Nikolay Neplyuev's Social and Pedagogical Experiment in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century

By Pavel Bilichenko

Investigating the original historical pedagogical experience in the activity of the distinguished enthusiasts of the world education development in period of 19^th – beginning of the 20^th centuries is of great scientific interest for us.

My research focuses on the history of my country in accordance to its status of the part of the Russian Empire at that period. In my opinion, pedagogical experience of Nikolay Neplyuev can be of serious interest for researcher.

He was born in 1851 in a very famous noble family. His father was close to the Royal House and headed the nobility in Chernigov province. 

Nikolay Nikolaevich Neplyuev

Neplyuev was an extremely religious person since his youth. Having received an excellent educational at the university (he graduated from St. Petersburg university), he soon came to the conclusion that the Russian society was not perfect and fell short of high ideals of orthodox Christianity. His searching for the ways to creating the new and highly humane society led him to conducting the famous and successful social experiment through organizing the community “Крестовоздвиженское трудовое братство” (“Exaltation of the Cross labour brotherhood"). The activity of this community was researched by many scientists: historians, sociologists, theologians. My research seeks to present Nikolay Neplyuev’s pedagogical investigations results.

The practical result of Nikolay Neplyuev’s educational activity consisted in opening two agricultural schools (one for boys and one for girls) in 1881, and a prep school in his estate in Chernigov province. The founder considered them to be a basis for forming since childhood the future ideal society. 

Children in the Prep School

Summing up the results of Nikolay Neplyuev's and his like-minded colleagues attempts, the fact of appraising the successful activity of these educational establishments is generally admitted. There were some peculiarities of these schools working far from big noisy cities in the silence of patriarchal village.

The first obvious condition of Neplyuev's work efficiency was his confidence in the deep religiousness of the rural population. He easily gained respect of the rural population by his views on upbringing their children grounding on deep respect of Christian values.

According to his views, the founder of the schools could effectively connect the process of teaching children with raising them on the basis of Christian moral tradition. Neplyuev himself actively taught boys in the boys’ school while his mother and sister conducted lessons in the school for girls. One of the traditions of the boys’ school was to hold weekly classes (on Saturdays) about the real sense of Christian study.

Using understandable for children examples from the Holy Writing Neplyuev tried to make bring them understand the sense of human brotherhood and human love to close people. The founder's experience of introducing to the school practice two circles: groups of senior and junior pupils (Rus. − "круг" (circle)) was a success. The first one united children and teachers in discussing pupil's behaviour, and second one included only children.

The experience of moral teaching was positive, when every new pupil could choose his own mentor amongst the senior pupils. Every mentor had a copybook where he noted his ward's behavior. Later, at the meetings, this was discussed and everybody could share his own opinions regarding the behaviour of different children and even of the mentor. 

General Meeting in Girls' School

The activity of these schools during the whole history of their existence formed the basis for their founder’s developing his idea of forming the labour community. More than half of school leavers joined the community voluntarily after graduating from school.

During his pedagogical explorations, Nikolay Neplyuev had to overcome the most serious in his view problem of providing qualified staff for his schools. The trouble was that most teachers couldn’t grasp the essence of founder’s deep educational ideas and they often did not share his views. After some years of efforts, Neplyuev obtained the authorities’ permission to employ the graduates of his schools as teachers. Later he considered it to have significantly improved the situation.

We consider it to be a great confirmation of Neplyuev’s project success that even after his death in 1908, the community as a social institute its household and schools existed for several more decades. Their liquidation in the late 1920s was caused by Soviet authorities’ policy.

We managed to restore a lot of different pedagogical innovations of Nikolay Neplyuev both in the sphere of upbringing and teaching.

A more detailed account of our research will soon be published in History of Education Researcher.

‘My First Coup': autobiographies of childhood

By C E Hastings

"My auntie and the headmistress tried as best they could, with smiles and toffee, to shield me from their rising anxiety, but I could feel it bouncing off the quick sideways glances they shot each other and taking flight like some dark, winged creature on the breath of their long, exhausted exhales. It was rumoured that people had been executed. I knew the headmistress and my auntie were worried my father might have been among them. I was worried too…"

 John Dramani Mahama’s autobiography, My first coup d’etat: Memoirs from the lost decades of Africa is not the typical political autobiography. Thankfully.

