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SOVIET PSYCHOLOGY

SOVIET
PSYCHOLOGY

A Symposium

With a Foreword by
Ralph B. Winn

PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY
New York

Library of Congress Catalogue Card No. 61-12625

Published by arrangement with Volk und Wissen
Volkseigener Verlag, Berlin, East Germany.

Printed in the United States of America.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Ralph B. Winn 1

Introduction

Hans Hiebsch 5

The Development of Soviet Psychology

A. A. Smirnov 11

The Present Tasks of Soviet Psychology

A.N. Leontiev 31

Heredity and the Materialist Theory

N. F. Posnanski 49

The Intellectual Development of the Child

A.N. Leontiev 55

A. The Steps of the Child's
Intellectual Development

B. The Mental Development of Children
in the Kindergarten Age

C. The Early School-Age Child

Problems of the Child's Personality Formation

G. S. Kostiuk 79

Investigation of Pupil Personality

A. L. Shnirman 103

SOVIET PSYCHOLOGY

FOREWORD

Ralph B. Winn

During the last few years the American educators have
developed a considerable interest in the Soviet system of
education. The reason for that is that the Russians are
fast catching up with us in atomic physics, in the produc-
tion of missiles, and in many other aspects of technology.
They are already graduating considerably more engineers
annually than our universities have ever graduated in
a single year. We are still ahead, on the whole, but the
margin of difference is steadily shrinking, and that means
a threat of bitter competition on the level of equality in
science, industry, international trade, and world politics.

For the first time in many years, our responsible scholars
look critically at our methods, techniques and achieve-
ments in education. Most of us are worried about our
shortage of teachers, from kindergarten to the graduate
school— the shortage which is apparently non-existent be-
hind the iron curtain. We find that in many high schools
and colleges the traditional glamor of baseball and foot-
ball exists at the expense of the regular studies. We ac-
knowledge here and there that our students' motivation
for education leaves much to be desired, that it is selfishly
misdirected.

Some basic changes appear to be unavoidable. Our
prominent educators already suggest numerous reformis
in the educational procedures and curriculums. They
agree on the whole that training in science and mathe-
matics must be vastly improved. But the majority of the
people, including our teachers, students and their par-
ents, do not yet react at all. In their opinion, educational
reforms, if needed, can wait. They have, indeed, other
headaches to worry about, such as the current recession,
segregation and desegregation, the new administration
in Washington, international tensions and, of course, all
kinds of personal problems. In a way, this is perfectly
natural: our nation is prosperous, individualistic and
freedom-loving.

But some well-informed persons say: "It may be later
than you thinkl" The people ought to know that our
future is no longer as secure as our past since the begin-
ning of the century. They ought to realize that, for some
reasons, admiration for the American way of life is being
seriously questioned abroad. And at the root of all these
recent developments lies our nineteenth-century school
organization. Under these conditions, should we not ask
and answer the simple question: Can we really afiEord to
close our eyes to certain deficiencies of our educational
habits, policies and patterns or, for that matter, to the
shifting balance of power throughout the world?

If the people of this nation prefer to wait with educa-
tional reforms, the educated people themselves have a
certain obligation of leadership. There is, no doubt, time
enough to get thoroughly acquainted with the situation,
to examine carefully our educational merits and demerits
—and also what can be learned from other peoples, in-
cluding the Russians. There is certainly no crime in

learning. Indeed, it pays to know the truth wherever it is
to be found. Even the truth which we happen to dislike
is, after all, more valuable than the falsity we like.

Much can be learned— without any obligation to imi-
tate—from the pages that follow, written (apart from the
Introduction) by five prominent educators of the Soviet
Union. The material is, to be sure, confined to one aspect
only of the problem, namely, to the function of psy-
chology in the growth and learning of children, par-
ticularly, while they attend school.

There are certain basic differences to be noted between
the ways of American psychology and those of Soviet psy-
chology, derived, no doubt, from the history of each
nation and from respective philosophies of life. For in-
stance, we have been greatly influenced by the behaviorist
and psychoanalytic schools of thought, whereas the Rus-
sians will have nothing to do with them. They follow
the lines of dialectical materialism. It is also somewhat
surprising to discover that the Russian psychologists are
completely unable to appreciate the value of our intelli-
gence, aptitude and achievement tests. But that is their
loss.

If we are willing to disregard some of these differences,
much in the writing below becomes quite interesting and
informative. It is instructive to learn, for instance, that
the recent habit of our professional psychologists to shun
the use of such familiar words as "consciousness," "mind,"
and even "experience" has not affected the Soviet psy-
chologists at all. But the average American reader will
hardly notice this peculiarity because, unlike our learned
psychologists, he finds the above-mentioned words quite
indispensable in thought and speech.

There are many wonderful passages in this book which

can be read without thinking of their foreign origin, for
instance, the quite illuminating pages on "The Mental
Development of Children of the Kindergarten Age" and
"The Early School- Age Child" (both in A. N. Leontiev's
Intellectual Development of the Child) .

But most interesting of all is the idea going through
the entire series of articles— something to be taken very
seriously— that one of the principal tasks of the school,
from its beginning, is to locate and promote among
children talent of any creative type, for it is never too
early to encourage future scientists, inventors, artists,
writers, or plain workers to do their best and to learn
and think unselfishly.

INTRODUCTION

Hans Hiebsch

The history of Soviet psychology has three distinct
stages. The first begins with the October Revolution and
ends in 1936. Its main characteristic was the struggle of
the dictatorship of the proletariat against the tough and
bitter resistance of the ideological bastions of the bour-
geoisie. The latter maintained many positions, even after
the victory of the proletariat was assured. Its main weapon
in psychology and pedagogy was the so-called "paedology,"
about which something needs to be said.

It is obvious that a science like psychology, whose sub-
ject-matter is human consciousness, will influence, above
all, those human activities which are concerned with the
formation and creation of that consciousness, i.e., in
education and its science, called pedagogy. Psychology is
a science related to pedagogy and deals with a number of
questions directly and indirectly concerned with educa-
tion and instruction. Therefore, the psychology of child-
hood and youth was developed at the end of the 19th
and the beginning of the 20th century as a separate dis-
cipline. It was bom in the age of class war and imperi-
alism, and bore from the very beginning the seed of
fruitlessness, which must not be overlooked, even if one re-

spects the rich experiences which it gathered. Its idealistic
and metaphysical base precluded its development into a
progressive and transforming science. The child psy-
chology of the turn of the century and its philosophical
and methodological base were turned, as early as 1896,
into a special "science of the child," or paedology, founded
by Chrisman under sponsorship of Wilhelm Rein. Paedo-
logy brewed together the facts of psychology, biology,
physiology, etc. into a "science."

Paedology has this in common with the many different
tendencies of bourgeois child psychology, that it views
consciousness as independent from matter and as some-
thing primary, which develops, both in its phylogenesis
and ontogenesis, "according to the law which started it
on its course." The paedologists hold that the driving
force of this development is either "heredity" or "environ-
ment" or a combination of both. But, in any case, these
driving forces predetermine psychic development unal-
terably and fatalistically. The most important practical
method of paedology is the test, which puts down, in each
case, the stage of development reached and considered
unalterable and necessary. Just as the child looks in the
"snapshot" of the test, so it must look through the action
of its heredity, or of the mechanical effect of its environ-
ment. It is a "hopeless diagnosis," a fruitless undertaking
which, under capitalism, must inevitably lead to pessi-
mism. For all that, paedology placed the child in the
center of things by a romanticizing and sentimentalizing
exaggeration of the love of the child, which it inherited
from the bourgeois pedagogues. "The child" was the sun
round which everything had to turn; everything had to
start from "the child." The objective social tendencies of
this entire conception are not dealt with here in any

detail.

In the twenties, bourgeois paedology with its "peda-
gogical conclusions" found its way into the Soviet Union,
and so did its practical consequences. The pupils were
tested, sorted and differentiated. Special schools of all
kinds were created for them, and the general standard
of Soviet schools fell. . . .

In this first stage, paedology dominated almost com-
pletely the practice of psychology in the Soviet Union.
And yet it was then that its defeat was prepared by the
truly scientific investigations of I. P. Pavlov and the
practical work of the best Soviet teachers. The hard con-
ditions of ideological class warfare forged the great in-
novator of Soviet pedagogy, and therefore also of Soviet
psychology, Anton Semyonovich Makarenko. His prac-
tical work, derived from the work of Socialist construc-
tion and driven by the consciousness of a fighting and
unbending Communist, overcame in the twenties the
paedological practices and the "theory" on which they
were based. However, the theoreticians of the educational
sciences were not yet able to draw from his victory the
necessary conclusions. It was the Central Committee
(C.C.) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU) which, after thorough discussions and investiga-
tions, drew these conclusions in its historical resolution
of July 4, 1936 "On the paedological distortions in the
system of the People's Commissariat for Education." This
resolution marks the end of the first stage of the develop-
ment of Soviet psychology.

In this resolution, the C.C. of the CPSU shows the
practical consequences of the use of paedological work,
theory and methods in Soviet schools: "An inflation of
the system of special schools" for all kinds of different

categories of difficult, retarded and defective children,
in which "talented and gifted children were educated by
the side of defective ones," which were selected "by the
paedologists without any good reason on the basis of
pseudo-scientific theories." The paedological method of
differentiating the children "consisted essentially in
pseudo-scientific experiments and the carrying out of
innumerable investigations of pupils and parents in the
form of senseless and harmful tests, i.e. in experiments
which the party had condemned long ago."

Therefore, the C.C. of the CPSU condemned the theory
and practice of the present-day so-called "paedology." It
"is of the opinion that both theory and practice of so-
called paedology rest on pseudo-scientific, un-Marxist as-
sumptions . . . that such a theory could be formed only by
an uncritical application in Soviet pedagogy of views and
principles of unscientific bourgeois paedology, which has
made it its task to prove, on the one hand, the special
aptitudes and special rights to existence of the exploiting
classes and of the "higher races" and, on the other hand,
the physical and intellectual inferiority of the working
classes and the "lower races," in order to uphold the rule
of the exploiting class."

As a result of this resolution, the theory and practice
of paedology were completely abolished in the Soviet
Union.

The second stage, from 1936 to 1948, is characterized by
the revi-val and more intensive utilization of the materi-
alist traditions of the great Russian revolutionary demo-
crats, philosophers and critics like Herzen, Belinsky, and
Chernyshevsky. Moreover, it was then that the investiga-
tions of I. P. Pavlov, whose spiritual father had been the
great 19th century Russian materialist physiologist Seche-

nov, became more and more influential. But the most
important characteristic of this stage was intensive study
of Marxism-Leninism by the scientists concerned.

The victory of T. D. Lysenko's biology in August 1948
marks the end of the second stage and the beginning of the
third, in which Soviet psychology now finds itself. It
studies the teachings of Marx and Engels, and Lenin; it
uses dialectical materialism as its foundation; it practices
criticism and self-criticism; it fights against bourgeois
survivals and for the proletariat; it is a true science and
on its way towards fulfilling Makarenko's motto: "Man
must be changed "

THE DEVELOPMENT OF
SOVIET PSYCHOLOGY

A. A. Smirnov

Psychology enjoys a respected and influential position
in the Soviet Union. Men are the most valuable of all
the fruits of this earth. Therefore, Soviet construction
cares for men and devotes special attention to human
personality. The relations between Soviet people are
governed by socialist humanism. The psychic life and
the psychic properties of human personality are the spe-
cial concern of every Soviet citizen and one of the most
important subjects of scientific study.

Soviet psychology is of decisive importance in solving
problems of the education and instruction of the rising
generation. Ushinsky, an outstanding Russian educationist
and psychologist of the mid-1 9th century, said that "to
be able to educate man in every way one must sufficiently
know him in every way." The knowledge of the laws of
the child's mental life and of its development is an indis-
pensable condition for the solution of all pedagogical
and didactical problems that are apt to arise. In this
respect, Soviet psychology is a necessary constituent of
the pedagogical sciences and has an important place in

their system.

The scientific theses worked out by Soviet psychology
play an important part in developing the theory of So-
viet pedagogy and the daily practice of Soviet educa-
tion. They are widely taken into account in working
out teaching plans and school programs, preparing text-
books, perfecting teaching methods, and carrying out the
educational work of schools. Among the proofs of the
Avide recognition which the science of psychology enjoys
in the Soviet Union are the following: the scientific work
carried on with ojeat visror; the existence of a number
of important institutions for psychological investigation,
and the scientific work of the numerous chairs of psy-
chology in Soviet universities. Particularly broad and
many-sided is the work of the Moscow Psychological In-
stitute of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences; of the
team led in Leningrad by Professor Ananiev; of the
Ukrainian Psychological Institute under Professor Kos-
tiuk; of the Georgian Psychological Institute under Us-
nadze; and of the Philosophical Institute of the Acade-
my of Sciences of the USSR under Professor Rubin-
stein.

Psychology plays a very important part in the Soviet
system of training the teachers. There are psychology
courses in the curricula of all the Pedagogical Institutes
and the Faculties of Humanities of all the universities.
Special attention is paid to the practical psychological
training of student-teachers. All these students take part
in the practical psychological work of the school to which
they are attached, during which they study individual
pupils and their independent work, or the class collec-
tive as a whole, and analyze the content, methods and
organization of the instruction hours from psychological

points of view. These practical exercises are connected
with the entire pedagogical work of the school, namely
with the elaboration and execution of concrete peda-
gogical measures applied to pupils who are the subjects
of the special study.

The training of psychologists is entrusted to special
psychology departments which are part of several univer-
sities. Particular attention is devoted to the training of
young scientists in the field of psychology, the so-called
"aspirants." These are young people who received their
higher education and proved their interest and aptitude
for independent scientific work. They now receive an
additional three years' training in psychology, including
an acquaintance with the nature of scientific investiga-
tion.

Another proof of the importance of psychology in the
Soviet Union is its teaching in secondary schools. It is
here a subject which plays a specially important part
in the educational work of the school. It acquaints the
pupils of the upper classes of the school with the laws
of psychology, and thus fosters in them the development
of the materialist world view, an understanding of the
mental life of others, the formation of valuable person-
ality traits and the organization of their own independent
schoolwork. The pupils show, in turn, great interest in
the psychology classes; their practical value is obvious to
them.

What are the theoretical bases of Soviet psychology?
It is founded, first of all, on . . . the teaching of dialec-
tical materialism. Its most important task is to develop
the fundamental theses of that teaching in the sphere
of man's experience. The history of psychology, like that,
of other sciences, is the history of the conflict between

materialism and idealism. All progressive thinkers were
adherents of the materialist theory, while idealism al-
ways provided a foundation of reactionary views. It not
only hampered the progress of sciences, but was an
obstacle to their very formation. We define idealism as
all philosophical theories according to which the psychic
factor is something autonomous and independent of mat-
ter; i.e., it is not a special property of matter, nor is it
a product of the brain. We define materialism, on the
contrary, as all the theories which start from the assump-
tion that the psychic factor has no independent existence,
but is only a property of matter and is formed in the
long process of its development. Since idealism accepted
the psychic factor as independent, it attempted to explain
the entire mental life from out of itself, from the laws
of the psyche. In doing this, it ignored the most impor-
tant fact which is offered by our knowledge of the de-
pendence of experience on the nervous system and the
outside world: namely, that consciousness is itself only
a property of matter, a product of the brain, and that
it develops as a result of the action of an objective
reality which is outside us and independent of us.

Idealism could not and would not understand that
consciousness is merely a reflection, an image in us of
the real world. It could or would not understand that
the social relations between men are the most important
among the factors of objective reality that influence us,
and that these relations are determined by the material
living conditions of the society. It also ignored the fact
that these relations are shaped quite differently in dif-
ferent historical eras, depending in each case on the
material living conditions of the society in question.
Idealism could or would not see the class character of

consciousness in a class society, the dependence of the
mental life of men on the class of each individual and
on whether he belongs to the ruling or the exploited
class.

Nor could the pre-Marxist, mechanistic materialism
offer an adequate explanation of man's experience. This
materialism has the characteristic trait of trying to ex-
plain the psychic processes and consciousness by purely
physiological or even physical and chemical processes. It
saw the qualitative peculiarity of the psychic processes
not as a special property of highly developed matter,
created during its development. Neither mechanistic ma-
terialism nor idealism managed to understand the de-
pendence of consciousness on the growth of man's social
life, on his way of living and on his class affiliation.
Mechanistic materialism had no understanding of the
active role of consciousness of progressive ideas in chang-
ing reality. This materialism finally mechanized man's
entire life and turned him into an automaton.

