EDUCATION.
Education, like everything else in Russia, has, in the course of its
existence, experienced many sharp ups and downs, which were the outcome
in the past of the vicissitudes of history, and, in less remote times,
of changes in the policy of successive governments.
The birthplace of education in Russia was the Church. Until the Tartar
invasion, education was entirely in the hands of the clergy; and like
everything else in Russia, it necessarily suffered an eclipse during the
epoch of the Tartar domination. Peter the Great created secular schools,
sowed the seed of technical education, which was later to bear such
abundant fruit, and planned an Academy of Sciences which was executed by
his widow Catherine.
The University of Moscow was founded in 1755, in the reign of the
Empress Elisabeth. Catherine II. encouraged education in many ways; but
it was not until the reign of Alexander I. that an attempt was made to
organize a national system of education. From that time until the
present day, education has experienced spurts of progress and relapses
into stagnation, according as the political pendulum swung from reform
to reaction. From 1812 to 1855 reaction was predominant. In 1855
education, as everything else, revived under the influence of the great
reforms. After the assassination of the Emperor Alexander II., in 1881,
another period of reaction set in, which lasted more or less until the
Russo-Japanese War; then came the revolutionary movement which broke
down certain barriers, and was succeeded, as far as education is
concerned, by a Government policy whose constant tendency has been
towards reaction, and here as elsewhere, and in other matters, to take
back or to curtail and limit with one hand what it had given with the
other. But although the Government has constantly interfered with and
hampered the organization of education, it has not only been powerless
to withstand the great movement towards the extension and progress of
education which is at this moment taking place in Russia, but it has in
some cases taken the initiative in educational reform, so that if it
curtails with one hand it has none the less given with the other; and
the gift is more important than the limitations, because, once made, it
opened windows that could never be shut again in spite of all possible
curtailments. In Russia at the present moment there is a great and ever
increasing demand for primary, secondary, technical, and higher
education.
Primary education, which in Russia is always gratuitous, is in the hands
either of—
(_a_) The Zemstvos, in the country.
The Municipalities, in the towns.
(_b_) The Church.
(_c_) The Minister of Education, to a small extent in that part of
Russia where Zemstvos exist, and a large extent in the
ukraines where there are no Zemstvos.
The course of primary education is planned on a basis of from three to
six years. In all primary schools, reading, writing, and arithmetic, and
religion are taught.
The tendency towards a longer and slower course, because a three years’
course, while it teaches a boy to read once and for all, has been found
not to leave a lasting impression on him as far as writing is concerned.
The boy after a three years’ course will never forget how to read, but
he will entirely forget how to write.
The primary schools are full to overflowing, and have to turn back
pupils all over the country.
As far as the teachers are concerned, 60 per cent. of them are women, 40
per cent. are men. Only a small proportion are specially trained
teachers; the rest, especially among the women, have merely finished
their course at a Government Gymnasium.
Of the three classes of primary schools, the best are those which are in
the hands of the Zemstvo; then next in order of merit come those which
are in the hands of the Minister of Education; and next the Church
parish schools,[15] which are gradually being suspended and ousted by
the others.
All these schools were till quite lately (three or four years ago)
supported either by the respective authorities in whose control they
are, or by private persons. As the sums of money rendered available by
such a system were totally insufficient to defray the necessary
expenses, the consequence was that the general progress was slow. A
radical change in this situation was made by an Education Bill, which
was introduced into the Duma by the Government, and passed by the Duma a
few years ago. This most important measure provided that the various
authorities indicated above, which control the schools, should receive
yearly from the Government a sum of about £40 in order to pay for the
schooling of fifty children—that is to say, for the salary of one
teacher for every fifty children, on the condition that the Zemstvo, or
the other controlling authorities, as the case might be, should
undertake to build, in a period of ten years, a number of schools
sufficient to meet the needs of the whole population of their respective
districts. The result of this Bill will be that in about five to six
years’ time Russia will have enough schools for the whole of its
population, and will be able to contemplate the practical realization of
compulsory education.
As it is now, in European Russia the percentage of people who can read
or write is only 22·9 in Siberia, and in the Caucasus it is less (12·3
and 12·4); but it is higher in Poland (30·5), in the Baltic provinces
(71–80), and in certain governments, such as Moscow (40) and St.
Petersburg (43–53).[16]
Before considering the question of secondary education in Russia, it
must be pointed out that all secondary and higher education in Russia is
of two kinds—namely, technical and general.
