At the head of the Commissariat of Education is the commissar Lunats char sky, an intellectual and tolerant man. According to what I learned in an interview with his nearest assistant and in conversation with himself, the apparatus of the whole school system was destroyed during the war. During the Kerensky period several propositions were advanced, but they never came to the point of realization. When the bolsheviks came into power they found that the old system was entirely unfit for use. But the utmost difficulties stood in the road. Many old teachers sabotaged them. Thus, 70 professors went with Denekin in Odessa, in Ural 67 with Koltschak, because they were political opponents of the bolsheviks. The Koltschak army did everything in order to hinder the enlightenment of the people ; they destroyed the schools, burnt the school books, and drove the teachers away. During the czarist period the kindergartens were in private hands. When the bolsheviks came into power they nationalized these. A mother is supported for three months after child birth by the state. The child can be sent to a Home for Children, to remain there up to its third year. From the third to the seventeenth year the children are under the supervision of the Commissariat of Education and get their maintenance from the schools. At present there are about 3,620 children's homes after the Froebel system for children of 3-6 or 7 years. In these institutions it is principally war orphans that are taken up, and if there is room to spare, proletarian children, and, last of all, children of the bourgeoisie. In Moscow there are about 180 such institutes. In the whole of Russia there are, so far, (1920), 204,917 children in these institutes.
In the 43 gouvernements which are under consideration here, there are 7 million children of school age, so that only an insignificant part has so far been taken charge of by the school. Of teachers there are 11,234. Among them are, naturally, all sorts of teachers. In newly established seminaries young people of 17 years and up are given instruction from 6 weeks up to 3 years, in order to serve as teachers.
For specially refractory children separate children's homes have been established. The children are examined in regard to their natural tendencies, and it is also sought to ascertain whethei the child is born with inherited criminal tendencies. If it shows signs of bad tendencies it is put in a bureau of psychic observation. There are also children still in the prisons. But it sought to remove them from the prisons as far as possible. Persons below 17 years of age are counted as children.
In the public schools one teacher had to instruct 40 childrei in czarist times, but it is now tried to reduce the number to 25, but so far they have not come down any further than 32. The school period was formerly 2-4 years, but now it is desired raise it from 4 to 9 years.
From 8 to 12 years children shall go to the middle school, where they are given elementary instruction. In regard to the new methods of teaching we were told that in the czarist schools the connection between geography and mathematics on the on< side, and history on the other, was never taught. It is now desired to give the children such an education that they will get a general view of the economic structure of society in the Marxian sense. It is attempted to introduce the intuitive method of instruction on a grand scale. By means of technical apparatus, for instance, a match box, the children shall be taught mathematics, chemistry and physics. In the 43 gouvernements of Soviet Russia there are about 3,600 public elementary schools with 29,000 teachers and
470,000 pupils. But there is a total of 6,801,000 children of school age, so that the largest part of the children do not go to school. This has its cause in several circumstances. 1) There are not sufficient schools. 2) There is not sufficient school equipment. 3) Many parents purposely neglect to send their children to school, because many schools are demoralized. Many children are speculating, and are then picked up and sent to institutions for the bringing up of children.