POLYTECHNISATION 61
Usually it equips the workshop, and sometimes it provides the
instructor. In one school in Kharkov the factory to which it was
attached had detailed a highly qualified engineer, who was also
an educationist, to supervise the polytechnical work, to see that
it was carried on as education and not as training for a trade. He
spent several hours daily at the school. The workshops in this
school were extraordinarily well equipped. There was a car-
penter's shop, which was to be still further improved hy an
electric saw, a locksmith's shop, an engineer's shop, with very
good lathes, and an electric forge. All this was for children
between the ages of twelve and fifteen, who would not necessarily
go into a workshop when they had finished this school. The
workshop and its equipment depend on the prosperity of the
factory to which the school is attached. In a Tatar school in
Moscow, which I visited in 1932, the workshop was very poorly
equipped because the factory to which it was attached was on
low-grade production. The Director and the school council were
then making a drive for improvement, and I have no doubt that
they have been successful.
The factory elects its representative to sit on the school
council. Very often when visitors are expected in the school, he
will be there to add his welcome. Where the need exists, the
factory will supply clothes for the schoolchildren. It may
contribute to school meals, and it will help to send the poorer
ones to summer camps. Factory workers can, and do, visit the
school, whenever they wish. On the school's side, excursions are
organised to the factory to study the workers' conditions, the
organisation of industrial planning, and the actual industrial
processes. The children will sometimes visit the factory in its
lunch-hour, and produce a " Living Newspaper" of recent
events. The older children will help generally with the cultural
life of the factory. The school is always conscious that it is united
with the factory and the factory with the school.
The scope and meaning of polytechnisation may best be gireii
in the words of a textbook, published by Narkompros m
The actual amount of knowledge for each ye^ has