Diversification in Russian Education

Stephen T. Kerr

College of Education

University of Washington

A few years ago, a chapter with a title such as this would have been recognized instantly as an oxymoron by those interested in the fate of schools, students, and education in what was then the USSR. If there was one thing that the highly centralized system of that country prized, it was uniformity--uniformity in textbooks, teaching practices, syllabi, methods of preparing teachers, ways of assessing students, and patterns of school organization. Outcomes, too, were to be uniform--so many students prepared for roles in industry, so many for manual labor on farms, and a few to move on to universities and other specialized careers. While there was in fact considerable diversity within the system, most of it was not of the sort that Soviet educational planners wanted to feature. There were, for example, special schools that catered exclusively to the elite, and segregated schools for the handicapped and retarded that kept them effectively out of public view; there were also huge, but largely unacknowledged, differences between rural and urban schools. The projected and desired image was one of a system in which minimal, planned diversity contributed to the overall purpose of the Soviet state in creating an "all-around, harmoniously developed personality."

The advent of Mikhail Gorbachev, the promulgation of perestroika and its associated reforms, and the eventual break-up of Communist power brought a dizzying series of changes in this tightly controlled educational world. For our purposes here, we can think of these developments as divided roughly into three periods: the first reform efforts generally followed the old Soviet model of centrally dictated changes required of all schools and teachers, but at the same time allowed more experimentation around the fringes than had been permitted previously; next, as the era of perestroika continued, old centers of power and influence began to decay, and new ones arose--sometimes briefly--to take their place. Finally, before and after the collapse of the USSR at the end of 1991, changes of a more far-reaching nature began to be proposed for the system of schools in Russia. The first of these phases has been adequately discussed elsewhere, so we will not dwell on it extensively here. The second phase has also been described, although less thoroughly, and so some aspects of it warrant our attention here. The final stage is unfolding as this book is in preparation, so we can provide only outlines of what the future may bring. In each of these periods, diversification was encouraged differently, took place to different degrees, and had different impacts. The conclusion will seek to draw together these threads, and suggest what future may await Russian education as a result.

Background: The Last Soviet Reforms

In 1985, Soviet schools made up a large and inert institution. While many recognized that there was a need for change, and while there had been a number of reforms promulgated over the preceding years to encourage this system to function more efficiently for the economy and social order, few substantive changes had taken place over the previous two decades in the ways that teachers taught or students learned. Much of the discussion about educational change in the late Soviet period before perestroika (1975-85) revolved around an issue central to the economic health of the socialist state: how could students be steered into manual jobs at a time when population growth in European Russia was static, inefficient Soviet factories needed more laborers, and higher education was increasingly available? In the context set by this critical issue, matters of pedagogy, of the psychological nurture of students, all took second place; the question of changing the underlying assumptions on which the system of schooling rested was still not raised at all in official forums.

Then came glasnost and perestroika. These changes brought a new environment for discussion of educational issues that was at once troubling and exhilarating for those who worked within the Soviet system of schooling. Some changes instituted after 1985 were simply more thoroughgoing instances of shifts that had already been proposed or tried before. But others were significantly new, representing sharp breaks with earlier practice and structure. In the former category were the attempts to revivify the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, to restructure the series of government ministries and committees that oversee the educational system, and to restructure the curriculum. On a more fundamental level, there was now the possibility for alternative voices to be raised and for independent groups of various kinds to emerge; these new possibilities did not come to fruition immediately. Educators, perhaps even more than most groups in Soviet society, had been selected and trained to be loyal servants of the state, and so invitations to partake of newly available freedoms were not quickly or eagerly accepted.

The chronicle of change that took place in Soviet education after 1985 is a relatively long one, and parts of it have been documented elsewhere (Dunstan, 1987; Balzer, 1985; Kerr, 1989, 1990, 1992; Szekely, 1986). In brief, the attempts of the education bureaucracy to improve the efficiency of the system through a set of reforms in 1984-85 (in general education) and 1986-87 (in higher education) provided only partial improvements. A new grade level was added to the general school, providing 11 years of education for a secondary school graduate instead of 10. Schools were charged to develop relationships with factories, farms, and other enterprises that would both introduce students more directly to the world of work, and also hopefully overcome the notorious inefficiency of the educational system in preparing and placing its graduates by providing direct transition to employment following graduation. A new subject, fundamentals of computer science, was also added (principally in the hope of giving students some inkling of what might become in the USSR if Soviet industry ever began to use enough of work the machines to make a difference). In higher education, the economic rationale was also predominant: institutions of higher education (vuzy) were to work jointly with factories in preparing specialists, and faculty were to take more time to actually work in industry, and therefore presumably do a better job of instructing their students with current procedures and needs in mind. Rectors and administrators, as well as faculty, gained some new rights to determine curriculum and procedures for evaluating faculty at the local level. (Dobson, 1987; Dunstan, 1992; Kerr, 1988, 1992).

The official structures changed slowly. In 1989, the set of ministries and committees that had formerly guided all aspects of the educational system was reorganized and replaced with a single State Committee on Public Education. While few substantive alterations took place in the period immediately following this shift, there were a number of interesting events connected with it, including a National Congress of Education Workers in December of 1988 which gave some hint of the changes to come. Genadyi Iagodin, the Chairman of the new committee, was a typical Gorbachev-era figure--too radical in his vision of the future for many moderates and conservatives, too slow-moving and unsupportive of serious change for the radical reformers.

One bastion of conservatism that had a continued impact on the entire Soviet educational establishment was the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (APN). Through its research and development activities, which included such things as developing all texts and supplemental materials used in the school system, the Academy exercised a nearly-invisible but profound influence overall aspects of the educational system. Since the Academy, the Ministries, the Party, and the trade union controlled all the journals through which teachers might express themselves, there was little opportunity for truly independent thought to emerge from among the normally passive ranks of the nearly 2 million teachers who worked in the nation's schools. Although a committee was established in the summer of 1988 to consider what changes might be made in the Academy, and a new process for selecting members was proposed and adopted, little seemed to change. The names of those proposed as candidate or full members during 1989 included a few well-known and respected pedagogues, but many more provincial hacks and unproductive scholars. Indeed, some of the best-known figures of the nascent educational reform movement were either conspicuous in their absence, or were voted down in the balloting in favor of lesser-known figures. (Some measure of the persistence of the pedagogical elite may be seen in the fact that, in 1989, 375 names were proposed for candidate or full membership in the APN, and 1990 saw 303 similarly proposed. The two lists overlapped on 173 names.)

