(ISBN: Volume 1: 0-89875-559-X, Volume 2: 0-89875-508-5, Volume 3: 0-89875-430-5)
The literature on Makarenko's work is widely available in Russian, German, Spanish and Italian. Unfortunately, there is barely anything in English apart from some misinformed or downright false encyclopaedia entries.
This book is excellent for counsellors, counselling trainees and anybody who is interested in the ways personalities develop, partly because it takes a completely different approach from the ones that dominate the Anglo-Saxon world.
Road to Life is a novel in which Makarenko demonstrates how the principles of his pedagogical philosophy work. The novel is about the development and life of an orphanage (the Gorky Colony) from 1920 to 1928 (though we get a glimpse into the operation of the fully developed method that he implemented in the Dzerzhinsky Commune between 1927-1935).
After World War I and the civil war there were a huge number of children in Soviet Russia without a home, family and food (in 1921 three million people perished in famine due to the destruction of the civil war). Being left to their own devices, these children robbed and murdered in herds. Once the situation started to settle, the authorities transferred these children to institutions. One of these institutions was the Gorky Colony (named after the outstanding humanist and writer Maxim Gorky) and its director was A. S. Makarenko.
Here Makarenko, gradually, developed his pedagogy whose aim was to develop individuals who can benefit the society in general, while he or she is an autonomous personality. To achieve this aim, Makarenko insisted on the self-government of the colony that would result in a collective, which is the central point of Makarenko's philosophy.
Naturally, Makarenko could rely on the achievements of previous pedagogues, such as Comenius, Pestallozzi and Diesterweg). What he added to was the role of the collective. This derives from the philosophy of historic and dialectic materialism, that is Marx, Engels and Lenin.
For Makarenko, the individual, the personality was not some abstract thing that is born with the child or something that is merely the object of the education work. For him, personality was a product of the complex system of social interaction of a collective, in which the personality has an active role. In addition, the collective was not a closed unit, but a system in active interaction with the wider society. The reader will find plenty of evidence of this in the book: for example, the theatrical performances provided by the colony to the villagers or the management of the mill (where the colonist use 'medical water treatment' to cure villagers from swearing).
The collective as Makarenko described it is often criticised as being an encouragement to suppress the freedom of the child and subordinate him unconditionally to the demands and will of the collective. This accusation is completely unfounded. It is true that in conflict situations, when the collective clashed with an individual (who opposed the views of the collective, breached the rules or ignored his or her obligations towards the community) coercion took place. However, we have to emphasise two points here. Firstly, all educational work involves coercion, simply because education is about transferring values (and it is irrelevant whether the education - parents and teachers or other adults - know it or not). Makarenko's main adversaries were those who believed that the 'discipline should develop not from collective experience, not as a result of the friendly pressure of a collective, but from pure consciousness, from purely intellectual conviction, from the emanations of the soul, from ideas. The propounders of this theory went even further, deciding that "conscious discipline" is no good when it is the result of adult influence ... Moreover, it is not conscious discipline, but "self-discipline" that is required. In the same way they reasoned that any form of organization for children is unnecessary and harmful, excepting "self-organisation", which is essential.' Hopefully, today's readers can see the damage that this approach to the upbringing of the child created. They can also follow how Makarenko had to fight with this approach, how he was criticised for introducing competition (another familiar problem for today's reader) and introducing differentiation in pocket money depending on the performance of the individual.
Secondly, the coercion in the Gorky Colony was based on common interests of the colonists as well as the rights of each individual member of the collective. Consequently, the criticism exercised by the collective was based on respect and setting demands. In addition, all the members of the colony actively participated in the setting of the rules and shaping the views of the collective, therefore, the power that exercised the coercion was of their own making and not alien to them. The collective did not suppress, but genuinely promoted the freedom of each emergent person.
For the reader, the scenes of the Road to Life in which the colony exercises its rights are fascinating. These were democratic experiences - thus sharp, merciless exchanges between the individual and the collective, whilst also respecting the rights of the individual and serving justice to the collective. These were democratic experiences even for the offender, because in the course of the punishment (another anathema for many educators then and today) they could prove their progress to the collective.
