Growing piglets, teambuilding in the Soviet style and chipping: The success and impotence of Anton Makarenko's method

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The outstanding teacher Anton Makarenko was glorified in the Soviet Union, exposed after its collapse; his successes were applauded, his methods were smashed to smithereens. In the end, Makarenko managed to raise a huge number of homeless children in his colonies so that they then easily merged into ordinary adult life: they started families, found work, even built careers. But it was not possible to introduce such methods at the all-Union level. Why?

It's not about personality

Personality, of course, is very important: a child will always look at an adult and be guided by his behavior and actions. No matter how kind, affectionate the teacher is, no matter what loud words he speaks, the child will not believe him if he does not see inner discipline, inner humanity, constant adherence to his principles.

In addition, the teacher's indifference is extremely important. Makarenko aptly noticed that a crowd of indifferent teachers is capable of ruining the whole thing where a handful of those who are not indifferent will achieve success.

Nevertheless, the education system in the famous colony was not based at all on the charisma and willpower of Anton Semyonovich himself. The same successes were achieved by those of his students who later chose the path of a teacher, as well as a few who were not indifferent, who approached Makarenko's experience not formally.

Makarenko himself tried to arrange so that he did not have to control everything around, so that as soon as possible the teenage team became viable, permeated with ideas about ethics, motivated and could deal with most of the problems within the team without teachers and without assault.

Education by work

In numerous adolescent boarding schools, later the principle of upbringing by labor, proclaimed by Makarenko, was embodied in the form of labor lessons and work in the garden. Moreover, of course, it did not give any pedagogical effect in practice. Psychologists and educators of our time, analyzing the life of the Gorky colony, draw attention to three features of the labor of the colonists. Actually, Makarenko was also aware of them.

First, it had a final, visible, often tangible result. Semi-annual sewing of an apron or endless standing at the machine, cutting out the same part, turn work in the eyes of a teenager into an endless process that will soon become boring for an incomprehensible purpose. Everything that the colonists did gave them a visible result: not a detail that is not suitable for anything in the hands of the teenager who carved it, but the whole. In addition, when it took a long time to wait for the result, the colonists watched and discussed its approach: the piglets grew, and this could be measured in kilograms, the crops rose a few centimeters, and so on.

Second: the result of labor was useful, first of all, to the colonists themselves. They themselves ate the grown or boiled potatoes. Stitched shorts were worn. We sat on hammered stools. Of course, adolescents were also stimulated by the fact that the state could not provide everything necessary: if you want to live comfortably, try. It is impossible and unethical to completely repeat the situation of refusal in what is needed in our time. Organization of work, the benefits of which are obvious to children, is nowadays possible only with a good imagination of teachers who can offer, for example, to make a theater and props for it - who knows.

Third: Makarenko, as soon as he could, invited the pupils to work with advanced technologies. Under his leadership, the colonists built two factories that produced cameras and electromechanical instruments. By modern standards, it's like kids creating prostheses for injured pets and developing apps for smartphones. It is much easier to captivate with such work than weaving baskets. Both boys and girls worked at these factories, because ordinary manual labor rarely motivates girls either, or technology! It is a pity that this is not taken into account in Russian schools.

Team upbringing

Teambuilding is a word that plunges many modern people into despondency. But with the right, informal approach, fostering a team spirit, the ability to work in a team, quickly self-organize can work wonders. In the twenties and thirties, the choice for team building among teenagers was small. Makarenko could not provide general sports activities, only "common cause" does not work if the children in the team do not know how to tune in to each other, and he chose what critics called "militarization".

The colonist uniform - very simple clothing that children could provide for themselves and which could be an analogue of a prison or hospital uniform - turned into the form of a small army, especially since the colonists had to fight with what and for what, starting from banal survival. The horns and drums became the internal codes of the team, the marching step a way to catch some common rhythm. The romanticization of the recent Civil War worked into Makarenko's hands. The children were really carried away by military images, otherwise "militarization" would only irritate them.

