LEGITIMATION OF VIRTUE EDUCATION IN TEACHER TRAINING DISCOURSE DURING SOVIET LATVIA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17770/sie2019vol1.3916Keywords:
legitimation, Soviet Latvia, Soviet virtues, teacher education, virtue educationAbstract
Soviet virtue education had a relevant place in the discourse of the founders of communism and in the Communist Party’s documents. Virtue education played a central role in the construction of the future Soviet society and the raising of the New Soviet Man, a conscious communist, productive worker and soldier. This paper addresses two research questions: how was character and virtue education conceptualized, legitimized and implemented in Soviet Latvia? What elements of the Soviet approach to character education facilitated the consolidation of totalitarianism in Latvia?
This research is based on written academic sources published in Soviet Latvia about virtue education and intended to school teachers: two teaching manuals for teacher training (Jesipovs & Gončarovs, 1948; Iļjina, 1971), and three collections scientific papers written by the leading educational academics of the Soviet Latvia published by the Latvian State University in 1962, 1964 and 1967 within the series “Questions about Upbringing in the Soviet school”.
The findings highlight the understanding of virtue education during this period, and how it was ideologically, socially and pedagogically legitimized in the academic discourse and pedagogical literature addressed to school teachers.
Downloads
References
Anspaks, J. (1962). The educational value of orienting young people with vocations. Upbringing Questions at the Soviet School, 48(1), 7-36.
Anspaks, J. (1967). Pupils’ vocational orientation and some problems of the moulding of a person's character. Upbringing Questions at the Soviet School, 84(3), 73-98.
Ansраks, J. & Zеi1е, P. (1964). Aesthetic education and the shaping of a new type of man. Upbringing Questions at the Soviet School, 69(2), 203-242
Arendt, H. (1976). The Origins of Totalitarianism. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Arthur, J. (2003). Education with character: The moral economy of schooling. London: Routledge Falmer.
Arthur, J. (2016). Convergence on policy goals: Character education in East Asia and England. Journal of International and Comparative Education, 5(2), 59-71.
Brickman, W. W. & Zepper, J. T. (1992). Russian and Soviet education, 1731-1989: a multilingual annotated bibliography (Vol. 200). United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.
Calhoun, G. (2014) Saints into Soviets: Russian Orthodox symbolism and Soviet political posters. Doctoral dissertation. Georgia: Georgia State University.
Devanny, C. (2018). Catholic character education. Birmingham: Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham.
Doyle, D. P. (1997). Education and character: A conservative view. Phi Delta Kappen, 78, 440–443.
Fitzpatrick, S. (1969). The Commissariat of Education under Lunacharsky (1917-1921). Doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford.
Gielen, U. P., & Jeshmaridian, S. S. (1999). Lev S. Vygotsky: The man and the era. International Journal of Group Tensions, 28(3-4), 273-301.
Iļjina, T (1971) Pedagogy. Riga: Zvaigzne.
Jesipovs, B. P. & Gončarovs, N. K. (1948). Pedagogy - a teaching book for pedagogical schools. Riga: Latvijas valsts izdevniecība.
Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. (2017). A framework for character education in schools. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues.
Kahne, J., & Westheimer, J. (2003). Teaching democracy: What schools need to do. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(1), 34-66.
Ķestere, I. (2003). Value orientation in Soviet youth organizations. The Baltic countries under occupation, Soviet and Nazi rule 1939 – 1991. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Studia Baltica Stockholmiensia, 23, 293-298.
Ķestere, I. (2005). History of education: The school, the pupil, the teacher. Riga: Zvaigzne ABC.
Ķestere, I. (2017). The classroom as an arena for political propaganda: Communism and Nazism in Latvian classrooms (1940-1956). Annali online della Didattica e della Formazione Docente, 8(12), 34-69.
Kisby, B. (2017). ‘Politics is ethics done in public’: Exploring linkages and disjunctions between citizenship education and character education in England. Journal of Social Science Education, 16(3), 8-21.
Klēģeris, N. (1962). Soviet traditions in our schools: How to instil and retain them. Upbringing Questions at the Soviet School, 48(1), 55-80.
Klēģeris, N. (1964). Soviet pedagogical traditions in our schools. Upbringing Questions at the Soviet School, 69(2), 118-170.
Klēģeris, N. (1967). Traditions of a collective as a factor of communist education. Upbringing Questions at the Soviet School, 84(3), 107-130.
Kreegipuu, T. & Lauk, E. (2007). The 1940 Soviet coup-d’état in the Estonian communist press: Constructing history of reshape collective memory. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 4(4), 42-64.
Kristjánsson, K. (2004). Beyond democratic justice: A further misgiving about citizenship education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 38(2), 207-219.
Kristjánsson, K. (2010). The self and its emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kristjánsson, K. (2015). Aristotelian character education. London: Routledge.
Kristjánsson, K. (2016). Flourishing as the aim of education: Towards an extended, ‘enchanted’ Aristotelian account. Oxford Review of Education, 42(6), 707-720.
Maslinsky, K. A. (2016). ‘Codes of Conduct’ in the Soviet school system. Part 1: The teacher as the mouthpiece of the State. Russian Education & Society, 58(5-6), 428-451.
McGrath, R. E. (2015). Character strengths in 75 nations: An update. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(1), 41-52.
Musolff, A. (2017). Language under totalitarian regimes: The example of political discourse in Nazi Germany. In R. Wodak & B. Forchtner (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics (660-672). London: Routledge.
Plotnieks, I. (1967). Personal initiative as a character trait and some observations as to developing it in schoolchildren of the upper forms. Upbringing Questions at the Soviet School, 84(3), 131-143.
Pope John Paul II. (2005). Memory and identity: Conversations at the dawn of a millennium. New York: Rizzoli.
Stepe, A. (1962): Developing voluntary features of character: the important task in shaping a communist consciousness in night schools. Upbringing Questions at the Soviet School, 48(1), 81-98.
Suissa, J. (2015). Character education and the disappearance of the political. Ethics and Education, 10(1), 105-117.
Walker, D. I., Roberts, M. P., & Kristjánsson, K. (2015). Towards a new era of character education in theory and in practice. Educational Review, 67(1), 79-96.
Zelmenis, V. (1962). Criticism and self-criticism in school education as an essential condition in shaping communist consciousness. Upbringing Questions at the Soviet School, 48(1), 99-120.
