The Development of Vocational-Technical Education in the Ukrainian Governorates of the Russian Empire in the Late 18th and Early 20th Centuries. Part 1.

Abstract

This paper addresses the evolution of vocational-technical education in Ukrainian lands within the Russian Empire. Chronologically, the study covers the period between the late 18th and early 20th centuries. This part of the work is primarily focused on the making and development of particular vocational-technical institutions in the region under examination as well as the specialized and vocational-technical education offered by regular educational institutions in the period between the late 18th and the last quarter of the 19th centuries. During that period, Ukraine was mainly an agrarian region, so relatively little attention was paid there back then to the training of industrial workers. At the same time, the region witnessed brisk development in its shipbuilding and seaborne trade sectors, which would result in the emergence of the region’s first vocational educational institutions – Naval Architecture School and Merchant Shipping School in the city of Kherson. In the first half of the 19th century, the city of Chernigov became home to a trade school and industrial arts instruction began to be implemented in educational institutions of different types in the region. In addition, there emerged schools of horticulture, winemaking, arable farming, apiculture, etc. Despite a number of reforms in the education system, the region still had no system of vocational-technical training in place in the mid-1860s. Of particular note is the role of the Russian Technical Society, which was one of the key initiators of the organization of vocational-technical education in the Russian Empire as a whole and in the Ukrainian lands in particular. However, there were fewer vocational-technical educational institutions in Ukrainian governorates back then than in industrially developed Russian governorates.