European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 14, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Tenth Grade students at Moscow s Middle school 734 debate recently revised soviet history during class. Soviet school system undergoing change a by John Thor Dahlburg associated press months ago a dozen personal computers arrive Dat Moscow Middle school no. 109, but they Haven t been hooked up yet. No one knows How the principal says. In Uzbekistan in soviet Central Asia army inductees fresh out of school Are so poorly educated that they can t understand simple orders in russian and even need to be taught How to Brush their Teeth. Two hours a week a class of 14-year old Moscow boys dons Blue smocks and grinds bolts on aging Metal lathes. Their female classmates sew dresses using treadle machines that would have been familiar to their great grandmothers. With surprising suddenness and unanimity reminiscent of the panic in the United states after the first sputnik launch in 1957, soviets have discovered that their schools now dispense largely outdated and irrelevant learning and that their country is falling behind. I m ashamed to say it but my grandchildren study More or less from the textbooks i used As a child before the War one Man wrote earlier this year in the communist party daily pravda. Ivan May know How to read but he does t know How to program a computer says a Moscow based Western Diplomat who specializes in soviet education but asked not to be identified by name. The catalyst for the change is Mikhail s. Gorbachev s ambitious drive to rebuild society and modernize and streamline the Economy to enable his nation to compete with the developed West. For Gorbachev the soviet school is both a problem and a solution. We pin Hopes for the future largely on the work of our school which is Only natural with its own restructuring its own teaching talents and the creative pursuits of the soviet teacher Gorbachev told a meeting of party leaders who met this year to consider school reforms. Authorities Are re examining How the rigidly centralized curriculum prepares the country s 57 million school pupils and University students for life. They Are even questioning whether Rote learning Long the mainstay of soviet education should not yield at least in part to free debate. But officials say changing the system won t affect the school s role in bringing up children with socialist values. How they will reconcile that task with the promotion of a Freer learning environment is still an open question. In january 1984, party officials announced the country s schools were being revamped to stress Trade skills. Then education minister Mikhail a. Prokofiev said the objective was to double enrolment in technical institutes. Those goals were opposed by Many parents who wanted their children to learn More than just a Trade. That objective has now been turned on its head and a sense of urgency imparted by the feeling that the soviet Union is slipping further behind the West technologically intellectually and culturally. Soviet achievements in space theoretical science and High tech armaments Are Well known and the result of a network of state institutes think tanks and military Industrial agencies that enlist Many of the country s Best brains. But for the vast majority of soviets education has meant Little More than vocational training. The main task of the changes undertaken is to make school More humanitarian to give up the technocratic View that Only technical upbringing is necessary Eduard d. In prov of the soviet Academy of pedagogical sciences said recently. Educators Are debating whether a 10 year general education course should be mandatory for All children or whether most youngsters should continue to be shunted into Trade or vocational institutes after eight years of schooling. More alarming for soviets is the realization that even the professional training Given their children like the courses in Bolt grinding dispensed to some Moscow teens May Bear no relation to Job demands of the Post Industrial age. Soviet schools now turn out 2.5 million skilled workers annually but officials say the instruction they receive often lags behind innovations at the workplace. This Means that the technological complexity of operations grows at a much faster Pace than the level of workers skills Yegor k. Migachev the no. 2 Kremlin Leader told the party meeting on education in february. The Inadequacy of Job training extends to the most Complex professions. Yevgeny i. Chazov minister of health has told one american researcher that 40 percent of soviet medical school graduates do not know How to read a cardio ram. The scale Ohhet Kremlin s ambitions and the problems it must surmount Are evident in computer science and information processing a Field once scorned As a Bourgeois pseudo science but now seen As vital to technological Progress. By Kremlin decree 98 percent of the country s general education courses teach children about computers. But at last count Only 1.5 percent had the machines. In february school no. 109 in Southwest Moscow received 12 soviet made personal computers but some of the squat Black machines have sat on a table in Yakov z. Voronov s classroom for More than three months because no one has been found to install them. Despite the Long wait the math teacher is enthusiastic. Once the kids do their lessons with the computers the computer will give them their Grade Voronov says. They la love  that notion that learning should be fun is one Western educators find conspicuously absent from the soviet system whose textbooks Are crammed with Gray Type and devoid of Bright illustrations and graphics. A far More prevalent attitude toward learning is expressed by the russian Maxim repetition is the Mother of  for decades memorization has been at the Core of soviet education. They know lots of facts said Paul Kalkstein an English teacher at Phillips Academy in Andover mass., who taught 17-year-old soviet Exchange students last year. But they Are expected to be passive in class until their turn comes to read something aloud and that s not very  by age 15, students in Moscow physics teacher Gavril a. Braziler s class Are plotting the movements of electrons and protons through magnetic and electric Fields. That does t mean they understand what they Are doing. They Don t know what elementary particles Are. But they learn How to solve the problems Braziler says. However Many soviet educators say that the ability to regurgitate answers is no longer enough to meet the confusing demands of a changing world. I Don t want them to say something or believe something just because it s me who says it says Yevgeny a. Hamburg principal of school 109. Hamburg concedes that for a mass of teachers it s hard to get used to students not All being in  the 3-million-Strong corps of soviet teachers and professors ritually lauded but poorly paid has come in for special attention As Well As criticism under the reforms. To draw More qualified people to the profession wages have been raised. A beginning teacher once paid about $150 a month now earns about $230. That s still Well below the average factory worker s wage of $330. A teachers Congress has been called to set tougher standards for the profession. The party s demand for educational Reform had its first institutional effect in March when the Trio of ministries overseeing soviet schools was replaced by a single state committee on education. In May the head of the committee Gennady a. Yagodina cancelled final exams for 10th-graders in history because their textbooks had been outdated by Media revelations about the crimes of Josef v. Stalin and the corrupt reign of Leonid i. Brezhnev. A new generation of textbooks More in tune with the spirit of glasnost or openness is now in the works. The Kremlin also recognizes the need to invest More in schools themselves 40 percent of which now Lack Basic plumbing. Migachev said schools for 28 million pupils will be built by 2000, and that capital expenditures in education will increase drastically. Sunday August 14, 1988 the stars and stripes Page 17