In One School Family Again

Frida Vigdorova, “Let’s Sit Together!”. October 21, 1954

 

This piece marks a small step in the evolution of Vigdorova, first introduced to the Soviet public in 1947 as a conventional school teacher. Her small critiques of the school system would evolve into acts of defiance against the state. According to Nadezhda Mandelstam, in 1964 Vigdorova ‘opened a new era [of dissidence] by writing down the proceedings at Brodsky’s trial, and this first genuine record of its kind had a shattering impact.’ The trial of Brodsky so angered much of the Russian literary intelligentsia that they organized pressure and support groups. Through writing letters to people in prominent offices, awareness of the trial was raised.  Distribution of the transcript was one of the founding stones of the distribution system that would become samizdat – it create a systematic and integrated network of support for underground and non-state sponsored writers of Soviet Russia. The power of the state to isolate, alienate and individualize writers who do not conform to its standards was weakened.

Original Source: Literaturnaia gazeta, 21 October 1954.

How many heated discussions this vital question of co-education has aroused! Last year people were talking about it in trams and trains, parents and children argued about it everybody in fact was concerned.

‘It’s grand and quite right too that they’re going to go to school together again,’ said a middle-aged man in spectacles sitting in the carriage of a long-distance train, as he carefully folded the paper he had just read.

The woman sitting next to him put down her knitting, the youth standing by the window shut his book, and a minute later everyone was busy talking about this vitally important question and the way in which it had been settled: ‘They’re together at home, at college and at their work, so what’s the point of keeping them apart at school?’

‘Oh dear,’ sighed the nine-year old girl sitting by the window watching the fields and woods of the Moscow countryside go by. ‘if only these was someone like Egor in our new form!’

There was such genuine enthusiasm in her voice that everyone involuntarily turned towards her, interested to know about this Egor who possessed such great virtues.

‘What’s so wonderful about him then?’ asked the man with the spectacles who had begun the conversation.

But it is obviously not always easy to explain why somebody seems so charming to us. So we merely learnt that the mysterious Egor ‘never starts any quarrels and doesn’t show off’. All in all, it appeared that Egor was the only boy she knew who did not ‘start quarrels’. To her all boys were ruffians.

This view is also shared by some of the parents. At the parents’ meetings held in the schools of Moscow last spring 6,000 people expressed their points of view. Of these only 230 were against coeducation, and almost all of these were mothers and fathers of girls. Both they and their daughters feared that boys would bring an atmosphere of violence and disruption into the schools.

As to the boys, I heard one ninth-form pupil remark in passing on ‘how lucky the tenth forms are’.’ This was to show that lie despised girls and envied those boys who would not be going to school together with them. But 1. should add that both the statement as well as the scornful tone in which it was made by the ‘unlucky’ ninth-former had a false ring about them.

Second-form pupil Yura, on the other hand, said with the whole force of his inner conviction:

‘Another nine years to have to stick girls!’

And then came September 1.1 Muscovites will remember how brightly the sun shone on that day and what noise and hubbub there was in the school playgrounds. The older boys and girls were shy and would only steal a glance at one another. The boys pretended that they were completely indifferent to it all, while the girls were noisier than usual. All the same it was quite obvious which of the children were at their old school and which had come to their new school for the first time: those whose old school it was were cheerful and uninhibited, while the ‘guests’ stood around frowning. It was not so easy to get used to a new school and new comrades and to make new friendships, after seven or eight years in another school.

Complete agreement and trust was found only among the youngest children. They were holding one another by the hand. Looking out from under the skip of his school uniform cap, the woman-hater Egor saw a blue-eyed little girl to whom he suggested a minute later: ‘Let’s sit together!’

Then the bell went and the school doors were opened. The second day followed and then the third. And now September is already past and we are at the end of October. For almost two months boys and girls have been at school together. What have these months shown?

JOINT WORK AND MUTUAL JOYS

In essence the impressions gathered by the teachers in the school courtyard on that first day in September have been confirmed by each successive day. With the youngest children everything went satisfactorily right from the start. It was here that we saw how right and natural it is for boys and girls to go to school together. In the senior forms things were more difficult. A schoolgirl in Kiev told me that she was ‘even frightened to talk to the boys’. Two weeks later that same girl said to me: ‘if only you knew how interesting and nice everything is! First of all, we’re going to build a wireless station for the school, and then we’re going to put on a play. And I’m no longer afraid of boys either.’

