DESCRIPTORS:
Education reform; Russian schools; Russian education history; 19th century model school; personality/character development; school curriculum; parental involvement; under Soviet rule; unique move to Paris; present day location on the Arbat in Moscow.

SYNOPSIS:
The story of School 59 Named for Gogol is a unique one containing the many twists and turns that one might expect over a hundred year history but few schools anywhere in the world have a history like this one. From its idealistic foundation through its unique programs and activities, and its unusual life under Soviet rule and during wartime, School 59 spread its spirit and ideals to Paris and home again where it continues its formational role in the midst of one of the busiest attractions in modern Moscow.

“And One Day Lasts Longer Than a Century[1]”

You are flowing as a river,
With a strange name,
And your transparent asphalt
Looks like water.

That’s how the poet[3] wrote about Arbat[4]. If you follow the flow of the ‘street stream’ and turn upstream into one of its tributaries – Starokonjushenny Alley, at the very end you will see an old four-storied building with an unusual architectural design. This is School No 59, named after N.V. Gogol.[5] The school building, originally a classic gymnasium[5] for boys, was erected in 1904, but the school itself was founded in 1901.

The idea of creating the most progressive school in Russia goes back to the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century, contemporary with a new educational reform, a situation that is quite typical for our distressful motherland. The reform was supposed to be executed under the leadership of a newly appointed minister of education, Nikolay P. Bogolepov, who clearly saw and formulated the main drawbacks of the secondary school of his time:

• alienation from the family and an overall bureaucratic nature;
• lack of attention to students’ personal traits and neglect of their moral education and physical training;
• undesirable specialization of the school starting from elementary grades, at the age period when natural capacities and inclinations were not yet defined;
• a heavy burden of daily intellectual work put on all students but especially on those in elementary grades;
• inconsistency between curriculum plans and the time allocated to study them, the number of side issues and unnecessary demands;
• insufficient teaching of the Russian language, Russian history and Russian literature and poor instruction of the surrounding nature, which as a result deprives a school of its vital and national character;
• inadequate intellectual maturity of the graduates, which hampers their future university success.

It sounds quite surprising but after a hundred years a modern Russian school is facing practically the same problems. The only difference is that the comprehensive educational concepts and programs are overstuffed with scholastic terminology.

In the past, the minister’s regulations became a guide for action. As always in Russia, every new reform seemed to be serious and last for a long time. In the fall of 1899, a new Moscow commission for school reform started its activities. The idea of a new gymnasium-type was born during its stormy debates. The process of the school’s creation is quite instructive and exemplary. A large donation of 450,000 rubles came from Nikolay Tsvetkov, an executor of the deceased philanthropist Alexandra Medvednikova as an example of what “the best part of the Moscow society” could do. Mr. Tsvetkov informed the Ministry of Public Education of the intention of the Ivan and Alexandra Medvednikov Foundation to donate a certain amount of money for the creation of a new type of Moscow secondary school. In accordance with the Medvednikova’s last will, Tsvetkov was trying to provide the Russian society with the school, “which would satisfy the structure of the contemporary Russian life and the requirements of reasonable pedagogy, and where the process of teaching would correspond with the students’ age, their developmental level and natural abilities”.

The creation of the building that would meet all the latest pedagogical demands cost a lot of money: the best Moscow companies provided building materials, and the work was inspected “very closely”. As a result, the immense gymnasium building was solid, cozy and beautiful. There were airy rooms full of light, spacious lobbies and halls, comfortable auditoriums with high ceilings, and a library. The building was equipped with a ventilation system, which was changing airflow three times an hour and holding permanent temperature before and after classes, thus providing an excellent air quality. There were other unique school features: specially designed furniture, hot meals, and a system of drying the students’ coats on rainy days. These features were and still are very rare in our schools.

The founders wanted to present the Russian society with the school, which “would meet secret wishes of every father and mother, correspond with the spirit of the time, the structure of the modern life and demands of the pedagogy”. By its nature, the school was a genuine experimental secondary school. The original plan was to reconstruct the whole Russian school system in accordance with this example. It was easier said than done.

