As in most Eastern European countries, the major objectives of the Bulgarian educational system have been premised on both ideological issues and the demands of the national economy. One of the primary goals of the system--both stated and implicit--is the production of the ideal communist citizen who will work for the realization of "socialist construction" and the betterment of the socialist society. A second major premise of the system is that the demands of the economy must be met; this goal is to be achieved by educating skilled personnel to fill the specific needs of its various sectors. Because of the trend toward industrialization that obtains in all communist countries, a corollary policy is that the study of science and technology must be emphasized over the study of the humanities.
According to established principles, therefore, certain policies are carried out in the process of education. People of worker or peasant origin, who the Communists perceive as having been deprived of their basic rights to an education in the past, are allowed to enter the higher levels of the educational system without the usual prerequisite examination if the necessary places are available. They generally represent between 30 and 40 percent of the total higher education population as compared with 80 percent of the population as a whole.
Certain communist principles form the backbone of the curriculum. Work is perceived to be an integral part of education as are directed extracurricular activities, and a sizable percentage of formal education is allotted for practical and vocational training. Religious education, which was a legacy from the past, has been dismissed as superstitious and archaic, and virtually all religious schools have been banned. The curriculum from the earliest years of schooling to the upper levels of higher education is filled with such courses as Marxism-Leninism, the history of the communist party of the Soviet Union, and the history of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP--see Glossary).
Under the many and varied educational reforms legislated under the Communists, the pendulum has swung between relative emphasis on science and technology on the one hand and the humanities on the other. Although overall emphasis has always been on the sciences, that emphasis has increased and decreased at various times since the communist takeover. Between 1944 and 1948, for example, there was little overall emphasis on technology in the curriculum. Between 1948 and 1967, however, these subjects were emphasized to a large degree. Beginning in 1967 some weight was again placed on the humanities. As of 1973 there had been some manifestation of rededication to technology and science, but the latest proposed reform regarding secondary education represented a desire on the part of the government to fuse general education--which of course includes the humanities--and specialized training into one system.