The so-called vulgar materialism of Biichner, Vogt
and Moleschott was particularly far removed from a po-
sitive and scientific understanding of psychic life. Con-
temporary mechanistic theories are also quite incapable
of a correct understanding of man's mental life. This is
especially true of American behaviorism, which tries to
replace psychology, the science of consciousness, by a
psychology conceived as a science of behavior; the latter
being understood as the sum of mechanically produced
reactions. Applied to instruction and education, these
theories lead to a denial of the need of a conscious ac-
quisition of knowledge and skills and also of a con-
scious discipline and activity for the child. Instruction
and education thus become mere drill or mechanical

training— which is the position of Thorndike and some
other behaviorists. The mechanists deny with particular
obstinacy the need of consciousness in the instruction
and education of the youngest children and of pupils of
elementary schools. They thus become the champions of
reactionary class interests, for the elementary school is
a mass school, accessible to all the strata of the popu-
lation, while the higher levels of education are accessible
only to the children of the rich. The behaviorists thus
rob the children of the poor of the possibility to learn
consciously, and expose them only to an education that
is more or less mechanistic. . . . This reduces the future
workers to mere robots.

Only dialectical materialism has a correct conception
of the nature of experience. It proved that mental life
is a special property of highly organized matter, which
consists in representing the material world. It alone
offered the proof of the social conditioning of human
consciousness and of its dependence on social relations
which are, in their turn, determined by the material
living conditions of each society. It alone emphasized
the historical nature of consciousness and revealed the
class character of consciousness in a class society. It alone
has the correct idea of the effective role of conscious-
ness and of the importance of progressive ideas in the
life of society.

What are the chief problems that occupy Soviet psy-
chology? The problem of personality has a very impor-
tant position in its system. The aim of the investigations
of Soviet psychologists is, after all, man in concrete, the
living human personality. The chief task of Soviet psy-
chology is to uncover the mental properties of man and
the laws of his mental development. How does Soviet

psychology solve this problem? It decisively rejects all
theories which argue that man's personality and ex-
perience are determined by biological, natural drives.
Such a conception assumes the immutability, i.e., "eter-
nity" of the basic psychic qualities of a person. How-
ever, history, and especially the practice of socialist con-
struction, have taught us that the mental qualities of
men are very changeable. The years since the Revolu-
tion have wrought radical changes in the personality
qualities of Soviet people. Individualism has yielded to
collectivism and new capacities for patriotism and or-
ganization have been revealed. It is absolutely false to
claim, as the personality theory of depth psychology
does, that the influence of social and historical condi-
tions operates through an upper part of human per-
sonality, which is opposed by a lower part, consisting
of natural drives. Actually, the social influences embrace
the entire personality of man and determine from the
beginning his whole mental life. Man even satisfies his
organic needs depending on the social influence to which
he is subjected. This is the essential difference between
man and animal: the experience of animals is deter-
mined by biological factors; that of man by social and
historical conditions of life. The individualistic strivings,
which depth psychology assumes to be natural and in-
born drives, are viewed by Soviet psychology as in no
way inborn but formed under the influence of certain
definite social conditions.

But what are these conditions? The answer to these
questions must start from the following thesis: Human
society is, at any stage of its development, a class so-
ciety. In such a society, man always belongs to a certain
class and lives under conditions that are characteristic

of his class. The influences to which he is subjected,
always emanate from a certain class; man's mental life
in a class society therefore has a class character.

In a capitalist society, the ruling class has pronounced
individualistic strivings and interests. And so a decidedly
individualistic psychology is typical of it. This psycho-
logy arises from economic conditions characterized by
private property. The bourgeoisie tries to explain its
individualistic and egotistic strivings as the unchange-
able and basic qualities of human nature. But the only
reason for this explanation is to justify the capitalistic
order and to prove that this order corresponds to the
allegedly innate egotistic strivings of man. Actually, the
capitalistic order does not arise from these allegedly
innate economic strivings of man. The real situation is
rather the reverse: the individualistic psychology of man
arises from the capitalistic order and, wherever that or-
der is liquidated, the egotistic strivings disappear in the
end.

In a socialist society, the personal strivings of man
are not opposed to the interests of society, but agree
with them. Personal interests are therefore not repressed
in such a society but, on the contrary, reach their full
expression and development here, because they fully
correspond to the interest of society. One fact at least
can be used as an example. The motivation of the choice
of vocation by Soviet youth is, naturally, personal since
everyone chooses the vocation that suits him. There
exist, in this respect, no restrictions in our country.
However, Soviet youth is also guided in its choice of
vocation by the idea of being of the best possible use
to its country, and this social motivation is essential for
our young people. Motives like desire for material se-

curity or a "high" social position are totally absent in
them. They know that, in their country, every vocation
gives material security, and can lead to high honors and
a position of dignity. The honorable title of "Hero of
the Socialist Fatherland" is granted to men and women
of all vocations who achieve successes in their chosen
type of work. This harmony of personal and social in-
terests, and their very unity, proves how wrong the theo-
ries are which assure us that social influence can mani-
fest itself only as the suppression of the personal strivings
of man.

Among such theories is, in addition to some tenden-
cies of depth psychology, the theory of Freud. What we
have already said fully justifies us in rejecting theories
based on certain "depth strata" of personality. Their in-
acceptability is also justified by the fact that they con-
sider biological needs or the "subconscious," and not
reason and consciousness, to be the determining factors
of human personality. Consciousness is regarded by them
as merely an instrument for the satisfaction of these
needs. But consciousness is actually the highest form of
psychic life and the highest stage of its development.
Man is not characterized by the dominion of dark forces
of the instincts or of the subconscious, but rather by
the dominion of his reason which reflects the world
clearly and correctly. We therefore consider the high-
est aim of education to be the development of conscious-
ness and the placing of the entire behavior under the
rule of consciousness. Instincts and the subconscious push
man back, reason leads him forward. Whoever wants
to fight for progressive ideas, for a bright future of
mankind, must reject the theories which hold that the
psychic foundation of man consists of instinctive, in-

born or unconscious strivings. All attempts to uphold
such theories and to justify the conditioning of man
by instinctive and unconscious strivings, are in the service
of reaction. It is not for nothing that fascism has made
much use of such theories.

The problem of aptitude occupies in the Soviet Union
a special position among the problems of the psychology
of personality. How has Soviet psychology solved this
problem? The great unfolding of talents among the
Soviet people has proved for all time the falsity of the
reactionary "theory" of the special aptitudes of the ex-
ploiting classes and of the so-called "higher" races. It
also confirmed the truth of Lenin's words on the or-
ganizational talents slumbering in the people: "There
is a lot of organizational talent among the people, i.e.
the workers and the working peasants. But they are
repressed, corrupted and eliminated by the thousands
under capitalism, and, we do not know yet how to find
them, encourage them and put them on their feet.
(Author's note: Lenin said this in the first years of So-
viet rule.) But we shall learn to do it, when we set out
to learn with the full revolutionary enthusiasm, with-
out which there can be no victorious revolution." These
words of Lenin must, of course, be understood to refer
not only to organizational talents but to all kinds of
talent. The practice of Socialist construction in the So-
viet Union has proved sufficiently the truth of these
words. It has thus refuted all lying and unscientific
theories which attempt to prove the right to existence
and the special privileges of the exploiting classes and
the "higher" races. It also refutes all theories of the
mental and intellectual inferiority of the working classes
and the "lower" races. It has been proved that the

working masses of the Soviet Union, and in particular
the peoples retarded by the Tsarist and capitalist yoke,
can be raised to a high cultural level by the changing
of their social and economic living conditions.

Soviet psychology rejects the assumption of directly
inborn abilities. Only certain anatomical and physio-
logical characteristics of the organism, and especially
of the nervous system, can be inborn in this sense. Abili-
ties are always the product of a development which takes
place under certain definite social conditions, under
certain quite concrete forms of human activity and in
the course of a long process of instruction and educa-
tion. The peculiarities of the nervous system are al-
ways explicable in several different ways. Given the same
starting conditions, the result of the development, as
expressed in the abilities achieved, will be quite dif-
ferent, corresponding to the differing conditions and
forms of education and instruction.

Soviet psychology assumes that the successful execu-
tion of any ability is based on all kinds of combina-
tions of individual abilities. The loss of any special
ability can never be an obstacle to achieving outstand-
ing success in any sphere, for highly developed abilities
can sucessfully replace other and less well developed
ones. This possibility of a mutual compensation of abili-
ties is extraordinarily great. Soviet psychology rejects
the pseudo-scientific pretension to measure ability or
talent in any form and considers its main tasks to be
the analysis of qualitative characteristics of aptitude and
the discovery of methods for the successful develop-
ment of abilities. This is why we Soviet psychologists
investigate abilities of all kinds. Our investigations have
already opened up very rich possibilities of developing

abilities through teaching and educational influences.

Why does Soviet psychology reject the quantitative
measurement of abilities and, in particular, the method
of tests which is so widely applied by American psy-
chologists? It rejects this method because it is founded
on a fatalistic theory of aptitudes which considers human
abilities predetermined through heredity and unchange-
able by environment. In this way, it denies the existing
rich possibilities of development. This kind of theory
assumes that it is possible, by measuring abilities at a
certain time, to determine the suitability of men for
future forms of activity. The tests are given a prog-
nostic value which they actually do not possess. It can-
not be determined, without any further ado, from the
way in which a man's abilities express themselves at
any given time, how they will behave in the future.
The possibility of their development is, in any case,
extraordinarily great and it must be, moreover, remem-
bered that abilities develop during and with the activi-
ties of man. They are even, to an important extent,
the result of the activity for which they are required
and not the assumption or condition of the successful
execution of such an activity. When an activity is exe-
cuted, the abilities required for it develop in man. The
influence of instruction and education plays a most
important part in this respect. This is why the most
important task of the teacher is to develop the abilities
of his pupils. The fatalistic theories, on which the test
method is based, deprive him of this task. When we
pass, on the basis of tests, a judgment that is essen-
tially fatalistic, we deprive the teacher of the possibility
to explore all possible ways and methods of developing
the abilities of his pupils.

The tests have neither a prognostic nor a diagnos-
tic value. They are not even capable of giving a true
characterization of the abilities that happen to be ac-
tually present at the moment of testing. Why do they
fail to do so? The successful performance of an ac-
tivity, the solution of a problem, do not depend on
abilities alone. They also depend on the underlying
motivation, on what drives us towards the solution of
the problem. A simple fact will explain what we mean.
An investigation proved that the capacity of memoriza-
tion of children of pre-school age is influenced by moti-
vation. The following experiments were made. In the
first case, the children were asked to memorize certain
words in the course of a play period. The children
played at "kindergarten." One child took over the job
of buying in a store certain things required by the
kindergarten. In the second case, the children were
asked to memorize the same words not in the course
of a play period, but of an ordinary experiment, con-
ducted in the way common to such experiments. The
result was that the children memorized twice as many
words in the first case as in the second. Why? Because
the motives of memorization were not the same.

The tests do not take into account the motives of
human actions. Moreover, the motives of the children
submitted to a test can be quite varied. Therefore, the
results of the tests can never be quite correct, not because
of differing abilities of the children, but merely because
the children have quite different relations to the solu-
tion of the problems presented to them in the test.

The psychology of bourgeois countries has developed
complicated procedures to help determine the diagnostic
value of tests. It uses for the purpose the statistics of

variations and obtains a quantitative determination of
the correlation between the results of the investigation
and successfully performed action. The authors of the
tests seem to be satisfied if the limit of error is low.

But Soviet psychology can never be satisfied with such
a solution. It invokes the principles of humanism and
therefore cannot accept even rare errors. After all, be-
hind every error there is a living human being, a liv-
ing child and his fate. This is by no means a matter
of no consequence to a Soviet psychologist. He cannot
offer his sanction to such an error, not even in a single
case.

Why then is the test method so widely proclaimed
in capitalist countries? Because its results are used to
serve political, reactionary class aims. Such tests are
used to prove that the level of ability is lower in chil-
dren of workers and peasants than in children of the
propertied classes, and that the abilities of children of
subject peoples are lower than those of children of the
so-called "higher" peoples and "higher" races. These
tests serve as foundation for the assertion that social
inequality is based on and justified by such differences
of aptitude. Actually, it is not social inequality that
is caused by such differences in aptitude, but the dif-
ferent possibilities of developing abilities are caused by
the social and economic inequality of men in capi-
talist society. If, in capitalist countries, the children of
workers achieve worse results in tests than the children
of property owners, it is not because they are less gifted
but because they were greatly hampered in developing
their abilities by their conditions of life, determined
by the oppression, exploitation and social and economic
inequality prevailing in these countries.

If we reject the method of tests and measurements,
does this mean that we do not think it is necessary to
investigate the abilities of the pupils? No, we do not
believe this. But we hold that a correct investigation
of abilities is possible only if the child's activities are
performed under his ordinary conditions of life, and
when his abilities are not investigated statistically but
in their development and change, in connection with
the whole personality of the child, his instruction and
education, his entire life.

Such an investigation can be carried out by the teacher
himself. He can investigate the child in all the forms
of his activity and under the most varied conditions,
and he can follow the change and development of his
abilities. He must have an adequate knowledge of the
child's whole life, of the conditions of his development
and the peculiarities of his personality. Soviet teachers
give a high importance to this task and perform it in
their practical pedagogical activity.

One of the most important theses of Soviet psychology
—and also one of its most important problems— is the
theory of the unity of man's consciousness and activity.
Soviet psychologists believe that individual aspects of
mental life must not be studied in the abstract, but in
connection with the concrete activities of men. Thus,
thinking, memory and attention cannot be studied by
themselves, but only under the conditions of an activity,
during teaching, work, etc. The subject of the investi-
gations of Soviet psychologists is not the child's thinking
in itself, but the process of his thinking in the solu-
tion of mathematical problems, in applying the rules
of spelling, in learning literal^ or scientific texts. Soviet
psychologists do not investigate the memory processes

by themselves, but the memorization of the varied ma-
terials offered to the pupil in the course of his instruc-
tion. They do not study the formation and growth of
concepts in the way of, e.g. Narziss Ach, who investi-
gated the formation of artificial concepts created by
himself. They note how the pupils handle scientific
concepts which are explained to them in the course of
their schoolwork. Such a method of investigation is the
only way to make psychology a true, living and con-
crete science, with wide possibilities of practical appli-
cation. This is the way which Soviet psychology has
taken.

The theory of the unity of consciousness and activity
places before Soviet psychologists the very impK>rtant
task of giving a psychological analysis of concrete human
activity. In this connection, particular attention is given
to creative activity. The subject of investigation is, above
all, the creative activity of the worker in production. In
the Soviet Union, the worker is not a mere appendage
of the machine. He is the creator of new and more
perfected working methods, the organizer of the process
of production, the designer and the inventor. The new,
Communist attitude towards work, conditioned by the
new production relations and the disappearance of the
exploitation of man by man, produced entirely new
forms of work. The activity of the workers became a
creative work. This was expressed with the greatest
clarity in the activity of the Stakhanovites. Their crea-
tive work is a most important subject of psychological
investigation. In the sphere of psychology of work, the
investigators are faced with the very important prob-
lems of discovering the psychological requirements of
different professions. This is not a matter of investi-

gating aptitudes for different kinds of work, but of
studying the conditions under which, within the work
of the profession, the necessary personal conditions are
created, under which the work itself educates and changes
the worker. A considerable number of studies of Soviet
psychologists is devoted to the investigation of the crea-
tive work of artists— painters, musicians, actors and also
writers. This is also true of the work of scientists and
inventors.

Particular attention is paid to the investigation of
the learning process, especially of the schoolwork of
pupils of elementary and secondary schools. These are
the problems that form the main content of Soviet edu-
cational psychology.

No less important in the work of Soviet psychology
are the problems of the psychology of growth, and es-
pecially the problems of the child's mental develop-
ment, A question is raised in this connection which is
so important that it deserves some detailed treatment.
It is the question of our attitude to the peculiarities
of growing children's behavior. In solving this question
Soviet psychology starts from the thesis that the pecu-
liarities of each age are not to be viewed as unchange-
able and eternal characteristics of that age, independent
of the concrete conditions of the child's life. Soviet
psychology refers here to the social conditioning of the
development of man and his consciousness. It proclaims
the assertion that the peculiarities of the various ages
depend on social and historical conditions under which
the child's life, activities, instruction and education take
place. If these conditions are changed, the specific age
peculiarities also change. The correctness of this thesis
is clearly proved by the remarkable changes in Soviet

children under the influence of the new social condi-
tions of life. Instruction and education must not there-
fore be built on some "eternal" characteristics of each
asfe, but rather must start from concrete facts formed
under some definite social and historical conditions.
They must also bear in mind their possible further
development and growth, of which the child is capable
at a given age, and the increase and intensification of
that child's intellectual forces.

The Soviet psychologists hold themselves entitled to
assert, on the basis of the many investigations they car-
ried out in the field of child psychology, that many
concepts held by bourgeois psychologists concerning the
nature of children do not correspond to reality. Among
these erroneous concepts are the theses of Stern about
the step-by-step development of the capacity for obser-
vation; Piaget's thesis of the egocentricity of childish
thought; the characterization of childish memory, and
many others. All these theses do not do justice to the
possibilities which slumber in each child of that age
grade. They underestimate the growth possibilities of
the child and distort the true picture of the child's men-
tal development.