These words are worth a whole educational tract. All the causes and effects in this case are perfectly clear: as soon as there was work to be done together and the children experienced mutual feelings of joy the first shoots of the future community sprang up, and it was no longer possible to separate the form into hostile groups. It is obvious that the teacher in charge of this form has a very good grasp of his task, realizing that he must form his pupils into a community and that such a community will not come into being through pious talk, but through activities carried on together, and joys and anxieties experienced in common.

From every side you can hear favorable comments about the good effect co-education is having. But how steady and calm is the school’s pulse-beat at present? Are there any symptoms that demand our attention and thought?

It is over and finished with now, but it must nevertheless be admitted that some even among the most respectable of school heads tried to get rid of their most incorrigible ruffians when asked to transfer some of their pupils to another school. In school no. 618 in Moscow, for instance, everyone was shocked because some of the boys persisted in entering the school building by the window for the whole of the first week, even though their form room was on the third floor. They would climb up the drain pipe, poke their heads through the window, greet the teacher, and then jump into the room. And one can hardly blame the teacher for not insisting that the pupil who had arrived in the form in this unusual manner should leave it again at once by the same route!

Those people who feared that boys would only bring an atmosphere of violence and disruption into the school can say that they have been right; formerly your neighbor did not pull the girls’ hair, disturb them during lesson time or tease them during break. And in spite of all this, these people are wrong, for the boys are not the only cause of the quarrels in schools today.

The children sit before the teacher and he diligently tells them that they must behave themselves, and not fight or pull the girls’ hair. Every boy knows all that by heart. He knows it well enough, but nevertheless does not act accordingly. As Makarenko said- ‘No matter how persistently you tell a person what thoughts and what knowledge he should possess-if you do nothing else but that, you will be wasting your time or, at best, turning the person into a hypocrite and automaton.’

The boys and girls in question are between thirteen and fourteen years old, One must understand this age, its burning thirst for activity and its insatiable energy. It must be provided with something to do, something interesting and attractive that arouses feelings of comradeship among both boys and girls, knits them into one family and gives them something more interesting to do than pulling people’s hair.

It cannot be denied that it is difficult to create a community when the form is a new one made up of children from three or four, and sometimes as many as six, different schools. And the older the children are, the more difficult and knotty does the problem become. With some trepidation, I am now about to touch on a subject which is bound to bring down upon me the wrath and indignation of certain teachers.

In spite of the fact that, far from condemning it, separate education regarded a co-educational upbringing for children as something to be taken for granted, boys and girls lived as though on different planets. In the pioneer camps they were divided into separate detachments and even had their meals at separate tables. And when they tried to arrange something to do together in the town, they found themselves wading in a sea of troubles. I know of a girl from the seventh form of one of the Moscow schools, for instance, who tried to arrange an evening of humor together with the seventh-form pupils from the neighboring boys’ school. The first reaction to this plan came from their form mistress who had the following comment to make:

‘I was just waiting for that-an evening with the boys! What next!’

The girls then approached the head of the school from whom they received a similar reply. The district Komsomol committee admitted that it would be a good idea to arrange a joint evening of humor, and told the children to go back to school and to try to persuade their head mistress once more. The latter, however, refused to be persuaded, and the evening of humor and satire never took place.

I have not recalled these instances in order merely to harp on our difficulties of the past, but because a great deal of hypocrisy has

grown up on the soil of separate education. Hypocrisy is a plant with deep roots, and you do not destroy it by merely tearing off its leaves.

YES, BUT WITHOUT THE GIRLS!’

In school no. 182 a questionnaire was passed round the senior forms at the beginning of September: pupils were asked what new and interesting things they wanted the school to do during that year. The replies contained all kinds of suggestions.

‘I should like to have some cheerful music played during every break,’ somebody suggested. This is hardly practicable, but there is something very charming and buoyant about the idea.

‘I should like us all to have a lot of things to do together and to be really responsible for the school. In my old school nobody ever trusted us with anything. We even had the teacher to turn us out of the classroom during break as though the boys on duty couldn’t have done it without them.’-This reply contains the very important embryo of something which can unite all these boys and girls from their different schools in one community: love towards their school, mutual responsibility for it, and common interests.

‘I think we ought to have a discussion about friendship and comradeship. But without the girls; you can’t speak your mind when they’re there.’

That was the reply from a boy in the tenth form. Nine years of separate education have taught this young boy to mistrust half the human race to such an extent that he does not want to discuss any problems in their presence, not even when these problems worry boys and girls alike.

The pupils of school no. 618 did not receive any questionnaires but they in fact replied in the same way as the tenth former from school no. 182 had done.