Let’s look more closely at two aspects of this school life: charity and the structure.

In May 1902, the gymnasium’s founder Tsvetkov initiated the creation of the “Support Society for the Indigent Gymnasium Students in Memory of the Late A. Medvednikova”. All the students’ parents were present at the Society’s first meeting and they became its first members. Since the opening of the Society its balance reached the amount of 30,000 rubles.
Among the main founder’s demands was the provision of free education for the underprivileged students. With the royal approval, the Gymnasium Regulations allowed 30 scholarships named after the Medvednikovs spouses. Some time later four more honorary scholarships were established.

The gymnasium, as all other state educational institutions of its time, allowed free education for 10% of the best underprivileged students and for all the children whose parents were schoolteachers. At its peak, 120 students were receiving free education, which was about 30% of all students. Furthermore, the school gave away benefits of up to a thousand rubles per year to a number of students and provided forty more students with free hot breakfasts.

Having such solid financial support, the school could turn its attention to the most innovative educational plans and projects. Now we are going to describe the most interesting school innovations.

A complete school course was eleven years long, with the graduates’ age usually being nineteen. To have the chance to study in the gymnasium, future students should study in the so-called preparatory school for three years, starting from the age of seven or eight. The school board, in accordance with their own strategies, conducted the enrollment process; one of the main issues was children’s health, general sagacity and development in the sphere of the age-appropriate ideas and concepts. Later on, these children would become the gymnasium students and save their teachers a gigantic amount of time, which the latter would have spent, listening to hundreds of potential students in order to select only forty.

Classes in the preparatory school started at 9:00 AM; class duration was forty minutes, and there were no more than three or four classes each day. The children were studying reading, writing, foreign languages, and of course, The Scriptures. Classes alternated with active games, breakfast, and again classes, which would all be over by two o’clock.
After graduating from the preparatory school children would enter the gymnasium. To do this they had to pass entrance exams together with those who were home-schooled. Teaching was very individually oriented, which is clearly seen from the questionnaire prepared for the parents of potential students who were formerly home-schooled.

Here are some most typical questions:

• When did you start to teach your son[7] and what subject areas did you cover in your home schooling?
• What foreign languages was he studying at home? Were there foreign teachers at home who would speak with the boy in their language? If yes, then, from what age?
• Did he study music and from what age?
• What kind of inclinations does your son show; what does he prefer, quiet or active games, arts or intellectual activities?
• What character traits have you noticed in your son? Is he absent-minded or attentive; shy or lively?
• What interventions are most effective for your boy (persuasion, tenderness, threat, punishment)?
• Did you ever use corporal punishment?
• Does he have any special habits?
• What kind of day is most difficult for him?
• What school subjects are most complicated for him?
• What subject does he like most?
• Does he prepare home assignments independently? If not, then who helps him?

Classes in the main gymnasium started at 9:00 AM; class duration was forty minutes, and there were five to six classes each day. In comparison with preparatory classes, a day at the gymnasium also had some time specially allocated for breakfast and rest. Instead of a special hour of active games, here the students had gymnastics and singing. At three o’clock the classes were over, and the students left school for home where they prepared their homework that was obligatory starting from the first grade.

Along with intensive classes the gymnasium paid a lot of attention to developing students’ personality and character. At the initiative of the school principal, Vasily Nedachin, the teachers’ council favored the development of research interests in the students, of creating clubs for continuing education, of organizing students’ readings and preparing short research projects under the supervision of different teachers. This independent research work was certainly directed by the teachers who would prompt topics or recommend articles and monographs. Many students had a habit of also visiting the school in the evening: some attended optional classes at that time, some played at the school playground which was transformed into either a skating-rink in winter, or into a sports-ground in summer. The building itself had special halls to keep the students safe from bad weather.

Parents played a serious role in their children’s education, especially in their moral formation. Parents were welcome during entrance exams, they were invited to meet with teachers, and the tradition of having joint teacher-parent meetings became widely accepted.

