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p Our school is situated on the edge of a large village fifteen kilometres or so from the town of Kremenchug. The school grounds occupy about five hectares and they are bordered by woods, high-yielding fields of the nearby collective farm and the river Omelnik, a small tributary of the Dnieper which skirts their south side. At this point the river has been dammed to create a large lake. (11, 107)

p The village is almost hidden by a sea of greenery. Between the school grounds and the collective-farm fields we planted several oakgroves and copses as windbreaks. Next to the school there is a sports stadium with a ring of apple trees around it. There used to be a dark ravine on the north-west side of the school. We planted oaks round the top of it and lilac bushes on the slopes, so we now have an oak-grove and a garden of beautiful lilac. (11, 107)

p The countryside where the school is sited undulates gently. Enchanting views of the approaches to the Dnieper can be enjoyed from any of the nearby hills. From the top of a barrow the fields of Poltava country beyond the Dnieper are visible on a clear day, and also the blue mirror of Kremenchug man-made sea: on the horizon you can make out the silhouette of a hydroelectric power station and in the distant haze the outline of a motor-works and 99 railway-wagon factory. To the west and to the south are spread wide fields scattered with ancient Scythian barrows. (11, 107)

p It would seem likely that the school of the future is bound to make the fullest possible use of all that Nature provides and all that man can do to ensure that Nature serves him in order to promote man’s harmonious development. For this reason alone we should protect and supplement existing natural riches. The work of our pupils to multiply the natural resources here over a comparatively short period —twenty years—has substantially changed, indeed transformed their surroundings here. Over these two decades we have transformed forty hectares of poor clayey soil into fertile, rich fields and abundant orchards. (11, 109)

p Four of the buildings at our school are set aside for study purposes. The main building with ten classrooms in it is for Classes 5-10 (Classes 5-7 on the ground floor, Classes 8-10 on the first). The other three buildings nearby house Classes 1, 2, 3 and 4. Each building contains a staff-room. (11, 109)

p In each building there lives a small family so to speak, in which all the children know each other and gradually come to join in the life of the collective made up of the whole school as well. The atmosphere is free of fuss or bustle which always tire children very quickly. They can all run straight out of their “house” into the garden, onto the 100 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1977/SOE347/20070212/199.tx" green lawns; in any weather they can make their way to any of the other buildings to visit their younger or older friends along the little concrete paths that save them from wetting their feet. (11, 109)

p In the main study block, apart from classrooms, there are a maths room, language and literature section, a foreign languages laboratory complete with a set of tapes and records, radio workshop (with a school radio station), a music room, Pioneer and Komsomol meeting rooms, a school museum, methodology room, a “parents’ corner”, a photographic workshop, art room, sports hall, a recreation room (where pupils can find peace and quiet to daydream in, talk to their friends, read books and newspapers), an equipment centre where pupils can help themselves to what they need. (11, 112)

p In the language and literature section there are two hundred works of literature, which should be read by every schoolchild in order for him to have a grounding in literature. This selection is considerably less than most people read before they reach maturity, however ensuring that all pupils read these particular books (and indeed read several of them more than once) is no easy task for the teacher. There are also lists of recommended reading for pupils of every age; there is even a separate list of books that should be re-read; at our school we regard this grounding as an essential part of real moral and aesthetic education. Also available are annotations on 101 outstanding works of fiction drawn up by pupils, advice for young readers, exercise books containing essays of particular merit drawn from the whole period since the school was first set up, individual issues of wall newspapers and folders of old copies of the manuscript journal put out at the school entitled All Our Own Work. (11, 112)

p The list of works recommended for re- reading is prefaced with the following words: “Boys and girls. Here is a list of titles which form part of man’s literary treasure-house. They should be read several times over. These books teach us how to live and open up before us the beauty of art.” (11, 112)

p In the staff-room there is nothing reminiscent of an ordinary school setting apart from time-tables: there is an aquarium on the table, next to that some indoor plants including a lemon and a laurel tree to keep the air pleasantly fresh, the table is ringed with soft chairs and on it lie journals and a chess set. (11, 116)

p We also have a separate reading-room for girls, in which are laid out books and brochures (the supply is constantly being replenished) on anatomy and physiology, on feminine hygiene and motherhood. These books and brochures are read by the girls with great interest___(11, 116)

p In every educational establishment there is a supply of cleaning equipment from which 102 students can help themselves. Each class has its own bucket, watering-can, dust-brushes, dusters. There is a vacuum cleaner on every floor. Each of these objects has its set place.

