The Image of an Ideal History Teacher from the Recollections about the Russian School in the 1840s and 1850s

Abstract

This article discusses the teaching methods that shaped the Russian school in the 19th century. The image of an “ideal teacher” is analyzed based on the recollections of historians of that period. The dynamics of its features is explored on a historical time scale. The factors that forced its transformation and evolution are considered. The sources used include memoirs written between the 1860s and 1870s, as well as those published at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. The first group of memoirs is characterized by the juxtaposition of the “old” and “new” history teachers who differed in their preferred “teaching methods”, moral beliefs, and attitudes to teaching. In the second group of memoirs, the trend to a negative view of the “old” teachers and the effectiveness of their methods is rejected, while the “young” teachers are criticized. The obtained results show that an “ideal history teacher” was endowed by the memoirists of the 1840s and 1850s with such new personal and professional qualities as: humanity, morality, “expertise” (a high level of scientific knowledge), as well as a sincere desire to awake students’ interest in what they are being taught and to help them become self-reliant in their reasoning.