There were other tricks to improve the self-organization of the team. Ability to get away in time, no matter how much you want to control every decision of the children. The rule of acquaintance of a newcomer with life in a colony is precisely other children. Public assignments - in relation to the outside world. And, of course, bringing the element of team play to everything that is possible. Children need to play.

Communication with the outside world

By the way, about the outside world - while the later, the more children in orphanages and boarding schools began to isolate from society, reducing contacts to the arrival of clowns and the distribution of gifts, the colonists at Makarenko, after instilling some discipline skills in them, tried to work with the outside world communicate actively. We went with the caretaker to make purchases, gave theatrical performances to villagers, went out on city holidays.

In general, preparing for life there, in the world outside the colony, was one of the most important goals for Makarenko. It was not only about self-service and labor skills. Children who had already learned about street life were brought to the colony, so it was very important to teach them to restrain themselves. Take turns speaking in meetings, waiting for the word. Do not push even with impatience. Walking along the corridors inside the house is calm: if you want to run, go to the sports field, run out. Movement is good, not being able to restrain yourself and therefore creating dangerous situations is bad.

First of all, Makarenko considered the ability to restrain oneself to be important for the skill of the ability to restrain aggression, especially sexual aggression. It would be pointless and impossible to read only lectures about the inadmissibility of hitting a comrade in the face and pawing the girls, although if necessary, all this was spoken out loud without undue embarrassment. But words will remain words, and the skill of containment is another matter entirely.

Individuality

Although the life of the colony from the outside looked like an equalization, a struggle against any individuality, Makarenko just believed that the team is made up of personalities and skills - this is one thing, and character is another. The child should be guided by the needs of the collective, but the collective should also take into account that it consists of living people with their own needs and, strictly speaking, the needs of the collective are the needs of those very people.

Each person for growth and development had to receive a task that challenges her, otherwise the child's motivation to grow personally would disappear. The first colonists were used to feeling their power and using it - Makarenko came up with a task for them that would direct their skills and the desire to apply them in a socially useful channel. He sent young men 16-17 years old to patrol the road, where robbers sometimes operated, and to drive poachers out of the forest. Fighting, of course, was not encouraged, but the robbers were basically satisfied with the very presence of the patrol, and the poacher could be twisted by four guys without beating.

If the child was artistically gifted, he received an assignment at the border of his capabilities: the design of a backdrop for performances, for example. It's the same with musical, mathematical, and animal husbandry talent. Each talent received a challenge, but never beyond what a teenager is capable of. In addition, Makarenko believed that without charismatic and ethical leaders at the same time, without a healthy nucleus, the children's collective is not capable of normal self-organization - and this is reliance on the individual.

Pedagogical impotence

There were things that Makarenko was unable to cope with. When he was just assigned to the colony, he saw that the seventeen-year-olds turned it into a brothel, kept the educators at bay, did not obey anyone. All tricks and tricks were useless. In the book, Anton Semyonovich admitted that the guys began to listen to his words only after he hit one of them in the face. This was the pinnacle of his despair, his fall as a teacher, but he did not find any other way out - there were not enough instruments of influence. This confession Makarenko was later reproached for a long time, it was suspected that later he kept discipline with teeth.

Makarenko worked with children, each of whom had experience in the first years of family life. He did not know and could not offer anything to children from children's homes, with severe tactile and emotional deprivation. He implicitly turned to the healthy memories of children who had at times a terrible experience - memories of home, nepotism, comfort. His system is poorly suited for children who have no experience of emotional connections with adults.

Finally, Makarenko did not know at all what to do with the girls who passed the street. These girls were often prostituted, repeatedly raped, they behaved like many girls with such experience, deliberately promiscuous and at the same time very distrustful, it was difficult for them to join the team in an amicable way, at first they needed psychological rehabilitation. Makarenko did not have the necessary specialists, and then pedagogy had no idea about the methods of working with children who had experienced sexual violence. Many times Anton Semyonovich experienced pedagogical impotence when faced with such girls. Nevertheless, he was able to help dozens of girls grow up and integrate into society - perhaps the girls' collective itself provided psychological assistance to the new ones to the best of their ability.

The family secrets of Anton Makarenko will also tell about the teacher: what the descendants of the legendary teacher were silent about.