Oh, this is another book written in 1937

But the introduction is very good! A great primer on “Dictatorship vs Democracy” that lays the groundwork for further understanding. I usually have to use a similar intro when discussing Socialist ideas, I’ll be sure to use the example of ancient Greece being a “Democracy” for a tiny few and a “Dictatorship” for everyone else.

And the first chapter has a lot of overlap with Strong’s accounts of Soviet education in This Soviet World. Also interesting how it captures the “Zeitgeist”(for lack of a better term) of this era of the USSR, everyone from children to elders were eager to improve themselves, enrich themselves, be the best version of themselves they could be. And the idea that 2-3 years after leaving school at 14, these teens would want to return to finish their education for another 4 years is completely unimaginable in my country, especially with it being completely free and supported by society. This is going to be another book that makes me really wistful, isn’t it?

It is interesting how some aspects of Soviet life seem more compelling to Sloan than to Strong and vice versa. Sloan mentions women workers almost as an afterthought, while it felt (to me at least) that their accounts were usually at the forefront in Strong’s writing.

To many teachers and parents in other countries it seems inconceivable that schools should be run throughout a vast country without the use of punishment and all the other devices for preserving the authority of the teacher to which we are accustomed in the rest of the world.

And this is yet another book on the Soviet life that shows just how little the capitalist world has changed in the past century. It does offer a very interesting perspective on the mentality of Soviet schoolchildren though, as a Brit, Sloan must inevitably compare it to enthusiasm towards football, but the point is made well. Children treated with respect and dignity in the classroom are better students, ambitious and eager students, just how a respected and dignified worker is a better worker.

Whereas, on the one hand, we would find much scepticism in this country as to the advisability of pupils choosing their teachers, on the ground that they would choose those that gave them the least work, it would hardly be maintained that the boys in a school would not be capable of passing judgment on the question of which master was the best football coach.

And I was literally thinking about this myself before Sloan brought it up! The way Soviet students were treated would be unimaginable in Australia today, as it would be feared they would use their power to just avoid work as much as possible, which come to think of it, is also a common argument against Socialism in general, that workers can’t be trusted to “be their own boss.” because they are too lazy. I don’t know if “Capitalist infantilisation” is a thing really explored much in theory, but I am noticing a common trend of just how much workers under capitalism are treated like unruly children who need the rod and the cane. It’s the “everyone is 12” thing, but for the entire socio-economic system.

The type of person created by the Soviet educational system, then, is an intolerable type from the standpoint of any private employer. Such people, to use a common term, “would simply make a revolution.” And that is why, only in the U.S.S.R., and after the Revolution, an educational system has been developed which creates such people. For, in the U.S.S.R., the new system of production, where the power of the private employer has been first restricted, and then finally eliminated altogether, requires a type of citizen altogether different from the wage-earner of capitalist society.

And again I bring up a point, only to find Sloan also brings it up later, how is this book reading my mind?

Struggled a bit with the first chapter, but really enjoyed the second. I think the first felt a little too similar to This Soviet World and I was concerned this book would just rehash things from that, but it goes in a different (and much more football focused) direction, discussing the same ideas, but emphasising different parts of them, which is a very interesting thing to read, two interpretations of the same society.