l system was to
persist in its struggle against old customs in society and in its
efforts to inculcate youth with atheistic ideas. The new system, Hoxha
declared, was intended in particular "to safeguard our schools from the
Soviet revisionist school," which in a "demagogic way was degenerating
into a bourgeois school." Accordingly, the Soviet concept in pedagogy
was to be eradicated from the Albanian schools.

As reorganized on January 1, 1970, the system was divided into four
general categories: preschool, general eight-year, secondary, and higher
education (see fig. 5). On December 23, 1969, the government submitted
to the People's Assembly a draft bill on educational reform, which was
approved and became effective on January 1, 1970. The preamble to the
law set the ideological tone of the new system. Its aim was to make "a
decisive contribution to the training and education of the new man with
comprehensive Communist traits, loyal to the end to the Party's cause,"
closely linking "learning with productive work and with physical and
military education, giving absolute priority to Marxism-Leninism." In
presenting the bill on the school reform to the People's Assembly,
Minister of Education and Culture Thoma Deljana listed the three
components of the reorganized school system as academic education,
production, and military education.

The educational system in 1969 was divided into two general parts: one
dealt with full-time pupils and students from the kindergarten to the
university level, and the other with adult education for employed
people. The eight-year education was obligatory, beginning at age six
and ending at age thirteen; secondary education began with grade nine,
or age fourteen, and ended with grade twelve.

[Illustration: _Figure 5. Educational System in Albania, 1969_]

Before a full-time student proceeds to higher education, he must pass a
probationary period of one year in production work. The eight-year
system was described as the fundamental link of the entire educational
system; it was intended to provide the pupils with the primary elements
of ideological, political, moral, aesthetic, physical, and military
education. The new eight-year system differed from the old in that it
lowered the entrance age from seven to six, and there were no longer
separate primary and intermediate schools; that is, there was a single
eight-year school, which was, however, completely separate from the
secondary sch