From the history of the Tambov Labor Faculty: an attempt at a “didactic revolution”

Abstract

Based on the materials of the Tambov Labor Faculty, an attempt at a decisive restructuring of the Soviet sphere of education in the second half of the 1920s is studied by replacing the traditional class-lesson system on a fixed schedule with a free one (Dalton plan), aimed at developing skills for self-building knowledge in the course of “laboratory work”. Based mainly on archival materials introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, the stages of the “struggle” for Dalton are traced, during which it was relatively quickly revealed that it was impossible to introduce a “pure” free system, which exceeded the material organizational and methodological capabilities of the Tambov Labor Faculty, which practiced semi-free (combining classroom and laboratory schemes) system. The gradual increase by the Center requirements for the quality of training in labor faculty and universities showed the impossibility of solving these problems within the framework of Dalton, which led to a return to a modified orthodox didactics.