Konstantin Ushinsky

Konstantin Dmitrievich Ushinsky ( – ) was a Russian teacher and writer, credited as the founder of scientific pedagogy in the Russian Empire.

Biography Konstantin Ushinsky was born in Tula to the family of a retired officer. Soon the family moved to Novgorod-Severskiy (present-day Novhorod-Siverskyi, Ukraine) where Konstantin's father was appointed an uezd judge. In 1844 Ushinsky graduated from the Department of Law of Moscow University. and the primer Rodnoe slovo ([Our] native language, 1864). More than 10 million of Ushinsky's books, including 187 editions of Rodnoe slovo, were printed before the October Revolution.

Ushinsky died in Odesa in 1870 and was buried in Kiev.

Works

Ushinsky's magnum opus was his theoretical work The Human As a Subject of Education: Pedagogical Anthropology in three volumes, started in 1867. In it he argued that the subject of education is a person, so it is impossible to achieve results in education without using the results of the "anthropological sciences": philosophy, political economy, history, literature, psychology, anatomy, physiology. According to Ushinsky, "Pedagogical experience without science is equivalent to witchcraft in medicine." Among his innovations was the new "Analytic-Synthetic Phonetic Method" for learning reading and writing, which is still the main method used in Russian schools.

Memorials

Educational institutions named after Konstantin Ushinsky:

South Ukrainian National Pedagogical University in Odesa, Ukraine Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University in Yaroslavl, Russia 1st Simferopol Gymnasium in Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine Novgorod-Siversky gymnasium in Novgorod-Siversky, Chernigiv, Ukraine