So, the collective set demands on the individuals and respected the individuals' rights to develop themselves. As Makarenko put it: 'I demand from you, because I respect you'. Thus for Makarenko, following the tradition of the Enlightenment, the demand on and respect of the individual were not two different categories, but two aspects of the same thing: the development of the human personality.
How can such a thing be achieved? Step by step - now we turn to the technique of Makarenko's pedagogy.
The first step, Makarenko suggested, was discipline. A number of official educators in the novel are just as shocked by this (quite funnily described) as many of superficial interpreters of Makaranko's ideas. The discipline started with introducing cleanliness, routines (morning assembly, reading of the order of the day), physical exercise, military-like marches. Once orders were issued, they had to be carried out (with the statement: 'Very good'). However, Makarenko perceived this only as a first step to achieve proper discipline, the one that comes from inside.
For Makarenko, this discipline comes from work - work that is carried out for the interest of the collective, and thus for the interest of the individual and work carried out for the joy of human, creative activity. Working with others, working with tools, working with materials and enjoying the rewards for the work bring about discipline. In Makarenko's philosophy, work was part of the general education of the children, because it was the task of the collective and the members of the collective organised their own work and decide on profit distribution and wages, the use of material and moral incentives. Whilst Makarenko considered work as an indispensable element of education, the also pointed out that the amount of work the colonists had to do was a result of the conditions of the 1920s' Soviet Union and that of principles.
The book describes the way work was organised in the colony and how this organisation came about. Children were allocated to groups (detachments). There were permanent detachment (carrying out day-to-day functions) and mixed detachments (for particular purposes). The leaders (commanders) of these mixed detachments were chosen from those pupils who were not considered to be 'active' members. This gradually made it possible to involve everyone in running the collective and in leadership, and at the same time it bypassed the privileges of the elective body and prevented its members from coming to think that they belonged to an elite. In this way, the organisation of the life of the collective assumed a genuinely democratic and, at the same time, human character. By the second half of the 1920s the general assembly of colony members, which became the supreme collective organ of self-government, gave practically every colony member a hand in organizing the manifold affairs of the collective, while the Commanders' Council became the executive organization of the Colony.
For Makarenko, the final step to achieving human development is the point when being useful for the collective, which in turn supports, nurtures and encourages the individual, and for the collective, which is the creation of the individual becomes a need of its members. Let's read it in Makarenko's own words: 'Man must have something joyful ahead of him to live for. The true stimulus in human life is the marrow's joy... In the first place the joy itself has to be organised, brought to life and converted into a possibility. Next, primitive sources of satisfaction must be steadily converted into more complex and humanly significant joys. A most interesting line can be traced here - from the simple satisfaction derived from eating a sweet biscuit, to the satisfaction based upon a sense of duty. Strength and beauty are the two human qualities which are usually found most appealing. And both depend entirely on the individual's attitude to future prospects. The person whose behaviour is ruled by the most immediate gratification - today's dinner, (today's, be it understood) - is the weakest of men... The more comprehensive the collective with whose future prospects the individual is able to identify his own, the more beautiful and noble that individual appears. To educate a man is to furnish him with a stimulus leading to the morrow's joy.' Consequently, Makarenko was interested in the future of the children and fiercely criticised those approaches that hoped to find the 'eternal principles' of the personality in the past of the children or even in the lives of the children's ancestors.
Counsellors, trainee counsellors and the attentive reader will find a huge number of details in this book that can stimulate further thoughts. Let me mention a few examples.
Some of the heroes of the book start as criminals, ignorant anything beyond their immediate needs. In the course of their development, through struggling with Makarenko, the others and themselves, they become young adults who give support to the others and gain further impetus for their own development.
Members of the collective are protected by the collective when they are threatened. This happens to a girl who is beaten at home, to Makarenko, when he is reported to the Cheka by some official, to younger children when adults of the educational establishment ignores their rights to be individuals.
The longing of children for discipline, to learn the boundaries, are evident in a number of episodes, especially in Volume 3. Although these children also longed for love, they easily saw through and rejected the adults who wanted to caress or hug them instead of exercising their duties towards them.
The three volumes are about 1,000 pages - the reader can find his or her favourite scenes, boys and girls.
Children are born for happiness. It depends only on us what they become.
© Dolores James
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