Curricular changes also came slowly or not at all. The much-discussed addition of computer science to the curriculum in 1985 was purportedly an attempt by Gorbachev himself to show "there is something new in education," but the move backfired among educators when providing the needed hardware and software proved an impossible task for the hard-pressed Soviet computer industry (Kerr, 1991). Arranging the mandated experiences with industry became increasingly difficult as firms struggled to support themselves under the new "self-financing" economic conditions imposed by the central government. Factories, which had formerly regarded the training and orientation of young workers as an unproductive but unavoidable and not especially costly part of their mission, now had good financial reason not to cooperate. The addition of the extra grade level was accomplished slowly, and their was much consternation about the inability of six-year-olds to sit quietly in the prescribed Soviet fashion through a long day of classes.

Signs of Diversity, 1987-91: The Movement and Its Aftermath

The most interesting indicator of change on the Soviet educational scene in the post-1985 era was the rise of diversity outside of the official governmental structure. Included in the events referenced here were such phenomena as the appearance of a national network of "Eureka" clubs for discussion and modeling of alternative pedagogical styles and theories from about 1986, an independent Creative Teachers Union during 1988, and the attention increasingly focused on a group of about a dozen so-called "innovators" in education. If there is a single person to be credited with the early and forceful emergence of this movement, it is Vladimir Fedorovich Matveev, editor of Uchitel'skaia gazeta (Teachers Gazette) from 1984 until early 1989. Matveev, who died in October, 1989, must surely rank as one of the unsung heroes of perestroika, at least for educators, and probably for the whole of Soviet society. His uncompromising integrity in the face of corruption and muddle-headed bureaucracy would have made him an outstanding figure in any society; that he managed to do what he did in the early-Gorbachev Soviet context is indeed almost unimaginable. That he eventually suffered for what he did, even in the heady days of 1988-89, provides an indicator of what must still lurk in the backs of the minds of many Soviet citizens bent on challenging the institutions of their society to change.

Matveev started out as a journalist, specializing on children's and educational issues. He worked first for Komsomol'skaia Pravda, then for Murzilka, a children's magazine that might well have remained a backwater were it not for Matveev's insistence on finding excellent authors who would write for children. On coming to Uchitel'skaia in 1984, he was in his early fifties and had little direct experience in education. He did, however, immediately identify and encourage a remarkable team of writers and teachers to join him on the journal. Quickly identified as "Matveev's team," they began to produce a remarkable series of articles, features, and serial publications that focused public attention on the problems of education in new ways. School directors who ventured to try something new suddenly found themselves in the spotlight rather than cut off from public attention. Teachers with talent or a different way of working with children found their ideas and approaches welcomed. Those who thought that parents had been too long ignored by the system found themselves with a platform from which to express their views.

At a series of conferences of the "teacher-innovators" starting in 1985, Matveev encouraged and publicized the very different ways of working that these educators had developed, and soon their appeared (again, with his firm support and expert coaching) a network of clubs, most under the name "Eureka," to discuss, extend, and test the ideas the innovators had developed. By the summer of 1988, these clubs had formed themselves into the "Creative Union of Teachers," a group independent of the official educators' trade union and committed to diversity and the exploration of alternatives. Several open conferences for the presentation of alternative models were held during 1987 and 1988, leading to a final round of demonstrations for six "featured" models. Aleksandr Adamskii, a physics teacher from Moscow, Simon Soloveichik, a correspondent and writer whose views encouraged parental involvement and increased care for children, and Oleg Gazman, a follower of Sukhomlinskii and specialist in "upbringing" work, were all key figures in the movement at this stage.

The Union held its first "Congress" in the spring of 1989, and accounts suggested it was a lively and well-attended affair. After this event, however, it slipped into a long period of anonymity. Several factors probably account for this. First, there was the continuing hostility to the movement on the part of the educational establishment; the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences took the lead in this regard. Those who worked at its component institutes and labs made no secret of their scorn for the "impostors" and "self-advertisers" who claimed to speak for pedagogical science. Too, the Union had great difficulties simply getting itself organized. While many of its members were enthusiasts, they were enthusiasts for pedagogy, not for organization or management. The bickering and internal feuding that immediately seemed to seize the Union is evidenced in many accounts of meetings during the period from 1989 to 1991. Nor did the Union ever manage to publish a regular newspaper--two issues of Peremena appeared in 1989 and 1990, and there was apparently a great demand for there to be such a paper, but the intricacies of editing, printing, and distribution, combined with the usual difficulties in assuring a regular supply of newsprint, did the venture in (material under the rubric of "Peremena" and edited by Aleksandr Adamskii appeared during 1991 in Demokraticheskaia Rossiia). A further factor in the decline of what once appeared a hopeful sign in the Soviet pedagogical firmament was the departure of several of the key innovators (especially Adamskii, later Shatalov and Lysenkova) to form their own consulting groups or for other activities (Amonashvili to the Supreme Soviet; Dneprov to the Center for Pedagogical Innovations, then to the RSFSR Ministry of Education; Soloveichik to Novoe vremia).

