Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1904
Source: "Fables for Children," by Leo Tolstoy, translated from the original Russian and edited by leo Wiener, assistant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University, published by Dana Estese Company, Boston, Edition De Luxe, limited to one thousand copies of which this is no. 411, copyright 1904, electrotyped and printed by C. H. Simonds and Co., Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
I suppose each of us has had more than one occasion to come in contact with monstrous, senseless phenomena, and to find back of these phenomena put forward some important principle, which overshadowed those phenomena, so that in our youthful and even maturer years we began to doubt whether it was true that those phenomena were monstrous, and whether we were not mistaken. And having been unable to convince ourselves that monstrous phenomena might be good, or that the protection of an important principle was illegitimate, or that the principle was only a word, we remained in regard to those phenomena in an ambiguous, undecided condition.
In such a state I was, and I assume many of us are, in respect to the principle of "development" which obfuscates pedagogy, in its connection with the rudiments. But popular education is too near to my heart, and I have busied myself too much with it, to remain too long in indecision. The monstrous phenomena of the imaginary development I could not call good, nor could I be persuaded that the development of the pupil was bad, and so I began to inquire what that development was. I do not consider it superfluous to communicate the deductions to which I have been led during the study of this matter.
To define what is understood by the word "development," I shall take the manuals of Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski, as being new works, which combine all the latest deductions of German pedagogy, intended as guides for the teachers in the popular schools, and selected by the advocates of the sound method as manuals in their schools.
In discussing what is to form the foundation for a choice of this or that method for the teaching of reading, Mr. Bunákov says:
"No, an opinion about the method of construction based on such near-sighted and flimsy foundations (that is, on experience) will be too doubtful. Only the theoretical substratum, based on the study of human nature, can make the judgments in this sphere firm and independent of all casualties, and to a considerable degree guard them against gross errors. Consequently for the final choice of the best method of teaching the rudiments, it is necessary first of all to stand on theoretic soil, on the basis of previous considerations, the general conditions of which give to this or that method the actual right to be called satisfactory from the pedagogical standpoint. These conditions are: (1) It has to be a method which is capable of developing the child's mental powers, so that the acquisition of the rudiments may be obtained together with the development and the strengthening of the reasoning powers. (2) It must introduce into the instruction the child's personal interest, so that the matter be furthered by this interest, and not by dulling violence. (3) It must represent in itself the process of self-instruction, inciting, supporting, and directing the child's self-activity. (4) It must be based on the impressions of hearing, as of the sense which serves for the acquisition of language. (5) It has to combine analysis with synthesis, beginning with the dismemberment of the complex whole into simple principles, and passing over to the composition of a complex whole out of the simple principles."
So this is what the method of instruction is to be based upon. I will remark, not for contradiction, but for the sake of simplicity and clearness, that the last two statements are quite superfluous, because without the union of analysis and synthesis there can be not only no instruction, but also no other activity of the mind, and every instruction, except that of the deaf and dumb, is based on the sense of hearing. These two conditions are put down only for beauty's sake and for the obscuration of the style, so common in pedagogical treatises, and so have no meaning whatever. The first three at first sight appear quite true as a program. Everybody, of course, would like to know how the method is secured that will "develop," that will "introduce into the instruction the pupil's personal interest," and that will "represent the process of self-instruction."
But to the questions as to why this method combines all those qualities you will find an answer neither in the books of Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski, nor in any other pedagogical work of the founders of this school of pedagogy, unless they be those hazy discussions of this nature, such as that every instruction must be based on the union of analysis and synthesis, and by all means on the sense of hearing, and so forth; or you will find, as in Mr. Evtushévski's book, expositions about how in man are formed impressions, sensations, representations, and concepts, and you will find the rule that "it is necessary to start from the object and lead the pupil up to the idea, and not start with the idea, which has no point of contact in his consciousness," and so forth. After such discussions there always follows the conclusion that therefore the method advocated by the pedagogue gives that exclusive real development which it was necessary to find.
After the above-cited definition of what a good method ought to be, Mr. Bunákov explains how children ought to be educated, and, having given an exposition of all the methods, which in my opinion and experience lead to results which are diametrically opposite to development, he says frankly and definitely:
"From the standpoint of the above-mentioned fundamental principles for estimating the value of the satisfactoriness of the methods of rudimentary instruction, the method which we have just elucidated in its general features presents the following plastic qualities and peculiarities: (1) As a sound method it wholly preserves the characteristic peculiarities of all sound method,—it starts from the impressions of hearing, at once establishing the regular relation to language, and only later adds to them the impressions of sight, thus clearly distinguishing sound, matter, and the letter, its representation. (2) As a method which unites reading with writing it begins with decomposition and passes over to composition, combining analysis with synthesis. (3) As a method which passes over to the study of words and sounds from the study of objects it proceeds along a natural path, coöperates with the regular formation of concepts and ideas, and acts in a developing way on all the sides of the child's nature: it incites the children to be observant, to group their observations, to render them orally; it develops the external senses, mind, imagination, memory, the gift of speech, concentration, self-activity, the habit of work, the respect for order. (4) As a method which provides ample work to all the mental powers of the child, it introduces into instruction the personal interest, rousing in children willingness and love of work, and transforming it into a process of self-instruction."
This is precisely what Mr. Evtushévski does; but why it is all so remains inexplicable to him who is looking for actual reasons and does not become entangled in such words as psychology, didactics, methodics, heuristics. I advise all those who have no inclination for philosophy and therefore have no desire to verify all those deductions of the pedagogues not to be embarrassed by these words and to be assured that a thing which is not clear cannot be the basis of anything, least of all of such an important and simple thing as popular education.
All the pedagogues of this school, especially the Germans, the founders of the school, start with the false idea that those philosophical questions which have remained as questions for all the philosophers from Plato to Kant, have been definitely settled by them. They are settled so definitely that the process of the acquisition by man of impressions, sensations, concepts, ratiocinations, has been analyzed by them down to its minutest details, and the component parts of what we call the soul or the essence of man have been dissected and divided into parts by them, and that, too, in such a thorough manner that on this firm basis can go up the faultless structure of the science of pedagogy. This fancy is so strange that I do not regard it as necessary to contradict it, more especially as I have done so in my former pedagogical essays. All I will say is that those philosophical considerations which the pedagogues of this school put at the basis of their theory not only fail to be absolutely correct, not only have nothing in common with real philosophy, but even lack a clear, definite expression with which the majority of the pedagogues might agree.
But, perchance, the theory of the pedagogues of the new school, in spite of its unsuccessful references to philosophy, has some value in itself. And so we will examine it, to see what it consists in. Mr. Bunákov says:
"To these little savages (that is, the pupils) must be imparted the main order of school instruction, and into their consciousness must be introduced such initial concepts as they will have to come in contact with from the start, during the first lessons of drawing, reading, writing, and every elementary instruction, such as: the right side and the left, to the right—to the left, up—down, near by—around, in front—in back, close by—in the distance, before—behind, above—below, fast—slow, softly—aloud, and so forth. No matter how simple these concepts may be, I know from practice that even city children, from well-to-do families, are frequently, when they come to the elementary schools, unable to distinguish the right side from the left. I assume that there is no need of expatiating on the necessity of explaining such concepts to village children, for any one who has had to deal with village schools knows this as well as I do."
And Mr. Evtushévski says:
"Without entering into the broad field of the debatable question about the innate ability of man, we only see that the child can have no innate concepts and ideas about real things,—they have to be formed, and on the skill with which they are formed by the educator and teacher depends both their regularity and their permanency. In watching the development of the child's soul one has to be much more cautious than in attending to his body. If the food for the body and the various bodily exercises are carefully chosen both as regards their quantity and their quality, in conformity with the man's growth, so much more cautious have we to be in the choice of food and exercises for the mind. A badly placed foundation will precariously support what is fastened to it."
Mr. Bunákov advises that ideas be imparted as follows:
"The teacher may begin a conversation such as he deems fit: one will ask every pupil for his name; another about what is going on outside; a third about where each comes from, where he lives, what is going on at home,—and then he may pass over to the main subject. 'Where are you sitting now? Why did you come here? What are we going to do in this room? Yes, we are going to study in this room,—so let us call it a class-room. See what there is under your feet, below you. Look, but do not say anything. The one I will tell to speak shall answer. Tell me, what do you see under your feet? Repeat everything we have found out and have said about this room: in what room are we sitting? What are the parts of the room? What is there on the walls? What is standing on the floor?'
"The teacher from the start establishes the order which is necessary for the success of his work: each pupil is to answer only when asked to do so; all the others are to listen and should be able to repeat the words of the teacher and of their companions; the desire to answer, when the teacher directs a question to everybody, is to be expressed by raising the left hand; the words are to be pronounced neither in a hurry, nor by drawing them out, but loudly, distinctly, and correctly. To obtain this latter result the teacher gives them a living example by his loud, correct, distinct enunciation, showing them in practice the difference between soft and loud, distinct and correct, slow and fast. The teacher should see to it that all the children take part in the work, by having somebody's question answered or repeated, now by one, now by another, and now by the whole class at once, but especially by rousing the indifferent, inattentive, and playful children: the first he must enliven by frequent questions, the second he must cause to concentrate themselves on the subject of the common work, and the third he must curb. During the first period the children ought to answer in full, that is, by repeating the question: 'We are sitting in the class-room' (and not in brief, 'In the class-room'); 'Above, over my head, I see the ceiling;' 'On the left I see three windows,' and so forth."
Mr. Evtushévski advises that in this way be begun all the lessons on numbers from 1 to 10, of which there are to be 120, and which are to be continued through the year.
"One. The teacher shows the pupils a cube, and asks: 'How many cubes have I?' and taking several cubes into the other hand, he asks, 'And how many are there here?'—'Many, a few.'
"'Name here in the class-room an object of which there are several.'—'Bench, window, wall, copy-book, pencil, slate-pencil, pupil, and so forth.'—'Name an object of which there is only one in the class-room.'—'The blackboard, stove, door, ceiling, floor, picture, teacher, and so forth.'—'If I put this cube away in my pocket, how many cubes will there be left in my hand?'—'Not one.'—'And how many must I again put into my hand, to have as many as before?'—'One.'—'What is meant by saying that Pétya fell down once? How many times did Pétya fall? Did he fall another time? Why does it say once?'—'Because we are speaking only of one case and not of another case.'—'Take your slates (or copy-books). Make on them a line of this size.' (The teacher draws on the blackboard a line two or four inches in length, or shows on the ruler that length.) 'Rub it off. How many lines are left?'—'Not one.'—'Draw several such lines.' It would be unnatural to invent any other exercises in order to acquaint the children with number one. It suffices to rouse in them that conception of unity which they, no doubt, had previous to their school instruction."
Then Mr. Bunákov speaks of exercises on the board, and so on, and Mr. Evtushévski of the number four with its decomposition. Before examining the theory itself of the transmission of ideas, the question involuntarily arises whether that theory is not mistaken in its very problem. Has the condition of the pedagogical material with which it has to do been correctly defined? The first thing that startles us is the strange relation to some imaginary children, to such as I, at least, have never seen in the Russian Empire. The conversations, and the information which they impart, refer to children of less than two years of age, because two-year-old children know all that is contained in them, but as to the questions which have to be asked, they have reference to parrots. Any pupil of six, seven, eight, or nine years will not understand a thing in these questions, because he knows all about that, and cannot make out what it all means. The demands for such conversations evince either complete ignorance, or a desire to ignore that degree of development on which the pupils stand.
Maybe the children of Hottentots and negroes, or some German children, do not know what is imparted to them in such conversations, but Russian children, except demented ones, all those who come to a school, not only know what is up and what down, what is a bench and what a table, what is two and what one, and so forth, but, in my experience, the peasant children who are sent to school by their parents can every one of them express their thoughts well and correctly, can understand another person's thought (if it is expressed in Russian), and can count to twenty and more; playing with knuckle-bones they count in pairs and sixes, and they know how many points and pairs there are in a six. Frequently the pupils who came to my school brought with them the problem with the geese, and explained it to me. But even if we admit that children possess no such conceptions as those the pedagogues want to impart to them by means of conversations, I do not find the method chosen by them to be correct.
Thus, for example, Mr. Bunákov has written a reader. This book is to be used in conjunction with the conversations to teach the children language. I have run through the book and have found it to be a series of bad language blunders, wherever extracts from other books are not quoted. The same complete ignorance of language I have found in Mr. Evtushévski's problems. Mr. Evtushévski wants to give ideas by means of problems. First of all he ought to have seen to it that the tool for the transmission of ideas, that is, the language, was correct.
What has been mentioned here refers to the form in which the development is imparted. Let us look at the contents themselves. Mr. Bunákov proposes the following questions to be put to the children: "Where can you see cats? where a magpie? where sand? where a wasp and a suslik? what are a suslik and a magpie and a cat covered with, and what are the parts of their bodies?" (The suslik is a favorite animal of pedagogy, no doubt because not one peasant child in the center of Russia knows that word.)
