Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1862
Source: From RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
From the very foundation of the school, and even at the present time, our exercises in sacred and Russian history are conducted in this way: The children collect around the teacher, and he, using no other guide than the Bible and Pogodin's "Norman Period" and Vodovozof's "Collection for Russian History," tells the stories, and all begin to talk at once.
When the confusion of voices is too great the teacher calls a halt, and has one speak at a time. As soon as one begins to grow confused he calls on the others. When he perceives that some have failed to comprehend, he sets one of the better scholars to telling it over again for the benefit of those who don't understand.
This was not a preconceived plan, but came about of itself, and, whether the pupils are five or thirty in number, is repeated, always with the same success, if the teacher watches them all, if he does not allow them to shout, repeating words which have already been said, and if he does not permit the shouting to degenerate into frenzy but regulates this torrent of joyous animation and rivalry as much as he needs.
In summer, when we had frequent visitors and changes in the instructors, this order of exercises was modified, and the teaching of history was far less satisfactory. The universal shouting was incomprehensible to the new instructor; it seemed to him that those that were reciting at the top of their voices were not merely reciting; it seemed to him that they were shouting for the sake of shouting, and especially that it was hot and stifling in that pack of pupils, crawling up on his back, and thrusting themselves into his very face.
For if children want to understand well, they must infallibly get very close to the person who speaks, must watch every change in the expression of his face and every gesture he makes. I have more than once thought that they understand best of all those passages where the narrator happened to make a genuine gesture or a genuine intonation.
A new teacher made the pupils sit on benches and take turns in answering. The one called on would keep silent and was tortured with confusion, and the teacher, looking away from him, with a gracious expression of submission to his fate, or a sweet smile, would say:
"Well .... and then? Good .... very good," all in the pedagogical way only too well known to all of us.
Moreover, I have become convinced by experience that there is nothing more pernicious for the development of a child than this kind of single questioning which springs from the teacher's relation of superiority to the pupil; and for me there is nothing more disturbing than such a spectacle. A grown man tortures a child without the slightest authority. The teacher knows that the pupil is tortured as he stands blushing and perspiring before him. The teacher himself finds it wearisome and difficult, but he has a rule, in accordance with which he must accustom his pupil to speak alone.
But no one knows why he must teach the pupil to speak alone. Perhaps it is in order to set him to reading a fable before his or her excellency. I shall be told perhaps that otherwise it is impossible to determine the degree of his attainments. But I reply that it is really impossible for a stranger to determine within an hour the knowledge of a pupil, while the teacher, even without any verbal or written examination, is always conscious of the measure of these acquirements. It seems to me that this plan of individual interrogation is a relic of ancient superstition. In the old times the teacher, compelling his pupils to learn everything by heart, could not judge of their attainments in any other way than by setting them to repeat the whole lesson word for word. Then it was found that a parrot-like repetition of words was not education, and they began to make pupils tell in their own language what they had learned; but they have not changed the custom of calling up individual pupils and making them recite whenever the teacher desires.
It was entirely lost from sight that you may require from the scholar who learns by heart the repetition of certain passages from the Psalter or fables at any time and under all conditions; but that in order to be in a condition to appreciate the sense of any passage, and to give it in his own words, the pupil must find himself in a condition fitted for this exercise.
Not only in the lower schools and gymnasiums, but also in the universities, I understand that examinations based on questions are nothing else than tests on the learning of passages or propositions, word for word. In my time I left the university in 1845 I did not prepare for the examinations by learning by heart word for word, but paragraph by paragraph, and I received the mark of five only from those professors whose notebooks I knew by heart.
Visitors, who have done so much injury to the instruction at the Yasno-Polyana school, have in one direction conferred a great service on me. They have definitely convinced me that written and verbal examinations are a relic of medieval scholastic superstition, and that in the present order of things they are decidedly impossible and only harmful.
Often, under the influence of a childish conceit, I have wished to show some esteemed visitor, in an hour's time, the attainments of our pupils, with the result either that the visitor would be persuaded that they knew what they did not know, I surprised him by a certain hocus-pocus, or else the visitor would suppose that they did not know what they really knew very well. And a regular confusion and misunderstanding arose at such a time between me and the visitor an intelligent, talented man, a specialist in these matters, and a believer in absolute freedom of relations. What then would result from the official visits of directors and supervisors, to say nothing of the interruption of the course of study, and the confusion of ideas caused by such examinations among the pupils?
