activity has brought new problems before the school. Our Commissariat, as an educational center, is engaged, as a first step, in freeing the school from church influences and encroachments—the separation of the school from the church.
These first steps are only the beginnings of the task. Before us is still a long path of a tremendous and prolonged creative work of organization which shall ultimately give to the people the school they need in this period of reconstructing life on a new basis—in the period of the international struggle of the proletariat for Socialism.
Having this task in mind the Commissariat sounded a call inviting learned and practical individuals, people of extensive pedagogic training, to participate in this task. The Commissariat of People's Education has opened wide the doors to all who would and could help. Something has already been done in this direction. Recently we created at the Commissariat of People's Education an educators' advisory board which in turn was subdivided into a number of sub-committees, these latter conducting a preliminary campaign in favor of school reform and gradually formulating concrete problems, the solution of which should determine the substance of our activity of school-organization.
Our conception of a school is one from which religious services and teachings are absolutely barred. Secondly, a people's general education school must be compulsory and accessible to all, regardless of sex and social distinctions; it must be a school where tuition, books, etc., are free; and, lastly, we conceive of the new school as a labor unit. The school must be homogeneous in the sense that it is of uniform type, with a definite minimum amount of instruction—in the sense of uniformity of aims and problems grouped between two chief centers of gravitation—and in the producing of an harmonious individual with regard to his social development; and, finally, in the sense of establishing an organized connection between the various school grades and unimpeded promotion of students from lower grades to higher.
The principles underlying the development of the school, as a labor unit, can be summarized thus:
1. An early fusion of productive labor with academic17
