On Popular Education Page #10

"On Popular Education" is a thought-provoking essay by Leo Tolstoy in which the renowned Russian author explores the role of education in shaping individuals and society. Written in 1862, Tolstoy critiques the existing educational systems of his time, advocating for a more accessible, practical, and moral approach to learning. He emphasizes the importance of fostering critical thinking and moral values over rote memorization, urging educators to nurture the innate curiosity of learners. Tolstoy's reflections serve as a powerful call for a more humane and equitable educational framework that empowers individuals to contribute meaningfully to society.

• Essay

								

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.

Just so, with either method, the mechanical side of instruction
predominates over the mental. In either school the pupils excel in a
good handwriting and good enunciation with absolutely exact reading,
that is, not as it is spoken, but as it is written. Just so, with either
method, there always reigns an external order in the school, and the
children are in constant fear and can be guided only with the greatest
severity. Mr. Korolév has incidentally remarked that in instruction
according to the sound method blows are not neglected. I have seen the
same in the schools of the German method, and I assume that without
blows it is impossible to get along even in the new German school,
because, like the church school, it teaches without asking what the
pupil finds interesting to know, but what, in the teacher's opinion,
seems necessary, and so the school can be based only on compulsion.
Compulsion is attained with children generally by means of blows. The
church and the new German school, starting from the same principles and
arriving at the same results, are absolutely identical. But, if it came
to choosing one of the two, I should still prefer the church school. The
defects are the same, but on the side of the church school is the custom
of a thousand years and the authority of the church, which is so
powerful with the masses.

Having finished the analysis and criticism of the German school, I
consider it necessary,--in view of what I have said, namely, that
criticism is fruitful only when, condemning, it points out how that
which is bad ought to be,--I consider it necessary to speak of those
foundations of instruction which I regard as legitimate, and on which I
rear my method of instruction.

In order to elucidate in what I find these unquestionable foundations of
every pedagogical activity, I shall be compelled to repeat myself, that
is, to repeat what I said fifteen years ago in the pedagogical
periodical, Yásnaya Polyána, which I then published. This repetition
will not be tedious for the pedagogues of the new school, because what I
then wrote is not exactly forgotten, but has never been considered by
the pedagogues,--and yet I still think that just what was expressed by
me at that time might have placed pedagogy, as a theory, on a firm
foundation. Fifteen years ago, when I took up the matter of popular
education without any preconceived theories or views on the subject,
with the one desire to advance the matter in a direct and
straightforward manner, I, as a teacher in my school, was at once
confronted with two questions: (1) What must I teach? and (2) How must
I teach it?

At that time, even as at the present, there existed the greatest
diversity of opinion in the answers to these questions.

I know that some pedagogues, who are locked up in their narrow
theoretical world, think that there is no other light than what peeps
through the windows, and that there is no longer any diversity of
opinions.

I ask those who think so to observe that it only seems so to them, just
as it seems so to the circles that are opposed to them. In the whole
mass of people who are interested in education, there exists, as it has
existed before, the greatest diversity of opinions. Formerly, just as
now, some, in reply to the question of what ought to be taught, said
that outside of the rudiments the most useful information for a primary
school is obtained from the natural sciences; others, even as now, that
that was not necessary, and was even injurious; even as now, some
proposed history, or geography, while others denied their necessity;
some proposed the Church-Slavic language and grammar, and religion,
while others found that, too, superfluous, and ascribed a prime
importance to "development." On the question of how to teach there has
always been a still greater diversity of answers. The most diversified
methods of instructing in reading and arithmetic have been proposed.

In the bookstalls there were sold, side by side, the self-teachers
according to the buki-az--ba, Bunákov's lessons, Zolotóv's charts,
Madame Daragán's alphabets, and all had their advocates. When I
encountered these questions and found no answer for them in Russian
literature, I turned to the literature of Europe. After having read what
had been written on the subject and having made the personal
acquaintance of the so-called best representatives of the pedagogical
science in Europe, I not only failed to find anywhere an answer to the
question I was interested in, but I convinced myself that this question
does not even exist for pedagogy, as a science; that every pedagogue of
any given school firmly believed that the methods which he used were the
best, because they were based on absolute truth, and that it would be
useless for him to look at them with a critical eye.

However, because, as I said, I took up the matter of popular education
without any preconceived notions, or because I took up the matter
without prescribing laws from a distance about how I ought to teach, but
became a schoolmaster in a village popular school in the backwoods,--I
could not reject the idea that there must of necessity exist a criterion
by means of which the question could be solved: What to teach and how to
teach it. Should I teach the psalter by heart, or the classification of
the organisms? Should I teach according to the sound alphabet,

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes