Report from Moscow:

By WILLIAM DEVINE
Tribune Staff Correspondent

C contrast to pessimistic
Western forecasts about the

effects of automation (and
the genuine fears of workers
about losing their jobs) one
finds only optimism in the
Soviet Union.

Automation is seen here as a
genuine boon to mankind, en-
abling it to produce more and
enjoy a constantly rising stand-
ard of living.

Recently assistant professor
Vladimir Yagodkin commented

Leningrad engineers D. I.
Azhotkin and V. V. Chuyev
work on an experimental com-
puter designed to control
the operations of an average-
size factory.

In Berlin:

Education

By MAX REICH
Tribune Staff Correspondent

HE German Democratic Re-
public recently adopted a

new law on the “Unified
Educational System”. It covers
schoolbooks, curricula, teach-
ing methods, teacher training
and every step of education
from pre-school to university.

“Unified” does not mean dull
uniformity. The diversity offered
by the GDR educational system
is second to none.

Today, mathematics and ab-
Stract thinking play an increas-
ingly important role. Abstract
maths, general numbers (x, y)
are introduced in Grade One.
This is revolutionary, but experi-
ments prove it can be done with-
out difficulty or mental burden
on the child.

Not only does this save time
and effort in later school years,
but it eliminates the mental
blocks that may arise when
switching from the concrete to
the abstract.

The new law will reshape
education for the next 20 to 30
years. It is the outcome of long
study, debate, test and exper-
iment by thousands of experts
in all fields. The study proceeded
for two years in full public
view. The whole country talked

on assertions of British econo-
mists that 60 percent of the
world’s workers will be automa-
ted out of their jobs within 20
years,

Yagodkin, who had made an
analysis of the effects of tech-
nical progress on employment in
the Soviet Union, said such as-
sertions had no bearing on the
socialist countries. This was be-
cause of the socialist system of
nation-wide planning.

Yagodkin noted that since
1928 the labor force has grown
six-fold in the USSR, with an
even greater increase in the
number of skilled specialists.

An uninterrupted and crisis-
free growth of production in
the Soviet Union, he said, en-
sured full employment for all
these workers despite automa-
tion. He pointed out that in the
last five years 5,100 big indus-
trial enterprises had been built.

Thus a constantly expanding
economy absorbs a constantly
expanding work force.

Within this general process
individual workers are able to
advance apace when automa-
tion does set in at their place
of work.

A typical example of how this
works is provided by the Soviet
republic of Lithuania. There,
technical progress has been ac-
companied by a growth in tech-
nical knowledge of the work-

ers. According to the republic’s
trade union council, every fourth
industrial worker has improved
his skill or mastered a new
trade.

He does this through special
schools set up at factories where
he studies free of charge,

In addition he is given paid
leaves during examination: per-
iods. A worker studying at a
higher technical school may get
up to 300 days of paid leave
during his studies.

With his new skills a worker
is then given (a) another job in
the same plant because of the
plant’s expansion (all factories
I’ve visited complain of a lack
of workers); (b) a job in an-
other plant in the same city; or
(c) an offer of re-location in an-
other area of the country.

The eastern regions of the
country, in particular, seem to
be a never-ending source of jobs.
Vast construction projects are
underway there and new settle-
ments and towns are constantly
springing up.

If’ a worker chooses to re-
locate, his moving expenses are
paid and he receives a month’s
wages as a re-location benefit.

Another reason why- automa-
tion will never mean unemploy-
ment in the Soviet Union was
given by Prof. Yagodkin: the
work week will be reduced.’

As workers throughout the

for the future

educational reform in articles in
newspapers, letters to the edi-
tors, on radio and TV.

Full-time sub - commissions
were set up to investigate, ex-
amine, test, experiment, an-
alyze. Computers were used.
Special commissions — studied
how educational problems were
tackled in other countries, so-
cialist and capitalist.

Two factors have made the
reshaping of education a world-
wide problem — the technolo-
gical revolution (electronics and
automation) and the rapid
growth of knowledge.

It is estimated that the know-
ledge of humanity doubles every
seven to nine years. How can
schooling keep up with it?

.As a start, the term “general
education” must be redefined in
terms of structure and volume.
It is obvious that not every-
thing can be taught in school
in all its detail. Seep

Education can no longer be
something that is stuffed into
the pupil as long as he attends
school. It has become a life-long
process. This does not mean
future generations will do
nothing but go to school. It
means that the most important
aim of the school is to teach the
pupil methods for continuing to

a RR

acquire knowledge independen-
tly. Not a mass of detail, but
the principles, the general un-

derstanding of the subject is

what is important.

