"Education through dialogue": the story of Leningrad's first private school

The article deals with the history of the first public school in Leningrad. The history of the school is considered as an example to reveal the essence of the phenomenon of private education itself, its emergence in the last years of the USSR. Founded in 1988, the School of Externs was at the epicentre of a new educational practice, namely, the provision of education on a fee-paying basis with the possibility of receiving a general secondary education, that is, completing the curriculum at a pace chosen, acceptable to each pupil. The «Dialogue» form of education also made this possible. The peculiarities and some aspects of the organisation of this form are described in the article. The emergence of the school was facilitated by the socio-cultural situation in the city in the late 1980s, which manifested itself in various events: cultural, political, and economic. Some of the events are presented in the article. The prehistory of the establishment of the public school, its first stages of organization, and the «three freedoms» in teaching are examined. The recollections of eyewitnesses of those events are given in the article. The school was in a state of continuous development, developing new educational products, improving its methods (the «Teach to Learn» course, the «Pilots of the Mind» seminar). The whole chronological sequence of events is presented: from the biography of the school director V.I. Andreev to the introduction of the Mind Pilots workshop on a permanent basis.