Among the erroneous concepts mentioned above is the
thesis of the allegedly inevitable crises which accom-
pany some stages of the child's development, notably
puberty. The reports of Soviet investigators and the
educational practice of the Soviet family and school
show, however, that these crises can be completely
avoided when the child is instructed and educated in
the right way and his life is lived under favorable social
and historical conditions.

Since Soviet psychology denies the immutability of

the child's age peculiarities, it must also decisively re-
ject the norms which are used to measure the child's
intellectual forces and to determine the step-by-step
process of his development.

What are the methods used by Soviet psychologists in
their work? The basic principle to which we refer all
questions of method is this: we do not confine our-
selves to any single method, but apply many and quite
different ones. Our attention is concentrated on study-
ing the processes that are of interest to us in the actual
life of the child or under conditions which closely ap-
proximate the ordinary conditions of that life. We there-
fore make a wide use of the method of observation and
live experiment, i.e., an experiment that is closely linked
with the process of teaching and the pupil's work at
school. Where it is a question of individual peculia-
rities, we try to obtain as complete information as pos-
sible about every pupil in order to understand the
quality of his mental process in connection with the
other sides of his personality.

In all such investigations, we are interested not only
in the results of the individual processes of behavior,
but also in the way they take place. Thus, for example,
we are not only interested in finding out how much
a pupil memorizes under different conditions of learn-
ing. We are also interested in the way in which he
memorizes, in what he does to memorize, and in the
course of the memorization process itself. We devote
special attention to the qualitative aspect of the processes
we study.

I would like to make the following concluding re-
mark. Soviet psychology, like all Soviet sciences, works
under conditions that are extremely favorable to its

development and growth. It is given the greatest atten-
tion and care, and the government ofEers it large eco-
nomic means for the realization of its work. Soviet
educationists are given a chance to do a broadly con-
ceived and many-sided scientific work. They form a sci-
entific collective of men working together in a com-
radely fashion. They are linked by their general tasks
and by their aims, which are: to give an objectively
correct explanation of the laws of development of man's
life and consciousness; to reveal the real motives of hu-
man actions; to show the rich possibilities of growth
of man's intellectual forces; to provide better methods
for the instruction and education of children; and to
foster the formation of valuable personality traits. So-
viet psychologists discuss their scientific problems in the
widest possible way.

THE PRESENT TASKS OF
SOVIET PSYCHOLOGY

A. N. Leontiev

Psychology is not a part of the system of biological
sciences. But it is very closely connected with the phys-
iology of the higher nervous activity and animal psy-
chology, i.e., the science of the development of living
creatures. The problem of heredity also closely touches
upon human psychology.

The theories of the American biologist Morgan found
their strongest expression in the work on animal psy-
chology by V. M. Borovski. In his last publication,
Borovski stated that a direct influence of external con-
ditions on the heredity of living creatures is possible
only through the action of factors which influence mu-
tations, e.g.. X-rays. The theory that "a new milieu can
not only change the characteristics of an individual but
also influence it in such a way that the changed pecu-
liarities are exhibited in its descendants," i.e., the theory
of the mutability of the hereditary mass under the in-
fluence of new living conditions, is described by Bo-
rovski as the remnant of "a once widespread theory,"
as factually false and logically improbable. "There is no

inheritance of acquired characteristics," writes Borovski.^
He adds to his statement the traditional argument: "The
descendants of fishes whose tailfins were cut off, do not
exhibit the expected abbreviation."^

This false, metaphysical conception of the immuta-
bility of characteristics of living creatures hindered the
solution of numerous problems of animal psychology,
especially those of instinct. Darwin inaugurated the sci-
entific treatment of these problems. He was interested
in the importance of instinct in the life of the species
and reached the realization that the development of
species can only be understood by assuming the inher-
itability of the changes made under the influence of
new conditions of life that did not correspond to the
existing instincts.^

The Morganists of today distort Darwin's theory when
they proclaim that the inheritance of acquired charac-
teristics is incompatible with a correct conception of the
instincts.* They thus throw overboard the important
contribution of Darwin which differentiates between in-
stinct and the ability to perform a given action.

The textbook of "General Foundations of Psychology,"
by S. L. Rubinstein, develops a false, objectivist view of
the problem of inheritance and variability. The author
does, indeed, defend the correct view of the decisive
role of the environment, but also proclaims the erro-
neous view that the question of the influence of the
environment in the phylogenetic development of living
creatures can remain an open one. Thus Rubinstein
presents the theories of the Morganists and of Lysenko
as equally important, although they are actually dia-
metrically opposed.^ The theories of Morgan, Weismann
and Mendel were much quoted and applied in the So-

viet Union until the Central Committee of the Com-
munist Party of the Soviet Union passed the resolution
of July 4, 1936. This resolution which condemned pae-
dology, i.e., the science of the special psychology of the
child, also put an end to the "two-factor theory" which
proclaimed the equal role of heredity and environ-
ment. . . .

In the last years, a correct view of the problem of
heredity asserted itself in the work of Soviet psycholo-
gists, especially as regards the decisive importance of
education in the development of human personality.
But the concrete questions on the nature of inherited
tendencies, their mutability and their importance for
the mental development of man, have hardly been dealt
with so far. We can therefore point to only a very
limited number of psychological studies which reach con-
crete solutions of such questions.

First of all, we must mention the studies of B. M.
Teplov on the problem of inborn tendencies and on the
development of abilities. Teplov further develops the
important idea that only anatomical and physiological
characteristics of the organism can be inborn. These can
not be described as abilities; for abilities develop only
in the process of the corresponding activities and are
therefore dependent on the objective conditions which
make these activities possible.^

It must, however, be emphasized that these and other
psychological studies which deal with the problem of
inherited human characteristics and their role in the
development of the mental factor, are merely the first
steps towards a scientific clarification. The theory of
inheritance and variability of vegetable and animal or-
ganisms cannot be mechanically transferred to human

psychology. This does not mean, however, that psy-
chology can avoid the problem of tendencies. On the
contrary, psychology now faces the imperative task of
providing the theoretical foundations for the solution
of this problem.

The triumph of creative Soviet Darwinism, as ex-
pressed in the complete victory of the Michurinist ten-
dency in the Soviet Union, also meant the foundation
of a dialectical materialist theory of the development
of living organisms. . . . The phylogenetic theory of
Michurin and Lysenko has also been applied to psy-
chology. . . .

The most important problems of mental development
are the questions of the historical development of man
and of the individual development of the child. Two
conceptions are diametrically opposed in connection with
these questions: the idealistic and the dialectical ma-
terialistic.

The metaphysical-idealistic conception views the de-
velopment of the mental factor as a process of the un-
folding of intellectual abilities inherent in man. The
living conditions of man form only a background to
this process. They make the abilities apparent and direct
their development to one side or another, into one di-
rection or another. Such a conception is characteristic
of the bourgeois psychology.

It is very closely linked with the tendency of bour-
geois psychology to view the mental factor not histori-
cally but as something abstract, unhistorical and "gene-

rally human." But the so-called "generally human" char-
acteristics of the factor are actually nothing but the
characteristics of present-day man in a class society. The
mental character of the members of the exploiting class
becomes particularly apparent in this connection. The
mental character of members of the exploited classes
and of oppressed peoples is considered not to be up
to standard and is explained through its primitive na-
ture.

This conception of man became especially clear when
reactionary psychologists openly entered into the service
of military imperialism. They tried to prove in their
writings that elementary psychological phenomena like
work for payment or the love of money also had an eter-
nal validity. Their rudiments could be experimentally
proved to exist in anthropoid apes. Innumerable experi-
ments were made to "prove" that human actions ulti-
mately express only those needs, tendencies and instincts
that are rooted in the "depths" of personality, and that
the highest drives of men were merely a strange kind
of "superstructure" above these "depths" and merely
one of their manifestations. The primitive needs and
motivations were therefore the strongest. "Thus, punish-
ments and the need to satisfy hunger or the sex drive
are stronger motivations than those of a social char-
acter"—we read in a survey of results of investigations
made abroad, published in an American psychological
journal. It is even assumed that the most important
needs and emotions are immutable in man— as is em-
phasized by John Dewey. Since this erroneous view of
the strength of biological factors is also extended to
social phenomena, the foreign reactionary psychology
reaches highly backward conclusions. It is enough here

to say that this psychology attributed the origin of Ger-
man-Fascist bestiality to ". . . the hysterical and paranoid
tendencies of Hitler and Rosenberg" to which "the na-
tion merely reacted in the same way,"'^

The progressive Soviet psychology considers the his-
torical development of the mental factor from theo-
retical positions that are diametrically opposite. Soviet
psychologists start from the Marxist thesis that the con-
sciousness of man is social and historical in its nature,
that it is determined by social existence and that it
changes qualitatively with changes in social and eco-
nomic conditions. They explain the peculiarities of the
mental factor not by so-called eternal properties of hu-
man nature, but by the objective living conditions of
man in society. Contrary to bourgeois psychology, So-
viet psychology develops as a kind of social science, as
the science of the experience of concrete and historical
men.

The psychological characteristics of human person-
ality are viewed not as the product of the interaction
of two extremely opposed principles, i.e., the biological
and the social, or heredity and environment, but as the
product of the development of human life and activity
under the given social relations. The development
process of the mental factor is thus not conceived as
a process that is put into motion by external forces
and elements, but as one which has as its driving force
the inner contradictions of human life in society it-
self.

But life itself, the child's activity which determines
in its course his mental development, is not sponta-
neous—it is under the influence of education and in-
struction. In a Socialist society, which does not develop

spontaneously but is directed by men, education is the
decisive force which forms man intellectually. It must
correspond to the aims and the needs of the entire so-
ciety, of the entire people or, in other words, it must
fully agree with real human needs, and also with those
of individual man.

These theoretical conceptions of the development of
the mental factor are characteristic of Soviet psychology.
But it must by no means be concluded from this that
Soviet psychology already possesses a fully developed
Marxist theory of the historical development of the fac-
tor. It must, on the contrary, be stated that this problem
has so far received an inadequate treatment. We still
have no fundamental research into these questions. The
few studies that do exist, like the "General Foundations
of Psychology" by S. L. Rubinstein and the "Sketch of
the Psychological Development" by A. N. Leontiev, suf-
fer, as was noted in scientific criticism, from considerable
defects.

And so the most important task that now faces the
Soviet psychologists is the creation of a historical psy-
chology, a theory of the historical development of the
mental factor at different stages of society and in rep
resentatives of different social classes, of the basic changes
in human experience produced by the abolition of pri-
vate property and by the planned transformation of
this experience under conditions of gradual transition
from socialism to communism.

Soviet psychology has done much more thorough work

on the ontological development of the mental factor,
i.e., on its development in the process of life. This is a
central problem of child psychology and one of great
practical importance.

In a theory of child psychology we must, of course,
also start from a consideration of the driving forces in
the development of the child's experience. Contrary to
the metaphysical theory of "two-factors" (i.e., heredity
and environment) , according to which the development
of the child's psyche is said to proceed fatalistically,
Soviet psychology shows that this development is based
on the growth of the child's living conditions and of
his activities, which are determined by objective living
conditions and education.

The child enters the society of men with his very
first steps into life. He learns from society the activities
which it has developed and the language which re-
flects the social practices of mankind. The child's en-
vironment presents him with all kinds of tasks and de-
mands and thus actively makes him engage in activities
required by these tasks and demands. Thus, the social
environment instructs and educates the child.

This does not happen without a conscious setting by
society of the aims of education and instruction. This
conscious and purposeful process of education, which
starts in early childhood, is continued, though in es-
sentially different forms, in the kindergarten, at school
and in social life. The mental development of the child
is realized in this process.

Numerous investigations by Soviet psychologists on
the development of mental processes of children, e.g.,
of perception, memory, thought and speech, have given
concrete proofs that the formation of these processes

must not be viewed as the unfolding of innate abilities
under the influence of all kinds of conditions of the
milieu. This formation takes place in the course of the
child's directed activities. The psychological characteris-
tics that were hitherto fatalistically attributed to given
stages of development, proved to be actually the products
of the child's life which went on under certain definite
social conditions, the product of the child's instruction
and education. Rich possibilities of producing desirable
psychological and character traits in the children were
thus revealed.

This does not, of course, mean that the general course
of the child's mental development is not subject to a
certain law, and that education is independent from
the child's age and from the stage of development he
has reached. To be able to direct the child's psychologi-
cal development, one must be acquainted with its course
and its respective stages. It is therefore necessary to deal
once more fundamentally with the problem of the stages
of the child's psychological development.

The numerous periodisations, i.e., lists of stages, of
childhood of bourgeois psychology are well known. All
of them start, more or less, from the metaphysical con-
ception of psychological development as an unfolding
of the child's innate characteristics, i.e., from theories
which falsely transfer so-called biological laws into child
psychology. They identify the psychological with the
biological development of the child, and use such phe-
nomena as change of teeth or the development of the
function of the sexual glands, to mark the stages. All
these periodisations are attempts to present the psy-
chological development of the child as a phenomenon
of growth.

The pseudo-scientific character of these periodisations,
which are essentially paedological, is obvious. It is our
task to oppose them by a periodisation of the child's
growth that is founded on the dialectical materialist
conception of development. The solution of this problem
was made possible by the investigations, already men-
tioned, of individual mental processes in the child and
by studies of the development of various kinds of child
activities— play, learning, work, etc.

The study of the concrete activities of the child made
it possible to link qualitatively differentiable stages of
the psychological development with the most impor-
tant forms of activity in the various periods of the
child's life. At the same time it could be shown that,
at each stage of the development of any kind of activity,
other and more complicated forms of that activity were
being prepared, which will eventually assume the lead-
ing role in the following stage. It was also shown that
each stage of development already prepares the leap-
like transition to the following stage, and that this
transition is necessary and regular. This discovery pro-
vides a new foundation for the successive periods of the
child's psychological development: these depend on the
activities which determine in each case the child's life
and on the typical relations of social life that link the
child with other people and mark his position in so-
ciety.

To take one example, at the stage of development that
starts with the child's entry into school, learning at school
is his most important activity. It reflects a new type of
life relations into which the child enters. By this activity,
the child acquires a new position in society of which he
becomes conscious, namely that of a Soviet pupil.

Learning is, under the given conditions, the first socially
important activity that is binding upon the child and is
fixed by law. The quality of the pupil's work at school
is the subject of an objective evaluation by society. It
determines the relationship of the environment to the
pupil and creates for him a certain definite position in
his school and in his class: he becomes a good or bad
pupil. With his new duties, the pupil also acquires new
rights. He can claim from his environment that it should
give him help and that it should grant him a considerable
degree of independence. He passes into a new form of
life, which he finds in the collective of his class and his
school. At the same time, important changes take place
in the child's intellectual development through the process
of instruction. His memory and his thinking change; and
he develops an ability of continuous and systematic
thought. He takes part in the complicated relations of
his new collective life, which form in him special moral
ideas and sentiments.

This example shows that the contents of the stages
of the child's development are not unchangeable, but
depend on the social conditions under which he lives
and which make possible the varying contents of his life
and activity. The stages of psychological development can
therefore differ in their social conditions, for all their
regular succession. At the same stage of development, one
set of social conditions may require a transition to sys-
tematic schooling, and another a transition to systematic
work.

The problem of the transitions from one stage of psy-
chological development to another is particularly im-
portant. These transitions occur in this way: essential
changes occur in the psychological processes of the pre-

ceding stage which are linked with the child's activities.
They prepare the transition to a more complex form of
life and the appearance of a new leading activity. The
transition is not gradual but leaplike.

Our educational task consists in directing the child's
development in such a way that what he has achieved in
the previous stage is continued according to plan so as
to develop in the child qualities that will be of a decisive
importance in the next stage. In other words, it is neces-
sary to orient oneself not only by the existing possibilities
of the child but also by the perspective of his further
development. The transition to a new sphere of life
relationships, to a new "position" in life, must not occur
spontaneously but must be directed by education. The
child must be presented in time with new tasks and in-
cluded in a new sphere of relationships. Otherwise, this
transition becomes a "crisis of development," i.e. a process
which is erroneously attributed by bourgeois psychology
to an "age of transition," as its necessary feature.

The studies of the child's psychological development
are by no means completed. The false metaphysical con-
ception is not yet overcome, and we still come across it
here and there in our psychology. It makes its appearance
in the question of the interrelationship between psychology
and pedagogy, e.g. in K. N. Kornilov. He does, indeed,
emphasize the necessity of pedagogy to take into account,
in educating the will, "the requirements of a concrete
historical epoch," "the family conditions of the child's
life" and "the moral abilities." But he also says that, for
the psychological analysis of the act of will, "all this is in
no way binding," and he closes his account with this
statement: "The psychologist who occupies himself with
the problem of educating the will, ceases to be a psy-

chologist and becomes a pedagogue."^

Kornilov's point of view represents a retreat to theo-
retical conceptions which isolate the mental factor from
education and from life. They do not view it as the
product of life, but, on the contrary, as its precondition
which provides the child— and the man— with the pos-
sibility of satisfying the requirements of instruction, edu-
cation and life.

