МОДЕЛИРОВАНИЕ ЖИЗНИ В РОССИЙСКИХ ШКОЛЬНЫХ ЗАДАЧНИКАХ 1920-1930-ЫХ ГГ.

Научная статья
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18454/RULB.5.06
Выпуск: № 1 (5), 2016
PDF

Аннотация

В современной социологии понятие «срытый смысл» относится к идеям, которые ученикам пытаются навязать косвенным путем. Авторы Советских школьных учебников никогда не пытались скрыть их идеологической составляющей, даже в течение достаточно либеральных 1920-ых гг. Напротив, идеология в них демонстрировалась осознанно и открыто. Математика всегда считалась наукой, наиболее удаленной от политики, но даже ее использовали в сталинские времена в пропагандистских образовательных целях. Превращение школ из достаточно свободных в абсолютно тоталитарные учреждения произошло в течение нескольких лет, а основные принципы советской педагогической науки сильно трансформировались в течение 1920-1930-ых гг. В авторских учебниках по математике это особенно заметно. В учебниках того периода доминирует своего рода модель соцреализма, и здесь важно отметить, что произошло это задолго до того, как он стал главным методом Советской литературы в широком смысле. Советская рутина начала 1920-ых гг. отображена в этих учебниках достаточно детально. Среди главных тем: голод, болезни, бедность, а также природные и социальные катаклизмы. В учебниках арифметики появляется специфическая Советская модель мира. В педагогике того времени главным акцентом становится назидание, а школьная арифметика все чаще обращается к аспектам каждодневной жизни. Конфликт между реальностью и идеологией решается в пользу последней. В этом смысле, математику можно считать одним из главных факторов коммунистического воспитания.

Introduction

Those who compiled the first Soviet textbooks would criticize their prerevolutionary colleagues, first of all, for being ‘out of touch’ with reality; they themselves were, by contrast, ready to turn a textbook into a newspaper or even a political leaflet, striving to be modern. The Politics Department of the Privolzhsky Military District, for example, issued A New Arithmetical Book of Problems in 1922 in consideration of the fact that “formerly, the contents of tasks and arithmetical exercises were too far from the life of pupils, [where] most of them felt artificial and failed to capture student interest, that was the reason why it [the Politics Department] compiled it < the book of problems> in the way to be more suitable for the interests of modern life” (A New Arithmetical Book of Problems Vol. I, 1922, p. 1). Pupils themselves should have participated in realizing this program. They were offered to compile their own task “using the materials of newspapers of the last month”[11, Vol. I, p. 5].

Examples

Instead of an abstract “someone” used in the texts of those tasks to be found in prerevolutionary textbooks such as A New Arithmetical Book of Problems, there appeared quite modern characters – such as a Red army soldier, a speculator, a security officer (a chekist) – while the events are strictly localized, as the following examples bear out: 

 In December of  1921, 1 gram of  sugar cost 31/2 thousand rubles in Samara, if counted in old monetary system. How much should you pay for a kilo of sugar in 1922?

One of the districts of the Tula Governorate had sent to the state budget 9 train cars of wheat by the 1st of September, 1921 as a foodstuff tax though it should have sent 12 train cars. What part of its task did the district fulfill?

The market price of rye bread in Moscow on the 1st of January 1921 was 29/10 thousand rubles, and in Samara, it cost 31/2 thousand rubles for a pound. By how many times is bread more expensive in Samara than it is in Moscow?

[11, Vol. I, p. 10; Vol. II, p. 15].

Such scrupulousness was typical for the textbooks of the first half of the 1920s. The same meticulousness can be found in Glazenap, who included the following problem: “a metric centner of cereal flour cost 25,50 rubles at the Moscow commodity exchange on the 19 of June in 1924. While a metric centner of buckwheat flour cost 10,75 rubles. How much more expensive is cereal flour than buckwheat flour?” [10, p. 75].

The Soviet way of life of the beginning of the 1920s is presented in this way in textbooks in quite a realistic manner. The dominant topics include hunger, diseases, poverty, as well as natural and social disasters such as fighting with the enemies of the Revolution. Some further examples include:

To help to people starving in Povolzhye, the cadets from Petrograd sent 17 pounds of bread from their ration and 9 pounds from the bread they were to get in compensation for working on Saturday on their day off [ which they called the subbotnik]. How much bread did the cadets sacrifice in total?

