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The USSR tried and rejected progressive education

'Tis education forms the common mind
Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined
- Alexander Pope

From the book "Bending the Twig: The Revolution in Education and Its Effect on Our Children"
https://archive.org/details/bendingtwigrevol00ruddrich

Few Americans realize that Progressive Education was given a thorough tryout in Soviet Russia. When the Bolsheviks under Lenin destroyed the Kerensky government in November, 1917, they believed that a similar revolution was imminent in other countries and they sought to expedite it by creating in Russia a Communist model for the world. They proceeded to inaugurate a series of drastic reforms and changes in the traditional life of the Russian people. A veritable orgy of change followed in all segments of their society from education to marriage. Many of these "reforms" were not only unnecessary but proved to be harmful to the Communist cause.

Anything new or extreme was tried, provided it was a break with the traditional. The Communist leaders had heard of the Progressive Education system in America and in 1918 they imported its program almost intact.*


* "The 'new' schools in Russia were organized and conducted after the model laid out by John Dewey in Chicago many years earlier. . . . Indoctrination in the practice of Communism was included as direct instruction." Dr. John Almack, San Francisco Examiner, October 12, 1942.


A review for this book can be found in The Freeman, from 1958.
https://www.unz.org/Pub/RuddAugustin-1957


 
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