The full existence and development of any state is based primarily on education. Already at the beginning of the 19th century, the young Russian autocrat Alexander I understood the importance of reforms in education. The Tsar supported the project of creating the Imperial Lyceum, proposed by the press secretary of the Senate, MM. Speransky.
Instructions
Step 1
Alexander I connected the ideas of transforming Russia with educated people capable of benefiting society and the state. Under him, schools, grammar schools and universities were opened. But the initially revised education system did not bring significant results. The nobility did not take into account the new opportunities for obtaining education: science, unlike military service, was not held in high esteem; mistrust of teachers and joint education with representatives of different estates, poor educational institutions did not suit the nobility. As before, the preference in this environment was given to home education.
Step 2
The famous statesman Mikhail Speransky, the main engine of the reforms of that time, is the author of the project of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Here it was conceived to raise a young generation capable of benefiting the Russian state transformed by reforms. The upbringing in the new school was supposed to differ from the previously established one: the tasks of the Lyceum are to give the broadest knowledge, teach to think in a new way, foster love for the Motherland and the desire to work for the benefit of its prosperity. The lyceum was intended to prepare future statesmen, and the education in it corresponded to the university one.
Step 3
On October 19, 1811, the grand opening of the Imperial Lyceum took place. The serving nobles happily placed the children in a new school, although at first it was planned to teach representatives of children of the most famous Russian families in the Tsarskoye Selo Imperial Institution. Of the thirty-eight applicants, thirty of those who passed the preliminary test and, according to the Charter, having excellent behavior and good health of children, were enrolled in the number of lyceum students. At the opening of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, it was supposed to recruit from twenty to fifty boys aged 10-12 years. The number of pupils in the subsequent years of the existence of the Lyceum directly depended on the state of the treasury, since the boys were trained at the expense of the state. The Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum is an educational institution created with the main goal: the primordial Russian upbringing of the true "sons of the Fatherland". According to the recollections of one of them, Ivan Pushchin (the future Decembrist, friend of AS Pushkin), none of the admitted lyceum students imagined themselves as “future pillars of the Fatherland”.
Step 4
After another Russian Emperor Nicholas I visited the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum in 1829, the educational institution underwent changes: it was supposed to prepare pupils selected from among the best at the St. Petersburg University Noble Boarding School, exclusively for civil service. Due to the lack of funds in the state treasury, the number of students at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum was insufficient: only twenty-five people were graduated to serve the state after three years. Therefore, according to the Regulations of 1932, the same number of students at the expense of their parents was added to the fifty lyceum students studying at public expense. Younger pupils of the Lyceum, who found themselves within the walls of the educational institution immediately from their families, became the reason for the change in the habits and foundations of the Lyceum life that had taken root in it.
Step 5
A very important change took place in 1843, when the Lyceum changed its place of residence and name: at the behest of Emperor Nicholas I, it was transferred to St. Petersburg, settled in the building of the Alexandria Orphanage and received the name of the Imperial Alexander Lyceum.
Step 6
Over the years of its existence, the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum has honorably justified the goals and hopes originally assigned to it. From its walls came people who have worked hard for the good of Russia and are the honor and glory of our Motherland. Suffice it to recall the names of the first graduates of the Lyceum, among whom the star of the great Pushkin shines.