p The first thing that a child notices when he joins Class 1 is the interesting tasks that everyone is absorbed in. Each pupil has a little 208 corner for his favourite work, his favourite occupation and he has an older workmate whose work he emulates. The vast majority of the pupils are not only learning something and mastering some skill or other, but they are also passing on their new found abilities and skills and knowledge to their fellow-pupils. Real character formation is achieved only when an individual imparts his knowledge, experience and skills to another. (11, 347)

p The starting-point for the development of childien’s abilities and gifts is literally their fingers. Figuratively speaking tiny streams flow forth from their fingers which feed the source of their creative thought. The more confidence and inventiveness there is in the movement of a child’s hands, the more intricate the interaction of his hands with his work tools, and the more complex the movements essential for that interaction, the more vivid will be the creative element in a child’s mind and the more subtle, precise and complex the movements used for that interaction; the more profoundly the interaction of a child’s hands with Nature and with social work has become a part of the child’s emotional and intellectual life, the more observant, inquisitive, astute, attentive a child will be in his activity and the more his urge to investigate the world around him will grow.

p In other words, the more skill mastered by a child’s hand, the more intelligent the child. But skills are not achieved thanks to mere intuition. 209 They are determined by a child’s mental and physical ability. A child’s mental ability is consolidated as his skills are perfected, but at the same time a child’s physical skills flow forth from his mental ability. I always strove to ensure that a child’s apprehension of the world around him involved active interaction of his hands with that environment ... that a child manifested and developed his curiosity not only by means of questions but also through work. (10, 220)

p However complex machines and technological processes become, manual work will never cease to be a vital element of production. The concept “manual work" is not a synonym for “physical work”. In high-level manual work creative thought is required. The more complex technology and work processes, the more elementary skills and experience of manual work will be required before technical processes can be mastered. As production is increasingly automated the role of skills and experience necessary for the regulation, adjustment, tuning, assembly, inspection and up-dating of equipment will grow.

p Thanks to the high level of manual labour the skills for operating complex machinery and devices are more sophisticated and require greater expertness than ever before. Men and women who have long experience of manual work are able to operate machines in such a way that their units and parts interact smoothly without any hitches. (11, 360)

p Regardless of how far technology develops and the level which technical inventions reach, the path to the summits of scientific discovery and the achievement of expertness will always start out from mastery of the technical ABC, that is through the study of the internal combustion engine, the turbine, circular and bandsaws, etc. Just as it is impossible to approach the frontiers of science without first mastering the alphabet, so without understanding simple tools, apparatus and mechanisms it is impossible to master complex technology and achieve competent, skilled levels of work. (11, 325)

p In primary classes children begin to learn to use tools. We attach great importance to children’s tools for manual work. Pupils in the middle classes at work sessions in the locksmith’s workshop make knives and cutters for woodcarving and for cutting out paper and cardboard. There is special device with which the youngsters make small clay bricks for the construction of toy buildings. Small chisels and gouges, axes and hammers are all used by the small children in their work sessions. As they learn to work with various materials the children gradually progress to making things, in which the quality of the whole depends upon the quality of the parts and their interaction. Precise calculation and the precision with which materials are prepared and assembled, accurate interaction of the parts concerned—all these work skills fostered and nurtured in primary 211 school are very important for subsequent instruction at work sessions. (11, 323)

p The material basis of a school truly improves if the work the children engage in brings certain profit. Harvests from the school garden, orchard and vineyard and the tending of fruittree saplings all represent important material assets. Some of these we pass on to the local collective farm and parents free of charge, but some we sell: the resultant revenue is spent on cultural functions and facilities provided for the children (excursions, the purchase of musical instruments and books) and also for further expansion of the school’s material basis; with this money the school bought electric motors, materials for the radio club, and internal combustion engines. The pupils work not merely so as to learn how to work, but also so as to create material conditions for more complex, intellectually demanding work. Money obtained in this way has also been used to provide a fund to assist those families in material straits, money from which is distributed by a special committee made up of Komsomol members and the council of the school’s Pioneer organisation. (11, 317)

p Of course it is important to encourage readiness to carry out all sorts of work conscientiously which are essential for society. Yet this moral quality is in itself the result of education: pupils can become conscientious workers ready to carry out any necessary work only 212 after they have learnt to appreciate the need to carry out the most ordinary types of work, and that can only be achieved after lengthy, purpose-orientated educational work. (3, 329)

p As they plant out trees for a wind-break or an oak-grove and tend these for several years, or as they go about the daily task of dusting the classroom desks pupils in both cases are carrying out socially useful work which has an important role to play in moulding their characters as well. But while in the first case the pupil is taking a direct part in the creation of society’s material technical basis, in the second the work does not extend beyond “self-service”; work of the latter type cannot nurture those emotions and convictions which the former helps take root. At the same time “self-service” does have its advantages: it fosters tidiness, respect for the simple task and those people who engage in modest, inconspicuous jobs. (11, 318)

p The more opportunities there are to make use of the things created by the children, the deeper the moral impact and attraction of the work involved. A working model that can be used, once it is complete, in practical work is worked on with much more interest and eagerness than models of a purely decorative type—-This is why all pupils take such an interest in making wireless sets—-(3, 290)

p Schoolchildren do not see the completion of a model as its ultimate goal; but rather its 213 testing in practice. Children are prepared to work for a whole year for the sake of those thrilling twenty or thirty minutes and overcome all manner of difficulties. Operating a working model provides them with ultimate satisfaction. (3, 295)

p Many years ago when considering the work of pupils in planting out and tending trees we came to the conclusion that because that work lacked any set goal it came to be regarded by them either as a means of keeping them occupied or as a futile waste of effort. Children would dig holes, plant trees, water them, destroy pests and it might have appeared to the observer that they were doing very useful work. However, after all this work they would stand calmly by, while a fruit tree withered from lack of water, and sometimes they themselves would damage the trees they had planted.

