With the reconstruction of a room – as it was during the cell schools during the Renaissance, and the presentation of the collection of scientific reports “The book and education – historical aspects and traditions” the Regional History Museum today celebrated the 175th anniversary of the opening of a mutual girls’ school in Razgrad.
The celebration under the title “Education in Razgrad – from the cell to modernity” was the house museum “Stanka and Nikola Ikonomovi”. The event began with a reading of the poem “Patriotism” by Vladislav Hristov from PS “N. Ikonomov”, participant in the school competition “We also gave something to the world”.
Artifacts from the museum’s collection are arranged in the home of prominent Razgrad educators and writers. On a carpet spread on the ground are several pillows, and in front of them – boxes with sand and writing sticks, an abacus, old printed books and bags that the children used to go to school with.
The director of the museum, Tanya Todorova, says that the old cell school in Razgrad was housed at the northwestern end of the church. The mutual teaching method was introduced in Razgrad in 1846 by the teacher Nikola Ikonomov, who before 1948, following the modern secular requirements for education, opened a girls’ school in the city. Among the teachers is his wife Stanka Nikolitsa.
“Nikola Ikonomov’s name is also connected with the appearance and development of the grade school in Razgrad in 1859/1860. Razgrad welcomed the Liberation with modern education for its time, which laid the foundations of the post-liberation educational and pedagogical system,” Tanya Todorova also said.
A word for Nikola Ikonomov and Stanka Nikolitsa and the genealogical meetings of their heirs was delivered by the director of the Regional Library “Prof. Boyan Penev” Dimitar Petrov, and the quatrain of the first Bulgarian poetess was read by Mila Marinova.
In the house museum, Prof. Rositsa Angelova PhD, head of the “New and Recent History” department at the museum, also presented a collection of reports from the national scientific conference in 2020, held online due to the covid pandemic, “The book and education – historical aspects and traditions”, whose compiler is she herself.
“The conference on November 12 and 13, 2020 marked important anniversaries: the 200th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Ikonomov; 100 years since the death of Stanka Nikolitsa Spaso-Elenina, 40 years since the house-museum “Stanka and Nikola Ikonomovi” and 150 years of library work in Razgrad”, recalled Prof. Angelova.
The scientific forum was attended by 20 authors from historical museums, schools and higher education institutions in the country, divided into four sections: “Spiritual life in the Bulgarian lands in the second half of the 19th century in the context of social development”; “Bulgarian education in the 19th century”, “Urban educational culture before the 19th and 20th centuries” and “Women’s education, social sympathy and philanthropy”.
The editorial board was composed of: Natalia Akoeva, Prof. D.Sc. from the Krasnodar State Institute of Culture and Svetla Atanasova, Assoc. Ph.D. from RHM – Veliko Tarnovo.
At the end of today’s celebration, a greeting was given to the participants and guests by the self-made dancers from the “Bouquet” dance group, “Ivan Vazov” community center in the village of Vladimirovtsi in the Samuil region, led by Borislava Ivanova.
