A Coincidence — or Lessons Not Learned?
There are strange coincidences in Russian history—here is one of them.
On June 14, 1887, Minister of Education Ivan Delyanov signed the circular “On the Reduction of Gymnasium Education,” which went down in history as the circular about the “cook’s children.” It was not only about the statement that:
“Gymnasiums and progymnasiums should be relieved of admitting the children of coachmen, footmen, cooks, laundresses, small shopkeepers, and similar people; children who, except perhaps for those gifted with exceptional talents, should not aspire at all to secondary or higher education.”
It concerned an entire system of measures that restricted access to education for the lower social classes.
Alexander III
“would consider it preferable to achieve the goal of preventing an influx into gymnasiums and progymnasiums of children whose home circumstances do not correspond to secondary education.”
As a result, tuition fees were increased—first to 50 rubles and then to 60. Preparatory classes, which had allowed children from poor families to enter gymnasiums, were abolished. Some gymnasiums were converted into technical and industrial schools. As a consequence, the total number of students in classical gymnasiums fell by 16%. Access to education increasingly became a privilege for those who already had money and could provide their children with a good education at home.
Behind all this stood the philosophy of Alexander III and Pobedonostsev: society needed to be “cooled down,” and the transformation of lower-class children into students and intellectuals had to be limited—the very social environment from which, in their view, revolutionaries emerged. They believed that the fewer educated people there were, the fewer free thinkers and people asking uncomfortable questions there would be, and the more stable the state would become.
The state was deliberately turning education from a vehicle of social mobility into a privilege.