The article covers the life and career of Borys Dmytrovych Hrinchenko, in particular, the main directions of his literary, pedagogical and social-educational activities, as well as scientific and pedagogical achievements in the field of public school with the application of principles of national pedagogy and national ideals of formation and development of Ukrainian national school are considered and analyzed. It is noted that B. Hrinchenko was one of the first, under the total ban on the dissemination of the Ukrainian language, to raise the issue of the use of the mother tongue in the educational process, in particular in Sunday schools. Such an institution was Khrystyna Alchevska's private school for girls in the village of Oleksiivka in Katerynoslav province, where over a period of six years of teaching (1887-1893) he realized his ideals of building a national school and secretly introduced the Ukrainian language to its students. According to the principles of folk pedagogy, B. Hrinchenko popularized new innovative forms and methods of organizing the educational process, not recognizing physical punishment and advocating for closer communication between teacher and pupils. Teaching in the mother tongue became Hrinchenko's main credo as a teacher. At the same time, Borys Dmytrovych was an advocate of using the best achievements of progressive educators, applying the dialectical unity of thought and language, considering the latter the exponent of national attributes: ethnographic, mental and attitudinal. Borys Dmytrovych paid special attention to the literature of national reading, to which he devoted a special article «Popular Books». Pedagogical views of Borys Hrinchenko are reflected in his numerous works: «On the hopeless path» (1905), «What schools we need» (1906), «People's teachers and school» (1906), «In front of the wide world» (1907) and numerous works of fiction about students and teachers. An integral part of social and educational activity of Borys Hrinchenko was his publishing activity, which had a particular scope in Chernihiv, where he organized the only at that time in Ukraine folk publishing house for Ukrainian-language books. His work in this field proved fruitful, because from 1894 to 1902 Hrinchenko published about 50 books for the people with total circulation of 170 thousand copies, including works of outstanding classics.The outstanding merit of B. Hrinchenko is the publication of a four-volume "Dictionary of the Ukrainian language" (1907-1909) containing 68 thousand Ukrainian words from folk and written language, covering the period from I. Kotliarevsky to the beginning of the twentieth century. Despite the criticism of the edition, the significant merit of B. Hrinchenko is that the Dictionary represents linguistic wealth of the then Ukraine - from east to west, which asserted the eternal idea of unity of the Ukrainian people and thus the Dictionary can be considered the face of the Ukrainian nation, which raised the status of the Ukrainian language and asserted the right of people to self-determination. The main meaning of Hrinchenko's life and work was the struggle for the Ukrainian national cause. Thus, in his «Letters from Upper Dnipro Ukraine», published in «Bukovyna» newspaper in 1892-1893, Borys Dmytrovych presents a critical review of society of that time, turning to analysis of reasons of decline of national competitions and advancing an opinion on revival processes

Borys Hrinchenko, pedagogy, education, public-educational activity, national consciousness, national idea, populism