General secondary education is either directly in the hands of the
Minister of Education, or in the hands of private persons under the
close supervision of the Minister of Education. There are, as in
Germany, two classes of general secondary education—classical, which is
taught in the gymnasia, and non-classical, which is taught in the Real
Schools; the gymnasia are attended by boys and girls, but the schools
are as a rule not mixed. The Gymnasium’s course of instruction lasts
eight years; that of the Real Schools, seven.
The subjects taught in the gymnasia are as follows: Religion, Latin,
Greek, Russian, mathematics (as far as logarithms and the binomial
theorem, and including trigonometry), history, natural sciences, French
or German, English (optional).
The course of the Real Schools is the same, except that it excludes
Latin and Greek, attaches much more importance to mathematics and
natural science, and has two obligatory foreign languages (French and
German), and one optional foreign language.
The course for girls is the same in kind, but less in degree. The
tendency for girls is to go to the Real Schools in preference to the
gymnasia; and besides the gymnasia and the Real Schools, there are also
for girls a certain number of institutes and gymnasia founded by the
Empress Marie, open only to the daughters of the nobility, and to
foundlings and orphans. These gymnasia are more or less the same as the
ordinary Government gymnasia; the institutes are closed pensions,
organized more or less on the lines of a French convent; the pupils are
boarders, and the teaching of languages in these institutes is
especially good.
In the ordinary gymnasia the average number of pupils is 372, and the
average number of pupils in each class is 35. These schools are open to
people of every class; but this does not exclude the possibility of
nobles or other persons founding special private schools for members of
their particular class.
In the gymnasia and Real Schools the pupils are mostly children of town
dwellers and guild artisans; the pupils live at home, and go to the
school only during school hours.
The school terms last from September 1 until Christmas, and from
Christmas until June 1, leaving a holiday of three months in the summer.
The hours of work in school are from 9 a.m. until noon, and then, after
an hour’s interval for lunch, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., making five hours a
day. Preparation is done at home. There are no half-holidays. On the
other hand, there are many whole holidays, since every saint’s day in
Russia is a whole holiday, and besides the saints’ days there are other
holidays as well. One point of interest, in comparing Russian secondary
schools with English secondary schools, is that in Russian schools there
is no such thing as corporal punishment, and if a Russian schoolboy were
chastised or beaten by a teacher he would be almost ready to commit
suicide from shame. In the Russian gymnasia and High Schools, the level
and quality of the teaching are high. A university degree is required
from all teachers, except in some rare cases in the lower classes of
girls’ gymnasia. On paper, and theoretically, nothing could appear
better than the system of Russian secondary education. It seems to have
all the advantages of the German system, and at the same time to be a
little less strenuous.
Nevertheless, almost any Russian, if you ask him what is the chief
characteristic of Russian secondary education at present, will answer
that the education received is bad and unsatisfactory.
And if you ask whether this is the result of an incomplete or faulty
programme of instruction, or of incompetent and inadequate teaching, he
will say, No; the scheme of instruction is sufficiently extensive and
difficult, the teachers are well trained, competent and conscientious;
it is in spite of this, they tell you, that the education which is the
fruit of this laborious course is unsatisfactory, and the culture
obtained comparatively low. If you press for the reason, they will point
to the influence of the Government over the schools. The Government do
not exercise an open and direct pressure on the schools, but they never
cease from interfering indirectly with them. They exercise a kind of
censorship over education; the teachers are being constantly checked;
certain subjects and certain topics are tabooed; and the nature of the
censorship varies with the changing ministers.
Thus it is that education tends to be intensive in one direction and
incomplete in another; and the net result is that the culture obtained
is to a certain extent superficial, and that the product of the Russian
secondary schools is a youth who is intellectually half-baked.
One of the chief results of the attitude of the administration towards
the schools is that the pupils look upon their course of education
solely as a means of getting a diploma; they cease to be interested in
the education itself which is provided for them, and they throw
themselves with exaggerated vehemence into any other political or
philosophical channel outside it—into socialism, materialism,
theoretical and practical anarchy.
This is what Russians tell you, and it is no doubt true from their point
of view; nevertheless, if you compare the average level of secondary
education in Russia with that which exists in England, you will notice
at once that the average Russian, as I have said earlier in this book,
is infinitely better instructed. I use the word “instructed” purposely;
because if you take education in the larger sense, it is often the case
that the more ignorant Englishman has on the whole a better balanced
education than the over-instructed Russian. That is to say, the
intellectually immature product of the English schools will often be
saner and nearer to reality and practical life, and fitter to deal with
the emergencies of life, than the intellectually overripe Russian, who
is immature in his very overripeness; and who, by nature being
intellectually plastic, agile, and assimilative, receives an education
of a kind that starves him where he needs feeding, and overfeeds him
where he needs a low diet, and leads him to seek for himself just that
kind of intellectual food and drink which is likely to inebriate him,
and to ruin his intellectual digestion. With regard to the course of
education itself, he becomes simply and solely a diploma-hunter.