"Naturally the teacher does not always put these questions straight to the children, as forming the predetermined program of the lesson; more frequently the small and undeveloped children have to be led up to the solution of the question of the program by a series of suggestive questions, by directing their attention to the side of the subject which is more correct at the given moment, or by inciting them to recall something from their previous observations. Thus the teacher need not put the question directly: 'Where can a wasp be seen?' but, turning to this or that pupil, he may ask him whether he has seen a wasp, where he has seen it, and then only, combining the replies of several pupils, compose an answer to the first question of his program. In answering the teacher's questions, the children will often connect several remarks that have no direct relation to the matter; for example, when the question is about what the parts of a magpie are, one may say irrelevantly that a magpie jumps, another that it chatters funnily, a third that it steals things,—let them add and give utterance to everything that arises in their memory or imagination,—it is the teacher's business to concentrate their attention in accordance with the program, and these remarks and additions of the children he should take notice of for the purpose of elaborating the other parts of the program. In viewing a new subject, the children at every convenient opportunity return to the subjects which have already been under consideration. Since they have observed that a magpie is covered with feathers, the teacher asks: 'Is the suslik also covered with feathers? What is it covered with? And what is a chicken covered with? and a horse? and a lizard?' When they have observed that a magpie has two legs, the teacher asks: 'How many legs has a dog? and a fox? and a chicken? and a wasp? What other animals do you know with two legs? with four? with six?'"
Involuntarily the question arises: Do the children know, or do they not know, what is so well explained to them in these conversations? If the pupils know it all, then, upon occasion, in the street or at home, where they do not need to raise their left hands, they will certainly be able to tell it in more beautiful and more correct Russian than they are ordered to do. They will certainly not say that a horse is "covered" with wool; if so, why are they compelled to repeat these questions just as the teacher has put them? But if they do not know them (which is not to be admitted except as regards the suslik), the question arises: by what will the teacher be guided in what is with so much unction called the program of questions,—by the science of zoology, or by logic? or by the science of eloquence? But if by none of the sciences, and merely by the desire to talk about what is visible in the objects, there are so many visible things in objects, and they are so diversified, that a guiding thread is needed to show what to talk upon, whereas in objective instruction there is no such thread, and there can be none.
All human knowledge is subdivided for the purpose that it may more conveniently be gathered, united, and transmitted, and these subdivisions are called sciences. But outside their scientific classifications you may talk about objects anything you please, and you may say all the nonsense imaginable, as we actually see. In any case, the result of the conversation will be that the children are either made to learn by heart the teacher's words about the suslik, or to change their own words, place them in a certain order (not always a correct order), and to memorize and repeat them. For this reason all the manuals of this kind, in general all the exercises of development, suffer on the one hand from absolute arbitrariness, and on the other from superfluity. For example, in Mr. Bunákov's book the only story which, it seems, is not copied from another author, is the following:
"A peasant complained to a hunter about his trouble: a fox had carried off several of his chickens and one duck; the fox was not in the least afraid of watch-dog Dandy, who was chained up and kept barking all night long; in the morning he had placed a trap with a piece of roast meat in the fresh tracks on the snow,—evidently the red-haired sneak was disporting near the house, but he did not go into the trap. The hunter listened to what the peasant had to say to him, and said: 'Very well; now we will see who will be shrewder!' The hunter walked all day with his gun and with his dog, over the tracks of the fox, to discover how he found his way into the yard. In the daytime the sneak sleeps in his lair, and knows nothing of what is going on, so that had to be considered: on its path the hunter dug a hole and covered it with boards, dirt, and snow; a few steps from it he put down a piece of horseflesh. In the evening he seated himself with a loaded gun in his ambush, fixed things in such a way that he could see everything and shoot comfortably, and there he waited. It grew dark. The moon swam out. Cautiously, looking around and listening, the fox crept out of his lair, raised his nose, and sniffed. He at once smelled the odor of horseflesh, and ran at a slow trot to the place, and suddenly stopped and pricked his ears: the shrewd one saw that there was a mound there which had not been in that spot the previous evening. This mound apparently vexed him, and made him think; he took a large circle around it, and sniffed and listened, and sat down, and for a long time looked at the meat from a distance, so that the hunter could not shoot him,—it was too far. The fox thought and thought, and suddenly ran at full speed between the meat and the mound. Our hunter was careful, and did not shoot. He knew that the sneak was merely trying to find out whether anybody was sitting behind that mound; if he had shot at the running fox, he would certainly have missed him, and then he would not have seen the sneak, any more than he could see his own ears. Now the fox quieted down,—the mound no longer disturbed him: he walked briskly up to the meat, and ate it with great delight. Then the hunter aimed carefully, without haste, so that he might not miss him. Bang! The fox jumped up from pain and fell down dead."
Everything is arbitrary here: it is an arbitrary invention to say that a fox could carry off a peasant's duck in winter, that peasants trap foxes, that a fox sleeps in the daytime in his lair (for he sleeps only at night); arbitrary is that hole which is uselessly dug in winter and covered with boards without being made use of; arbitrary is the statement that the fox eats horseflesh, which he never does; arbitrary is the supposed cunning of the fox, who runs past the hunter; arbitrary are the mound and the hunter, who does not shoot for fear of missing, that is, everything, from beginning to end, is bosh, for which any peasant boy might arraign the author of the story, if he could talk without raising his hand.
Then a whole series of so-called exercises in Mr. Bunákov's lessons is composed of such questions as: "Who bakes? Who chops? Who shoots?" to which the pupil is supposed to answer: "The baker, the wood-chopper, and the marksmen," whereas he might just as correctly answer that the woman bakes, the ax chops, and the teacher shoots, if he has a gun. Another arbitrary statement in that book is that the throat is a part of the mouth, and so on.
All the other exercises, such as "The ducks fly, and the dogs?" or "The linden and birch are trees, and the horse?" are quite superfluous. Besides, it must be observed that if such conversations are really carried on with the pupils (which never happens) that is, if the pupils are permitted to speak and ask questions, the teacher, choosing simple subjects (they are most difficult), is at each step perplexed, partly through ignorance, and partly because ein Narr kann mehr fragen, als zehn Weize antworten.
Exactly the same takes place in the instruction of arithmetic, which is based on the same pedagogical principle. Either the pupils are informed in the same way of what they already know, or they are quite arbitrarily informed of combinations of a certain character that are not based on anything. The lesson mentioned above and all the other lessons up to ten are merely information about what the children already know. If they frequently do not answer questions of that kind, this is due to the fact that the question is either wrongly expressed in itself, or wrongly expressed as regards the children. The difficulty which the children encounter in answering a question of that character is due to the same cause which makes it impossible for the average boy to answer the question: Three sons were to Noah, [1] —Shem, Ham, and Japheth,—who was their father? The difficulty is not mathematical, but syntactical, which is due to the fact that in the statement of the problem and in the question there is not one and the same subject; but when to the syntactical difficulty there is added the awkwardness of the proposer of the problems in expressing himself in Russian, the matter becomes of greater difficulty still to the pupil; but the trouble is no longer mathematical.
[1] The Russian way of saying "Noah had three sons."
Let anybody understand at once Mr. Evtushévski's problem: "A certain boy had four nuts, another had five. The second boy gave all his nuts to the first, and this one gave three nuts to a third, and the rest he distributed equally to three other friends. How many nuts did each of the last get?" Express the problem as follows: "A boy had four nuts. He was given five more. He gave away three nuts, and the rest he wants to give to three friends. How many can he give to each?" and a child of five years of age will solve it. There is no problem here at all, but the difficulty may arise only from a wrong statement of the problem, or from a weak memory. And it is this syntactical difficulty, which the children overcome by long and difficult exercises, that gives the teacher cause to think that, teaching the children what they know already, he is teaching them anything at all. Just as arbitrarily are the children taught combinations in arithmetic and the decomposition of numbers according to a certain method and order, which have their foundation only in the fancy of the teacher. Mr. Evtushévski says:
"Four. (1) The formation of the number. On the upper border of the board the teacher places three cubes together—I I I. How many cubes are there here? Then a fourth cube is added. And how many are there now? I I I I. How are four cubes formed from three and one? We have to add one cube to the three.
"(2) Decomposition into component parts. How can four cubes be formed? or, How can four cubes be broken up? Four cubes may be broken up into two and two: II + II. Four cubes may be formed from one, and one, and one, and one more, or by taking four times one cube: I + I + I + I. Four cubes may be broken up into three and one: III + I. It may be formed from one, and one, and two: I + I + II. Can four cubes be put together in any other way? The pupils convince themselves that there can be no other decomposition, distinct from those already given. If the pupils begin to break the four cubes in this way: one, two, and one, or, two, one and one; or, one and three, the teacher will easily point out to them that these decompositions are only repetitions of what has been got before, only in a different order.
"Every time, whenever the pupils indicate a new method of decomposition, the teacher places the cubes on a ledge of the blackboard in the manner here indicated. Thus there will be four cubes on the upper ledge; two and two in a second place; in a third place the four cubes will be separated at some distance from each other; in a fourth place, three and one, and in a fifth one, one, and two.
"(3) Decomposition in order. It may easily happen that the children will at once point out the decomposition of the number into component parts in order; even then the third exercise cannot be regarded as superfluous: Here we have formed four cubes of twos, of separate cubes, and of threes,—in what order had we best place the cubes on the board? With what shall the decomposition of the four cubes begin? With the decomposition into separate cubes. How are four cubes to be formed from separate cubes? We must take four times one cube. How are four cubes to be formed from twos, from a pair? We must take two twos,—twice two cubes, two pairs of cubes. How shall we afterwards break up the four cubes? They can be formed of threes: for this purpose we take three and one, or one and three. The teacher explains to the pupils that the last decomposition, that is, 1 1 2, does not come under the accepted order, and is a modification of one of the first three."
Why does Mr. Evtushévski not admit this last decomposition? Why must there be the order indicated by him? All that is a matter of mere arbitrariness and fancy. In reality, it is apparent to every thinking man that there is only one foundation for any composition and decomposition, and for the whole of mathematics. Here is the foundation: 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 1 = 4, and so forth,—precisely what the children learn at home, and what in common parlance is called counting to ten, to twenty, and so forth. This process is known to every pupil, and no matter what decomposition Mr. Evtushévski may make, it is to be explained from this one. A boy that can count to four, considers four as a whole, and so also three, and two, and one. Consequently, he knows that four was produced from the consecutive addition of one. Similarly he knows that four is produced by adding twice one to two, just as he knows twice one is two. What, then, are the children taught here? That which they know, or that process of counting which they must learn according to the teacher's fancy.
The other day I happened to witness a lesson in mathematics according to Grube's method. The pupil was asked: "How much is 8 and 7?" He hastened to answer and said 16. His neighbor, too, was in a hurry and, without raising his left hand, said: "8 and 8 is 16, and one less is 15." The teacher sternly stopped him, and compelled the first boy to add one after one to 8, until he came to 15, though the boy knew long ago that he had made a blunder. In that school they had reached the number 15, but 16 was supposed to be unknown yet.
I am afraid that many people, reading all these long refutals of the methods of object instruction and counting according to Grube, which I am making, will say: "What is there here to talk about? Is it not evident that it is all mere nonsense which it is not worth while to criticize? Why pick out the errors and blunders of a Bunákov and Evtushévski, and criticize what is beneath all criticism?"
That was the way I myself thought before I was led to see what was going on in the pedagogical world, when I convinced myself that Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski were not mere individuals, but authorities in our pedagogics, and that what they prescribe is actually carried out in our schools. In the backwoods we may find teachers, especially women, who spread Evtushévski's and Bunákov's manuals out before them and ask according to their prescription how much one feather and one feather is, and what a hen is covered with. All that would be funny if it were only an invention of the theorist, and not a guide in practical work, a guide that some follow already, and if it did not concern one of the most important affairs of life,—the education of the children. I was amused at it when I read it as theoretical fancies; but when I learned and saw that that was being practiced on children, I felt pity for them and ashamed.
From a theoretical standpoint, not to mention the fact that they faultily define the aim of education, the pedagogues of this school make this essential error, that they depart from the conditions of all instruction, whether this instruction be on the highest or lowest stage of the science, in a university or in a popular school. The essential conditions of all instruction consist in selecting the homogeneous phenomena from an endless number of heterogeneous phenomena, and in imparting the laws of these phenomena to the students. Thus, in the study of language, the pupils are taught the laws of the word, and in mathematics, the laws of the numbers. The study of language consists in imparting the laws of the decomposition and of the reverse composition of sentences, words, syllables, sounds,—and these laws form the subject of instruction. The instruction of mathematics consists in imparting the laws of the composition and decomposition of the numbers (but I beg to observe,—not in the process of the composition and the decomposition of the numbers, but in imparting the laws of that composition and decomposition). Thus, the first law consists in the ability of regarding a collection of units as a unit of a higher order, precisely what a child does when he says: "2 and 1 = 3." He regards 2 as a kind of unit. On this law are based the consequent laws of numeration, then of addition, and of the whole of mathematics. But arbitrary conversations about the wasp, and so forth, or problems within the limit of 10,—its decomposition in every manner possible,—cannot form a subject of instruction, because, in the first place, they transcend the subject and, in the second place, because they do not treat of its laws.
