Date: 1911-01-18
Source: ru:PSS/v24

The All‑Russia School Census of January 18, 1911, while the data were processed in an exceedingly haphazard manner, nonetheless offers a faint glimpse behind the veil of official secrecy.

For now, data are available only for the St. Petersburg Educational District—broken down separately by urban centers and rural settlements. Let us examine, on the basis of these data, what our parish schools truly amount to.

In the cities, there were 329 municipal single‑class schools, 139 private schools of the third category, and 177 parish single‑class schools. Let us compare the average salaries of female teachers (the number of male teachers is quite small): in municipal schools, teachers earned 924 rubles per year; in private schools, 609 rubles; and in parish schools, 302 rubles.

Meagerly paid, hungry teachers—this is what our parish schools have come to represent.

Let us look at the proportion of students who have received higher or secondary secular general education: in municipal schools, it stands at 76 percent; in private schools, 67 percent; but in parish schools, it is a mere 18 percent!

Uneducated teachers—though we have not yet considered the role of religious instructors—are the true hallmark of our parish schools.

In the countryside, we find 3,545 zemstvo single‑class schools and 2,506 parish single‑class schools. In the former, the average salary of female teachers is 374 rubles per year; in the latter, it is 301 rubles.

In the former, the percentage of educated teachers (those who teach in general) is 20 percent; in the latter, it is just 2.5 percent—again, excluding religious instructors.

These figures clearly reveal just how deplorable the situation of parish schools has become!

The census also collected data on the average amount of floor space and cubic air volume allocated per student—that is, on the degree of overcrowding in our schools.

In zemstvo schools, there are 2.6 square arshins of floor space and 10.1 cubic arshins of air per student; in parish schools, the figures are 2.4 square arshins of floor space and 9.6 cubic arshins of air per student.

The floor area should be six times greater than the window’s light‑gathering surface. In reality, however, it is nine times larger—meaning that our schools are not only cramped but also dimly lit.

Of course, these data are extremely sparse. The Ministry did everything in its power to ensure that detailed, precise, and comprehensive information about the abject conditions of our schools would never be gathered.

And yet, even from these incomplete, officially curtailed, and poorly processed data, the wretched, impoverished state of parish schools becomes strikingly apparent.

One of the most pressing tasks facing representatives of cultural, educational, and professional workers’ organizations at the upcoming All‑Russia Congress on Popular Education is to raise the question of our schools—and the schoolteacher—in all their dimensions and to illuminate this issue from every possible angle.

“Proletarskaya Pravda,” No. 10, December 18, 1913.

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “Proletarskaya Pravda.”

Table “People’s Schools in the St. Petersburg Educational District (January 18, 1911),” compiled by V. I. Lenin—late 1913.