Konstantin Ushinsky

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Konstantin Ushinsky

Konstantin Dmitrievich Ushinsky (Russian: Константин Дмитриевич Ушинский; 2 March [O.S. 19 February] 1824-3 January 1871 [O.S. 22 December]) was a Russian teacher and writer, credited to be the founder of the scientific pedagogy in Russia ^[1] ^[2].

1 Biography
2 Works
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Konstantin Ushinsky was born in Tula to a family of a retired Lieutenant Colonel D.K. Ushinsky ^[3]. Soon Ushinskys moved to Novgorod Seversky (modern Ukraine) there his father was appointed an uyezd judge ^[4]. In 1840 Ushinsky entered and in 1844 graduated from the Department of Law of Moscow University ^[1]^[4]. In 1846-1849 he was a Professor of Demidov Lyceum in Yaroslavl but was forced to leave the position because of his liberal views ^[2]^[4].

Unemployed Ushinsky earned money by literary work for magazines Sovremennik and Biblioteka dlya Chteniya. After 1 year and a half Ushinsky managed to get a position of a small bureaucrat (stolonachalnik) in the Department for Foreign Religions. Ushinsky referred to his job at the time as the most boring position possible^[4].

In 1854 Ushinsky became a teacher of Russian Literature and Law at the Gatchina Orphanage (Gatchinsky Sitrotsky Institut). In 1855-1859 he became the Inspector at the same institution^[1]. There was a lucky incident during Ushinsky's inspectorship: once he discovered at his institution two sealed off bookcases untouched for more than twenty years. The bookcases kept the library of a Pestalozzi's pupil E. Hugel. This discovery strongly influenced Ushinsky's interest int theoretical pedagogy^[4].

In 1859-1862 Ushinsky is the Inspector of the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens in Saint-Petersburg, In 1860-1862 he also worked as the Chief Editor of the magazine Journal of Department of Education (Zhurnal Ministerstava Narodnogo Obrazovanija) ^[2]. After the conflict with the Department of Education Ushinsky was forced to go abroad to study school organizations in Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium and Italy (1862-1867). The position was precepted by many as a honorary exile^[4].

At the end of his life Ushinsky mostly acted as a writer and publicist. Together with Pirogov he may be considered as an author of the Great liberal reforms of 1860s. Emancipated peasants needed schools, the schools needed teachers and textbooks. Ushinsky spent a lot of efforts arguing the best way to organize Teachers Seminaries. He also wrote children's text books for leaning reading Kid's world (Detskij mir) and Native Word (Rodnoye Slovo) ^[5]. More than 10 mln of Ushinsky's books including 187 editions of his textbook Native Word were printed before the October Revolution ^[4].

Ushinsky died in Odessa in 1870 and was incurred on Kiev^[2].

[edit] Works

The Magna Opus of Ushinsky was his theoretical work Human as a subject of education: Pedagogical Anthropology in three volumes started in 1867 ^[4]. According to Ushinsky the subject of education is human so it is impossible to achieve results in education without using the results of "anthropological sciences": philosophy, political economy, history, literature, psychology, anatomy, physiology^[2]. According to Ushinsky "Pedagogical experience without science is an equivalent to witchcraft in medicine" ^[4]. Among Ushinsky's breaks through was the new "Analytic-Synthetic Phonetic Method" for learning reading and writing. The approach is still the main method used in Russian schools ^[2].