У статті йдеться про появу у містах Чернігівської губернії недільних шкіл на початку 60-х років ХІХ ст. Звертається увага на витоки недільної форми навчання, її
специфіку, учительський та учнівський контингенти, джерела фінансування й матеріальну базу; з'ясовуються причини згортання недільної освіти, обмежувальні кроки уряду щодо неї та значення недільних шкіл для підвищення рівня грамотності населення.
In the second half of the 19th century. Sunday schools for adults and children were a new
and productive phenomenon in the educational system of Dnieper Ukraine. Their appearance
and activity on the periphery hasn’t been studied well, that’s why it is urgent to attract materials
from different provincial and county towns in order to form a holistic view about Sunday
education, its importance for increasing the general literacy of the population. Accordinh to
this, the purpose of the study is an attempt to characterize the process of formation the Sunday
education in the towns of Chernihiv province during 1860-1862.
Based on published and archival materials, we can state the following. In the early 60’s of
the 19th century. thanks to the head of Kyiv Educational District Mykola Pyrohov, a progressiveminded
intelligentsia and following the example of Poltava and Kyiv, Sunday schools were
opened in the towns of Chernihiv province. It is difficult to find out the number and gender of
students, as we have controversial information where Sunday schools and afternoon classes
are identified in the same way: ‘for incoming students’. In 1860 Sunday schools and afternoon
classes appeared in 7 county towns (Hlukhiv, Horodnia, Krolevets, Nizhyn, Novhorod-Siverskyi,
Starodub, Surazh) and one provincial city - Chernihiv. Lessons were conducted separately for men and women who socially belonged to bourgeois and peasants. The total number of students was more then 400, most of them studied at school
in Nizhyn (140 people), the least – in Surazh (seven girls). The teaching staff was formed mainly by the teachers from local high schools, where extracurricular free training was conducted. The educational program included reading and
writing in Russian, elementary arithmetic, God’s law and church singing. Sunday schools quickly gained popularity among the ordinary people, becoming a convenient way to gain basic knowledge. However, soon the official authorities, seeing them as “centers where anti-government ideas are spread,” introduced a series of restrictive rules, and subsequently closed them on the pretext of developing new foundations for functioning in 1862.
