Arithmetic schools and Realschulen. 300 Years of Schooling in Moscow

Moscow has been the research and education centre of Russia for ages. By the end of the 19^th century, the evolution of the rules and practices of teaching had produced an accomplished system in which the teacher played the key role.

Arithmetic schools and home tutors

Until the middle of the 17^th century, Russian children were taught to read, write and count at home by local priests or any other literate people. Noble families often employed foreign tutors of basic sciences and foreign languages.

Formal primary education carried out by professional teachers at permanent institutions according to prescribed programmes started under Peter the Great, with the opening of the first arithmetic schools. Moscow’s first arithmetic school, established in 1716 on Ilyinka Street, taught arithmetic and geometry to 10–15 year olds.

During the reign of Catherine the Great, pursuant to the Statute of Public Schools in the Russian Empire adopted in August 1786, two-year free schools were set up in Moscow and other cities. The Statute opened with words of praise for the beneficial role of early education in the formation of a worthy member of society. Around the same time, Guidance Notes for first-form and second-form teachers were issued.

The Statute gave special attention and status to the role of teacher. Teaching became a profession requiring special knowledge and skills. Appointments for the job were subject to a preliminary test. The statutory weekly workload of a first-form teacher was 27 hours, the prescribed subjects being the alphabet, the addition table, the Russian ABC-primer, pupils' rules of behaviour, concise catechism, the sacred history, calligraphy and orthography. The second-form workload went up to 29 hours a week of continued studies in orthography and arithmetic, extended Scripture lessons and an introduction to draughtsmanship. Each teacher was to handle a class of 15 to 60 children or, at a smaller school, a combined first-and second-form class.

It was a teacher's duty to set an example of good manners, showing the pupils how a well-behaved person should sit, walk, bow, "beg humbly and speak benignly even unto servants". The Statute cautioned teachers against improper methods of visual instruction, such as trying to amuse pupils by imitating the sounds and movements of birds and beasts, thus running the risk of losing the pupils’ respect and needlessly distracting their attention, unstable enough as it was.

Edifying the mind

In the 19th century secondary education underwent serious changes and took on practically the same form by which we know it today. The children of peasants, urban commoners and craftspeople went mainly to two- and four-year urban schools. As a result, as early as in the 1890s the Moscow governorate boasted the nation's highest literacy rate, of no less than half its urban population.

Secondary education could be obtained at gymnasia or at so-called real schools (after the German "Realschule"). Gymnasia provided a classical education focused on ancient languages: Latin and Greek. Most teachers were graduates of Moscow University. At real schools, emphasis was given to the exact and natural sciences, to the exclusion of classical languages.

Graduates of the Moscow Governorate Gymnasium, which functioned at the beginning of the 19^th century near Prechistenka Gate, apart from being eligible for university enrolment, could teach at primary schools. The reign of Alexander I coincided with the era of encyclopaedism, when Latin, German and French were taught along with geography, history and mythology, statistics, mathematics, experimental physics, natural sciences and draughtsmanship. It was considered the teacher’s duty not only to convey knowledge but also to instil good temper, and taking pupils out to the countryside for closer contact with nature was deemed beneficial for this purpose. In addition, children were being shown hydraulic machines and other equipment at factories and mills, and were taken to artists’ studios. Teachers were expected to treat their pupils with parental kindness and patience, and, above all, to see more to edifying and refining their minds than to the development of their memory.

A second gymnasium opened in Moscow in 1835, one more in 1839 and another in 1849. The gradually growing teaching corps was beginning to form its professional traditions.

As caring as parents

The teaching profession reached a new phase of its development in the second half of the 19^th century, due to a sharp increase in the number of potential pupils. In the 1870s, mindful of most Muscovites’ desire to provide their children with a primary education, the City Duma began to open new primary schools. Vast numbers of young educated people, inspired by the idea of enlightening the masses, were eager to join the teaching community.

Thus, the mixed school for 56 boys and 36 girls, that in 1887 was opened at the request of local residents on Nizhnyaya Khapilovskaya Street in the Lefortovo district, was staffed with highly skilled teachers. Anastasiya Guryeva, who had gained experience at the Petrovsk-Basmanny school, became head teacher, while Vera Dityatina, who had studied at a Moscow gymnasium, and Yekaterina Grivtsova, from the Ryazan Episcopal School, were appointed class teachers. Draughtsmanship was taught by Nikolai Tarasov, who had graduated from the Stroganov School for Technical Drawing, while Moscow Conservatoire graduate Larisa Tolstaya taught singing.

