The Challenge

Russia has allowed few outsiders a real look at its educational system. Generally, Western educators have comfortably assumed that it lags far behind that of the West. But in Geneva last week, at an international conference of top education officials from 74 countries, the chief Soviet delegate, Mme. Ludmila Dubrovina, flatly challenged the U.S. to an educational "competition." If Mme. Dubrovina is to be believed, such a competition would be a good deal tougher than anyone had suspected. Among the recent Soviet advances in education, as listed by Dubrovina:

P:Russia requires six years of mathematics for pupils between the ages of 11 and 17. It has started a series of "mathematics Olympiads" at which bright students can compete for a "national mathematics championship." Mathematics clubs have sprung up at every level of education.

P: Starting this fall, every Soviet child will get at least ten years of schooling. The number of technical "specialists" in the country will grow by 600,000 a year. "We will double the number of school buildings," added Mme. Dubrovina, "to take in the extra 4,000,000 pupils under the new obligatory education system."

P:For selected children the government will open special boarding schools. These will take pupils at the age of seven, may later drop the entering age to two, when children "no longer need maternal care." First mentioned by Party Boss Khrushchev at the 20th Party Congress, the schools are apparently designed, like Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler Schulen, to become the training ground of a new Soviet elite.

After listening to Mme. Dubrovina, U.S. Delegate Finis Engleman, Connecticut's Commissioner of Education, commented: "Our educational standards in mathematics, languages and diplomacy must be raised. But our system is based on the freedom of the individual, and the only course open to us is persuasion and encouragement."

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