The first chapter is the title story and presents him as a small boy of 7, how he hears of Nkrumah’s ousting, and the personal consequences. As the school holidays start, he is the last pupil left, waiting for his father to come.

He doesn’t come, and he and a school matron travel to the city centre to find his home surrounded by troops and his father jailed by the coup leaders. He writes that the ‘course of my future’ was changed by an ‘unspeakable period of violence’ that followed.

This opening does not reflect the almost idyllic childhood Mahama recounts in the remaining chapters. The reason for this opening can be related to his introduction.  Here, he suggests that he views his book as a paedagogic project, a way to educate his readers. He is going to be as specific as possible, because he is tired of people generalising about Africa, creating a ‘monolithic’ viewpoint. In this way, for example, he stresses the difference between growing up in Accra (with his father, and attending the elite boarding school Achimota) and in a small northern village that is difficult to reach and (he suggests) considered by many Ghanaians as foreign. He is keen to establish that there is purpose in writing: this is not an ego project, but an important way to generate understanding, believing that survival despite difficult political and economic situations ‘must be somewhere in our stories, in the seeming minutiae of the day-in and day-out’. There are clear echoes here of the Christian biographical narrative, the focus on what can be learned, improved upon over a lifetime: the belief that there is meaning in everyday experience. For Mahama the adult, as much as Mahama the small boy faced with intimidating soldiers and a father who disappeared (to prison) for a year, the coup has educative potential.

It is this focus on minutiae, the small parts of life, which is of great interest to me in his descriptions of history, and of school as I develop a project looking at West African autobiographies. I am particularly interested in childhood memories of school, given the focus in so many sources and studies on the experiences of teachers, parents and policy makers. Mahama’s account of facing a playground bully, in contrast to these top-down texts, presents the school as a community in which teachers know little of their charges’ life. Mahama (briefly) attended Achimota, a school that stressed cooperation, yet the author describes a systematic theft of food by a bullying pupil that went unnoticed by teachers. This may seem insignificant, but shouldn’t: a key way in which African pupils showed their opposition to school authorities was the so-called ‘food strike’. Protest could grow from young people’s concerns over what was available on the meal table.

Achimota Badge: The keyboard image symbolises cooperation

In the reverse of this process, large, globally significant events become small parts of everyday lives through the prism of the school. Politics (in the shape of the coup) is discussed in school.   Even if for the smallest boys it is in confusing, new terms, that are not fully understood, that seem to offer exciting possibilities.

The autobiography also provides insight into the ways in which families strategically managed educational opportunity. In his description of a family divided between different schools, it becomes clear just how some parents attempted to systematically improve the odds of their children’s success (separating them across different institutions). This is even though Mahama recalls his father’s attitude to schooling:

"He saw it as one of the few risk-free endeavours in life. There was nothing to be lost from it and everything to be gained."

Children’s views of the school concerned, not to mention separation from siblings and home do not seem to have mattered from Mahama’s account. The author makes clear that the ‘tradition’ and prestige of Achimota did not prevent him from hating the experience. Again, it is suggested here that we have the child’s eye view of school.  This contrasts to the fuzzy, often minimally defined, claims to ‘reputation’ which dominate many accounts of African schools I have read in the archives. Despite this apparent disempowerment, Mahama’s account also includes key moments in which school enabled him to shine in front of his father. Even before he is selected for Achimota, his father is called in to meet with his first teacher, who has spotted his potential.

She tells his father that Mahama: ‘has the potential to make you really proud’. He goes on to win prizes at Achimota, recalling of this experience that

"even considering all the accolades I have been blessed to receive thus far in my life, nothing can ever top those few precious moments of hearing my name called, of climbing up on that stage and having all the parents clap for me."

