The Life of Tolstoy: First Fifty Years / Fifth Edition

by Aylmer Maude

But I consider that to be all wrong. I think that a need to enjoy art and to serve art, is inherent in every human being, to whatever race or class he may belong; and that this need has its right and should be satisfied. Taking that position as an axiom, I say that if the enjoyment and production of art by every one, presents inconveniences and inconsistencies, the reason lies in the character and direction art has taken: about which we must be on our guard, lest we foist anything false on the rising generation, and lest we prevent it from producing something new, both as to form and as to matter.

Tolstoy goes so far as to doubt whether, so long as no suitable literature is produced for the people, it is even worth their while to learn to read.

Looking closer at the results of the rudiments in the form in which they are supplied to the masses, I think most people will decide that the rudiments do more harm than good, taking into account the prolonged compulsion, the disproportionate development of memory, the false conception of the completeness of science, the aversion to further education, the false vanity, and the habit of meaningless reading acquired in these schools....

'Let us print good books for the people!'... How simple and easy that seems—like all great thoughts! There is only one obstacle, namely that there exist no good books for the people, either here or in Europe. To print such books, they must first be produced; and none of our philanthropists think of undertaking that work!

Before closing this rapid summary of Tolstoy's educational writings, let me quote a few more sentences which sum up his essential position:

In my articles on Education I have given my theoretic reasons for considering that only freedom on the part of the pupils to select what they will learn and how they will learn it, can furnish a sound basis for any instruction. In practice I constantly applied those rules to the schools under my guidance ...and the results were always very good both for the teachers and the pupils, as well as for the evolution of new methods; and this I assert boldly, for hundreds of visitors came to the Yásno-Polyána school and know how it worked.

For the masters, the result of such relations with the pupils was that they did not consider any methods they happened to know, to be the best, but they tried to discover new methods and made acquaintance with other teachers whose ways they could learn. They tested fresh methods, and above all, they themselves were always learning. A master never allowed himself, in cases of failure, to think that it was the pupils' fault: their laziness, naughtiness, stupidity, deafness or stuttering; but he was convinced that the fault was his own, and for every defect on the side of the pupil or pupils, he tried to discover a remedy.

For the pupils the results were that they learnt eagerly, always begged to have additional lessons on winter evenings, and were quite free in class—which, in my conviction and experience, is the chief condition of successful teaching. Between the teachers and the pupils friendly and natural relations always arose, without which it is not possible for a teacher to know his pupils fully....

With reference to the methods of instruction, the results were that no method was adopted or rejected because it pleased or did not please the teacher, but only because the pupil, without compulsion, accepted or did not accept it. But besides the good results which unfailingly followed the adoption of my method both by myself and by all—more than twenty—other teachers (I say 'unfailingly' because we never had a single pupil who did not master the rudiments)—besides these results, the adoption of the principles of which I have spoken produced this effect, that during fifteen years all the different modifications to which my method has been subjected, have not only not removed it from the demands of the people, but have brought it closer and closer to them.... In my school... every teacher, while bringing his pupils forward, himself feels the need of learning; and this was constantly the case with all the teachers I had.

Moreover, the very methods of instruction themselves—since they are not fixed once for all but aim at finding the easiest and simplest paths—change and improve according to what the teacher learns from the pupils' relation to his teaching.