V.N. Tatishchev and Organization of First Verbal Schools in Urals

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of opening the first verbal schools of the mining department in the Urals in 1721. V. N. Tatishchev, appointed by the Berg Collegium as the head of state-owned factories in 1720, decided to open literacy schools at two factories that were then in the mining department, and settlements assigned to them. In the very first normative document that regulated the activities of the factory commissar, he devoted one of the chapters to schools. The document is of particular interest as the first pedagogical experience of V. N. Tatishchev, who assumed responsibility for organizing verbal schools without waiting for the approval of the Berg Collegium. The norms of punishment concerning the reasons for opening schools, the duties of the commissioner for their arrangement, the duties of teachers, determining the sources of their support through special collections of money from local residents are analyzed in the article. The plan conceived by V. N. Tatishcheva was successfully implemented; in 2-3 years, more than a hundred children of factory residents, church ministers, landless peasant, and peasants learned to read and write in schools. Gradually, the factory authorities increased their share in the financing of schools up to the appointment of state salaries for needy schoolchildren.