15 Facts About Anton Makarenko

Anton Makarenko became the most influential educational theorist in the Soviet Union; along with promoting principles in educational theory and practice.

Anton Semyonovich Makarenko was born in Belopolye, Sumsky Uyezd, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire, to Semyon Grigoryevich Makarenko, who worked at a railway depot as a painter, and Tatyana Mikhaylovna, daughter of a soldier from Mykolaiv.

In September 1905, having graduated from a four-year college in Kremenchuk, Anton Makarenko took a one-year teachers' course and at the age of seventeen, began teaching at a railway college at Dolinskaya station near Kherson where he worked from September 1911 till October 1914.

Anton Makarenko went on to work as a teacher in Poltava and later Kryukov where, in 1919, he became the local college's director.

In 1923 Anton Makarenko published two articles on the Gorky Colony and two years later made a public report at the All-Ukrainian Conference for the orphanage teachers.

In 1927 Anton Makarenko was appointed as the head of the Dzerzhinsky labour commune, an orphanage for street children near Kharkiv, where the most incorrigible thieves and swindlers were known to be put into rehabilitation.

Anton Makarenko succeeded in gaining their respect, combining in his method insistence and respect, school education and productive labour.

On September 3,1928, Anton Makarenko was released from the post of head of the Gorky colony.

In 1935 Anton Makarenko started working at the NKVD in Kyiv as the Chief Assistant of the Labour Colony Department.

Anton Makarenko continued writing, and in 1937 his acclaimed The Book for Parents came out, followed by Flags on the Battlements in 1938, a sequel to The Road to Life.

Anton Makarenko was buried in Moscow, at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Criticism of Anton Makarenko's ideas were raised by Soviet educators and Russian dissidents both before and after the fall of Soviet communism.

Anton Makarenko's system has been faulted for giving the child collective too much power over the individual child.

The Anton Makarenko system has been studied, among others, by Scandinavian care workers dealing with young drug abusers who couldn't be helped efficiently by using other approaches.

Anton Makarenko's holistic view makes him a pioneer in this regard, holding the enlightened, but often ignored position that the individual is a complex being, with a multitude of potentials and needs.