The Native Word in the Pedagogical System of K. D. Ushinskh

Abstract

The great Russian educator K. D. Ushinskii was also a talented methodologist - a teacher of teachers. With equal success, he wrote both scientific theoretical works on the upbringing of man and the remarkable school textbooks The Child's World [Detskii mir] and Native Word [Rodnoe slovo]. An educator and theoretician, he was a reformer of public education. He gave a great deal of attention to the public school and to primary education as the basis of general human upbringing. He also regarded primary education as the most difficult part of pedagogical science and practice. The younger the student, the greater are the demands on pedagogical knowledge. Pedagogy, he wrote, has a very wide foundation and a very narrow apex: the didactics of primary instruction can fill volumes; the didactics of giving lectures at the university can be expressed in a few words: ‘Know your subject well and expound it clearly.’ That is why a large portion of the professors who have not been especially occupied with pedagogy a...