But more than anything else, it was the change in leadership at the helm of Uchitel'skaia gazeta that caused the downfall of the movement for greater teacher control in the Soviet educational system. Matveev was nothing if not a controversial figure; his constant attacks on the Party and its heavy handed approach to schools and education won him no friends in the CPSU education bureaucracy. Likewise, he managed to alienate rather completely those in the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences whom he felt were merely hacks and poseurs instead of real scholars and educators. Finally, and probably most unforgivably, he took on then-CPSU-Secretary Egor Ligachev himself. For refusing to abide by a "direct order" from Ligachev that he not publish disparaging material about Ligachev's performance as a CPSU functionary during his time in a provincial capital, Matveev was simply removed from his position as editor of UG. Indeed, so great was the ire of the Secretary that there was serious doubt for a while that the paper itself would even survive. It did, but only after becoming an "Organ of the CPSU," with a party hack as editor (Genadii Seleznev, who went on in the Spring of 1991 to head Pravda, apparently successfully for he was confirmed there as editor after the coup). Matveev, disillusioned and sick (perhaps from a cancer contracted during an required "sabbatical" editing a rural teachers' paper in Byelorussia during 1986), lived ten months before dying in October, 1989. (Some materials on Matveev's life and work may be found in Matveeva, 1992; see also Kerr, in press.)

In Matveev's absence, the movement he had created grew increasingly splintered. As noted above, the Creative Union found it difficult to operate given insufficient management expertise and commitment from its creators. But some of these, notably Aleksandr Adamskii, found new allies among teachers and schools willing to branch out and experiment in the new conditions of freedom and uncertainty that pedagogical glasnost' of the late 1980s had created. Adamskii's own intellectual progeny, the Eureka Clubs, had come together to form the Union, but they mostly also retained their original independent form, and thus provided a set of local bases for further renewal of educational organizations. Adamskii capitalized on their willingness to try new approaches by creating a consulting group to provide seminars and other advice to schools and regions wanting such services. In addition to working with a number of city regional education departments, he formed particularly close ties with several innovative schools already well known throughout the country for their outspoken and talented directors; these included, among others: Aleksandr Tubel'skii at School No. 734 in Moscow (the "School of Self-Definition"), Tat'iana Kovaleva who started a private school in Tomsk, and Isaak Frumin, who directed a laboratory school in conjunction with Krasnoiarsk University in that city.

The success of Adamskii and company seemed to give heart to others among the "innovators" of the mid-80s. Lysenkova and Shatalov started their own consulting services and others engaged in increasingly public debate about a wide variety of educational policies, not merely teaching methods. The Union, in the meantime, seemed to degenerate into a typically Soviet institution--a structure, increasingly bureaucratic and rule-bound, to be regularly milked by its leaders for perks and privileges. By early 1991, the activities of the Union's leaders (particularly Beregovoi and Daineko, but several others as well) were once again on the pages of Uchitel'skaia gazeta, but this time in a very negative light. There were accounts of nepotism, misuse of funds, and intellectual bankruptcy (Kvartskhava, 1991).

Coverage of the Union and other alternative groups increased in Uchitel'skaia gazeta during 1991, especially after Seleznev moved to the editorship of Pravda in April. His successor, Petr Polozhevets, while following basically the same line and adhering to CPSU policies, seemed somewhat more open to admitting that there were other educational forces at work in Soviet society, and therefore began once again to recognize the legacy of Matveev (publishing, for example, a long account of the "Matveevskie chteniia" that took place on the former editor's birthday in June. Polozhevets also attracted some younger journalists (e.g., Ivan Bogachev, a talented writer on economics and education) to work for the paper, and asserted that its pages were to be "open to all." While the generally lackluster style of the paper continued, there were at least occasional flickers of controversy and dissent visible on its pages.

The second Congress of the Creative Union, however, demonstrates how difficult real progress is in education these days in the former USSR. Staged in the Crimea in October, the meeting quickly degenerated into a shouting match among rival factions, each claiming to speak for "real teachers." There were tussles for the microphone, long arguments over procedural matters, disputes as to both form and substance. Most of the original founders of the Union (Adamskii, Gazman, Tubel'skii, et al.) suggested that its presence was no longer as critical as when it was created: with Dneprov sitting in the position of RSFSR Minister of Education, the Academy and the Federal educational bureaucracies in increasing disarray, and the official push for reform coming more and more from those who, once outsiders, were now in positions of real power, there seemed little reason for a strong "alternative" with an elaborate administrative structure and rules for governance. Others, seemingly those who were attracted to the Union because of what it might materially offer as a "vedomstvo," were incensed that anyone should want to do away with "their own child," and therefore pushed for continuation of the Union and increased support. While there was agreement at the end of the meeting to have small organizing committee to consider alternatives for further action, the prospects for significant action out of the Creative Union appeared dim (Borisova, Nikolaev, & Trukhacheva, 1991; Riurikov, 1991; Igra v s"ezd, 1991). As will be noted below, however, several of the Union's founders themselves moved into new areas of activity that may carry forward the program of the Union in more effective ways than the "Union" structure allowed.

Power to the Disenfranchised: The Rise of Eduard Dneprov

In retrospect, it will probably be clear that no other event so shaped the future of education in the former USSR as the advent to power of Eduard Dmitrievich Dneprov to the position of Minister of Education of the RSFSR in the summer of 1990. While the action at first appeared merely as a rather thorough house cleaning of the ministry that Dneprov himself characterized as a "nest of the Black Hundreds," it gradually became clear over the ensuing year that what Dneprov had in mind was something quite new.

Dneprov's own background as a historian gave him a unique perspective on the problem of bringing diversity to Russian education. His own previous work had been largely focused on the schools of the Russian Empire immediately prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917, with particular attention to the condition of peasant and village schools. In 1988, when he took on the job of directing the work of "VNIK-Shkola" (Vremennyi nauchno-issledovatel'skii kollektiv-"Shkola", or the "Ad Hoc Scientific-Research Collective on the School"), he was viewed as something of an outsider among the Academicians in the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences for his outspoken and critical views of much current pedagogical practice. VNIK quickly established itself as a group that would tolerate no compromise with what most of its members regarded as the obvious faults of the status quo. Instead, over the next two years, there appeared under VNIK's imprimatur a remarkable series of documents and proposals calling for a fundamental recasting of the Soviet system of education. While many of these papers were roundly ignored by the educational establishment as they were published, they soon came to have a second and more vigorous life after Dneprov was appointed Minister of Education for the RSFSR in June, 1990. Many of his former colleagues in VNIK, as well as many of the ideas they had generated, found new homes in the RSFSR Education Ministry.

