Soviet Education: Myth and Fact

A timely warning of the danger to our spiritual values in uncritical acceptance of the myth of Soviet superiority in education

It is a wholesome thing that Americans, stung in their pride by the Sputniks, are taking a close and worried look at their educational theories. But it is unfortunate, indeed tragic, that the reappraisal should be coupled with uncritical eulogy of rock-ribbed totalitarian education in Communist Russia. In our mood of self-denigration, we tend to credit the Soviets with pedagogical wonders surpassing the Kremlin’s own claims. We accept Soviet statistics at face value. We draw the picture without perspective and outside the frame of reality in a brutal police-state.