A socialist general education was conceived of in the 1950s and was seen as the basis for further development of socialism as well as for individual vocational training and the path to further educational institutions in the education system up to university level. In contrast to a subjectively idealistic and abstractly humanistic conception of personality (Neuner, 1975, p. 30), the education research of the GDR found that all educational processes were inseparably embedded in living historical processes and decisively determined in terms of goal, content and method by the material life processes of society, the political struggles of the classes and their ideological reflections (ibid., p. 27). The general aspect of socialist general education was therefore essentially an orientation towards active appropriation of the historically concrete environment, of human culture in its entirety, in work, in learning, in culturally creative activities (ibid., p. 32). Socialist general education was thus based (1) on the Marxist-Leninist interpretation of the laws of social development (ibid., p. 38), and (2) saw the combination of instruction, productive work and gymnastics as the condition for comprehensive human development (ibid., p. 39), which through (3) ideological education was a comprehensive development of a specifically socialist personality (ibid.). A socialist personality development conceived of in this way was (4) considered a condition and guarantee for the embedding of education in the revolutionary struggle of the working class and its allies (ibid.).

With all this, education research in the GDR concentrated on contributing to the formation of well-developed and well-educated socialist personalities – especially in the institutions of the education system. The appeal to Marx's vision of the full development of every individual in a higher form of society excluded the free, individual development of personality (Marx, 1962, p. 618). Both the theory of socialist general education (Neuner, 1975) and the concept of socialist general education manifested in curricula and explanatory monographs tied up significant education research resources in the GDR, initially in the German Central Pedagogical Institute (Deutsches Pädagogische Zentralinstitut, DPZI) and from 1970 in the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (Akademie der Pädagogischen Wissenschaften, APW) (see also leading pedagogical institutions). Only gradually, from the mid-1970s onwards and especially towards the end of the 1980s, did the dogmatic thesis of teaching as the main field of education and training of the growing generation (cf. Tenorth & Wiegmann, p. 382, FN 80) give way to a carefully presented criticism from education research. Nevertheless, the insight of the interconnectedness of social processes in the formation of socialist personalities (cf. ibid., p. 419, FN 276) was unable to break through the prevailing policymaking in education and for research until the collapse of the GDR.