Presidential Library to School

October 5 is Teacher's Day. In the Soviet Union, Teacher's Day has been celebrated since 1965, when it fell on the first Sunday in October. In 1994, UNESCO declared International Teachers' Day on October 5, and in Russia the professional holiday began to be celebrated on this day.

Russian teacher Mikhail Demkov writes about the great value of knowledge in his book “The History of Russian Pedagogy” (1915). He quotes from a monument of ancient Russian literature, “The Teachings of Prince Vladimir Monomakh to Children”: “... having learned all the good things, one must remember: what you don’t know, you must learn”.

In 2023, declared the Year of Teachers and Mentors in Russia, the Presidential Library, together with its strategic partners, in particular, the Academy of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, successfully implemented a number of educational projects. Of great importance is the development of unified history textbooks, from which high school students began to study the history of Russia and world history in the new academic year. The Presidential Library became the only library which resources were included in educational publications. Of all the Internet links in new textbooks, more than 15% of QR-codes lead to the collections of the Presidential Library, which contain more than 15 thousand documents and materials on the history of Russia. In the future, it is planned to continue this successful experience when publishing unified history textbooks for grades 5–9, as well as other educational publishing projects.

As part of cooperation with the Academy of the Ministry of Education of Russia, the Presidential Library transferred to the Library of Digital Educational Content a large-scale knowledge based on all subjects and topics of the school curriculum in accordance with federal state educational standards - more than 300 specially selected materials on the history of the two world wars of the 20th century: archival documents, rare publications, postcards, photographs, leaflets, as well as video lectures created within the walls of the Presidential Library. 

Active cooperation with the teaching community allowed the library to begin implementing another major project - “The Presidential Library for Teachers: Teaching Using Primary Sources”. The library’s portal features the institution’s main activities in the field of education as well as the possibilities of using library resources in educational activities. At the moment, scenarios for lessons on the history of the Second World War are available, but next year it is planned to expand the number of topics within the discipline of history, as well as add scenarios for lessons in social studies. The section also presents the collections of the Presidential Library, systematized by academic subjects and grades - from 6th to 11th. This format will help better navigate the collections and quickly find the resources necessary for educational activities.  

On August 15, the acceptance of applications for the Contest of pedagogical projects “The Future of the Fatherland in the Hands of a Teacher” ended. The contest partners are the Academy of the Ministry of Education of Russia and the online publication Teacher’s Newspaper. It is held in seven nominations related to the field of humanitarian knowledge. More than 750 works from all over Russia were submitted to the contest. The final stage of the Contest begins on September 25. The projects of the contest winners are planned to be posted on the Internet portal of the Presidential Library to promote and disseminate successful teaching experience.  

Together with its permanent partner, the Gorchakov Lyceum of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, the Presidential Library, based on the collection World War II in Archival Documents, is preparing 28 video lessons dedicated to the events of 1933–1945. The lessons are taught by leading teachers in Russia, the duration of each lesson is about 15 minutes, which makes it possible to use them both in class and in extracurricular activities. Reliance on primary sources in order to counteract the falsification of history, combined with an interesting form of presenting material, will increase the efficiency of the educational process.

The Presidential Library traditionally implements a large number of educational and outreach projects. Among them are the Knowledge Forum, the Russia in the Electronic World Olympiad in history, social studies, the Russian language and Russian as a foreign language, contests, quizzes, video lectures, multimedia lessons and others. The library’s portal features the collection History of Education in Russia which includes books telling about the development of various stages of education, and examines higher, primary, gymnasium, and women’s education.