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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 27, No. 2. 1964.

Historical Outlook Rejected

Historical Outlook Rejected

It is not by accident that this volume is entitled Communist Education, for although the major portion of the work is concerned alone with Russian education, case-studies are also included of education in East Germany, Poland and China.

The twelve articles which comprise the volume range widely In subject matter from the Soviet concept of ideology to the common ground between Communist and Western education. For all the wide scope of the work, however, and the scholarly first-hand accounts contained in it, a number of factors remain disquietingly unresolved.

In the first place, it is negligently assumed throughout the work that everybody knows what is meant by being a Communist. Indeed, the only common ground among the various contributors in any attempt to answer this fundamental question is to imply that a Communist is none other than an inhabitant of a certain area of the world's surface. Is this any less naive than the reported geographical division of the world according to the Czech textbook Zemepis Pro Desaty Rocnik into "socialist" regions and the rest?

Secondly, the absence of any historical treatment in the work cannot readily be overlooked, no matter how unavoidable.

This is especially so in view of I the Marxist emphasis on the importance of historical studies in education, and the major role which historical studies play in Communist education.

Neither of these criticisms must be construed too severely in detracting from the merits of the work, the mature and dispassionate tolerance which the authors bring to bear on their subject, without expressing condonation of that with which they find fault.