Restructuring the 3 R's

By NANCY TRAVER MOSCOW

Galina Boyko, principal of School No. 32 in Moscow, was teaching Russian literature to a class of 13-year-olds when a boy shot his hand into the air and asked about man's need for religion. Boyko, a 32-year veteran of the classroom, was understandably startled: religion has long been taboo in Soviet schools. But instead of avoiding the issue, she led her students through a 30- minute debate on the universal search for faith. "Before school reform, parents would have come to me, frightened that religion had even come up," Boyko said. "Now no one is surprised."

In School No. 79 across town, Principal Semyon Boguslovsky sat at a table with a handful of teenagers, each dressed in the blue blazer that most Soviet students wear. When Boguslovsky said free discussion in the classroom was possible on every subject, Volodya, 16, quickly spoke up. His face red with anger, Volodya said, "There is much talk, but nothing has really changed. We are already tired of talking." Instead of silencing his young charge, Boguslovsky said nothing, but his features took on a boys-will-be-boys look of resignation.

A few years ago, Boyko would not have handled the topic of religion with such confidence, nor would Volodya have had the last word. Now fresh breezes of tolerance are wafting through many Soviet schools, from first to tenth grade. Always considered a potent means of molding character, schools have been transformed into little laboratories of restructuring. Under Gorbachev, they are to change citizens from sheep into self-starters. Said Boguslovsky: "Soviet society requires not just a person who carries out orders but someone who thinks for himself. Our children are not mannequins, and our school is not a fortress."

To help children cope with the demands of a changing society, many teachers are encouraging a spirit of inquiry. Some ninth- and tenth-graders are choosing their own elective courses. Rote learning, long the mainstay of education for the 42 million students in the nation's 130,000 schools, is beginning to yield to free debate. Like America's system of local school boards, councils made up of trade-union and party members, parents and students have been created to give people more control over their children's classrooms. Boring textbooks that only timidly touched upon the terrors of Stalin have been withdrawn. Until new textbooks become available, articles from newspapers, enlivened by the candor of glasnost, serve as the main basis for history lessons. Once banned 20th century classics, such as Andrei Platonov's Juvenile Sea, have found their way into classrooms.

Despite these shifts, change is taking place within a narrow framework. Children must still be taught socialist values; how educators will reconcile that with the promotion of a freer learning environment remains to be seen. Some Soviets do not anticipate major problems. Said Boguslovsky: "I'm a Communist Party member, but I speak openly. To me, the two things are not mutually exclusive. I can be a Communist and also speak the truth."

Skeptics are not so confident. They say schools cannot lead the way to reform, they can only reflect society, not shape it. Some of the harshest criticism comes from Uchitelskaya Gazeta, a pro-reform teachers' newspaper that regularly berates the State Committee for Public Education and the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. Those two mammoth bureaucracies oversee the nation's school system and train its 4 million teachers. Reformers believe that both block educators eager to try more innovative methods.

Some parents blame the teachers. For years, teachers have been one of the most conservative elements of Soviet society, barking orders like drill sergeants and demanding ready obedience. In many schools, parents are called in for collective meetings, where they hear their children denounced before other adults. Any mother or father who tries to defend his child does so at the risk of seeing him later punished by his teacher. Boyko agreed that many teachers are not prepared for reform. "They don't have the strength to change, or they think the old ways are just fine," she said.

Gennadi Yagodin, appointed last year as chairman of the State Committee for Public Education, has been blunt about the failings of teachers. Many cannot be replaced or re-educated, he says; the system is simply stuck with them. Money is another problem. Yagodin has promised to double the budget for new school construction and teaching materials. But the biggest need, he feels, is for free thinking. Says Yagodin: "The school badly wants more democracy." In the end, only a generation of new teachers, trained in the era of glasnost, may be able to carry out the sweeping school reform so crucial to changing Soviet society.