Женское епархиальное училище как образец духовного учебного заведения для девочек

Abstract

Until the middle of the XIX century there were not special educational institutions in Besarabia for teaching daughters of priests. However, even secular schools for girls were sorely lacking at that time. The purpose of this article is to review the brief history of the establishment of the women's Diocesan school in Besarabia, as well as the analysis of the positive aspects of this spiritual institution. The initiator of the establishment of the women's Diocesan school was Archbishop of Besarabia Anthony (Shokotov). It was he who, for the first time in Besarabia, attended to the creation of a special educational institution for orphans of Besarabian priests. The school itself was opened in Chisinau in 1864 and had since been continuously improved. In documents of that time, this school often appeared with the epithet "exemplary". For 50 years of the existence of the Women's Diocesan School (under the tsarist regime), more than twenty thousand girls had been studied there. All of them received the best education at that time, including the study of several foreign languages, the Law of God, Russian and Moldovan grammar, arithmetic, music, and home economics courses. Graduates were even given primary knowledge of medicine and care for newborns, since the main purpose of the Women's Diocesan School was the education of the wives for parish priests. According to the recollections of contemporaries, the school always had an exemplary order and purity. At the school a strong material base was created: a garden, a kitchen-garden, a hospital, a teacher's building, a shelter, etc. All constructions were carried out exclusively at the expense of parisiioners‟ voluntary donations. The school never used physical punishment, which could be considered atypical for that time. Over time, the Women's Diocesan School began to accept not only the daughters of priests, but also all comers. The main condition was only Orthodox faith. Upon completion of the training, each graduate was issued a certificate, on the basis of which they could become domestic teachers and having served in this rank for 20 years, they could count on a lifelong pension. This school in many aspects became a model for imitation in the organization of similar educational institutions not only in Besarabia, but in most provinces of tsarist Russia