. I. Brezhnev, Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the XXIV Congress of the CPSU. Materials of the XXIV Congress of the CPSU. Moscow, Publishing House of Political Literature, 1971, pp. 85–86.

^23 A. Kireev, “Choose According to Taste,” Izvestia, 1971, August 19.

^24 Yu. R. Vishnevsky, “On Certain Questions in the Study of the General-Educational Level of Young Workers,” in: Problems of General Education among Workers of Industrial Enterprises of the Urals. Sverdlovsk, 1969, p. 105.

...of motives is connected with scientific and technological progress (49.5%), while 30% of the motives are the desire to raise one’s cultural level or the unwillingness to fall behind one’s comrades, which, in essence, is likewise a reflection of a personal and social need brought about by the scientific and technological revolution. A similar picture was obtained in V. N. Turchenko’s study of this question.^25 A survey of 586 students studying without interruption from production showed that 52.3% of them cited as their motive the fact that the work they performed required engineering knowledge, or the desire to engage in scientific engineering-research work, or the wish to be a highly qualified worker.

A characteristic feature of the development of education is the greatest growth in the output of specialists with higher and secondary specialized education in fields that reflect the development of modern scientific and technological progress. Thus, if during the period from 1950 to 1969 the output of specialists with higher education in the specialties of machine building and instrument making increased 6.5 times, then in electronic engineering and electrical-instrument making it increased 26.5 times, and in radio engineering and communications 12.5 times. If the output of specialists with secondary education in the specialties of machine building and instrument making increased 5 times, then in the specialties of electrical-machine building and electrical-instrument making it increased 15 times.^26

The scientific and technological revolution also leaves its imprint on the formation, in the course of study, of interest in a future profession. A significant part of the young people graduating from secondary educational institutions, as studies conducted under the direction of V. Shubkin show,^27 strive to acquire professions with a bias toward technical or physico-mathematical training.

An important feature, and at the same time an objective condition, is the ever-accelerating growth of knowledge, the need to master which confronts the individual; otherwise he cannot function freely in the constantly developing productive, social, and cultural life activity of society. The volume of material studied is increasing at all levels of the education system, and especially in the system of higher education. Higher education is directly responsible for deep mastery of the foundations of science and of contemporary scientific achievements. The growth of general-educational and scientific knowledge gives rise to the need to find the optimal volume of it that future specialists must assimilate. It requires decisive unification of knowledge itself, as well as the need to improve curricula, teaching methods, and academic work.

In addition, part of the basic material studied at all levels of the education system is being shifted accordingly to an earlier age. Naturally, this creates certain difficulties, but nevertheless this is an objective process, and resolving it is just as possible as it is necessary.

The continuously growing volume of knowledge gives rise to the problem of mastering it as fully and as rapidly as possible within more or less stable periods of study. Solving this problem is impossible without

^25 V. N. Turchenko, “On the Sociological Approach to the Study of Social Phenomena,” in: Sociological Studies. Novosibirsk, 1968, p. 44.

^26 The National Economy of the USSR in 1969: Statistical Collection. Moscow, “Statistika,” 1970, pp. 686–687.

^27 V. Shubkin, “Profession: Problems of Choice,” Nauka i zhizn’, 1971, no. 5, p. 73.

the universal introduction into the system of education and instructional work of the newest technical means and achievements. F. Bacon wrote as early as the seventeenth century of the need to have helpers for the mind: “The true cause and root of all evils in the sciences lies in one thing: in that we are deceitfully amazed by the power of the human mind... and do not seek assistance for it... The work is accomplished by instruments and aids, which are needed by the understanding no less than by the hand.”⁵