Education here is a publicly rewarded activity, but also one seen as all the more rewarding in retrospect. I connect this retrospective focus on the benefits of education to Mahama’s introduction, his goals for expanding his readers’ knowledge and understanding. For me, Mahama’s autobiography sparks important questions. How valuable are memories of school, if they are recalled to argue for the value of education?  How do we interpret the discordant notes (his hatred of much of life at Achimota) in the light of this focus?

 John Dramani Mahama, My first coup d’etat Memoirs from the lost decades of Africa (Bloomsbury, 2012)

Available to buy from Bloomsbury’s online store

With thanks to Liverpool City Library, where I loaned my copy.

* This post is cross-posted from Africa in Words, a blog that focuses on cultural production and Africa. We cover books, art, film, history, music, theatre, ideas and people and the ways they interact, through their publication and circulation, with societies, economies and space. Our name is intended to recognise that there are as many Africas and ways of talking about it as there are words to do it with. It reflects our shared understanding of the diverse networks across the continent that generate thought and action, that provoke people to produce, to curate, and to write, and that cross political, generic, and disciplinary limits. Ours is a collective space made up of regular authors and guest contributors, edited by Kate Haines, Charlotte Hastings, Nara Improta, Rebecca Jones, Katie Reid and Stephanie Santana. The post forms part of an ongoing project looking at a autobiographical work and the study of childhood in West Africa. The goal of cross-posting is to reach an audience who might not have found the original site of the post, despite an interest in childhood, memory, colonial schooling and/or Africa. *

Playcentre and DEHANZ

By Suzanne Manning ~ @slmanning1

When my first child was about 10 months old, I met a woman in a nearby park.  She asked me what early childhood services I would be taking my daughter to; at that stage, I had no idea.  So she launched into her spiel about Playcentre, an Aotearoa/New Zealand parent co-operative that offers early childhood and adult education, creating a parent support community along the way.  The next week I went along to my local Playcentre… 

My daughter is now 21 years old.  I was a member of that centre for 10 years, contributing as a session supervisor, adult education officer, collage corner looker-afterer, and vice-president.  I absorbed the training as fast as I could.  I was an active member of the local Association working in the adult education programme, including a stint as librarian, and was made a life member (which now mostly means I’m called on to facilitate tricky meetings).  My Playcentre work was counted as “sufficient educational experience” to accompany my science degree when I wanted entry into the Masters of Education programme.  Further, I was on the national Federation education team for four years, coordinating all the Association education teams.

Playcentre has been a life-changer for me.  When I was raising young children, it opened up a world of parent support and intellectual stimulation, and a scholarly direction I hadn’t known I would enjoy.  The community networks that developed for me are now part of my way of life.  Yet I believe that the Aotearoa/New Zealand early childhood education (ECE) policy landscape is marginalising Playcentre and endangering its survival (I’m in favour of evolution of Playcentre, but not extinction).  No big surprise, then, that my doctoral research is a historical look at ECE policy over the last 25 years and its impact on Playcentre.  History has lessons for policymakers!

Although my research is examining the last 25 years of Playcentre history in detail, I have also been exploring its longer history to put the work in context.  Playcentres started during World War II (WWII) in Wellington middle class suburbs as self-help ventures, in contrast to the already well-established kindergartens that had originally been aimed at children of the poor.  These centres quickly formed a network, combining with other similar groups such as Gwen Somerset’s nursery school at the Feilding Community Centre and Doreen Dolton’s nursery school attached to a secondary school in Christchurch.  When Gwen became the first President of the New Zealand Nursery Play Centre Federation in 1948, she influenced the organisation to develop along progressive education lines - which was familiar territory for many of the well-educated founders.  Gwen championed free play, learning through play and parent education based on child development and the observation of children.

In the post-WWII era, government and society strongly reinforced the traditional nuclear family and the associated gender roles: male income earner, female household manager and child carer.  Playcentre was a mixed bag in this respect as it supported (rather than challenged) women as full time carers of their children, but on the other hand, it gave many women an acceptable outlet for their talents in the many jobs necessary to run a centre and/or a national organisation as a parent co-operative.

