V. I. Lenin

Instructions Of The Central Committee

To Communists Working In The People’s Commissariat For
Education

1. Unreservedly adhering to the position defined by the Programme of
the R.C.P. in regard to polytechnical education (see, in particular,
§ 1 and 8 of the section dealing with education), the Party must
regard the lowering of the ago for general and polytechnical education
from seventeen to fifteen as only a practical expedient necessitated by
the country’s poverty and ruin caused by the wars imposed upon us by
the Entente.

Vocational training for persons. of fifteen years of age and upwards
’in conjunction with ... general polytechnical education" ( 8
mentioned above) is absolutely compulsory all over the country, wherever
there is the slightest oppor-tunity to introduce it.

2. The main failing of the People’s Commissariat for Education is
its lack of practical efficiency, inadequate attention to the recording
and verification of practical experience, lack of systematic application
of its lessons, and prevalence of general arguments and abstract slogans.
The People’s Commissar and the Collegium must concentrate on
combating these defects.

3. The enlistment of specialists, i.e., of teachers with theoretical
and long practical experience, and of persons having such experience in
technical (including agronomic) vocational training for work at the
centre, is improperly organised in the People’s Commissariat for
Education in genera], and in Glavprofobr, [The Chief Administration for Vocational Training under the People’s Commissariat for Education —Editor ] in
particular.

The registration of such workers, the study of their experience, the
verification of the results of their work, and their systematic enlistment
for responsible posts in local, and specially central, work must be
organised immediately. Not a single serious measure should be carried out
without canvassing the opinion of these specialists and obtaining their
continued co-operation.

It goes without saying that the enlistment of specialists must be
carried out under these two indispensable con-ditions: first, specialists
who are not Communists must work under the control of Communists;
secondly, Commu-nists alone must determine the content of the curricula,
in so far as this concerns general educational subjects, and particularly
philosophy, the social sciences and communist education.

4. Curricula for the main types of educational establishments and for
courses, lectures, readings, colloquia and practice periods must he drawn
up and endorsed by the Collegium and the People’s Commissar.

5. The Standard Labour School Department, and, in particular,
Glavprofobr, must devote greater attention to the wider and more
systematic enlistment of all suitable technical and agronomic forces for
the promotion of technical vocational and polytechnical education and to
the utilisation for that purpose of every tolerably well-organised
industrial and agricultural enterprise (state farm, agricultural
experimental station, well-organised farm, etc., electric power stations,
etc.).

To avoid disruption of normal operations, the forms and the order in
which economic enterprises and establishments are to be used for
polytechnical education are to be determined by agreement with the
economic agencies concerned.

(3. Clear, concise and practical forms of reporting must be devised to
make it possible to estimate the scale and verify the results of the work.
The organisation of this work in the People’s Commissariat for
Education is highly unsatisfactory.

7. The distribution of newspapers, pamphlets, magazines and books to
libraries and reading-rooms in schools and elsewhere is also highly
unsatisfactory. The result is that newspapers and books reach only a
small section of Soviet office workers and extremely few factory workers
and peasants. This whole system must be reorganised from top to
bottom.