29. A Regional Department of People's Education is composed of members, not fewer than seven, elected by a Congress of Soviets of Workmen's Deputies of a Region, thus forming a Collegium.
30. A Regional Department of People's Education develops and approves a plan of all-regional measures pertaining to people's education; systematizes all annual estimates submitted by the various Provincial Departments of People's Education; calls periodic Regional Educational Congresses; opens educational courses, exhibitions, excursions, etc., controls the activity of cultural and educational institutions within boundaries prescribed by corresponding legislative enactments; and submits an annual report on the state of affairs in the sphere of people's education to the State Commission of Education..
Chairman of the Soviet of People's Commissaires, V. Ulianov (Lenin).
Acting People's Commissary of Education, Michael Pokrovsky.
Chief Clerk of the Soviet of People's Commissaires, V. Bonch-Bruevich.
Correct: Secretary of the Soviet, N. Gorbunov.
The above document is a clear, sober set of rules, suggesting anything but anarchy in the administration of the educational system, and differing fom corresponding laws of other countries only in the remarkable clarity of the legal phraseology.
But while Document No. 2 is a legal paper, giving necessary instructions only, Document No. 3, which follows, is a personal expression, by one of the educational specialists of the Soviet Government, of the philosophy and purposes of the new system. It is characterized throughout by a constructive humanitarian spirit.
DOCUMENT No. 3
SCHOOL REFORM
Commissary Lepeshinsky's Paper, Read at the First All-
Russian Congress of Teachers-Internationalists,
June 2, 1918
The Commissariat of People's Education has as yet done very little in the field of reforms in popular education, since this problem could be approached intelligently only after the removal of the Commissariat to Moscow.
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