Abstract:

In modern social science, the notion of the “a hidden curriculum” refers to a set of beliefs imposed on pupils in an indirect way. The authors of Soviet school textbooks never tried to hide their ideological components, even during the relatively liberal 1920s. On the contrary, ideology was deliberately and overtly demonstrated in them. Mathematics is generally considered to be a science as far from politics as is possible, but even this was used by the school of the Stalin era in the service of propagandist educational aims. The transformation of schools from fairly liberal to fully totalitarian institutions took just a few years, and the basic principles of Soviet pedagogical science transformed rapidly during the 1920s and the 1930s. In the original manuals on Mathematics, the change is especially obvious. A kind of a model of Social Realism is dominant in the textbooks of this period, where it is important to note that this happened before it became the main method at use in the Soviet literature more broadly. The Soviet routine at the beginning of the 1920s is depicted in such books with realistic detail. Among the topics that dominate are hunger, disease, poverty, as well as natural and social disasters. A specific Soviet model of the world is formulated in arithmetical textbooks. When looking at current pedagogies, edification receives certain emphasis, and in the case of school arithmetic, refers more infrequently to aspects of daily life. A conflict between the real and the ideal is settled in favour of the latter. In this way Mathematics is considered to be one of the factors of Communist education.

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