Anton Semionovich Makarenko: biographical aspects of a social pedagogy teacher development

Abstract

The present article aims to provide, in a narrative format, a synthesis of the life of Anton Semionovich Makarenko up to the beginning of his work at the Gorky Colony, placing it within the social context of Ukraine and the Russian Empire of that period. Makarenko was one of the most significant pedagogues of the Soviet Union and pioneered a distinctive form of pedagogy. Born in Ukraine in 1888, during the pre-socialist revolutionary era, he began his studies in his hometown of Belopolye and later attended secondary school in the city of Kremenchug, to where his family had moved. There, he also completed a preparatory course for teachers and, subsequently, a Higher Course in Pedagogy. He worked in primary education in various schools and, after the Soviet Revolution—which brought profound social and political changes to the entire Russian Empire—he was summoned, in 1920, to organize and direct an educational colony for juvenile offenders. During this period, Makarenko came into contact with the ideas of the New School movement, which begun to influence Russian pedagogical thought. Inspired by these ideas and seeking methodological paths in other sources that he was also studying—ranging from the classics of Antiquity to the emerging Russian authors—and integrating them with the real challenges of children education in the colony, he initiated a pedagogical approach that may be considered unprecedented: Social Pedagogy. His experience at the Gorky Colony deeply marked his professional path and gave rise to his most renowned work, The Pedagogical Poem, first published in 1935.