Development of School Education in South Ossetia in the XIX-early XX Centuries

Abstract

After the annexation of Ossetia to the Russian Empire, the formation of national education begins. The decisive factor here was that the origins of the formation of the Ossetian school were national cadres – people’s educators and clergy. The process of formation of education was particularly difficult on the territory of South Ossetia. This was due to a number of reasons, the main of which was the geography of the region almost entirely consisting of mountainous terrain. Another negative factor was that the teaching was conducted in Georgian (unlike in North Ossetia), Russian was less accessible here. The development of school education in South Ossetia went along with the revival of the Church organization, since all the first schools were built at churches (parochial) and the first teachers were clergymen. The learning process was mainly limited to the study of the Georgian and Russian alphabets, as well as the Law of God with the study of prayers in the Georgian language. The development of national school education was initiated by the Ossetian spiritual Commission (The First (established in Tiflis in 1816), and then the Second), which is associated with the construction of the first schools in South Ossetia. The first school was Java, then Cheselt, Bekmar and Yedys, built in four different districts of the region in 1826. Large-scale school construction here begins only in the second half of the XIX century and is associated with the Society for the restoration of Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus. This Society, which replaced the second Ossetian Spiritual Commission, abolished in 1867, existed until 1917. School affairs were also part of her department. It is noteworthy that in South Ossetia, women’s education appears almost simultaneously with men’s, but, unlike the latter, all open schools for girls, after a short time, ceased to function. Later, in addition to parochial schools, so-called Ministerial schools (i.e. secular schools of the Ministry of public education) appeared. The first (Ministerial) school was opened in Tskhinvali in 1881. The entire school network of South Ossetia before the revolution consisted of 28 parochial and Ministerial schools and one “higher primary school”, covering 1,896 students.