At the present time I am convinced that to sum up all the knowledge of a pupil is as impossible for the teacher or the stranger as it would be to sum up my knowledge or yours in any subject you please. To bring a cultivated man of forty to an examination in geography would be no more strange and stupid than to bring a man of ten to the same. The one as well as the other cannot answer the questions in any other way than word for word, and in an hour's time it is actually impossible to test their knowledge. Really to learn what either one knows it is necessary to live with him for months.
Wherever examinations are introduced and by examinations I understand any demand for answers to questions there appears only a new and useless object, demanding special labor, special qualities, and this object is called preparation for examinations or lessons. The pupil in the gymnasium learns history or mathematics, and in addition something important the art of answering examination questions. I do not consider this art a useful branch of learning. I, a teacher, appreciate the degree of my pupil's attainment as accurately as I appreciate the degree of my own, although neither the pupil nor I have been subjected to lessons; but if a stranger wishes to get the measure of your attainments, then let him live with us and learn the results, and the application of our attainments to life.
There is no other means, and all attempts at examinations are only deception, falsehood, and obstacles to learning. In the matter of learning there is one independent judge, the teacher, and only the pupils themselves can control him.
In the teaching of history the pupils replied all together, not for the sake of proving their knowledge, but because there is in them a necessity of putting into speech the impressions they have received. In the summer neither the new teacher nor I understood this; we saw in it only a way of testing their knowledge, and therefore we found it more convenient to examine them one at a time. I had not discovered as yet why this method was wearisome and bad, but my faith in the rule of freedom for scholars was my salvation. The majority began to grow listless, three of the boldest took upon themselves to answer all the questions, three of the most bashful never said anything, but wept and got zeros. During the summer I neglected the classes in sacred history, and the teacher, who was a lover of order, had full scope to keep them sitting on benches, to torture them one at a time, and to vent his indignation at the stubbornness of the children.
Several times I advised him to let the children get down from the benches during the class in history, but the teacher regarded my advice as a mild and pardonable originality as I know beforehand most of my readers will also regard it and this order of things remained unchanged until the former teacher returned, and in the instructors note-book appeared remarks like the following: "I could not get a single word from Savin;" "Grishin [34] had nothing to say;" "Petka's obstinacy amazed me, he would not say a single word;" "Savin was worse than before;" and so on.
Savin is the son of a householder or a merchant, a rosy, fat lad, with flashing eyes and long lashes, wearing a leather tulupchik, boots big enough for his father, a red Alexandrisky shirt and drawers. This lad's pleasant and attractive personality especially struck me, because he was at the head of the arithmetic class, by his readiness in calculation and his gay liveliness. He reads and writes also far from badly.
But as soon as he was asked a question he would hang his pretty curly head to one side, tears would trickle down his long lashes, and it would seem as if he were trying to hide out of sight; it was evident he was suffering unendurably. If you compel him to recite, he will speak, but either he cannot or will not form a sentence by himself. God only knows whether it is the terror inspired by his former teacher, he had been taught before by a person in the ecclesiastical profession, or whether it is lack of self-confidence or conceit, or the awkwardness of his position among boys whom he considers inferior to himself, or vexation because in this one respect he is behind the others, because once already he has been in the teacher's bad graces, or whether this little soul has been affronted by some inconsiderate word hastily spoken by the teacher, or whether it is a mixture of all; but this bashfulness, although it may be in itself a disagreeable trait, is nevertheless inseparably connected with all that is best in his young soul. To whip it out of him by a physical or moral discipline is possible, but at the risk of destroying at the same time the precious qualities without which the teacher would find it a hard task to take him farther.
The new teacher heeded my advice and let the pupils get down from the benches, and permitted them to climb round wherever they wanted, even though it was on his back; and from the moment he did so they all began to recite incomparably better, and it was noted in the teacher's diary that even "the obstinate Savin said a few words."