That is the way the matter presents itself to me from its theoretical side; but theoretical criticism may frequently err, and so I will try to verify my deductions by means of practical data. G—— P—— has given us a sample of the practical results of both object instruction and of mathematics according to Grube's method. One of the older boys was told: "Put your hand under your book!" in order to prove that he had been taught the conceptions of "over" and "under," and the intelligent boy, who, I am sure, knew what "over" and "under" was, when he was three years old, put his hand on the book when he was told to put it under it. I have all the time observed such examples, and they prove more clearly than anything else how useless, strange, and disgraceful, I feel like saying, this object instruction is for Russian children. A Russian child cannot and will not believe (he has too much respect for the teacher and for himself) that the teacher is in earnest when he asks him whether the ceiling is above or below, or how many legs he has. In arithmetic, too, we have seen that pupils who did not even know how to write the numbers and during the whole time of the instruction were exercised only in mental calculations up to 10, for half an hour did not stop blundering in every imaginable way in response to questions which the teacher put to them within the limit of 10. Evidently the instruction of mental calculation brought no results, and the syntactical difficulty, which consists in unraveling a question that is improperly put, has remained the same as ever. And thus, the practical results of the examination which took place did not confirm the usefulness of the development.
But I will be more exact and conscientious. Maybe the process of development, which at first is confined not so much to the study, as to the analysis of what the pupils know already, will produce results later on. Maybe the teacher, who at first takes possession of the pupils' minds by means of the analysis, later guides them firmly and with ease, and from the narrow sphere of the descriptions of a table and the count of 2 and 1 leads them into the real sphere of knowledge, in which the pupils are no longer confined to learning what they know already, but also learn something new, and learn that new information in a new, more convenient, more intelligent manner. This supposition is confirmed by the fact that all the German pedagogues and their followers, among them Mr. Bunákov, say distinctly that object instruction is to serve as an introduction to "home science" and "natural science." But we should be looking in vain in Mr. Bunákov's manual to find out how this "home science" is to be taught, if by this word any real information is to be understood, and not the descriptions of a hut and a vestibule,—which the children know already. Mr. Bunákov, on page 200, after having explained that it is necessary to teach where the ceiling is and where the stove, says briefly:
"Now it is necessary to pass over to the third stage of object instruction, the contents of which have been defined by me as follows: The study of the country, county, Government, the whole realm with its natural products and its inhabitants, in general outline, as a sketch of home science and the beginning of natural science, with the predominance of reading, which, resting on the immediate observations of the first two grades, broadens the mental horizon of the pupils,—the sphere of their concepts and ideas. We can see from the mere definition that here the objectivity appears as a complement to the explanatory reading and narrative of the teacher,—consequently, what is said in regard to the occupations of the third year has more reference to the discussion of the second occupation, which enters into the composition of the subject under instruction, which is called the native language,—the explanatory reading."
We turn to the third year,—the explanatory reading, but there we find absolutely nothing to indicate how the new information is to be imparted, except that it is good to read such and such books, and in reading to put such and such questions. The questions are extremely queer (to me, at least), as, for example, the comparison of the article on water by Ushínski and of the article on water by Aksákov, and the request made of the pupils that they should explain that Aksákov considers water as a phenomenon of Nature, while Ushínski considers it as a substance, and so forth. Consequently, we find here again the same foisting of views on the pupils, and of subdivisions (generally incorrect) of the teacher, and not one word, not one hint, as to how any new knowledge is to be imparted.
It is not known what shall be taught: natural history, or geography. There is nothing there but reading with questions of the character I have just mentioned. On the other side of the instruction about the word,—grammar and orthography,—we should just as much be looking in vain for any new method of instruction which is based on the preceding development. Again the old Perevlévski's grammar, which begins with philosophical definitions and then with syntactical analysis, serves as the basis of all new grammatical exercises and of Mr. Bunákov's manual.
In mathematics, too, we should be looking in vain, at that stage where the real instruction in mathematics begins, for anything new and more easy, based on the whole previous instruction of the exercises of the second year up to 20. Where in arithmetic the real difficulties are met with, where it becomes necessary to explain the subject from all its sides to the pupil, as in numeration, in addition, subtraction, division, in the division and multiplication of fractions, you will not find even a shadow of anything easier, any new explanation, but only quotations from old arithmetics.
The character of this instruction is everywhere one and the same. The whole attention is directed toward teaching the pupil what he already knows. And since the pupil knows what he is being taught, and easily recites in any order desired what he is asked to recite by the teacher, the teacher thinks that he is really teaching something, and the pupil's progress is great, and the teacher, paying no attention to what forms the real difficulty of teaching, that is, to teaching something new, most comfortably stumps about in one spot.
This explains why our pedagogical literature is overwhelmed with manuals for object-lessons, with manuals about how to conduct kindergartens (one of the most monstrous excrescences of the new pedagogy), with pictures and books for reading, in which are eternally repeated the same articles about the fox and the blackcock, the same poems which for some reason are written out in prose in all kinds of permutations and with all kinds of explanations; but we have not a single new article for children's reading, not one Russian, nor Church-Slavic grammar, nor a Church-Slavic dictionary, nor an arithmetic, nor a geography, nor a history for the popular schools. All the forces are absorbed in writing text-books for the instruction of children in subjects they need not and ought not to be taught in school, because they are taught them in life. Of course, there is no end to the writing of such books; for there can be only one grammar and arithmetic, but of exercises and reflections, like those I have quoted from Bunákov, and of the orders of the decomposition of numbers from Evtushévski, there may be an endless number.
Pedagogy is in the same condition in which a science would be that would teach how a man ought to walk; and people would try to discover rules about how to teach the children, how to enjoin them to contract this muscle, stretch that muscle, and so forth. This condition of the new pedagogy results directly from its two fundamental principles: (1) that the aim of the school is development and not science, and (2) that development and the means for attaining it may be theoretically defined. From this has consistently resulted that miserable and frequently ridiculous condition in which the whole matter of the schools now is. Forces are wasted in vain, and the masses, who at the present moment are thirsting for education, as the dried-up grass thirsts for rain, and are ready to receive it, and beg for it,—instead of a loaf receive a stone, and are perplexed to understand whether they were mistaken in regarding education as something good, or whether something is wrong in what is being offered to them. That matters are really so there cannot be the least doubt for any man who becomes acquainted with the present theory of teaching and knows the actual condition of the school among the masses. Involuntarily there arises the question: how could honest, cultured people, who sincerely love their work and wish to do good,—for such I regard the majority of my opponents to be,—have arrived at such a strange condition and be in such deep error?
This question has interested me, and I will try to communicate those answers which have occurred to me. Many causes have led to it. The most natural cause which has led pedagogy to the false path on which it now stands, is the criticism of the old order, the criticism for the sake of criticism, without positing new principles in the place of those criticized. Everybody knows that criticizing is an easy business, and that it is quite fruitless and frequently harmful, if by the side of what is condemned one does not point out the principles on the basis of which this condemnation is uttered. If I say that such and such a thing is bad because I do not like it, or because everybody says that it is bad, or even because it is really bad, but do not know how it ought to be right, the criticism will always be useless and injurious. The views of the pedagogues of the new school are, above all, based on the criticism of previous methods. Even now, when it seems there would be no sense in striking a prostrate person, we read and hear in every manual, in every discussion, "that it is injurious to read without comprehension; that it is impossible to learn by heart the definitions of numbers and operations with numbers; that senseless memorizing is injurious; that it is injurious to operate with thousands without being able to count 2-3," and so forth. The chief point of departure is the criticism of the old methods and the concoction of new ones to be as diametrically opposed to the old as possible, but by no means the positing of new foundations of pedagogy, from which new methods might result.
It is very easy to criticize the old-fashioned method of studying reading by means of learning by heart whole pages of the psalter, and of studying arithmetic by memorizing what a number is, and so forth. I will remark, in the first place, that nowadays there is no need of attacking these methods, because there will hardly be found any teachers who would defend them, and, in the second place, that if, criticizing such phenomena, they want to let it be known that I am a defender of the antiquated method of instruction, it is no doubt due to the fact that my opponents, in their youth, do not know that nearly twenty years ago I with all my might and main fought against those antiquated methods of pedagogy and coöperated in their abolition.
And thus it was found that the old methods of instruction were not good for anything, and, without building any new foundation, they began to look for new methods. I say "without building any new foundation," because there are only two permanent foundations of pedagogy:
(1) The determination of the criterion of what ought to be taught, and (2) the criterion of how it has to be taught, that is, the determination that the chosen subjects are most necessary, and that the chosen method is the best.
Nobody has even paid any attention to these foundations, and each school has in its own justification invented quasi-philosophical justificatory reflections. But this "theoretical substratum," as Mr. Bunákov has accidentally expressed himself quite well, cannot be regarded as a foundation. For the old method of instruction possessed just such a theoretical substratum.
The real, peremptory question of pedagogy, which fifteen years ago I vainly tried to put in all its significance, "Why ought we to know this or that, and how shall we teach it?" has not even been touched. The result of this has been that as soon as it became apparent that the old method was not good, they did not try to find out what the best method would be, but immediately set out to discover a new method which would be the very opposite of the old one. They did as a man may do who finds his house to be cold in winter and does not trouble himself about learning why it is cold, or how to help matters, but at once tries to find another house which will as little as possible resemble the one he is living in. I was then abroad, and I remember how I everywhere came across messengers roving all over Europe in search of a new faith, that is, officials of the ministry, studying German pedagogy.
We have adopted the methods of instruction current with our nearest neighbors, the Germans, in the first place, because we are always prone to imitate the Germans; in the second, because it was the most complicated and cunning of methods, and if it comes to taking something from abroad, of course, it has to be the latest fashion and what is most cunning; in the third, because, in particular, these methods were more than any others opposed to the old way. And thus, the new methods were taken from the Germans, and not by themselves, but with a theoretical substratum, that is, with a quasi-philosophical justification of these methods.
This theoretical substratum has done great service. The moment parents or simply sensible people, who busy themselves with the question of education, express their doubt about the efficacy of these methods, they are told: "And what about Pestalozzi, and Diesterweg, and Denzel, and Wurst, and methodics, heuristics, didactics, concentrism?" and the bold people wave their hands, and say: "God be with them,—they know better." In these German methods there also lay this other advantage (the cause why they stick so eagerly to this method), that with it the teacher does not need to try too much, does not need to go on studying, does not need to work over himself and the methods of instruction. For the greater part of the time the teacher teaches by this method what the children know, and, besides, teaches it from a text-book, and that is convenient. And unconsciously, in accordance with an innate human weakness, the teacher is fond of this convenience. It is very pleasant for me, with my firm conviction that I am teaching and doing an important and very modern work, to tell the children from the book about the suslik, or about a horse's having four legs, or to transpose the cubes by twos and by threes, and ask the children how much two and two is; but if, instead of telling about the suslik, the teacher had to tell or read something interesting, to give the foundations of grammar, geography, sacred history, and of the four operations, he would at once be led to working over himself, to reading much, and to refreshing his knowledge.
Thus, the old method was criticized, and a new one was taken from the Germans. This method is so foreign to our Russian un-pedantic mental attitude, its monstrosity is so glaring, that one would think that it could never have been grafted on Russia, and yet it is being applied, even though only in a small measure, and in some way gives at times better results than the old church method. This is due to the fact that, since it was taken in our country (just as it originated in Germany) from the criticism of the old method, the faults of the former method have really been rejected, though, in its extreme opposition to the old method, which, with the pedantry characteristic of the Germans, has been carried to the farthest extreme, there have appeared new faults, which are almost greater than the former ones.
Formerly reading was taught in Russia by attaching to the consonants useless endings (buki—uki, vyedi—yedi), and in Germany es em de ce, and so forth, by attaching a vowel to each consonant, now in front, and now behind, and that caused some difficulty. Now they have fallen into the other extreme, by trying to pronounce the consonants without the vowels, which is an apparent impossibility. In Ushínski's grammar (Ushínski is with us the father of the sound method), and in all the manuals on sound, a consonant is defined thus: "That sound which cannot be pronounced by itself." And it is this sound which the pupil is taught before any other. When I remarked that it is impossible to pronounce b alone, but that it always gives you bŭ, I was told that was due to the inability of some persons, and that it took great skill to pronounce a consonant. And I have myself seen a teacher correct a pupil more than ten times, though he seemed quite satisfactorily to pronounce short b, until at last the pupil began to talk nonsense. And it is with these b's, that is, sounds that cannot be pronounced, as Ushínski defines them, or the pronunciation of which demands special skill, that the instruction of reading begins according to the pedantic German manuals.