The details of Dneprov's vision came into sharp relief in a document that he and his team published in January, 1991: Russian education in a period of transition: A program of stabilization and development (Dneprov, Lazarev, & Sobkin, 1991). The document contains many proposals and indications of new policy directions. For our purposes here, we can focus on a few that relate especially to the question of diversification within the educational system: arrangements for teacher preparation; differentiation of the system of schools and educational institutions, including provisions for non-governmental and private schools; provision of new kinds of textbooks and other instructional materials; and new emphasis on the education of national minorities. What follows is drawn largely from that document, as well as from conversations with Dneprov and other officials (Vladimir Sobkin, Viktor Bolotov, Oleg Gazman, Elena Lenskaia, Vladimir Novichkov, and others) in the RSFSR Ministry of Education.

Diversifying teacher education. The reformers in the Russian Ministry of Education clearly have no illusions about the problems they face in reconstructing teacher education. Among teachers, 73% see schools as being in a "state of crisis"; 37% find themselves in "regular conflict" with at least some students, and 60% feel that "the family has abdicated its responsibility for raising children." Some 37% accuse other teachers of "apathy and carelessness" toward their colleagues (Dneprov et al., 1991, p. 27). Some 93.6% of teachers taking courses through in-service institutes were also unhappy with what they were offered, and felt these courses did little to stimulate creative approaches to their work (p. 46).

Dealing with these problems, and educating teachers able to think for themselves, will require organization of local "Instructional-Research Pedagogical Complexes." These organizations will be based at either institutes or the lower pedagogical academies [uchilishche], but may also include schools and businesses. (Some of the language here is remarkably similar to the proposals in the USA for the development of professional development schools.) The outflow of the "best and brightest" teachers will be somewhat compensated for by recruiting part-time teachers from the ranks of industry, scientific institutes, and universities (pp. 175-176; again, the solution is remindful of the many suggestions in the USA to provide alternative access routes to teaching for mid-career professionals).

Student-teachers thinking and pedagogical approaches are to be diversified by exposing them to a variety of teaching models and encouraging them to make real pedagogical choices, rather than (as of old) having them adhere to a single "approved" model. Some specific changes in the pre-service teacher education curriculum are closely tied to Soviet work in developmental psychology, particularly the work of Vygotskii and his followers (e.g., V. V. Davydov and his "activity approach"). As Viktor Bolotov, head of teacher preparation for the Russian Republic, recently put it, the teacher must "know what should change in your student and be able to create the conditions for this change" (Bolotov, 1991, p. 1). Another model, the so- called "dialogue of cultures," is based on the work of Vladimir Bibler; it postulates that children's thinking should retrace the developmental course of European civilization, starting from the Greeks. Other approaches include Aleksandr Tubel'skii's "school of self-determination," a kind of Soviet effort at site-based management (teachers, administrators, parents, and students join in setting general direction for the school; students have freedom of choice in many activities, but the educational staff try to create options so attractive that students will voluntarily choose a desirable course of action; Tubel'skii, 1989). Approaches that focus on the "whole child," such as those of Carl Rogers and Rudolf Steiner (the Waldorf School) are also very popular and will get strong exposure in the pedagogical curricula of Russian teacher education institutions.

Diversifying the structure of schools and educational institutions. Russia is also wrestling with the issues of privatization of the educational sector. The new Russian law on education explicitly provides for the existence of non-governmental educational institutions; several new organizations for those interested in private education have been formed, including RANGO, the Russian Association of Non-Governmental Education [Rossiiskaia assotsiatsiia negosudarstvennogo obrazovania] (Rezoliutsiia, 1991) and the Association of Directors of Experimental Schools and Centers. Private schools have begun to appear, with particular emphases and foci that vary from the entrepreneurial (business and management academies being a special favorite at the moment), to the religious (there are now schools with distinctively Orthodox and Jewish curricula). Additionally, an increasing number of public schools are finding ways to make themselves distinctive--by designing special curricula (often very similar to that of the former "special schools" [spetsshkoly]), returning to the classical studies common in the lycees and gymnasia of the early 20th century, finding some other distinctive niche (such as the recently organized "School of Slavic Cultures" in Moscow) and by setting up increasingly selective entrance criteria.

While some educators clearly revel in the new freedom to create pedagogical alternatives, many (among both conservatives and reformers) seem very troubled by the suggestion that private schools may "cream" the best students and teachers, leaving the regular public schools to deal with an increasingly fractious and alienated student body. Whether or not private schools should continue to receive government support has become the touchstone of this issue, and, while the initial legal position of the Ministry is that such aid should not go to schools in the private sphere, arguments continue, and there seems as yet no clear cut resolution to this debate. Another aspect of the effort to diversify education is the appearance of a large number of independent organizations, consulting services, and other interest groups. Some of these are organized principally as not-for-profit educational support operations, while others clearly hope to turn a profit. A survey of these suggests they fall into roughly five categories: First, the traditional pedagogical societies and societies focused on the work of an individual or "school" of pedagogical thought (the Pedagogical Society of the RSFSR, the Soviet Anton Makarenko Association, the Comenius and Korszak Societies, and so on) have found new life as the old restrictions were loosened and their members began to be able to discuss and travel more freely; their roles, however, have not changed radically. Second, there are new groups focused around teachers' interests--the Moscow History Teachers Club, the Association of Informatics Teachers, the "Soviet Teacher" and "Torch" projects (the latter seemingly organized by Uchitel'skaia gazeta as a counterweight to the Creative Union), and the "New Pedagogical Technologies" Association of Educators and Psychologists. While some of these groups are organizing their own interesting projects, most focus on the needs and interests of particular sub-sets of the educational community.