The death rate from cholera in Samara was 65% in 1921. [The task was to explain the sense of this number].

[11, Vol. I, p. 3; Vol. II, p.  9].

30 kopecks were given to 10 beggars in equal parts. How much money did each of the beggars get?

30 kopecks were given to beggars such that each of them received 10 kopecks. How many beggars received money?

[7, p. 11].

Perhaps because the new regime had no achievements of which it might be proud, it introduced comparisons with western countries or even, in contrast, to Russia’s prerevolutionary period:

In the United States, the average harvest of wheat from a dessiatina (2¾ acres) is 90 pounds and we have 45 pounds. How much is the harvest of bread in the United States  more than ours?

In 1913 in Russia, we used 30 million pounds of paper and in 1920 we used 10 million pounds. How much cheaper was it in 1920?

A Russian eats on average 1,25 pounds of meat a year. A German eats  11/2  pounds. An American eats 3,5 pounds. How much and how many times less meat does a Russian eat than a German and an American?

[11, Vol. I, pp. 4, 8 ; Vol. II, p.  26].

The indications of the advantages of a prerevolutionary life would become impossible all too soon, but the issue of the USSR lagging behind the West finds expression regularly in the textbooks of 1920s, in examples such as the following:

An average weight of a peasant’s cow in Soviet Russia is 300 kilos. Some cows abroad weight up to 700 kilos. The yield of milk of a peasant cow is also quite low and it seldom is higher than 100 buckets a year. Some cows abroad give three times more milk.

Peasants think a horse to be tall if its height exceeds 155 centimeters; it is quite contrary abroad – a horse is considered to be short if its height is less than 155 centimeters.

There is some data about poultry in the Russian peasant household. A hen lays on average 80 eggs a year. […] foreign thoroughbred hens lay up to 260 eggs a year. How many more eggs a year will 5 such foreign hens lay than 5 Russian hens?

[9, pp. 70, 74, 97–98].

You can find an admiration of American technologies on pages of the Soviet textbooks, and it is not surprising, because it was encouraged by Stalin himself. His formula of “a combination of the Russian revolutionary scope with the American business character” is actively propagandised, for example, by the authors of a manual on the Russian language [1, pp. 41, 120]. In a workbook on Mathematics, as it should be, there are only facts and figures: “In 1925 in the United States, there were 191/2 million of automobiles, which is 87,2% of the total number to be found worldwide. How many automobiles were there in all the other countries of the world excluding the USA?” [3, p. 148].

The school of the 1920s is relatively free for a while, where foregone conclusions were not imposed on pupils, and they are allowed to think by themselves and have their own point of view.  For one of the problems on subtractions of decimal fractions, D.L. Volkovsky used the research of scientists who showed that women in wealthy families are taller than those in poor families. At the age of 17, a girl from a wealthy estate was 156,6 centimeters tall, from a middle class income estate was 153,8 centimeters tall, and from a poor family was 150,4 centimeters tall. “Using this data you are to make your own problems” the author offers, “solve them and make your own conclusions” (Volkovsky, 1926, p. 34). It is quite easy to suppose that schoolchildren are thereby pushed to make a conclusion about social injustice of the former world order. But the following statistical table changes the direction of thoughts of schoolchildren.

Volkovsky gives the data on the height of men and women in Moscow and in the governorate. It was found that Muscovites far overtake their peers from the provinces. The height of a 17 year-old Muscovite girl is 154,3 centimeters, and that of a girl from the governorate is 152,2 centimeters. The task is the same: “Compare the height of teenagers from Moscow with that of teenagers from the governorate. On the table make your own problems, solve them and make your own conclusions” [8, p. 34]. It is more difficult to forecast the conclusions of the third year schoolchildren here. At any case an perpetual conflict of the capital and province does not refer to class fighting. 

The way in which quite liberal schools became totalitarian took just a few years. Basic principles of Soviet pedagogical science, leading from the 1920s into the 1930s, were transformed quite quickly. In manuals on Mathematics, the change of authorial opinion is especially obvious when comparing problems on the same topic.

