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The Adequacy of Basic Schooling in Rural Russia: Teachers and Their Craft, 1880–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Ben Eklof
Ben Eklof*
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington
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Extract

The rural teacher is a familiar and sad character in Russian literature. Yet little hard information has been forthcoming with which to verify impressions gleaned from fiction. Western as well as Soviet historians have pointed out that the teacher eked out a miserable existence, was usually a dropout from advanced schools, and was often of a radical cast of mind. Moreover, they have documented the failure of Russian primary schoolteachers to organize, to set and police their own standards of competence, or even to win the respect of the more elevated professions requiring a higher education for entry.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , Summer 1986 , pp. 199 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Erman, Lev K., Intelligentsiia v pervoi russkoi revoliutsii (Moscow, 1966), 314; Ushakov, Anatoii V., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie demokraticheskoi intelligentsii v Rossii, 1895–1904 (Moscow, 1976), 17–40; Korostelev, Aleksandr A., ed., Uchitel' i revoliutsiia: Sbornik statei materialov pod redi (Moscow, 1925), 161–63; Leikina-Svirskaia, Vera R., Intelligentsiia v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX veka (Moscow, 1971), 147–73. For an anthology of fictional portraits of the teacher, see Blagoi, Dmitrii et al., eds., Uchitel' v russkoi khudozhestvennoi literature (Moscow, 1927). A good brief western treatment of the teacher is in Brooks, Jeffrey, “The Zemstvo and Education,” in The Zemstvo in Russia: An Experiment in Local Self-Government, ed. Vucinich, Wayne S. and Emmons, Terence (Cambridge, Eng., 1982).Google Scholar

2 See especially the impressive work by Seregny, Scott J., “Professional and Political Activism: The Russian Teachers' Movement, 1864–1908” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1982).Google Scholar

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4 See Eklof, Ben, “Peasant Sloth Reconsidered: Strategies of Education and Learning in Rural Russia before the Revolution,” journal of Social History 14 (Spring 1981):355–85; and idem, “Myth of the Zemstvo School: The Sources of Expansion of Rural Education in Imperial Russia, 1864–1914,” History of Education Quarterly 24 (Winter 1984):561–84.Google Scholar

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9 Odnodnevnaia perepis', 16: 4, 189.Google Scholar

10 Ibid.; Biuro obshchezemskogo s'ezda, Trudy pervogo obshchezemskogo s'ezda po narodnomu obrazovaniiu, 12 vols. (Moscow, 1911–12), vol. 5, Anketa uchashchim s'ezda (hereafter, Anketa), 15–16. For the curriculum of the various teacher-training schools, see Farmakovskii, , “Nachal'naia shkola MNP,” no. 10, 170–72; Panachin, , Pedagogicheskoe obrazovanie, 85; Kuz'min, N.N., Uchitel'skie seminary Rossii i ikh mesto v podgotovke ucbitelei narodnoi shkoly (Kurgan, 1970).Google Scholar

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14 Revealingly, when the Novgorod provincial zemstvo petitioned to give its teachers' seminaries secondary school status, the local school dircctor agreed that its graduates were receiving the equivalent of a full secondary education but the MNP, in a report to the Council of Ministers refused to go along with the request, not because it disagreed with the assertion, but because it felt that this move would increase the flow of graduates from primary schools to more attractive professions. (TsGIAL, f. 733, op. 175, ed. kh. 365, ll. 107–108 and 205).Google Scholar

15 Farmakovskii, , “Nachal'naia shkola MNP,” no. 10, 172.Google Scholar

16 Ibid. See also Piskunov, Aleksei I., ed., Ocherki istorii shkoly i pedagogicheskoi mysli narodnov SSSR (Moscow, 1976), 198–200.Google Scholar

17 Panachin, , Pedagogicheskoe obrazovanie, 96.Google Scholar

18 Sinel, , Classroom, 240–41.Google Scholar

19 Darlington, , Education in Russia, 237, 292; Zhil'tsov, P.A. and Velichkina, V.M., Uchitel' sel'skoi shkoly (Moscow, 1973), 37.Google Scholar

