Historical overview and current approaches to the problem of spiritual and moral education of children in Sunday schools

The article discusses the activities of Sunday schools in the pre-revolutionary period and modern Russia. Draws attention to the moral significance of Sunday schools, which gave an opportunity to communicate a variety of segments of the population, is the link between the intelligentsia and the illiterate people. Analyze their causes in the nineteenth century and the process of revival at Orthodox parishes in the post-Soviet period. Celebrated the diversity of disciplines and forms of recreation. Reveals the basic directions of educational activities in the modern Sunday schools: catechetical; main goal - education in the faith, which includes training and evangelical Christian doctrine of morality; cultural and educational, under which integrates educational work, aesthetic, artistic, spiritual and moral development; social, which is intended to promote the cultivation of Christian qualities in the students (charity, sacrifice, patience, and others); military and sports - promotes moral standing and physical development; leisure (organization of leisure believers, accompanied by participation in the liturgical life of the Church and teaching the basics of Orthodoxy); pilgrimage, which involves travel most revered spiritual monuments of Orthodoxy. Emphasizes the special role of Sunday schools in the spiritual and moral education of children and the development of national culture.