p Before coming into school each pupil wipes his feet twice: the first time is by the fence in a special little reservoir for washing down boots to get the worst off and then later at the end of the concrete path, he has to wash his footwear down again before actually entering the school building. The staff on duty check the state of all pupils’ shoes: each one stands on a piece of white canvas and wipes his soles on it, if no mark is left on the canvas he can go into the school. If the canvas on the other hand shows dirty, the pupil is sent back again to wash down his footwear taking with him the dirtied canvas to wash as well. But no more than two minutes is set aside for that each day (for shoe-washing and cleanliness checks). Yet at the same time those two minutes do a great deal to shorten and alleviate both the work pupils have to do to clean up after themselves and that of the cleaning women. (11, 117)

p The footpaths along which the children cross from one building to the next are kept in a state of ideal cleanliness, and if they get wet in bad weather, pupils bring moisture inside but no dirt or dust. (11, 117)

p The school’s electric power station consists of two sections. In the first there is an alternating-current generator with a capacity of 103 sixteen kilowatts, another with a capacity of four and a half kilowatts and a direct-current generator with a capacity of two kilowatts, a thermo-electric generator, battery-charger, a galvanic trough, and electro-smelting furnace, electric-welding apparatus, a milling machine, a grinding lathe and a circular saw; they are all kept here so that when the electric generators are switched on for demonstration purposes the power should not go to waste.

p In the second section there is the children’s electric power station. It has a low-voltage power plant of small capacity. Mechanical models can be connected up to the generator. Senior pupils have constructed a number of installations in there which automatically switch off the current and which stop the small internal combustion engine—to make sure that accidents are avoided.

p Next to the electric power station are the foundry and the smithy. (//, 121)

p Almost everything to be found in the laboratories, special study-rooms and workshops is the work of pupils and teachers. Each year the study-rooms and laboratories are issued with additional new machinery, working models and installations, tables for model construction, etc. In 1963/64 for example pupils and teachers made a milling machine for metalwork, a wood-turning lathe, a circular saw, two automatically programmed lathes, six small metal lathes for pupils from junior and middle classes, 15 working models of 104 alternating-current generators and 45 wireless sets. We produce machines for working metal to be used not only in our own premises but also at neighbouring schools. Over the last ten years we have supplied to other eight-year secondary schools 18 machines and 45 visual aids for use in physics, mathematics and chemistry lessons. (11, 121)

p The south, west and north sides of the school grounds are taken up with an orchard that covers two hectares, where you will find all the varieties of fruit trees which are grown in the Ukraine (apples, pears, plums, apricots, peaches, cherries, walnuts). It was first planted out by the school’s pupils twenty years ago and is extended each year. Next to the main school block there is a vineyard (0.2 hectare) —an especial favourite with both children and teachers. From May to November the children take delight first in the sea of thick foliage and then the ripening grapes. (11, 123)

p Between the orchard and the vineyard there is our Greenhouse No. 1 and the “green laboratory”. Flowers and vegetables are grown in the greenhouse and experiments are carried out. One set of shelves for plants is placed in the centre of the greenhouse and round it there are folding benches which the children sit on when they come out here for study sessions. Pupils built the greenhouse and it was they who installed the water pipes and central heating. Even on the coldest winter days the 105 temperature in the greenhouse is kept up to at least 27°C. (11, 123)

p Behind the school’s working garden stands the mechanics laboratory and a garage for two school cars and two tractors. There are also a number of agricultural machines and implements (sowing machines, ploughs, a cultivator, sprayer for the fruit trees, etc.). The mechanics workshop and the garages (apart from the main one there is also a second smaller one for two mini-cars designed by members of the mechanics hobby circle) were built by senior pupils. Part of the small garage is used by the “Young Motorists" club, and here tools for mending motors are kept and materials used for model construction. The work that goes on here is always most enthusiastic: small machines and devices are made or assembled which involve the use of electric power for work that would otherwise have been done by hand. (//, 126)

p The school garden is a sea of greenery. The school has no need of a large yard, from which the wind would have blown dust into the classroom windows. Out in the garden there are countless islands of green lawns and secluded grassy corners. There is so much greenery that although pupils sometimes walk about over the grass and sit on it, they would never be able to wear it away.

p There are also many flowers, arbours and groves. The path leading from the main school 106 building to the laboratories and study-rooms is bordered with rose bushes. This rose arbour is a favourite place for walks. In the orchard, peach grove and oak copse there are at least thirty secluded corners full of fragrant flowers which make an ideal setting for meditation or a quiet talk. All that is part of man’s life should be beautiful and this is why we have devoted so much attention to the external setting of our school. (11, 126)

p As a child’s emotional and cultural world is taking shape, what he sees around him is very important, on the walls of the school corridor, in the classroom and the workshop. Nothing should be a source of inspiration and enlightenment. We try to ensure that every drawing and every word a child sees provide him with a source of new ideas about himself and his friends. (11, 130)

p The decoration of the ground-floor corridor intended for pupils aged between twelve and fourteen is the face of the school so to speak; it reflects the educational aims of the teaching body and the latter’s style of work, and the ideas and work skills of teachers and pupils. (11, 134)

p In the corridor of the building, where pupils from Class 1 and 2 study, drawings have been put up to attract the children’s attention but they do not require captions, for they are catering 107 for children who have only just joined the school.