These false tendencies sometimes manifest themselves
in the ways of satisfying the requirements of pedagogy
with regard to the so-called age stages. We mean the
requirements which the pedagogue needs for the organ-
ization of his educational work. These requirements are
sometimes falsely understood so as to show only the
existing "level" of the psychological development, but
not the perspective of that development and— what should
be most important— the actual laws of formation of the
higher functions. Only these latter foster the pedagogical
activity and the further improvement of the methods of
education.

These considerations emphasize, of course, the task of
exploring the psychological development of the child.
But they also emphasize the problem of linking psychology
and practice, and in particular, the pedagogic practice of
education and instruction, in a new way.

The most important lesson to be drawn from the results
of the Lysenko discussion of the Lenin Academy of
Agricultural Sciences is the need to subordinate the devel-
opment of progressive science to the tasks of progressive

Socialist practice, A true scientific theory cannot be devel-
oped without a close connection with practice.

This lesson is of special importance to psychology.
Bourgeois psychology which, especially as regards ideology,
carries out the orders of the ruling class, has turned away
more and more from the solution of really practical prob-
lems, and busies itself essentially with imaginary problems.

But even when it solved practical problems, bourgeois
psychology remained only an observing and diagnosing
science. The practical areas of bourgeois psychology are
the professional selection, developed with the aid of the
results of special investigations and mainly required be-
cause of the existence of an army of labor reserves in the
capitalist countries; the reform of schools with the aid of
"intelligence tests" for children; the development of
methods of rationalization and labor training aimed ex-
clusively at a radical exploitation of the working popula-
tion; problems of the influence of advertising, etc. The
educational psychology of bourgeois countries, especially
in its consideration of problems of child psychology and
pedagogy, starts from theoretical positions that are typi-
cal of paedology and deny the formative character of
education. An education that corresponds to such con-
ceptions is based only on the "natural" abilities of the
children and influences merely the form of their ex-
pression.

The socialist practice of education is, on the other hand,
the practice of an active and planned formation of
human characteristics and abilities. The great aim set
for our society— the transition to communism— means a
substantial rise in the intellectual level of the whole
working population. This is the task of our schools, and
of our whole educational and cultural system. It is also

the task of our psychology. The consciousness of this task
fundamentally changes our conception of psychology, of
its connection with practice, of its concrete problems and
methods.

Psychology changes from a registering science, which
merely analyses the psychological processes and the pe-
culiarities of personality, into a science of their mutability
and transformation. From this point of view, the chief
task of psychology is to study the processes through which
science and ideology become the contents of human
consciousness and deposit themselves in the psychological
traits of personality.

The first requirement for the fulfillment of this task
is a different conception of the connection between theory
and practice. Psychology must start from the progressive
experiences of education in our society; it must analyse
these experiences and draw from them scientific gener-
alizations on the child's psyche in connection with the
general formative influence of the conditions of life,
education and instruction. This is the only way to turn
psychology into a science of the laws of the transforma-
tions of the mental factor which can fructify our practice
in a progressive sense. The psychological development
of man takes place through transformations which regu-
larly appear in connection with the changes in his ac-
tivities under the influence of new conditions and new
tasks. This change in the activities and relationships of
the child, the juvenile and the adult, is a process whose
course is not evolutionary. It rather takes the form of
sudden transformations. It is therefore no accident that
the most progressive educational ideas— those of A. S.
Makarenko— are ideas of a creative pedagogy, a "pedagogy
of the events," which consciously and deliberately creates

educational opportunities.

This is also true of the process of teaching. To take
an example: the child discovers, in his language classes,
that the word, the language, are a peculiar reality— an
object of knowledge and learning. Or else, in his mathe-
matics classes, he achieves the transition to arithmetical
fractions. These are events in the course of the child's
school days, when he acquires the foundations of science.

How do these transformations and development thrusts
take place? What are their "mechanisms" and the psy-
chological laws that rule them? What measures prepare
the process of development thrusts? What difficulties
exist here?

The answers to these questions require that psychology
acquire different methods. The abstract experiment,
isolated from other methods of studying the laws of
mental phenomena, is essentially an expression of a search
for truth that is a stranger to reality and therefore cannot
satisfy us. But we do not mean to imply by this that the
method of experimental investigation, applied correctly
and in its right place, should disappear from psychology.
Rather, the importance of the experiment has become
greater with regard to certain problems, though in a
completely new form. In a certain sense it is the ex-
periment of the pedagogical kind, although it serves to
solve psychological problems. It requires a completely
different organization of psychological investigation,
which must be directly linked with practice and must
undertake only the study of special questions. Such ex-
periments should be undertaken jointly by psychologists
and pedagogues. There exists a certain timidity in peda-
gogical and psychological circles about such psychological
investigations of problems of practical work. This timidity

is a symptom of the fear of responsibility. We are of the
opinion that this attitude is contrary to the demand to
change psychology from an abstract science into a living
science, closely linked with practice. We believe that the
intensification of the sense of responsibility for the edu-
cation of our youth is a must for Soviet psychologists and
the necessary precondition of a successful further devel-
opment of Soviet psychology.

Notes

1. V. M. Borovski, The Problem of the Instinct (in Russian),
in Reports of the Crimea Scientific Institute, vol. XI, pp. 99 f.

2. Ibid., p. 104.

3. C. Darwin, The Origin of Species.

4. V. M. Borovski, Historical and Critical Remarks on Re-
flexes and Instincts (in Russian) , 1946, p. 17.

5. S. L. Rubinstein, General Foundations of Psychology
(in Russian) , Moscow, 1945, pp. 32 f.

6. B. M. Teplov, "Abilities and Aptitude" (in Russian),
in Scientific Reports of the Institute of Psychology, vol. XI,
1941. B. M. Teplov, The Psychology of Musical Peculiarities
(in Russian) , published by the Academy of the Pedagogical
Sciences of the RSFSR, 1947.

7. W. Brown, British Journal of Psychology, 1944, p. 34.

8. K. N. Kornilov, "Psychology, Pedagogy and Educational
Psychology" (in Russian) , in Soviet Pedagogy, 1945, nr. 7,
pp. 41 f.

HEREDITY AND THE
MATERIALIST THEORY

N. F. Posnanski

Bourgeois psychologists and pedagogues mostly em-
phasize the fatal influence of biological factors on man's
developments and explain inborn characteristics through
heredity. Human abilities are explained in theory as
belonging to a specially formed aristocracy of birth and
in practice as the privilege of the ruling classes and
governors of colonies. Marxist theory, on the other hand,
recognizes the individual differences between men, which
appear at birth; but it does not see in inborn qualities
any fatal predetermination of future talents and abilities
that man develops in the course of his life. Individual
differences between men are based on the existence of
a definite physical organization and of particular natural
life forces, which, according to Marx, are contained in
man as tendencies and talents. Not everyone can be a
Raphael, but only the person "in whom there is a
Raphael" (Marx) . This does not mean, of course, that
everybody in whom there is a Raphael actually becomes
a Raphael. The development of Raphaelian talents de-
pends on the conditions of life and on education.

The inborn anatomic and physiological characteristics,
as also the inborn type of nervous system, have much in
common in all men at their birth. Individual differences
express themselves but weakly in the vital function of
individuals. Marx stated that "the original difference
between a porter and a philosopher is less great than
between a watch-dog and a greyhound. The gap between
them exists through the division of labor." ^

Individual talent, as long as it "does not begin to
function as an actual force, exists only as a tendency."^
The question here is to determine when it becomes active
as an actual force. For the bourgeois idealist scientists
and metaphysicians, it is from the very beginning an
actual force, which directs the individual's development.
The theory of dialectical materialism, however, excludes
the existence of abilities before the appearance of the
activity which first makes the ability effective. Ability is
formed and develops only in the process of the activity
that requires it. Marx noted that only music awakens
the musical feeling in men. But to the idealists and meta-
physicians, the role of the environment in developing
abilities is reduced to the freeing of already existing ones.
For the dialectical materialist, ability does not exist out-
side the corresponding activity of man. The tendencies
from which it develops are too indefinite and plastic; they
are too multivalent with regard to future development
to be able to determine the character of future abilities.

Man is bom with the tendency to speak. But if the
child did not live in the society of men, but among
animals, this tendency would not develop at all. Con-
ditions of life and, above all, education, determine which
language the child learns and the degree to which he
learns it.

These facts lead to the conclusion that the concept
"ability" has a historical character. The same applies to
the connected concept of "talent." Human activity always
takes place under concrete social and historical conditions.
Different kinds of human activity are formed, change and
disappear depending on their conditions; and so do
human abilities. There can be no "philosophical talent"
in a society that knows as yet no philosophy.

The feelings of men, too, change like their opinions,
depending on their activities and their concrete historical
living conditions.

Carlyle's chimera of "the animal nature of man burning
in eternal hellfire," which tormented contemporary bour-
geois pedagogues, does not exist for dialectical mate-
rialists.

But it is not only the abilities, talents and feelings of
men that are historical in character: it is also their natural
tendencies. It would be false to assume that these tend-
encies are the result of a purely biological heredity. In the
course of man's history, and especially of the historical
development of work, numerous differences in natural
individual talents are bound to develop. The ever growing
division of labor plays a decisive role in this process. As
Marx puts it: "The differences in the natural talents of
individuals are as much the cause as the effect of the
division of labor."

In his critique of Stimer's view of the causes of the
degeneration of individuals, Marx states that it had not
occurred to Stirner to ponder these facts: that the child's
capacity for development depended on the development
of his parents; that the entire degeneration was created
historically by the given circumstances and that it can be
overcome by another historical development. Marx goes

beyond this when he says that even naturally caused
differences of birth, e.g. racial, can and must be abolished
by a new historical development. This Marxian thesis
disposes of all so-called race theories and of the political
conclusions drawn from them. The conditions of life
and work leave their imprint upon the individual's ana-
tomic and physiological organisation and upon his nervous
system. These results are to some degree passed on by
heredity and consolidate in the descendants. Without
such a heredity, there could have been no "humanization
of the ape" or a further evolution of man. Pavlov's in-
vestigations showed that the acquisition of certain con-
ditioned reflexes by animals facilitates the development
of these same conditioned reflexes in the descendants of
the animals experimented upon. Within the series of
generations always subjected to the same experiment,
the conditioned reflex gradually becomes an uncondi-
tioned reflex. This gives us a key to the understanding
of the historical growth of the "hereditary differences."
But, at the same time, it offers us the possibility of
abolishing such differences.

Which factors among the individual's living and work-
ing conditions influence the development of his natural
tendencies? The material means of production and the
productive forces are the basic factors which determine
the development of individual talents. Marx has thus
analysed the factors which influenced the development
of Raphael's pictorial talent: "Raphael, like any other
artist, was conditioned by the technical advances of art
that were made before his time; by the organisation of
society and the division of labor in his locality; and finally,
by the division of labor in all the countries with which
his locality was in contact. It depends entirely on the

demand for his work whether an individual like Raphael
develops his talent; and this demand itself depends on
the division of labor and the cultural conditions of men
which develop from it."^

When we speak of the social conditions of the develop-
ment of individual tendencies, we must emphasize one
aspect of this process, i.e., the role of the collective. This
is a difference of principle between dialectical materialism
and the bourgeois theories, characterized by a pronounced
individualism, viewed as a reflection of the economic com-
petition. The bourgeois scientists develop their theories
starting from the individual. Marx called these theories
"Robinsonades."

A particularly good example of such theories in the
field of education is Rousseau's "Emile." All kinds of
"paedocentric" educational theories make their appear-
ance until our day. It is above all Dewey's pedagogy, which
likes to speak of the education of children in the "com-
munity." Dewey's view is best explained by his insistence
that the child should become the center round which all
the educational means turn. The Morgan-Mendel theory
fully corresponds to his individualistic theory.

The dialectical materialist viewpoint, for which no
individuals developing in isolation exist, stresses, on the
contrary, the social conditioning of individuals. Marxism
proves that man finds only in the community the pos-
sibilities for an all-sided development of his gifts.

In this connection, it must be pointed out that Marx
and Engels distinguished between a true collectivity and
a substitute form which only pretends to have a collective
consciousness. Such a substitute is the bourgeois State,
which offers freedom only to the individuals of the ruling
class and only as long as they belong to this class.

The bourgeois pedagogues of imperialism who attempt
to make the collective idea a reality in bourgeois schools
through a pupils' self-government, a copy of the con-
stitution of the bourgeois democratic State, create an
apparent and substitute collectivity. Dewey's pedagogy,
which wants to turn the school into "a cell of social, civic
life," is a good example of an organisation of teaching
and education founded on a substitute collective. The
situation in a true collective is quite dijBEerent. Of such a
community Marx says: "It is a collective of revolutionary
proletarians who take over the control over the con-
ditions of their own existence and of all the other mem-
bers of Society. In such a collectivity, individuals partici-
pate as individuals."* Such a true collectivity is the
foundation of our Soviet system of education. It is not an
accident but rather a historical necessity that the excellent
educationist A. S. Makarenko should have appeared in
the Soviet Union. He made "education by the collective
for the collective" the motto of his pedagogical activity,
and the excellent results which he achieved by his methods
have, as Gorki emphasized, a world importance.

Notes

1. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works (in Russian), vol. V,
p. 380.

2. Ibid., vol. IV., p. 286.

3. K. Marx and F. Engels, On Art and Literature (in Ger-
man), Berlin, 1950, p. 89.

4. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works (in Russian) , vol. IV,
p. 65. -

THE INTELLECTUAL
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD

A. N. Leontiev

A. The Steps of the Child's
Intellectual Development

r e

It does not follow from the fact that education plays
the decisive part in the child's intellectual development
that education "can do everything" and that educators
do not have to reckon with anything else. On the contrary,
if they are to be successful in their educational and teach-
^iJt ing work, they must always npte^oz:; the development of
the children takes place.

The intellectual and spiritual development of the child
proceeds, like any other natural and social process, ac-
cording to definite laws. This means that the develop-
ment of the child proceeds consistently, from one stage
of life to another. In this process, certain features of the
childish psyche disappear, while others, qualitatively new,
are formed. The educator must take this into account
if he is to intervene actively in the process of formation
of the growing personality^

There exist different periods or stages in the intel-
lectual development of the child. The differences be-

.Iween them are not pnly quantitative but also qualitative.
The intellectual development of the child is linked with
a deep qualitative change in .his personality. We can
therefore speak of common psychological characteristics
of children of certain aggs^ the pre-sdiool child, . the,^
beginner at school, the adolescent. "He is a typical pre-
school child" or "this is a typical adolescent" are phrases
in common use. Though children of the same age differ
from each other, they have many things in common in
spite of their individual differences— provided that they
live under the same social and historical conditions. It
is this that causes the immediate impression that children
of the same age look alike in certain respects.

The differences in the individual intellectual processes

/ lik£ memory, thought, jetc. §re both qualita,jf|y,e,,-,and qu^^n:
titative. It is a well-known fact that smaller children
learn verses by heart with considerably greater ease than
40 older ones. They can recite texts effortlessly and re-
member what they have learned for a long time. On the
other hand, children of pre-school age cannot be expected
to learn material of a length that pupils of higher classes
manage without further ado. The explanation is not
tliat the memory^of a smalixhild is simply better or worse
than that of an older child, but rather that itjis q^uali-
latively different. What a small child easily memorizes
may offer considerable difficulty to an older one, while,
on the other hand, an adolescent may easily memorize
something that is quite beyond the capacity of a young
child. A four-year-old child that learned entire stories by
heart and remembered them word by word, could not
remember the names of the five fingers, i.e., five words.

He was able to memorize them only when his mother
made them part of a game. It is well known that small
children, remember what they should learn most easily
in playing. They cannot, as yet, set themselves the task
■nf feinembering this or that. J|^ey..Jiii^;np]fi^g^^§i|j^
"what is remembered,.by,^^i|^.'' On the other hand, the
''rtieinory of school children ..§nows quite different quali-
tative characteristics. Children of that age group know
how to remember deliberately what is rec[uired. It is
therefore not true that the capacity of memorization
simply increases with , age; it is rather that memoiy changes
qualitatiyety. . 'W.

The same thing occurs in the development of other
mental processes. The child's psyche therefore changes in
the course of his development. The child of kindergarten
age differs from the third-grade child in the character of
his mental processes and in the special psychological traits
peculiar to each stage of development.

In our country, learning at school starts at the age of
seven. The most essential change^ of the mental develop-
ment occur precisely during the school age: memory is
transformed, the way of thinking becomes different, the
more complex forms of collective life and the sentiments
pertainijng.. thereto are formed, etc.