Up to the beginning of the 1930s, simple calculations of the amount of sweets, nuts and apples were often changed in textbooks into the calculations of the cost of wine and vodka. In 1923, a second-year schoolchild should have solved, in particular, such a problem: “A bottle of wine costs 3 rubles 15 kopecks. How much do 6 bottles of such wine cost?” [7, p. 27]. No moral inferences are made beyond the information provided to do the calculation. The same six bottles of wine are found in a textbook of 1931, however, compiled for the first-year schoolchildren, which reads: “a bottle of wine costs 3 rubles. How much will you spend for 6 bottles of vodka?” [6, p. 62]. Moral edification finds introduction here in the unit called ‘Traditional Life’, where the problem is taken from within a text focused on the celebration of Easter. While explicating this religious holiday, the co-authors make a demagogical substitution. They in fact absolutely ignore the religious part of the holiday, which is illustrated as an ordinary feast lasting for three days, and instead relate the following: “several fights happened and 12 people were injured in them. Seven of them got slightly injured, and the rest were severely injured and taken to hospital. How many people were taken to hospital?” [6, p. 62]. “Life Mathematics” by N. Belyakova, also published in 1931, is even more biased. One of the paragraphs here has the sloganary title: “For the fighting against the Easter drug”. The ‘Easter drug’ here is certainly not the exotic opiate mentioned in Marx’s popular definition of religion, but a reference to the more traditional vodka. With a complete disregard for religion and taking issue with drinking, Belyakov finds a what is to him a satisfactory substitute: “A bottle of vodka costs […] but ‘The Peasant Newspaper’ costs 2 kopecks for an issue. How many issues of the newspaper can you buy instead of a bottle of vodka?” [2, p. 68]. The cost of vodka here is not even given in the problem, where it is assumed that a pupil himself should insert it, and to do it he should know the prices for alcohol drinks quite well. A moralistic pathetic of a compiler poorly matches with this.

A fifth-year schoolchild of any epoch outside that of Stalin’s would most likely be shocked by the statement of the following problem: “it is considered that the amount of pure alcohol that kills a living being is in proportion to his weight. For a person who weights 65 kilograms, a lethal dose is 520 cubic centimetres. Calculate out a lethal dose for your own weight” [3, p. 207]. The aim of a compiler ought to have been to prove the harm of drinking to a child, where in fact he achieves the contrary effect when recommending each child to define a dose of alcohol suitable for his own demise. The question would certainly be thrown into stark relief were this to end up provoking suicide.

A wicked trick can be played on a teacher by objective scientific accuracy, especially when combined with uncontrollable childish curiosity. The information given in the problems № 790 and № 797 in The Work  Book on Mathematics (1926), is borrowed from the Soviet and prerevolutionary statistics as follows:

On average, 4678 people annually die from drinking in the USSR, 26,3% of 2000 suicides registered every year are those of drunk people, while 60% of 2840 murders are committed by drunkards. How many people annually die from vodka?

According to the latest census in 1870–1887, 84217 people died from drinking in Russia, 7431 of which are women. Calculate the percentage of men and women who died (Berg, 1930, p. 207).

Though the problems are printed next to each other, the authors tried to escape a direct correlation. However, it is not difficult – even for a pupil of primary school age – to calculate that the average annual number of people who die from drinking in Russia in 1870–80s is 4678 people, and that the number stays the same for the USSR. Such stability of Russian life across these eras  is a great shock, and may easily upset anyone, even though it was not the aim of the teachers who provided students with this material.

In such a way, good arithmetical skills can lead to undesirable consequences. Perhaps it is even better for pupils not to count at lessons? It is , but this variant was also tested: “The expenses of one religious family during a church festival were as follows: they paid 1 ruble to the priest; 65 kopecks to the church for candles, communion bread and sundry; 2 rubles and 96 kopecks for vodka; and 2 rubles 35 kopecks for snacks. Is the money spent enough to buy skates or skis or chessboards?” (Berg, 1930, p. 206). One can certainly assume a positive answer to this question, and respond that yes, it will be enough to buy skates and skis and chess, too. However, the lack of prices in the problem shows that a pupil is expected not to formulate the correct calculations, but indeed, the correct ideology. A dangerous ambiguity is not passed over. Six rubles and 96 kopecks was quite enough to buy a chess set at the time, but why not dream of something more qualitative and expensive and  then the whole of antireligious propaganda will be in vain. 