A third set of groups includes those organized by the new pedagogical entrepreneurs. Some of these people see education as a vehicle for direct economic gain (e.g., the Soviet-American Management Institute, established to provide courses on American business management techniques, or the Center for System Research and Educational Technology, created to provide programming services in exchange for computer hardware); others offer pedagogical services to the more independent school administrators, and thereby hope to gradually change the educational system (e.g., the "Creative Pedagogy" group formed by the Center for Pedagogical Innovations and the Creative Union of Teachers, and cooperatives formed by notable "teacher-innovators" such as Shatalov and Lysenkova). Yet a fourth set of groups includes those united by common interests in creating and preserving a place in the educational system--for example, the several groups formed around private schooling (the Russian Association of Non-Governmental Education, the International System of Alternative Educational Systems). Finally, there is a fifth set of parent and community groups, including such new entities as the Parent-Student-Teacher Research Association, the Association of School Councils, and the Association for the Pedagogical Support of Parents.

It is difficult to say what lasting effect these many new independent groups will have on the system of education in Russia. Clearly, many of them were merely adventitious responses to a changing situation, attempts to carve an economic or political niche for their founders in a time of chaos and confusion. Many of the entrepreneurial groups are probably in this category, as are some of the new teacher-focused groups. Others, including the traditional pedagogical societies and groups formed around teachers' instructional interests, as well as some of the community groups and the interest groups with a focus on encouraging diversity through privatization, are likely to remain, especially if they are given priority status (as has been suggested by Russian Education Minister Dneprov) in the new trade union for teachers.�

Diversification in curriculum and materials. Curricula and educational materials are also to become more diverse and increasingly there is the possibility to create them at the local level. But while this is now legally permissible, developing and distributing such materials in practice has proven to be enormously difficult. Part of the difficulty is material and financial: The Ministry's report indicates only tiny press-runs of new textbooks (e.g., 12,000 copies of physics texts, 9850 of biology) were produced in the mid-1980's, leading to enormous unfilled demand (22% of all secondary teachers in specific subject fields--about 150,000 for each field--indicated a desire to use new texts; p. 36). Some help is now coming from publishing ventures with new European partners, but the need is obviously still great. Shortages of paper, primitive printing technology, lack of computers for design and layout, and the absence of a well-developed system for ordering and distributing texts remain serious obstacles.

Perhaps more serious than the financial hurdles are the psychological and institutional ones. In a system that has for years handed down new curricula and teachers' materials from the center, and where the very notions of "curriculum design" and "instructional development," common in the West, are difficult to translate for an audience of educators, the idea that a teacher can create the content of education either individually or at the level of the school is indeed novel. A number of projects are now under way sponsored by the Ministry of Education and various Western groups to try to overcome these barriers, but they have a long road to travel.

The success of these efforts has yet to be tested, but it is clear that those in the Russian Ministry of Education are working toward a fundamental reconceptualization of how materials and curricula are put in place. Connections have been established with a number of European groups, including IMTEC, and with such experimental sites in the United States as the Chicago schools and the site-based management trials in Dade County, Florida. Given the almost unimaginable problems faced in the printing and dissemination of materials, it is not surprising that one of their top priorities has been to establish working linkages with Western publishers so as to translate and disseminate basic works on pedagogy for both pre-service and in-service teacher preparation (V. Sobkin, personal communication, April 6, 1991).

Diversification to meet the needs of national minorities. Dneprov's charter for the Russian Ministry of Education, Russian education in a period of transition, provides what is perhaps the first clear look at the dimensions of ethnic minorities in the Russian Republic--a catalog of groups and their relative student populations, together with a detailed listing of which languages are actually used for instruction and for how long in school a student may study using them. In most cases, only the first few years of schooling are available in a non-Russian language. These data also point out the huge administrative problems that will await the Ministry if they try to provide a more truly bilingual curriculum in that many of the language groups are both tiny and isolated.

[Table 1 here]

The data in Table 1 suggest that the position of the Soviet government over many years--that national minority groups were recognized and well provided for within the educational system--to have been largely overstated. If true bilingualism in education is intended to make available a full range of educational services in a student's native language over the full course of his or her educational career, then there are only three groups in Russia that meet this criterion--the Bashkirs, the Tatars, and the Georgians. Nine other groups, with student linguistic populations ranging from just over 3,000 (Kazakhs; this excludes 56 Estonians) to more than 145,000 (Chuvash) have instruction in their native languages available for more than two grades but less than eleven; the group with the longest grade-level coverage is the Yakuts, with nine grades. Some ten other groups, with populations ranging from just over 2,300 (Tabasarans) to over 84,000 (Osetians) have instruction available for only one or two years. The largest number of minority groups, some 43 in all, have only instruction about the native language available.� �

The classification proposed by the Ministry for these language groups and their schools is instructive: a five-way distinction is proposed, based partly on nationality and partly on levels of economic development. The typology includes these classifications:�

1. Languages of "autonomous" groups with a "mature" base (Russians, Bashkirs, etc.)

2. Languages of groups spread across several territories (Greeks, Gypsies, Nogai, etc.)�

3. Koreans and Germans--"independent" groups "which can count on the support of their historic homelands."

4. Languages of peoples of other republics (Ukrainians, Georgians, Estonians, etc.)�

5. Languages of small northern peoples--groups which are "not capable of independent development."

The way in which a nation treats its least powerful citizens may be taken as an indicator of its general level of concern about social welfare issues. If this is so, we must seriously wonder about what will happen to the "small-numbered peoples" of the Russian Far North. This is a part of the country where levels of economic development are far behind those in other parts of the country and whose educational position, as the Ministry suggests, "can be characterized as catastrophic" (p. 147). Diversification of the educational system here will require a different kind of approach, for simply saying to these long-oppressed groups "Now figure out your own educational system" clearly will not work.