The senior pupils in school no. 618 were to be given a lecture on friendship and comradeship. Everyone was interested and eager to come. Finally the day of the lecture arrived. The speaker went up to the platform and saw-100 girls and not a single boy. Her face expressed such bewilderment that the girls all started to talk at once, explaining why they were here alone. It transpired that the boys had at the last moment raced downstairs and on to the street, and that it had been quite impossible to halt them:

‘They’re embarrassed! They haven’t got used to us yet!’

Suddenly the door opened and in came-two boys. These desperate heroes were met with laughter, but the path of retreat had already been blocked and they sat down on the nearest empty seat, blushing and keeping their eyes averted. And so only two boys ventured to come to a lecture which the school had been looking forward to so much. The rest were simply afraid. Of what? Of a lecture on such a straightforward, important and interesting subject?

‘SURELY IT ISN’T RIGHT?’

They were not given a lecture, but a simple and sincere talk, such as people rarely succeed in giving when they speak on this subject to an audience of young people.

‘It’s very bad that you’ve got into the habit of doing things separately-the girls on their own, and the boys on their own,’ the speaker told them. ‘Imagine what would have happened if the Young Guard had acted like that, if Ulya Gromova, for instance, had refused to keep an appointment with boys, or if Sergei Tiulenin had refused to work with Lyuba Shevtsova!”

‘Yes, but they were going to school together; they would never have thought of saying things like that,’ the girl sitting next to mean eighth-former with attentive blue eyes-replied. And she was right. This proportion of 100 girls to two boys at a talk on a subject which really worries both the sexes, had only been made possible by 10 years of separate education.

And when the speaker had finished, many notes were sent up to her. It was obvious that the girls were all worried about their school. They wanted to know how they could form a single community out of the particles of different school communities which had now been brought together. What work did the speaker think they should do together?

There was a whole stream of other questions, such as ‘is it possible to fall in love for life at our age?’, and ‘my mother doesn’t want me to go out with boys; how can I persuade her that there’s nothing wrong in it?’, which obviously seemed equally important to those who were asking them.

And the mothers are not the only ones who have sometimes to be persuaded that there is nothing wrong in friendships between boys and girls. I am sorry to say that there are some teachers and heads of schools who have to be reminded of this fact.

In school no. 636 a teacher caught a boy misbehaving during break, and started to tell him off in a loud voice. Finally she said to him: ‘If you don’t start behaving yourself I’ll have to make you sit with the girls!’-This queer threat was made in front of everyone and shook the whole edifice of co-education; it might indeed have tottered had the boy himself not come to its rescue: ‘I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I like sitting with them!’

One careless word can sometimes destroy the inner world of an adolescent: ‘You’re too young to be going out with boys’, ‘why aren’t you doing your homework, you haven’t fallen in love, have you?’, ‘with whom were you at the cinema last night? And don’t try to tell me it was your brother’.

None of this questioning and scolding has been thought up by me; it could be heard in the schools, and it immediately destroyed all trust in the teacher and substituted feelings of contempt, suspicion and secrecy. More than that, such words taught adolescents to be hypocritical and petty bourgeois themselves and gave them a narrow and mean conception of human relationships.

There is no doubt that the teacher is now faced with many difficult problems which have yet to be solved. He has once again to get to know a new form with only a few familiar faces, while the rest have come from other schools. And some of those on whom he has spent so much work and energy have now left. The community has to be formed anew, and the children have to be taught to love their new school, to think of it as their own. None of this is easy, and it win take many months to accomplish. But there is yet another problem which we must not forget. After an interruption of 10 years our schools have once again become co-educational. There is a great deal here which the teacher must watch carefully. He needs sensitivity, sincerity, tact and a real understanding of the people entrusted to him.

I have a letter here. This is what it says:

‘Surely it isn’t right, is it? I share a desk with Vitya V., and every lesson our form mistress starts saying: “I’ll have to separate you two or you’ll start flirting and not work properly.” Surely it isn’t right to talk like that?’

No, it is not right to talk like that. The teacher must never forget his own youth when he too was vulnerable, impressionable and sensitive to every unjust word.

It is very important and right that co-education has been re-introduced in our schools. And the first month and a half have shown that school life now is different, attractive and interesting. But it is now, at the very beginning, that we must discover anything that hinders this wonderful work of joint education and upbringing; we must listen carefully for any unevenness or false note in the beat of the school’s pulse. And we must, right from the very start, remove all obstacles in the way of a healthy community where boys and girls will be friends and comrades in one school family.

Source: Dorothea L. Meek, ed., Soviet Youth: Some Achievements and Problems. Excerpts from the Soviet Press (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), pp. 65-72.

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