HISTORY OF EDUCATION

Until the late eighteenth century education made virtually no progress in the country. Although schools did exist during the period of Turkish rule, the Turks had no interest in furthering education among their subjects, except insofar as it would benefit themselves. From the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries education remained at a standstill. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Turks allowed the Greek Orthodox Church to become predominant among Christians in the area, and an intense hellenization campaign ensued with the seeming purpose of assimilating the Bulgarians as a people into the Greek society that surrounded them. The campaign, which was particularly virulent in the 1750s, was successful in the schools, and the Bulgarian language and customs were supplanted by those of the Greek.

By the late eighteenth century, however, a national revival grew in force, stimulated in large part by Father Paisi, a monk who wrote the first Bulgarian history, The Slav-Bulgarian History. This work and Father Paisi's teachings provided an incentive for the development of education in the country. From 1762 until liberation from Turkish rule in 1878, education made great strides. As the churches began to throw off the domination of the Greek Orthodox Church, more church schools staffed by monks and priests were established within the Bulgarian Orthodox Church framework.

Although the Greek educational system still predominated in the early part of the nineteenth century, complemented by a rising move toward the establishment of Bulgarian Orthodox Church schools, a movement toward secular education was initiated at this time. Secular subjects were introduced in the church schools, and communal schools were established. By 1834 the first primer in Bulgarian was written, based on a western European model, which established the basis for secondary education. In 1835 a wealthy merchant founded the first Bulgarian high school, and within the next ten years some fifty schools had been established.

At the time of liberation, however, over 90 percent of the population over school age was still illiterate. Only a small proportion—some 30 percent—of school-age children, those from seven to fourteen years of age, were actually attending schools. After the Turnovo Constitution (1879), however, which was enacted shortly after liberation, the educational system was revitalized (see ch. 8). Elementary education was made both free and compulsory. The state, the monarchy, and private individuals contributed to the goal of making education as nearly universal as possible.

In 1879 the three-year compulsory elementary school was introduced. By 1880 the period of compulsory education had been extended to four years. In 1888 the University of Sofia was founded. The university initially had seven faculties: history and philosophy; physics and mathematics; law; medicine; agronomy; theology; and veterinary medicine.

In 1910 the school system, which covered a twelve-year period, consisted of a four-year elementary school for children aged seven to eleven, a three-year progymnasium for children from eleven to fourteen, and a five-year gymnasium for children from fourteen to eighteen. This system continued with only slight modification until the Communists took over in 1944. Also by 1910 both professional and vocational schools had been established providing a relatively high quality of education in such fields as agriculture, engineering, theology, commerce, art, and music. Although there were many students of higher education at the University of Sofia, about 10,000 students annually attended foreign universities, principally in Austria and Germany.

By the end of World War I, many villages that had more than twenty families had their own primary school. Larger settlements in more urban areas often had their own progymnasia and gymnasiums. In towns that had 20,000 or more citizens, there were kindergartens for children from three to seven years of age. Both religious and linguistic minorities had their own schools, which functioned within the public school system. Foreign schools coexisted with the public school system. Although the curricula of the foreign schools were similar to those of the public secondary schools, subjects were taught in western European languages, forming a link between Bulgaria and the West.

By 1921 a three-tiered system of education—consisting of the four-year elementary school, the three-year progymnasium, and the five-year gymnasium—became officially compulsory in the first two stages. Many children failed to attend school, however, and many villages, despite the official policy, were without school facilities. The entire educational system was controlled by the government through the Ministry of Public Education, which regulated the contents of texts and courses and the administration of exams. The model for the educational system was essentially European, with a particularly strong emphasis on German and Russian patterns.

In 1921 the Law of Public Instruction brought an increase in emphasis on vocational training. Orders were issued to bring about a transition to "vocational education and respect for labor." Eventually, schoolchildren were forced to spend two weeks of their studies in "compulsory labor," a concept that was the precursor of the Bulgarian communist philosophy of the integration of work with education. During this period the students worked in such projects as cleaning school facilities, binding texts, and cultivating school gardens.