A. T. KINKULKIN and I. Y. LERNER. A New Stage In the Teaching of History in Secondary Schools The article points out that further development of the system of public education in the U.S.S.R. along the lines of establishing closer links between school education and life has confronted the Soviet school and its teachers with the task of raising the level of general and polytechnical knowledge imparted to pupils and improving the methods of upbringing and educating erudite and harmoniously developed people-conscious builders and members of communist society. A new stage in the development of school education has brought about certain changes in the methods of teaching history in secondary schools. The authors note that at the present juncture instruction in history acquires even greater significance than before. More extensive knowledge of history should enable the youth practically to apply the knowledge received at school in the process of communist construction in our country, develop in young people a scientific understanding of the laws of social development, give them firm conviction in the inevitability of the victory of the new social system, consistently and systematically reveal the role of the popular masses as genuine makers of history and creators of all material and spiritual values, and bring out the significance of the individual in history. The article comprehensively analyzes the new programs on history and emphasizes the bigger attention devoted in them to developing and shaping in the pupils a dialectical-materialist world outlook. Sustained efforts in the field of shaping the pupils' world outlook have found their vivid manifestation in the introduction of a new subject in the senior grades of general-education schools - a popular course in the fundamentals of political knowledge. Crowning as it does the process of school education, this course is based on the knowledge received by the pupils in studying natural scien ... Read more