Second wave feminism from the late 1960s promoted accessible and affordable childcare as a means for women’s emancipation.  This required government support for childcare services on an equal footing to the half day services such as kindergarten and Playcentre that were seen as being ‘educational’.  The childcare advocate’s message was that care and education for young children were inseparable and that the services should not be treated differently.  In 1989 the Before Five reforms merged the administration and funding of all the ECE services under one umbrella, a big achievement for childcare advocates.  For Playcentre, however, the effects were mixed: more money and recognition, but more administration and striving to fit bureaucratic categories that were designed for teacher-led services and not parent co-operatives.

Since the Before Five reforms, there has been increasing professionalization of the ECE workforce, an ‘educationalisation of play’ (Stover, 2011), and the promotion of ECE as a child’s right.  With the rise of Human Capital Theory where education is integral to producing a productive citizen, ECE has come increasingly under government attention – partly because of its role in freeing women up to participate in the paid labour market but mostly (according to the dominant discourse) because of the educational benefits accrued to the child.  ECE has come to be seen as something that only qualified teachers in formal institutions can do.  Although partnership with parents is seen as important, the discourse firmly points to a care (parent) and education (teacher) divide, even though the rhetoric is still that care and education of young children are inseparable.  Where does this leave Playcentre, a formal education centre with educated parents as the teachers?  It is all these changes, policies and discourses, and their effects on Playcentre, that I am trying to tease out in my research.

As part of exploring the recent history of Playcentre, I have written and co-written entries for the Dictionary of Educational History of Australia and New Zealand (DEHANZ) at dehanz.net.au.  One is an overview of Playcentre’s history, and the other is about the educational philosophy of one of Playcentre’s early influential leaders, Gwen Somerset.  DEHANZ is a new and expanding resource curated by the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society (ANZHES) which is aimed at researchers and students interested in the history of education from our part of the world.  If anyone is knowledgeable about a particular area of antipodean history and would like to write an entry, contact the editors and make their day.

Stover, S. (2011).  Play’s progress? Locating play in the educationalisation of early childhood education in New Zealand. Unpublished PhD thesis, Auckland University of Technology.

Teachers’ Lives, Teachers’ Voices, and Educational Development in Central Asia

By Peter Cunningham

Teachers’ life histories make a significant contribution to educational development in a Central Asian centre of key economic growth.  Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education has recently published a project from within their Professional Development Programme.

Stepping Stones: Recording the Voice of the Past, is the product of 65 teachers from across Kazakhstan collecting oral testimonies as an integral component of their action research. The resulting data is published at www.nupdp.weebly.com  

The teachers’ accounts in Kazakh or in Russian languages are archived as edited video extracts conveniently subtitled in English, and edited transcriptions are available for download in the language of interview and in English.  The benefits of video for the oral historian are evident.  We see and hear the interviewees, their facial expressions, body language and gestures. Their transcribed memories are then also accessible for detailed analysis.

Teachers’ accounts provide immensely rich stories of learning and growing into their professional role.  Their own educational experiences in family, community and school evolve into reasons for career choice, patterns of initial training and career development.  Personal ideals, political and ideological contexts, economic conditions and geographical contexts all come into play in understanding the evolution of teachers’ identities.

Hugely encouraging is the view of this project’s integration into the overall programme of educational development in the republic.  Alongside the ‘drivers’ of ‘internationalization’ and ‘modernisation’, space is made for ‘preserving cultural values, contextual ambience, historical mores and grassroots perspectives’, as the project explains in its goals.  Cultural and historical content are seen as making a significant contribution to educational development, and authentic oral history research is identified as a key methodology.

The wide range of perspectives opened up by the project is reflected in captions chosen to title these oral accounts: ‘From a dream to reality’; ‘For the love of children’; ‘For the love of teaching’; ‘The language of my ancestors’; ‘Passion for music’; ‘”Think from your heart”’; ‘Teachers that inspired us’; ‘Through thorns to stars’; ‘A brilliant life of hands-on innovation and research’; ‘Looking back, moving forward’; ‘The best of the Soviet education system’; ‘Democracy and authoritarianism in the school’.

