SIMON    L'VOVICH   SOLOVEICHIK
(1930-1996)

Simon Soloveychik was one of the best Russian journalists in the field of free and alternative education. He brought to national prominence several members of the group of "teacher-innovators," whose teaching methods allowed students to liberate from their fears. Together with those seeking radical reform in Soviet schools he initiated a pedagogical movement called Pedagogy of Cooperation, from which perspective the relationship between teachers and students becomes cooperative when teachers help students strengthen their dignity, and their faith in success.  

Forty years of writing about children and for children with simultaneous research of educational theories and methods of many philosophers and humanists in the field, such as Rousseau, Socrates, Bronfenbrenner, Vygotsky, Spock, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Korczak, Sukhomlinsky challenged him to discover several stable laws of a child spirit development. These humanitarian ideas he brought into the field of parenting, a science about the art of upbringing children in families. For ten years of deep investigation of the origin of humanity in people he gathered, analyzed and systematized those ideas into a complete, integral system, which was described in his book Parenting For Everyone. 

In 1992 he founded First of September, a teachers' newspaper in Russia. His manifest to this newspaper, Free Man, was intended to promote the concepts of internal freedom, conscience, and duty among other ethical concepts. He wrote several books, was married and had three children.

'Soloveichik was a classic member of the Russian intelligentsia, focused on underlying ideas and their significance, rather than on what was practical or expedient. He wrote always in defense of teachers and their work, and featured as a slogan on the masthead of Pervoe sentiabria from its first issue, "You're an outstanding teacher -- You have wonderful pupils!" Perhaps the organizing idea of Soloveichik's work was expressed in a remark he recently made to a visiting American educator who wanted Soloveichik's reaction to some new psychological theory. "You know," said Simon L'vovich, "everyone thinks that the essence of pedagogy is in psychology, but it's not. The essence of pedagogy is in ethics." It would be a fitting epitaph for this courageous writer and intellectual.' (Stephen Kerr, 10/18/96)