20 Darlington, , Education in Russia, 237. Beginning in 1864 many women's gymnasiums under the Fourth Section offered two- or three-year programs (kursy) in pedagogy. After 1897 this was extended to three years for all). On the religious seminaries see Darlington, , Education in Russia, 234. The main difference between the seminary and the gymnasium was a greater concentration upon religion, and upon theology and philosophy in the fifth and sixth forms. Religious schools (uchilishche) accepted children from the ages of ten to twelve, and the seminaries (the second four years of a combined eight-year program which began with the uchilishche) fixed admission at fourteen to eighteen.Google Scholar

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22 Attrition stood at approximately 10% per annum.Google Scholar

23 See Verigin, N., Vpomoshch uchashchim v nachal'nykh narodnykh uchilishchakh… 5th ed. (Moscow, 1915), 129–33, for the regulations governing the certifying examinations for teachers in secular schools. For church school regulations (passed in 1890) see Anastas'ev, Aleksandr I., Narodnaia shkola: Rukovodstvo dlia uchitelei i uchitel'nits nachal'nykh narodnykh uchilisch: Nastol'naia spravochnaia kniga (Moscow, 1910), 413–14.Google Scholar

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28 For a handbook, with annotated bibliography, of Russian school textbooks, see Flerov, A., Ukazatel' knig po voprosam vospitaniia i obuchenni, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1905–6). I am currently working on a manuscript entitled “The Archaeology of Education in Russia,” which will include a study of textbooks, teachers' manuals, and readers.Google Scholar

29 Horn, Pamela, Education in Rural England, 1800–1914 (New York, 1978), 111.Google Scholar

30 Tyack, David B., Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820–1980 (New York, 1982), 17. But see also LaVopa, Anthony J., Prussian Schoolteachers: Profession and Office, 1763–1848 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980).Google Scholar

31 Anketa, 21–42 (the material on the following four pages is from these pages).Google Scholar

32 It bears repeating that graduates of the teachers' seminaries and clerical schools were the most comfortable in the rural setting. It has frequently been noted that the state, for security reasons, preferred employing graduates of these schools, isolated from direct contact with the cities. But it was also true that candidates from these teachers' seminaries were more likely to stay on the job.Google Scholar

33 More specifically, inadequacies were experienced in natural science (4.4%); Russian literature (1.8%); the local language (2.2%); child psychology (1.5%); psychology, math, history, Church Slavonic, hygiene, discipline, and school accounting (each under 1%).Google Scholar

34 Phillips, Herbert M., Basic Education—A World Challenge: Measures and Innovations for Children and Youth in Developing Countries (London, 1975), 50–53, 60. According to Zhil'tsov and Velichkina (Uchitel' sel'skoishkoly, 34–35) because of the difficulty of gaining access to higher schools, teachers' seminaries were virtually the only place where a peasant could receive a free education, and even a stipend and housing, as well as schooling beyond the level of the two-class (five- and six-year) school; see also footnote 14 above.Google Scholar

35 Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford, Calif., 1976), 302.Google Scholar

36 For a brief discussion of recent debates on and definitions of literacy see also Graff, Harvey J., ed., Literacy and Social Development in the West: A Reader (Cambridge, Eng., 1981); idem, The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City (New York, 1979); Resnick, Daniel P., ed., Literacy in Historical Perspective (Washington, D.C., 1983); and Chall, Jeanne S., Learning to Read: The Great Debate (New York, 1967). Chall has identified three stages of learning to read, and two more of learning from reading (comprehensive literacy). On the notion of “transfer” see especially Scribner, Sylvia and Cole, Michael, “Cognitive Consequences of Formal and Informal Education,” Science, 9 Nov. 1973, 553–59.Google Scholar

