THE STATE OF RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN THE POST-REFORM PERIOD IN RUSSIA

Borisov Boris Yurievich, Kozlova Alyona Mikhailovna, Shpak Alexey Pavlovich

This article is a historical and pedagogical study of the problems of the state of religious and moral education in the post-reform period in Russia. From the Soviet period to the present, there is a widespread and incorrect idea that the religious and moral education of students reigned supreme in the public education of pre-revolutionary Russia, which, in the person of the clergy and law teachers, was an obstacle to both the spread of education in general and the development of a "progressive" zemstvo school based on secular principles, in particular. Turning to the sources of the period in question allows us to fundamentally revise the widely established view. Upon closer examination, it turns out that even earlier the abolition of serfdom, and even more so after it, the clergy was one of the most proactive classes in opening schools for peasant children. But gradually, and most importantly systematically, it began to be removed from active participation in the life of the school, the new managers of which, at best, took care of teaching the Law of God and religious and moral education of students. Although these foundations of the public school were spelled out in all regulatory documents regulating public education. As is traditionally the case in Russia, the intervention of the supreme power was required to correct this situation, by, in fact, restoring parish schools, which found support in wide popular strata.

Keywords:spiritual and moral education, parish schools, public education, zemstvos, the Holy Synod, the clergy, the Law of God, the law teacher