Ongoing project
“Contextual socialisation”: the example of the educational establishments of A. Makarenko
The current societal crises in the world show clearly that, in the long term, we only can create a fulfilling individual life if we learn to also think and act in solidarity on a global scale. Education therefore has to complement the training of individual skills by a community –related “collective intelligence”, that focuses on the understanding and taking into account of interconnections. This worldview constitutes the context of the Makarenko project.
Who was Makarenko? In the difficult historical situation of Ukraine from 1920-1928, Anton Makarenko, eminent writer, pedagogue and thinker, a “classic of the pedagogy of the 20th century”, directed the “M. Gor’kij colony” for abandoned children and later also other educational establishments. The social experiences he gained there lead him to the development of a “contextual pedagogy”, that organizes community life in such a way that the individual and collective needs are equally taken into account and are brought into coherence with the requirements and possibilities of of a concrete social reality. This experience shaped his main literary work “A pedagogic poem”, which became the reference book of an important pedagogic movement of the 20th century. In recognition of this quality, UNESCO declared the year 1988 as “international Makarenko year”.
The social experiment of Makarenko described in the “Pedagogic poem” is nearly unknown today in France. Since the translation of the first section (Le chemin de la vie, Paris 1939) and of extracts (Le chemin de la vie. Epopée pédagogique, Paris 1950), the only full translation into French of the three parts of the “Poem” has been published in 1953 under the direction of the Soviet authorities and with the corresponding ideological implications (Poème pédagogique. En trois parties. Moscou 1953; new editions 1958, 1962, 1967, 1977); this edition is moreover hardly accessible today.
We plan a new translation and edition of the complete “Poem” in French on the basis of the most complete and last authorized version by Makarenko (Moscou, state-owned publishing house, 1934–1936).
Moreover, Makarenko’s concept of a “contextual socialisation” will be an important reference for our reflections and experiments concerning the question: how can we live, work and grow together?