Subject-matter and object of study of the history of pedagogy

The subject-matter of the history of pedagogy should be understood not as just emerging, functioning and evolving in time and space pedagogical reality, but a pedagogical reality in the system of generated by it and generating it contexts of social life, that is material and spiritual, economic, social, political and cultural reality. This being the case, pedagogical activity itself (and, accordingly, pedagogical reality generated by it) turns out to be the result and the means of understanding and solving contradictions between the needs of society, its institutions, groups and certain people experienced by an individual who has a specific set of qualities and character traits and faces the impossibility to secure their more or less guaranteed development by means of spontaneous (natural, unmanageable) socialization. This understanding of the subject-matter of the history of pedagogy implies that its object of study is the historically evolving sphere (spheres) of social life, which determines (determine) the context of historically evolving pedagogical activity and pedagogical reality, and, also, people’s whole way of life, combining the aggregate process of their mental fixation, understanding and building up the picture of life. The specificity of the correlation of the subject-matter and the object of study of the history of pedagogy (in the interpretation given above) lies in the fact that in historico-pedagogical studies the border-line between the concrete subject- matter and the object of study related to it is very often very vague and not strictly defined).