The simple thought that the time had not yet come for good reading and that there was at present no need of it, but that the pupils would themselves find the best method when the need arose, only recently entered my head.
After telling how the boys first met the difficulty of mastering the mechanical process of reading, Tolstoy goes on to tell how in the upper class progress was suddenly made owing to what seemed an accident.
In the class of advanced reading some one book is used, each boy reading in turn, and then all telling its contents together. They had been joined that autumn by an extremely talented lad, T., who had studied for two years with a sacristan, and was therefore ahead of them all in reading. He reads as we do, and so the pupils only understand anything of the advanced reading (and then not very much of it) when he reads; and yet each of them wishes to read. But as soon as a bad reader begins, the others express dissatisfaction, especially when the story is interesting. They laugh, and get cross, and the bad reader feels ashamed, and endless disputes arise. Last month one of the boys announced that at any cost he would manage, within a week, to read as well as T.; others made the same announcement, and suddenly mechanical reading became their favourite occupation. For an hour or an hour-and-a-half at a time, they would sit without tearing themselves away from the books, which they did not understand; and they began taking books home with them; and really, within three weeks, they made such progress as could not have been expected.
In their case the reverse had happened of what usually occurs with those who learn the rudiments. Generally a man learns to read, and finds nothing he cares to read or understand. In this case the pupils were convinced that there is something worth reading and understanding, but felt that they lacked the capacity; and so they set to work to become proficient readers.
A difficulty of enormous importance was the absence of books really suitable for simple folk to read.
The insoluble problem was that for the education of the people an ability and a desire to read good books is essential. Good books are, however, written in a literary language the people don't understand. In order to learn to understand it, one would have to read a great deal; and people won't read willingly unless they understand what they read.
Connected with this difficulty of finding books suited to the understanding of peasants and of peasant children, was the parallel difficulty of finding literary subjects that interested them. This was first met by reading the Old Testament stories to them:
A knowledge of Sacred History was demanded both by the pupils themselves and by their parents. Of all the oral subjects I tried during three years, nothing so suited the understanding and mental condition of the boys as the Old Testament. The same was the case in all the schools that came under my observation. I tried the New Testament, I tried Russian History and Geography, I tried explanations of natural phenomena (so much advocated to-day), but it was all listened to unwillingly and quickly forgotten. But the Old Testament was remembered and narrated eagerly both in class and at home, and so well remembered that after two months the children wrote Scripture tales from memory with very slight omissions.
It seems to me that the book of the childhood of the race will always be the best book for the childhood of each man. It seems to me impossible to replace that book. To alter or to abbreviate the Bible, as is done in Sonntag's and other school primers, appears to me bad. All—every word—in it is right, both as revelation and as art. Read about the creation of the world in the Bible, and then read it in an abbreviated Sacred History, and the alteration of the Bible into the Sacred History will appear to you quite unintelligible. The latter can only be learnt by heart; while the Bible presents the child with a vivid and majestic picture he will never forget. The omissions made in the Sacred History are quite unintelligible, and only impair the character and beauty of the Scriptures. Why, for instance, is the statement omitted in all the Sacred Histories, that when there was nothing, the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and that after having created, God looked at His creation and saw that it was good, and that then it was the morning and evening of such and such a day? Why do they omit that God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, and that having taken one of his ribs He with the flesh closed up the place thereof, and so forth? One must read the Bible to unperverted children, to understand how necessary and true it all is. Perhaps one ought not to give the Bible to perverted young ladies; but when reading it to peasant children I did not alter or omit a single word. None of them giggled behind another's back; but all listened eagerly and with natural reverence. The story of Lot and his daughters, and the story of Judah's son, evoked horror but not laughter....
How intelligible and clear it all is, especially for a child, and yet how stern and serious! I cannot imagine what instruction would be possible, without that book. Yet when one has learnt these stories only in childhood, and has afterwards partly forgotten them, one thinks: What good do they do us? Would it not be all the same if one did not know them at all? So it seems till, on beginning to teach, you test on other children the elements that helped to develop you. It seems as if one could teach children to write and read and calculate, and could give them an idea of history, geography, and natural phenomena, without the Bible, and before the Bible; yet nowhere is this done: everywhere the child first of all gets to know the Bible, its stories, or extracts from it. The first relations of the learner to the teacher are founded on that book. Such a general fact is not an accident. My very free relations with my pupils at the commencement of the Yásno-Polyána school helped me to find the explanation of this phenomenon.