Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1862
Source: From RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
Reading constitutes a part of the instruction in language.
The problem of instruction in language consists, in our opinion, in directing the pupils in the comprehension of the contents of books written in the literary language. The knowledge of the literary language is indispensable because all good books are written in it.
Formerly, from the very foundation of the school, there was no division between mechanical and graded reading; the pupils read only what they could comprehend special works, words and phrases, written in chalk on the walls, then the tales of Khudyakof and Afanasief.
I supposed that for children to learn to read they had to have a love for reading, but that to acquire a love for reading it was necessary that what they read should be comprehensible and interesting. This seemed so rational and clear, but this notion is fallacious.
In the first place, in order to pass from the reading on the walls to the reading in books, each pupil had to have a special training in mechanical reading for every book. As the number of pupils happened to be small, and there was no classification of topics, this was possible, and I succeeded without great difficulty in getting the first pupils from reading on the walls, to reading in books; but when new pupils appeared this became impossible. The younger ones had not the ability to read and comprehend stories; the labor of spelling out words and gathering the meaning, taken together, was too great for them.
Another obstacle consisted in the fact that graded reading was interrupted by these stories, and whatever book we chose, popular, military, Pushkin, Gogol, Karamzin, it proved that the older scholars in reading Pushkin, just as the younger ones in the reading of stories, could not coordinate the labor of reading and that of comprehending what they read, though they understood perfectly well when we read it to them.
We thought at first that the difficulty consisted only in the faulty mechanism of the pupils' reading, and we invented mechanical reading reading for the process of reading where the teacher read in alternation with the pupils but this did not help matters; even in the reading of "Robinson" the same unreadiness manifested itself.
In summer, when the school is in a state of transition, we thought we had overcome this difficulty by the simplest and most practical method. Why not confess it, we submitted to the false shame of having visitors observe us. Our pupils read much worse than the pupils that had been taught the same length of time by the sacristan! A new teacher proposed to introduce reading aloud from the same books, and we consented. Having once adopted the false notion that pupils ought to learn to read fluently in the course of a year, we added mechanical and graded reading to the curriculum, and obliged them to read two hours a day, all using the same books, and this proved very convenient to us.
But one infraction of the law of freedom for the students brought falsehood, and a whole series of mistakes in its train.
The books were purchased the short stories of Pushkin and Yershof; the children were seated on benches, and one was called on to read aloud while the others followed his reading; in order to be sure that all were paying attention, the teacher would call on first one, then another.
At first this seemed to us a very good plan. Any one visiting the school would find the scholars sitting in good order on their benches; one would be reading, the rest following.
The reader would pronounce, "Sniiluisa, Gosuddruinya Rmbka, Have pity, Mistress Fish;" the others or the teacher would correct the accent, smiluisa, and all would follow suit.
"Ivanof read!"
Ivanof will hunt around for the place and begin to read. All are attention; watchful of the teacher, every word is accurately pronounced, and the reading goes with considerable smoothness. It seems admirable, but probe it a little; the one who is reading is reading the same thing for the thirtieth or the fortieth time.
A printed leaf suffices for at least a week, for to purchase new books every time would be terribly expensive, and books comprehensible to the children of peasants are not more than two: the tales of Khudyakof and Afanasief. Moreover, the books used once by one class become so familiar that some know them by heart, and all get tired of them, and they are a bore even to the families of the scholars.
The one that reads is bashful, hearing his own voice ringing through the silence of the room; all his energies are concentrated on the observation of signs and accents; and he contracts the habit of reading without trying to make out the sense, for he is burdened with other distractions. Those who listen do the same, and in their efforts to keep the place when they may be called on, they run their fingers regularly along the lines, and this bores them, and they are easily distracted by outside incidents. The sense of what is read, being an extraneous affair, sometimes against their will sticks in their minds, sometimes does not.
The chief harm lies in that eternal conflict of sharpness and trickery between teacher and pupils which always develops in such an order of things, and which we had hitherto escaped in our school; while the sole advantage of this method of reading namely, the correct pronunciation of words had no influence on our pupils.
Our pupils began to read phrases put on the walls, and pronounced by themselves; and all were aware that the word kogo whose is pronounced as if it were kavo. I opine that it is useless to teach them to keep their voices up, or to change their voices in accordance with arbitrary marks, since every five-year-old child correctly employs, in speaking, the punctuation marks when he understands what he says. Therefore it is easier to teach him to comprehend what he reads from a book for sooner or later he must attain this than it is to teach him by punctuation marks to sing as if by notes. But it seems so comfortable for the teacher!
The teacher is always involuntarily impelled to select for himself the most convenient method of teaching.
The more convenient this method is for the teacher, the more unsuitable it is for the scholar.
That method is the only good one which renders the pupils contented.
These three laws of instruction are reflected in the most palpable way in the Y. P. school in the mechanical reading.