Lancasterian schools

Lancasterian schools [лянкастерські школи; liankasterski shkoly]. Inexpensive elementary schools in which older and better students lead the school activities in groups under the teacher’s supervision. The Lancasterian school system was brought to Ukraine from France by Gen N. Raevsky and the Decembrist (see Decembrist movement) M. Orlov, who reformed the system and in 1818 founded a large military school for orphans in Kyiv. Other Lancasterian schools in Ukraine were established in Horodyshche (Cherkasy region), through the initiative of Count Mikhail Vorontsov, in the village of Babai, near Kharkiv (1832), and in many other locations. The Lancasterian school system failed to establish itself in Ukraine and soon disappeared.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]