The system of education is directly dependent on the results and achievements of the scientific and technological revolution and on their introduction into the educational process. The present state of the technical equipment of secondary schools and of secondary and higher specialized educational institutions shows that the scientific and technological revolution is invading the sphere of education, promoting the technicalization of instruction and of students’ study work. At present schools have at their disposal such equipment as motion-picture projectors, epidiascopes, filmoscopes, tape recorders, radio sets, “LETI-60” slide projectors, and others. For the needs of the school, motion pictures, gramophone records, tape recordings are produced; television centers conduct educational broadcasts. The appearance of new technical means, devices, and corresponding materials has created favorable conditions for organizing the classroom system in schools. Thus, of the total number of eight-year and secondary schools, physics classrooms are available in 69.2% of schools, chemistry classrooms in 48.7%, and biology classrooms in 37.7%.⁶ In the Eighth Five-Year Plan alone, 30,411 new subject classrooms were created.⁷

The introduction of technical means into the educational process is increasingly beginning to embrace higher educational institutions as well. In addition to the fact that the country’s higher educational institutions are equipped with modern equipment and instruments necessary for intensive mastery of knowledge and practical skills in one or another branch of science, specialized automated teaching auditoriums are being created. Such auditoriums already exist in a number of higher educational institutions: the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, the F. E. Dzerzhinsky Military Engineering Academy, the Kuibyshev Aviation Institute, and others. At the Leningrad Institute of Precision Mechanics and Optics, an automated system for controlling the educational process has been developed and is being introduced, and lecture-stream auditoriums have been equipped. As I. Vysokodvorskii reports, the auditoriums are equipped with a “Ukraina” film projector, two LETI slide projectors, Edi-454 devices for projecting lecture notes onto a screen, and a tape recorder.⁸ At the Kaliningrad branch of the Leningrad Agricultural Institute, the audiovisual complex “Kaliningrad-1” has been created, which, as R. Berdichevsky writes, enables the lecturer, without the help of a laboratory assistant and at a time convenient for himself, to switch on and off the necessary technical means. This makes it possible, without outside assistance, provided there has been preliminary preparation, to illustrate a lecture with tape recordings, gramophone records, recordings on an epidiascope tape, television broadcasts, slide films, and motion pictures.⁹ Training machines are being created for students to practice particular elements of scientific knowledge.

In a number of higher educational institutions in the country, including Tomsk Polytechnic, centers for the assessment of knowledge have been created, in particular in foreign languages, on the basis of examination machines. Similar examples can be found in any higher educational institution in our country. “Smart” technology is being placed at the service of human beings in the matter of mastering knowledge and managing the educational process, solving the task of assisting reason.

However, the problem of the industrialization of education is still far from resolved. Today this process appears as a tendency connected with the development of society and the scientific and technological revolution, which shows that education is still at the source of its future revolutionization on the basis of electronics and cybernetics and the newest methods of instruction. “When computers,” writes Academician A. I. Berg, emphasizing their significance in education, “become as commonplace as, say, the telephone... a truly new era will open in this field”^33. The future will demand ever more insistently the use of technical means in the sphere of education. Much remains to be done in this respect. The decisions of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU state this directly: “Strengthen the instructional-material base of schools and vocational-technical schools, especially in rural areas, and of higher and secondary specialized educational institutions, and equip them with modern equipment and technical means of instruction”^34.

The use of technical means of instruction, of course, plays an important role in improving the methods and effectiveness of the educational process. But here I would like to draw attention to one aspect of the matter. The development of science, the rapid growth of scientific knowledge, the appearance of complex equipment, machines, and instruments, the “brain-intensiveness” of labor in production accordingly give rise in education as well to the “brain-intensiveness” of academic disciplines and of the educational process as a whole. Therefore it is incorrect to imagine that the appearance of the newest means facilitating the process of assimilating particular aspects of the greatly increased volume of knowledge really creates ease in academic labor, as well as in the process of instruction at any level of the educational system. On the contrary, the “devilish tension” (Marx) in the process of academic labor is not only preserved but is increasing. The rising level of the study load increases the psychological load on the learner, which gives rise to an awareness of the burden of academic labor, especially when there is a large volume of information and inadequate methods and forms of its organization. The latter circumstance leads to a weakening of interest in learning and lowers its emotional aspect. And “...without ‘human emotions,’” wrote V. I. Lenin, “there has never been, nor can there be, any human search for truth”^35.

