Chapter 6
Methods of Instruction
Tuition
at the school of Yasnaia Poliana was of course free. There were about forty
pupils in all, but usually not more than thirty were present at a time, of whom
four or five were girls. The ages of the boys varied from seven to thirteen
years, with an occasional adult who wished to make up for the lack of
opportunity to study during his boyhood. There were four teachers in all, and
six or seven lessons a day. Tolstoy used the school as a laboratory for
experiments. He has the habit of mind of questioning all traditions and customs
in all realms of thought and activity, and of making them answer for themselves,
and he carried it with him into the field of education.
It is a disturbing
habit, and perhaps it is just as well that all men do not indulge in it; but it
is stimulating to find here and there a man who insists on thinking for himself,
and who refuses to accept without proof the most time-honoured theories. Count
Tolstoy soon came to the conclusion, as we have seen, that it is fatal to
consider the school as a disciplined company of soldiers, all obeying the same
orders in the same way. A certain degree of freedom, of disorder even, he found
necessary for the purpose of revealing the individuality of each pupil. He
compared his own method of teaching with that of the village sacristan, and as a
result of the comparison formulated three rules, namely, that (1) The teacher
always has a tendency to select that method of teaching which is easiest for
him; (2) that the easier it is for him, the less satisfactory it is for his
pupils; and (3) that method only is good which gives satisfaction to the pupils.
And to give satisfaction to the pupils it is necessary to take account of the
differences between them and of their natural aptitudes.
Tolstoy found the
old-fashioned school curriculum based upon the study of grammar, and this study
appeared to him particularly senseless. The object of learning grammatical rules
is to speak the language correctly, but it is obviously possible to speak
correctly without knowing the rules, and hence the value of learning them
consists chiefly in the mental exercise, which can be obtained as easily in some
other more useful way.
He found practice in
composition much the best way of studying language. In the first and second
classes the choice of subjects was left to the pupils, who usually preferred
stories from the Old Testament, which they wrote out two months after they had
heard them from the master. In the second class they tried compositions on given
subjects, such as "wheat," "houses," "wood," but to their surprise these
subjects drove the boys to tears and even when the master helped them, and
called their attention to the growing of the grain of wheat, its transformations
and uses, they still worked reluctantly, and made all sorts of mistakes in
spelling, grammar and meaning. Then Tolstoy changed his method and narrated some
event to them, and they were at once delighted, and they found it much easier to
recite an incident which they remembered than to describe a pig or a pot or a
table. To the master these simple subjects seemed the easiest, but the child, as
usual, looked at things from the opposite point of view, and was interested only
in that which is complex and living.
Text-books, says
Tolstoy, usually begin with general ideas, those of grammar with adjectives,
those of history with divisions into periods, those of geometry with definition
of space and of the mathematical point; but these general ideas are the hardest
to comprehend, and the child must begin with something tangible, related to his
own common experiences. To describe a table requires a high degree of
philosophical attainment, and the child who cries because he has to write about
a chair, will express well a feeling of love or hate -- either the meeting of
Joseph with his brethren or a quarrel of his own with his comrades.
The subjects which the
children chose were either some particular event, their relations with some
particular person, or tales that they had heard. They preferred writing
compositions to any other exercise. Out of school, as soon as they chanced upon
paper and pencil, they began to write stories. And they soon became critics as
well, vexed when the story of a fellow-pupil was too long, or disconnected, or
when there were too many repetitions. They had definite tastes of their own.
Sometimes a boy would refuse to read his essay, declaring that that of another
boy was better than his, and soon, when the compositions were read anonymously,
the boys would easily guess who the author was.
Tolstoy gives two
specimens of composition by Fedka, a boy of ten, to show how much more easily he
described a trip to Toula than a concrete object. Here is his essay on "Wheat."
"The grain germinates in
the ground. First it is green, but when it has grown a little it produces ears
and the women reap it. There is also a kind of wheat like grass which the cattle
eat."
And this was all he
could find to write on the subject. He saw that the composition was a poor one,
and was much distressed about it, but he could not improve it. Here is his essay
on "Toula."
"When I was still a
little fellow, about five years old, I used to hear people speak of going to
Toula, but I did not know what it was. And so I asked father, 'Father, to what
Toula do you go? Is it pretty?' Father said, 'Yes.' And I said, 'Take me with
you, father, so that I may see Toula.' Father said, 'All right. Come on Sunday
and I'll take you.' I was delighted, and began to run and jump on the bench. The
days passed and Sunday arrived. I got up early, and father was already
harnessing the horses in the farmyard, and I dressed myself as quickly as I
could. When I came out, the horses were already harnessed. I got into the
sleigh, and we left.
"We go on and on until
we have gone fourteen versts. I see a big church, and I cry out, 'Father, see
what a big church.' Father answered, 'There is another smaller church, which is
smaller but prettier.' I begin to beg him, 'Father, let's go there to church.'
