Model Calculations of Home Education Scale: The Case of Yaroslavl Province in the Late 18th - Early 20th Century

Abstract

In this article the author reconstructs the dynamics of home education sector in monetary value terms as the case study of a province in Central Russia, with application of mathematical modelling methods. As the source base, the author employs evidence primarily from published memoirs, epistolary heritage, fiction, as well as from previous research literature. The findings are obtained by means of calculations including inter-, retro-, and extrapolations of the quantitative evidence from the sources. The principal findings are the set of methods for reconstruction of annual output in the home education services segment of a regional economy and the respective long time series for Yaroslavl Province. They support the hypothesis that the home segment was comparable in scale to the educational establishments or even could exceed them at the start of the period under study. The methods developed by the author may be employed directly for similar reconstructions based on materials from other regions of Central Russia; and they are applied to the materials from the regions of Siberia, Far East and national peripheries of Russia.