Material and Technical Base of Secondary Schools of the Khakass Autonomous Region in 1946-1964

Mankovskaya Ol'ga Vyacheslavovna Postgraduate, Department of history, Khakass State University named after N.F. Katanov 655017, Russia, Republic of Khakassia, Abakan, Lenin Ave., 90 wakagashira413@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

In recent history, in the context of increasing state interest in such a resource as human capital and accelerating the growth of knowledge on which modern production is based, education as a social institution plays an increasingly important role in the life of society. The process of reforming school, basic, and education has not stopped since the formation of the Russian Federation. This, on the one hand, reflects the desire of the state authorities to modernize the school education system, which is able to prepare graduates for the challenges of the modern world, on the other hand, demonstrates the insufficient effectiveness of the ongoing reforms.

In this regard, it is relevant to turn to the Soviet experience of state policy in the field of public education in order to take into account the mistakes made during the reform of secondary schools. The present research is based on the historical and comparative method, and the source base is the materials of the funds of the National Archive of the Republic of Khakassia, most of which are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.

The period 1946-1964 is interesting for analysis because it is at this time that the restoration of the post-war secondary school, as well as the unsuccessful reform of 1958, falls. The problem of a weak, and in some cases practically non-existent, material and technical base, which became acute in the war and post-war period, was one of the reasons for the curtailment of school reform aimed at "strengthening the connection of school with life."

The material and technical base of schools includes the school territory, buildings located on it, gyms, classrooms and specialized classrooms, rigid equipment and equipment for laboratory, practical work, labor training, educational and methodological literature, visual textbooks, as well as educational equipment and educational supplies.

One of the main vectors of educational policy in the USSR was the universality of education. The coverage of children to be educated in general education schools was ensured by keeping records of such children, as well as creating educational places in educational organizations. The post—war period was characterized by a shortage of educational places, which manifested itself in the organization of training in two and three shifts, as well as in a large service radius (up to 25 km., at individual schools - from 30 to 60 km.). In the 1948-1949 academic year, 46% of students of seven-year and secondary schools in the region were engaged in the second shift ^{[1, L. 38]}.

In the 1955-1956 academic year, 44.2% of all students of the region studied in the second shift, 530 students of four schools of Chernogorsk studied in the third shift (by the beginning of the next academic year, the problem of having a third shift was solved) ^{[2, L.75]}, by the 1963-1964 academic year, 57% of all students of the region continued to study in the second shift.

It should be noted that although the general education schools of the Khakass Autonomous Region were characterized by a shortage of educational places, the condition of school buildings was generally satisfactory, so in the mid-1950s 24 schools were housed in emergency buildings, 44 schools — in rented buildings, which did not exceed 17% of all schools in the region ^{[2, L.83-87]}. At the same time, the annual reports noted that the repair of schools was not carried out in full: in some schools of the region, the internal frames remained unglazed, the roofs were not blocked, the floors were not restored. ^{[3, L.77]}

An important factor influencing the implementation of the plan for universal education was the predominance of rural areas with sparsely populated areas in the region. The large service radius was largely explained by the need for a small number of training places in numerous logging points, settlements at gold mining enterprises and remote collective farms, where the construction of schools was unprofitable.

In this regard, since 1946, the transformation of the public education system has been taking place annually, two processes have been going on in parallel: construction of new schools and consolidation of schools by converting primary schools into incomplete secondary schools, incomplete secondary schools into secondary schools. The transformation of educational organizations led to an increase in the distance of remote settlements from schools, creating a need to increase the network of boarding schools. So, at the beginning of 1947, there were 47 boarding schools in the Khakass Autonomous Region with a total of 832 pupils ^{[4, L. 14]}, then at the end of the 1963-1964 academic year, the network of boarding schools included 77 institutions, in which 4062 students lived in boarding schools ^{[5, L. 2]}.

Despite the growth of the network and the increase in the number of places in boarding schools, the problems of shortage of soft and hard equipment, crowding of residents remained relevant. At the end of the 1940s, boarding schools in Askizsky, Saralinsky and Bogradsky districts were especially poorly maintained ^{[6, L. 2]}, in 1964 unsatisfactory living conditions were characteristic of boarding schools in Askizsky district, "where in the current academic year (1963-1964 – approx. the author) in some boarding schools, students slept two on beds" ^{[5, L. 2]}. There was an acute shortage of blankets, bed linen, tables and chairs.

Not all boarding schools belonged to schools, some of them were listed as enterprises, and therefore workers of collective farms and mines lived in the rooms next to the pupils. There were cases when cooking was carried out in the same room where the pupils slept and washed, due to the lack of utility rooms. ^{[2, l. 11-13]}

The problem of the weak material and technical base of boarding schools was aggravated by the abuse of leadership in terms of the illegal issuance of school property items to employees for free use ^{[7, l. 101]}.

In the 1950s and 1960s, media education was actively introduced as part of the general education of schoolchildren ^{[8, p. 102]} through the film classification of schools. The order for the Khakass Regional Department of Public Education noted that this work is well established in the schools of Abakan and Ust-Abakan district, but most schools were not provided with specially equipped film classes (with attached or built-in movie booths) ^{[9, L. 10]}. At the same time, with the increase in the number of film schools by 1964, 23 schools did not receive films ^{[10, l. 11-12]}.

The weak link of the material base of schools remained the equipment of classrooms. Physics, chemistry, and biology classrooms were poorly equipped, and there were not enough geographical and historical maps. Not all schools were equipped with special classrooms, by the 1952-1953 academic year only secondary schools of the region were fully staffed.

