Improved General Education School Curricula and Raising the Quality of Teaching

Abstract

The society of developed socialism, scientific and technological progress, and the confrontation of the two [world] social systems are making new, higher demands on the comprehensive development and communist education of the younger generation, who are being summoned to the task of solving the highly complex tasks of the coming century. The school must convey to its pupils deep and enduring knowledge about surrounding reality that corresponds to advances in modern science, the principles of the dialectical materialist world view, and communist morality and must instill in them the habit and love of useful labor. One way of realizing this objective is to improve the secondary general education school's curricula and textbooks. In the work [that has been done to date] on the school curricula, the resolution of the decision of the Twenty-sixth CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) Congress to improve their quality has been fulfilled. Unduly complicated and extraneous material has been deleted from the school programs. The instructions accompanying the sections and topics [of the curricula in their published form] indicate the most important points that pupils are expected to learn without fail and also identify materials of marginal or secondary importance that may be used, depending on the ability of the school collective. The improvement of the curricula is intended to eliminate the overloading of pupils and at the same time to see to it that all pupils master a defined amount of basic study material at a high level without fail.