Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1862
Source: From RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
This summer we had exactly the same experience with calligraphy as we had with mechanical reading.
The scholars were very poor penmen, and one of the new teachers tried to have them write from a copy always a regular and easy method for the teacher. The scholars detested this; we were compelled to abandon calligraphy, and we could not devise any way of correcting bad writing.
But the oldest class themselves found a way out of it. After they had finished writing their sacred history, the older scholars wanted us to let them carry their copybooks home. The copy-books were soiled, torn, badly written. The careful mathematician, R, asked for a new book, and began to copy his exercise. This idea pleased them all. "I want a sheet of paper," and "I want a copy-book;" and calligraphy became the fashion, and has continued so in the upper class.
They would take their copy-books, lay before them the written alphabet-copy, practice on each letter, and try to excel one another; and in two weeks they had made great progress.
Almost all of us, when we were children, were obliged to eat bread at the table, and for this very reason, that we did not like it; but we came to like it at last. Almost all of us have learned to hold the pen with straight fingers, and we all began by holding the pen with crooked ringers, because they were short; but now we hold it with straight fingers. It may well be asked: Why are we so tortured when all of this comes of itself as soon as it is necessary? Will not the love and the demand for knowledge come to all in the same way?
The members of the second class write compositions on some story repeated from sacred history. They compose them on their slates, then copy them on paper. The members of the third or lowest class write what they please. Moreover, the younger ones in the evenings write sentences separately, which they compare together. One writes while the others whisper together, notyig his mistakes, and they wait till the end only to correct him of a misused vowel or a misplaced preposition, and sometimes of a misstatement.
To write correctly and correct the mistakes of others is for them a great pleasure. The older ones seize hold of any writing which comes under their notice, practice correcting the mistakes, strive with all their might to write well, but they cannot endure grammar and the analysis of language, and notwithstanding all our former passion for analysis they will permit it only in very small amounts, they go to sleep or drop out of the classes.