Prerequisites for updating pedagogical education of parents of preschoolers in Russia in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries

Abstract

The article analyzes the prerequisites for the actualization of pedagogical education of parents of preschool children in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author proceeds from the assumption that this process cannot be explained only by the emergence of kindergartens or by the development of individual pedagogical ideas. It is shown that its formation was determined by a complex of social, cultural, institutional, medical-hygienic, and specifically pedagogical factors. The most important prerequisites include the reforms of the 1860s, the expansion of public participation in education, the development of women’s education, the formation of preschool institutions and pedagogical periodicals, the activity of public pedagogical associations, as well as the growing scientific interest in childhood, health, and family upbringing. Particular attention is paid to the way in which the family gradually came to be regarded not only as a natural environment for child development, but also as an object of pedagogical support and educational influence. It is concluded that by the beginning of the twentieth century parental education had become an independent direction of Russian pedagogical thought.