I'd like briefly to address the topic of education in the Soviet Union. While their achievements in science, math, engineering, and so on were formidable, I have to think that their education system suffered from advancement of one ideology, Marxism-Leninism, as being absolutely true, a kind of non-religious dogma, and that any subject area requiring critical, liberal thinking was mightily compromised. In short, it was one big STEM program. Discussion along the lines of "is communism the true way? --- could the various religions be right and could we be wrong? --- what does the West get right that we don't?", and so on, would have been dead on arrival.
I see much the same tendency in today's "woke", politically correct college environment in this country. Cranking out high-achieving scientific and technical experts is lionized, but as to the big existential questions, the ones that require moral choices, the ones that deal with man's ultimate end, there seems to be only one acceptable set of answers --- tolerate every diversity that there is unless it is a diversity that hearkens back to traditional concepts of morality, redress historical grievances of groups that see themselves as having been oppressed or treated unjustly (and, in all fairness, many of them were), disrupt the old order of things, in short, a revolutionary ideology. Woe to anyone who goes against this.
I referred to the ideological issue in the first response- by stating that the meritocracy was conditional on ideological alignment. Then I got a lot of questions on literacy rate (basic instruction), which I answered. I added some detail for context, and exactly, by stating the preferences of the regime towards certain areas and the
favoritism for defense and space, gives an open for an analysis of ideology. In responding I balance accuracy with length- people will read just so much. If we talk ideology, that requires an essay type answer, because it is way more complex than your answer.
Yes, absolutely,
"Universal education was fundamental to the development of a socialist state.." exactly puts the focus that one more reason Soviet leaders wanted their children to read well was bc they were given ample Marxist materials for indoctrination.(I did not even go into the little pioneers, that is another essay) Let's not be naive about the leaders, but neither about the people. By the time people were 15 years old, most were profoundly skeptic of the state: you can not teach people well and expect they will stop using their brains. Any US civil servant that spent some time in the Soviet Union, will attest to the many (very witty) jokes that were common amongst the Soviet people. They were very careful how they shared them, nobody wanted to end up in Lubyanka, the building with the best view in Moscow- you could see all the way to Siberia.
I do mind your comment about "woke"- let's not use labels, but focus on what is actually written and what can be developed from it according to interest shown through comments). The academic education in this country excels at just the opposite of what you claim. Students in good schools are trained in analytical thinking. Even in highly technical subjects, this country, above any other in the world, praises innovation (thinking outside the box), personal development, individual initiative. Yes, we respect each field, knowing the limits of our expertise, but we consult with each other. The best places achieve the level of care, because of the ability of American trained professionals to work in teams. I have been lucky to obersved this in different top institutions. One of them was MD Anderson from University of Texas, where a team of specialized doctors and some PhD in physicists (thank nearby NASA in Houston) gave my mother 12 extra years of life after the local hospital said she would be lucky to get to 6 months after a stage IV cancer diagnosis.
I graduated from MIT- many people think that the success of MIT is because people "are smart" as if it was magic. Yeah, people are smart- but the organization is smart as well- every professor there will state, with humility, that they would not have been able to progress in their research had it been for the contributions of their peers, and in many cases, it is an interdisciplinary audience.
So please, do not fall for half backed slogans being hurled in the internet by chat robots, probably from Russia (ironic right?)- education in this country is the best. Hopefully you will support efforts to keep our universities well financed and stop the cutting of funds, especially to liberal arts colleges that forms minds with critical thinking.
