After the death of Semyon Kalabalin, A.S. Makarenko, who created several successful communes according to his system, Makarenko’s communes disappeared in Russia “in their present form”. However, not entirely. In one form or another, the Makarenko system still works, see Orphanage boarding school
The main thing that can be said is that the time in which Makarenko created his system is very similar to our days.
And the records of A.S. Makarenko:
“Our current homeless person is not a product of class decay, but a product of family disintegration. The family is now falling apart much more than before. There are many reasons for this: a freer form of the family, the absence of forced residence, a more intense movement of a person in society, a greater workload of father and mother with work, a woman’s departure from family limitations, material and other forms of contradictions. From a letter to the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, 1934
Who’s to say it’s not about us?
Teachers “…have a miserable appearance. At best, these are people who have become accustomed to the field of their subject, who drive from school to school from early morning until late at night in order to earn more. In other cases, and in the majority, they are workers tormented by want, impotence and family situation, who somehow do their job in the classroom, somehow keep their place, more or less successfully bypassing dangerous squabbles and sit-ups, who do not read anything, who are somehow dressed and have some kind of apartment. The teacher receives a salary that is almost equal to the salary of a city cleaner or janitor, but the janitor gets clothes, and the teacher gets nothing but 100-120 cu. Naturally, a person who is so weak according to his personal data goes to this job that he can no longer get any other job. From a speech at a meeting of «Osvityans», 1927
— our school teachers and institute teachers immediately come to mind.
“I considered myself, boastfully considered myself, a great specialist in the reforging of all kinds of offenders. I thought: “What is a child with a family, is it difficult to re-educate him, this is a trifle.” And as I looked at these children with parents, I saw: where our offenders fit. A murderer, a libertine, a thief, the most desperate «traveler» in comparison with a child with a father and mother, just a meek lamb.
The children who had families were mostly from good families and very spoiled. There were those who said: «My dad has a View, my dad has a Lincoln.» There were those who were used to traveling only in international carriages. And these were the hardest.
The homeless child only counted on me, looked at me alone: a man gives me a start in life. And although I sometimes gave this ticket to the life of the gu.e., but he knew that after all this was a ticket to life. Well, how did this child look at me? “Why are you talking to me like that, you know who my dad is, you know who my mom is?” And in which case he “washed off” and went home.
So children who have a family are not at all easier or simpler than homeless children. («Education in the family and school»)
The main obstacles today are legal, legal. No one will give you land, no one will give you children, no one will give you the right to give children real work for which they will receive money. There are similar obstacles beyond the European Union, where the Makarenko system is treated with great interest: a ban on child labor and other humanistic requirements that do not fit in with the realistic rigidity of A.S. Makarenko.