Childhood Institutions

CHILDHOOD INSTITUTIONS have as their task the satisfaction of the diverse needs and requirements of the rising generations for the purpose of educational influence on them, protection of rights, and preservation and strengthening of health, and elimination of defects in health condition and behavior. The complexity of these ultimate goals and the diversity of conditions for their achievement, which are constantly increasing with the complication of social life and the intensification of social relationships in general, lead everywhere (even in capitalist countries) to the expansion of the base of social service and to the complication of its forms. This is especially true of the child population, which has long been the subject of attention of state power and public organizations, mainly because in the so-called civilized countries it is always relied upon in terms of planning and calculations regarding the future economic and political development of each country in the interests of the ruling classes. The prototype of childhood institutions is the school as an organ and instrument of public education, which already had its beginning and its special development in deep antiquity (Egypt, Greece, Rome). And if at that time childhood institutions were instruments for the preparation of warriors, slave owners, merchants, and rulers, then in the further course of the historical process schools became in addition instruments of enslavement, i.e., such a system of education for the exploited layers of the population that these would be most amenable and inclined to obey and work for others. Hence the expansion of the network of childhood institutions and the complication of their tasks, the refinement of methods of work and in particular the desire of the clergy to seize them in their hands and subject them to their influence. An element of philanthropy is introduced into the system of childhood institutions—care for orphans, the poor, abandoned children, and cripples. In this sense, school in all its varieties, which have been called childhood institutions, has always been state, since all threads of its management were in the hands of the ruling strata of society. In periods of emergence and intensification of class struggle, there arise tendencies to detach the school from the exclusive influence of the ruling classes [the demand of the bourgeoisie fighting against feudalism for the separation of school from church, the demand of the working class in capitalist countries for the separation of school from state, which is replaced by the opposite demand for its complete nationalization with the coming of the working class to power (USSR)]. The position substantiated by Marx and Engels about 'the education of all children from the moment they can do without maternal care in state institutions and at state expense' is a program for the future, but even at the present time at the very first stages of its implementation the prototype of childhood institutions—the school—represents only the main trunk or core, surrounded by numerous institutions that play an auxiliary and complementary role in relation to its tasks. To survey the complex aggregate of childhood institutions, they can be grouped into three main categories: 1) the group of social education, which has the task of covering all age-sex varieties of the child and adolescent mass, taking into account territorial, professional and other peculiarities. It serves the overwhelming majority of children and adolescents, normal in their physical and mental condition, and in normal environmental conditions (material and social). Alongside the mass schools of all types, there are also so-called preventive childhood institutions, which, having as their main object the normal child mass, are at the same time closely connected with the system of institutions whose task is the elimination of all kinds of anomalies both in the rising generation itself and in its environment. These latter tasks are served by two further groups of institutions: 2) the group of social-legal protection and 3) the group of therapeutic and therapeutic auxiliary institutions. The group of social-legal protection has the task of protecting the rights and interests of children and ensuring the rising generation normal conditions for development in order to prepare them for social and labor activity by eliminating and preventing anomalies in their social and material environment. The therapeutic and auxiliary group takes care of eliminating already existing anomalies in the health condition of the child or in his behavior (social deficiency), and also provides public education to children difficult in educational respect, 'exceptional' children (in American terminology). The latter include both children with various defects—cripples, blind, deaf-mutes, poorly gifted, neuropaths and psychopaths—as well as categories of so-called highly gifted children, who are often characterized by nervous excitability and imbalance and who need special methods of education. To each of the three groupings mentioned there belongs a number of institutions, differing considerably from one another both in their objective setting and in the coverage of age contingents, as well as in the method of activity. On the basis of taking into account all these peculiarities, it appears possible to outline the following classification of the main types of institutions. A. Normal children and adolescents. Open and closed institutions. 1) Preschool age (institutions for the protection of motherhood and infancy)—consultations, nurseries, homes for mother and child, milk kitchens. 2) Preschool age (3-8 years)—kindergartens, children's playgrounds, children's homes for preschoolers. 3) The first concentration of school age and adolescents—school of the first grade (8-12 years), children's homes for school age children (8-12 years), schools for adolescents, including labor commune (13-16 years). 4) The second concentration of school age (higher education)—school of the 2nd grade (15-17 years), seven-year school (12-15 years), nine-year school (17-18 years), children's home for older children, factory-apprentice schools, schools for peasant youth. 5) The third concentration—technical schools: a) industrial, b) agricultural, c) pedagogical, d) medical, e) economic and others. This last category of course already stands beyond the proper childhood institutions, but is closely adjacent to them, including in its contingents young people who have not yet passed out of adolescent age. B. Difficult-to-educate, physically defective and mentally retarded children. 