Summer Universities, within the international relationships of the Hungarian Royal Erzsébet University between 1920-1946

by Adrienn Sztana-Kovács                                                   

What kind of foreign educational opportunities did the Hungarian students have at an university, that was founded in Pozsony (Bratislava) in 1914, and quickly changed its seat  twice between 1919 and 1923? In our short writing we try to give an impresson of the summer universities' utilisation as a part of our wider research into the foreign relationships of Hungarian universities.

The birth of the Hungarian Royal Erzsébet University and its seat changes

The foundation of the University of Pozsony (Bratislava) and the University of Debrecen was declared by the Hungarian Parliament in 1912. The University of Pozsony was named Hungarian Royal Erzsébet University, and started the education with only the Faculty of Law opening in 1914. The organisation of the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Medicine had to wait until 1918. At the end of World War I. on the 1st January 1919 Bratislava was annexed by the Czechoslovak Republic. The new Slovakian administration took over the managment of the Hungarian University from the Council of  the University between the 22nd and the 25th of September 1919. At this time the university was cut into two parts. The Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Medicine moved to Budapest, while the Faculty of Law stayed in Pozsony (Bratislava) until the autumn of 1921.

The Hungarian Royal Ferenc József University moved to Budapest from Kolozsvár (Cluj Napoca) because of similar circumstances. The Erzsébet University in cooperation with The Ferenc József University continued their existence in Budapest between 1919 and 1921. The Ferenc József University changed its residence again, and moved to Szeged in 1921, than two years later the Erzsébet University also moved to its final residence to Pécs.

After the Treaty of Trianon was signed on 4th of June 1920, the diplomatic isolation of Hungary slowly started to disolve. The foreign cultural and academic relationships of the Erzsébet University started to develop from 1923.

The main building of The Royal Erzsébet University in Pécs

The major directions of education policy in Hungary between 1922 and 1946

One of the most important makers of Hungarian education-policy was Kuno Klebersberg Minsiter of Religion and Education (1922-1931), who in his cultural-political conception condemned - particularly in the case of small countries - the policy of  cultural isolation. He organized the network of  the Collegium Hungaricum-s [1] (Berlin 1924, Wien 1924, Rome 1927), the foreign scholarship programmes, and supported the creation of new positions of native speaker language teachers at universities, in the spirit of cultural and educational opening, but the great depression broke his initiative.

The other big influence as Minister of Religion and Education was Bálint Hóman (1932-1938, 1939-1942). In the first period of his ministership the budget of his portfolio was 33% less than during the time of his predecessor.[2] Hóman criticized Klebersberg’s exaggerated and expensive scolarship-system. He developed the relationships of higher education institutions through the cultural exchange agreements between Hungary and other countries.[3]

Hungary in the 1930’s built very close diplomatic links with Germany and Italy.[4] World War II. damaged the academic relationships with the Allied Countries in spite of the efforts Ministry of Religion and Education not to create difficulties over these. After the ratification of the Treaty of Paris the inter-state relations were restored. It serves as an example that a new hostel was opened in London for scientists, and that about this fact the Hungarian universities were informed by the Hungarian Ministry of Religion and Education. [5]

The holiday courses

The summer programmes of universities appeared at the Hungarian universities as an another alternative way of access to foreign education. Among the registered files of the Erzsébet University we found numerous application forms and brouchures for summer universities and summer language courses. Most of these arrived from Germany, France, England and Italy.

Pécs University Archives, reference number: VIII.101.b. 17d. 744/1928-29

 

Pécs University Archives, reference number: VIII.101.b. 17d. 744/1928-29

  

We don't have any details on the numbers of applicants from the 1920s. This may be so, because students participating had to pay directly to the foreign institutions themselves. As far as we can see it, this was mainly true in the first half of 1920s. This situation changed, when the summer universities and courses were integrated into the national scholarship programme or when they became a part of the international cultural exchange agreements and they were subsidized by travel-aid. An example for this occuring was the German-Hungarian Cultural Exchange Agreement in 1934. The agreement included  six student-exchanges, German students participation in Hungarian summer universities and two university- or college-lecturer exchanges in each semester.

