The Bulgarian Participation in the New Education Movement: The First Half of the 20th Century

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present in comparative terms the origin and institutionalization of the New Education Movement in Western European countries and Bulgaria. The archive of Dimitar Katsarov in the Scientific Archive of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences was used as the main source material, as well as publications in the «Svobodno Vaszpitanie» magazine edited by him, a Bulgarian organ of the New Education Fellowship. The emergence and development of the first «new schools» and attempts to consolidate the movement in Western Europe are examined: the creation of the International Bureau for New Schools; the emergence of the concept of «new education»; the characteristics of the new schools (Adolphe Ferrière‘s thirty points); the establishment of the New Education Fellowship (NEF) and its principles and aims. Against this background, the Bulgarian participation in the New Education Fellowship is traced, especially in the person of Dimitar Katsarov, founder of the Bulgarian Section for a New Education: his correspondence with the leadership of the NEF in London; the exchange of books, magazines, and articles; the participation of Bulgarian representatives in the congresses of the NEF; the practical attempts to apply the ideas of the new pedagogy in the Bulgarian public education.