These remarks do not apply to technical secondary education. There are
in Russia technical secondary schools of agriculture, engineering,
mining, forestry, and railways (all under the management of the
different ministries). The general course of education received here is
the same in character as that given in the gymnasia and the Real
Schools; but it is combined with a special course, and the technical
schools produce a type of youth who is not only more practical and
nearer to reality, but who is more really cultivated in spite of the
fact that the pupils of the gymnasia have the advantage of the more
general course of education.
There are also cadet schools and special schools for officers under the
Ministry of War, which are sufficiently good; and commercial schools
(similar to the Real Schools), under the direction of the Minister of
Commerce.
The number of schools in Russia is still not really sufficient for the
demand; and since the regulations binding on the institution of schools
by private persons have become less stringent, the increase in the
number of such privately organized schools has been enormous, and this
testifies to the greatness of the general demand for education.
Higher education in Russia is also of two kinds, technical and general.
General higher education is supplied by the universities. There are
universities at Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Kharkov, Yurieff, Warsaw,
Kazan, Odessa, Tomsk, and Saratov.
The largest university is that of Moscow, where there are nearly ten
thousand students; and that of St. Petersburg, where there are eight
thousand. Admission to the university takes place once a year, and
admittance is given to all students who have passed what the Germans
call their _Abiturienten Examen_, at their secondary school—that is to
say, their leaving-certificate examination. Besides the universities,
there are higher technical schools, which we will come to presently.
The system of university teaching is the same as that which exists in
the rest of Europe and in Scotland; the faculties include jurisprudence,
physics and mathematics, medicine, historical philology, Oriental
languages, and divinity.
But the part played by the universities in Russian life and the special
character of Russian university education are unique.[17]
Every Englishman who is at all interested in Russia will be probably
aware of the immense influence that the universities have had on the
current of modern history in Russia.
The young, the adolescent in all countries, have often played a part in
politics, whenever the politics of a country have been in a state of
ferment. Sometimes the expression of their zeal takes the form of
patriotism, as in the War of Liberation in Germany; sometimes, if the
form of the Government is reactionary, it leads them to go and fight at
the barricades.
In Russia the students have always taken an interest in political
matters; but at the beginning of the century the universities were small
and aristocratic. Nevertheless, in 1825, secret societies existed all
over Russia, largely recruited from the ranks of the young, and these
finally organized an insurrection in St. Petersburg, which has become
famous in Russian history as the Decembrist Rising; and which stands in
contrast with all later insurrectionary risings in Russia, in that it
was exclusively the work of the nobility and the gentry, and was
confined to that class. The society which brought about this
insurrection modelled itself on the German association of students, the
_Tugendbund_; and although its practical results were nil, it left a
tradition which the students on the one hand, and the Government on the
other hand (although unconsciously), never permitted to die out.
All through the ’forties and the ’fifties, as secondary education first
became a fact and subsequently went on increasing, the universities grew
not only large, but democratic, and formed a democratic nucleus; and it
was here that the rationalistic movement which started in Western Europe
found the most grateful soil and the quickest response. Liberal ideas
had always flourished among the students, and this blend of liberal and
rationalistic ideas, as soon as it began to spread and to increase, met
with a counter-movement of repression from all successive governments.
And it is the glory of the Russian universities that they never ceased
to keep the flag of their ideal, their demand for political freedom,
flying, and were always the soul of any progressive political movement.
The universities were originally autonomous, and though they were
deprived of their liberties for a time in the early part of the century,
they retained them fully in the reign of Alexander II.; it was not until
then that the universities came to be an important factor, since up to
that period they had been, as I have already said, small and
aristocratic; and it was only in the fifties that they became democratic
and large enough to count. The privilege of autonomy which had been
given to the universities meant that they were administered solely by a
board of professors, at the head of which was a rector. This state of
things lasted until the reign of Alexander III., when the universities
were again deprived of their privileges and their autonomy, and the
Government tried to administer them directly, with the usual result that
trouble ensued; only the trouble brought about by the conflict of the
Government with the universities was more turbulent in character than
that produced by its clash with any other institutions or classes of
society.