p These drawings are changed at regular intervals: at the beginning of the school year the children are shown drawings of the interesting things children can do at school, even the very youngest ones. These pictures represent something in the way of a “world in pictures" that acquaints the child with his immediate environment. Young children enjoy looking at pictures depicting other children like themselves—children at play, caring for the school pets, in the botanical laboratory, in the greenhouse, in the workshops manning a drill or lathe, working with a vice or fret-saws. In addition there are drawings depicting children at leisure, pioneers at work and at play, pupils from the youngest classes. These pictures also show young children how children of their own age or slightly older can drive a mini-car. That is still more interesting. Then the world illustrated in these pictures starts to unfold before children as the real world. (11, 130)

p For the small children we hang up pictures to help them understand the world around them. For example there is a series of pictures with the overall title: “Why Does It Happen Like That?" The pictures show ordinary things familiar to the children, taken from Nature or a work setting: however there is something unusual about them, something that the children can’t help thinking about, which fills them with astonishment. A willow branch stuck into the damp earth brings forth shoots, turns into 108 a tree, while an oak-branch withers. Why? On a spring night, when waves of cold air are sweeping down from the North, threatening to blister the flowering trees, bonfires are lit in the orchards and the damage is prevented. Why?, etc.

p The second series of pictures has the title: “What Are They Doing That For?" Men are shown boring holes through thick ice on a pond in the winter. What for? During the summer heat a fine layer of dung is being scattered on parched soil round vegetable plants. What for? On summer days jugs of milk are wrapped in damp cloths. What for? Pieces of iron are made red-hot before being fashioned into axes or hammers. And so on and so forth.

p The third series of pictures comes under the heading: “What Is Wrong Here?" Deliberate mistakes are made in them: red tomatoes are shown ripening in dark shade of an oak tree; collective farmers are shown bringing in water melons past flowering apple trees; the shadows of poplar trees fall in the direction from which the sun is shining; beehives have been taken outside and set up in a field sown with wheat, etc., etc. These pictures make the youngsters think about phenomena of the natural world and work.

p The fourth series: “Where Is This Taking Place?" shows scenes familiar to the children from books that their elders have read to them, from their elders’ own stories or from films; for example an aeroplane is shown landing on a small runway surrounded by ice-hummocks; a 109 rocket is forging into space surrounded by stars and at the window there is the smiling face of the first Soviet cosmonaut familiar to the children. And so on and so forth. (11, 131)

p On the wall-board with the heading “Why Is It Done?" there are pictures with the following captions: “Why are all the metal parts of cars and machines rubbed over with lubricants for the winter?”, “Why are seed potatoes warmed out in the sun before being sown?”, “Why are fields harrowed in two days after the rain?”, “Why is coal dampened before being burnt?”. And so on and so forth.

p A further series of drawings come under the heading: “How to Find Out?.. ."—How old a fruit tree is, without sawing off even a single branch? Will an apple tree flower in the spring, and if so how to find it out in the winter? What aeroplane is flying up there and does it have propellers or a jet engine? (11, 133)

p In the middle of the central entrance hall there is the Komsomol’s Lenin display. Special posters and collections of photographs are devoted to such subjects as “Lenin’s Teaching on Communist Morality”, “Exploits of Komsomol Heroes”, “The Finest People from Our Village”. Then there is a list of books “What to Read about Lenin".

p One of the central focuses of the exhibit is a board headed “Of Burning Interest to Mankind”, featuring articles and photographs about important events in our country and abroad. (11, 143)

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p At the entrance to the first floor where the senior classes are there is a poster saying: “Boys and Girls! You are on the threshold of adult life. You must learn to take your own education in hand in order to become fine upstanding adults. Pay heed to these words of famous men on the subject of self-education”. Statements by celebrated men and women of the past and present follow. (11, 140)

p We try to make even the walls of the school speak to the pupils.

The profound ideas reproduced on the posters and wall-boards contribute to the pupils’ intellectual experience and arouse response in the first place because they are part of the overall system of moral, intellectual and aesthetic education provided for our pupils. If the message of the statements cited above did not link up with the present-day interests and concerns of our school collective, then these words would strike no chord in their minds or hearts, and would fall on deaf ears. All these wall-boards and posters are changed from time to time depending upon the immediate focus of the educational work being carried out in the school. (11, 138)