In July 2020, the Government of India introduced the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The NEP is a tool to privatise and saffronise education as elaborated in the previous articles. It aims to make education inaccessible for the majority of the population. While this government is denying the right to education and making new rules to deprive people of higher education, let’s look back at the experience in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which became the first nation in the world to offer universal education.
Eradication of illiteracy:
Before the October revolution of 1917 in Tsarist Russia around 80 percent of the population between the ages of 9 and 50 was illiterate. Especially in central Asian regions of Russia literacy was practically nil (eg.,Tajiks 0.5 percent, Kirghiz 0.6 percent). Discussing this situation Lenin wrote: “there is no other country in Europe so barbarous in which the masses are robbed to such an extent of education, light, and knowledge . . . No other country in Europe has remained in this condition; Russia is the exception.” He reasoned that without equality in education there could be neither genuine equality nor genuine democracy. To achieve this genuine democracy he outlined a number of aims, not only in the social, political, and economic but also in the educational fields.
The October Revolution brought opportunities for revolutionary reconstruction of education. Problems of great historical importance had to be solved, and the educational monopoly of the upper classes had to be broken. The outlook of erstwhile capitalist nations towards universal education is summed up by the Bishop of London: “It is safest for both the Government and the religion of the country to let the lower classes remain in the state of ignorance in which nature has originally placed them”. For the new nation, the construction of socialism didn’t mean only the building of huge factories and grain mills. People must grow in mind and heart to build a nation. In the early years, the young Soviet Republic was beleaguered on all sides by foreign armies and a large part of its territory was occupied by the enemy, but education was the main focus of the new republic.
Lenin focused his attention on universal education immediately after the workers had seized political power. The decree “On the setting up of a State Commission for Education”, published on November 22, 1917, defined the main principles underlying the structure of the educational system and its democratic management. Under the new order, research institutes, libraries, publishing houses, newspapers and periodicals, museums, picture galleries, theatres, conservatoires, the radio, etc., were all enlisted to help schools of all levels in the task of spreading knowledge. The Red Army became a vehicle for imparting education. At the third All-Russia Congress of the Soviets, on January 31, 1918, Lenin declared that all scientific and technological achievements would become the property of the people and be placed at their service. In that year Nadezhda Krupskaya became the Commissar for Adult Education. She played a leading role in the spread of education and literacy in USSR.
On December 26, 1919, the Soviet government passed the decree on the elimination of illiteracy in the 8 to 50 age group, and the great educational and cultural drive began. The Soviet government saw the eradication of illiteracy as a priority for Soviet education since ‘economically and culturally we can develop no further without dispelling the darkness of illiteracy’. “Workers faculties” were organized early in 1919 to help workers, peasants, and soldiers whose secondary education was incomplete to join higher educational establishments. 1920 saw the creation of the all-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Eradication of Illiteracy, whose role was to concert the efforts of all organizations concerned with literacy; in 1923 a voluntary organization called ‘Down With Illiteracy!’ was formed. The result was that between 1920 and 1940 some 60 million adults were taught to read and write.
Primary-school enrolment in 1929-30 was double that of 1914-15. In the national republics (in Central Asia, Transcaucasia, etc.) there were three to four times as many primary-school pupils as before the Revolution. Between 1917 and 1928, the construction of 7,780 new primary and secondary schools was completed. Many universities were founded. In 1914, Russia’s student population was 127,000 whereas, in 1968/69, 4,470,000 students attended the country’s higher educational establishments. Considerable changes were made in the geographical distribution of academic institutions. On the eve of the Second World War, there were 146, including 46 in the Transcaucasian Republics, 47 in the Central Asian Republics, and 20 in Kazakhstan. Many higher education establishments were opened in Siberia. In the 1960s there was not a single Republic, territorial or regional centre without at least one of the country’s 794 institutions of higher learning. The Soviet student population included representatives of practically all the 100 different nationalities living in the USSR. In essence, post revolution Russia showed the world what feats can be achieved in a socialist system.
References :
- The UNESCO Courier (July 1970)
- Fifty Years of Soviet Education – Nigel Grant
- The New Schools of New Russia – Lucy L. W. Wilson
- Education in Russia: The evolution of theory and practice – Natalia Kuznetsova and Irina Peaucelle
- On Education – Nadezhda Krupskaya
