Reform and counter-reform of mathematics education in the USSR in 1960-1970

Abstract

Introduction. In the 1960s and 1970s, a secondary school in the USSR became involved in the international mainstream for the reform of mathematics education. Both the content of mathematics education and its ideology and structure were subject to change. Today, the historical events of the last 50 years require a retrospective view. The relevance of the study is determined by the need to rethink the reform of mathematics education of the 1960s and 1970s in the new conditions of radical changes and modernization of the modern education system. The purpose of the study is to restore the objective history of the reform and counter-reform of mathematics education in the USSR, identify the prerequisites for the reform, analyze the reasons for its failure and identify the positive methodological aspects of transformations. Research methods. More than 100 sources were used, including documents from the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, textbooks on mathematics (pre-reform, reformist and post-reform textbooks), certificates of the participants of reform and counter-reforms. The leading methodological approaches included theoretical, philosophical, theoretical-mathematical and experimental-practical. Research results. The analysis of the facts made it possible to establish that the main motives for the reform in the USSR were, on the one hand, the international movement for the new content of school mathematics education based on the ideas of an international group of mathematicians who called themselves Bourbaki, and on the other, the excessive involvement of academic structures (mathematicians and academicians) in solving this issue. Results and discussion. The desire of the top leadership of the USSR not to lag behind the trends in science, education and technology in the world played a negative role in the field of Soviet mathematics education. The initiative in choosing the content of mathematics education “according to Western patterns” to academic workers and structures was erroneous, since the opinions of a community of thousands of teachers, practitioners, methodologists were not taken into account. According to the authors, another reason for the failure of the reform was the excessive involvement of academic structures. Conclusion. Historical experience shows that the greatest successes in education and science are achieved during the periods of stabilization. In the mathematics education of Russia, the stabilizing factor is textbooks written in the traditions of a systematic course, going back to the Elements of Euclid, which is a kind of cultural and historical standard. One of the main conclusions of the study is that the quality of training is closely related to the preservation of the domestic pedagogical tradition, its fundamental principles of learning (systematics and consistency).