Russian Pupil’s School Exercise Books: A New Source for the Study of Teaching of Literacy Skills in the 19TH Century (original) (raw)
Related papers
QUADERNI DI STUDI INTERCULTURALI #3, 2017, 2017
The beginning of the XXth century in Russia was marked by a rise in interest in childhood. Different aspects of childhood were analysed by professionals and discussed by the public. The urgent need for democratic education reforms became obvious to both society and the state. Between 1900-1913 the budget of the Ministry of Education had increased fivefold. Political parties made education reforms an important issue in their programmes. Throughout Russia hundreds of educational societies and pedagogical circles came into being and thousands of public libraries were opened. Various aspects of childhood and education -social, philosophical, psychological -were discussed at numerous pedagogical conventions and conferences on public education, women's education, people's universities, etc. To promote progressive ideas exhibitions such as the "Child Development and Education" (April 1914) exhibition were organised. Publications on education, pedagogical theories, and child psychology were in great demand. Professional, as well as popular periodicals, the number of which had increased considerably during that period (304 pedagogical periodicals in 1916), provided information on various aspects of education. Humanistic pedagogical theories and progressive practices from all over the world aroused great interest, became subjects of discussion and gave the impulse for pedagogical experiments. For example, two of the most popular pedagogical magazines were launched in 1890 -Vestnik Vospitanya (Bulletin of Education) and Russkaya Shkola (Russian School). Both aimed at a wide audienceschools and families -and maintained a high and professional level of publication. Articles were published on social and experimental pedagogy, vocational education, and international practices. While Vestnik Vospitanya devoted much attention to child psychology, pre-school education, and paediatric hygiene, Russkaya Shkola dealt mostly with the most urgent problems in Russian education. Children's reading also became an important topic for consideration -both as an educational tool and as a medium for cultural development. Two new magazines devoted to children's reading appeared in 1911 -Novosty Detskoy Literatury (Children's Literature News) (Moscow) edited by A. Kolmogorov and Chto I Kak Chitat Detyam (What and How to Read to Children) (St.-Petersburg) edited by Eugene Jelachich. Both magazines published reviews of children's books, as well as literary critiques and articles on children's reading and education. Due to historical reasons -the social revolution of 1917 that resulted in crucial changes in Russian society and a revised attitude to historical matters -the First World War had not, for a long time, been the subject of proper scientific research and it is only in the last decades that evidence based research of this period has been thoroughly investigated. Periodicals from that period provide important information on the epoch of the Great War. Articles from pedagogical magazines present a diversity of educational and cultural policies, and of opinions in Russia, and could be used as a source of knowledge on the topic.
Herald of an archivist, 2021
The article is devoted to the problem of home education and schooling in Russia in the 1910s–1920s. The author draws attention to the fact that this topic has not been sufficiently covered in the study of Russian society, although it deserves to be studied no less than history of various educational institutions. Memoirs remain the main source, as features of family education simply can’t be studied on the basis of official documentation. In this regard, the collections of the Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library are of great use to the historians specializing in the history of childhood, for instance, the recently discovered fond of T. P. Znamerovskaya (1912–77) – Ph. D in History of Art, assistant professor of the history of art department at the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) State University, researcher, author of numerous publications on the history of Spanish and Italian art of the 15–17th centuries, a woman of many accomplishments, poet, indefatigable travele...
Ab Imperio, 2017
The article reconstructs the history of the creation of Russia's literary canon in the second half of the nineteenth century, and more specifically – the phenomenon of Russian classic literature as codified in the high school curriculum of the time. The fact that teaching Russian literature was not abandoned in schools in the 1870s and that the writings published before about 1842 had acquired the status of "classics" owed to a very specific political constellation. The author argues that the turn toward classicism in education in the early 1870s by the newly appointed minister of public education, Dmitry Tolstoy, reflected the regime's determination to embrace and promote Russian nationalism while curtailing its democratic potential. This both opened up an opportunity for Russian literature to be included in the school curriculum and mandated the format of this inclusion as rigid lists of compulsory reading.
The paper is dedicated to a historiographical analysis of the Slavonic-Greek-Latin Primer by Fedor (Theodore) Polikarpov published at the Moscow Print Yard in 1701.The unique character of the publication lies in the fact that for the first time in the historyof the Moscow book-printing culture there was an attempt to introduce the basics of notonly one language but of three languages at the same time: Slavic, Greek and Latin. Animportant part of the study was to expose the sources of the Primer, and with this end inview, explored were not only earlier Primers but also the manuscript of the trilingual Primerwritten by Fedor Polikarpov. As of today, we discovered about 70 copies of the Primer invarious libraries. As a result of the study of these copies, a conclusion was drawn that bythe time of the release of the Primer, the learning of foreign languages had already graduallybeen entering into the lives of some part of society and a sufficiently trained reading publichad already been formed.