p As far as the effort involved in planting trees does not present any difficulties (if you calculate all the time spent on tending an apple tree from the time of planting to the apple harvest it will work out at less than a minute a day). Serious interest in trees, and respect for the work of gardeners and foresters can only be successfully encouraged when someone has once tended a fruit tree with his own hands___ (3, 256)

p It is very important that work for pupils in their early teens made it easier for them later on to acquire new skills and work experience. 214 We do not let pupils of 15 and 16 learn to drill metal, prepare the soil for sowing wheat or learn to graft fruit trees, for these skills they should master five years earlier and the better they master them at that stage the better their all-round development will be as they enter their late teens. (11, 313)

p Thanks to the wide range of work activities that are practised in the school hobby groups our pupils, by the time they enter Class 8, have already mastered a good number of skills and know where their talents and interests lie.... On moving up from Class 8 pupils are already able to process metal with metal-working tools and on metal-working machines, they can do woodwork involving lathes and make things out of wood (such as picture frames, stools, rulers, compasses), assemble models of machines and devices using ready-made components, process metal parts for these models, make tools for working wood and metal and also assemble metal-working machine tools, assemble electrical apparatus and wireless sets, prepare the soil for sowing, sow seed, tend crops, bring in the harvest, tend livestock, drive cars and tractors, graft fruit trees, grow grapes and fruit trees. The mastering of this range of skills is of vital importance for it means that older pupils are able to master complicated skills and techniques later in a short space of time. (11, 337)

p In the village of today we no longer see the ploughman and sower of seed who were 215 familiar figures for centuries. The collective-farm workers specialising in plant-growing or livestock care above all can also expertly operate various agricultural machines. Interest in agricultural work is now impossible without the desire and ability to replace the spade and fork with machinery. All collective-farm workers have to become expert machine operators. This is the main proviso for doing away with the differences between life in town and country. For every 1,000 hectares of cultivated land on the collective farms there should be no more than ten people who know how to operate agricultural machines. Only then will it be possible to achieve a high level of productivity. Yet it will only be possible to achieve that state of affairs when everyone has been introduced to the world of technology at seven or eight, when the introduction of the achievements of science to practical everyday life becomes the distinctive characteristic of the country’s intellectual development. (11, 343)

p It is wrong that any of our pupils should be faceless, indifferent to work or unable to find anything that “sets him ticking" as the phrase goes. By no means everyone is cut out to be a man of learning, writer or actor; not everyone is destined to discover gunpowder, yet it is within everyone’s reach to become a poet or artist in his work and this is an essential condition for the individual’s all-round development. We must avoid at all costs that people simply work “any old how".

p The individual, who has no favourite occupation, will glean no joy from any cultural riches and treasures. (9, 117)

p We try to ensure that all pupils achieve considerable success in their favourite hobby or activity. This path to ultimate success usually involves long searchings; pupils try their hand at various activities, and master many skills, but if a pupil does not achieve success in one particular field that is above average for his age that means he has not yet found his real bent. Real success is not simply satisfactory, good or even excellent implementation of some assignment that is within anyone’s grasp. Every pupil can make an excellent ruler or assemble a model of a generator if he tries—although of course some will need more practice than others. But in order for a pupil to become really absorbed and carried away with some type of activity success is essential which exceeds the highest demands made on all the pupils of that particular age group. This is the success we would refer to as considerable. All pupils of Classes 6 and 7 in our school are good at grafting buds of a cultivated variety of fruit trees on to a wilding and excellent examples of such work not regarded in our school as considerable success. Yet if a pupil in Class 3 or 4 achieved real skill in this work, let alone a pupil from Class 2, then that would rank as considerable success. (11, 354)

p Considerable success involves a pupil overtaking his peers. Of course this does not mean 217 that one or two members of a collective forge ahead of all the rest in a class. Each of them later also have their favourite work activity, in which they have made appreciable if not considerable success. (11, 354)

p In education theory and practical education work there are tendencies to attribute decisive importance to the way in which productive work is organised. Often subjects that come up for discussion include: the most expedient way to group pupils together during the summer period on the basis of class units or starting out from the school collective; the nature of relations which should exist between class groups if the latter are not linked together in a single unit, etc. In such discussions the educative role of production work is made directly dependent on the answers given to these questions. The urge artificially to maintain the class collective in the context of production activities is the surest way to isolate the school from real life. Schoolchildren will not always work together with their classmates; they will be joining work teams at factories, collective and state farms, and it is for this which they should be prepared. (3, 330)

p The success of education through work is in my view achieved, when children have to be made to leave for home after work sessions. (13, 2)

The development of children’s abilities is a vital, dynamic process. In the vast majority of 218 cases the individual does not turn out as he dreamt of doing while a schoolboy. Nevertheless, precisely the attainment of considerable success constitutes the small “summit” which a child can conquer—provided he makes special effort. Once he has raised himself up that far then he realises how much and at the same time how little he has done, for after all from a small peak the great as yet inaccessible heights are to be seen far more clearly than before. (11, 355)