Pécs University Archives, reference number: VIII. 104.b. 18d. 366/1929-30

Pécs University Archives, reference number: VIII. 104.b. 18d. 366/1929-30

In the 1930s the applicants' number was very low, compared to the number of students at the faculties.  In 1935 two-two law students were supported by the programme to travel to Berlin and Perugia for holiday courses.[6] The travel-aid was 40 Pengő per person in that year.[7] 

Pécs University Archives, reference number:  VIII.101. b. 53. d. 1287/1933-34

Pécs University Archives, reference number: VIII.101. b. 53. d. 1287/1933-34

Pécs University Archives, reference number:  VIII.101. b. 53. d. 1287/1933-34

The number of the successful applications did not rise in the 1936/37 academic year. One law student went to study in Berlin, at the summer course of the Hochschule für Politik, a male arts sudent traveled to Munchen and a female arts student could study in Perugia. [8] In the 1938/39 academic year from the Faculty of Arts three students went to Germany and another one visited Italy. We have only sporadic data about medical students because some the files of the faculty are missing. The sources just mentioned one assistant-lecturer’s name in the summer of 1940, who travelled to the summer course of the Intstitute Forlanini in Rome.

After the end of the World War II., the students of the Erzsébet University got to Munchen and Oxford for the summer holiday courses.

What were the reasons for the students not taking advantage of summer courses? On one hand the cause was the monetarly cirsumstances of the students, on the other hand the lack of foreign-language skills, in spite the fact, that the Erzsébet University stressed the neccessity of the same skills.

Available foreign-language courses at the Royal Erzsébet University between 1918 and 1949
language	Academic year/time period
French	1918/19.; 1923−1949
English	1918−1923; 1925−1948
Italian	1918/19.; 1926−1948
German	1924−1949
Slovak	1923−1949
Finnish	1926/27. II.;1930−1936
Estonian	1926/27. II.
Serbian	1931−1945
Croatian	1931−1945
Swedish	1933−1935; 1942−1948
Russian	1941−1949
Bulgarian	1942−1944
Esperanto	1946−1949

Language learning wasn’t an obligatory part of the university studies, therefore we don't have exact data about how many students learnt languages at the university, but we have some idea from the three notes of National Scholarship Council [9] about the lack of sufficient language skills amongst the applicants to study abroad.

References

[1] Hostels and studies for Hungarian students during their scholarship stay at foreign universities.

[2] Miklós Mann: Oktatáspolitikusok és koncepciók a két világháború között. (Educational Politicians and conceptions between the two World War.) Budapest. 1997. 105.

[3] Agreements: Poland, Italy, Austria (XVII., XVIII. and XIX. Acts of 1935), Germany  (V. Act of 1937 and XXXIV. Act of 1940) Estonia and Finland (XXIII. and XXIX. Acts of 1938), Japan  (I. Act of 1940) and  Bulgaria ( XVI. Act of 1941).

[4] Hungary joined to the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1939 and to the Tripartitive Pact in 1940.

[5] Society for Visiting Scientist, 5. Old Burlington Street, London. Pécs, University Archives VIII. 104. b. 411/1946–47., 27. April. 1947.

[6] The number of law students at the end of the 1934/35 academic year was 892, but only the third of them attended the seminars. The other two-third of them usually held a job and they just took their exams at the university in Pécs.

[7] A normal salary for an official in the private sector  was 200 Pengő. In 1937 1 USD was 5.40 Pengő. 1 GBP was 4.94 USD. 1 GBP was approx. 26.67 Pengő.

[8] Pécs, University Archives reference number: VIII. 101. a. 1936/37. Academic Year. Minutes of the first meeting of the University Council. 30. Szept. 1936. 19. point. The number of arts students was 120 at the end of the 1936/37. academic year.

[9] It was founded in 1927 with the main mission of award scholarships and travel aids. Pécs, University Archives reference number: VIII. 104. b. 294/1929–30., VIII. 107. e. 190/1930–31, VIII. 107. e. 67/1930–31.