1) Preschool education (3-8 years)—preschool children's homes for a) blind, b) deaf-mutes and c) mentally retarded children. 2) Elementary education. I. Institutions for difficult-to-educate children: a) institute of social education (8-16 years), b) labor commune (13-16 years). II. Institutions for physically defective and mentally retarded children: boarding schools for a) blind, b) deaf-mutes, c) mentally retarded. C. Children and adolescents both normal and exceptional, but needing a change in external environmental conditions. (Institutions for the legal protection of minors.) 1) Primary institutions—reception hostels. 2) Preschool, school and mixed homes, labor colonies. 3) Children's towns (system of childhood institutions of different types). 4) Commissions for affairs of juvenile delinquents. 5) Therapeutic-educational institutions for asocial children. 6) Patronage for assistance to homeless children. 7) Institute of guardianship over the interests of children who have lost their parents or have lost connection with them. 8) Institute of child social inspection, carrying out measures to combat homelessness and protect childhood in general. 9) Institute of child legal consultation, having the task of protecting the rights of children both outside the family and in the family. D. Institutions of preventive and therapeutic-educational character occupy a special position, most closely connected with all the previous groups and categories (institute for the protection of children's health with all its special institutions and special agents in the persons of physicians of health departments and school-sanitary physicians). Their main type is the children's preventive outpatient clinic—dispensary, around which the work of protecting the health of children and adolescents develops. Subjecting children's collectives to in-depth examination, it does not directly provide therapeutic and social assistance, but distributes those in need of it to auxiliary institutions grouped around this central institution. The most important of them: playgrounds for physically weak children, day sanatoriums and open-air schools, forest schools, sanatoriums, children's resorts, dietary children's canteens, children's colonies and children's rest homes. The above list of the main kinds and types of childhood institutions of course does not exhaust all their varieties. To them as a purely state system, relying on the proletarian public, there is attached in the USSR a number of diverse institutions generated by this public itself. Here belong e.g. institutions of the society 'Friend of Children', of the Russian Red Cross Society, of the Central Children's Commission and of pioneer and Komsomol organizations, namely: intended for children clubs, theaters, playgrounds, camps, cinema, libraries, pioneer houses, museums, natural history stations etc. A special place is occupied by experimental and demonstration institutions, which serve as the base for research institutes. On the enumerated varieties of childhood institutions—see the corresponding words.

All varieties of Childhood Institutions at the present time are an object of the closest attention from medical authorities, both in regard to their external organization and equipment, and in regard to the methods of working with children, the state of their health and the pace of their development, and finally in regard to the nature and extent of achievements in the area of educational tasks. Participation in all this follows primarily from the bio-social essence of the educational process, for the organization of which Childhood Institutions are created. However, it has been determined and proven that Childhood Institutions, being in their tasks a factor in the health improvement of younger generations, in reality still, for various reasons, cause many negative influences for children, acting in a direction that does not correspond to the ultimate goals and objectives of education. Childhood Institutions of a mass character have adopted methods of training and drilling, which are difficult to overcome and lead to disharmonies in the child's organism. The underestimation of the physiological needs and peculiarities of the developing organism, and the neglect (often forced due to economic difficulties) of the basic aspects of improving the external environment of the children's collective—lead to a whole range of socio-pathological phenomena, which at one time were called 'school diseases.' Some Childhood Institutions themselves are, as it were, corrective measures, intended to correct deficiencies in health and behavior; to such corrective types belong, for example, school sanatoriums, colonies, etc. All categories of medical specialties, both preventive and therapeutic, come into contact with Childhood Institutions. The leading role belongs to physicians for the protection of children's health, who have formed as a special specialty—physician-pedologists. In a whole series of Childhood Institutions serving defective children, physicians play the main role. Sanitary physicians have wide scope for their activity in the hygienic organization of the external environment of children's groups served by Childhood Institutions; epidemiologists and infectionists are connected with the problem of combating infections in Childhood Institutions—and finally, treating physicians, especially pediatricians, have an application of their strength and knowledge in various specialized children's hospitals and sanatorium institutions. In general, the tasks of the physician in relation to Childhood Institutions can be reduced to the following general provisions: 1) study of children and adolescents for the purpose of assessing their psycho-physical condition depending on the influence of the external environment; 2) development of measures to eliminate harmful factors and to create an environment and conditions ensuring the healthy development of children and adolescents; 3) participation in the implementation of these conditions; 4) organizational activity in the creation and management of Childhood Institutions of a special medical-pedological nature; 5) educational activity in the field of sanitary education and sex education; general supervision of physical culture; 6) therapeutic and orthopedic activity—in institutions specially designated for this purpose, by A. Molkov.