Children's circles of the USSR

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the Soviet Union, by the end of the 1980s, there were 3,800 palaces and pioneer houses in operation. Dozens of circles and studios necessarily worked in each of them. Sections and courses were not only a form of leisure, but also helped to determine the choice of a profession. Those who dreamed of becoming an engineer went to the circles of young technicians and mastered design even before entering the university.

Even after school, young mathematicians stayed to study their favorite subject. Animal lovers enrolled in biology circles or pet protection organizations.

There were choral groups in almost all schools at that time. School, district and city song festivals were held annually in the USSR. Technical clubs and circles became widespread, the content of which included radio electronics, automation, telemechanics, biochemistry, genetics, and astronautics. Look - it was all free!

Technical circles. Aeromodelling circle

Rocket Modeling Circle

Ship modeling circle

Robotics circle

Radio engineering circle

Computer Science Circle

Geographic circle

Circles "skillful hands" (arts and crafts). Wood burning circle

Artistic carving circle

Pattern and sewing circle

Circle "soft toy"

Amateur art circles. Choir circle

Drama circle

Drawing circle

Vocational circles. Circle of young railway workers

Circle of young filmmakers

Why was a Soviet child smarter than today's? Of course, many will answer as follows: “Because the best (well, almost the best) education in the world has fallen on us, and in general everyone who is not lazy and even those who are lazy took care of children - from school teachers to pioneer leaders and coaches, leaders circles, not to mention the parents, who themselves were not fools and managers, but engineers and "candidate doctors." But even the fools understood that erudition was in vogue and stuffed their wall-style headsets with volumes of Chekhov and Zola. If you like it or not, you will get involved."

All right, but such an answer would be incomplete.

Look at what was labeled in the Soviet Union as "children's literature" and "children's cinema" … If a teenager with a C grade by his 10-13 years old has already swallowed all of Alexander Dumas and Walter Scott, varnished it all with the fantasy of Belyaev, Strugatsky and Kazantsev, adding Green and even his father's Pikul, in his head - perhaps - porridge is formed, but … He from there, I have already brought out a lot of extensive information - historical, scientific, semantic. Then - it will be filtered out and the main and important will remain. He already constructs phrases in a different way. Yes, and this is not the most - the most - to quickly memorize arrays of texts and fluffy fluff can even a moron.

Soviet child knowingly received a high bar- if a book, in which the background for fights is the conflict between Catholics and Huguenots, is for the average Vasya, then what is it for the clever Vanya ?! Clever Vanya is already reading the journal "Foreign Literature" and the samizdat Bulgakov, brought in by his mother's friend for a couple of days. And that's just what happened besides the school. Of course, if both Vasya and even Vanya had sniffed something enticingly funny, bright and primitive since childhood, they would have watched it with great pleasure. Moreover, when in the early 1990s a stream of Western cartoons poured onto the screens, we - already adults - watched and rejoiced.

But Tom and Jerry, as well as Chip and Dale, do not contribute to the development of the brain. These are great jobs, but … not conducive. Even in the Soviet press, it was written that a Western child grows up on comics that do not develop his mind. And - all day long, if possible, stares at the TV screen. What should I say? When my mother brought me comics from Finland, we leafed through it with delight, redrawn it and - regretted that we did not have such a thing. But, if we had all this, it would not have moved us to anything. Development is always self-abuse.

Homo-sovieticus was created competitively difficult conditions, raising the bar at a decent, albeit achievable, height. Forced to cut it. Naturally, when it became unnecessary to read, people stopped doing it en masse. For - why rape the brain? Better to eat TV shows about the rich. And in adolescence we (well, yes, for lack of anything else) watched "The Vacations of Petrov and Vasechkin", the characters of which beat "The Inspector General" and "Don Quixote". I repeat, Petrov and Vasechkin are the same C grade Vasya, a typical Soviet boy, not a child prodigy.

Any Soviet film tale of the 1960s-1980s is a refined postmodernism with a mass of allusions that should be equally understood by both father and son. … A Soviet child had to build a whole system of knowledge in order to just watch a children's movie and discuss it at school the next day.… New neural connections were created at a breakneck speed - that's what is most important here. Plus - fine motor skills developed - labor lessons and a musician-artist after school. Yes, and an ordinary idiot, something, but tinker with. Just so as not to be an outcast.