p The young man’s spiritual culture depends, first and foremost, on his general and specialised education. Lenin regarded it as the most important task of the cultural revolution to raise the educational level of the masses, as the basis for the development of socialist culture as a whole. During a conversation with Clara Zetkin, he said: "... We put foremost public education and training on the biggest scale. It creates a basis for culture.”  [74•1 

p Education involves many important social functions. It acquaints the young man with a definite system of knowledge of the surrounding world (general education), and gives him the knowledge indispensable for some kind of work (special education), and knowledge about society and its development (political and economic education). The process of education shapes a definite type of human personality with a definite world outlook. Thanks to education, the national economy is provided with qualified specialists, the spiritual values accumulated by mankind are passed from one generation to another and thus the liaison between the generations is maintained. Education helps man to understand the whole system of social relations and to absorb social information.

p Besides the systematic acquirement of knowledge in special institutions (formal education), the society also offers opportunities for self-education in line with personal inclinations and wishes.

p Naturally, even higher education does not make a cultured man in the full sense of the word. But it serves as the basis for acquiring culture. Moreover, as distinct from other components of culture, the formal level of education can easily be assessed.

p Ever since the foundation of the socialist state, the Party, the Komsomol and the Soviet Government, implementing Lenin’s behests, have always shown great concern for the education of Soviet people, primarily the younger generation. In the past few decades the general level of education among youth has risen sharply. According to the spot checks 75 which were made early in 1936 among workers under 25 in some Soviet industries, the picture in the engineering industry was as follows: 0.4 per cent were illiterate, 13.5 per cent had incomplete primary education, 39.2 per cent had full primary education, 43.5 per cent had incomplete secondary education and only 3.4 per cent, complete secondary education. In a comparatively short while the picture changed completely, and the educational level of youth, particularly of its most progressive section—young workers— was raised to unbelievable heights!

p At the beginning of the Eighth Five-Year Plan 26.8 per cent of young workers at the region’s industrial enterprises remained with incomplete secondary education, but by 1970 the number had dropped down to 15.2 per cent. It is significant that an increasing number of young workers acquired complete secondary education. Today young workers engaged in the region’s engineering and instrument-making industries, transport and communications have on the average an 8- class education, while those in metallurgy, have an average education of 8 1/2 classes.  [75•1  In 1959 only 386 per 1,000 workers had secondary (complete or incomplete) education compared with over 550 in 1970. In the same year (1970) half the rural population had secondary or higher education. In Sverdlovsk Region 47.8 per cent of young villagers between 20 and 29 have an incomplete secondary education, 29 per cent have a complete secondary, special secondary or higher education (complete or incomplete), and only 23.2 per cent have an education of less than eight classes. It would be well to recall here that, according to the first Soviet census, in 1926, only 1.5 per cent of those engaged in manual labour had at most an incomplete secondary education.

p In 1971 some 79 million people in the Soviet Union were involved in diverse forms of education. Of these more than 49 million went to general schools, 4.5 million, to higher educational establishments, and 4.3 million, to special secondary schools.

p The upsurge of general education in the Soviet Union was a decisive factor in the general advancement made by socialist culture.

p General education does not imply a mere assimilation of a definite volume of knowledge or information accumulated over a few thousand years. General education also implies the acquirement of the habits, skill and methods involved in the practical utilisation of knowledge. It must instruct man how to gain new knowledge independently and show him the way to self-education. Finally, another aim of education is to develop the rational sphere of human cognition and its emotional comprehension of the universe, i.e., to broaden the cultural gamut of human sensation. It is thanks to education that man can find his way in the diverse fields of production and public life. The process of education is inseparably linked with the development of the new man and the transformation of his knowledge into convictions.

p The Party has assigned Soviet secondary schools and schools of higher learning the task of bringing up builders of communist society, who are both educated and convinced of their mission.

p Bourgeois sociologists hypocritically deny that there is any link between education and politics. The West German bourgeois sociologist E. Weber says, for example, that "it (education.—Ed.) must be ... free and independent of everything; independent of politics, ideology and social influences of the times. In this sense education is above party influences, and unifies all groups of society.”  [76•1  Such theories are designed to veil the class nature of bourgeois schools, the social selection which prevents young working-class people from getting a higher education, and the subjection of all school education to the propaganda of the capitalist way of life. According to UNESCO, only one out of every four people in the world gets a primary education, and one out of twelve, a secondary education. In the FRG, France, Britain and some other countries only 20 to 25 per cent of young people, mostly from the ruling classes, get the education which gives them the right to matriculate in universities.