What is being done to deal with these particular nationality issues is interesting, and hopeful: an Institute on National Problems of Education was created during 1991 (under the direction of Mikhail N. Kuz'min, a respected historian and scholar of ethnicity); materials for still-non-literate peoples are being prepared; new national content is being included in teacher-training programs and in-service institutes; and two new journals dealing with national issues have appeared--Life of Nationalities, and Arctic Journal for Children and Youth. Later steps are to include fuller efforts to create true national syllabi for these groups, founding local gymnasia and lycees to assure better educational standards, and the creation of "national-regional centers" to provide general support. The eventual hope is that the majority of these groups will be able to pursue their own development independently, while the smaller groups will develop in a "stable" (but likely still somewhat dependent) fashion.

At least some efforts are being made to provide the same kinds of "affirmative action" programs for these groups that have existed in the United States for the past 20 years or so: A recent Ministry of Education decree announced that places would be reserved in pedagogical institutes and other higher education institutions under the Ministry's control for members of the far-northern minority groups. Whether members of the groups will take advantage of these new opportunities, and whether the existence of such programs will generate the same kinds of dissatisfaction and protest that have been witnessed in the United States, remains to be seen.

The Routinization of Diversity: Developments in 1992

To say that the post-coup era in Soviet and Russian education was eventful would be an understatement. Changes during this most recent period include increasing diversification among educational institutions, the groups serving them, the educational press, and the centers of power actively seeking a voice on the nation's educational scene. Reviewed briefly here are: the growing numbers of private schools and lycees, the arguments surrounding their funding, and the appearance of competing associations to provide a voice for them; the fate of Uchitel'skaia gazeta and the emergence of a new paper to serve teachers, Pervoe sentiabria; the genesis and growth of several organizations to provide in-service and other advanced training the teachers, among them Alexander Adamskii's Eureka Open University, Boris Bim-Bad's Russian Open University, and Petr Shchedrovitskii's School of Cultural Policy; the devolution of power from the Ministry of Education increasingly into hands further down the administrative pyramid, especially at the levels of oblast' and city; and the gradual fractioning of forces in the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (now the Russian Academy of Education).

Private lycees and experimental schools. While no complete catalog exists of all the private schools now operating in Russia, developments in late 1991 and early 1992 gave some idea of the scope of interest in creating new types of independent schools. Meetings held at the Ministry of Education and at the offices of Uchitel'skaia gazeta during this time drew over a hundred participants from all parts of the country. While some of these schools were actually in operation, more were in the planning stages, and their various directors and managers seemed hungry for information and advice. Unfortunately, according to at least one participant in the meetings, the principal organizer, Vladimir Zhukov, seemed unable to break out of models of the past, and insisted on delivering long speeches at the opening meetings. Several of those attending reportedly walked out in disgust. The meetings sponsored by UG, however, did lead to the creation of RANGO, the Russian Association of Non-Governmental Education [Rossiiskaia assotsiatsiia negosudarstvennogo obrazovania], and association that now seems to sport a full compliment of officers and titles.

Competing with RANGO for the attention of those interested in new forms in education will be the Association of Directors of Experimental Schools and Centers, led by Alexander Tubel'skii. Tubel'skii's own Moscow School No. 734, the "School of Self-Definition," has garnered considerable attention over the past several years, and the new group seems to have drawn in many creative thinkers about pedagogical and organizational issues, including Isaak Frumin of Krasnoiarsk and Tat'iana Kovaleva of Tomsk, as well as Adamskii, Anatolii Kasprzhak and Elena Khiltunen of Moscow, Viacheslav Lozing of Kemerovo, Sergei Nekrasov of Krasnodar, Nikolai Guzik of Odessa, and Sergei Vetrov, rector of the Ukrainian Open University. The group seems more open than RANGO, and is committed to modeling their systems through open seminars and festivals (T.M. Kovaleva, Personal communication October, 1992).

The pedagogical press. At the beginning of 1992, Uchitel'skaia gazeta announced to its readers that it had available only enough capital to publish perhaps 18 issues instead of the 52 planned for the year. Financial aid provided by B. M. Bim-Bad's Russian Open University enabled the beleaguered weekly to limp forward, publishing a regular insert with material for teachers prepared by the ROU's staff. Nonetheless, there seemed to be a large group of teachers still searching for a publication more attuned to their daily needs, more like Matveev's paper.

In the summer of 1992, Bim-Bad, acting in concert with former Uchitel'skaia gazeta correspondents Soloveichik, Adamskii, and T.I. Matveeva (the widow of the former UG editor), decided to found a new paper for teachers. Under the title Pervoe sentiabria [September First], the first issue arrived in time for the start of the new academic year, and was issued in a press run of 50,000 copies. The new thrice-weekly paper seemed to find an audience quickly among teachers. Estimates suggested that it might quickly surpass UG in total readership. Part of the reason for this may be the fact that it is not merely "news for teachers" in the manner of the former UG, but rather is intended to be a working resource for the teacher's daily life: the paper comes accompanied by several supplements each week focused on the teaching of separate subjects (chemistry, physics, history, English ["American English!"], as well as Children's Health). In a society starved for new ideas on pedagogy, new textual materials may be a great attractant (much of the initial content of the supplements seemed to be reprinted texts and teachers' materials). The paper's focus on teachers' needs is seen in its subtitle, "Uchitel' uchitelei" ("The teacher of teachers") and in the encouraging aphorism running under the masthead on each issue: "Vy blestiashchii uchitel'; u vas prekrasnye ucheniki" ("You are a brilliant teacher; you have wonderful pupils"). The latter, which Soloveichik admits is designed to counter to common mood of despair among teachers, may be the best indicator of the current state of mind in Russia's schools.

Other new pedagogical publications served to increase the variety of opinion circulating in the marketplace of pedagogical ideas. A popularly oriented publication Magistr i, on psychology and education, seemed aimed at the readership of Narodnoe obrazovanie. The ill-fated Pedagogicheskii vestnik, published by the Soviet Association of Researchers-Educators, which enjoyed a brief flurry of popularity in 1990-91, seemed almost to have disappeared from popular attention by 1992.

