Iakob Gogebashvili ,was a Georgian educator, children’s writer and journalist, considered to be the founder of the scientific pedagogy in Georgia. Iakob Gogebashvili was born in the village Variani near Gori, Georgia to a poor family of a priest Simon Gogebashvili.He studied at the seminaries of Gori and Tiflis before enrolling into the theological academy in Kiev in 1861. Simultaneously, he attended the lectures in natural sciences at the Kiev University.. Yet, unlike many of his contemporary Georgian intellectuals, he was affected less by the Russian radicals than by a Christian background in the seminaries of Gori and Tbilisi. Returning to Georgia in 1863, he taught arithmetic and geography at the Tiflis Seminary and later became its inspector. Gogebashvili’s apartment, frequented by the seminarian students, soon became a haven for forbidden discussions of art and politics.
From then onwards Gogebashvili became a free-lance and devoted his energies to spreading education among his countrymen. In 1879, he helped found the Society for the Spreading of Literacy Among Georgians through which he channeled his efforts aimed at countering Russification, especially in the school system, and at reversing the erosion of Georgian language whose status he compared with that of a "wretched foundling, deprived of all care and protection.
Gogebashvili’s most influential work, Mother Tongue,, an introduction to Georgian for children, was first published in 1876. Moving from alphabet to literary texts, with a number of encyclopedic passages, it has gone through countless editions to become the pattern over the next hundred years for primers not only in Georgian, but in the several new literary languages of the Caucasus. Gogebashvili also authored a number of fairy stories and historical fiction for children as well as several journalistic articles in defense of Georgian culture and identity.
From then onwards Gogebashvili became a free-lance and devoted his energies to spreading education among his countrymen. In 1879, he helped found the Society for the Spreading of Literacy Among Georgians through which he channeled his efforts aimed at countering Russification, especially in the school system, and at reversing the erosion of Georgian language whose status he compared with that of a "wretched foundling, deprived of all care and protection.
Gogebashvili’s most influential work, Mother Tongue,, an introduction to Georgian for children, was first published in 1876. Moving from alphabet to literary texts, with a number of encyclopedic passages, it has gone through countless editions to become the pattern over the next hundred years for primers not only in Georgian, but in the several new literary languages of the Caucasus. Gogebashvili also authored a number of fairy stories and historical fiction for children as well as several journalistic articles in defense of Georgian culture and identity.
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