Kosinovа O. A. The Problem of Educational Administration in Multicultural Environment of the Russian Far East in Early 20th Century Sources

The article was written within the framework of the project "Intercultural Interaction in the Educational Sphere of the Russian Diaspora in China at the End of 19th - First Half of the 20th Century: The Source Studies Aspect" (grant from Russian Foundation for the Humanities, No. 13-06-00193).

(Moscow University for the Humanities)

Abstract ♦ The article takes a look at the issue of pedagogic interaction in multi-ethnic and multicultural educational sphere, which is a topical problem for the modern Russian society.

The study is devoted to the period of 1917–1918 in the history of Russian education. A plethora of documents survives from this eventful time, but they have been little studied by historians of pedagogy. We have for the first time looked at some historical and pedagogical sources for the Russian Far East, including the territory around the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER).

The multiethnic nature of this region was one of the factors explaining the diversity of the population’s cultural and educational needs. The Priamurye region and the Chinese Eastern Railway formed separate school districts, each with its own specific traditions of administering the local education systems. Therefore, the movement for the democratization of national education, which started in both regions in these years, had different consequences.

The Main Department for civil educational institutions at the Priamursky Office of the Governor General paid little attention to the educational demands of the region’s various ethnic and sub-ethnic groups. This factor, together with the weakness of the local zemstvo and the substitution of pedagogical problems with the ones of political struggle explains why supporters of democratization of national education in Priamurye missed the opportunities to reform the administration of ethnic schools, even though this issue had been thoroughly researched at the Institute of the East in Vladivostok.

By contrast, the CER administration used the experience of cooperating with the educational authorities of the local ethnic communities and boosted the practice of teaching Chinese children in Russian schools. This attention to cultural diversity was a natural consequence of CER’s educational policy, of the multicultural nature of the local educational sphere, and of the Russian teachers’ aspirations to establish intercultural communication with the Chinese.

Bringing a number of yet unresearched sources into the study allows us to reconstruct the range of problems in educational administration during the abovementioned period. The sources confirm that the efficiency of managing the educational in multiethnic Russia was directly connected with the degree of attention paid to the ethnic, sub-cultural and other specific features region. This conclusion is crucial for understanding the current problems of education in Russia.

Keywords: educational administration, polyethnicity, intercultural communication, historical and pedagogical source.

Kosinova Oksana Anatolievna, Doctor of Pedagogy, Associate professor, Professor of the Department of Pedagogy and Psychology of the Higher School, Moscow University for the Humanities. Postal address: B. 6, 5 Yunosti St., Moscow, Russian Federation, 111395. Tel.: +7 (499) 374-74-59. E-mail: kosinova1967@rambler.ru

Citation: Kosinovа, O. A. (2014) Problema upravleniia obrazovaniem v polikul'turnom prostranstve [The Problem of Educational Administration in Multicultural Environment of the Russian Far East in Early 20th Century Sources]. Znanie. Ponimanie. Umenie, no. 3, pp. 207–213. (In Russ.).

Submission date: 30.05.2014.

RUSSIAN VERSION

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