Flowers, Books, and Meritocracy in Communist Schools

My Second Grade Class

I found a rare book in my home library collection with personal significance. The pages are all yellowed and fragile enough that, if not handled with care, it will disintegrate. The published date is 1966, more than half a century ago.

At the end of second grade, school year 1966-67, my overall class average out of 30 students was very good. I was 8 years old and my average qualified for second place. My parents were blue collar workers (the proletariat) and always emphasized the importance of education; it was their pride and joy that their only child would do well in school. 

As was the case in the communist run schools of that time, each year four students with the highest overall averages received a bouquet of flowers, a certificate signed by the teacher and the principal, with first, second, third place, honorable mention, and a book to inspire students further in their studies.

The ceremony was always held outdoors on a sunny day. The black and white photograph shows the four of us on stage, dressed to the nines in pioneer uniforms with the red communist scarf, receiving the certificates, the books, and the flowers.

My book was titled "Illustrious Figures of Antiquity," and it cost 8.50 lei in 1966-67 when it was published which, at the forced exchange rate of that time, of $1 per 12 lei, it would have cost 75 cents.

I was not able to fully understand the book's content until the 8th grade, of course. I was not a genius to comprehend the historical figures of antiquity and their contributions to science, philosophy, art, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. However, the point I am trying to make is that education and meritocracy were important at any grade level, during the era when the socialist man was being fashioned by the schools into the communist man.

Meritocracy and good performance in school were rewarded and recognized each year. Nobody would have dumbed down education or have taken away awards from good students in order to pacify weak students. There was no such thing as diversity and equity of outcomes. If you performed well, you were rewarded for your hard work and success. If your performance was weak, you did not receive certificates of participation.

Re-reading the book now, ever so carefully, I see all the dialectic materialism influence (communist), author’s views permeating through the historical record and its analysis.

Obviously, the author was a communist party card carrying member and apparatchik in good standing, otherwise his book would have never been approved for publication or even seen the light of day. Only authors approved by the censors of the communist party would have had their books published. The rest would just distribute their writings in pamphlet form in the underground.

The published world today is very much dominated by leftist communist influence, with bookstores overflowing with books written by the darlings of the radical left, and very few conservative authors see their books in print unless they are famous and publishing houses see an immediate profit motive. Most conservative authors are forced to form their own publishing houses or self-publish.

The larger point to be made here is that education, after weeding through the communist party indoctrination, was quite good when compared to the western education then and especially now, with noted exceptions of the manufactured history, which justified the communist party platform.