A continual state of effervescence and of disturbance on the one hand,
and of repression on the other, lasted until 1908, when autonomy was
again restored to the universities; and during the next five years
university life began, in spite of periodical strikes and closures, more
or less to settle down; but as reaction set in, a part of its activity
was directed against the liberties of the university. In 1911, for
instance, all the professors in Moscow were forced to resign.
At the present moment, if we do not hear of disturbances in the
university, this can be attributed to the reaction among the students
themselves, who are in a natural state of depression at the result of
the revolutionary movement of 1905, which from their point of view was a
complete failure. It may safely be said that it is most improbable that
such a state of things will last very long, and even now there are
unmistakable clouds on the horizon. The policy of the Government of
giving, in educational matters, with one hand and of hampering and
hindering with the other, was bound and is bound to result in trouble
sooner or later. The troubles which occurred in the recent past in the
life of the universities, during and subsequent to the revolutionary
movement, without doubt lowered the general standard of education. The
results obtained at present are worse than they should be, considering
the excellence of the professors. Moreover, the constant troubles which
arose in the life of the universities during the revolutionary period,
caused generally by some move on the part of the Government, and
invariably followed by repressive measures (involving temporary
closure), drove thousands of students to seek education abroad.
All that I have said about the universities applies to the higher
technical institutes, only in a lesser degree. There is a considerable
number of such technical institutes in Russia. St. Petersburg alone can
boast of a Polytechnic, a Technological Institute, a Mining Institute,
an Institute of Civil Engineers, a Higher Commercial Institute; and in
addition to these there are institutes in other parts of Russia where
higher education can be had in the branches of mining, railways, ways
and communications, forestry and agronomy, besides an increasing number
of agricultural schools all over the country. The difference between the
character of higher technical and higher general education, between the
higher technical schools and the universities, is the same as the
difference between the character of the technical secondary schools and
the general secondary schools.
As in the case of technical secondary education, higher technical
education produces a more practical type than the universities; and the
students of the higher technical institutes only take part in politics
when matters have reached a definite crisis, in which their action can
have practical effect. The great importance of the universities and of
the higher technical institute in Russia lies in the fact that they
supply the ranks of the whole of the higher _intelligentsia_. All
lawyers and all doctors come from the universities, and the life and the
fate of the universities affect the cultured classes vitally. This works
both ways. The universities affect the cultured classes, and the
cultured classes act on the universities.
For instance, every medical officer in every county council is a
university man, and he will be vitally interested in the fate and doings
of his _alma mater_. Any blow at any particular university will affect a
whole class of people all over the country; the influence of the
universities spreads like a network over the whole length and breadth of
Russia, and produces an _esprit de corps_ and a strong spirit of
freemasonry among the former students of the various universities.
Games and physical exercise are not a feature of Russian
education—certainly not at least in the English sense; and though
outdoor sports, such as boating and football, have been introduced, and
are popular in some of the universities—Odessa, for instance—it is
impossible at present to discern even the dawn of any trend towards
physical sports and exercise such as we have in France or Spain, for
instance.
Lately, however, an organization of gymnastical societies, under the
supervision of Czech instructors, and in some ways resembling the German
_Turnvereine_, have taken a firm root in the towns, and enjoy great
popularity; these societies hold yearly festivals, and organize
competitions between various towns. The popularity of these societies is
likely to increase in the future.
Besides the universities and schools I have mentioned, there are still a
great many more educational institutions: veterinary institutes, schools
of art, archæology, Oriental languages, and law; seminaries,
ecclesiastical and naval schools, and private institutions; and at the
top of the ladder of education there are two academies, one of art and
one of science, consisting of professors, men of science and letters,
who are chosen by election. Scholarships and grants to poor students are
distributed both by the universities and the higher technical schools.
If one reviews the question of Russian education as a whole, one is
forced to the conclusion that the material both of the teacher and the
pupil is good; the staff of teachers excellent; but that the whole
system is continually and fundamentally vitiated by a policy, not
exactly of repression, but of constant censorship, interference,
checking, nagging, and hindering which saps the school life of Russia,
and deprives it of all potential interest and vitality for the pupil. It
is reduced to an official machine, which turns out either a specimen of
bureaucratic mediocrity, or a rebel who reacts against it and is driven
to anarchy and dynamite. If the Government were to leave the whole
matter alone, there is no doubt that the schools would not only manage
their own affairs perfectly peacefully and well themselves, but that
they would succeed in turning out a type of youth who would be more
really cultured than the present overripe and immature, half-baked, yet
partially burned specimen, which is the average product of a system of
education which cannot fail to be one-sided and unsatisfactory so long
as it is cramped and diverted from larger channels by the exasperating
supervision of a paternal, officious, and suspicious administration.