The foundation and development of the secondary vocational education of women in Western Ukraine (from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th centuries)

Abstract

The paper presents a complete analysis of the development of women’s secondary vocational education in Western Ukrainian lands from the end of the 19-th to the beginning of the 20-th centuries. On the basis of a thorough analysis of legislative and normative educational documents of the period under investigation, the main stages and tendencies of teachers’ training educational establishments are set out. The role of the state and private public aspects, religious organizations (first of all Roman and Greek catholic nuns’ associations of the sisters of St. Basil and Benedict) and some pedagogues in the organization of women’s secondary vocational education in Galicia, Northern Bukovina and Transcarpathia is established.
It is argued that the first and most famous state teachers’ training institutions for girls were founded by the nun’s association of the sisters of St. Benedict in 1871 in Lviv and Peremishl’ (Galicia); in Chernivtsy(1872) on the basis of the pedagogical institution for men (Northern Bukovina); by the local clergy and intelligentsia in Uzhgorod (1902) (Transcarpatia).
It is shown that the organization and content of educational procedures in the women’s vocational institutions, as well as their foundation and development, are regulated by the state, regional and land legislative and normative acts. On the territories of the Austrian and Hungarian state they were equal for all the lands of the Empire, possessed almost the same amount of subjects and school-hours for their study, with the same applying to the language of education and its domination (in Galicia – Polish, Transcarpatia – Hungarian, Bukovina – Rumania), more vivid presence of “female” subjects (women’s handicraft, household, hygiene).
It is investigated that the teachers’ training establishments for women gained great popularity among young girls. By the end of the period under studies in Galicia, in addition to the state, 24 private educational establishments of this type had been founded, but the number of Ukrainian girls, studying there was insignificant.
This paper doesn’t reveal all the aspects of the problem under analysis here. The subject of the further research may be as follows: the creative heritage of the pedagogues, connected with the problem of women’s education of the period under investigation, – both in Western Ukrainian lands and abroad; the influence of West Ukrainian pedagogical ideas on the formation of the educational priorities in Western Ukrainian women’s education and others.