Education was of one of the obsessions of a regime
\nthat wanted to enlighten and emancipate the people. Communism saw illiteracy as
\na major disadvantage of the lower classes compared with the middle and upper
\nclasses. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
On 23rd August 1944, Romania withdrew from
\nits alliance with Germany and Italy and joined the United Nations. One week
\nlater, on 31st August, the Soviet army entered Bucharest, an event
\nthat would be a turning point in Romania’s contemporary history. The communist
\nand pro-communist press began speaking of the need to eradicate illiteracy.
\nAccording to Sc\u00e2nteia, the official newspaper of the Romanian Communist
\nParty, illiteracy levels in the rural area and in small towns stood at 49%. The
\nauthors of these articles and, later, the communist leaders presented this
\nsituation in a tendentious manner, making it sound as if there were no earlier
\nefforts to fight illiteracy. The communists used to accuse the former
\ndemocratic governments of intentionally discriminating against the lower
\nclasses and of blocking education in the rural areas. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Historian Cristian Vasile from the Nicolae Iorga
\nInstitute of History in Bucharest has been studying the literacy programme
\ncarried out by the communist regime in its early years:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Beginning at the end of 1947, the campaign to combat
\nilliteracy became for the communist leadership an important component of the
\nCultural Revolution of Soviet extraction. The Stalinist propaganda claimed that
\nin its wake no one was illiterate any more in the USSR, something also claimed
\nto be true in Romania. Mihail Roller was not only a leading historian, but also
\na theoretician of education after the Soviet model. He even wrote a book about
\nSoviet pedagogy and how it can be implemented in Romania.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Illiteracy is an immense obstacle to the proletariat’s
\nachieving leading positions in the country and to the building of socialism and
\ncommunism. An illiterate person is one who is excluded from political life,
\nread a manifesto of cultural propaganda, using oversimplifying and misleading
\nrhetoric. The installation of Petru Groza’s communist government on 6th
\nMarch 1945 paved the way for a widespread literacy campaign in Romanian
\nvillages. The education ministry and the culture ministry were put in charge of
\nexpanding the school network in the countryside and giving all children access
\nto education. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Literacy was also promoted through films, visual
\npropaganda and works of art that encouraged people to get an education. An
\nextremely efficient way of achieving literacy was the military service. The
\narmy also carried out education programmes and many people from the countryside
\nlearnt to read and write during their military service. The members of ethnic
\nminorities also learnt the Romanian language in the army. Communist literacy
\nprogrammes were a means of promoting communist ideology and spreading
\nMarxist-Leninist teachings. When it came to implementation, however, things
\nwere a bit different, says historian Cristian Vasile:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The efforts to intensify the literacy campaign as it
\nwas designed by the education ministry were met with reserve and even hostility
\nby some teachers. Not because they were opposed in principle, but out of the
\nmost banal considerations. Many teachers were being sent from the city to the
\ncountryside, which they saw as a demotion in a way. They were being posted for
\npolitical reasons to villages and small towns where there were many people who
\ncouldn’t read and write. The teachers who had been abusively posted to these
\nplaces naturally didn’t have a home and the same comforts they had been used
\nto, and found it difficult to do their job.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Young and inexperienced teachers were sent to the
\ncountryside based on a job posting scheme aimed at implementing the policies of
\nthe communist party. Many, however, refused to take up their new jobs so they
\nwere declared saboteurs and punished. Historian Cristian Vasile tells us more:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
A report from November 1948 drawn up by the school
\ninspectorate in Cluj recommended that teachers be paid extra hours for these
\nclasses. It also mentioned a series of resignations in the education system
\nover the allocation of posts. People who were attached to Cluj wanted to stay
\nin Cluj, not go somewhere else. The report also wrote about the big differences
\nbetween the city of Cluj and the county of Cluj, where villages were scattered and
\nthere were few roads between them. 600 teachers from the city who worked in the
\ncountryside resigned after a while. The report noted that the inspectorate
\ndecided that teachers who refuse to remain in their posts in the countryside
\nwould not find a job somewhere else but be sacked.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The communist literacy campaign disrupted the job
\nallocation system in education and amounted to a lot of unpaid voluntary work,
\nabusive transfers and layoffs. Historians believe, however, that the level of
\neducation did increase as a result of the communist literacy campaign. There
\nwere also schools where teachers did not follow the school curriculum to the
\nletter. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The student riots of 1956 in solidarity with the
\nHungarian anti-communist revolution, with many of the students being from a
\nrural background, were proof that the literacy and education campaign also worked
\nagainst the regime itself and its ideology. (Tr.: CM)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the achievements the communist regime was most proud of was the eradication of illiteracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":83019,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[32441,42866],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-130890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-communism","tag-literacy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n