Formerly syllables were senselessly learned by heart (that was bad); diametrically opposed to this, the new fashion enjoins us not to divide up into syllables at all, which is absolutely impossible in a long word, and which in reality is never done. Every teacher, according to the sound method, feels the necessity of letting a pupil rest after a part of a word, having him pronounce it separately. Formerly they used to read the psalter, which, on account of its high and deep style, is incomprehensible to the children (which was bad); in contrast to this the children are made to read sentences without any contents whatever, to explain intelligible words, or to learn by heart what they cannot understand. In the old school the teacher did not speak to the pupil at all; now the teacher is ordered to talk to them on anything and everything, on what they know already, or what they do not need to know. In mathematics they formerly learned by heart the definition of operations, but now they no longer have anything to do with operations, for, according to Evtushévski, they reach numeration only in the third year, and it is assumed that for a whole year they are to be taught nothing but numbers up to ten. Formerly the pupils were made to work with large abstract numbers, without paying any attention to the other side of mathematics, to the disentanglement of the problem (the formation of an equation). Now they are taught solving puzzles, forming equations with small numbers before they know numeration and how to operate with numbers, though experience teaches any teacher that the difficulty of forming equations or the solution of puzzles are overcome by a general development in life, and not in school.
It has been observed—quite correctly—that there is no greater aid for a pupil, when he is puzzled by a problem with large numbers, than to give him the same problem with smaller numbers. The pupil, who in life learns to grope through problems with small numbers, is conscious of the process of solving, and transfers this process to the problem with large numbers. Having observed this, the new pedagogues try to teach only the solving of puzzles with small numbers, that is, what cannot form the subject of instruction and is only the work of life.
In the instruction of grammar the new school has again remained consistent with its point of departure,—with the criticism of the old and the adoption of the diametrically opposite method. Formerly they used to learn by heart the definition of the parts of speech, and from etymology passed over to syntax; now they not only begin with syntax, but even with logic, which the children are supposed to acquire. According to the grammar of Mr. Bunákov, which is an abbreviation of Perevlévski's grammar, even with the same choice of examples, the study of grammar begins with syntactical analysis, which is so difficult and, I will say, so uncertain for the Russian language, which does not fully comply with the classic forms of syntax. To sum up, the new school has removed certain disadvantages, of which the chief are the superfluous addition to the consonants and the memorizing of definitions, and in this it is superior to the old method, and in reading and writing sometimes gives better results; but, on the other hand, it has introduced new defects, which are that the contents of the reading are most senseless and that arithmetic is no longer taught as a study.
In practice (I can refer in this to all the inspectors of schools, to all the members of school councils, who have visited the schools, and to all the teachers), in practice, in the majority of schools, where the German method is prescribed, this is what takes place, with rare exceptions. The children learn not by the sound system, but by the method of letter composition; instead of saying b, v, they say bŭ, vŭ, and break up the words into syllables. The object instruction is entirely lost sight of, arithmetic does not proceed at all, and the children have absolutely nothing to read. The teachers quite unconsciously depart from the theoretical demands and fall in with the needs of the masses. These practical results, which are repeated everywhere, should, it seems, prove the incorrectness of the method itself; but among the pedagogues, those that write manuals and prescribe rules, there exists such a complete ignorance of and aversion to the knowledge of the masses and their demands that the relation of reality to these methods does not in the least impair the progress of their business. It is hard to imagine the conception about the masses which exists in this world of the pedagogues, and from which result their method and all the consequent manner of instruction.
Mr. Bunákov, in proof of how necessary the object instruction and development is for the children of a Russian school, with extraordinary naïveté adduces Pestalozzi's words: "Let any one who has lived among the common people," he says, "contradict my words that there is nothing more difficult than to impart any idea to these creatures. Nobody, indeed, gainsays that. The Swiss pastors affirm that when the people come to them to receive instruction they do not understand what they are told, and the pastors do not understand what the people say to them. City dwellers who settle in the country are amazed at the inability of the country population to express themselves; years pass before the country servants learn to express themselves to their masters." This relation of the common people in Switzerland to the cultured class is assumed as the foundation for just such a relation in Russia.
I regard it as superfluous to expatiate on what is known to everybody, that in Germany the people speak a special language, called Plattdeutsch, and that in the German part of Switzerland this Plattdeutsch is especially far removed from the German language, whereas in Russia we frequently speak a bad language, while the masses always speak a good Russian, and that in Russia it will be more correct to put these words of Pestalozzi in the mouth of peasants speaking of the teachers. A peasant and his boy will say quite correctly that it is very hard to understand what those creatures, meaning the teachers, say. The ignorance about the masses is so complete in this world of the pedagogues that they boldly say that to the peasant school come little savages, and therefore boldly teach them what is down and what up, that a blackboard is placed on a stand, and that underneath it there is a groove. They do not know that if the pupils asked the teacher, there would turn up very many things which the teacher would not know; that, for example, if you rub off the paint from the board, nearly any boy will tell you of what kind of wood the board is made, whether of pine, linden, or aspen, which the teacher cannot tell; that a boy will always tell better than the teacher about a cat or a chicken, because he has observed them better than the teacher; that instead of the problem about the wagons the boy knows the problems about the crows, about the cattle, and about the geese. (About the crows: There flies a flock of crows, and there stand some oak-trees: if two crows alight on each, a crow will be lacking; if one on each, an oak-tree will be lacking. How many crows and how many oak-trees are there? About the cattle: For one hundred rubles buy one hundred animals,—calves at half a ruble, cows at three rubles, and oxen at ten rubles. How many oxen, cows, and calves are there?) The pedagogues of the German school do not even suspect that quickness of perception, that real vital development, that contempt for everything false, that ready ridicule of everything false, which are inherent in every Russian peasant boy,—and only on that account so boldly (as I myself have seen), under the fire of forty pairs of intelligent youthful eyes, perform their tricks at the risk of ridicule. For this reason, a real teacher, who knows the masses, no matter how sternly he is enjoined to teach the peasant children what is up and what down, and that two and three is five, not one real teacher, who knows the pupils with whom he has to deal, will be able to do that.
Thus, the chief causes which have led us into such error are: (1) the ignorance about the masses; (2) the involuntarily seductive ease of teaching the children what they already know; (3) our proneness to imitate the Germans, and (4) the criticism of the old, without putting down a new, foundation. This last cause has led the pedagogues of the new school to this, that, in spite of the extreme external difference of the new method from the old, it is identical with it in its foundation, and, consequently, in the methods of instruction and in the results. In either method the essential principle consists in the teacher's firm and absolute knowledge of what to teach and how to teach, and this knowledge of his he does not draw from the demands of the masses and from experience, but simply decides theoretically once for all that he must teach this or that and in such a way, and so he teaches. The pedagogue of the ancient school, which for briefness' sake I shall call the church school, knows firmly and absolutely that he must teach from the prayer-book and the psalter by making the children learn by rote, and he admits no alterations in his methods; in the same manner the teacher of the new, the German, school knows firmly and absolutely that he must teach according to Bunákov and Evtushévski, begin with the words "whisker" and "wasp," ask what is up and what down, and tell about the favorite suslik, and he admits no alterations in his method. Both of them base their opinion on the firm conviction that they know the best methods. From the identity of the foundations arises also a further similarity. If you tell a teacher of the church reading that it takes the children a long time and causes them difficulty to acquire reading and writing, he will reply that the main interest is not in the reading and writing, but in the "divine instruction," by which he means the study of the church books. The same you will be told by a teacher of Russian reading according to the German method. He will tell you (all say and write it) that the main question is not the rapidity of the acquisition of the art of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but in the "development." Both place the aim of instruction in something independent of reading, writing, and arithmetic, that is, of science, in something else, which is absolutely necessary.
This similarity continues down to the minutest details. In either method all instruction previous to the school, all knowledge acquired outside the school, is not taken into account,—all entering pupils are regarded as equally ignorant, and all are made to learn from the beginning. If a boy who knows the letters and the syllables a, be, enters a church school, he is made to change them to buki-az—ba. The same is true of the German school.
Just so, in either school it happens that some children cannot learn the rudiments.
Just so, with either method, the mechanical side of instruction predominates over the mental. In either school the pupils excel in a good handwriting and good enunciation with absolutely exact reading, that is, not as it is spoken, but as it is written. Just so, with either method, there always reigns an external order in the school, and the children are in constant fear and can be guided only with the greatest severity. Mr. Korolév has incidentally remarked that in instruction according to the sound method blows are not neglected. I have seen the same in the schools of the German method, and I assume that without blows it is impossible to get along even in the new German school, because, like the church school, it teaches without asking what the pupil finds interesting to know, but what, in the teacher's opinion, seems necessary, and so the school can be based only on compulsion. Compulsion is attained with children generally by means of blows. The church and the new German school, starting from the same principles and arriving at the same results, are absolutely identical. But, if it came to choosing one of the two, I should still prefer the church school. The defects are the same, but on the side of the church school is the custom of a thousand years and the authority of the church, which is so powerful with the masses.
Having finished the analysis and criticism of the German school, I consider it necessary,—in view of what I have said, namely, that criticism is fruitful only when, condemning, it points out how that which is bad ought to be,—I consider it necessary to speak of those foundations of instruction which I regard as legitimate, and on which I rear my method of instruction.
In order to elucidate in what I find these unquestionable foundations of every pedagogical activity, I shall be compelled to repeat myself, that is, to repeat what I said fifteen years ago in the pedagogical periodical, Yásnaya Polyána, which I then published. This repetition will not be tedious for the pedagogues of the new school, because what I then wrote is not exactly forgotten, but has never been considered by the pedagogues,—and yet I still think that just what was expressed by me at that time might have placed pedagogy, as a theory, on a firm foundation. Fifteen years ago, when I took up the matter of popular education without any preconceived theories or views on the subject, with the one desire to advance the matter in a direct and straightforward manner, I, as a teacher in my school, was at once confronted with two questions: (1) What must I teach? and (2) How must I teach it?
At that time, even as at the present, there existed the greatest diversity of opinion in the answers to these questions.
I know that some pedagogues, who are locked up in their narrow theoretical world, think that there is no other light than what peeps through the windows, and that there is no longer any diversity of opinions.
I ask those who think so to observe that it only seems so to them, just as it seems so to the circles that are opposed to them. In the whole mass of people who are interested in education, there exists, as it has existed before, the greatest diversity of opinions. Formerly, just as now, some, in reply to the question of what ought to be taught, said that outside of the rudiments the most useful information for a primary school is obtained from the natural sciences; others, even as now, that that was not necessary, and was even injurious; even as now, some proposed history, or geography, while others denied their necessity; some proposed the Church-Slavic language and grammar, and religion, while others found that, too, superfluous, and ascribed a prime importance to "development." On the question of how to teach there has always been a still greater diversity of answers. The most diversified methods of instructing in reading and arithmetic have been proposed.
In the bookstalls there were sold, side by side, the self-teachers according to the buki-az—ba, Bunákov's lessons, Zolotóv's charts, Madame Daragán's alphabets, and all had their advocates. When I encountered these questions and found no answer for them in Russian literature, I turned to the literature of Europe. After having read what had been written on the subject and having made the personal acquaintance of the so-called best representatives of the pedagogical science in Europe, I not only failed to find anywhere an answer to the question I was interested in, but I convinced myself that this question does not even exist for pedagogy, as a science; that every pedagogue of any given school firmly believed that the methods which he used were the best, because they were based on absolute truth, and that it would be useless for him to look at them with a critical eye.
However, because, as I said, I took up the matter of popular education without any preconceived notions, or because I took up the matter without prescribing laws from a distance about how I ought to teach, but became a schoolmaster in a village popular school in the backwoods,—I could not reject the idea that there must of necessity exist a criterion by means of which the question could be solved: What to teach and how to teach it. Should I teach the psalter by heart, or the classification of the organisms? Should I teach according to the sound alphabet, translated from the German, or from the prayer-book? In the solution of this question I was aided by a certain pedagogical tact, with which I am gifted, and especially by that close and impassioned relation in which I stood to the matter.
