Editing Nikita Khrushchev (section)

====Education====
[[File:RIAN archive 159271 Nikita Khrushchev, Valentina Tereshkova, Pavel Popovich and Yury Gagarin at Lenin Mausoleum.jpg|thumb|Khrushchev (right) with cosmonauts [[Yuri Gagarin]], [[Pavel Popovich]] and [[Valentina Tereshkova]], 1963]]
While visiting the United States in 1959, Khrushchev was impressed by the agricultural education program at [[Iowa State University]], and sought to imitate it in the Soviet Union. At the time, the main agricultural college in the USSR was in Moscow, and students did not do the manual labor of farming. Khrushchev proposed moving the programs to rural areas. He was unsuccessful, due to resistance from professors and students, who never actually disagreed with the premier, but who did not carry out his proposals.{{sfn|Carlson|2009|p=221}} Khrushchev recalled in his memoirs: <blockquote>It's nice to live in Moscow and work at the [[Russian State Agricultural University|Timiryazev Agricultural Academy]]. It's a venerable old institution, a large economic unit, with skilled instructors, but it's in the city! Its students aren't yearning to work on the collective farms because to do that they'd have to go out in the provinces and live in the sticks.{{sfn|Khrushchev|2007|p=154}}</blockquote>

Khrushchev founded several academic towns, such as [[Akademgorodok]]. The premier believed that Western science flourished because many scientists lived in university towns such as [[Oxford]], isolated from big-city distractions, and had pleasant living conditions and good pay. He sought to duplicate those conditions. Khrushchev's attempt was generally successful, though his new towns and scientific centres tended to attract younger scientists, with older ones unwilling to leave Moscow or Leningrad.{{sfn|Medvedev|Medvedev|1978|p=108}}

Khrushchev also proposed to restructure Soviet high schools. While the high schools provided a college preparatory curriculum, few Soviet youths went on to university. Khrushchev wanted to shift the focus of secondary schools to vocational training.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|pp=192–193}} In practice, schools developed links with nearby enterprises and students went to work for only one or two days a week; the organizations disliked having to teach, while students and their families complained that they had little choice in what trade to learn.{{sfn|Tompson|1995|p=193}}

While the vocational proposal would not survive Khrushchev's downfall, a longer-lasting change was a related establishment of specialized high schools.{{sfn|Kelly|2007|p=147}} These schools were modeled after the foreign-language schools that had been established in Moscow and Leningrad beginning in 1949.{{sfn|Laurent|2009}} In 1962, a special summer school was established in [[Novosibirsk]] to prepare students for the Siberian math and science Olympiad. The following year, the Novosibirsk Maths and Science Boarding-School became the first permanent residential school specializing in math and science. Other such schools were soon established in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev. By the early 1970s, over 100 specialized schools had been established, in mathematics, the sciences, art, music, and sport.{{sfn|Kelly|2007|p=147}} Preschool education was increased as part of Khrushchev's reforms, and by the time he left office, about 22% of Soviet children attended preschool—about half of urban children, but only about 12% of rural children.{{sfn|Perrie|2006|p=488}}