It seems that the safest way to suppress arbitrary connotations was chosen by Belyakov. The collection of problems from the unit “Working Together for the Common Cause” in his Live Mathematics (1931), was devoted to comparing the harvest of a collective farm to that of separate households. The title of the unit itself makes it clear that the collective farmers won out against the separate households, even before the competition got started. But to illustrate this, it is necessary to illustrate  the slogan with a certain material. The first step is to collect the facts as follows: “Find out what the approximate harvest is of a peasant from a separate from kolkhoz household. This data you can get from the local Soviet Department or from your teacher”. [2, p. 10]. It appears out of the question to get this information straight from a peasant! As far as alternative sources of information were limited there were no any grounds to doubt the usefulness of the collectivisation. But as if that is not enough, there is an additional argument being introduced. As an example, they give another calculation of the harvest as if it was made in some other school. It shows that the harvest of buckwheat on a collective farm to have been 8 centners higher than the harvest in separate household, where the harvest of wheat was 4 centners higher and that of oats was 5 centners higher. The question asked for teachers further on is then of certain interest: “Check up if pupils filled in the last column correctly” [2, p. 11]. The last column of the table is called “Who has more”, and the options are given thus: “In a collective farm”; “In a collective farm”; “In a collective farm”. All of these naturally leads to this triple “hurrah” to the kolkhoz system. The main error of Belyakov was that he could not finally overcome the main idea of the 1920s,. In the new decade of the 1930s, there was no need for any “Live Mathematics” as it was called in the title of the textbook. Reality is unpredictable but no one takes it into account. What if some wealthy private householder would grow a harvest, for example, which would be higher than on a collective farm? To break with all references to reality was the only way for a teacher to be guaranteed safety from confusing questions.

School arithmetic of the 1930s is so far from daily life, that even the notorious ‘someone’ from prerevolutionary problems now seemed to be an example of naturalism.

In textbooks of this period, a kind of analogue of the social realism won out and this had happened even before it became the main method of the Soviet literature. Problem № 608 from The Activity Book on Mathematics is fairly demonstrative: “By the end of the five-year plan (1932–33) the length of the railway line should become 20% longer and be 92 000 km long; freight turnover will rise by 87% and reach 282 million tons per kilometre. Count the length of the line and its freight turnover at the beginning of the five-year plan (1927–28)” [3, p. 149]. A pupil is expected to count how it was yesterday, based on the hypothetical data of a possible tomorrow. Looking from the future to the past in such a way, they ignored the present as it was taken for granted. The conflict between the way things are in reality and the way they should be, is won not by the reality.

Results

In modern social science, the notion of the “a hidden curriculum” refers to a set of beliefs imposed on pupils in an indirect way. The authors of the Soviet school textbooks never tried to hide an ideological component, even during the relatively liberal 1920s. On the contrary, ideology was deliberately demonstrated. If some conservative pedagogues could not change their opinions, in time it was deemed necessary for them to be assigned an ideologically competent consultant to suit the requirements of the moment. Professor Glazenap, in the introduction to his Book of Problems on Basic Mathematics (1924), was frank enough to confess that “A.T. Shenkman helped me to compile the problems on social topics and to review the whole of the book” (Glazenap, 1924, p. 4). In the 1930s, this phenomenon  was even more outspoken, where for example it was written for the second-year schoolchildren the very first page of the textbook “Mathematics at School”, that “while compiling books, authors took into consideration the role of mathematics at school as one of the factors of Communist education” [12, p. 3].

Discussion

School textbooks are a significant part of the every day life of modern society. They in one way or another reflect author outlooks, the every day life of society, the policy of a state, and other such ideological constructs. The question of what a school textbook should be, to what degree it should reflect the realities of everyday life, and whether or not there should be any attempt to edify remain immediate for any community and state [5]. Now and then we encounter lively discussions about the quality of the material presented in modern textbooks and even their ideological bent [4], despite the technical and social developments of ‘the modern age’ of today. 

Список литературы

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