The “Second” Bulgarian School. The Genesis

The place of the Bulgarian Community Center in European culture is unique. Originated as a form of public education unknown to the world, today it asserts itself with its multifunctional mission of preserving the intangible cultural heritage, providing widely accessible education in an extracurricular environment and permanent self-education in the spirit of the modern educational paradigm. The aim of the historical-pedagogical study is a theoretical reconstruction of the genesis of the Bulgarian community center, which, even at the dawn of its emergence, functioned as an alternative to the new Bulgarian school. The tasks for realizing the goal are focused on highlighting the content orientation and forms of community education, its first trainers and users of knowledge. The reconstruction is based on researched information, facts and data about events, processes and persons in the documentary base of the first community center that arose in Svishtov, of the National Historic Archive in the National Library, DA Archives of Shumen and Montana, revival periodical press. The applied research methodology is based on the analytical-synthetic, documentary, biographical, factual, hermeneutic and chronological method