The Cultural-Historical Type of School: Draft of a Concept

As we know, the school is an extremely delicate social organism that is connected to social practice with strong threads, and that influences and develops that practice. The contemporary school, intended to accomplish the tasks of today's society, cannot be created simply by copying previous types of schools and by repeating the forms of their instructional work, because every school is unique (in the sense of conforming to the conditions of its historical origin). It is obvious that the construction of the school of the new type must begin with a solid scientific conception, but by no means does every position relating to education constitute a scientific conception. Neither does an aggregate or even a system of requirements that might characterize the educational arena constitute a scientific conception; such a system remains merely declarative until the internal characteristics of the educational arena are brought out from particular more general restrictions.