In 1888, the Moscow City Duma had 76 primary schools under its jurisdiction. The teachers had to work hard, as some classes had up to 40 pupils. Children from needy families, who often came to school hungry or poorly clothed, were given, at municipal expense, modest breakfasts of a slice of bread with tea or milk, or sometimes a plateful of hot soup. Teachers earnestly responded to the recommendation to play the role of a kindly parent during class.

In some extreme cases teachers had to deal with hugely overloaded classes. In the 1887–88 school year, one class was reported to have 65 pupils. Staying in control of such a group throughout the lesson required a lot of skill and devotion. A teacher’s weekly workload reached 29 to 30 hours, as eight and nine year olds had four lessons a day, plus Scripture lessons and singing and drawing lessons given by teachers specialising in these subjects, while older children had up to five  basic lessons a day. The classes went on from 9 am to 3 pm with a one hour lunch break.

In addition, teachers had to arrange a great deal of extracurricular activities, such as tours of the city, handicraft classes, Sunday readings and shadow shows. At the readings, often before their parents, who were also invited, the children recited, either solo or in the form of a dialogue, Ivan Krylov’s fables, Russian folk tales or poetry. Interestingly, the poem that every pupil had to learn by heart was Fyodor Glinka’s Moscow, a fervent homage to the Russian capital.

Such activities met with public approval. The parent community and the authorities alike appreciated the teachers’ efforts. The 1887–88 report on the condition of primary schools recognised the beneficial effect of their work both on the pupils’ character and on the school’s image.

Many teachers, mainly female, shared part of summer vacations with their pupils, the most popular pastime being, especially from the beginning of the 20^th century, excursions across Russia. Urban and rural schools exchanged tourist groups, lodging them in the seasonally vacant school buildings.

In 1912, the city’s 312 primary schools employed nearly 2,000 teachers with a total salary of 1.5 million roubles. Appointments were subject to a special examination as per the law of 1872. Nearly half of all candidates had been trained at Moscow gymnasia, another 20 percent had received higher education at Moscow’s St Nicholas Orphanage, St Catherine School, Emperor Alexander, Emperor Paul or Empress Elizabeth Institutions, while others came from normal provincial schools, the Metropolitan Philaret Episcopal School, or had been trained as Scripture teachers at seminaries or even, as was the case with some young female teachers, had passed examinations for home tutorship.

By the end of the 19^th century the teaching profession became quite prestigious. According to the Golos Moskvy (Voice of Moscow) newspaper, in 1907 the 15 vacant teachers’ posts available at the city’s schools were sought after by nearly 1,500 applicants.

Gophers, pistons and flasks

At the beginning of the 20^th century, Moscow had as many as 10 municipal and 15 private men’s gymnasia, while the number of municipal and private women’s gymnasia reached seven and 40 respectively. The total teaching staff of these institutions exceeded 2,000.

Among real schools, particularly in Moscow, some were famous for their high training standards. One of the best was St Michael Real School in Lefortovo. Its director, Actual State Councellor Georgy von Kowaltzig, had gathered a team of first-class teachers. Russian language, for instance, was taught by renowned scholars, such as Alexei Gruzinsky, President of the Russian Philological Society and distinguished developer of language training techniques, as well as children’s book author and philologist Alexei Slivitsky, and Iona Vertogradsky.

Situated in a fine old mansion, the school was so atmospheric that the impression it left on most visitors remained with them for their entire lives. The well-known Russian philosopher Fyodor Stepun thus described his first impression, “We enter a very strange room. Surrounded by ancient vases, floral ornaments and geometric figures, Zeus, Pallas Athena, Homer and Apollo silently stare from shelves that reach the ceiling. At the foot of this plaster Olympus sits a gathering of shabby stuffed grouse, hawks, squirrels, gophers and other fauna. Physical instruments and electric machines, pistons and chemical flasks, blue and matte glasses stand or lie about on the desks, while the walls and even the doors are overhung with maps.”

A friendly and creative atmosphere was created by teachers of other Moscow’s schools, such as Polivanov's gymnasium on Prechistenka Street, the teaching staff of which consisted of school textbook authors. Russian novelist and poet Andrei Bely, former student of the gymnasium, warmly remembered “heart-to-heart” relations with his teachers who, while firmly insisting that enormous portions of text and formulae be learnt by heart, still were human, cultured and appreciative of the profundity of world science and art.

Materials and illustrations courtesy of the Main Archive Directorate of Moscow (Glavarkhiv)