“2 for Behavior”. The Life and Death of Gymnasium Student Volodya Belavin as a Reflection of Daily School Life at the end of the 19th – early 20th centuries

The paper examines how the intra-school environment influenced the psyche and behavior of students using the example of events that took place in the Orenburg boys' gymnasium at the end of the 19th -early 20th centuries.The organization of education and upbringing in the gymnasium acts as an objective circumstance of the daily life of gymnasium students.The psyche and behavior of students, as components of their everyday life, are examined through the prism of the life of one of the gymnasium students, Vladimir Belavin, who committed suicide in October 1908.The source base of the research is the materials from the Orenburg press, which describe this event in detail, as well as a personal source -the memoirs of N.A. Krasheninnikov, who studied at the same gymnasium several years earlier.An analysis of available sources allows us to state the crisis state of Russian secondary schools during the specified period.Students were required to strictly adhere to harsh disciplinary rules in addition to mastering an ever-increasing amount of information.For teenagers, such mental stress often proved to be completely unbearable.In addition to this, children were generally forbidden to openly experience psychological crises and personal problems that the school teaching community considered insignificant, caused by insufficient diligence or laziness of the student.Many teachers treated students in an inappropriate, disrespectful, or even downright cruel manner.Possible reasons for these patterns of behavior could include a significant age gap between teachers and students, the high social and intellectual standing of teachers, as well as the fact that they may have been overworked and experiencing professional burnout, and possibly personal hostility towards some gymnasium students.During this period, parent committees were only in their initial stages of development and could not adequately protect the interests of students.Unfortunately, these committees often began active work only after cases of teenage suicide.Such tragedies prompted parents to appeal to the leadership of school districts, resulting in the dismissal of some of the most odious teachers.Overall, based on our analysis of historical experience, we find that teachers' judgments of students were subjective, that the severity of school punishments did not match the offenses committed, and that there was no visible correlation between a failing grade for behavior and positive changes in the behavior of gymnasium students.