urban proletariat, having seized power, should use it primarily to this end, that it may raise all the backward strata of the working population to the requisite level of communist consciousness. The bourgeoisie used the school for the enslavement of all who live by labour. The proletariat will use the school to enfranchise them, to sweep away the last traces of spiritual slavery from the consciousness of the workers. Thanks to the schools, the bourgeoisie was able to impose upon proletarian children a bourgeois mentality. The task of the new communist schools is to impose upon bourgeois and petty-bourgeois children a proletarian mentality. In the realm of the mind, in the psychological sphere, the communist school must effect the same revolutionary overthrow of bourgeois society, must effect the same expropriation, that the Soviet Power has effected in the economic sphere by the nationalisation of the means of production. The minds of men must be made ready for the new social relationships. If the masses find it difficult to construct a communist society, this is because in many departments of mental life they still have both feet firmly planted upon the soil of bourgeois society, because they have not yet freed themselves from bourgeois prejudices. In part, therefore, it is the task of the new school to adapt the mentality of adults to the changed social conditions. Still more, however, it is the task of the new school to train up a younger generation whose whole ideology shall be deeply rooted in the soil of the new communist society.
The attainment of this end must be promoted by all our educational reforms, some of which have already been inaugurated, whilst others still await realisation.
79. Preparation for School Life.
In bourgeois society, the child is regarded as the property of its parents — if not wholly, at least to a major degree. When parents say, “My daughter,” “My son,” the words do not simply imply the existence of a parental relationship, they also give expression to the parents’ view that