Pedagogical Research Problems of the General Curriculum

Abstract

The decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the USSR Council of Ministers on the school (dated November 10, 1966) clearly set forth the task of introducing scientifically substantiated syllabuses and curricula. Pedagogical science was called upon to ensure fulfillment of this task, which required that curriculum theory be drawn upon. As early as 1965, in a discussion organized by the journal Sovetskaia pedagogika [Soviet Pedagogy], the question of the importance of pedagogical theory - whose underassessment in working out the new syllabuses and curricula could significantly complicate the solution of practical problems - was urgently raised. When the idea of the new curriculum was first introduced, however, it was admitted that the field of didactics "is concerned only minimally with working out curriculum problems" (B. P. Esipov, "On the Subject, Problems, and Methods of Didactics," Narodnoe obrazovanie, 1963, No. 4, p. 58).