Soviet Educator Cites Difficulties of Reform

The success of Soviet educational reform depends on the fortunes of perestroika, a top-ranking Soviet educator said at Harvard's Education School last night.

"People understand that educational change is necessary, but the success or failure of this is linked to the success or failure of perestroika," said Dr. Nikolai D. Nikandrov, who is general secretary of the presidium of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences--roughly the equivalent to the U.S. Education Department.

Nikandrov, appearing before about 150 people in Longfellow Hall, referred frequently to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev's economic and political "restructuring" proposals, or perestroika.

The avid proponent of educational reform stopped at Harvard during a national tour of American universities sponsored by Educators for Social Responsibility, a national teachers organization that encourages student involvement in social issues.

Nikandrov told Harvard graduate students and faculty that gaining funding is the chief obstacle for Soviet educators. Soviet education reform hopes to give teachers and local educators greater curricular autonomy, he said.

"We need good equipment for our schools, and for that we need money, which is not forthcoming," Nikandrov said, adding that if perestroika succeeds, a vitalized Soviet system will generate the funds.

But Nikandrov said internal resistance to change remains formidable. Black marketeers and corrupt officials in particular threaten reform because they have no stake in an altered system, he added.

Nikandrov cited several weak sectors in Soviet education.

"We must give teachers more power to decide what they will teach students," Nikandrov said, adding that in the existing hierarchical format for education, principals decide "practically everything."

Nikandrov also said that control of curriculum should be less centralized. "At this point 70 percent of the curriculum comes from Moscow," he added. He stated a modest goal of giving local councils 40 percent control.

School councils, composed of the principal, elected teachers and students and community leaders, should take more responsibility for individual school programs, Nikandrov said.

But he added that the pace of reform in the Soviet Union remains slow. "It's one thing to proclaim a set of new ideas--it's quite another to transform them into a new set of textbooks," Nikandrov said.