p The African governments invite Soviet teachers to their countries, and their number is growing with each passing year. In recent years, the Soviet teaching staff there has averaged 2,000 each year. They can be seen at universities and other higher educational establishments, secondary and technical schools, vocational training centres and Russian language courses. At some educational establishments they make up a sizable quotient or even the larger part of the body of foreign teachers. The absolute majority of Soviet teachers sent to Africa on long missions teach physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics.

p The largest group of Soviet teachers work in Algeria, where they teach some 40,000 students at more than 80 educational establishments in 26 towns. These Soviet envoys teach general educational subjects and Russian and give lectures on the history of economics, the history of MarxistLeninist economic doctrine, the constitutional law of the USSR and the socialist countries, nuclear and solid-state physics, electrical engineering, and geology.

p Close to 100 Soviet teachers are working in Zambia. They teach mainly mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology in senior secondary school classes. Only a tiny fraction of them teach in the capital, the rest being scattered all over the country—in 27 towns and villages. There are also large groups of Soviet teachers in the People’s Republic of the Congo, Mali, the Central African Republic, Chad, and many other African countries.

p A characteristic feature of the activities of the Soviet teaching staff in African educational establishments is that they assist in training national teachers. When they go back to the USSR they leave behind a trained body of local 254 teaching staff in virtually all educational establishments. Soviet teachers working in Africa take account of local conditions and try to adapt their teaching methods accordingly. They work out special equations and sums intended to arouse the students’ interest in their native land, its riches and achievements.

p Soviet teachers are guided by one of the main principles of socialist pedagogical science and practice—the polytechnisation of education. The realisation of this principle has acquired special importance today because without it it is impossible to restructure the education system to suit the requirements of socio-economic development and scientific and technological progress on the continent. The polytechnical principle and a stable link between the object of study and practice encourage African students to think harder and take a creative approach to achieving their objectives.

p Soviet teachers assist African organisations in charge of people’s education in solving a number of problems related to teaching methods. In the People’s Republic of the Congo, together with Congolese colleagues, they drew up chemistry curricula for general education colleges, compiled a general chemistry textbook for lycees and higher educational establishments (later put out in a mass edition), and also philosophy and political economy curricula for administration and trade union schools.

p In Mali, Soviet teachers have compiled new study programmes for 39 subjects. All of them were approved by the country’s Ministry of National Education.

The Algerian Government invites many Soviet teachers to participate in drafting measures to reform secondary school education and also the system of higher education. At the request of the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Soviet teachers have written several chapters of a physics textbook for Algerian lycees. Hundreds of textbooks were compiled in the course of one year by the Soviet instructors at the African Institute of Oil, Gas and Textile Industry.