The School Student's Personal Opinion

Abstract

Today's schools are called upon to instill in every student the habit of taking active part in dealing with the most important problems in the life of the collective, the ability to formulate, express, and defend his own opinion and to respect the judgments of others. Today's schoolchildren face the prospect of living in a genuine democracy, with glasnost'; of becoming participants in sociaiist self-government. It will be impossible to prepare young people for life under these conditions merely through unthinking and direct assimilation of truisms. Thinking educators are disturbed about the problem of "schoolchildren's silence," their apathy, and, sometimes, their inability to express themselves regarding urgent problems of class activity, the school, the city, and the country, the inability to define their personal attitude toward them.