When I entered at once into the closest direct relations with those forty tiny peasants that formed my school (I call them tiny peasants because I found in them the same characteristics of perspicacity, the same immense store of information from practical life, of jocularity, simplicity, and loathing for everything false, which distinguish the Russian peasant), when I saw that susceptibility, that readiness to acquire the information which they needed, I felt at once that the antiquated church method of instruction had outlived its usefulness and was not good for them. I began to experiment on other proposed methods of instruction; but, because compulsion in education, both by my conviction and by my character, are repulsive to me, I did not exercise any pressure, and, the moment I noticed that something was not readily received, I did not compel them, and looked for something else. From these experiments it appeared to me and to those teachers who instructed with me at Yásnaya Polyána and in other schools on the same principle of freedom, that nearly everything which in the pedagogical world was written about schools was separated by an immeasurable abyss from reality, and that many of the proposed methods, such as object-lessons, the natural sciences, the sound method, and others, called forth contempt and ridicule, and were not accepted by the pupils. We began to look for those contents and those methods which were readily taken up by the pupils, and struck that which forms my method of instruction.
But this method stood in a line with all other methods, and the question of why it was better than the rest remained as unsolved as before. Consequently, the question of what the criterion was as to what to teach and how to teach received an even greater meaning for me; only by solving it could I be convinced that what I taught was neither injurious nor useless. This question both then and now has appeared to me as a corner-stone of the whole pedagogy, and to the solution of this question I devoted the publication of the pedagogical periodical Yásnaya Polyána. In several articles (I do not renounce anything I then said) I tried to put the question in all its significance and to solve it as much as I could. At that time I found no sympathy in all the pedagogical literature, not even any contradiction, but the most complete indifference to the question which I put. There were some attacks on certain details and trifles, but the question itself evidently did not interest any one. I was young then, and that indifference grieved me. I did not understand that with my question, "How do you know what to teach and how to teach?" I was like a man who, let us say, in a gathering of Turkish pashas discussing the question in what manner they may collect the greatest revenue from the people, should propose to them the following: "Gentlemen, in order to know how much revenue to collect from each, we must first analyze the question on what your right to exact that revenue is based." Obviously all the pashas would continue their discussion of the measures of extortion, and would reply only with silence to his irrelevant question. But the question cannot be circumvented. Fifteen years ago no attention was paid to it, and the pedagogues of every school, convinced that everybody else was talking to the wind and that they were right, most calmly prescribed their laws, basing their principles on philosophies of a very doubtful character, which they used as a substratum for their wee little theories.
And yet, this question is not quite so difficult if we only renounce completely all preconceived notions. I have tried to elucidate and solve this question, and, without repeating those proofs, which he who wishes may read in the article, I will enunciate the results to which I was led. "The only criterion of pedagogy is freedom, the only method—experience." After fifteen years I have not changed my opinion one hair's breadth; but I consider it necessary to define with greater precision what I understand by these words, not only in respect to education in general, but also in respect to the particular question of popular education in a primary school. One hundred years ago the question what to teach and how to teach could have had no place either in Europe or with us. Education was inseparably connected with religion. To learn reading meant to learn Holy Writ. In the Mohammedan countries this relation of the rudiments and religion still persists in its full force. To learn means to learn the Koran, and, therefore, Arabic. But the moment religion ceased to be the criterion of what ought to be taught, and the school became independent of it, this question had to arise. But it did not arise because the school was not suddenly freed from its dependence on religion, but by imperceptible steps. Now it is accepted by everybody that religion cannot serve as the contents, nor as an indication of the method of education, and that education has different demands for its basis. In what do these demands consist? On what are they based? In order that these principles should be incontrovertible, it is necessary either that they be proved philosophically, incontrovertibly, or that, at least, all educated people should be agreed on them. But is it so? There can be no doubt whatsoever about this, that in philosophy have not been found those principles on which could be built up the decision of what ought to be taught, the more so since the matter itself is not an abstract, but a practical affair, which depends on an endless number of vital conditions. Still less can these principles be discovered in the common consent of all men who busy themselves with this matter, in the consent which we may take as a practical foundation, as an expression of the universal common sense. Not only in matters of popular, but even of higher education do we see a complete diversity of opinions among the best representatives of education, as, for example, in the question of classicism and realism. And yet, in spite of the absence of any foundations, we see education proceeding on its own path and on the whole being guided by only one principle, namely by freedom. There exist side by side the classical and the real school, each of which is prepared to regard itself as the only natural school, and both satisfy some want, for parents send their children to either.
In the popular school the right to determine what the children shall learn, no matter from what standpoint we may consider this question, belongs just as much to the masses, that is, either to the pupils themselves, or to the parents who send the children to school, and so the answer to the question what the children are to be taught in a popular school can be got only from the masses. But, perhaps, we shall say that we, as highly cultured people, must not submit to the demands of the rude masses and that we must teach the masses what to wish. Thus many think, but to that I can give this one answer: give us a firm, incontrovertible foundation why this or that is chosen by you, show me a society in which the two diametrically opposed views on education do not exist among the highly cultured people; where it is not eternally repeated that if education falls into the hands of the clergy, the masses are educated in one sense, and if education falls into the hands of the progressists, the people are educated in another sense,—show me a state of society where that does not exist, and I will agree with you. So long as that does not exist, there is no criterion except the freedom of the learner, where, in matters of the popular school, the place of the learning children is taken by their parents, that is, by the needs of the masses.
These needs are not only definite, quite clear, and everywhere the same throughout Russia, but also so intelligent and broad that they include all the most diversified demands of the people who are debating what the masses ought to be taught. These needs are: the knowledge of Russian and Church-Slavic reading, and calculation. The masses everywhere and always regard the natural sciences as useless trifles. Their program is remarkable not only by its unanimity and firm definiteness, but, in my opinion, also by the breadth of its demands and the correctness of its view. The masses admit two spheres of knowledge, the most exact and the least subject to vacillation from a diversity of views,—the languages and mathematics; everything else they regard as trifles. I think that the masses are quite correct,—in the first place, because in this knowledge there can be no half information, no falseness, which they cannot bear, and, in the second, because the sphere of those two kinds of knowledge is immense. Russian and Church-Slavic grammar and calculation, that is, the knowledge of one dead and one living language, with their etymological and syntactical forms and their literatures, and arithmetic, that is, the foundation of all mathematics, form their program of knowledge, which, unfortunately, but the rarest of the cultured class possess. In the third place, the masses are right, because by this program they will be taught in the primary school only what will open to them the more advanced paths of knowledge, for it is evident that the thorough knowledge of two languages and their forms, and, in addition to them, of arithmetic, completely opens the paths to an independent acquisition of all other knowledge. The masses, as though feeling the false relation to them, when they are offered incoherent scraps of all kinds of information, repel that lie from themselves, and say: "I need know but this much,—the church language and my own and the laws of the numbers, but that other knowledge I will take myself if I want it."
Thus, if we admit freedom as the criterion of what is to be taught, the program of the popular schools is clearly and firmly defined, until the time when the masses shall express some new demands. Church-Slavic and Russian and arithmetic to their highest possible stages, and nothing else but that. That is the determination of the limits of the program of the popular school, which, however, does not presume that all three subjects be introduced systematically. With such a program the attainment of symmetrical results in all three subjects would naturally be desirable; but it cannot be said that the predominance of one subject over another would be injurious. The problem consists only in keeping within the limits of the program. It may happen that from the demands of the parents, and especially from the knowledge of the teacher, this or that subject will be more prominent,—with a clerical person the Church-Slavic language, with a teacher from a county school—either Russian or arithmetic; in all these cases the demands of the masses will be satisfied, and the instruction will not depart from its fundamental criterion.
The second part of the question, how to teach, that is, how to discover which method is the best, has remained just as unsolved.
Just as in the first part of the question of what to teach, the assumption that on the basis of reflections it is possible to build a program of instruction leads to contradictory schools, so it is also with the question as to how to teach. Let us take the very first stage of the teaching of reading. One asserts that it is easier to teach so from cards; another—according to the b, v system; a third—according to Korf; a fourth—according to the be, ve, ge system, and so forth. It is said that the nuns teach reading in six weeks by the buki-az—ba system. And every teacher, convinced of the superiority of his method, proves this superiority either by the fact that he teaches with it faster than others, or by reflections of the character which Mr. Bunákov and the German pedagogues adduce. At the present time, when there are thousands of examples, we ought to know precisely by what to be guided in our choice. Neither theory, nor reflections, nor even the results of instruction can show this completely.
Education and instruction are generally considered in the abstract, that is, the question is discussed how in the best and easiest manner to produce a certain act of instruction on a certain subject (whether it be one child or a mass of children). This view is quite faulty. All education and instruction can be viewed only as a certain relation of two persons or of two groups of persons having for their aim education or instruction. This definition, more general than all the other definitions, has special reference to popular education, where the question is the education of an immense number of persons, and where there can be no question about an ideal education. In general, with the popular education we cannot put the question, "How is the best education to be given?" just as with the question of the nutrition of the masses we cannot ask how the most nutritious and best loaf is to be baked. The question has to be put like this: "How is the best relation to be established between given people who want to learn and others who want to teach?" or, "How is the best bread to be made from given bolted flour?" Consequently the question of how to teach and what is the best method is a question of what will be the best relation between teacher and pupil.
Nobody, I suppose, will deny that the best relation between teacher and pupil is that of naturalness, and that the contrary relation is that of compulsion. If so, the measure of all methods is to be found in the greater or lesser naturalness of relations and, therefore, in the lesser or greater compulsion in instruction. The less the children are compelled to learn, the better is the method; the more—the worse. I am glad that I do not have to prove this evident truth. Everybody is agreed that just as in hygiene the use of any food, medicine, exercise, that provokes loathing or pain, cannot be useful, so also in instruction can there be no necessity of compelling children to learn anything that is tiresome and repulsive to them, and that, if necessity demands that children be compelled, it only proves the imperfection of the method. Any one who has taught children has no doubt observed that the less the teacher himself knows the subject which he teaches and the less he likes it, the more will he have to have recourse to severity and compulsion; on the contrary, the more the teacher knows and loves his subject, the more natural and easy will his instruction be. With the idea that for successful instruction not compulsion is wanted, but the rousing of the pupil's interest, all the pedagogues of the school which is opposed to me agree. The only difference between us is that the conception that the teaching must rouse the child's interest is with them lost in a mass of other conflicting notions about "development," of the value of which they are convinced and in which they exercise compulsion; whereas I consider the rousing of the pupil's interest, the greatest possible ease, and, therefore, the non-compulsion and naturalness of instruction as the fundamental and only measure of good and bad instruction.
Every progress of pedagogy, if we attentively consider the history of this matter, consists in an ever increasing approximation toward naturalness of relations between teacher and pupil, in a lessened compulsion, and in a greater ease of instruction.
The objection was formerly made and, I know, is made even now that it is hard to find the limit of freedom which shall be permitted in school. To this I will reply that this limit is naturally determined by the teacher, his knowledge, his ability to manage the school; that this freedom cannot be prescribed; the measure of this freedom is only the result of the greater or lesser knowledge and talent of the teacher. This freedom is not a rule, but serves as a check in comparing schools between themselves, and as a check in comparing new methods which are introduced into the school curriculum. The school in which there is less compulsion is better than the one in which there is more. The method which at its introduction into the school does not demand an increase of discipline is good; but the one which demands greater severity is certainly bad. Take, for example, a more or less free school, such as mine was, and try to start a conversation in it about the table and the ceiling, or to transpose cubes,—you will see what it hubbub will arise in the school and how you will feel the necessity of restoring order by means of severity; try to tell them an interesting story, or to give them problems, or make one write on the board and let the others correct his mistakes, and allow them to leave the benches, and you will find them all occupied and there will be no naughtiness, and you will not have to increase your severity,—and you may safely say that the method is good.
In my pedagogical articles I have given theoretical reasons why I find that only the freedom of choice on the side of the learners as to what they are to be taught and how can form a foundation of any instruction; in practice I have always applied these rules in the schools under my guidance, at first on a large scale, and later in narrower limits, and the results have always been very good, both for the teachers and the pupils, as also for the evolution of new methods,—and this I assert boldly, for hundreds of visitors have come to the Yásnaya Polyána school and know all about it.
The consequences of such a relation to the pupils has been for the teachers that they did not consider that method best which they knew, but tried to discover other methods, became acquainted with other teachers for the purpose of learning their methods, tested new methods, and, above all, were learning something all the time. A teacher never permitted himself to think that in cases of failure it was the pupils' fault,—their laziness, playfulness, dullness, deafness, stammering,—but was firmly convinced that he alone was to blame for it, and for every failure of a pupil or of all the pupils he tried to find a remedy. For the pupils the result was that they learned readily, always begged the teachers to give them evening classes in the winter, and were absolutely free in the school,—which, in my conviction and experience, is the chief condition for successful progress in instruction. Between teachers and pupils there were always established friendly, natural relations, with which alone it is possible for the teacher to know his pupils well. If, from a first, external impression of the school, we were to determine the difference between the church, the German, and my own school, it would be this: in a church school you hear a peculiar, unnatural, monotonous shouting of all the pupils and now and then the stern cries of the teacher; in the German school you hear only the teacher's voice and now and then the timid voices of the pupils; in mine you hear the loud voices of the teachers and the pupils, almost simultaneously.