This particular example already shows that mental
development is improved at every stage of life, while. the
child's psyche becomes more and more complex. It must
be strongly emphasized in this connection that the content
^Ijthese stages is not immutable or Jndependent^of^ the
social conditions und^i: which the. child lives and grqws.
'On the contrary, the content is determined by the con-
crete social and historical conditions; it is they that give
this or that content to the child's life and activities. The

process of the psychological development of the child is
therefore essentially different under qapitalism, which, in
the words of Marx, robs the workers' children of their
childhood, in contrast to our socialist order of society.

The conditions under which the Soviet children grow
up are determined by the collective character of their
society. They therefore escape such phenomena as self-
doubt, loneliness, contrast between ideal and reality,
which are characteristic of the life of children living
under capitalism and which bourgeois psychology wrongly
assumes to be universal.

The dependence of the stages of development of the
child's psyche on the concrete historical conditions of life
manifests itself also within the course of each stage. Even
the general duration of the period of instruction and
education, which is the period in which man is prepared
for independent collaboration in social and economic life,
has by no means always been the same. But it varied from
era to era and was more extensive the higher were the
requirements of society in each particular case. Also, in
a society composed of antagonistic classes, it differed for
children of different classes.

The stage of development is thus neither absolute nor

predetermined; rather it is dependent on the concrete

cojiditions of development and can change accordingly.

/ f The following list of stages of the child's development

/ is~6ased on the study of the life and activity of children

under the conditions of socialist societyTH

1) the stage of infancy, which includes the initial
period of the child's life (up to the age of one) ;

2) the stage of early childhood (from 1 to 3 years) ;

3) the stage of the kindergarten age (from 3 to 6 years) ;

4) the stage of the early school age (from 7 to 10 years) ;

5) the stage of the middle school age (from 11 to 14
years) ; and

6) the stage of adolescence (from 14 to 17 years).

How does the transition from one stage to the next i ^
occurPj" '^v-^....-^. . -^. -^' -

This transition could not take place if the child did not
qhangeCin the course of the stage of development and
thus prepare; himself for the transition. Actually, the
psychological and mental forces of the child develop
more and more in the course of the activities typical of
the given stage of development. Thus, during infancy,
the activity of the child grows, and his perception and
movement improve. His hands and feet become stronger
and the cerebral cortex develops further. All this prepares
the independent activity of the child and paves the way
for an irnproved form of contact jvith the outside world/
i.e., language. jt

The child's educator has the task of continuing his
development on the basis of what has already been
achieved. Ahfive-allj it is necessary to foster^those^ ^^^^ u— "-

teristics of the child which prepare him for the next
.stage and which will therefore soon acquire a decisive
importance in this connection. In other words, it is neces-
sary to bear in mind not only the existing possibilities of
the child but also the perspective of this further devel-
opment. To do this, one must have a clear notion of the
general course of the child's mental development.

It is not our purpose here to offer an extensive and
exhaustive treatment of the way in which the child
develops in the different stages and of the peculiar char-
acteristics of these stages. We shall limit ourselves to con-

sidering some problems of development in the kinder-
garten and early school ag€»=^

^JB. The Mental Development of Children
in the Kindergarten Age

At the threshold of the kindergarten age, i.e. towards
the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth year,
the child is generally accustomed to the objects in his
(_^ surroundings and has learned to use them correctly. He
knows how to handle the objects of daily use and likes
\ to play with all kinds of toys. He can already speak
fluently, listens with interest to short stories or verses,
looks at pictures, etc. A wide field of phenomena opens
itself to his eyes and ears. His activity is roused not only
by things that he encounters directly; under the influence
of earlier perceptions, he also feels the desire to do some-
thing, to undertake something. The child always thinks
up something else and tries to put his ideas into practice.
This is the time when the desire to do everything by
himself, so well known to the parents, becomes manifest.
"By myself" is the child's slogan, even when he still
rieeds the help of grownups so badly.

What is behind this form of the chU4'§.. behavior? What^
does it express?
V^ • A wide world of phenomena opens itself up to the
child at the beginning of the kindergarten age, and he
tries to grasp it. But a small child can grasp a phe-
nomenon only concretely or "palpably." The child is
anything but a passive observer of these phenomena.
He wants to put into action through his own activities

everything that he has seen and that he has learned
from the stories of grownups or from his children's books,
even though so much cannot as yet be accessible to him.
This is the ground on which contradictions arise be-
tween the diversity of the surrounding world that opens
itself up to him and the limitations of his actual pos-
sibilities of action. The new things that the child dis-
covers in the world around him are, above all, kmd&L«.^
of human activity and mens attitudes towards things.
The book, the exercise book, etc., are the things with
which his elder brother, the pupil, has to do; the gun
and the cannon are the sphere of activity of the soldier.
The child sees all these things but it is forbidden to
him to touch them and to handle them. He does not
as yet possess the necessary skills.

How are these contradictions resolved?Orhe way in
which the children get over them is ^Tnew kind of
activity making its appearance at that time: the creative
playing of parts. This does not take place in the play
of the earlier childhood. What matters to the child in
this new kind of play is to act as exactly as possible
the way his father or his brother, a chauffeur or an
officer acts, i.e.. jLjq. take -QV.eE,,.an,d play a certain part.
In this play, the children become familiar, through crea-
tive activity, with certain events that take place in their
surroundings: a railway trip, the visit of a doctor, the
building of a factory. It might seem, at first glance, that
such games lead the child out of the real world and
into the world of fantasy and imagination. But it is
not so. Let us take, as an example, children playing at
"war." Everything here seems to be an illusion: a simple
stick serves as a "rifle," little Peter suddenly becomes
"Sergeant" and Vania "Major" and all this is but "make

believe." But not quite. Such a game does not require
the actual objects involved; nor is it a question of carry-
ing out the actions exactly. What matters to the child
is that jreality is correctly reflected in the contest of
the actions of the game ajid in.thejrelations thj^^^^^
If^lHe game involves shooting, it can, of course, only
be a make-believe shooting. But, on the other hand,
since the real soldier must not desert his post and the
real sergeant must not give orders to the real major-
such things must also not happen in the game.

The creative play with distributed parts is an ac-

^^'^ tivity most important for^IKe inerital development of

The child of pre-school age '(3 to 5 years) . Not only

the child's imagination and fantasy are developed in it,

but also his mental capacities. The play forms his per-

^. sonality, his collective spirit. "The play," said Gorki, "is

<-,, at the same time a way by which the children learn to

^ know the world in which they live and which they are

/ called upon to change."

The creative play of pre-school age children must
not be viewed as meaningless pastime and unimportant
for the child's development. Rather, the best attempt
must be made to direct this play and to enrich it.
N. K. Krupskaya writes on children's games: "Even if
the train in which they travel is made of chairs, and
the house they build is made of bits and pieces, the
child learns during play to overcome obstacles, to know
the world around him and to deal with such difficulties
as may arise." ^

When stimulating the children to educationally valu-
able games, it must be seen to that they receive useful
impressions and suggestions. This does not mean, of
course, that everything which the child takes from his

surroundings becomes part of his play and is accepted
among his conceptions. It is sometimes necessary to di-
vert the children from the play theme they had chosen
into another, more desirable one. This can be easily
done if the child knows that the grownups follow his
play with interest and sympathy.

It is good when the children play jix.the: pf esiejice^ of
gT^i^3jjLps^-«A few words can achieve much in such a
case, for the activity of the child in creative play can
easily be diverted into the direction desired.

Creative play is, as a rule, collective. As tlie roles are
distributed, certain definite relations are created between
the children which condition their behavior towards each
other. The accepted role determines the child's behavior.
"The daughter" must obey "the mother"; "the mother"
must be loving; "the policeman" strict but courteous.
We must not forget that the main thing for the chil-
dren in these games is action and, in particular, an
action which comes closest to reality. The children al-
ways take seriously the content of the actions performed
in the play. Therefore, a remark thrown in incidentally
is sufficient to direct the behavior of the playing child.
It is enough to say, for example: "Does it really happen
that a policeman on duty is uncourteous?", and the
quarrel among the playing children subsides. The play
is a kind of school in which the child acquires crea-
tively the rules and forms of human behavior and of
tjhie reciprocal relations between men. The play of our \
Soviet children becomes, therefore, a school in whic
they practically acquire the norms of Socialist behavior
But, to make creative play truly fruitful, it is necessary
to overcome the prejudice that play is a "free" activity
which tolerates no intervention from adults. We must

not shy from conducting and directing the play by rely-
ing on its characteristic peculiarities. In creative play,
the objects which the children have to use may be fic-
tion, e.g., the stick instead of the rifle, the chair instead
of the car. The movements of the playing may also be
fiction, e.g., imitations of the actual motions that the
hand performs in shooting, instead of the real thing.
But the contents of these actions and the relations be-
tween the people concerned are not fictions, for the
child always strives after truth and reality. He always
likes to listen to grownups explaining to him how this
or that action "actually takes place in reality." This is
what we can rely on when we direct their play and
educate them in the process.

The notes of a Moscow teacher, S. A. Cherepanova,
are quoted below as an example of how children's games
are directed:

"Igor and the other boys have built a big bus from
chairs, while the girls play with dolls. I suggest to Igor
to invite the girls to a bus trip. 'I am the conductor, I
punch the passengers' tickets,' says Galia. 'No, I want
to be the conductor,' answers Vania. A quarrel breaks
out. Vova argues with Igor about who is to be the
driver. 'You were driving before; now it is my turn,'
he says. The teacher must now intervene. I explain to
the children that both driver and conductor have their
shifts, and that one rests while the other works. The
children like the idea of my trying to turn their play
into the 'real thing.' 'Is this what always happens with
real drivers?' asks Vova. Peace is restored. Igor passes
the steering wheel to the boy who relieves him, while
Vania waits until he can relieve Galia, now acting as
conductor."

Creative play forms many psychic processes of chil-
dren of pre-school age, especially in the early and middle
period. This is proved by the results of Soviet investi-
gations. Thus, a study of the memory of 4 to 6 year
olds showed that the number of words memorized in
creative play is double the number memorized at the
order of adults. The same is true of the child's ability
to control his movements; this is especially important
for the future, i.e., for the school years. Investigations
of Soviet psychologists proved that normal time during y*^-.
which children are able to pay attention to the position <„j^
of their upper body, hands and feet and to maintain
them in a given position is 40 seconds. But in a game ■\
in which the children play at "positions" this time in- ^
creases more than sixfold.

These examples show clearly why play must be given
a great educational significance in pre-school age. The
outstanding Soviet educationist, A. S. Makarenko, wrote:
"In the education of the future personality, the play
must by no means be abolished; it must rather be or-
ganized in such a way that, while remaining play, it '
nevertheless develops the qualities of the future worker
and citizen." 2

It must not, however, be assumed that the entire de-
velopment of the child of pre-school age occurs in crea-
tive play. The play is but one of the ways in which the
child comes to know the surrQunding world.
"Tntroduction to culture is another important way to Z-— **
the child's mental and moral development. A. S. Maka-
renko rightly maintained that cultural education must
begin as early as possible— before the child knows how
to read and write, as soon as he is able to see, hear and
speak properly,

The cultivation of a proper attitude towards books
is a matter of urgent necessity in this connection. We
must not believe that the child's attitude to books is
something that forms only at school, when he has learned
to read independently. Rather, it develops at the earliest
age. When the child sees that the grownup members
of his family read books attentively, when he realizes
that books play an important part in their lives, he
acquires, a respect for books. When the child looks at
pictures and listens to stories and tales, he not only
enriches his mental outlook, but also becomes interested
in books. TW,§,„iaterest prepares Jnm,jp^,j£aLa..^^^
and writing. Even the newspaper, which the grownups
"constantly use to keep informed about events in the
outside world, no doubt plays a. certain part in the
early impressions of the child.

Even more important for the development of the child
>o are such things as his practical activities the demands
'^ * made upon him by the grownups, and.Hffis position in
the_fai]Qily»:^These things determine the development
of the psychological qualities of his personality which
will be all-important for ^^ future work and life in the
collective.

Neffatfve traits of character such as egoism or cal-
Jousness are cause^tf both by a defective education foj
■v^ork and by an insufficiently developed sense of c
lectivity. An exhaustive investigation of these problems
would go beyond the limits of our study of the mental
"and psychological development of the child. These are
special pedagogical problems. We will limit ourselves
to pointing out the most imp^jtarU: cond-itionSoOiL^aii.
adequate education of the child in this respect.

One of the most important of these conditions is that

'^^ the child becomes familiar, from the very beginning,
with the work of his parents and other members^ of his
family. "The child must learn, as soon as possible, where
his father or mother works, the kind of work they do,
whether it is heavy, what kind of effort it requires and
what achievements it brings. He must know that his
father or mother are engaged in productive work and
must realize the importance that their production has
for the whole of society. . . . The child must understand,
as soon as possible, that the money that his parents
Bring hoine is not merely a useful thing to spend, but
the reward for a great and socially useful work. The
parents must always find both time and simple words
to explain this to the child. If the mother does not
work outside, but at home, the child must also come
to know and respect her kind of work; he must under-
stand that it, too, requires effort and strain,"^

The second important condition is that the child
acquire certain working skills already at the kindergarten
age. The child should gradually be given certain simple
but continuous tasks, such as, to water flowers, to feed the
cat, to clear up his own things and toys, to take the incom-
ing newspaper to a certain place every day, etc.

Our socialist society produced the Soviet family, th^'
germ cell of our society, pervaded by the collective spirit. J
This has created quite new conditions for the family cdu-S.
cation. It is most important that this favorable opportunity /
should be made use of fully. The child must not be alien- \ ^-'
ated from family life; he must rather be led to this life, so
that he can feel himself to be a member of the family
collective.

c.-«-"'

C. The Early School- Age Child

When the parents are asked what they believe to be the
most important thing in the development of their school-
age children, they generally answer: "How he learns at
schdot." We must, of course, agree with this answer. It
is therefore very understandable that many parents pay,
as a rule, so much attention to the successes of their chil-
dren at school. But all parents do not realize— far from
it— that the performance of their children at school
depends, especially at the beginning, on the way in which
the child has been prepared for his attendance at school.
Many parents seem not to understand fully the very ques-
tion of the degree of the preparation of their children
for school attendance. But this question must be treated
with the utmost seriousness. The successes and failures of
the child at school depend on it.

What do we mean when we talk of "the child's readiness^
fpr school"?

Instruction at school makes, from the very first days, a
series of demands on the child. When he enters school he
must already possess a certain knowledge and some simple
skills. The more of this knowledge and skills he has, the
better he is prepared. The preparation must, of course,
come as early as possible. Great attention is paid to this
preparation in our kindergartens. There, the children
are subjected to organized activities which are to prepare
them for attendance at school. But the child must also be
prepared for school in his family circle, as regards his
general mental development.

From his very first days at school the child must learn
how to listen to the teacher actively and without letting

himself be distracted. He must memorize what he is asked
to remember and not what he is interested in, and he
therefore remembers, so to say, automatically. It is no
less important that he pay attention to his behavior.
He must be able to sit still at his desk, and to get up
from it together with the other pupils of his class. But
the most important thing of all is that the child be edu-
cated into a proper attitude towards school a.ttendance
^nd given a proper understanding of the importance of
education.

The child's going to school is an extraordinary milestone
in the course of his life. By going to school, the child enters
upon a new stage of his development which gives his life
a new content. The child consciously acquires at school
a new position in human society^i.e., the rank of a Soviet
schoolchild. Learning becomes mr him an obligatory and
social activity which is determined by law. The quality
of his learning activity becomes the subject of an objective
social evaluation; it determines from now on the attitude
of the environment to the child. His performance gives
him a definite rank in his collective, e.g. he may become
a model pupil.

Together with new duties, the pupil acquires new rights.
Thus, he has from now on the right to expect that grown-
ups bear his school tasks in mind and do not disturb him
at his homework.

A beginner at school n^ust be prepared not only for „
systematic acquisition of knowledge, but also for the neWi^^
social relationships which are formed at school, ^

It is a well-known fact that children of pre-school age are
eager to go to school. This desire for school is a necessary
and important condition of readiness for school. When the
child becomes a pupil, he enters upon a new life, starts

upon an activity whose importance is recognized by all.
Everybody takes school seriously, even the newspapers and
radio publish reports about it. This desire for school must
be fostered, for it is the foundation for the most important
thing ,Q£,aU;j a propex^^osmdou^L^nd responsi^^ attitude
of children towards their school as a. whole.

Soviet school children are generally respected. It is there-
fore necessary that the child encounter within his family
such respect for his school, for his teacher and for the
dignity of a Soviet pupil.

