Ibrai Altynsarin

Born Oct. 20, 1841; died July 17, 1889. Kazakh pedagogue, enlightener, writer, and folk-lorist.

Altynsarin graduated from a Russian school in Orenburg and became the first Kazakh teacher. He was an inspector of Kazakh schools in Turgai from 1879. He developed a system of education for the Kazakh people which included a two-class boarding school in each district and Volost (small rural district) Russian Kazakh boarding schools for Kazakh nomads. During Altynsarin’s activity in Turgai Oblast, four two-class boarding schools for Kazakh boys, seven elementary volost schools, the Orsk Kazakh teachers’ school, a trade school in Turgai, and a girls’ boarding school in Irgiz were opened. Altynsarin fought against the age-old backwardness and religious obscurantism and popularized democratic Russian literature, basing his work on the pedagogical experience of K. D. Ushinskii, L. N. Tolstoy, and others. His first textbooks—for example, Elementary Guide to Teaching the Russian Language to the Kirghiz (1879)—artistic works, and translations for Kazakh children are imbued with democratic and humanistic principles. The Kirghiz Reader (1879) contains translations, fables, and stories written by Altynsarin in the Kazakh language and set in the Russian alphabet. Altynsarin translated L. N. Tolstoy and I. A. Krylov.