As for the methods of instruction the consequences were that not one method of instruction was adopted or rejected because it was liked or not, but only because it was accepted or not by the pupils without compulsion. But in addition to the good results which were always obtained without fail from the application of my method by myself and by everybody else (more than twenty teachers), who taught according to my method ("without fail" I say for the reason that not once did we have a pupil who did not learn the rudiments), besides these results, the application of the principles of which I have spoken had the effect that during these fifteen years all the various modifications, to which my method was subjected, not only did not remove it from the needs of the masses, but, on the contrary, brought it nearer and nearer to them. The masses, at least in our parts, know the method itself and discuss it, and prefer it to the church method, which I cannot say of the sound method. In the schools which are conducted according to my method the teacher cannot remain motionless in his knowledge, such as he is and must be with the method of sounds. If a teacher according to the new German fashion wants to go ahead and perfect himself, he has to follow the pedagogical literature, that is, to read all those new inventions about the conversations about the suslik and about the transposition of the squares. I do not think that that can promote his personal education. On the contrary, in my school, where the subjects of instruction, language and mathematics, demand positive knowledge, every teacher, in advancing his pupils, feels the need of learning himself, which was constantly the case with all the teachers I had.
Besides, the methods of instruction themselves, which are not settled once for all, but always strive to be as easy and as simple as possible, are modified and improved from the indications which the teacher discovers in the relations of the learners to his instruction.
The very opposite to this I see in what, unfortunately, takes place in the schools of the German pattern, which of late have been introduced in our country in an artificial manner. The failure to recognize that before deciding what to teach and how to teach we must solve the question how we can find that out has led the pedagogues to a complete disagreement with reality, and the abyss which fifteen years ago was felt to exist between theory and practice has now reached the farthest limits. Now that the masses are on all sides begging for education, while pedagogy has more than ever passed to personal fancies, this discord has reached incredible proportions.
This discord between the demands of pedagogy and reality has of late found its peculiarly striking expression not only in the matter of instruction itself, but also in another very important side of the school, namely in its administration. In order to show in what condition this matter has been and might be, I shall speak of Krapívensk County of the Government of Túla, in which I live, which I know, and which, from its position, forms the type of the majority of counties of central Russia.
In 1862 fourteen schools were opened in a district of ten thousand souls, when I was rural judge; besides, there existed about ten schools in the district among the clericals and in the manors among the servants. In the three remaining districts of the county there were fifteen large and thirty small schools among the clericals and manorial servants. Without saying anything about the number of the learners, of which, I assume, there were in general not less than now, nor about the instruction itself, which was partly bad and partly good, but on the whole not worse than at present, I will tell how and on what that business was based.
All schools were then, with few exceptions, based on a free agreement of the teacher with the parents of the pupils, or with the whole partnership of the peasants paying a lump sum for everybody. Such a relation between the parents or Communes and the teachers is even now met with in some exceedingly rare places of our county and of the Government in general. Everybody will agree that, leaving aside the question of the quality of instruction, such a relation of the teacher to the parents and peasants is most just, natural, and desirable. But, with the introduction of the law of 1864, this relation was abolished and is being abolished more and more. Everybody who knows the matter as it is will observe that with the abolition of this relation the people take less and less part in the matter of their education, which is only natural. In some County Councils the school tax of the peasants is even turned into the County Council, and the salary, appointment of teachers, location of schools,—all that is done quite independently of those for whom it is intended (in theory the peasants, no doubt, are members of the County Council, but in practice they have through this mediation no influence on their own schools). Nobody will, I suppose, assert that that is just, but some will say: "The illiterate peasants cannot judge what is good and what bad, and we must build for them as well as we can." But how do we know? Do we know firmly, are we all of one opinion, how to build schools? And does it not frequently turn out bad, for we have built much worse than they have?
Thus, in relation to the administrative side of the schools I have again to put a third question, on the same basis of freedom: Why do we know how best to arrange a school? To this question German pedagogy gives an answer which is quite consistent with its whole system. It knows what the best school is, it has formed a clear, definite ideal, down to the minutest details, the benches, the hours of instruction, and so forth, and gives an answer: the school has to be such and such, according to this pattern,—this alone is good and every other school is injurious. I know that, although the desire of Henry IV. to give each Frenchman soup and a chicken was unrealizable, it was impossible to say that the desire was false. But the matter assumes an entirely different aspect when the soup is of a very questionable quality and is not a chicken soup, but a worthless broth. And yet the so-called science of pedagogy is in this matter indissolubly connected with power; both in Germany and with us there are prescribed certain ideal one-class, two-class schools, and so forth; and the pedagogical and the administrative powers do not wish to know the fact that the masses would like to attend to their own education. Let us see how such a view of popular education has been reflected in practice on the question of education.
Beginning with the year 1862 the idea that education was necessary has more and more spread among the masses: on all sides schools were established by church servants, hired teachers, and the Communes. Whether good or bad, these schools were spontaneous and grew out directly from the needs of the masses; with the introduction of the law of 1864 this tendency was increased, and in 1870 there were, according to the reports, about sixty schools in Krapívensk County. Since then officials of the ministry and members of the County Council have begun to meddle more and more with school matters, and in Krapívensk County forty schools have been closed and schools of a lower order have been prohibited from being opened. I know that those who closed those schools affirm that these schools existed only nominally and were very bad; but I cannot believe it, because I know well-instructed pupils from three villages, Trósna, Lamíntsovo, and Yásnaya Polyána, where schools were closed. I also know—-and this will seem incredible to many—-what is meant by prohibiting the opening of schools. It means that, on the basis of a circular of the ministry of public instruction, which spoke of the prohibition of unreliable teachers (this, no doubt, had reference to the Nihilists), the school council transferred this prohibition to the minor schools, taught by sextons, soldiers, and so forth, which the peasants themselves had opened, and which, no doubt, are not at all comprised in the circular. But, instead, there exist twenty schools with teachers, who are supposed to be good because they receive a salary of two hundred rubles in silver, and the County Council has distributed Ushínski's text-books, and these schools are called one-class schools, because they teach in them according to a program, and the whole year around, that is, also in summer, with the exception of July and August.
Leaving aside the question of the quality of the former schools, we shall now take a glance at their administrative side, and we will compare, from this side, what was before, with what is now. In the administrative, external side of the school there are five main subjects, which are so closely connected with the school business itself that on their good or bad structure depend to a great extent the success and dissemination of popular education. These five subjects are: (1) the school building, (2) the schedule of instruction, (3) the distribution of the schools according to localities, (4) the choice of the teacher, and—what is most important—(5) the material means, the remuneration of the teachers.
In regard to the school building the masses rarely have any difficulty, when they start a school for themselves, and if the Commune is rich and there are any communal buildings, such as a storehouse or a deserted inn, the Commune fixes it up; if there is none, it buys a building, at times even from a landed proprietor, or it builds one of its own. If the Commune is not well-to-do and is small, it hires quarters from a peasant, or establishes a rotation, and the teacher passes from hut to hut. If the Commune, as it most generally does, selects a teacher from its own midst, a manorial servant, a soldier, or a church servant, the school is located at the house of that person, and the Commune looks only after the heating. In any case, I have never heard that the question of the location of the school ever troubled a Commune, or that half the sum set aside for instruction should be lost, as is done by school councils, on the buildings, nay, not even one-sixth or one-tenth of the whole sum. The peasant Communes have arranged it one way or another, but the question of the school building has never been regarded as troublesome. Only under the influence of the higher authorities do there occur cases where the Communes build brick buildings with iron roofs. The peasants assume that the school is not in the structure, but in the teacher, and that the school is not a permanent institution, but that as soon as the parents have acquired knowledge, the next generation will get the rudiments without a teacher. But the County Council department of the ministry always assumes—since for it the whole problem consists in inspecting and classifying—that the chief foundation of the school is the structure and that the school is a permanent establishment, and so, as far as I know, now spends about one-half of its money on buildings, and inscribes empty school buildings in the list of the schools of the third order. In the Krapívensk County Council seven hundred rubles out of two thousand rubles are spent on buildings. The ministerial department cannot admit that the teacher (that educated pedagogue who is assumed for the masses) would lower himself to such an extent as to be willing to go, like a tailor, from hut to hut, or to teach in a smoky house. But the masses assume nothing and only know that for their money they can hire whom they please, and that, if they, the hiring peasants, live in smoky huts, the hired teacher has no reason to turn up his nose at them.
In regard to the second question, about the division of the school time, the masses have always and everywhere invariably expressed one demand, and that is that the instruction shall be carried on in the winter only.
Everywhere the parents quit sending their children in the spring, and those children who are left in the school, from one-fourth to one-fifth of the whole number, are the little tots or the children of rich parents, and they attend school unwillingly. When the masses hire a teacher themselves, they always hire him by the month and only for the winter. The ministerial department assumes that, just as in the institutions of learning there are two months of vacation, so it ought also to be in a one-class country school. From the standpoint of the ministerial department that is quite reasonable: the children will not forget their instruction, the teacher is provided for during the whole year, and the inspectors find it more comfortable to travel in the summer; but the masses know nothing about all that, and their common sense tells them that in winter the children sleep for ten hours, consequently their minds are fresh; that in winter there are no plays and no work for the children, and that if they study in winter as long as possible, taking in even the evenings, for which a lamp costing one ruble fifty kopecks is needed and kerosene costing as much, there will be enough instruction. Besides, in the summer every boy is of use to the peasant, and in summer proceeds the life instruction, which is more important than school learning. The masses say that there is no reason why they should pay the teacher during the summer. "Rather will we increase his pay for the winter months, and that will please him better. We prefer to hire a teacher at twenty-five rubles a month for seven months, than at twelve rubles a month for the whole year. For the summer the teacher will hire himself out elsewhere."
As to the third question, the distribution of the schools according to localities, the arrangements of the masses most markedly differ from those of the school council. In the first place, the distribution of the schools, that is, whether there shall be more or less of them for a certain locality, always depends on the character of the whole population (when the masses themselves attend to it). Wherever the masses are more industrial and work out, where they are nearer to the cities, where they need the rudiments,—there there are more schools; where the locality is more removed and agricultural, there there are fewer of them. In the second place, when the masses themselves attend to the matter, they distribute the schools in such a way as to give all the parents a chance to make use of the schools in return for their money, that is, to send their children to school. The peasants of small, remote villages of from thirty to forty souls, where half the population will be found, prefer to have a cheap teacher in their own village, than an expensive one in the center of the township, whither their children cannot walk or be driven. By this distribution of the schools, the schools themselves, as arranged by the peasants, depart, it is true, from the required pattern of the school, but, instead, acquire the most diversified forms, everywhere adapting themselves to local conditions. Here a clerical person from a neighboring village teaches eight boys at his house, receiving fifty kopecks a month from each. Here a small village hires a soldier for eight rubles for the winter, and he goes from house to house. Here a rich innkeeper hires a teacher for his children for five rubles and board, and the neighboring peasants join him, by adding two rubles for each of their boys. There a large village or a compact township levies fifteen kopecks from each of the twelve hundred souls and hires a teacher for 180 rubles for the winter. There the priest teaches, receiving as a remuneration either money, or labor, or both. The chief difference in this respect between the view of the peasants and that of the County Council is this: the peasants, according to the more or less favorable local conditions, introduce schools of a better or worse quality, but always in such a way that there is not a single locality where some kind of instruction is not offered; while with the arrangement of the County Council a large half of the population is left outside every possibility of partaking of that education even in the distant future.
In matters of the petty villages, forming one-half of the population, the ministerial department acts most decisively. It says: "We provide schools where there is a building and where the peasants of the township have collected enough money to support a teacher at two hundred rubles. We will contribute from the County Council what is wanting, and the school is entered on the lists." The villages that are removed from the school may send their children there, if they so wish. Of course, the peasants do not take their children there, because it is too far, and yet they pay. Thus, in the Yásenets township all pay for three schools, but only 450 souls in three villages make use of the school, though there are in all three thousand souls; thus, only one-seventh of the population makes use of the school, though all pay for it. In the Chermóshen township there are nine hundred souls and there is a school there, but only thirty pupils attend it, because all the villages of that township are scattered. To nine hundred souls there ought to be four hundred pupils. And yet, both in the Yásenets and the Chermóshen townships the question of the distribution of schools is regarded as satisfactorily solved.
