This might explain why, when Chekhov checked the schoolrooms for books in 1890, he found mostly evangelical pamphlets and a few volumes of grammar.ĭuring the 1899-1890 school year, 222 children (144 boys and 78 girls) out of a total population of 700, attended the schools at an average rate of 44 students per day. The first teachers were the local priest, Father Simeon, and Lieutenant Michael Kostevich, and the main subjects taught were the alphabet and the Word of God. Later, in 1875, the officers of the 4th Siberian battalion at Korsakov voted to establish a school “in honor of His Majesty Prince Alexei Alexandrovich” for the benefit of the children of soldiers and peasants. However, this school had to close its doors within a few year, the casualty of “numerous failures”. The first school on Sakhalin was established in 1870 for the children of the soldiers in the five Russian military posts: Douai, Ilyinsk, Naybuti, Manuyski, and Korsakov. Administrative officials, who were also newcomers to the island, in similar fashion had to build from the ground up both the penal colony and also the economic structures necessary for its survival.
The families were also frequently headed by a single parent they were, in the words of Sakhalin historian M.I Ishchenko, “indigent”. Regional metric books reveal that many of the earliest families in the area had numerous young children, most of whom were too young to perform heavy labour. The first colonists–convicts, soldiers, and voluntary settlers–who arrived in the 1860s had to clear land, fell timber, build homes, breed livestock, cultivate crops, mine coal, lay roads, and hunt for food despite a significant lack of equipment and manpower. To be fair, the fact that a system of schooling functioned at all on Sakhalin might be considered a minor miracle, regardless of its quality, considering the difficulties inherent to colonizing a region as remote from the metropole as was Sakhalin. Primary among his observations was the fact that none of the schools contained libraries. He did notice the quality of the material educational environment, however, studied the reports of the school inspector, and interviewed the prisoners who had been tasked with teaching the children. Overwhelmed by the task of administering a fledgling, underfunded exile colony, government officials had sidelined improving the island’s educational system. Since his visit occurred during the summertime, Chekhov was not able to observe schools in session. While interviewing the adult convict population for his census, Chekhov was also observing the quality of their children’s lives. His notes reflect a particular emphasis on their intellectual needs, needs that he considered were being ill met.
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