37 See, for example, Korf, Nikolai A., Nashi pedagogicheskie voprosy (Moscow, 1882), 144–209; this work summarized a number of earlier investigations. For examples of inspectors' reports see TsGIAL, f733, op. 202 d. 255 (Kazan, 1872); f. 733, op. 202 d. 166, 1. 154 (Moscow, 1875) and f. 1291, op. 1, d. 139, 1. 1124 (inspection of Saratov 1880–1881).Google Scholar

38 See Zviagintsev, Evgenii A., Narodnaia zhizn' i shkola, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1912–13), vol. 1, for a summary of some of these tests and a discussion of their reliability. The Voronezh test is from Bunakov, Nikola F., Sel'skaia shkola i narodnaia zhizn : Nabliudeniia i zamietki selskago uchitelia (St. Petersburg, 1906), 175, 184–85. The Simbirsk study can be found in Krasev, S., “Chto daet krest'ianam nachal'naia narodnaia shkola,” Russkaia mysl', vol. 11, nos. 1–2 (1887): 49–72 and 110–30. Soviet dissertations commonly include rather detailed analyses of retention tests in a given province. See, for example, Petrov, V. A., “Zemskaia narodnaia shkola Viatskoi gubernii” (Kirov, 1955), 186–206, 286–319, 395–422.Google Scholar

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41 Ibid.; Ol'denburg, F. F., Narodnye shkoly evropeiskoi Rossii v 1892–1893 godu: Statisticheskiiocherk (St. Petersburg, 1896), 3–4; Kulomzin, , Dostupnost', 15–16. Also, see the study of the results of retention tests of all former pupils, dropouts as well as graduates in Sbornik statisticheskikh i spravochnykh svedenii po narodnomu obraazovaniiu vo Vladimirskoi gubernii, 6 vols. (Vladimir, 1899–1902), 3:221–30, 386–87.Google Scholar

42 Bunakov, , Sel'skaia shkola, 175–76, 184–85.Google Scholar

43 Krasev, , “Chto daet,” no. 1, 67–70.Google Scholar

44 Zviagintsev, , Narodnaia zhizn', 1: 17–24.Google Scholar

45 Weber, , Peasants into Frenchmen, 337, passim.Google Scholar

46 Zviagintsev, , Narodnaia zhizn', 1: 21.Google Scholar

47 Ibid.Google Scholar

48 Bunakov, , Sel'skaia shkola, 187. See also Sbornik statisticheskikh svedenii, 3: 222–30.Google Scholar

49 Anketa, 63–79.Google Scholar

50 Ibid. Numeracy—the ability to count and do basic calculations—has traditionally drawn less attention than literacy. This is regrettable, for its potential impact was enormous. Peasants certainly valued it, for study after study showed that a major impulse to schooling was the desire to avoid being cheated in the larger world outside. The subject, seemingly so innocuous, promises to tell us much about the degree of peasant participation in the modern world. As Daniel Resnick has observed, in the eighteenth century mathematics was introduced into the elite curriculum because it was regarded as the key to effective reasoning. What ripple effects upon the cognitive makeup of the peasant did basic math have? Although the subject did not directly threaten peasant values, as might a primary reader, the teacher was being asked to carry out a minor revolution in peasant perceptions if students were to pass examinations at the end of three years, for traditionally the Russian peasant had little use for official weights and measures, relying instead on complicated local systems of measurement. Yet both the Official Program and the Military Regulations (providing a reduced term of service for graduates) required knowledge of these weights and measures. If the reports are correct—that in most areas pupils were learning the program, and were capable of problem solving at the daily level using standardized measurements—a new skill with broad ramifications had indeed been introduced. Resnick, Daniel and Resnick, Lauren, “The Nature of Literacy: An Historical Exploration,” Harvard Educational Review 47 (Aug. 1977): 374. A survey of math textbooks in use can be found in Voprosy i nuzhdy uchitel'stva, 6: 10–34, and 9: 6–80; also, see Demkov, M. I., Nachal'naia narodnaia shkola, 2d ed. (Moscow, 1916), 304–15.Google Scholar

51 Anketa, 63–79.Google Scholar

52 Anketa, 67.Google Scholar