Kashchenko, Vsevolod Petrovich

Kashchenko, Vsevolod Petrovich 

Born Mar. 21 (Apr. 2), 1870; died Nov. 30, 1943. Soviet defectologist; one of the first organizers of higher defectological education and scientific research in defectology in the USSR.

Kashchenko was admitted to the medical department of Moscow University in 1891, but in 1894 he was expelled for his involvement in student revolutionary circles and exiled from Moscow. He graduated from the medical department of the University of Kiev in 1897. Deprived of his right to hold state and public positions because of political “unreliability,” in 1908 he opened a private school-sanatorium, one of the first institutions for abnormal children in Moscow. In 1918 the Home for the Study of Children was organized, an expansion of the former school; soon thereafter the home was converted to the Medical-Pedagogical Experimental Station. From 1920 through 1924, Kashchenko was a professor and rector of the Pedagogical Institute for the Problems of Abnormal Children in Moscow. During the last years of his life, Kashchenko was concerned with the problems of logopedics.

Kashchenko attempted to reduce or overcome developmental deficiencies in abnormal children through medical and pedagogical means. He based the processes of education and upbringing on methods that would contribute to the child’s maximum activity and independence and on the instillment of a desire to rectify the shortcomings in their behavior. He stressed that it is not the amount of knowledge that is important for abnormal children, but rather the quality of that knowledge, its vitality, and its role in developing the cognitive capacities of the student.

WORKS

Defektivnye deti i shkola. Edited by V. P. Kashchenko. Moscow, 1912. (Collection of articles.)
Vospitanie-obuchenie trudnykh detei. Moscow, 1913. (Jointly with S. Kriukov.)
Putem tvorchestva. A collection edited by V. P. Kashchenko. Moscow, 1922.

REFERENCES

Azbukin, D. I. “Obshchestvenno-pedagogicheskaia deiaternost’ V. P. Kashchenko do i posle Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii.” Uch. zap. Moskovskogo gos. ped. in-ta im. V. I. Lenina, 1947, vol. 49, pp. 101–109.
Zamskii, Kh. S. “Vrachebno-pedagogicheskaia deiatel’nost’ professora V. P. Kashchenko i ee roi’ v razvitii vspomogatel’noi shkoly SSSR.” Uch. zap. MGPI im. V. I. Lenina, Defektologicheskii fak-t, 1959, vol.131, issue 7.