Clearly the financial obstacles to publishing a regular paper under current conditions will deter many would-be press entrepreneurs. But the thirst for new ideas continues, and the demand for new pedagogically oriented publications suggests the importance of the printed word in a society and an occupation so long restricted in what was available.

In-service training for teachers. Teachers have continued to demand new approaches to in-service training, new ways of discovering and implementing new approaches in the classrooms. Several consulting organizations have appeared to try to satisfy the needs. Perhaps best known has been Aleksandr Adamskii's "Eureka Center for Socio-Pedagogical Design" (also known as the "Eureka Open University"). Serving teachers through seminar-workshops (" Evrikanskie sbory") around the country, Adamskii's group has provided several hundred seminars in the years since 1987. Some of these are national in scope and are designed to attract primarily city and regional educational administrators, as well as teachers who have already made preliminary changes in their own work. Additional seminars are offered on the district and city levels, with perhaps a somewhat lesser degree of commitment on the part of teachers. The seminars are partially informational, with different pedagogical and administrative models presented and discussed, but also partly transformational, with participants effectively isolated for a period of several days and subjected to an overload of new ideas and images of how education might be carried out. There is a also a strong emphasis on theoretically grounded models (the Vygotsky-Davydov "School of Development," the Biblerian "Dialogue of Cultures" model, the resurrected "School of Tolstoy," the imported "Waldorf school," and occasionally glances in the direction of Montessori and Carl Rogers. "Eureka's" prospects appear bright, but it is difficult to tell whether the transformative method it uses will continue to find favor in lean times.

Other in-service groups have used other approaches. One especially popular one is the so-called "game method" popularized as a consciousness-raising technique in the late 1980s. A principal proponent has been Petr Shchedrovitskii, son of the well-known psychologist by the same name. His "School of Cultural Policy" treats education as an essential part (but only a part) of the social and economic development of a region. Students now study with Shchedrovitskii and his colleagues, and work with them as they put on seminars and stage large-scale simulations in various parts of the country.

Perhaps most successful so far among the new educational entrepreneurs has been Boris Bim-Bad's Russian Open University. The essential quality here has been organizational and managerial skill combined with a kind of genius for marketing. The new university sports an enrollment of some 17,000 students, almost all studying in the evenings in faculties with formerly unfamiliar titles: "Andragogy," "Waldorf Pedagogy," "Business and Management," and the "Higher Christian-Orthodox School." Styled after the British and other foreign experiments "open universities," the ROU may be the first Russian institution to ask students on its application form to list the types of books they have in their personal libraries (Rossiiskii, 1991). Keeping the University afloat is a steady influx of dollars from contacts (and contracts) with a number of American institutions, which send their students to Moscow for intensive language and cultural courses. The University has an appeal for teachers, but is organized in traditional fashion with courses, exams, and so on, and so over the long run may do less to reshape teachers' perceptions of the possible than the previous two. The fate of the other numerous consulting organizations that were formed in the late 1980s is difficult to predict. Many will doubtless disappear in the economic whirlwinds now sweeping the Russian landscape. Some, like "Tvorcheskaia pedagogika," the commercial arm of the former Creative Union of Teachers and Dneprov's Center for Pedagogical Innovations, may survive because of their connections and their image among teachers. Others, such as Viacheslav Pogrebenskii's new psychological consulting firm, seem poised to recast teacher in-service training along newer and less traditional lines.

The rise of local control. The program developed by Eduard Dneprov provided that financial control of schools' budgets would increasingly devolve to lower levels (oblast', region, or city), and the Ministry would play more of a guiding and helping, rather than controlling, role. This change, completely unimaginable in the previously centralized Russian-Soviet system of education, is now slowly coming into being, though not without some difficulties for those involved. As anyone familiar with budgeting and accountability in the United States is aware, local control is both a blessing and a curse--a blessing because it permits local change and experimentation on a scale unknown elsewhere in the world, but also a curse because it can lead to disaster either financially (which happens, but only occasionally) or pedagogically (which happens more frequently, as school superintendents and principals make hesitant decisions, order and use mass produced texts, or stick with tried-and-true, though unimaginative, methods).

In Russia, there was simply no ground work done before decisions about financial matters were forced down onto the local level. The results do not appear to have been universally good. The general absence of abilities to deal with local budgeting, to negotiate with teacher unions, to define the role of the city and district education head, to determine what kinds of training and retraining teachers should receive, and, in rural areas, to cope with the continuing impoverishment of life generally--all hinder the possibilities for change. As "Eureka" and other in-service providers offer training to local and regional school heads, these needed abilities may begin to emerge, but at the moment there are vast problems connected with the provision of new freedoms.�

Competitors to the Academy. The problems associated with the recreation of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences into the Russian Academy of Education are many and have been dealt with elsewhere. What is interesting with regard to the creation of additional diversity within education in Russian Federation is the appearance, at least briefly, of a competing structure, the Russian Academy for the Development of Education. This group, which appeared at the beginning of 1992 and published a series of articles outlining its platform in Uchitel'skaia gazeta, brought together some serious figures in Russian psychology and education, including Vitalii Rubtsov, protégé of Davydov, and Iurii Gromyko, one of the founders of the "game approach." While their attempt to redefine the terms under which the Academy works may have been partly motivated by self-interest (several were eventually named as members to the Russian Academy of Education), the effort at least demonstrated that there was no cow too sacred for the reformers to take on under the new, post-Soviet conditions (Moskovskaia, 1992).

Stable Diversity through Disorder: Cautions and Prospects

Cautions. Clearly, there is much conflict and confusion within the Russian educational system at the moment: formerly subservient educational offices at the oblast', regional, and city levels are asserting control, as are the newly emergent ministries of education in Autonomous republics and regions; the federal structures that for so long determined what would happen throughout the Soviet empire--the State Committee and its predecessor ministries, the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, the CPSU--are in disarray, and many (the CPSU and the APN) will not likely return; new groups and organizations assert their existence daily (usually accompanied by pleas for financial support); communication continues to be a problem, as supplies of paper and typographic facilities remain rare; and, through it all, teachers and administrators desperately seek ways of acquiring new approaches, and the means for putting these into practice.

