On Pedagogical Education Under New Conditions

Abstract

Higher pedagogical education, erected on the granite foundations of Marxism-Leninism, is an important conquest of our Motherland. In the years of Soviet power, the Communist Party and the socialist state have done grandiose work to carry out V. I. Lenin's directive: "… to bring up a new army of pedagogical teaching personnel, who must be closely linked with the party, with its ideas and who must be permeated with the party's spirit; they must attract the working masses, permeate them with the spirit of communism, interest them in what the communists are doing." (1, p. 343) The system of pedagogical education was built up and developed at a swift pace. The leading place in this system is taken up by higher educational establishments. While, before the revolution, almost all of them were concentrated in the capital, at the present time, each region, district and autonomous republic has its pedagogical higher educational establishments; a tight network of these has grown up in the republics of Central Asia and the Trans-Caucasus, regions which, before the revolution, were dark and forgotten frontiers. At the present time, there are 203 pedagogical higher educational establishments at work in the USSR, which enroll 511,345 students in day, evening and correspondence divisions. In 1958 the pedagogical higher educational establishments gave the school 82,800 young specialists. At the present time, pedagogical higher educational establishments can almost fully satisfy the needs of the schools for teachers in all fields.