Much work remains to be
done to implement the new Sys-
tem — training teachers, print-
ing new books, preparing cur-
ricula. Only by 1968 will all
Grade One classes learn by the
new method and it will become
general up to Grade 10 only by
1978.

In the GDR, the 10-grade
school (from six to 16) is obli-
gatory as the minimum educa-
tion. From there pupils either
continue to Grade 12 and mat-
riculation or leave school to
work, in which case they can
attend night classes for matric-
ulation and then university
study.

The GDR does not claim to
have all the answers to educa-
tion. It is keen to learn and ap-
preciate what is done in other

ist.

_ Canada- could learn a lot
from the methods and results of
reforms and from the exper-
iments of the GDR as it drops
outdated practices and sets up
an educational system adapted
to our times and needs.

countries, socialist and capital-

world celebrate May Day and
the historic struggles for the
eight-hour day, it’s apt to note
that all factory and office work-
ers in the Soviet Union have
been on a seven or six-hour day

since 1960. At present the
USSR’s work week averages
39.4 hours.

The outlook is even better.
It’s contained in the 20-year
program adopted by the Com-
munist Party of the Soviet
Union in 1961, aimed at creat-
ing the material and technical
basis of communism and achiev-
ing a higher living standard
than any of the capitalist coun-
tries. Here’s what it says:

“In the coming 10. years the
country will go over to a six-
hour working day with one day
off a week, or a 35-hour work-

Where automation poses no threat!

ing week with two days 0M
on underground jobs an@®
prises with harmful We)
conditions to a five-houl
ing day or a 30-hour fi
working week. :

“By virtue of a cones,
ing rise in labor product
transition to a_ still :
working week will be D&
the second decade. |

“The Soviet Union W
have the world’s shor F
concurrently, the most PY
tive and highest paid Wy
day. Working people Wi, §
much more leisure time 7

That’s the socialist PY
tive. As workers in Cana
more and more coming
the capitalist perspect!
quite something else.

pieced out.

cucumbers.

of discrimination and riots.

These we preserved as well as peaches, plums and P th
With a couple of barrels of apples this saw us throug
winter. If not, dried apples and prunes (CPR strawbé

Autumn was storage time, winter a siege. We we)
sugar by the 100-lb. bag, flour by the 196-Ib barrel
enough bags of potatoes, turnips, cabbages, carroy’ F
snips, beets: kept in the cellar under sand. As we 4 thet
lived in a city or town we didn’t store meat or fish, © we
smoked or salted. Chicken was expensive even W
raised our own. Turkey and oranges appeared 0 ow
Christmas time; orange and tomato juice were unk®
We loved tomatoes; some homes feared these “love 4P
and grew them only for ornament, We feared the skit

Pedlars with huge bags on their backs were the
worth stores of that time. The sight of my mother
nizing with dark-skinned Syrians and Jews helped
the race prejudice that we caught in school. So ‘
fact that, being Irish, we were often on the receivill

We sawed wood for our hot air furnace (an innovall
and split it for the kitchen stove. Toast was made
fork over an open flame: it often fell in. We primed 4 iat
in the back yard for water and bathed every Saturday ~~
in a wooden tub on the kitchen floor.

el”
And now, as a contrast in one short life time orl
netics, automation, space orbits, socialism for one+t Pe we
mankind. The world moves faster and faster .. . un
too keep moving faster and faster we'll be flung offs

Communism won’t keep: me warm

Till the grate returns in a higher form
While to a nigh, a mistletoe sky,

I New sleighbells ring :

And old stars reply. — :

I THINK I remember horse cars operating in Toran!
perhaps only because we used a discarded one 4
cottage one summer. I don’t remember candles if o
but remember seeing a candle mold in our home. !®
time we used coal oil. I never lived in a house with ele,
lights or a phone until I was around twenty. We ne
laundry soap from wood ashes, fat and lye. We cut |
clothes into strips and made mats for our floors.
year a woman would come for a few days and help ®",
our clothes: other homes often had a grandmothef
spinster aunt to help in such work. F

We grew gooseberries and currants and made oom
excursions to gather strawberries, raspberries, bluebe!

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May 7, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE |