UNIVERSITY OF CASTILLA-LA MANCHA

Albacete’s Faculty of Education

Subject: Contemporary trends in education
Teacher: Antonio Cebrián Martínez
Academic year: 2017-2018

“PAVEL PETROVICH BLONSKY”

UNESCO

Students:
Eva Álvarez Lorente
José Francisco Campos Martínez
Antonio Morcillo Martínez
Javier Ruiz Izquierdo
Master degree in Primary Education
2nd course group B
Date of submission: 16/02/2018
 CONTENTS

1. Article: “Pavel Petrovich Blonsky” UNESCO

1.1 Life and Works
1.2 Blonsky’s psychological views
1.3 General educational issues
1.4 Basic problems in teaching
1.5 Teachers and their training

2. Questions

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1. Article: Pavel Petrovich Blonsky UNESCO

1.1 LIFE AND WORKS

Blonsky, an outstanding Soviet, a man of erudition and erudition, philosopher,

psychologist and educator. The name of Blonsky is associated with the founding and
development of the Soviet schools of psychology and educational sciences. He wrote
about two hundred works on psychology, education and philosophy, including pioneering
monographs, textbooks and methodological and experimental research that contributed
to the establishment and development of the entire Soviet education system in the 1920s.

Blonsky was born in Kiev, the son of a junior officer, on May 14, 1884. He was educated
first in the classical secondary school and then in the university, where he graduated from
the classical department of the faculty of history and philology. The student years of
Blonsky (1902-07) coincided with the first revolution in Russia, participated in the
revolutionary movement and was repeatedly imprisoned.

After the October Revolution, the vision of Blonsky's life was full of contradictions due
to the influence of different currents of thought, but his practical teaching activities, which
dictated his interests and research, played an important role in shaping his vision and
scientific views. Since 1908 he taught education and psychology at secondary schools for
girls in Moscow.

In 1913, Blonsky became an assistant professor at Moscow University. It was during this
period that he began lecturing on educational psychology in summer courses for teachers
in various cities. Blonsky developed the idea of the need for the integral development of
children. He frequently expressed ideas that were also advanced for his time and in
1914/15 his appointment as lecturer in the advanced Tikhomirov courses for women were
not confirmed.

Blonsky did a complete study of the works of prominent Russian and foreign educators,
such as Ushinsky, Tolstoy, Comenius, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Fröbel, Gansberg,
Scharrelmann and Dewey. Of the ideas contained in this educational legacy, he was
particularly impressed by those about the national characteristics of education and culture,
the training of students for creativity work, the scientific foundations of teaching methods,
the need to plan the system education on a strictly rational basis, and the importance of
solid theoretical and practical training for teachers.

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In 1918 he was appointed professor at the University of Moscow and several other higher
education establishments. He played an active role in the organization of the Academy of
Socialist Education (which would later become the Academy of Communist Education
N.K. Krupskaya). During his years of teaching, Blonsky trained a large number of
teachers, educators and psychologists. He was sensitive and affectionate in his
educational work with young specialists, self-confidence and encouraging initiative. He
also contributed to periodicals such as Trudovaya Shkola (The School of Labor),
Sotsial'noe Vospitanie (Social Education), Narodnoe Obrazovanie (National Education),
and Na Putyakh k Novoi Shkole (Towards New School), joining their editorial panels.

In 1922, Krupskaya enlisted the services of Blonsky in the development of curricula for
schools. Working with her in the scientific education section of the State Academic
Council (GUS) was largely responsible for giving a Marxist tendency to her educational
and psychological views. Krupskaya supported Blonsky's studies on the development of
the child and its other educational psychology and research.

Blonsky wrote: "In 1932, the Council was dissolved." The results of the work of the
Soviet experimental schools were published, all the new ideas found in the foreign
educational literature were avidly taken, the people travelled abroad to discover how
education was organized and they tried to introduce into the Soviet schools everything
that seemed valuable

Blonsky combined a large amount of practical teaching with theoretical work in education
and psychology. His research in the Institute of Scientific Education, the Institute of
Nationalities and the Institute of Polytechnic Education was enormous in volume and of
great importance.

During the civil war and the period of foreign intervention, he produced books like The
Labor School (1919) in two volumes, The Reformation of Science (1920), and A sketch
of Scientific Psychology (1921). Between 1918 and 1930 he wrote more than 100 works,
including the first textbooks for schools and higher education establishments.

After the publication of the well-known decree 'On Pedological Distortions in the Popular
Commissariat of the Educational System (1936), many of his theoretical propositions
were subject to severe criticism, going as far as the complete negation of the positive

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meaning of his practical and theoretical work. During the last ten years of his life, Blonsky
worked at the Institute of Psychology, where he directed the laboratory of thought and
trained specialists in psychology. He died on February 15, 1941.

