Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales

by graf Leo Tolstoy

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 programme 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 programme of knowledge, which, unfortunately, but the rarest of the cultured class possess. In the third place, the masses are right, because by this programme 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 programme 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 programme of the popular school, which, however, does not presume that all three subjects be introduced systematically. With such a programme 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 programme. 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 programme 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.