2018
The paper addresses the introduction of literacy schools for the lower ranks in the Russian army. The study primarily focuses on the teaching process, as well as on the used instructional techniques aimed to improve the education efficiency. The materials include army orders, as well as publications by Russian officers in the Russian Empire's central military edition – the Voennyi Sbornik (" Military Collection ") journal. The methodological basis for the study is formed by principles of historicism and objectivity, traditional for this kind of research. It also employed analytical, probabilistic, statistical, typological and comparative methods. The method of historicism allowed for the use of diverse facts, uncovered in field work with sources, and subsequent identification of important phenomena and processes related to the organization of the teaching process in company schools. The paper also paid attention to the instructional techniques that were applied in the teaching process. In conclusion, the authors note that the company literacy schools established in 1857 boosted the number of literate lower ranks. Classes in company schools were carried out in periods when military units were stationed in winter quarters. The term of study was no more than 3 years in these schools. The curriculum included a limited range of subjects such as reading, writing, 414 arithmetic and Scripture knowledge. The teaching was performed by regimental officers who were given complete freedom in choosing methods to instruct learners.
School as a subject of image in the Russian literature of the 1930's
2014
This article explores new approaches to the implementation of "school" theme, realized in the works of Russian literature of the 1930's. It is proved that the first decades after the revolution can be considered with regard to the XIX century as a kind of "antithesis": statics is replaced by dynamics, instead of monster teacher we see teacher-father, truly goodie, prison-type school is converted into a home-type school. Analysis of literary writings about school by Makarenko, Belukh and Panteleev, as well as Kassil suggests that debunking of school institution, peculiar to the XIX century, is replaced by poeticizing. The authors underline that the interest of the literature of these years is focused on correctional institutions. On the one hand, such an interest was prompted by the post- revolutionary reality, when the problem of combating homelessness was one of the most pressing; on the other hand, it reflected one of the main ideas of socialist realism abo...
Recent years have seen the publication of a plethora of articles covering the distinct features of education in various regions of the Russian Empire. However, most of these publications mainly focus on sharing statistical information (e.g., number of schools, number of students, etc.). Issues relating to the theoretical pedagogical beliefs of major provincial instructors and the characteristics of their instructional activity remain underresearched. This paper examines the experience of the Novocherkassk Gymnasium, a major center for science and education in the Don region in the 19 th century, whose teaching staff included a number of major local figures. Note that much of the material on the actual pedagogical process in the above gymnasium was gathered back before 1917, mainly in conjunction with the celebration of its 100 th anniversary-with much attention, due to a lack of documents, devoted to collecting information from former students of the gymnasium. Consequently, most of the information on the educational process in said educational institution is based both on official documentation and on oral, often critical, accounts by contemporaries about its teaching staff, which included individuals proven significant to the history of the Don region. The first part of this paper covers the activity of two of the gymnasium's seminal first-cohort instructors. One of these men, A.G. Popov, the gymnasium's principal and author of one of the first-ever books on the history of Don Cossackdom, was an eminent practician who was the first in the Don region to endeavor to have instructors get the learning material across in an accessible and consistent fashion, for which reason he would even regularly attend classes. However, he still did underestimate the significance of special pedagogical talents and skills, keeping in the gymnasium well-educated yet incompetent instructors, some of whom spoke poor Russian. This, in large part, was associated with the distinct theoretical pedagogical beliefs dominant in the gymnasium. Some of these beliefs were born and propagandized by another seminal pedagogue-protoiereus A.G. Oridovsky, who asserted the beneficence of any education. Yet, while beliefs like these did little to motivate pedagogues, A.G. Oridovsky's being an eminent person and an eloquent speaker did help to attract students into the gymnasium, which was a far-from-perfect educational institution.
Reading Russia. A History of Reading in Modern Russia, VOL. 2
If we replace, in the above, the words "church" and "archdeacon" with "stage" and "bass," Zhikharev's diary entry could easily pass as an opera review. However, poetic recitals differed decidedly from ecclesiastic ones in a key respect: the allocation of authority. Whether you were a gifted presenter like Vorzhskii or a second-rate one like the honorary Ivan Aleksandrovich, (divine) authority was vested not in you but the Holy Writ-the book. Conversely, poetic authority lay with a poem performed, not penned. "I do not know if you are going to like my poor verses, which shall reach you unnamed (I truly could not think of a fitting title), in so ugly a copy, and without its author present," Konstantin Aksakov wrote from Moscow to his beloved cousin in Petersburg. "I wish this great distance that separates us were not so: I would have recited the poem for you using my face and voice to complement things unexpressed." 43 Konstantin Aksakov, indeed, is better known as an essayist than a poet, but then, even a virtuoso versifier like Vasilii Zhukovskii used to trust his ear more than he would his eye. "I always liked him," Zhukovskii wrote to Petr Viazemskii from Bad Ems where he happened to run into Aleksei Khomiakov. "But this time, I bit into him like a hungry spider into a fly. I threw my verses at him so that he'd read them out before me. Thus am I able to detect my poems' covert flaws; when it comes to the overt ones, those I can notice and deal with on my own." 44 Performability is the name of the game: for Zhukovskii, any poem was presumed imperfect until proven perfect in performance. In a recital situation, poetry became a theater-in-miniature. Sometimes, as in the case of Gnedich's recitals or Baratynskii's reading of "Finland" to infantry officers in Finland, the theater was composed of a single poet reciting to a group. Sometimes, a group of poets took turns reading to each other. Sometimes, when poems were recited face to face or heart to heart, this was the theater of two; and sometimes recitals took the form of what twentieth-century playwright Nikolai Evreinov would call teatr dlia sebia ("theater for oneself")-the kernel and ultimate form of theatricality. When in 1836 Sergei Aksakov decided to take his twenty-year-old son Konstantin from Petersburg to Moscow, the latter lost the best listener he had: his cous