In matters of the choice of a teacher, the masses are again guided by quite different views from the County Council. In choosing a teacher, the masses look upon him in their own way, and judge him accordingly. If the teacher has been in the neighborhood, and the masses know what the results of his teaching are, they value him according to these results as a good or as a bad teacher; but, in addition to the scholastic qualities, the masses demand that the teacher shall be a man who stands in close relations to the peasant, able to understand his life and to speak Russian, and so they will always prefer a country to a city teacher. In doing so, the masses have no bias and no antipathy toward any class in particular: he may be a gentleman, official, burgher, soldier, sexton, priest,—that makes no difference so long as he is a simple man and a Russian. For this reason the peasants have no cause for excluding clerical persons, as the County Councils do. The County Councils select their teachers from among strangers, getting them from the cities, while the masses look for them among themselves. But the chief difference in this respect between the view of the Communes and that of the County Council consists in this: the County Council has only one type,—the teacher who has attended pedagogical courses, who has finished a course in a seminary or school, at two hundred rubles; but with the masses, who do not exclude this teacher and appreciate him, if he is good, there are gradations of all kinds of teachers. Besides, with the majority of school councils there are definite favorite types of teachers, for the most part such as are foreign to the masses and antagonistic to them, and other types which the school councils dislike. Thus, evidently, the favorite type of many counties of the Government of Túla are lady teachers; the disliked type are the clerical persons, and in the whole of the Túla and Krapívensk counties there is not one school with a teacher from the clergy, which is quite remarkable from an administrative point of view. In Krapívensk County there are fifty parishes. The clerical persons are the cheapest of teachers, because they are permanently settled and for the most part can teach in their own houses with the aid of their wives and daughters,—and these are, it seems, purposely avoided, as though they were very harmful people.
In matters of the remuneration of the teachers, the difference between the view of the masses and that of the County Council has almost all been expressed in the preceding pages. It consists in this: (1) the masses choose a teacher according to their means, and they admit and know from experience that there are teachers at all prices, from two puds of flour a month to thirty rubles a month; (2) teachers are to be remunerated for the winter months, for those during which there can be some instruction; (3) the masses, in the housing of the school as also in matters of the remuneration of the teachers, always know how to find a cheap way: they give flour, hay, the use of carts, eggs, and all kinds of trifles, which are imperceptible to the world at large, but which improve the teacher's condition; (4) above all, a teacher is paid, or is remunerated in addition to the payment, by the parents of the pupils, who pay by the month, or by the whole Commune which enjoys the advantages of the school, and not by the administration that has no direct interest in the matter.
The ministerial department cannot act differently in this respect. The norm of the salary for a model teacher is given, consequently these means have to be got together in some way. For example: a Commune intends to open a school,—the township gives it a certain number of kopecks per soul. The County Council calculates how much to add. If there are no demands made by other schools, it gives more, sometimes twice as much as the Commune has given; at times, when all the money has been distributed, it gives less, or entirely refuses to give any. Thus, there is in Krapívensk County a Commune which gives ninety rubles, and the County Council adds to that three hundred rubles for a school with an assistant; and there is another Commune which gives 250 rubles, and the County Council adds another fifty rubles; and a third Commune which offers fifty-six rubles, and the County Council refuses to add anything or to open the school, because that money is insufficient for a normal school, and all the money has been distributed.
Thus, the chief distinctions between the administrative view of the masses and that of the County Council are the following: (1) the County Council pays great attention to the housing and spends large sums upon it, while the masses obviate this difficulty by domestic, economic means, and look upon the primary schools as temporary, passing institutions; (2) the ministerial department demands that instruction be carried on during the whole year, with the exception of July and August, and nowhere introduces evening classes, while the masses demand that instruction be carried on only in the winter and are fond of evening classes; (3) the ministerial department has a definite type of teachers, without which it does not recognize the school, and has a loathing for clerical persons and, in general, for local instructors; the masses recognize no norm and choose their teachers preferably from local inhabitants; (4) the ministerial department distributes the schools by accident, that is, it is guided only by the desire of forming a normal school, and has no care for that greater half of the population which under such a distribution is left outside the school education; the masses not only recognize no definite external form of the school, but in the greatest variety of ways get teachers with all kinds of means, arranging worse and cheaper schools with small means and good and expensive schools with greater means, and turn their attention to furnishing all localities with instruction in return for their money; (5) the ministerial department determines one measure of remuneration, which is sufficiently high, and arbitrarily increases the amount from the County Council; the masses demand the greatest possible economy and distribute the remuneration in such a way that those whose children are taught pay directly.
It seems as though it would be superfluous to expatiate on how clearly the common sense of the masses is expressed in these demands, in contradistinction to that artificial structure, in which, at its very birth, they are trying to imprison the business of popular education. Even besides this, the feeling of justice is involuntarily provoked against such an order of things. See what is taking place. The masses have felt the necessity of education, and have begun to work in the direction of attaining their end. In addition to all the taxes which they pay, they have voluntarily imposed upon themselves the tax for education, that is, they have begun to hire teachers. What have we done? "Oh, you are able to pay," we said, "wait, then, for you are stupid and rude. Let us have the money, and we will arrange it for you in the best manner possible."
The masses have given up their money (as I have said, in many County Councils the levy for the schools has been turned directly into a tax). The money was taken, and the education was arranged for them.
I am not going to repeat about the artificiality of the education, but how the whole matter has been arranged. In Krapívensk County there are forty thousand souls, including girls, according to the last census. According to Bunyakóvski's table of the distribution of ten thousand of the Orthodox population for the year 1862, there ought to be, of the male sex between six and fourteen years, 1,834, and of the female sex, 1,989,—in all 3,823 to each ten thousand. According to my own observations, there ought to be more, no doubt on account of the increase of the population, so that the average school population may boldly be put at four thousand. In a school there are, on an average, in the large centers, about sixty pupils, and in the smaller, from ten to twenty-five. In order that all may receive instruction, the smaller centers, forming the greater half of the population, need schools for ten, fifteen, and twenty pupils, so that the average of a school, in my opinion, would be not more than thirty pupils. How many schools are, then, needed for sixteen thousand pupils? Divide sixteen thousand by thirty, and we get 530 schools. Let us assume that, although at the opening of the schools all pupils from seven to fifteen years of age will enter, not all will attend regularly for the period of eight years; let us reject one-fourth, that is 130 schools and, consequently, 4,200 pupils. Let us say that there are four hundred schools. Only twenty have been opened. The County Council gives two thousand rubles and has added one thousand rubles, making in all three thousand rubles. From some of the peasants, not from all, fifteen kopecks are levied from each soul, in all about four thousand rubles. On the building of schools seven hundred rubles are spent, and on the pedagogical courses twelve hundred rubles have been used in one year. But let us suppose that the County Council will act quite simply and sensibly, and will not waste money on pedagogical courses and other trifles; let us suppose that all peasants will pay the new school tax of fifteen kopecks, what will the future of this matter be? From the peasants six thousand, from the County Council three thousand, in all nine thousand. Let us assume that ten more schools will be added. Nine thousand rubles will barely suffice for the support of these schools, and that only in case the school council will act most prudently and economically. Consequently, with the County Council administration, thirty schools to forty thousand of the population are the highest limit of what the dissemination of the schools in the county may reach. And this limit of the school business can be attained only if the peasants will levy fifteen kopecks on each soul, which is extremely doubtful, and if the disbursement of this money will be in the hands of the peasants, and not of the County Council. I do not speak of the possible increase of three thousand rubles, because this increase of three thousand rubles partly falls back on those same peasants, and on the other hand is not secured by anything, forming only an accidental means. Thus, in order to bring the business of popular education to the state in which it ought to be, that is, in order that there shall be four hundred schools to the forty thousand of the population, and in order that the schools shall not be a toy, but may answer a real want of the masses, there is no other issue than that the peasants be taxed, not fifteen kopecks, but three rubles a soul, in order that the necessary three hundred rubles to each school be obtained. Even then I do not see any reason for thinking that as many schools as are needed would be built.
Do we not see that now, when the simplest arithmetical calculation shows that the only means for the success of the schools is the simplification of methods, the simplicity and cheapness of the arrangement of the school,—the pedagogues are busy, as though having made a wager to concoct a most difficult, most complicated, and expensive (and, I must add, most bad) instruction? In the manuals of Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski I have figured up three hundred rubles' worth of aids to instruction which, in their opinion, are absolutely necessary for the establishment of a primary school. All they talk about in pedagogical circles is how to prepare improved teachers in the seminaries, so that a village might not be able to get them even for four hundred rubles. On that road of perfection, on which pedagogy stands, it is quite apparent to me that if 120,000 rubles were collected in a county, the pedagogues would find use for them all in twenty schools, with adjustable tables, seminaries for teachers, and so forth. Have we not seen that forty schools were closed in Krapívensk County, and that those who closed them were fully convinced that they thus advanced the cause of education, for now they have twenty "good" schools? But what is most remarkable is that those who express these demands are not in the least interested in knowing whether the masses for whom they are preparing all these things want them, and still less, who is going to pay for it all. But the County Councils are so befogged by these demands that they do not see the simple calculation and the simple justice. It is as though a man asked me to buy him two puds of flour for a month, and I bought him for that ruble a box of perfumed confectionery and reproached him for his ignorance, because he was dissatisfied.
As I wish to remain true to my rule that criticism should point out how that which is not good ought to be, I shall try to show how the whole school business ought to be arranged, if it is not to be a plaything, and is to have a future. The answer is the same as to the first two questions,—freedom. The masses must be given the freedom to arrange their schools as they wish, and as little as possible should any one interfere in their arrangement. Only with such a view of the matter will all the obstacles to the dissemination of the schools be obviated, though they have seemed insuperable. The chief obstacles are the insufficiency of the means and the impossibility of increasing them. To the first the masses reply that they are using all the measures at their command to make the schools cost little; to the second they reply that the means will always be found so long as they themselves are the masters, and that they are not willing to increase the means for the support of that which they do not need.
The essential difference between the view of the people and of the ministerial department consists in the following: (1) In the opinion of the masses there is no one definite norm and form of the school, outside and below which the school is not recognized, as is assumed by the ministerial department; a school may be of any kind, either a very good and expensive one, or a very poor and cheap one, but even in a very poor one reading and writing may be learned, and, as in a richer parish a better pope is appointed and a better church built, so also may a better school be built in a wealthy village, and a poorer school in a less well-to-do village; but just as one can pray equally well in a poor or in a rich parish, even so it is with learning. (2) The masses regard as the first condition of their education an even, equal distribution of this education, though it be in its lowest stage, and then only they propose a further, again an even, raising of the level of education, while the ministerial department considers it necessary to give to a certain chosen few, to one-twentieth of the whole number, a specimen of education, to show them how nice it is. (3) The ministerial department, either unable or purposely unwilling to calculate, has raised the educational business to such a high, expensive level, and one which is so foreign to the masses, that considering the high price at which the education is acquired, no issue from that situation can be foreseen, and the number of learners can never be increased; but the masses, who know how to calculate, and who are interested in that calculation, have no doubt long ago figured out what I have pointed out above, and see as clear as daylight that those expensive schools, which cost as much as four hundred rubles each, may be good indeed, but are not what they need, and try in every way possible to diminish the expenses for their schools.
What, then, is to be done? How are the County Councils to act in order that this business may not be a plaything and a pastime, but shall have a future? Let them conform with the needs of the masses, and, so far as possible, cheapen and free the forms of the school, and afford the Communes the greatest possible power in the establishment of the schools.
For this it is necessary that the County Councils shall entirely abandon the distribution of the taxes to the schools and the distribution of the schools according to localities, but shall leave this distribution to the peasants themselves. The determination of the pay to the teacher, the hiring, purchase, or building of the house, the choice of place and of the teacher himself,—all that ought to be left to the peasants. The County Council, that is, the school council, should only demand that the Communes inform it where and on what foundations schools have been established, not in order that, upon learning the facts, it shall prohibit them, as is done now, but in order that, learning about the conditions under which the school exists, it may add (if the conditions are in conformity with the demands of the council) from its County Council's sums, for the support of the school newly founded, a certain, definite part of what the school costs the Commune: a half, a third, a fourth, according to the quality of the school and the means and wishes of the County Council. Thus, for example, a village of twenty souls hires a transient man at two rubles a month to teach the children. The school council, that is, a person authorized by it, of whom I shall speak later, upon receiving that information, invites the transient to come to him, asks him what he knows and how he teaches, and, if the transient is the least bit educated and does not represent anything harmful, apportions to him the amount determined upon by the County Council, one-half, one-third, or one-fourth, in precisely the same way the school council proceeds in reference to a clerical person hired by the Commune at five rubles per month, or in reference to a teacher hired at fifteen rubles per month. Of course, that is the way the school council acts in reference to the teachers hired by the Communes themselves; but if the Communes turn to the school council, the latter recommends to them teachers under the same conditions. But in doing so the County Council must not forget that there should not be merely teachers at two hundred rubles; the school council should be an employment agency for teachers of every description and of every price, from one ruble to thirty rubles a month. On buildings the school council ought not to spend or add anything, because they are one of the most unproductive items of expense. But the County Council ought not to disdain, as it now does, teachers at two, three, four, five rubles per month and locations in smoky huts or by rotation from farm to farm.
