How a famous teacher Makarenko dealt with juvenile bandits, and for which he was removed from the leadership of the colony

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

The famous Soviet educator Anton Makarenko became famous for his author's pedagogical concept, for which his name was included by UNESCO among the world's greatest teachers. And today the educational methods developed by Makarenko in dealing with difficult teenagers are being adopted by foreign schools. The results of his work, which have brought hundreds of juvenile delinquents and street children back to normal, are often controversial. At the same time, Anton Semenovich did not have his children, and he created a legal family shortly before his death.

At the forefront of pedagogy

In fairness, it is worth remembering that Anton Makarenko is not a lone hero of Russian pedagogy. He kept pace with the scientific era, but he was neither the first nor the only Soviet adherent of the educational system of teenage communes. At the very beginning of the 20th century, children's self-government in a duet was practiced with common difficulty in the "Vigorous Life" colony near Moscow. In 1918, a colony was opened in St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky, the famous Republic of ShKID. In 1922, J. Korczak's book "How to Love Children" was published in the USSR, in which the principles of democratic self-government were promoted. Hundreds of educational institutions functioned with the aim of raising a new person, implementing all kinds of methods. Makarenko was only among the first followers of innovative approaches and managed to experimentally create a pedagogical system.

Childhood Difficulties

As a child, Anton was sickly - he regularly caught cold, suffered from inflammation, was physically weak and clumsy. From an early age, the child lived by reading, not having the zeal to participate in yard games. Short-sighted, he was constantly the target of practical jokes and bullying. For this reason, Anton was worried and withdrawn into himself. In 1904, when Makarenko was 16, he entered pedagogical courses, receiving the right to teach in elementary school. Working with the first students, Makarenko realized that his knowledge was not enough for high-quality teaching, and continued to study at the Poltava Teachers' Institute. It was then that Makarenko distinguished himself with his thesis on the crisis of pedagogical science. Makarenko realized the opportunity to unleash his potential and work out his theories in practice as head of the Kuryazh colony near Kharkov.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the young Soviet country faced millions of homeless children - children of the White Guards and Red Army men who were left without parents, lost during the evacuation, or simply thrown out into the street due to poverty. There was an acute issue of creating educational colonies where the captured street children were taken. These children, who sometimes knew how to steal and lie better than reading, were considered problematic and defective. Few knew what to do with them, but Makarenko succeeded.

The hard experience of raising juvenile gangsters

Makarenko's concept was simple. The main unbreakable rule is not to remember the dark past of the colonists. The teacher said that the children should not try to correct, but be taught to live differently. And he saw the main tool as joint honest work, leaving no time for unnecessary. Inside the colony, Makarenko introduced a self-governing democracy based on his own production. According to his method, difficult teenagers were divided into groups, independently equipping their life and earning a living.

Very little time passed, and yesterday uncontrolled dangerous teenagers were producing cameras. The second labor wing was the agricultural plant inside the colony. The collective jointly raised wheat, vegetables, bred cows, pigs and horses. The guys worked in greenhouses, a smithy, a thresher and a mill. A park filled with flowers and a clean pond appeared on the territory of the institution. At leisure, the pupils studied in the drama club, arranging theatrical performances. While devastation and hunger reigned outside the colony, the street children ate hearty and slept in warmth. Of course, the company of potential bandits was not without failures. There were robberies, theft, gambling and even stabbing. But Makarenko found the strength not to give up and competently take the wards out of difficult situations.

The position of Lenin's wife and persecution

Despite the apparent successes of Anton Makarenko, he had persistent opponents. The founder of the Soviet school, Krupskaya, Lenin's wife concurrently, considered the pedagogical system "non-Soviet". Makarenko was accused of being tied to pre-revolutionary pedagogy, cruelty, authoritarianism and possible assault. In search of incriminating evidence, inspectors often came to the colony, and Makarenko loomed arrest. At the next congress of the Komsomol, Nadezhda Konstantinovna accused him of deviating from the party's resolutions and introducing an "ideologically harmful" system. Makarenko was then rescued by his associate Maxim Gorky, and the arrest was changed to a transfer to another colony near Kharkov.

Soon, this place began to flourish, which haunted influential party leaders. In addition to everything, at a friendly evening in his native colony, Makarenko uttered an ambiguous phrase about Joseph Stalin, which the enemies presented as an attempt on the Soviet system. Makarenko was called a "counter-revolutionary", they began to write regular denunciations. In 1939, the teacher was summoned to Moscow. According to some reports, this time the arrest was inevitable. Agitated Makarenko felt unwell as soon as he got on the train. He decided to lie down on the bench and did not get up again. As the doctors later established, death came from a ruptured heart.

Crowds of people came to the funeral of the honored teacher. The former pupils, who only thanks to him, found themselves in life, wished to see the mentor on his last journey. Many street children who fell into the hands of Makarenko became successful engineers, teachers, doctors. Several generations continued to bring his teaching experience to life.

The criminals, by the way, sometimes had patriotic feelings and went to defend their country. So did and Pyotr Klypa, the youngest defender of the Brest Fortress.