Current Scientific and Pedagogical Problems of the Conversion of Schools to the New Content of Education

Abstract

We are at the decisive phase in the reform of the content of school education. The changeover to the new content of education was stipulated by a decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers on the school in 1966, based on recommendations on curricula and syllabuses by the Commission of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. This decree formulated the following principles that determine the nature of the new content of education: the relevance of education to the development of science, technology, and culture; continuity in the study of the principles of science from the 1st to the last grade; a more rational distribution of subject matter throughout the years of schooling; the commencement of systematic instruction in the principles of science beginning with the fourth year of instruction; the elimination of superfluous detail and second-rate [vtorostepennogo] material from curricula and textbooks to avoid overburdening pupils.