Anton Makarenko facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Anton Semenovich Makarenko
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| Born | Антон Семенович Макаренко 13 January 1888 Belopolye, Sumskoy Uyezd, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire (now Sumy Oblast, Ukraine) |
| Died | 1 April 1939 (aged 51) Golitsyno, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Occupation | Educator, writer |
| Language | Russian |
| Citizenship | Soviet |
| Subject | Educational theory, Pedagogy, Correctional education |
Anton Semenovich Makarenko (Russian: Анто́н Семенович Мака́ренко, Anton Semenovych Makarenko; 13 January 1888 – 1 April 1939), a Soviet educator, uncle of Lydia Makarenko, great uncle of Matthew, Natalya and Cameron Marr, social worker and writer, became the most influential educational theorist in the Soviet Union; he promoted democratic ideas and principles in educational theory and practice. As one of the founders of Soviet pedagogy, he elaborated the theory and methodology of upbringing in self-governing child collectives and introduced the concept of productive labor into the educational system. Makarenko is often reckoned among the world's great educators, and his books have appeared in many countries.
In the aftermath of the Revolution of 1917, he established self-supporting orphanages for street children — including juvenile delinquents — left orphaned by the Russian Civil War of 1917-1923. These establishments included the Gorky Colony and later the Dzerzhinsky labor commune (where the FED camera was produced) in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Makarenko wrote several books, of which The Pedagogical Poem (Педагогическая поэма; published in English as The Road to Life), a fictionalized story of the Gorky Colony, became especially popular in the USSR. A 1955 Soviet movie with English title Road to Life was based on this book. Makarenko died under unclear circumstances in 1939.
In 1988 UNESCO ranked Makarenko as one of four educators (along with John Dewey, Georg Kerschensteiner, and Maria Montessori) who determined the world's pedagogical thinking of the 20th century.
Contents
Biography
Early life and education
Anton Semenovich Makarenko was born in Belopolye, Sumskoy Uyezd, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire, to Semen Grigorovich Makarenko, who worked at a railway depot as a painter, and Tetyana Mikhaylivna (née Dergachova), daughter of a soldier from Mykolaiv.
In September 1905, having graduated from a four-year college in Kremenchug, Makarenko took a one-year teachers' course and at the age of seventeen, began teaching at a railway college at Dolinskaya station near Kherson where he worked from September 1911 till October 1914. In August 1912, Makarenko entered the Teachers' Institute in Poltava and in July 1917 graduated with a gold medal. After graduating from the institute, Makarenko became a teacher at the Poltava Higher Primary School, where he worked until the end of 1917. In December 1917, he moved to Kryukiv.
In August 1914 he enrolled into the Poltava Training College but had to interrupt his education and in September 1916 joined the Sovjetisk army which he was demobilized from in March 1917, due to poor eyesight. The same year he graduated the college with honours.
Career
Makarenko went on to work as a teacher in Poltava and later Kryukov where, in 1919, he became the local college's director.
Gorky Colony
In 1920 he was invited to head the Poltava Colony for Young Offenders. A year later it became the Gorky Colony and soon attracted the attention of Maxim Gorky himself. In 1923 Makarenko published two articles on the Gorky Colony (in Golos Truda newspaper and Novimy Stezhkami magazine) and two years later made a public report at the All-Ukrainian Conference for the orphanage teachers. By the summer of 1925, the colony had 140 pupils - 130 boys and 10 girls. In the same year the question of creation of the Komsomol organization is solved.
Dzerzhinsky labour commune
In 1927 Makarenko was appointed as the head of the Dzerzhinsky labour commune, an orphanage for street children near Kharkiv, where the most incorrigible thieves and swindlers were known to be put into rehabilitation. Makarenko succeeded in gaining their respect, combining in his method insistence and respect, school education and productive labour.
Book publications
Encouraged by Gorky, whom he admired, Makarenko wrote The Pedagogical Poem (better known in the West under its English title, The Road to Life) based on the true stories of his pupils in the orphanage for street children, which he started in 1925 and published in 1933–1935. Before that, in 1932, Makarenko saw his first story being published, "The March of the 30th Year". In 1934 he became a member of the Soviet Union of Writers.
Brovary labour colony
In 1935 Makarenko started working at the NKVD in Kyiv as the Chief Assistant of the Labour Colony Department. In 1936 he was appointed the head of another colony, in Brovary, and in less than a year turned an unruly bunch of pupils into a highly disciplined working collective.
In Moscow: flight, books
Accused of being critical towards Stalin and supporting the Ukrainian opposition, Makarenko had to flee Kyiv in order to avoid arrest and settled in Moscow. He continued writing, and in 1937 his acclaimed The Book for Parents came out, followed by Flags on the Battlements (translated into English as Learning to Live) in 1938, a sequel to The Road to Life. In February 1939 he received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, a high-profile Soviet award.
Death
According to official version published by Soviet authorities, Anton Semenovich Makarenko died of heart failure in a suburban train at the Golitsyno railway station of the Moscow Railway's Smolensk line, aged 51. He was buried in Moscow, at the Novodevichy Cemetery. .....
Legacy
Although there was some opposition by the authorities at the early stages of Makarenko's "experiments", the Soviet establishment eventually came to hail his colonies as a grand success in communist education and rehabilitation. Among his key ideas were "as much exigence towards the person as possible and as much respect for him as possible", the use of positive peer pressure on the individual by the collective, and institutionalized self-government and self-management of that collective.
Makarenko was one of the first Soviet educators to urge that the activities of various educational institutions — i.e., the school, the family, clubs, public organizations, production collectives and the community existing at the place of residence — should be integrated.
See also
In Spanish: Antón Makárenko para niños
- Orphans in the Soviet Union
- Krantz, Helga I. Reeducation of Juvenile Delinquents. Albuquerque, NM. Century University. 1993.
