Punishments in schools of the tsarist period, as an integral part of education

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Punishment was an integral part of education and training in Russia. In "Domostroy", created during the era of Tsar Ivan the Terrible in the middle of the 16th century, they even included separate items: "How to raise your children in the fear of God" and "How to teach children and save them by fear."

Punishment was an integral part of education and training in Russia. In "Domostroy", created during the era of Tsar Ivan the Terrible in the middle of the 16th century, they even included separate items: "How to raise your children in the fear of God" and "How to teach children and save them by fear."

Punish your son in his youth, and he will rest you in your old age, and give beauty to your soul. And do not feel sorry for the baby bey: if you punish him with a rod (that is, a rod. - Ed. Note), he will not die, but he will be healthier, for you, by executing his body, save his soul from death. Loving your son, increase his wounds - and then you will not boast of him. Punish your son from youth and you will rejoice for him in his maturity, and among ill-wishers you will be able to boast of him, and your enemies will envy you. Raise children in prohibitions and you will find peace and blessing in them. So do not give him free rein in his youth, but walk along his ribs while he grows, and then, having matured, he will not be guilty before you and will not become your annoyance and illness of the soul, and the ruin of the house, the destruction of property, and the reproach of neighbors, and the mockery of enemies., and penalties of the authorities, and an evil vexation.

Society accepted harsh norms, and many eloquent orders remained in the people's memory: "What kind of dad you are, if your child is not at all afraid of you" the devil has grown, but not quilted with a whip. " Similar traditions were strong in theological schools of the 17th century, and in the first secular schools, and in closed noble educational institutions of the first half of the 18th century - and students there were punished very harshly.

The situation changed in the 18th century. The ideas of the Enlightenment, popular in Europe, began to penetrate into the Russian Empire. It was believed that a new society can arise only when it brings up a person of a "new type" - an enlightened, humane, acting according to reason. Empress Catherine II wrote in her Manual for the Education of Grandchildren in 1784:

Usually no punishment can be useful to children, if it is not combined with shame that they have done wrong; even more so for such children, in whose souls shame for the bad is instilled from infancy, and for this it is prescribed: to reiterate the pupils and make them feel at every opportunity that those who, by diligence and zeal, fulfill what is required of them, win love and praise from all people; but for disobedience and negligence, contempt, dislike will follow, and no one will praise them.

And in 1785 the "Charter to the Nobility" was published, which forbade corporal punishment to be applied to representatives of the noble classes. In the public schools created according to the School Reform, according to the Charter of 1786, a complete ban on such types of punishment was also introduced.

At the beginning of the 19th century, a gentle approach to child education persisted. For example, in the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, created in 1811, guilty students were sent to the back desks, or deprived of their lyceum uniform for a day, or excommunicated from the class. Rarely were they put in a punishment cell for bread and water, where they conducted educational conversations with students.

Everything changed after the speech of the Decembrists on Senate Square in December 1825. It was said that the rebels grew up from the "non-turned generation", and this problem was solved by Nicholas I. The school charter of 1828, according to which children of the lower classes began to study in one-class parish schools, bourgeois and merchants in three-year schools, and nobles and officials in seven-year gymnasiums, returned the right to corporal punishment. How to punish the guilty, the trustees of the educational institutions themselves decided.

The student could be struck with a ruler, kneeled on dry peas, or struck with rods. The list of pranks followed by such punishments was extremely long. Laziness, lies, inattention in class, abuse, fights, prompts, careless writing, lack of writing materials, offenses during breaks, smoking, disrespect for teachers, refusing to wear uniforms, and even skipping services. But far from all misdemeanors, students were threatened with a rod. For minor offenses, the perpetrators received mild punishments. Corporal punishment was not applied to girls at all.

Evidence of this era has been preserved in numerous works of Russian classics. For example, the writer Nikolai Pomyalovsky admitted that he himself had been flogged at least 400 times in the seminary, and he still doubted "am I crossed or not yet cut?" And in Sketches of the Bursa, he described all possible forms of punishment:

… Drunkenness, sniffing tobacco, autocratic absences from school, fights and noise, various ridiculous games - all this was prohibited by the authorities, and all this was violated by camaraderie. The absurd fucking and Spartan punishments hardened the students, and they did not harden anyone as much as Goroblagodatsky.

Goroblagodatsky, as inveterate, often got it from the authorities; over the course of seven years he was beaten three hundred times and an infinite number of times was subjected to various other punishments of the bursa

The punishment was to such an extent not a shameful matter, devoid of meaning and full only of pain and screaming that Goroblagodatsky, who was beaten in public in the dining room, in front of five hundred people, not only did not hesitate to appear in front of his comrades after the flogging, but even boasted to them.

They put him on their knees on the sloping board of the desk, on its prominent rib, forced the wolf to bow down to two hundred in two fur coats, sentenced him to hold in his raised hand without lowering it, a heavy stone for half an hour or more (there is nothing to say, the bosses were inventive), fried he bore him with a ruler in the palm of his hand, beat him on the cheeks, sprinkled salt on his severed body (believe that these are facts) he endured everything Spartan: his face became fierce and savage after punishment, and hatred for the authorities accumulated in his soul.

It "got" not only to ordinary students, but also to the heirs of the imperial family. Nicholas I and his brother Mikhail were often beaten with rulers, a rifle ramrod and rods by the teacher Matvey Lamsdorf. Alexander II and his children were brought up more liberally: instead of physical punishment, they applied restrictions on food, leisure and meetings with parents. Perhaps that is why the emperor-liberator in 1864 issued a decree on the exemption from corporal punishment of students of secondary educational institutions.

Although in practice this practice persisted, especially in rural and parish schools. The student could be dragged by the ears or hair, hit on the fingers with a ruler, or put in a corner. And in the gymnasiums, they began to enter the misdeeds of schoolchildren in a special conduit magazine. Guiltiness was reflected in the assessment of behavior, and the most severe form of punishment was expulsion from an educational institution: either temporary excommunication, or with the right to continue education elsewhere, or "with a wolf's ticket" - without the right to continue education anywhere. Konstantin Paustovsky described such a case in the story "Distant Years":

I saw only one high school student expelled with a wolf ticket. This was when I was already in the first grade. It was said that he slapped the German teacher Yagorsky, a rude man with a green face. Yagorsky called him a fool in front of the whole class. The high school student demanded that Yagorsky apologize. Yagorsky refused. Then the schoolboy hit him. For this he was expelled with a "wolf ticket".

The next day after being expelled, the schoolboy came to the gymnasium. None of the guards dared to stop him. He opened the classroom door, took out a Browning (name of the pistol. - Ed.) From his pocket and pointed it at Yagorsky.

Yagorsky jumped up from the table and, covering himself with a magazine, ran between the desks, trying to hide behind the backs of the gymnasium students. "Coward!" - shouted the schoolboy, turned, walked out onto the landing of the stairs and shot himself in the heart.

Finally, corporal punishment was abolished after the October Revolution of 1917. The Soviet government taught parents and children to new traditions of upbringing. The propaganda slogans became popular: “Do not hit the child - this delays his development and spoils his character”, “School is a friend of children”, “Down with beating and punishing children in the family”, “Do not hit or punish the children, take them to the pioneer squad”, “Instead of scolding and beating the guys, it’s better to buy them a book”and others.