Father takes me there. As we arrive, they begin ringing the bells. I am afraid,
and ask father what it is, if it is a drum and trumpet. Father says, 'No, it is
the mass that is beginning.' Then we go into the church to say our prayers. When
that is done, we go to the market, and I walk and walk and trip up, and look
everywhere. We reach the market, and I see they are selling kalatchi (rolls of
bread), and I want to take some without paying. And father says to me, 'Don't
take any, or they will take your hat.' I ask why they would take it, and father
says, 'Take nothing without paying.' I say, 'Give me ten kopeks and I'll buy a
kalatch.' Father gives me some. I buy three kalatchi. I eat them and say,
'Father, what good kalatchi.' When we have bought all that we have to, we return
to our horses, give them a drink and some hay. When they have finished eating,
we harness them and go back home. I go into the house and undress, and I begin
to tell everybody that I had been at Toula, and how father and I had gone to
church to pray to God. Then I go to sleep, and in my dream I see father leave
for Toula again. I wake up quickly and see that all are sleeping, and then I go
to sleep again too."
Tolstoy's estimate of
the artistic capabilities of the peasant children in the way of authorship may
seem a little exaggerated, but he publishes the results and invites the assent
of the public to his belief. He printed some of the stories which they composed
in his educational journal, and also one composed by a master, and he insists
that the last was the worst of them all. He had some difficulty in inducing the
boys to write, but when finally he sat down among them and they all set to work
to compose a story based on some simple theme which he would outline in a few
words, before long they would stop writing and crowd round him looking over his
shoulder, and then he would let them take the story out of his hands, accepting
every suggestion from them and acting merely as amanuensis with a certain right
of selection.
The first page of this
story was Tolstoy's own, the rest was almost wholly the boys', and he declares
that "every unprejudiced man, however little he may care for art or the people,
after having read the first page written by me and the following pages written
by the pupils themselves, will distinguish it readily from the rest like a fly
in a glass of milk, so poor, so artificial and in such a bad style is it
written. I should say that originally it was even worse, and I corrected it a
great deal upon hints from the scholars." It was on this occasion that he
discovered the ability of Fedka, and he was especially struck by his sense of
proportion, "the principal condition of all art." They worked together for four
hours, from seven to eleven in the evening, and the other boys dropped out,
except Fedka and one of his companions, Semka by name.
"Will it really be
printed?" asked Fedka.
"Yes."
"Then you must say it is
by Makaroff, Morosoff and Tolstoy." Tolstoy does not hesitate to place Fedka
above Goethe, and as for himself, "far from being able to guide or help Semka, a
child of eleven, and Fedka, I should consider myself happy (and only during a
happy moment of excitement) to understand and follow them!"
Unfortunately this
particular story, so far as I know, has not been translated into English, French
or German, and the extracts which Count Tolstoy gives in his Pour Les
Enfants imply a knowledge of the story, and are consequently not
illuminative. He gives more of a story of Fedka's, however, describing the
unexpected return of a soldier to his family, in the days when enlistment meant
usually banishment from home for life. This theme was also suggested by Tolstoy.
The first chapter is
inferior, he declares, because he, Tolstoy, interfered with its authorship. The
end of the story, which gives an account of the actual return of the father to
his family, Tolstoy thinks superior to anything in Russian literature. It
depicts the delight of the boy at seeing his father. He sits next to him at
table so that he may touch him. The father goes out, and the boy wishes to
follow him, but his mother forbids it, and when he persists she gives him a
slap. He begins to cry, and climbs up on top of the brick oven, the Russian's
favourite resting place. The father comes in again, and asks --
"'Why are you crying?'
"I complain of my
mother. He goes up to her and pretends to slap her, saying --
"'Never slap Fedoushka
again! Never slap Fedoushka again!'
"And mother makes belief
to cry."
This is certainly a
pretty scene, but I must leave it to others better qualified to determine its
rank in Russian literature, and in comparison with the works of Goethe and
Tolstoy.
While Fedka and Semka
were the best artists of the school, Tolstoy discovered the same talents, only
in lesser degree, in the other boys. "A healthy child," he says, "when he comes
into the world, realizes completely the absolute harmony with the true, the
beautiful, and the good which we carry in us; he is still in touch with
inanimate things, with plant and animal life, with that nature which personifies
in our eyes that true, beautiful and good which we seek and long for.... But
every hour of life, every minute of time, disturbs more and more those relations
which, when he was born, were in a perfectly harmonious equilibrium, and every
step, every hour, violates this harmony."
"Education perverts a
child, it cannot correct him. The more he is perverted, the less must we educate
him, and the more does he need freedom. To teach, to bring up a child, why, it
is a chimera, an absurdity, for this simple reason, that the child is much
nearer than I am, or any grown man, to the true, beautiful and good to which I
undertake to raise him. The consciousness of this ideal lives in him more
intensely than in me, and all that he requires of me is the material with which
to perfect himself harmoniously in all directions."
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