The School Student's Personal Opinion:: Making It Effective

Abstract

Today's school is called upon to shape every student's habit of taking active part in dealing with the most important problems of the life of the collective, the ability to formulate, express, and stand up for his own opinion and to respect the judgments of other people. Today's students in school face the prospect of living in an atmosphere of genuine democracy and openness [glasnost'], of being participants in socialist self-government. Under these circumstances, it is impossible to prepare young people for life through unthinking and direct assimilation of truisms. Thoughtful educators are concerned by the problem of "school students' silence," their apathy or their inability to express themselves with regard to urgent problems involved in the activities of the class, the school, the city, or the country, to determine their personal attitude toward these problems.