On Popular Education Page #12

"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

								

themselves, or to the parents who send the children to school, and so
the answer to the question what the children are to be taught in a
popular school can be got only from the masses. But, perhaps, we shall
say that we, as highly cultured people, must not submit to the demands
of the rude masses and that we must teach the masses what to wish. Thus
many think, but to that I can give this one answer: give us a firm,
incontrovertible foundation why this or that is chosen by you, show me a
society in which the two diametrically opposed views on education do not
exist among the highly cultured people; where it is not eternally
repeated that if education falls into the hands of the clergy, the
masses are educated in one sense, and if education falls into the hands
of the progressists, the people are educated in another sense,--show me
a state of society where that does not exist, and I will agree with you.
So long as that does not exist, there is no criterion except the freedom
of the learner, where, in matters of the popular school, the place of
the learning children is taken by their parents, that is, by the needs
of the masses.

These needs are not only definite, quite clear, and everywhere the same
throughout Russia, but also so intelligent and broad that they include
all the most diversified demands of the people who are debating what the
masses ought to be taught. These needs are: the knowledge of Russian and
Church-Slavic reading, and calculation. The masses everywhere and always
regard the natural sciences as useless trifles. Their programme is
remarkable not only by its unanimity and firm definiteness, but, in my
opinion, also by the breadth of its demands and the correctness of its
view. The masses admit two spheres of knowledge, the most exact and the
least subject to vacillation from a diversity of views,--the languages
and mathematics; everything else they regard as trifles. I think that
the masses are quite correct,--in the first place, because in this
knowledge there can be no half information, no falseness, which they
cannot bear, and, in the second, because the sphere of those two kinds
of knowledge is immense. Russian and Church-Slavic grammar and
calculation, that is, the knowledge of one dead and one living language,
with their etymological and syntactical forms and their literatures, and
arithmetic, that is, the foundation of all mathematics, form their
programme of knowledge, which, unfortunately, but the rarest of the
cultured class possess. In the third place, the masses are right,
because by this programme they will be taught in the primary school only
what will open to them the more advanced paths of knowledge, for it is
evident that the thorough knowledge of two languages and their forms,
and, in addition to them, of arithmetic, completely opens the paths to
an independent acquisition of all other knowledge. The masses, as though
feeling the false relation to them, when they are offered incoherent
scraps of all kinds of information, repel that lie from themselves, and
say: "I need know but this much,--the church language and my own and the
laws of the numbers, but that other knowledge I will take myself if I
want it."

Thus, if we admit freedom as the criterion of what is to be taught, the
programme of the popular schools is clearly and firmly defined, until
the time when the masses shall express some new demands. Church-Slavic
and Russian and arithmetic to their highest possible stages, and nothing
else but that. That is the determination of the limits of the programme
of the popular school, which, however, does not presume that all three
subjects be introduced systematically. With such a programme the
attainment of symmetrical results in all three subjects would naturally
be desirable; but it cannot be said that the predominance of one subject
over another would be injurious. The problem consists only in keeping
within the limits of the programme. It may happen that from the demands
of the parents, and especially from the knowledge of the teacher, this
or that subject will be more prominent,--with a clerical person the
Church-Slavic language, with a teacher from a county school--either
Russian or arithmetic; in all these cases the demands of the masses will
be satisfied, and the instruction will not depart from its fundamental
criterion.

The second part of the question, how to teach, that is, how to discover
which method is the best, has remained just as unsolved.

Just as in the first part of the question of what to teach, the
assumption that on the basis of reflections it is possible to build a
programme of instruction leads to contradictory schools, so it is also
with the question as to how to teach. Let us take the very first
stage of the teaching of reading. One asserts that it is easier to
teach so from cards; another--according to the b, v system; a
third--according to Korf; a fourth--according to the be, ve, ge
system, and so forth. It is said that the nuns teach reading in six
weeks by the buki-az--ba system. And every teacher, convinced of the
superiority of his method, proves this superiority either by the fact
that he teaches with it faster than others, or by reflections of the
character which Mr. Bunákov and the German pedagogues adduce. At the
present time, when there are thousands of examples, we ought to know
precisely by what to be guided in our choice. Neither theory, nor
reflections, nor even the results of instruction can show this
completely.

Education and instruction are generally considered in the abstract, that
is, the question is discussed how in the best and easiest manner to
produce a certain act of instruction on a certain subject (whether it be
one child or a mass of children). This view is quite faulty. All
education and instruction can be viewed only as a certain relation of
two persons or of two groups of persons having for their aim education
or instruction. This definition, more general than all the other
definitions, has special reference to popular education, where the
question is the education of an immense number of persons, and where
there can be no question about an ideal education. In general, with the
popular education we cannot put the question, "How is the best education
to be given?" just as with the question of the nutrition of the masses
we cannot ask how the most nutritious and best loaf is to be baked. The
question has to be put like this: "How is the best relation to be
established between given people who want to learn and others who want
to teach?" or, "How is the best bread to be made from given bolted
flour?" Consequently the question of how to teach and what is the best
method is a question of what will be the best relation between teacher
and pupil.

Nobody, I suppose, will deny that the best relation between teacher and
pupil is that of naturalness, and that the contrary relation is that of

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