On slow and fast learners, uniformed curriculum and more in Sovied education system

Centralized education system has its disadvantages for a individualist. However, in my opinion (and in opinion on my husband's grandmother who spent 47(!) years being a teacher and who I consulted on this topic) the benefits for a student were quite balancing it.
First, of course, was the funding of the schools - the schools in the capital city(at that time - Moscow) were financed and equipped better than schools in the province and country sides. The principals had nothing to do with the budget. All textbooks, supplies, materials, furniture etc were approved and provided from "the top". The teacher's salary was uniformed with differentiated pay with the increase of the years of service. Retirement started at 55 (and it's still so) for women, 60 - for men.

Second, the centralized control over curriculum was strict and a teacher could not work as she or he pleased. Everything was scripted, outcomes of the lessons approved. (For examples, there were lists of books the literature teacher could not even recommend for extracurricular reading - banned).

Third, there was no choice in terms of electives and so on the students could take. There was no choice in anything.

Fourth, no differentiating was done for students with different abilities.

Fifth, no students with disabilities (of any kind) were in general schools. Such kids were attending special internats (institutions) with medical personnel and other specialists available.


Though I understand the disadvantages of former education system in USSR (it doesn't exist any more!), I still feel nostalgic and therefore may be rather subjective.

Centralized funding - at least the BOOKS were available and provided for free for everybody. The last days in school year after the exams were taken, students were returning their books to the library and receiving complete sets of books for all subjects for the next year.

Scripted programs -The weak or inexperienced teachers were able to actually teach. New teachers were coming to school equipped with complete set of lesson plans for the subject they teach, by grades. They all had taken a class on TEACHING their subject and wrote (under strict guidance of their professors and chairs) the scripts for teaching each unit. The teachers in early grades had scripts (aligned with textbooks used) for teaching reading step by step, writing, and math. There were no social studies before grade 4 (in grade 4 History started), and no science (in grade 4 we had "Observing Nature" class in which we kept Nature observation logs.

All classes were mandatory and scheduled for the whole class. No choice. One would be moving through the school years with the same 30 people he started 1 st grade.
This type of scheduling ensured that ALL students had physics, chemistry, geography, biology despite their personal preferences (I still don't get it - how can you come out of high school and never take chemistry or physics, and then in colleges the professors start from the stuff that is SO basic!). So it was a kind of common knowledge. The literature you studied in grade 7 was also studied by the person you talk to, so you could be safely referring to and citing the authors and lines you memorized , and have the common ground of understanding.

Differentiated instruction - the school program was created for an average student with satisfactory marks (somewhat up to 75% in a 100% scale). So everyone, if not completely brain-damaged, could master it. Here we often hear about different pace of learning. I was the fast one. My prize was the amount of free time after school. I didn't have to read the chapter twice (and since most HW was oral, I always did my reading quickly or briefly looked up the notes), or spend much time on trying to understand the concept. The lessons were structured very close to direct instruction model, with clear and direct explanations, and guided practice,, so just to practice 10 problems in math was good enough.

Slow students had to spend much more time practicing at home, reading and re-reading the chapters, and memorizing rules and definitions. My cousin had also all excellent marks but it took her three times the amount of time I spent on the same material.

This way, the fast students could spend more time on extracurricular activities (as I did) provided for free by many culture centers. I was in the theater studio, I danced, I sang in a choir, I drew, and I did science research without harming my learning but rather enriching it.
Please, also note - in most cases parental involvement was in terms of checking with the teacher if the child behaves and what are the grades. If something was not "great", the kid would be spanked. But nobody had to re-teach anything. My parents, both engineers, paid attention to my HWs up to grade 4. After that, they could help me with resources (my mother works in research) but never had to explain or teach any topic to me.

I am not going to say anything about "special" students - I didn't see much of them while in school (BTW, the colleges could also refuse to accept a student based on the health issue - I was almost rejected by the vet.school because of the bad vision : - 9 is not a joke!)
However, now they mainstream kids based on parents' demands. My husband's grandmother is a homeroom teacher of an autistic child (a son of my mother's co-worker), but she also works with him individually after school.

As of now - there is still some remaining centralization, but the schools are moving toward the western (read - american) model. Workshop models are introduced, teachers are mandated to write activities and projects for students, private schools operate by "individualized approach to each students abilities" and work on "development of creativity", students cannot write properly, and the History as a subject looks like a twisted and deformed stick - no curriculum at all. My husband's grandmother still checks and corrects all spelling mistakes in essays, but most teachers don't. Education lost the value for average people becoming elitarian

P.S.: After talking to my husband's grandmother today I don't feel like sending my kid over there to school anymore (even though it's still cheaper to find the Math-English school with traditional instruction there). At least they didn't damage the science curriculum yet. And this Summer I'll go there and will bring myself sequenced and organized books in Physics (6,7,8), Chemistry, Geography...