Konstantin Ushinskiy

Konstantin Dmitrievich Ushinsky was a Russian educator and the founder of scientific pedagogy in Russia.

He was born on February 19 (March 3), 1823, in Tula, into the family of Dmitry Grigoryevich Ushinsky, a retired officer and veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, and a minor landowner. Konstantin Dmitrievich’s mother, Lyubov Stepanovna (née Kapnist), died when her son was 12 years old.

After Konstantin Dmitrievich’s father was appointed judge in the small district town of Novgorod-Seversky in Chernigov Governorate, the Ushinsky family moved there. K. D. Ushinsky’s entire childhood and adolescence were spent in a small estate acquired by his father, located four versts from Novgorod-Seversky on the bank of the Desna River. At the age of 11, Konstantin Ushinsky entered the third class of the Novgorod-Seversky gymnasium, which he graduated from in 1840.

After finishing gymnasium, he entered the law faculty of Moscow University, where he attended lectures by such prominent teachers as Professor of History Timofei Nikolayevich Granovsky and Professor of the Philosophy of State and Law Pyotr Grigoryevich Redkin.

After completing the university course in 1844 as a candidate of jurisprudence, Ushinsky was retained at Moscow University to prepare for a professorial career. In addition to philosophy and jurisprudence, the young Ushinsky was interested in literature and theater, as well as all the issues that concerned representatives of the progressive circles of Russian society of that time, in particular ways of spreading literacy and education among the common people.

In 1846 he was appointed acting professor of cameral sciences at the chair of encyclopedics of jurisprudence, state law, and financial science at the Demidov Lyceum in Yaroslavl. From March to May 1848 he edited the unofficial section of the newspaper Yaroslavl Provincial News. Ushinsky lived on Streletskaya Street (now Ushinsky Street), in one of the wings of the Vakhromeev estate. The liberal views of the young professor, his deep erudition,