p School education (including higher educational establishments) gives only the fundamentals of knowledge, and teaches man the habits of independent work which subsequently help him to replenish his knowledge.

p The Directives on the Five-Year Economic Development Plan of the USSR for 1971-75 set the task of completing the transition to universal secondary education. Today already nearly 80 per cent of graduates from 8-year schools subsequently complete secondary education, either in general schools (day or night), which will continue to supply the majority of graduates with secondary education, or in special secondary schools. These are now supplemented by vocational schools which will gradually adopt the curriculum of the secondary school and graduate skilled workers with a secondary education. The vocational schools are destined to play a significant role in the transition to universal complete secondary education.

p Day schools are supplemented by all kinds of secondary and higher correspondence courses which are quickly spreading throughout the country. In the 1969/70 academic year there were some 8,335,000 people taking these courses.

p The composition of the student body in evening schools has undergone a change in recent years. The majority of pupils now are under 25, the number of pupils in the primary classes has dropped sharply, while in the senior classes it has gone abruptly up (from 192,000 in 1950/51 to 2,991,000 in 1969/70).

p What prompts these people to spend a good portion of their leisure time on education? Firstly the scientific and technological revolution. New techniques, technology and organisation of production require much better skill, greater knowledge and a different mental outlook.

p An increasing number of professions requires secondary and even special secondary education. Economists predict that in the next decade the proportion of professions requiring secondary education and additional vocational training will increase sharply. Skilled and highly qualified workers will constitute more than a half of the expected increase in the work force. A number of them will come from vocational schools providing secondary education and high production skills.

p A growing number of graduates from secondary schools will enrol in vocational schools where they will master different professions. Finally, the ranks of the working class will be replenished by graduates from secondary technical schools. That will help to eliminate the disparity between the education and production skill of some workers.

p The production and technical aspects of education are increasingly supplemented by various social requirements. Life in Soviet society demands a high level of education. It is needed for effective management and planning of production, participation in public activities, as well as for rationalisation work and inventions. You cannot creatively absorb the swelling volume of information, nor can you bring up children or effectively engage in other social activities without a sound education. To put it briefly, a man must have a high level of education to measure up to his civic duties as a full-fledged master of his country. In addition, a man’s prestige among his friends and acquaintances also depends on his education. Today the socialist society regards education as one of its most treasured values.

p The social demand for a higher level of education is just as strong as that of production. This is substantiated by the results of a poll conducted in 1967-69 by sociologists from the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Urals research centre, at 12 metallurgical, chemical, engineering and electrical equipment enterprises in Sverdlovsk Region. In order to find the ratio between the production and the social demands for education they analysed the motives of 1,513 young workers who had enrolled in evening schools. It turned out that 10.9 per cent of them were motivated by production reasons, while 51.7 per cent were prompted by social demands.

p We verified the results by employing a different method. In our interviews with workers under 30, we asked them whether they regarded their education as adequate for production assignments and diverse social activities. The interviews were conducted at four enterprises in Sverdlovsk Region: the Sredne-Uralskaya Power Station, the Pervouralsk Pipe Factory, the Medicines Factory, and the Engineering Plant (Sverdlovsk). We selected one out of every 79 ten workers submitting our questions to a total of 796 people. Only 10.4 per cent said that their education was inadequate for production requirements; 51.8 per cent considered their education insufficient for improving production techniques. Many felt unprepared for effective participation in the management and planning of production.

p Thus the development of science and engineering, combined with the whole system of socialist relations are stimulating Soviet youth to raise the level of their education. The swelling volume of political, scientific and aesthetic information calls for the improvement of teaching methods in schools. The secondary school gives its pupils essential knowledge in science and engineering so that graduates can feel themselves at home in special educational establishments and training courses at production enterprises. This was precisely what the classics of MarxismLeninism implied by saying that polytechnical education was the most important foundation of the individual’s spiritual wealth.

p Polytechnical education provides the fundamentals of modern production, shows the importance of science for the development of production, imparts the simple habits involved in engineering skill, and inculcates respect for mental and manual labour. Polytechnical education is the essential basis for the acquirement of professions.

p By acquainting young people with the fundamentals of modern production, polytechnical education helps them to choose a profession to their liking with due regard for the interests of society.

Lenin said that polytechnical education "gives theoretical and practical knowledge of all the principal fields of production".  [79•1  He said that it was wrong to give professional training to children under 16, and stressed that from the viewpoint of the Party’s Programme, the education should be polytechnical.  [79•2  This is precisely the road taken by Soviet general schools.