p The humanities and knowledge of the same should be regarded not merely as a specific part of the school programme and the store of knowledge essential for everyone, but also as an important factor promoting the individual’s overall development and facilitating the acquisition of knowledge of Nature and pupil’s understanding of the processes involved in their own intellectual work, a factor that exerts a distinct influence on the individual. In this connection it would seem quite impermissible to neglect such subjects as logic and psychology, as is the practice at present. (6, 177)

p It is no exaggeration to say that youth is an age of criticism. The criticism encountered among boys and girls in their late teens is characterised by its active and uncompromising nature.... The harshest criticism of all is meted out to such weaknesses as lack of principle, irresolute convictions, kowtowing, a loss of human dignity, individualism, efforts on the 338 part of individuals to set themselves up against the collective, laziness, cowardice, bragging, conceit, and obtrusiveness. (6, 193)

p Like children in their early teens children approaching school-leaving age have their distinct moral ideal that is embodied in living models, in real people. While for the first group this ideal may be based on the moral qualities of one concrete individual, senior pupils tend to create in their imagination an ideal hero who as it were unites within himself all the moral qualities they admire. They do not endow him with concrete characteristics: their mental image consists above all in moral qualities, feelings and ideas, it is an ideal picture of what a person should be. ...

p The ideal hero envisaged by boys and girls of this age group is characterised first and foremost by moral purity. (6, 182-83)

p People who value truth above all else provide models which young people should emulate. It is no coincidence that children in their late teens regard acceptance of false ideas as renegade apostasy: this moral approach to intellectual integrity is explained by the positive influence of the moral ideal. (6, 185)

p For our pupils in their late teens this moral ideal is embodied in the Communist.. .. The attributes of the Communist are the criteria by which they judge their own moral fibre. (6, 185)

p Among the senses, through which senior pupils deliberately test and strengthen their conscience, their sense of right is that which runs deepest. Awareness of this feeling for what is right and resolute efforts to pay no heed to anything else except the voice of their own conscience are not only recognised as morally upright but also provide a source of joy. My experience of the behaviour of senior pupils has confirmed that the knowledge they are right and resolute rejection of all attempts to involve them in moral compromise, and finally their moral victory in this situation, all serve to give them a sense of moral satisfaction and strengthen their sense of their own dignity. (6, 201)

p It is wrong to persuade senior pupils to go against the promptings of their sense of reason, to demand that they acknowledge their guilt where they see none, or to advise them to condemn what they do not see as wrong, or to recommend to them actions which they inwardly reject. Pupils should not only carry their consciences unsallied through their teens, but also realise that they are capable of standing firm in the struggle to defend moral purity and noble communist ideas. (6, 202)

p The pure and ennobling quality of young love depends, of course, on kind words, guidance and wise advice imparted from outside during formative years, but still more so on the inner life of a young person, his intellectual 340 interests, his needs and moral requirements and on how deeply within the school collective the most important moral principle of our society, namely the idea that the most precious thing in life is Man himself, has taken root. (12, 224)

p If a teacher is anxious for a pupil to understand and sense the beauty of ennobling moral and political ideas (such as loyal devotion to his Homeland, his patriotic and social duties and the struggle for communism) then it is vital to this end to help him understand and cherish the beauty of deep personal feelings. If these are not pure, purity of civic feeling is unthinkable. (12, 225)

p Makarenko in a discussion with fellow- teachers once remarked that teachers at all times and among all peoples have always hated love. In that jocular comment there is a grain of truth: some teachers do not appreciate that senior pupils are already men and women and that sexual attraction is a natural part of their lives. It also tends to be overlooked that the sexual attractions experienced by young people in their teens are coloured by quite different emotions from those which characterise sexual attraction between adults. In an atmosphere of a rich and full intellectual and emotional life the intimate essence of the relationships between these boys and girls is bound up with idealised, pure and noble impulses.... The objective basis of their mutual attraction is sexual instinct, yet these boys and girls would 341 be deeply hurt if they were openly told about it. (12, 233)

p Pupils in their early teens react particularly violently to what they see as interference on the part of adults in the inviolate world of feelings. The art of respecting and understanding young love—that self-centred world inhabited by two people—is a very important condition for achieving harmonious contact between the minds and feelings of adult teachers and teenage pupils. (12, 223)

p In my view it is essential to put a stop to tactless, unnecessary conversations about love between pupils that so often go on at school. There should be nothing said about who has fallen in love with whom... . Love should always remain throughout life something the individual holds sacred and sees as intimately precious. (12, 223)

p The task of the school should be to protect children in face of all that is filthy and corrupt in the world of emotions and to counter immoral influences. There are no special educational techniques for nurturing a deeply moral view of love. The latter depends on whether or not and in how far moral convictions take root which are founded in communist morality, in the whole activity of the collective. (6, 167)

p It is strange and incomprehensible why during the formative years at school the individual is not provided with any knowledge about 342 himself, about man and in particular those specific characteristics which set him apart from the animal world: knowledge of the human mind, the thought process and consciousness, the emotional, aesthetic, volitional and creative spheres of our mental life. The fact that the individual knows virtually nothing about himself often leads to disaster, for which society has to pay a heavy price. Proper physical, moral, and aesthetic make-up is unthinkable without a grounding in the sphere of psychology. I always tried to give my pupils in their early teens elementary essential knowledge of what is specific to man’s nature and impart to them the ability to make use of that knowledge in life, at work and in their relationships with other people. (12, 108)

p Knowledge of the culture of the mind is not just potted psychology. I would refer to it rather as knowledge of the basic principles of selfknowledge and maturity, of the individual’s emotional life. (12, 108)

p I was once asked by a colleague at school when and where discussion of the human mind should be conducted for there was no room for it in the time-table.... I would discuss such questions outside school hours while out walking with the children or while sitting in the garden during quiet evenings, or even in classrooms after lessons when pupils in their early teens would come and beg me to tell them something interesting and gather together specially 343 for that purpose. Nothing in this world is more interesting than man himself. (12, 112)

The complex process involved in the formation of moral convictions for young people finds expression in their growing need for selfknowledge. . . . The school’s task in relation to senior pupils coming to grips with this problem is not simply to educate but also to involve them in the process of self-education, and far more so than is necessary in the case with pupils only in their early teens. (6, 188)