The System of Public Education in Penza Governorate in the second half of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Part 3

This set of articles explores the development of the system of education in Penza Governorate, a region in the Russian Empire, in the second half of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries (through to 1917). The present paper is the third part of the series. It examines the timeframe from 1895 to 1915. In putting this work together, use was primarily made of relevant documents from the Russian State Historical Archive (Saint Petersburg, Russia), memorandum books, reference books, and the journals of the Ministry of Public Education Narodnoe Obrazovanie and Obrazovanie. The following historical research methods were employed: historical-comparative, historical-typological, historical-systematic, historical-genetic, and historical-statistical. The general research methods employed in this study were analysis of the literature and sources, systems analysis, and mathematical methods. A key conclusion drawn from this study was that the period under review witnessed a steady rise in the number of educational institutions in the region. This especially was the case with its lower and primary educational institutions. Vis-à-vis the early 1870s, the region’s student body grew nearly 10 times, with the largest increase accounted for by its rural residents and the population of its capital, Penza. Most of the region’s secondary and lower educational institutions had a pronounced agrarian and technical orientation, while its primary education sector was dominated by parochial schools. By the end of the first decade of the 20^th century, the region began to follow a national trend and witnessed an increase in the number of female students, which especially was the case in cities (a boy to girl student ratio of 1.39:1), as girls tended to attend a trade (vocational) school with a view to being later employed in the field of processing agricultural and livestock farming output. The region’s rural residents followed traditional (patriarchal) values, with literacy and education not generally considered important for rural women, which explains the boy to girl student ratio of 3.4:1 in the region’s countryside at the time.