There were not enough methodological and handouts purchased and manufactured annually by teachers and students. This shortage is demonstrated by events such as contests for office equipment. So, in the regulations on the regional competition for the best participation of school students in the creation and equipment of chemical cabinets, organized in 1964, among the equipment for the manufacture of which points are awarded, in addition to tripods, existing models and layouts, there is a typical demonstration table, a fume hood. ^{[7, l.186-187]}

Most of the premises intended for labor and industrial training were not adequately equipped. Even in 1963, it was noted that home economics classes were not carried out in more than 20 schools due to the lack of classrooms and the necessary equipment ^{[11, l. 102]}.

Fully equipped rooms were special cases, often with devices and visual materials, classrooms were equipped with the efforts of teachers and students. Machine science classrooms are available only at individual secondary schools, in most schools the available equipment is placed in training workshops. ^{[11, l. 83]}

The automotive class of Ust-Abakan secondary school, the electrical engineering room of Abakan School No. 1, the machine science rooms of Montenegrin Secondary School No. 7, Bay Secondary School, schools No. 1 and No. 10 of Abakan, Askiz secondary school, which were equipped with parts of tractors, cars, combines and other agricultural machines, were exemplary in terms of equipment. ^{[5, l. 33]} Agro-chemical laboratories at Ochurskaya and Bortsovskaya secondary schools were fully equipped with equipment: chemical utensils, reagents for soil analysis, etc.

Inspections of the implementation of the practical part of the program in the schools of the region showed that labor training is not fully implemented at all levels of education: the lack of lumber, planes, and steel blanks for metalworking classes prevented the full development of the carpentry program in a number of schools in the region.

At the beginning of the 1958-1959 academic year, out of 407 schools in the region, only 110 primary schools had no school-based training and experimental plots, the total area of the plots was 212 hectares ^{[11, l. 66]}.

The school grounds were used both in educational activities (for conducting individual biology lessons, the basics of agricultural production), and for organizing group work (circles of young naturalists) and summer educational and industrial practice. Poultry farms, rabbit farms, greenhouses were organized on school grounds, including urban ones ^{[11, L. 67-68]}.

The expansion of the territory of the training and experimental sites was mainly due to the transfer of land by collective farms and state farms of the region to schools, with the assignment of inventory and agricultural units to the latter. According to the annual reports of the schools of the region, it can be established that sugar beet (157 ha), cabbage (365 ha), vegetable crops (785 ha), wheat and other crops (360 ha) were grown on the transferred plots by students. ^{[11, L. 69]}.

One of the problems of working on school sites was the lack of agricultural equipment. Locally, this problem was solved by manufacturing the necessary tools (rakes, shovels, boxes for seedlings) in school workshops at labor training lessons ^{[12, L. 52]}.

It follows from the reports and explanatory notes of the Khakass regional Planning Commission that the main reason for the untimeness and incompleteness of repair work and equipment of classrooms was the untimely receipt of funds to the regional and district (city) budgets.

It is impossible to imagine the educational process without textbooks and auxiliary educational materials that helped to build an educational trajectory in accordance with the curricula and decisions of the party and the Ministry of Education. Schools were insufficiently equipped with literature in the Khakass language and textbooks, the quality of which required revision and correction of the content ^{[13, L. 143-144]}.  With the constantly expanding library fund, there was a shortage of collections of problems in mathematics, textbooks for grades 1-4, textbooks on subjects of the natural science cycle ^{[13, L. 53]}.

In general, the problem of the shortage of textbooks (including textbooks on the Khakass language and literature) was overcome by the end of the 1950s – early 1960s. However, due to changes in curricula, curricula, the development of Khakass phonetics and grammar, the updating of the educational literature of schools occurred with delays: textbooks on the Khakass language and literature did not have time to publish in a timely manner ^{[14, L. 3]}, and the accumulation of textbooks in stores on other academic subjects of old editions prevented the renewal of the library fund ^{[12, L. 59]}.

In the first post-war years, the situation with stationery was extremely unfavorable: the provision of notebooks was carried out unevenly between urban districts and districts, in a number of institutions their stock was running out by the middle of the school year. So, in the 1949-1950 academic year in the schools of the Shirinsky district, children who were not provided with enough notebooks were forced to write on any available paper, and even on old newspapers ^{[6, L. 3]}. The acute problem of providing notebooks in connection with the change in the procurement scheme by the 1951-1952 academic year was solved.

Summarizing the above, we can draw several main conclusions regarding the dynamics of the material and technical base of the national schools of the Khakass Autonomous Region in 1946-1964.

Firstly, throughout the period under review, residential schools at educational organizations had an extremely low level of household provision for pupils, there was not enough educational places in public schools. These circumstances, combined with a large service radius, were one of the reasons for the systematic failure to fulfill the universal education plan.

Secondly, the problem of shortage of desks, textbooks and teaching aids, stationery, in general, was solved by the beginning of the 1953-1954 academic year, while the problem of insufficient equipment of classrooms remained relevant throughout the study period.

Thirdly, the level of the material and technical base of schools, especially the degree of equipment of specialized classrooms, did not correspond to the tasks formulated in the theses of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR on November 12, 1958 and enshrined in the Law on strengthening the connection of schools with Life and on the further development of the public education system in the USSR. The absence of production workshops in some schools and their partial equipment in others led to the formal teaching of labor training and industrial labor, or, in some cases, the exclusion of these subjects from the curriculum.