p I am firmly convinced that teaching must become a science for everyone—teachers and parents alike. We attempt to give parents a minimum grounding in educational science. To this end we arrange special courses for parents, for which they can enrol two years before their child starts school and continue to attend until their child completes his secondary school. The psychology and education course arranged for parents occupies a total of 250 hours....

p The course covers all fields incorporated into the university education course, but particular attention is paid to children’s psychological 121 make-up at different ages, psychology of personality and the theory of physical, intellectual, moral and aesthetic education. We attempt to provide all fathers and mothers who attend the course with a basis of theoretical knowledge for applying it to their child’s intellectual and emotional development. This requires of us teachers considerable tact and sensitivity. (11, 35)

p We have achieved an attendance rate of 95-98 per cent of all parents. Twenty-five per cent of the families are represented by both parents. The course is arranged in such a way that after two to three years of the pre-school section, parents then attend the section dealing with the junior section of the school for four years, then the middle section for three years and a final three years in the senior section (Classes 8 to 10). Successful educational work at school would be quite unthinkable without this system of instruction designed to enlighten and instruct parents in the highly responsible skills of education. (14, 6)

p One of the lectures in all sections of the parents’ courses I set aside specially for the topic: how children imitate their elders. Parents show great interest in accounts of how children adopt some seemingly insignificant, isolated features of their parents’ behaviour, which in their new form may well become exaggerated and be taken over by the child. Detailed analysis of how children single out certain 122 traits of their parents’ characters, how they are passed on, and how the features of a young child’s moral outlook take root, constitutes part of teachers’ everyday work with parents both as a group and individuals. It is very important in order to ensure coincidence of the educational line followed at school and at home, that parents should learn to see themselves in their children and appreciate the dialectics inherent in their child’s development. (14, 6)

p A home with no books, no library, at least fails to exert any influence on the course of a child’s school education, and at worst serves to stultify a child’s existence, holding back his intellectual development; this in its turn means that teachers have to make a special effort to compensate for the limited nature of the family’s interests in some way. (14, 6)

p We consider it important to build up a diverse home library not only for the sake of the children, but also for the parents, whose intellectual interests are just as important as the children’s reading. (14, 6)

p In the course of twenty years I have made out 1,200 cards recording-the development of my pupils from the onset of their teens till they left school. Perusal of this material demonstrates that adults of high moral calibre and conscientious attitudes to work come from homes where books are held in esteem. (14, 6)

p In an anthology I compiled for parents entitled A Humane World considerable space is devoted to fairy-tales and children’s books. I explain to parents which fairy-tales they ought to read to their children of pre-school age, and which children’s books they should have on the shelf at home, how they should be read and expounded. On the whole books occupy an exceedingly important place in the intellectual interests of a family. (14, 6).

p Perhaps some of you will wonder: if there are seven parents’ study groups at the school and they meet twice a month, surely the teachers will be spending most of their time talking to parents? No, we do not regard this additional work-load as excessive, because at the same time we have ruled out many unnecessary but nevertheless widely practised types of meetings between teachers and parents. We do not visit children in their homes. Their fathers and mothers come to us themselves. (16)

p From time to time we have special lectures for mothers in the parents’ courses.. . . This is essential when it comes to discussion of various matters connected with children’s sexual education. (14, 6)

p On winter evenings fathers often come to visit the school. On such occasions teachers discuss in detail with them the important role of the man in the family. Great importance is attributed to such discussions, because fathers 124 have a very specific part to play in educating the younger generation.

p Children are always eager for their fathers to be strong characters with a clear identity of their own and a responsible streak. If only every father realised and understood the tremendous need for him his child experiences, and how much he longs for there to be a wise, upstanding man beside him! (18)

p At discussions with fathers only teachers talk to them about the ways in which they should pass on wisdom gleaned from their experience of life, and show resolution and perseverance in bringing up their children. (14, 6)

p The time is at last ripe—and I am firmly convinced of this—to create ideal families, ideal relations between father and mother, between children and their parents. I am quite sure that the family is the magic foam on the sea from which beauty is born, and if there are no mysterious powers engendering that human beauty, then the function of schools will be to reproduce it. (31)

p Without the support of the family we—I mean our school—would be powerless. Decades have been spent on giving parents an essential grounding in the art and skills of education. The parents of the current intake are our former pupils; we prepared them for their mission as parents when they were still sitting at their desks—and this is very important! 125 Boundless respect for our school and trust in it are the most important features of the present generation of parents. In local homes there is no higher authority on questions of ethics, child-care or upbringing than the school. We have achieved in making books and reading a must in every family. Half our work outside the classroom with the senior pupils is aimed at preparing them to be good fathers and mothers. Perhaps this may seem strange to some of you, perhaps we are mistaken; be that as it may—our predominant preoccupation in work for “career orientation" is the training of future parent-educators when they are still on the school-bench. ... (31)

I have faith in the great power of communist education. I believe that children and young people can be educated in such a way that punishment should prove unnecessary. I believe that utmost happiness and joy are to be found in full and interesting lives, in lives rich in ideas, aspirations, endeavours, in our discovery of the beauty and splendour inherent in our world, in the desire to be better tomorrow than we are today, in the reproduction of our own beautiful attributes in children and in lasting and unswerving effort to promote the welfare of our fellow-men and our Homeland. (29)