Perhaps most critical is the hard task of nurturing democratic habits of thought and action. There is still a hesitancy to trust processes that have never been strong parts of the Russian cultural tradition, and so open debate, respect for opponents' positions, and the ability to judge a person on meritocratic criteria do not come easily. What one does if on loses an intellectual or social struggle poses a particular problem for educators. Too, there are the details of democratic life in schools and institutions: who is to have what powers? How can decisions be made without involving everyone all of the time? How can rights and responsibilities be described and communicated in a way that all will accept? How much democracy in school organization and decision-making (for example, in matters affecting curriculum and instruction) is it reasonable to try to effect? What rights are there for private schools to do their own thing, and what responsibility does the federal or republic government have to assure comparability of educational experience and equality of opportunity? Working with educators in the former USSR today frequently gives one the feeling that one is watching the writing of the educational equivalent of the Federalist Papers in late 18th century America, but without the benefit of knowing how the values expressed there would be played out in 200 years of subsequent history and culture.

Additional barriers to increasing the diversity available through the system are mostly administrative and bureaucratic: the uncertainty surrounding the new law on education regulating what can and cannot happen in schools and at the level of cities and regions; the general fears accompanying heated inflation and the difficulty in predicting what will be available for schools in the near future; and, in some cases, the too-rapid attempts to adopt popular Western models (e.g., the appearance of many cooperative ventures involving the teaching business and management skills, and some similar attempts by Western entrepreneurs to "sell" local Russian authorities on a particular plan or program, the adoption of voucher systems and radical free-market economics as solutions to educational problems, etc.)

Prospects. Nevertheless, there are signs of hope: diversity among schools and pedagogical approaches are no longer seen as heretical; educators of a reformist bent have been encouraged by the coup and its aftermath, and feel charged to push their programs more strongly than before; more teachers seem attracted to public life, and more intellectuals and scientists who a few years ago would have shunned any contact with the schools are becoming involved through school councils, direct teaching, and writing.

Perhaps most significantly, the heritage of Russian education seems to come more and more often to the fore as a basis on which new approaches can be built. In Adamskii's "Eureka," for example, there is a strong tendency for teachers to gravitate to those models with a distinctive Russian stamp--the models of Vygotsky, Tolstoy, and Bibler seem genuinely new, but at the same time are in some ways familiar. Whether this theoretical purposiveness can remain and spread on a wider plane will be interesting to see, for lack of theoretical substance has long been a weakness in Western in-service training for both teachers and administrators. It may be that the Russian genius for theory will yet find an appropriate outlet as teachers are prepared and re-trained for work in the new Schools of Russia.

As Russian schools move to become more diverse, there are a great many questions that Western researchers can probe. Answers to these will be useful not merely as description, but also to help in the further development of education in Russia itself. If diversity in education is valued not as an end in itself, but rather as a precondition for the creation of a more fully democratic and civil society, then we must think about issues such as these:

How much and what kinds of diversity? The growth in diversity needs to be cataloged and examined. What groups are strong and have reasonable prospects? How will they work to express the interests of their constituents, and how will they respond to the need for some kind of common coordination? What kinds of new pedagogical approaches will be tried, and to what effect? What will be the role of national minorities, and how much independence will they be given, how much central coordination will continue to be exerted? How will private education develop, and what is it reasonable to expect from a private school sector that has no traditions? How will the issues of equity be handled? (These are clearly not only questions for educators in the former USSR!) Perhaps most interestingly from an American and comparative perspective, do diversity and choice really lead to improved quality in educational outcomes? And how should those outcomes be defined, anyway?

Whither vocational education? The relationships between education and the economy also need to be watched. Historically, educators in Europe, and the USSR, paid more attention to issues of vocational education and the movement of students into productive roles in the economy than have Americans. Will the chaotic current state of the Soviet economy permit schools and firms to interact? Will the hopeful approach of the early 1980s--to link schools and firms--be abandoned, reshaped, or completely rethought? What kinds of skills will vocational tracks stress? And how will these be tied into the changing nature of the workplace? What, to mirror an emphasis of Soviet sociological studies of the early 1970s, will be the balance between unrestrained vocational choice and the needs of the economy?

Schools and democratic society. The schools' role in creating a democratic society should also be studied. Clearly, there are difficulties here--the conservatism of the teacher corps is well documented, and the institutions that schools are has not been called upon in recent years to exercise dynamic leadership in recreating society in a new image. Nonetheless, there are certainly things that could be done. The writing of new texts in such fields as history, economics, and even such topics as family relations will bear watching to see if democratic values are in fact incorporated. Likewise, the practices of teachers and administrators with respect to democratic processes within schools and classrooms should be observed. Are schools really modeling what a democracy needs to be? (American educators might rightly protest that we ourselves are no great paragons in this matter).

Schools and communities. The relationships between schools and parents and communities also bear close watching. Previously, many parents reported having to deal with the psychological problems of their children, problems based in the ways that they were treated in schools. Teachers and directors earlier felt well insulated and able to ignore the demands of communities (if such demands were ever voiced); now, there is a new sense that the public cannot be damned and that educators must in some ways become accountable. What forms will that accountability take? Will school councils evolve to express community interests? What forms of governance will appear, and what will be the balance there among the interests of parents, teachers, and officials? Will local control develop to such an extent that really individual local curricula and practices will result?

Education and the national agenda. Finally, and most importantly, what place will education come to have on the national agenda? In the West, governments have become accustomed to giving fine lip service to educational questions, with little real action in policy, financing, or public decision making. ("America-2000" and the New American Schools Development Corporation are good examples in the United States). While public volunteerism and "new thinking" may be important, they are not likely to go far without strong leadership from some quarter to keep public attention focused on real educational issues rather than red herrings. What will those forces be in Russia? What will be the issues that the new post-Soviet society will chose to advance in the field of education? And, for those who want to go beyond study to action, what can be done to help?

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