1.2 BLONSKY’S PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEWS

In solving educational problems, Blonsky was the first to demonstrate the need to give
scientific psychology a Marxist trend. He concerned the psyche as a property of highly
organized matter, a function of the nervous system and a product of the brain, and
concerning the social conditioning of the personality, he gained the upper hand and
received general recognition.
Blonsky considered that there was a link between psychology and sociology and this link
parallels the interrelationship between psychology, physiology and biology. In
addition, he opposed the substitution of biology and physiology for psychology, calling
this process an ‘over-simplification’ and drawing attention to the mistaken tendency to
confuse psychology with sociology.
Blonsky gave great importance to practical methods of scientific psychological
investigation (observation and experimentation). He was the first that used
mathematics for the investigation of mass psychic phenomena.
However, Blosnky considered that we have still to discover the ‘social man’ and his link
with the environment, and not by abstract reasoning but by mathematical formulae.
Blonsky was influenced by Pavlov’s teaching ideas (ex. association). But, later, Blonsky
came to realize that the Pavlovian physiology of higher nervous activity could not by
itself explain the neurophysiological mechanisms of mental phenomena.
According to the article ‘Change in the Alkalinity of Saliva in Relation to Change in
Mental State’, he sums up his research into changes in the alkaline radical of saliva—
pH—as a function of the activities being carried out by the experimental subject, such
as dreaming or allowing the mind to wander, or solving complex mental problems.
In relation to his books Memory and Thinking (1935) and The Development of Thinking
in Pupils (1935), Blonsky dialectically examines the processes of memory, perception
and will in relation to peoples’ actual activities, formulates a genetic or ‘phasic’ theory
of memory, and shows the internal connection of memory with thinking and speech.

Blonsky noted a connection and the transition of memory to thought. In fact, he

maintained, not only is memory a support of thought, but thought, when it reaches a
certain stage in its development, begins to exert a greater influence on memory, becoming
its support. The influence of thought on memory can be seen in memorization and
recollection.

Blonsky started from the dialectical principle of the interconnection of perception,

memory, thought and speech, and this principle was widely applied by him in the study
of the processes of understanding and assimilation.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet psychology made use of Blonsky’s ideas concerning the
application of the materialistic approach to mental phenomena, using objective

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research methods and linking psychology with life. But his psychological work is of more
than historical interest. His work is a well-developed system enabling us to understand
the complexities of human mental activity and to understand what can be employed
to solve educational problems and how to do it.

1.3 GENERAL EDUCATIONAL ISSUES

It would be difficult to name a field of education in which Blonsky was not active since
his scientific interests ranged from pre-school education to university teaching. He
suggested the idea of a connection between school and life, focusing attention on
teaching methods, vocational training and polytechnical education (application of
many arts or sciences).
He regarded education as an empirical science, considering education to be the
development of the child’s innate and natural abilities, following the ideas of
Pestalozzi and Fröbel in defining the goal of education, who derived it from the child’s
own nature, where pupils did useful work and became self-reliant.
He insisted that education should be based on the latest advances in the study of human
nature, where heredity plays an important role in the shaping of personality. According
to Blonsky, “Education humanizes the pupil by means of values” and “Only through
education can a person become a true human being”.
He wrote a number of textbooks on education. On “Teacher-Training Course”, the
characteristics of particular age-groups of children occupy a significant place. He
based the division into age-groups mainly on biological factors that were entirely
anatomical and physiological (the development of teeth and endocrine glands, blood
composition, etc.), so that a distinctive combination of factors is characteristic of a
particular age. He suggested the idea of the integral study of children, making wide use
of advances in education, psychology, physiology and biology.
In his enthusiasm for the integral study of the child he turned to pedology (science that
studies everything related to childhood), he regarded children at an early age as instinctive
and emotional beings. Therefore, the need for society arises only in the final stages of
the pre-school age.
His views change regarding children and the factors which shape personality. He places
more emphasis on the role of education in the mental development of children, which
points to a link between intelligence and knowledge, he observes: ‘Intelligence depends
most of all on living conditions and education and least on heredity’, without education
and instruction, children cannot develop. No innate or inherited characteristics can
create a competent and fully developed human being without suitable education and
learning.

Rejecting the claim of Western educationists that children are apolitical, he maintained
that even young schoolchildren in fact had marked political leanings, so it’s essential to
take into account the teenage characteristics connected with puberty. One example we
could find is the publication of “Essays on Child Sexuality”, which contains matters such
as the sexual experiences of boys and girls of different ages, the influence of childhood
sexual experiences on adult sex life, the psychology of love, first love, etc.

