Soviet teachers are overworked.

Who would be a Soviet teacher? Recently, Uchitelskaya Gazeta, in one of its periodic diatribes against the gross overburdening that afflicts Soviet teachers, cited some horrifying cases.

Comrade S, for example, who works in the Sverdlovsk region, teaches the fourth class, and teaches Russian and algebra in an evening school.

He also has to write syllabuses, conduct school excursions, run the local knowledge club, give reports and lectures to the parents’ committees, do extra work with backward pupils and attend countless meetings. He is expected, moreover, to undertake additional outside work of social importance. He is the convenor of the regional association of primary teachers and editor of the state farm newsletter.

The paper calculates that, to do all these jobs properly, Comrade S would need to work 18-20 hours a day. It adds that as the “last drop in the cup”, he has a wife and three children.