Socio-cultural themes of high-school writings at the turn of 19-20th centuries

The article analyzes the features of the school essays at the late 19th - early 20th century, recorded in the well-known collections of essays and manuals of this period. Despite the fact that the essay at the turn of the centuries functioned exclusively as a form of work in the Russian language and literature, it used, in addition to literary material, a wide socio-cultural problematic. A significant number of socio-cultural orientation topics continued in the high school, when the grammar course finished and close study of the Russian classics began. This situation was determined to a certain extent by the fact that the General goals of studying literature at school were associated primarily with mastering the stylistic and grammatical norms of the Russian language, rather than the depths of literary analysis, as it developed later in the 20th century. In the process of methodical works analysis and thematic classification of works the author comes to the conclusion that the historical and literary theme of the essays was not dominant in the subject "Russian language and literature" in this historical segment. In the model of the Russian school, including the senior classes of the gymnasium, there was a wide range of socio-cultural themes of essays related to the student's cultural and social experience. Along with historical and literary themes, the content of school essays at the turn of the 19-20th centuries was closely connected with sociological, historical, cultural problems, which occupy a key place in the public discourse of this historical period.