Institute for Noble Maidens

"[1] Boarding schools were to be preferred to other institutions of education in accordance with Rousseau's idea that "isolating the pupils enabled their tutors to protect them from the vices of society.

"[2] An important memoir touching upon life at these facilities was left by populist leader Vera Figner, who attended the Rodionovsky Institute for Noble Girls in Kazan from 1863 until 1869.

[4] Scientific instruction was said to be particularly paltry, with the zoology and botany instructor said to have "...never showed us a skeleton, nor even a stuffed animal, and not a single plant.

"[6] Time was carefully structured, and virtually no textbooks used according to Figner, with students compelled to copy and recopy handwritten notebooks.

[7] Outside reading was not encouraged, with the only library at the Rodionovsky Institute kept behind locked doors by a dean of the school and access to books by students very tightly restricted.