Tolstoy's Stories for Children by Leo Tolstoy

Author:Leo Tolstoy [Tolstoy, Leo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Xist Publishing
Published: 2016-03-16T07:00:00+00:00

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 favourite 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.

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