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He states that the social environment, supervision and instruction have a large part to play
in sexual maturation. Puberty, in his view, is an important but not the main factor in
development. He attached great significance to the child’s growing strength, observing
that the teenager’s physical maturity is matched by increasing intellectual and social
maturity.
Acting as one of the organizers and theoreticians of the new socialist school, he
maintained that contemporary education does not consist of vocational training, where
the adolescent learns a trade, but of ‘polytechnical’ training, which provides all-round
scientific and industrial skills, leading access to the world of contemporary culture,
which would be a school of will and intelligence, shaping the character and forming the
child’s mind and industry which, that would help to link knowledge with action by
providing social training.
1.4 BASIC PROBLEMS IN TEACHING
Blonsky’s educational legacy is rich in ideas about teaching, and particularly about the
cognitive activities of pupils, the development of thinking and memory, and the
conditions for the effective assimilation of knowledge, skills and habits. So as he knew
the educational process in a specific way, he proposed basics problems related to
contents and methods.
- Dogmatic, religious and moral dependence of the education. Blonsky
preferred the social and natural sciences as the basis to contribute to the
preparation for the students´ working life as inspiration to formal education.
He defended the chief requirements of educational content were: Scientific
basis, ideological and political bent, related to the real life and age-groups.
- Not a correct structure and organization of the educational process. He
proposed in the article “The Organization of Work as a Secondary-School
Subject” (1923) the following structure:
1. Organizational phase.
2. Implementation phase.
3. Checking phase.
During these phases we will calling for creativity, initiative, judgement,
alertness, foresight…
- Mistakes in the State Academic Council´s curricula like the dislocation in
the continuity of knowledge, higher ratios in the classrooms, use only
memorial strategies … Blonsky tried to discover the causes and try to
resolve them.

- Inactivity, immobility and passive contemplation of the students. The author

shared and active method that students should built or make it for oneself,
because they want to be busy by nature. Also, teacher have to help them to
find the proper material to reach the independence thinking and guide
students to select and use only the knowledge as is needed in life.

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As a summary, the conditions he considered essential to the learning process were the
capacity for work, degree of mental development, organizational ability and willingness
to study.
1.5 TEACHERS AND THEIR TRAINING
Blonsky gives teachers a considerable attention and he repeatedly stressed on their
training and retraining because teachers have to build the new societies and also, to
create the school of work. So, they need to:
- Love children.
- Be closed to them.
- Know how to instruct and educate them.
- Control the methods and techniques.
- Control the different contents of the subjects.
- Have the ability to arouse the pupil´s interest and motivation.
- Guide the students in their educational process.
- Cultivate themselves by the retraining programs.
- Relate the education with the real life through factories, families, museums,
workshops…
Blonsky played an important role in the formation of teacher in his country, he trained
around 4000 teachers with the goal of “train politically active people capable of
acquiring knowledge by themselves”. He gave a relevant to the practice which was
active and compulsory in all his training programs for teacher, because it is the base of
the teacher labour, the protagonist of education people.

2. Questions
A) TRUE/FALSE
1. According to Pavel Petrovich Blonsky’s article, Krupskaya didn´t supported Blonsky's
studies on the development of the child and its other educational psychology and research.
FALSE
2. According to Pavel Petrovich Blonsky’s article, Blonsky was the first to go against
the need of giving scientific psychology a Marxist trend. FALSE
3. Related to the article “Pavel Petrovich Blonsky UNESCO”, one of the main factors in
children’s development is puberty, stage in which intellectual and social maturity
happens. TRUE
4. According to Pavel Petrovich Blonsky’s article, teachers have to guide students in
their educational process, but they don´t have to controls the methods and techniques.
FALSE

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B) MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. According to Pavel Petrovich Blonsky’s article, he contributed to periodicals such as:
a) Trudovaya Shkola (The School of Labor).
b) Sotsial'noe Vospitanie (Social Education).
c) Narodnoe Obrazovanie (National Education).
d) All of them are correct.
2. According to Pavel Petrovich Blonsky’s article, the “psyche” is related to…
a) A property of highly organized matter.
b) A function of the nervous system.
c) A product of the brain.
d) All of them are correct.
3. According to the article “Pavel Petrovich Blonsky UNESCO”, Blonsky suggested the
idea of a connection between school and life, focusing attention on:
a) Teaching methods.
b) Vocational training.
c) Polytechnical education.
d) All of them are correct.
4. According to Pavel Petrovich Blonsky’s article, the new requirements of the
educational contents are:
a) Scientific basis.
b) Ideological and political bent.
c) Related to the real life.
d) All of them are correct.