The System of Public Education in Terek Oblast in the Period 1860–1917. Part 1

This work examines the system of public education in Terek Oblast in the period 1860-1917. The present part covers the period 1860-1900. The key source used in putting this work together is the annual Reports on Educational Institutions in the Caucasus Educational District, which provide data on the region's schools run by the Ministry of Public Education. This source is characterized by incompleteness, which may be attributed to the fact that around that time the effort of collecting data on the system of public education in Terek Oblast in particular and across the Russian Empire as a whole was just starting out. Methodologically, wide use was made of the statistical method to identify a set of distinctive characteristics of the development of the system of public education in Terek Oblast in the period 1860-1900. To achieve the study's objectives, use was also made of general research methods such as analysis and synthesis, concretization, and summarization. Of special mention is the use in this study of the historical-situational method. The authors' conclusion is that during the period 1860-1900, the development of the system of public education in Terek Oblast was based on the region's distinctive characteristics. At that time, the region witnessed the making of its systems of secondary, lower, and primary education. Due to the small size of the Russian population in the region at the time, it was not possible to create there quickly a large network of educational institutions, so the region's system of public education was predominantly serving the needs of its Orthodox Christian residents. Another distinctive characteristic of the system of public education in Terek Oblast in the period under review was the large number of schools under the Ecclesiastical Department and the large number of children attending them.