Schools at State-Owned Factories of Perm Region in 1735–1746

Abstract

Referring to reports provided by the Perm mining authorities to the Office of the Main Board of the Siberian and Kazan plants, school lists, and rulings of the office which are first introduced into scholarly circulation, this article reconstructs the foundations of organising the first schools at state-owned factories of Perm Region. Among them, the author considers censuses of children, quantitative, social, and age composition of pupils, and the scope of the territory where children went to school from. Special attention is paid to the composition of the teaching staff: their previous occupation, level of training, curricula and teaching methods, and textbooks. The author demonstrates that in the 1730s, schools lacked in state-provided books, loaned books to students for a fee, and had to send some students home until state-provided books were received by the school. Also, there were special instructions that regulated the school teaching process in Perm Region in 1736. The author concludes that between 1735 and 1742, children from all state-owned factories of the region studied in the Yegoshikha and Pyskor schools, including plants under construction and mines adjacent to them. In the 1740s, the Yegoshikha school of arithmetic along with that of Yekaterinburg had an extended curriculum: they instructed pupils not only in arithmetic, but also in geometry, trigonometry, and drawing. Starting with 1743, the Yegoshikha reading and writing schools and arithmetic schools became the only educational institutions attended by orphans, children of retired workers and soldiers from all state enterprises of the region and received financial support from the state. Together with that, there was a desire on the part of artisans, working people, and clerks to give children education within the walls of a state school, and they sent their children there at their own initiative and at their own expense. Thanks to the activities of schools, the Perm authorities were able to fill the vacant positions of factory apprentices of qualified specialists and copyists hiring their own school-leavers.

Keywords

• пермский край
• казенные заводы, горнозаводские школы
• учителя, учащиеся