It is also important to form in the child a^roper atti-^^
mde towards his learning activity. Learning requires from
him the capacity to achieve a definite result. The child
must not merely dispose of the homework in a perfunc-
tory manner. He must really "learn" it, i.e get to know
it thoroughly and not superficially. The child must there-
fore learn to estimate the results of his learning activity
correctly. Already the kindergarten pupils of the later age
groups must be educated to strive consistently for the
achievement of a definite purpose and to finish what they
have started, even if it is of minor importance. The per-
formance of the child must be carefully watched. His
achievements must be given recognition, and even his
smallest successes must not meet with indifference.

Learning at school requires systematic work from the
child. A pupil who is not used to work will never be able
to learn properly. As we said above, the capacity for con-
secutive effort and the proper attitude to work must be
developed in the child already at the kindergarten stage.

The experience gathered in our schools shows that the
children who had to carry out certain definite if small tasks
at home before they entered school learn more rapidly
than others how to organize their schoolwork properly.

These are the chief elements in the development of the
child's personality during the preparation for his attend-
ance at elementary school.

The importance of the school for the mental develop-
ment of the child is extraordinarily great. If we consider
more closely the changes in the child's mental processes
in his school years, we imd. that all these changes take
place under the influence of the systematic instruction
received at school.

From his very first year at school the child gradually
develops the ability to listen to the teacher's explanation
with ever greater endurance and concentration. This
means that the child's aUenj^2jU3£Uffl^.m8l£.S^
constant.

Memory improves more and more under the influence
of the teacher's instruction. The child memorizes edu-
cational material and learns many things by heart. His
memory increasingly acquires a clear and logical character.

Particularly pronounced is the development of the
child's thinking in the school years. In the lower grades,
thinking is still rather concrete and bound up with pic-
torial representation. At this age, the child's thought still
sticks largely to facts and ideas that can be vividly illus-
trated. What the child has actually seen and heard plays
an important part in his thought.

The child learns at schoc^^gjoaa^S^^co^ggi^^^^^
izat iqns.^jgJCefl.,tJtliQUt«^^i;fi^^ phgripmena ; but

these generalizations are not yet precise or systematic
enough. Bv accjuiripg knowledge systematically, the child
learns to think^ ranjistently, i.e. tp, bind Jndivid^^
nomena into logical connections.

THe* mother tongue is of great importance for the
mental development of the younger school children. By

learning his mother tongu^ the child not only acquires
the a;bilin^;,^g;^jj;^(i^^ important "in

tnemselves for his mental development— but also con-

ur Soviet school does not limit itself to transmitting
kppwledge to the child and developing his mental
ji^rocesses. It also educates him and forms his personaTTTy,
ihe personality of a Soviet patriot and of a future fighter
?for Communism. The school also opens up for the child
those wide oerspectives that await him in our Socialist
society.

We all know the great successes of our school. The
heroic deeds of its pupils in work and battle are known
the world over. But our school is not alone in its activity.
In its work it has the support of the Soviet family and of
our entire^9mniunity^ In educating tnemiMrtiie school
works hand in hand with the family. It is therefore inad-
missible for parents to say that they "need not bother any
more" about the mental development of their child and
the formation of his personality, "because the school is
taking care of all that." Successful instruction, good edu-
cation and a proper course of the child's development all
presuppose tireless effort on the part of the parents.

We have already mentioned the importance of a
proper attitude on the part of the child towards his school
and his duty to learn, even before he begins to attend
school. The importance of this attitude becomes even
greater once the child is at school. A new task arises here
for the teacher: to put this gpp'gp of jj^^lX. "P*^^ ^^^^^^ foun-
dations and to strengthen it— for a full development of
the pupil's personality is impossible without it. This
sense of duty must be fostered from the very beginning
of school. Its absence will produce very deleterious effects

in the future and will lead to the gi'owth of most unde-
sirable character traits. How is the proper attitude towards
school and its duties consolidated in the child? Abo\'e all,
by an attentive and understanding behavior of the grown-
ups towards the child's learning activity. They must always
speak of instruction at school with respect and approval,
and must ahvays rouse the child's interest in his school-
work. From the very beginning of his school attendance,
the child must be urged to do his schoolwork according
to plan. Above all, a certain definite time period is to be
fixecTin which the child must do his daily homework. The
child must also be helped to prepare a working plan to
provide for the performance of his homework and for the
necessary periods of leisure.

At the beginning, it is very important to urge the child
to be careful in his schoolwork and to exercise a certain
self-control. After all, the little pupil does not yet know
how to work properly and how to do his homework: he
often keeps his books and exercise-books in disorder, not
because he is disorderly by nature but only because he
simply does not know yet how to handle such things. The
same applies to his self-control. It sometimes seems to him
that he has done his homework thoroughly. But this may
not actually be the case: he may have "overlooked" this
or that, and the homework is not at all "done." The child
has not checked this— sometimes he is altogether unable
to do the checking.

It is at home that the child migL§jt,consolidate dxe ability
to learn which he has acquired at school. This is why
parents must always show interest in what the teacher
requires in this respect. Their interest not only helps the
child to remember the teacher's instructions in time and
to follow them; it also accustoms him to the idea that

these instructions are something that grownups take seri-
ously and respect.

But sometimes the interest of grownups in the child's
homework turns into a wrong and inappropriate form of
help. Some parents, when supervising the homework and
making the child do it, tell him what to do and how to do
it— they even solve the problems for him! A teacher re-
ported in the magazine "Family and School" that "a
mother, to ease her son's homework, used to read aloud
the oral assignment, which the boy merely had to repeat.
We also know another mother who solves the problems
with the pupil: she reads the assignment and formulates
the questions— while the pupil writes the answers in the
exercise books without mistakes and without inkblots!"

And here is another example of wrongly understood
"help." Nina, a third-grade pupil, sits at home doing her
homework. The mother does some other work in the same
room. From time to time, Nina asks a question. For ex-
ample: " 'How much is seven times eight?' 'Fifty-six', an-
swers the mother mechanically, and thinks she has done
a good deed and has helped her daughter with her home-
work."

Although Nina is already able to solve such problems
by herself, she is used to help, even if she does not need
it. Such "help" cannot be justified: it produces no positive
results, only negative ones. If the homework is taken from
the child, he becomes irresponsible and gets used to rely-
ing on others instead of on himself.

It is, of course, necessary to help the pupil if need be,
to take interest in him and to keep a check on how he does
his homework. But one should not impair the independ-
ence of his work or take away his responsibility for, it. On
the contrary, his independence and his sense of jesponsi-

74 ^

bility must be fostered by all possible means,
^^r^the chilB. is to maintain a serious and correct atti-
tude toward his education, he must be aware that his
parents, too, respect his school and his teacher. We can-
not expect a child to have respect for his school and
for the authority of his teacher if his family is wanting
in such respect. Such things happen, alas. "Komsomol-
skaya Pravda" reports the case of a woman teacher who
asked the mother of a bad pupil to come to her for a
talk. She received the following answer from the girl
herself: "Mother says, if you need her, you can come
to her."

One cannot help feeling indignant over such things.
Such an attitude not only undermines the proper atti-
tude of the child towards his school and his teacher;
it often also hurts the child's feelings and injures him.
The principal of a Moscow school reports: "When Mira
heard her father, who was looking over her exercise
book, make a negative remark about her teacher, she
cried and said, in tears, that she would never again
show her exercise books to anybody."

The development of the child's personality in ele-
mentary school consists not only of the extension of
Tiis knowledge, the cultivation of his thinking and simi-
lar rnental processes, but also of the formation of a
conscious, responsible attitude to his duties, of his edu-
cation in a'liense of duty. But this is only possible if
the pupil respects his school. This feeling of respect for
the school is theljBjcsL step in developing a consciousness
that to learn well is "the greatest patriotic deed of a

Mil mil — '■"•' ""-'"■nf''Tii' "rii n *Tl""'i"r"'~"''""'^"rrri|iiii'iin'iiaiir imiinnii ,

Sovier'chiid, in the words of M. I. Kalimnu**''***^^
""^Ttis wrong to assume that the younger pupil can-
not achieve the consciousness of the social importance

of his learning activity. Learning at school offers the
possibility to satisfy the child's awakening desire for a
new rank in life. This new rank includes for the child
meconsciousness that he has become a learner, a pupil.
His attitude towards education must therefore be cor-
rectly developed in the days to follow.

Other essential changes that are characteristic for this
^.-J" " stage of developmen| are the formation of a conscious
discipline, and the 'development of the capacity for sys-

^ ^ tematic work. Tliese are the first and most important

y^-^steps in the development of the child's will. Thelamily
'"'' ^ ' also plays an important part in the formation of this
characteristic of the child's personality.

To form the child's wilk he must be urged to get

^#*-- used^^ unerringlyajna"' without deviation, to a certain

fht^iyox^^ which should include the performance of certain

^-.ii.*^^^*'*^^^mestic duties. This order has an immense importance

in the child's life. When the child is, for any reason,

withdrawn from, his accustomed order and lives /j.g^,^^^-

d(^j^ his general condition worsens, he becomes dis-

^.^WiiTOfied and irritable. - --- .-»^-.,.._

,\ Finally, we must emphasize another important change

T ■( in the child's psyche which occurs during the "IcHool

\ -years. " ^ ^ ^ ^^^

The very entrance into school, i.e., into a collective,^

places the child in conditions which give him a pow

ful inipulse^ Joward^^ th^^^^ of the collectiye

spirit and of the- GomiriDn care for good learning. His

collaboration in the social organization of children is

also essential for the development of these collective

traits of character. The parents act very correctly when

they permit and encourage their child to take part in

the work of the "Pioneers" (i.e., Soviet Boy and Girl

Scouts) . The following incident is interesting in this
connection.

The girl L. was asked by a group of pioneers to take
part in a sporting event so that she could defend her
title as best sportswoman. But the girl refused on the
ground that she was to go to the theater that day. She
was urged, she was told that a theater ticket would be
available for her for another day, but she persisted in
her refusal. The parents found out about this, came to
the Pioneers' meeting, and criticized their daughter's be-
havior. This made a great impression not only on the
girl herself, but on the others as well. On the other
hand, the attitude of parents who underestimate the
participation of their children in the social organiza-
tions of children is wrong. It happens that even an
event as important in the child's life as his entrance
into the Pioneers organization is not given its due im-
portance in the family, is not discussed, and does not
become the occasion for a family celebration that the
child remembers for many years.

The parents do not always show sufficient interest in
the child's activities in the Pioneers, which is likely to
spoil the child's joy in these activities.

The mental development of the child is by no means
a process which takes place independently of education.
On the contrary, the development of all the child's rela-
tions with life and reality, of his entire activity and
consciousness, is determined in its course by education.
At the different stages of the child's development, it is
now one relation to reality and now another, now one
kind of activity and now another, that plays an impor-
tant part. But whatever stage of development we might
consider, we will find that not only the kindergarten

and the school, but also the family, plays a significant
role in the formation of the child's personality.

We address the parents with the words of F. E.
Dzierzhinsky:

- ' "You are faced with an immense task: to educate and
f to form your children. Be on guardl For the parents
\ bear a high measure of responsibility not only for the

Xir- " •"" """■'■ " ■"" '" "■' """■■'"

Notes

1. N. K, Krupskaya, The Role of Play in the Kindergarten
(in Russian) , Pedagogical Publishing House, 1948, p. 5.

2. A. S. Makarenko, Lectures on the Education of Children,
Volk und Wissen Verlag, Berlin/Leipzig, 1949, p. 37.

3. A. S. Makarenko, Lectures on the Education of Children
(in Russian) , p. 84.

4. From Soviet Pedagogy, Nr. 11/12, 1941, p. 56.

PROBLEMS OF THE CHILD'S
PERSONALITY FORMATION

G. S. Kostiuk

The Soviet psychologists, armed with the theory of
dialectical materialism, have set about creating a theory
of the growing personality. Soviet psychology has gene-
ralized from the experience gathered in the education
of the younger generation of our people in the spirit
of communism and the successful formation of the con-
sciousness of adults in the process of Socialist construc-
tion. It is based on the investigation of questions of the
psychology of education, instruction and development,
and on the scientific results of the related sciences. It
also makes use of everything valuable developed by the
great thinkers of the past. Soviet psychology has there-
fore already achieved some remarkable results which com-
pare favorably with fatalistic Western psychology.

Lenin wrote: "Everybody in the twentieth century—
or even at the end of the nineteenth century— agrees
with 'the principle of development.' Yes, but the super-
ficial, thoughtless, accidental, philistine 'agreement' is
an agreement of a kind that stifles and blots out truth." ^
The agreement with the principle of development

reached by the bourgeois child psychology, bom at the
end of the nineteenth century, an age of sharpened
class war, was such a means of stifling and trivializing
truth.

Preyer, whom the bourgeois historians of psychology
present as the founder of child psychology, offers a clear
and unambiguous formulation of the aims of that branch
of psychology in the introduction to his book "The
Soul of the Child." He writes there: "It must, above
all, be clear that the basic functions which emerge after
birth, are not formed only after birth. If they did not
exist before birth, it would be impossible to determine
where they come from." Therefore, "some parts of the
ovum content must undoubtedly possess potential men-
tal capacity." This human capacity is not therefore
"formed anew every time from material incapable of
sensitivity, but is differentiated in ovum parts as their
hereditary characteristic." In other words, "the soul of
the child is not a tabula rasa"; rather, it is inscribed
"with many illegible, irrecognizable and invisible signs."
He sees the task of his book, and the job of child psy-
chology in general, to note and illuminate these signs
so as "to recognize and decipher the secret writing in the
soul of the child." ^

Thus Preyer formulated— ninety years after the Rus-
sian radical Radishchev and over forty years after the
Russian critic Belinsky wrote on the same topic— his
conception of the child's psyche, which is often idealis-
tic and is hostile to the true principle of development.
His theory shaped the character of most Western stud-
ies of child psychology at the end of the nineteenth
and the beginning of the twentieth century.

It is no accident that this branch of psychology was

formed contemporaneously with the pedagogical theo-
ries of Stanley Hall, Kilpatrick, and others, and with
the theories of heredity of Weismann and Mendel. The
motivation for these theories lies, as our great Darwinist
K. A. Timiryazev pointed out, in the wish of the reac-
tionary forces to stop the progress of the materialistic
conception of life; in the revived clerical reaction against
Darwinism; and in the flare-up of a narrow-minded Ger-
man nationalism. As he put it: "The future historian
of science will regretfully note the penetration of cleri-
cal and nationalist elements in the brightest sphere of
human activity, which aims at uncovering the truth and
protecting it from all abuse." ^

According to these conceptions, the development of liv-
ing organisms is reduced to a simple repetition and
regeneration of those characters and properties which
are allegedly contained from the start in some heredi-
tary mass that is autonomous, independent of the or-
ganism, uninterrupted and imperishable. Nothing new
is formed in this process. These conceptions, under
cover of phrases about evolution, essentially deny true
evolution and restore the idealistic ideas of preformism,
which had long ago been abandoned. As Timiryazev
put it: "This makes it understandable why they were
taken over with such glee by the enemies of all theo-
ries of evolution, and why anti-Darwinists and parsons
joyfully embraced Mendelism and soon created a whole
school, whose 'blissful' field of action was open to every-
one. For no knowledge or capacity was required, not
even the ability to think logically."*

It is also understandable why these reactionary Weis-
mann-Mendel -Morgan conceptions of heredity, which
are hardly ever applied in the practice of bourgeois agri-

culture, were so widely applied to man and why, in
so many reports on investigations and lectures on child
psychology by men like ClaparMe, Biihler, Thorndike,
etc., the results of experiments with sweetpeas and fruit
flies were so widely applied to human heredity. These
authors wanted to find a theoretical justification for
their obsolete metaphysical theories of human person-
ality. By proclaiming the immutability of man's psychic
qualities, they tried and still try to prove the eternal
character of capitalist conditions and to justify racism,
cosmopolitanism, etc.