Hence there arises the most general problem for the entire system of public education: the improvement of the organization, management, and methods of the process of instruction and academic labor in accordance with the law of optimality (in its broad understanding), on the basis of the universal introduction into the educational system of electronic computing and other technology, and on the basis of strict consideration of the biological and age-related characteristics of the learner’s personality.

An important problem in the system of education is the combination of general educational and professional training. This is especially

^33 A. I. Berg, “The Creative Specialist and Adaptive Instruction,” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1971, No. 3, p. 17.

^34 Directives of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU. Materials of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU. Publishing House of Political Literature, Moscow, 1971, p. 278.

^35 V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 25, p. 112.

the problem arises in connection with the implementation of the task of universal secondary education. Its solution is possible on the basis of a broader development of the network of secondary specialized educational institutions, the transformation of vocational-technical schools into institutions of general educational and specialized training, and also through the creation of courses and other forms of production-technical training on the basis of ten-year education.

The development of education as a social phenomenon and its successes give rise to a number of other problems. Among them is the problem that requires bringing a certain level of an individual’s education into conformity with concrete conditions of labor. There are still quite a few industries whose level and technological processes do not require a high level of education; at the same time, there are still quite a few workers whose education does not correspond to the condition and technical equipment of production. This necessitates, on the one hand, the improvement of forms of education and, on the other, the raising of the level and technical equipment of every production facility.

One of the important social problems is the problem of selecting and admitting to higher education prepared and industrious young people. The contemporary level of society’s development still cannot provide the possibility for all young people graduating from secondary school to enter higher educational institutions. And the solution of the task of universal secondary education further intensifies the acuteness of this problem. Therefore, alongside selection, another social problem arises here: improving the system of vocational guidance and the system of evening and correspondence education.

The problem of education as a social problem is extremely broad and diverse, and considering it in its entirety in a single article is, of course, not possible. We have focused attention only on certain questions of the development of education under the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution, from the point of view of the development of the productive forces of society and, above all, of the human being as the chief “agent” of modern production. But the human being is connected not only with production. His life relations lead to other numerous connections requiring a certain level of erudition and general human culture. In this respect, his development, in addition to the basic links of education, proceeds through self-education, as well as through various connections and relations.

Thus, education, having as its purpose, on the one hand, the improvement and development of science, technology, and production (in the broad sense), and on the other, the all-round development of the individual and above all the development of his or her general cultural level and qualification capacities, is carried out in parallel and in close interconnection with the scientific, technical, socio-political, and cultural development of society. It conditions this development and is one of its means. The entire process of education and self-education, even when the best conditions for their realization are present, requires from the learner social activity, responsibility, and a certain exertion in study.

The scientific and technological revolution, by presenting demands to education, by being based on it and on scientific achievements, leads to the fact that study increasingly becomes, alongside professional labor, a continuous process for every individual.

1. I. A. Maizel, Communism and the Transformation of Science into a Direct Productive Force. Moscow, “Vysshaya shkola,” 1963, p. 17. ↩

2. N. V. Markov, The Scientific and Technological Revolution: Analysis, Prospects, Consequences. Moscow, Publishing House of Political Literature, 1971, p. 92. ↩

3. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 46, part II, p. 208. ↩

4. See, for example, the theory of the step-by-step formation of mental actions in the process of instruction, developed by P. Ya. Galperin and N. F. Talyzina. ↩

5. F. Bacon. Novyi organon [The New Organon]. Leningrad, 1935, pp. 108–109. ↩

6. See: V. Rozov. “Some Questions of the Economics of Public Education.” — Narodnoe obrazovanie, 1971, No. 1, p. 8. ↩

7. See: I. Driga. “The Educational and Technical Base of Schools at the Level of Contemporary Tasks.” — Narodnoe obrazovanie, 1971, No. 5, p. 12. ↩

8. See: I. Vysokodvorskii. “An Automated Auditorium.” — Nauka i zhizn’, 1971, No. 4, p. 41. ↩

9. See: R. Berdichevsky. “Technology, Science, Students.” Leningradskaia pravda, 1968, June 16. ↩