Punishments existed but they were more of a psychological nature. Cheating would be punished by temporary distrust; rudeness to the teacher would result in his unkind behavior in return; bullying would bring enforced silence on its initiators; an inability to sit properly would lead to standing during the class; students who misbehaved would be ejected from a certain class. More serious misbehavior would result in losing the right to attend all classes for a certain time period or even being dismissed from school.

When talking about this gymnasium, it’s not enough to just characterize its unique teaching process and life>[8] the gymnasium managed to preserve itself for some time but it was split eventually into two parts, one – for the children of the noble families, the other – for the working class children. In the 1920s the school was known as Experimental School No 9 of the Moscow Department of Public Education. Following the spirit of the time, in the 30s the school was transformed into the so-called factory-industrial seven-year school, and during the Second World War the school building was used for the training of nurses. Then it was again transformed into School No 59. In 1952, the students won in a national contest of creative works devoted to the 100th anniversary of Nikolay Gogol; a monument of the writer was presented to the school and since that time it is one of the decorations of its main lobby; and by the order of “the great satirist” Stalin the school was honored to bear the name of Gogol, another great satirist.

The reality and the fate of the gymnasium have somehow split into two different parts. The building remained in the same quiet Arbat alley. But the school principal, together with some teachers, moved to another, quiet street in… Paris. As usual, the school worked perfectly well and remained the best Russian school abroad. A former gymnasium principal, Vasily P. Nedachin, managed to bring together his best teachers and to attract a number of former professors from the Moscow State University. All together it allowed the rebirth of the most amazing gymnasium traditions.

It’s no wonder that this school managed to preserve itself longer than any other Russian school abroad, though the last pages of its history are quite painful to read. By the beginning of the 1950s the school had no more than 50 students and its financial status decreased tremendously. Then the Gymnasium Council signed an agreement with a neighboring private French school which could not accommodate all the students in its own building. So the French school would partially cover the cost of the building maintenance and teachers’ salaries, except for the so-called “Russian component”. The number of students was increased but half of them were now French; they were taught together with the Russian students but they never really showed any interest towards Russian culture, quite on the contrary… In 1961, the Russian gymnasium in Paris was closed, and the building was granted to the Charity that helped senior Russian immigrants.

But regardless of how its life has changed, this unique school still exists and keeps the spirit of its founders and donors in Moscow. On October 2, 2001 it celebrated its 100th anniversary. October 2nd is a special day when teachers and students get together to celebrate the school’s birthday. Fifth graders, after successfully fulfilling a number of contests, are proclaimed “school students”; the questions they have to answer are mostly about the history of the gymnasium. As for the first graders, their day at school starts with listening to the story about the school founders in the main lobby. This is their firstday at a century old school.

COMMENTARY:

This article generated a lot of questions in our minds. Here are some of them:

Did the politics and economic status of the student’s parents play a major role in their selection for the Gogol School? Were the schools in Moscow the bst in the country when the school was founded? If so, why?

In modern Russia are there elite, progressive schools the admit students for political reasons, not economic reasons? At times, in America, some students are admitted to elite schools because of their race or gender.

Today, what are the requirements for entrance to private schools in Moscow? Are these students who are admitted more likely to be successful than others? In New York City today, two of the major requirements to enter excellent private schools besides academic competence, are high family income and, at times, race and gender.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, were there any major changes in the educational requirements of teachers? For example, were political beliefs or economic backgrounds important to secure a teaching position in the Gogol School? The above standards have never been directly present in American schools.

For the past 150 years in the United States, the federal government’s policy towards the American Indians has been one of neglect. It is very rare in America to hear of superior, academic achievement by an American Indian. When the federal government of Russia controls the school system, does this policy translate into low funding, unprepared teachers and low student performance?

Michael Beirne, BS, New York University;
Dolores Beirne, BA, Business Education, Hunter College, CUNY; MS, Special Education, Queens College, CUNY; retired teacher of 30 years with the New York City Department of Education.