We can justify this assertion by some examples. Thus
K. Biihler, whose idealistic conception of the child's
psychic development aims at proving how, in general,
"the spirit (Geist) becomes what it essentially (an sich)
is," makes an extensive use of the Weismann-Mendel
theory of heredity for his proofs. He not only asserts
that this theory has allegedly directed the study of hu-
man heredity into a "certain definite path that is rich
in prospects," but tries to apply it directly to the study
of the growth of mental characteristics, of individual
differences and even of the peculiarities of moral be-
havior. He explains the differences in moral behavior
not by the unfavorable conditions of capitalist society
that drive men into committing crimes, but by heredity.
He writes: "There are men who have from their youth
an indestructible desire to be thieves and tramps, and
who become in later life regularly returning guests of
prisons and penitentiaries. They possess a fatal inher-
itance which is transmitted from generation to genera-
tion with the same regularity as any simple bodily
characteristic. . . . But it must be borne in mind that
this tendency makes these men commit acts that lead

82 ^

to terms in prisons and penitentiaries only so often as
is required by the Mendelian laws."^

Other authors reach the same conclusions. E. Hugue-
nin ignores the very statistical material which she quotes
in her study and which proves the frequency of juvenile
delinquency in bourgeois society, when she asserts in
her study that the causes of this delinquency lie in
"pathological hereditary tendencies" and "hereditary de-
generations" which "explain the anomalies of reason, of
will and of emotion." She goes on to say that: "The
biological study of the juvenile delinquent proves that
he is almost always the victim of a difficult heredity and
that he is burdened with physical and mental defects
inherited from his forebears."®

The Weismann-Mendel-Morgan conceptions of heredi-
ty have completely pervaded several trends of contem-
porary bourgeois psychology. The literature that is pub-
lished in the United States provides ample proof of this
assertion. Thus, Thorndike, in his theory of develop-
ment, attributes a decisive influence to heredity. In his
opinion, human nature or the human type is "a certain
definite collection or battery of genes which work to-
gether in a thousand different ways and means." This
"supply of genes does not change from generation to
generation and remains the same, independently of con-
ditions of life." It allegedly determines not only physical
traits, the shape of the face, the color of the eyes or
skin, but also the mental traits of man. Thorndike at-
tempts to present a detailed picture of how these "genes
of consciousness" determine in children their "ability
to move from the spot, to run, to jump, to embrace,
to fight, to pursue, to cry, to laugh, to study with hands
and eyes, to perform a constructive or destructive ac-

tion," and also reason, the ability to speak and to learn,
different professional capacities and psychological quali-
ties. Thorndike, like the other American representatives
of the "two-factor" theory which is so widely held in
that country, does not deny the importance of the en-
vironment in the development of the child. But he
insists that the decisive part in this process, and in the
differences observed in it, is played by "the battery of
genes" of each individual which determine his inborn
abilities and his "membership in the white and not in
the colored race."^

Other American scientists who investigate human abili-
ties with the aid of the famous aptitude tests, develop
similar racist views. They try to camouflage their primi-
tive and unscientific methods with the aid of compli-
cated apparatus and scientific formulas. Their intention
is to prove that the development of abilities in children
is determined not by the social conditions of life but
by the inherited biological equipment, the gene; that
the abilities do not develop with age but "remain con-
stant with regard to age"; and that the children of
colored peoples are far behind the children of white
peoples as far as their abilities are concerned. This dif-
ference can allegedly not be wiped out by their adhesion
to the white man's civilization.

It must be noted in this connection that a number
of the other American writers have reached similar reac-
tionary conclusions from, so to say, opposite starting
points. They ascribe the decisive part to the environ-
ment, but hold it to be immutable. They view it as
a purely external environment and limit it to the in-
fluence of food, climate and the geographical factor.
Their argument may be different, but their purpose is

the same: it is an attempt to prove the physical and
psychological inferiority of the workers and the so-called
lower races and to justify the right of Anglo-American
imperialism to exploit them in an inhuman fashion.

Bourgeois psychology has entered, in its main tend-
encies, into the service of capitalist imperialism. It is
therefore unable to solve the problem of personality
and other psychological problems. From this arises its
complete renunciation of the principle of development.
Bourgeois psychologists try to explain the concrete his-
torical peculiarities of man, which were formed by the
material living conditions of society, as eternal and
immutable characteristics of "man in general." They
try to find the driving forces of man's development in
"the depths of biological drives" and to explain man's
degeneration under capitalism by references to "human
nature."

This also explains the attempts to provide a psycho-
logical justification of the different philosophical sys-
tems and ideas that are still used by the enemies of
Marxism in spite of their untenable character. This was
noted by Zhdanov, who said that these were, above all,
". . . Neo-Kantianism, theology, the old and new edi-
tions of agnosticism, and the attempts to smuggle God
and other kinds of nonsense into modern natural science,
which are used to renew the stock-in-trade of the idealis-
tic shopkeepers."^

The crisis of modem bourgeois psychology is acknowl-
edged by the representatives of progressive psychology
in the West. Some of them rightly admit that modern
psychology in capitalist countries "is in the service of
the ruling class"; that "the hierarchy of its problems
is determined by the interests of that class"; that the

theses of that psychology are "merely the projections
of bourgeois morality"; that "child psychology, for ex-
ample, was formed on the assumption that only bour-
geois children existed in this world"; and that bourgeois
psychologists, and the psychotechnicians in particular,
try "to ignore the class struggle" and "to float above
it" by applying the comparative method while they ac-
tually serve the needs of capitalism and rationalize the
exploitation of the workers."^

They correctly state the reasons for this crisis of bour-
geois psychology: "Bourgeois psychology is idealist, while
it should be materialist"; "psychology can become a sci-
ence only if it renounces idealism, but the psychologists
of today are unable to renounce it"— which is under-
standable, since "they are linked with it by their origin,
tradition and bourgeois ideology." In the best of cases,
"they base themselves on the imperfect forms of mate-
rialism which prove to be sterile," i.e., on physiological
and mechanistic materialism. More often, they "busy
themselves altogether too much with restoration of spir-
itualism and scholasticism." Although they "abandoned
the monk's cowl and have put on the lay clothing of
professors," they "remain essentially theologians." Their
psychology is "a chapter of theology and an instrument
of the state." Instead of spreading knowledge, "they
offer to the masses Bergsonian mystifications, the fog
of German metaphysical psychology, or the kind of psy-
chological cocktail that is mixed by psychoanalysis.""

The author cited above notes that a Catholic periodi-
cal "described his criticism of the foundations of psy-
chology as the undertaking of a Bolshevik." He is con-
vinced that psychology will become a genuine science
only after it attacks all its problems in a new way, puts

an end to idealism, and accepts "the point of view of
modern materialism, originated by Marx and Engels
and called dialectical materialism." Only this materialism
can "be the correct ideological basis of a positive psy-
chology." "

The education of children at school is a common
activity of the children and of the teacher which takes
place in the school collective. It therefore requires from
the children a certain attitude not only towards edu-
cation but also towards the collective, an observance of
the rules of behavior at school and in society. The
school collective and also the collectives of the Pioneer
and Young Communist (Komsomol) organizations rep-
resent necessary assumptions for the formation of the
growing personality; for the individual "receives only
in the collective the means which make it possible for
him to develop his gifts all-sidedly. Personal freedom is
therefore possible only in the collective." ^^

This is an important principle of Soviet education;
it has been excellently realized especially in the edu-
cational theory and practice of A. S. Makarenko. Maka-
renko shows that the creation of a sound collective, the
purposes and strivings of which are inseparably linked
with the life of our society constitutes a necessary
precondition and powerful force for the full develop-
ment of the personality of every child; for the removal
of negative character traits; for the formation of his
attitudes, his will, and his character; and for the de-
velopment of his abilities. It was by his able realiza-

tion of the principle of education in the collective, by
the collective and for the collective that Makarenko
turned so many young people damaged by life whom
the professional educationists proclaimed hopeless and
"biologically doomed," into full and active workers for
Socialist construction. One important feature of that
education is that it is realized not only by the con-
scious activity of grownups, but that it also relies on
the unfolding and ever more conscious activity of the
child himself. For the child is never just a passive ob-
ject of the influence of environment and education. As
Makarenko puts it, "We must free ourselves from the
great 'vice of pedagogy,' i.e., from the belief that the
children are the objects of education. No, they are the
living life, and a very beautiful life at that. . . ."

The things which surround the child influence him
by entering somehow into his life and becoming the
objects and conditions of his activity. When the child
acts, he changes the influence of his surroundings. The
activity, controlled by education, not only satisfies his
needs, desires and strivings, but also establishes new
motives and aims for new activities and skills through
which these objectives are reached. The change in the
internal conditions of development in the child brings
about changes in his demands on his surroundings and
in the influence of his surroundings upon him. That
which up to now has not existed for the child and has
had no influence on him, now begins to affect him.
Not only the family, the kindergarten or the school,
but also the events of the social and political life of our
country gradually become, through changes in the child,
preconditions of his further psychological development.
The growing consciousness and self-consciousness of the

child is here the important factor, without which the
ever more complex reciprocal relations of the child and
his surroundings cannot be understood. The child's
consciousness is, indeed, an ideal form in which his life
expresses itself, but it also becomes a real factor which
affects his life. Lenin wrote: "The concept of ti\e trans-
formation of the ideal into the real is a deep one and
very important for history. But it is also clear from
man's personal life that there is much truth in it.""

The individual characteristics of the child also ex-
press themselves in his reciprocal relations with his sur-
roundings. He is attracted by some things and the ac-
tivities connected with them; he is enthusiastic about
them and imitates them knowingly or unknowingly. He
is indifferent to other things, avoids them or even acts
against them. Depending on such attitudes, the roles
of the various environmental conditions on the child's
mental development also differ. On the other hand, all
attempts to establish a direct dependence between cer-
tain personality traits of the child and some definite
"environmental factors" are false. The real reciprocal
relations that develop in the environment and become
important in real life must be borne in mind; but
neither can we ignore the great role of education which
leads and directs these reciprocal relations.

It is clear from the above why we must definitely
overcome not only the idealistic but also the mechanis-
tic views on the psychological development of the child.
These views, widely popular in contemporary psychology,
especially among the Americans (Watson, etc.) , destroy
the possibilities that actually exist for the development
and education of children by asserting that this develop-
ment is some kind of internal process which only re-

ceives its impulse from some external influences of the
environment. Such psychologists rob these processes of
their rich content and confuse the educators in their
practical work. The remnants of such views have not
yet been liquidated in our scientific literature and prac-
tice. They make themselves felt in the statements of
some physiologists who have not yet given up hope of
referring all psychological development to physiological
factors. They can also be found, in part, in the work
of some pedagogues who do not feel inclined to stimu-
late a conscious activity among the children or who try
to shift responsibility for the negative character traits
of some of their pupils and their failures at school by
blaming their unfavorable living conditions.

The recognition of the social conditioning of the
psychological development of the child by no means re-
leases us from the task assigned to us by Lenin, i.e., to
understand this process of development as a "sponta-
neous movement with an inner necessity."

Since we reject the idealistic concept of spontaneity,
which underlies the thought of so many bourgeois
psychologists, we must explain it in a dialectical mate-
rialist fashion.

The spontaneity of the child's psychological develop-
ment is not in contradiction with the conditioning of
this development by society; rather, it derives from it.
The new needs, strivings and interests of the child and
other stimuli of his activity do not come from some
intrinsic "nature" of the child, distinct from the world
around him. They grow out of his life, which is in-
separably linked with the life of his society and is
directed by education. This is proved both by our en-
tire pedagogical practice and by the results of investiga-

tions of Soviet psychologists like A. N. Leontiev, A. A.
Smirnov, etc. These investigations reveal how the aims
and motives of the child's activities are formed; and
show the qualitative peculiarity of the interests and ideas
of our children and adolescents, which make them dif-
ferent from the children and adolescents of Tsarist Russia
and contemporary capitalist countries.

Education directs the psychological development of the
child. It arises in the purposes set by our society and
the policy of our state. The purpose of education in-
cludes a program of characteristics that the new gene-
ration should possess. These characteristics "must be ex-
pressed in the real traits of men who are formed by
our pedagogical hands," as Makarenko put it. But even
the purposes of education that the adults set for them-
selves also influence the psychological development of
children, for they become to some extent the purposes
and motives of the children's activities and determine
the vitally important tasks which the children will be
called upon to perform. Any educative task set before
the child becomes an inner spur for his activity if the
child takes it over to some extent and makes it his own
task; as a result, the consciousness that it must be
achieved creates in him the will to achieve it and to
achieve it well. The higher the level of consciousness
and self-knowledge in the child, the greater is the in-
fluence of the actual situation on the efficacy of his ac-
tivities and the further is his development.

At later stages, the growing personality of the child,
inspired by the opinions, beliefs, perspectives and ideals
acquired through education, begins to direct the process
of his own development, to correct personal defects, and
to foster the growth of positive moral qualities.

It is here that a very significant characteristic of the
psychological development of the human personality,
which is particularly important for this process, makes
itself felt. It is spontaneity. The art of educational guid-
ance consists in arousing this spontaneity, in providing
it with its required content, and in leading it in the
right direction. It is the educators who know how to
turn their children and pupils into their own conscious
and active coeducators who achieve pedagogic work of
high quality.

The driving forces of psychological development are
to be sought neither in heredity or environment, nor
in any combination of these "two factors," as is asserted
by bourgeois psychological theories. They are rather
contained in the life of the child himself. The develop-
ment of the psyche as a special way of expressing life
is characterized by the contradictions that belong to life
and are specific to it.

These contradictions are not confined to those that
develop in the course of physiological development. They
are formed in the social conditions of the child's exist-
ence and find their solution in them, by making way
for new contradictions.

A general characteristic of these contradictions is that
they are contained in the tension arising between the
level of psychological development already reached and
the new problems set by life. The growing personality,
under the influence of society and education, sets about
solving these problems. The contradictions have a spe-
cific character at each stage of development. Thus, edu-
cation at school, by placing the pupil before ever new
and more difficult problems, inevitably creates contra-
dictions between these problems and the existing level

o£ development, motivation, ability and other psychologi-
cal characteristics. The mastery of the fundamentals of
science requires not only the utilization of existing pos-
sibilities but also the acquisition of entirely new knowl-
edge, feelings and qualities of will.

The psychological development is thus explained as
the overcoming of contradictions; the raising of psycho-
logical processes and characteristics to the level required
to solve new vital tasks; the weeding out of old and the
creation of new traits of consciousness and self-knowledge
of personality; and, finally, as a constantly growing en-
richment of psychological life. As in every other gen-
uine development, some old traits disappear, while
others, new ones, are formed, consolidated and developed.
Thus, with advancing age, the direct and naive interests
of the preschool child fade away and make place for the
new, deeper, more serious and more constant interests of
the school child. The purely childish ways of thinking dis-
appear; they are replaced by newer and more developed
ones, which correspond to the higher stage of knowl-
edge of the surrounding world. Naturally, not every-
thing fades away, much remains as solid attainment of
personality. But even what remains is much transformed.
Both in the history of the individual and of mankind,
what grows cannot be defeated because it bears within
itself the germs of the future. No education, even if
it should set itself this absurd purpose, can, e.g., return
the pupil to his childish interest in play and to his
childish view of the world, of other men and of himself.
He has already lived through them, and his entire being
is directed towards the future.

The psychological development of the child consists
of a sequence of regular and necessary stages. Each pre-

ceding stage prepares the following one and inevitably
makes room for it. The actual possibilities of transi-
tion to a new stage are always created in the concrete
life and activities of the child. Thus, the play and other
activities of the preschool child, directed by education,
create the possibilities for education at school and pre-
pare for the systematic acquisition of knowledge there.
These new opportunities do not grow by themselves;
they come into being under certain definite social con-
ditions, with the aid of the means provided by society,
and under the decisive influence of education. Instruc-
tion and education of the child create new possibilities
by realizing the existing ones, but in a different way
and depending on the content and the methods by which
the realization takes place.

This also applies to those potentialities of the child
that we call his natural gifts. They are not only utilized
in instruction and education; they undergo changes dur-
ing the process. It is wrong to assume that the gifts
of the child do not change, while his various abilities
develop. But this wrong metaphysical conception of gifts
is commonly accepted in bourgeois psychology.

Various bourgeois psychologists, like W. Stern, Binet,
Claparede, Spearman, etc., use it as the starting point
for working out systems of tests for the determination
of "intelligence quotients," "natural doses of intelli-
gence," "reserves of mental energy," etc. We find in our
own scientific literature and practice remnants of this
conception of natural gifts. They must be definitely over-
come, so that the educators can successfully direct the
development of the child's abilities.

Natural gifts are not ready abilities but only natural
possibilities for the formation and development of such

abilities. The material foundation of these possibilities
is provided by the child's organism, and particularly
by his brain, his senses and his organs of motion. These
possibilities are, like the organism itself, a product of
a development whose inner structure is different at dif-
ferent stages.

The child is bom with a relatively highly developed
nervous system, with senses and organs of motion, as
well as with organic needs that stimulate him into ac-
tivity. The degree of their development also determines
the degree of development of his inborn gifts. Marx and
Engels say that "the child is supplied by nature in part
with natural forces, with life forces; it is an active,
natural creature; these forces exist in him in the form
of gifts, abilities and also of instincts. . . ."^*

The growing interaction of the child and the world
around him produces, by bringing out ever new psy-
chological characteristics, a change in their anatomical
and physiological foundations. Through this interaction,
the child's organism develops; his nervous system ma-
tures, and especially his cerebral cortex; his functional
characteristics grow; and a great mass of conditioned
reflexes and other neurodynamic links are formed. The
results of investigations by I. P. Pavlov and his dis-
ciples show that these connections and relations do not
grow by themselves. They are formed in the child's
activity, by the solution of all kinds of tasks set by
life.

