PROBLEMS OF GUIDANCE AND SUPERVISION OF THE FOLK SCHOOL IN THE BASIC DOCUMENTS OF THE ESTONIAN SOCIAL MOVEMENT AND IN THE PEDAGOGICAL WRITTEN WORD (FROM THE NATIONAL AWAKENING ERA UNTIL THE FIRST WORLD WAR)

Abstract

The present article examines differentiation and specialization of the national educational ideology on the ground of one of its most politicized component that until now has not been the object of a special study. The author tries to give an overview of the development in standpoints of the Estonian national leaders in the realm of rule and direction of the folk (in the first place peasant) school, tracing the relation between the negative and constructive side of this matter. From the 1830s the Estonian peasant school had been administrated by the Consistories of the Lutheran Church and the Baltic Knightages with the help of their provincial school institutions. The struggle to provide the Estonian communities and educated persons with access to supervision of the folk school began from the beginning of the Estonian national movement (in the 1860s). We can see the development from indistinct, unrealistic proposals and naive hope on benevolence of the Russian government (tsar) to more self-confidence and significant demands. The memorandum of Estonian village communities (1864) declared that the Estonian peasant schools should be administrated by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Empire. Actually this request stood for the elimination of the unequal and estate provincial school administration. However, no constructive proposal had been added. In the next essential memorandum to the Russian government in 1881, which reflected the views of the radical and somewhat Russophile wing of the national movement led by Carl Robert Jakobson, a newspaper editor, the central political proposal was for the reform of the provincial self-government with an equal representation for the Estonians with the Baltic Germans and the unification of the areas populated by Estonians into one administrative unit (national province). As to peasant education, the Estonian leaders demanded there only the abolition of the Baltic German control and inspection, the Ministry of Education was not even mentioned. This memorandum reflects hesitation with regard to Russian educational institutions. Hypothetically we can suppose that the radical national leaders had connected the problems of school administration with the prospective Estonian national self-government. The Russificatory reforms in the 1880s and the introduction of Russian as the language of instruction in all types of schools were a serious disappointment to the Estonian public opinion. Estonians did not receive the slightest opportunity to participate in school administration. The Revolution of 1905 stimulated the rise of political activity and pluralism. The Estonian liberal and socialist parties and movements disclosed their programmes, which included democratic, at times ultra-democratic requirements also in the sphere of school administration. The author attempts to discuss the problems from the point of view of the level of maturity of Estonian society for the national territorial and administrative autonomy within the Russian Empire and draws a conclusion that although speaking about autonomy and independence in the sphere of education the Estonian leaders nevertheless frequently laid too much hope on the financial support from the Russian government and gave up too much of authority to the state administration. In 1911 Peeter Pold, who was to become the first Minister of Education for the Republic of Estonia (1918) and the first professor of education at Tartu University (1920.1930), published the first comprehensive project of subordination, guidance and control of local schools in Estonia, in which he attached great importance to the lower levels of guidance and control (village communities and parishes). In that way Pold hoped to more successfully protect the national school keeping in view the continuing pressure of forcible Russification.