The County Council ought to remember that the prototype of the school, that ideal toward which it ought to tend, is not a stone building with an iron roof, with blackboards and desks, such as we see in model schools, but the very hut in which the peasant lives, with those benches and tables on which he eats, and not a teacher in a Prince Albert or a lady teacher in a chignon, but a male teacher in a caftan and shirt, or a female teacher in a peasant skirt and with a kerchief on her head, and not with one hundred pupils, but with five, six, or ten.
The County Council must have no bias or antipathy for certain types of teachers, as is the case at present. Thus, for example, the Túla County Council just now has a special bias for the type of school-teachers from the gymnasia and clerical schools, and the greater part of the schools in Túla County are in their charge. In Krapívensk County there exists a strange antipathy for teachers from the clerical profession, so that in this county, where there are as many as fifty parishes, there is not one clerical person employed as a teacher. The County Council, in proposing a teacher, ought to be guided by two chief considerations: in the first place, that the teacher should be as cheap as possible; in the second, that by his education he should stand as near to the masses as possible. Only thanks to the opposite view on the matter can be explained such an inexplicable phenomenon as that in Krapívensk County (almost the same is true of the whole Government and of the majority of Governments) there are fifty parishes and twenty schools, and that for these twenty schools there is not a single clerical teacher, although there is not a parish where a priest, or a deacon, or a sexton, or their daughters and wives could not be found, who would not be glad to do the teaching for one-fourth the pay that the teachers coming from the city would be willing to take.
But I shall be told: What kind of schools will those be with bigots, drunken soldiers, expelled scribes, and sextons? And what control can there be over those formless schools? To this I will reply that, in the first place, these teachers, bigots, soldiers, and sextons are not so bad as they are imagined to be. In my school practice I often had to do with pupils from these schools, and some of them could read fluently and write beautifully, and soon abandoned the bad habits which they brought with them from those schools. All of us know peasants who have learned the rudiments in such schools, and it cannot be said that this learning was useless or injurious. In the second place, I will say that teachers of that caliber are especially bad because they are quite abandoned in the backwoods and teach without any aid or instruction, and that now there is not to be found a single one of the old teachers who would not tell you with regret that he does not know the new methods and has himself learned for copper pence, and that many of them, especially the younger church servants, are quite willing to learn the new methods. These teachers ought not to be rejected without further ado as absolutely worthless. There are among them better and worse teachers (and I have seen some very capable ones). They ought to be compared; the better of them ought to be selected, encouraged, brought together with other better teachers, and instructed,—which is quite feasible and precisely the thing in which the duty of the school council is to consist.
But how are they to be controlled, watched, and taught, if they breed by the hundred in each county? In my opinion the work of the County Council and school council ought to consist in nothing but watching the pedagogical side of the business, and that is feasible, if these means will be taken: in every County Council, which has taken upon itself the duty of the dissemination of popular education, or the coöperation with it, there ought to be one person—whether it be an unpaid member of the school council, or a man at a salary of not less than one thousand rubles, hired by the County Council—who is to attend to the pedagogical side of the business in the county. That person ought to have a general, fresh education within the limits of a gymnasium course, that is, he must know Russian thoroughly and Church-Slavic partly, arithmetic and algebra thoroughly, and be a teacher, that is, know the practice of pedagogy. This person must be freshly educated, because I have observed that frequently the information of a man who has long ago finished his course even in a university, and who has not refreshed his education, is insufficient, not only for the guidance of teachers, but even for the examination of a village school. This person must by all means be a teacher himself in the same locality, in order that in his demands and instructions he may always have in view that pedagogical material with which the other teachers have to deal, and that he may sustain in himself that live relation to reality which is the chief preservative against error and delusion. If a County Council does not possess such a man and does not wish to employ one, it has, in my opinion, absolutely nothing to do with the popular education, except to give money, because every interference with the administrative side of the matter, in the way it is done now, can only be injurious.
This member of the County Council, or the educated person hired by it, must have the best model school, with an assistant, in the county. In addition to conducting this school and applying to it all the newest methods of instruction, this head teacher ought to keep an eye on all the other schools. This school is not to be a model in the sense of introducing into it all kinds of cubes and pictures and all kinds of nonsense invented by the Germans, but the teacher in this school should experiment on just such peasant children as the other schools consist of, in order to determine the simplest methods which may be adopted by the majority of the teachers, sextons, and soldiers, who form the bulk of all the schools. Since with the arrangement which I propose there will certainly be formed large complete schools in the larger centers (as I think, in the proportion of one to twenty of all the other schools), and in these large schools the teachers will be of a grade of education equal to that of the seminarists who have finished a course in a theological school, the head teacher will visit all these larger schools, bring together these teachers on Sundays, point out to them the defects, propose new methods, give counsel and books for their own education, and invite them to his school on Sundays. The library of the head teacher ought to consist of several copies of the Bible, of Church-Slavic and Russian grammars, arithmetic, and algebra. The head teacher, whenever he has time, will visit also the small schools and invite their teachers to come to see him; but the duty of watching the minor teachers is imposed on the older teachers, who just in the same way visit their district and invite those teachers to come to see them on Sundays and on week-days. The County Council either pays the teachers for traveling, or, in adding its portion to what the Communes levy, makes it a condition that the Communes furnish transportation. The meetings of the teachers and the visits in similar or better schools are one of the chief conditions for the successful conduct of the business of education, and so the County Council ought to direct its main attention to the organization of these meetings, and not spare any money for them.
Besides, in the large schools, where there will be more than fifty pupils, there ought to be chosen, instead of the assistants which they now have, such of the pupils, of either sex, as show marked ability for a teacher's calling, and they should be made assistants, two or three in each school. These assistants should receive a salary of fifty kopecks to one ruble per month, and the teacher should work with them separately in the evenings, so that they may not fall behind the others. These assistants, chosen from among the best, are to form the future teachers, to take the place of the lowest in the minor schools.
Naturally the organization of these teachers' meetings, both for the smaller and the larger schools, and the head teacher's visits of inspection, and the formation of teachers from pupils acting as assistants may take place in a large variety of ways; the main point is that the surveillance of any number of schools (even though it may reach the norm of one school to every one hundred souls) is possible in this manner. With such an arrangement the teachers of both the large and the small schools will feel that their labors are appreciated, that they have not buried themselves in the backwoods without hope of salvation, that they have companions and guides, and that in the matter of instruction, both for their own further education and for the improvement of their situation, they have means for advancement. With such an arrangement, the devotee and the sexton who are able to learn will learn; while those who are unable or unwilling to do so will be replaced by some one else.
The time of instruction ought to be, as is the wish of all peasants, during the seven winter months, and so the salary is to be determined by the month. With such an arrangement, leaving out the rapidity and the equal distribution of education, the advantage will be this, that the schools will be established in those centers where the necessity for them is felt by the masses, where they are established spontaneously and, therefore, firmly. Where the character of the population demands education it will be permanent. Just look: in the towns, the children of the innkeepers and well-to-do peasants learn to read in one way or another and never forget what they have learned; but in the backwoods, where a landed proprietor founds a school, the children learn well, but in ten years all is forgotten, and the population is as illiterate as ever. For this reason the centers, large or small, where the schools are established spontaneously, are particularly precious. Where such a school has germinated, no matter how poor it be, it will throw out roots, and sooner or later the population will be able to read and write. Consequently, these sprouts ought to be deemed precious, and not be treated, as they are everywhere,—they ought not to be forbidden, because the schools are not according to our taste, that is, the sprouts ought not to be killed, and branches stuck in the ground where they will not take root.
With merely such an arrangement, without the establishment of costly and artificial seminaries, the chosen ones—those selected from the best of the pupils themselves, and those who are educated in the schools—will form that contingent of cheap popular teachers who will take the place of the soldiers and sextons and will fully satisfy all the demands of the masses and of the educated classes. The chief advantage of such an arrangement is that it alone gives the development of popular education a future, that is, takes us out from that blind alley into which the County Councils have gone, thanks to the expensive schools and to the absence of new sources for the increase of their numbers. Only when the masses themselves choose the centers for the schools, themselves choose teachers, determine the amount of the remuneration, and directly enjoy the advantages of the schools, will they be ready to add means for the schools if such should become necessary. I know Communes that paid fifty kopecks a soul for a school in each of their villages; but it is difficult to compel the peasants to pay fifteen kopecks for a school in the township, if not all of them can make use of it. For the whole county, for the County Council, the peasants will not add a single kopeck, because they feel that they will not enjoy the advantages of their money. Only with such an arrangement will be found soon the means for the proper maintenance of all schools, of one to each one hundred souls, which seems so impossible in the present state of affairs.
In addition to this, with the arrangement which I propose, the interests of the peasant Communes and of the County Council, as the representative of the intelligence of the locality, will indissolubly be connected. Let us say that the County Council gives one-third of what the peasants give. In furnishing this amount, it will evidently, in one way or another, see to it that the money is not wasted, and, consequently, will also keep an eye on the two-thirds given by the peasant Communes. The peasant Commune sees that the County Council gives its part, and so admits the right of the Council to follow the progress of the instruction. At the same time, it has an object-lesson in the difference which exists between a school maintained at a smaller and that maintained at a greater expense, and chooses the one which it needs or which is more accessible to it in accordance with its means.
I will again take Krapívensk County, with which I am familiar, to show what difference the proposed arrangement would make. I cannot have the slightest doubt that the moment permission is granted to open schools, wherever wanted and of any description desired, there will at once appear very many schools. I am convinced that in Krapívensk County, in which there are fifty parishes, there will always be a school in each parish, because the parishes are always centers of population, and because among the church servants there will always be found one who is capable of teaching, likes to teach, and will find his advantage in it. In addition to the schools maintained by the church servants there will be opened those forty schools that have been closed (more correctly thirty, because ten of them were church schools), and there will be opened very many new schools, so that in a very short time there will be not far from four hundred instead of the twenty at present.
I may be believed or not, but I will assume that in Krapívensk County 380 additional schools will be opened, the moment they are given over to the masses, so that there will be four hundred in all, and I will try to determine whether the existence of these four hundred schools, that is, of twenty times as many as at present, is possible under the conditions which I have assumed in discussing the existing order.
Assuming that all peasants pay fifteen kopecks per soul, and the County Council gives three thousand rubles, there will be nine thousand rubles, which will suffice only for thirty schools with the former arrangement. But with the new arrangement:
I assume that ten of the old schools are left intact; in these schools the teachers get twenty rubles per month, which, for the seven winter months, amounts to fourteen hundred rubles.
I assume that in every parish there will be established a school with the teacher's salary at five rubles per month, which, for fifty schools, amounts to 1,750 rubles.
I assume the remaining 340 schools are of the cheap character, at two rubles per month; fifteen rubles for each of the 340 schools makes 5,100 rubles.
Thus the four hundred schools will demand an expenditure in salaries amounting to 8,250 rubles. There are still left 750 rubles for school appliances and transportation.
The figures for the teachers' wages are not chosen arbitrarily by me: on the other hand, the expensive teachers are given a larger salary than they now get by the month for the whole year. Even so, the amount apportioned to the church servants is what they now receive in the majority of cases. But the cheap schools at two rubles per month are assumed by me at a higher rate than what the peasants in reality pay, so that the calculation may boldly be accepted. In this calculation is included the kernel of ten chief teachers and ten or more church servant teachers. It is evident that only with such a calculation will the school business be placed on a serious and possible basis and have a clear and definite future.
If what I have pointed out does not convince anybody that will mean that I did not express clearly what I wanted to say, and do not wish to enter into any disputes with anybody. I know that no deaf people are so hopeless as those who do not want to hear. I know how it is with farmers. A new threshing-machine has been bought at a great expense, and it is put up and started threshing. It threshes miserably, no matter how you set the screw; it threshes badly, and the grain falls into the straw. There is a loss, and it is as clear as can be that the machine ought to be abandoned and another means be employed for threshing, but the money has been spent and the threshing-machine is put up. "Let her thresh," says the master. Precisely the same thing will happen with this matter. I know that for a long time to come there will flourish the object instruction, and cubes, and buttons instead of arithmetic, and hissing and sputtering, in teaching the letters, and twenty expensive schools of the German pattern, instead of the needed four hundred popular, cheap schools. But I know just as surely that the common sense of the Russian nation will not permit this false, artificial system of instruction to be foisted upon it.
The masses are the chief interested person and the judge, and now do not pay a particle of attention to our more or less ingenious discussions about the manner in which the spiritual food of education is best to be prepared for them. They do not care, because they are firmly convinced that in the great business of their mental development they will not make a false step and will not accept what is bad,—and it would be like making pease stick to the wall to attempt to educate, direct, and teach them in the German fashion.