Vitality of Study-While-Working Educational System Displayed in DPRK

Pyongyang, July 15 (KCNA) -- It was at the height of the Fatherland Liberation War when a study-while-working educational system was established in the DPRK along with the foundation of the first factory college on July 15, 1951.

Since then, the system has demonstrated its advantages and vitality for the past 75 years in training many working people to be the reliable forces capable of accomplishing the technical revolution to push forward with socialist construction.

President Kim Il Sung saw to it that a factory college, the first of its kind in the country, was founded during the grim war and confirmed its advantages in reality. Based on it, he made sure that colleges were arranged at major factories of the country from September 1960.

Chairman Kim Jong Il in some works including "On Further Developing Educational Work", the letter he sent to the participants in the Ninth National Meeting of Educational Activists held in July 1984, said that it is important to develop the study-while-working educational system in turning all members of the whole society into intellectuals, and advanced forward the tasks and ways for doing so.

Under the energetic leadership of the peerlessly great men, the number of such factory colleges increased to more than 30 in the 1960s, nearly 100 in the 1980s and a hundred and dozens in the new century. Those colleges had produced a great number of labor innovators, scientists and technicians.

Under the wise leadership of the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un, the said system has further developed and contributed to making all the people well versed in science and technology.

Many teachers and students at Pyongyang, Chongjin, Sangnong and Sinuiju colleges of technology became holders of academic degrees or titles and were awarded the title of October 8 Model Professor. And they became able to speak and write several foreign languages and play an important role in developing their units.

The Sci-Tech Complex was built as a grand seat of learning for all the people in the 21st century and a center for disseminating the latest science and technology. And sci-tech learning spaces were set up in all provinces, cities and counties and at institutions and industrial establishments in order to train the people into talented revolutionaries who are well-versed in the knowledge needed for their sectors and fields and have many-sided knowledge.

Ordinary working people became competent technicians, experts, innovators, masters of inventions and worker inventors in production and construction, and many workshops and work-teams of factories, enterprises and farms have become the ones of college graduates. This is a clear proof of the validity and vitality of the said system. -0-