ABSTRACT
The importance of education - of the educational system as a whole - in shaping people's outlook does need not to be specially emphasized. Education is also one of the major sources of information about other nations or societies, even if it has to compete with such powerful media as TV and the press, which carry news from all over the world. Education in the school has the function both of imparting knowledge and of systematizing or reinforcing knowledge on the one hand. Educational goals are obviously long-term goals, but the task of identifying such long-term goals and developments in educational policy is complicated by the fact that education is undergoing a process of far-ranging reforms. Among the ideological features of Soviet education which has for a long time had a significant place in Western perceptions of the ideological role of Soviet education is military-patriotic education.