Therefore, the successes of the child in his psycho-
logical development presuppose the development of his
natural abilities. The abilities, as the starting points for
the psychological development, themselves grow while
that development is taking place. For what does not

itself develop, cannot be the inner condition of a de-
velopment. The abilities of the child who starts going
to school are no longer the same as those he had at the
age of three, or when he was born, because the child
himself is no longer the same. The abilities are always
contained in their realization and in their concrete re-
sults. To every stage of development of the child's
psyche there corresponds a stage in the development of
his abilities. We cannot view this, of course, as an in-
teraction of two factors which are parallel and of equal
importance, for the psychological and physiological de-
velopments are not identical and their relationship is
complex. On the other hand, psychological development
must not be separated from the development of the ma-
terial substratum and its potentialities.

To understand natural gifts correctly, it is necessary
to abandon once and for all the conception that views
them as powers which are localized in individual parts
of the brain and Avhich directly condition the develop-
ment of individual abilities. Such a conception is not
in keeping with the results of scientific studies of the
work of the brain as the material substratum of psy-
chological activity. Every concrete form of such activity,
like reading, the solution of arithmetical problems, learn-
ing by heart, playing a piece of music, technical con-
struction, is the expression of an indivisible human per-
sonality. The brain participates in these processes as a
whole, even if its individual parts and structures are
responsible for the different aspects of these complicated
processes. Therefore, the natural gifts of the child de-
velop as a whole in each of his activities, but they de-
velop in different degrees and in different directions,
according to the character of each activity and according

to the demands it makes on the child's personality.

We can estimate the natural abilities only to the
extent in which a growing personality, all other con-
ditions being equal, manifests itself in this or that kind
of human activity and results in relevant skills or other
qualities. A personality can manifest itself in many kinds
of activities with equal success; it is thus that the gene-
ral character of the natural gifts expresses itself. But,
at the same time, the different branches of human ac-
tivity—musical, technical, scientific, etc.— make specific
demands on the human personality. The existence of
special natural gifts for the development of individual
abilities manifests itself in the way in which these de-
mands are met.

It is understandable that the manifold and many-sided
activity of the child in the family, in the kindergarten,
at school and outside school is the decisive precondition
for the development of natural gifts and talents. What-
ever natural gifts for the development of general and
special abilities the child might possess, they cannot be
transformed by themselves, and apart from the corre-
sponding activity, into scientific, musical, technical and
other abilities. But this does not mean, of course, that
natural gifts which are not utilized because of given
conditions of life and activity are therefore dulled and
finally die away, as is assumed by some people.

Such an opinion is derived from a false conception
of natural gifts. It views them as some kind of isolated
"organ" in the brain which dies away if it lies fallow.
Actually, everything in the brain is activity; not only
nothing dies, but everything develops further. The de-
velopment of general abilities is also expressed in th€
special gifts, even if these are not utilized. A person can

be robbed, no doubt, by the conditions of his life, of
the opportunity to learn, to acquire a mastery of the
arts, and to enjoy them. But this does not mean that
his natural gifts perish. They can make their appear-
ance at a ripe old age. After the October Revolution,
many workers who learned to read and write only at
an advanced age, successfully acquired a knowledge of
the achievements of science, technology and the arts.
There is, for example, the case of E. I. Guseva. Born
in a village of Simbirsk province, she learned to read
and write when she was over forty. She became a stu-
dent at a Workers' Faculty, graduated together with
her son from the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, ob-
tained in 1936 the degree of the "Candidate of Sciences."
Now, at the age of seventy- three, she has successfully
defended a dissertation on the cultivation of some agri-
cultural plants (Agrumen) and does creative work in
agricultural technology. The name of E. I. Guseva, who
trained hundreds of young specialists, is known in all
collective and government farms of the Black Sea Coast.
Her life story is typical of our country.

The gifts and abilities develop through purposeful
activity, both in the child and in the adult. As Gorki
put it: "The higher a man's purpose, the more rapidly
and more productively his abilities and talents develop."
Makarenko proved by his practical work the great im-
portance of ideological purposefulness in the education
and development of the growing personality. He stressed
especially the value of men's more distant purposes, es-
pecially those which are linked with the aims and tasks
of our society (cf. his "system of perspectives"). "An-
ticipated joy," he wrote, "is a true stimulus of human
life." Therefore, "to educate a man" means to supply

him with perspectives to which an anticipation of joy
is attached, beginning with the simplest kind of joy and
ending with those which express the consciousness of the
citizen of our country and his sentiment of duty to our
society.

Without new purposes and perspectives linked with
those of the collective, there would be no development
and no progress.

Two abilities of educators play a very important part
in the guidance of psychological development. One is
the ability to transform these future perspectives into
concrete tasks which must be achieved at a given stage
of life and activity. The other is the capacity of arousing
a conscious and interested attitude towards these tasks
and of mobilizing all efforts for the overcoming of ob-
stacles and difficulties. Both in the historical develop-
ment of mankind and in the growth of the individual,
work creates ever new possibilities for solving new prob-
lems. These result from overcoming the difficulties which
arise in the child's learning and other activities. The
acquisition of knowledge does not proceed without ob-
stacles to be overcome as a precondition of the child's
growth and mental development. It is only by over-
coming difficulties that the child acquires a solid knowl-
edge, forms his abilities and talents, develops his power
of acquiring knowledge and other qualities, and forges
his character. The intellectual maturity to which our
schools certify their graduates is a result of ten years
of systematic and strenuous work directed by educa-
tors.

One necessary precondition for the development of
the potentialities of every child consists in the high de-
mands made by the educator who must, however, adapt

them to the child's strength and combine them with
care, attention and respect for the child's personality.
"Without demands there can be no education," Maka-
renko correctly noted. He remarked in this connection
that in our country completely new demands were made
both on adults and on growing personalities. But these
demands, to be fulfilled, create new possibilities and new
qualities of reason, emotion and will. The demands we
make on growing personalities are the expression of our
strong belief in their strength and their potentialities—
they are, indeed, a necessary precondition for the reali-
zation of their abilities. They are in no contradiction
with man; on the contrary, man recognizes their justice
and turns them into demands upon himself, upon his
own work and upon his qualities that are in the state
of formation.

Ushinsky observed that the art of guiding the psy-
chological development of personality is the most com-
plicated and difficult of all arts. It consists in the ability
to direct the life and activity of men. This work raises
the educator to the level of an "engineer of the childish
soul"; he creates new qualities in the child. And yet,
he has one task that is even more difficult: to re-educate
some children and to correct the mistakes of earlier edu-
cational work.

The success of the educator's task depends in the
first place on his Communist purposefulness, his love
for his work and his ability to use for his purpose all
the rich means that our socialist society places at his
disposal. But to do this he needs to know the children,
their life, their nature, and their development. Engels'
view that man rules nature only when he understands
her laws applies both to the laws of outer nature and

100

to those laws to which the bodily and mental nature
of man is subjected.

A true "engineer" of the child's consciousness is the
educator who knows the laws of the human nature
upon which he exercises an influence and which he helps
to form; who knows the age and individual peculiarities
of the child; who takes into account the concrete pos-
sibilities of each stage of development and creates new
ones; who understands how to notice, behind seemingly
insignificant facts, the germs of new qualities in the
consciousness and self-consciousness of the child; who
can help the child to develop these qualities and to use
them for his gro^vth. The realization that the psycho-
logical development of our children and the formation
of their psychological and moral qualities takes place
under the decisive influence of Communist education,
confirms the powerful importance of the scientific study
of the problems of child and educational psychology.

Notes

1. V. I. Lenin, from the Posthumous Philosophical Writings
(in German) , Berlin, Dietz, 1949, p. 190.

2. W. Preyer, The Soul of the Child (in German), 8th
edition, Leipzig, 1912, pp. VI-VIII.

3. K. A. Timiryazev, Works (in Russian), 1939, vol. VI,
p. 265.

4. Ibid., pp. 183, 265.

5. K. Biihler, The Mental Development of the Child (in
German), 6th edition, Jena, 1930, p. 39.

6. E. Huguenin, The Children's Courts (in French), Paris,
1935, p. 89.

7. E, L. Thorndike, Man and His Works, 1943, pp. 9, 12,
13, 15-16, 21, 40.

101

8. A, A. Zhdanov, "Contribution to the Philosophical Dis-
cussion" (in Russian) , in Voprosy Filozofii, 1947, Nr. 1, p. 263.

9. Georges Politzer, The Crisis of Contemporary Psychology
(in French), Paris, 1947, pp. 117, 119.

10. Ibid., pp. 89, 91, 96, 109.

11. Ibid., pp. 90, 117.

12. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, IV (in Russian) , p. 65.

13. V. I. Lenin, Posthumous Philosophical Writings (in
German) , Berlin, Dietz, p. 31.

14. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works (in Russian) , vol. Ill,
p. 642.

102

INVESTIGATION OF
PUPIL PERSONALITY

A. L. Shnirman

The foundations for the psychological study of per-
sonality and the possibilities of such an investigation
have been established by one of the most important
theses of Soviet psychology: man's consciousness and the
psychological qualities of his personality are formed and
express themselves in activity. This assertion is of fun-
damental importance. The thesis that psychological char-
acteristics are formed through activity opens wide per-
spectives for the development of necessary human quali-
ties through the correct guidance of human experience.
The fact that man's consciousness and psychological
characteristics are prominent in any purposeful activity,
offers us a possibility for an all-round understanding of
human personality.

Idealist psychology decries the pwDssibility of under-
standing the psyche of another person through his be-
havior. On this basis, self-observation or introspection
developed as the only method of psychological investi-
gation. "Objective" psychology directed upon behavior,
i.e., behaviorism, which is a variety of idealistic psy-

103

chology, also denied that it was possible to understand
scientifically a man's psyche from its manifestations. This
conception led to the conclusion that psychology must
renounce altogether an understanding of the psyche and
must study only the outward behavior of man in con-
nection with the environment that influences him, as
a totality of reactions and reflexes. Thus, all the tend-
encies of bourgeois psychology agree that man's psyche
cannot be understood.

Soviet psychology, based on logical Marxist theory,
consistently asserts the thesis of the understandability
of the psyche. The possibility of a scientific understand-
ing of the psyche is derived from the recognition that
the psyche, formed in human activity, manifests itself in
human activity.

The above account yields our first principle for the
study of human personality generally and of pupil per-
sonality in particular, i.e., the study of personality in its
activity. To give this study a real content, we must analyse
personality from many sides through its different forms
of activity.

The most essential and important activity of the pupil
is learning. We must therefore study the personality of
the pupil in the learning process. The teacher notices
many psychological traits of his pupils in the course of
his instruction in class. It is the interests of the pupil
that manifest themselves here: his likings for this or
that subject, the extension and depth of his interests,
his constancy and his activity, the peculiarity of his be-
havior. The pupil's behavior in class expresses important
motivations of his actions, and, above all, his personal
convictions. These manifest themselves in his attitude
towards schoolwork (conscientiousness and a sense of

104

responsibility in work) ; his position as regards ideological
questions, especially in literature, history, biology and
physics; his high opinion of this or that historical char-
acter, personality of public life, an outstanding artist,
scientist or writer— any man for whom he has a special
sympathy and who becomes his ideal. We also obtain
information about the pupil's motivations in learning,
when Ave analyse his reactions to the teacher's judgments
on his work and behavior. What is interesting here is the
type of the pupil's reaction. The following reactions are
typical: a correct attitude in estimating his grades, viewed
both as a just estimate of his work and as a stimulus to
further efforts; an indifferent attitude; over-estimation
of the value of grades and constant effort to get ones;
differential attitude to good or bad grades and their varied
effect on the pupil's activity; etc. Very important also is
the pupil's attitude to the judgment of different teachers,
according to the nature of the subject, the personal
qualities of the teacher and the pupil's relationship with
him.

The abilities of the pupil in this or that area of studies
manifest themselves in class with a particular clarity. A
sufficient degree of attention permits the teacher to rec-
ognize not only the actual state of the pupil's abilities,
but also the direction of their development. The teacher
observes in class many essential facts which help him to
understand the pupil's traits and habits, especially the
qualities of his schoolwork, e.g., correctness, eagerness
and grade.

The intellectual characteristics of the pupil manifest
themselves with special distinctness: gift of observation;
rapid grasp; careful understanding; clear, distinct and
graphic language; logical thought; expression that goes

105

straight to the point; clear and vivid speech, and other
traits that impressively characterize the pupil's mentality.
The same is true of the characteristics of the pupil's will:
activity; perseverance; persistence; the capacity to over-
come difficulties; initiative; independence; self-control;
etc.

It is more difficult to recognize the pupil's emotional
characteristics from his behavior in class. But this side,
too, of the pupil's personality will manifest itself to a
greater or lesser degree. The teacher who observes his
pupil closely can always recognize the different expres-
sions of "intellectual" feelings: thirst for knowledge; joy
in the successful accomplishment of a difficult task, etc.
But he can also note the existence of aesthetic feeling, e.g.,
in the literature class; and of moral feelings which mani-
fest themselves with special clarity in the treatment of
ideological questions.

The teacher has many opportunities in class to observe
manners of the pupil's behavior that are characteristic
of his attitude towards other people. They show them-
selves in the pupil's relationship with the teacher, in his
reactions to the teacher's instructions and his stimulating
or reproving remarks. Very important for the character-
ization of a pupil are his relations with his fellow pupils,
e.g., gruflp or cooperative behavior; rudeness or politeness;
sensitivity; envy; arrogance or condescension, etc. Typical
of the pupil's behavior is his attitude towards the achieve-
ments of the other pupils in class, to their progress or
failure.

Another type of characteristics of the pupil that mani-
fest themselves in class includes those which indicate
his feelings about himself: modesty or presumption; self-
confidence or timidity; ambition, etc.

106

Thus even a simple observation in class reveals to the
teacher a series of important character traits of the pupil.
But a true teacher does not limit himself to a passive ob-
servation of the pupil. He deliberately creates conditions
in which certain character traits of the pupil, which are
of interest to him, manifest themselves. He gives serious
thought to the demands to be made on that particular
pupil, to the manner of their presentation, to whether
praise or censure is appropriate, to the effect that a special
interest in the pupil's personal development or indiffer-
ence towards him might have. These observations of the
teacher in class are supplemented by the results of his
control of the pupil's achievements, his classwork and
homework, his notes, statements and summaries, his
themes and his essays, especially those on "free" themes,
e.g. on friendship and comradeship; on ideals and plans
for the future, etc. These observations and reflections
offer the teacher a rich material for characterizing the
growing personalities of his pupils.

But the teacher must not limit himself to what he notes
at school. Many character traits of the pupil manifest
themselves more clearly and significantly in other forms
of his activity. Above all, the extra-curricular activities of
the pupil offer the teacher great opportunities for studying
his personality. These activities include work in various
groups; his contributions to wall newspapers and pupils'
magazines; his participation in readers' circles, sport
clubs, etc. The mere fact that these activities are usually
carried out without compulsion and on the pupil's own
initiative makes them particularly valuable in revealing
his motives— and interests. Breadth, depth and constancy
of these interests show themselves with special clarity in
extra-curricular activities. The literary interests of the

107

pupil merit a special attention. Unfortunately, they very
often remain outside the teacher's field of awareness,
though they are of great importance for a study of the
personality of young people.

Also to be noted is the pupil's interest in questions of
Soviet and international politics. The pupil's tendencies
in this respect show themselves in classes on political in-
formation, in political lectures and in judgments of
newspaper items.

Very important is the study of the pupil's conduct in
social situations. Many important traits of character, es-
pecially the pupil's attitude towards his school and his
class, manifest themselves here. Thus it becomes clear
how the successes and failures of his class affect him. His
sense of responsibility towards the collective and his
consciousness of the responsibility of his class collective
towards the school show themselves particularly in the
performance of common tasks and especially of the tasks
assigned to him by the class and to the class by the school.
Many personality traits manifest themselves in social situ-
ations and in relations with the collective. They include:
communicativeness; sympathy; attention; openness; love
of truth; sincerity; confidence; friendliness, etc. It is in
the collective that an understanding of collective life is
formed and developed, and also the ability to fit in and
to subordinate oneself, which are important characteristics
of the will. It is in the collective that the social feelings
of men form and manifest themselves.

The study of the pupil at his social work and in his
collective are therefore an important part of the teacher's
analysis of pupil personality.

Learning in class, extra-curricular activities, and social
work are the most important spheres of the pupil's ac-

108

tivities. They offer the teacher the best clues to the pupil's
psychological traits. But it would be wrong for the teacher
to ignore another very important part of the pupil's life,
i.e., his activity at home and with his family. We don't
mean the pupil's homework, but rather his mutual rela-
tions with the family, the chores assigned to him and his
collaboration in the functioning of the home. It may
happen that the pupil learns well in class and takes an
active part in the school collective, but he won't do a
stroke of work at home and insists that the family do
everything for him. The school and the teacher must not
ignore such facts.

109

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