Kharkiv Women's Sunday School

The Kharkiv Women's Sunday School was a literacy school for women in Kharkiv, founded in 1862 by the educator Khrystyna Alchevska and regarded as one of the first and most important institutions of adult education in Ukraine and the Russian Empire. It operated illegally at its founder's home until its official opening in 1870, and it was kept going for more than fifty years on private donations. Instruction was free, the minimum age of admission was 10, and by the 1890s enrollment had passed 450, mostly working-class women. On Sundays the students spent four hours on elementary school subjects and on reading Ukrainian writers, particularly Taras Shevchenko, and Alchevska taught in Ukrainian until it was banned. With her teachers she worked out a method for adult education that used literary works instead of primers, close contact between students and teachers, discussion instead of rote learning and student involvement in planning the curriculum. The teachers also compiled the bibliographic guide What the People Should Read and the teaching manual Book for Adults, and the school became a model for literacy schools throughout Ukraine and Russia.