On Popular Education Page #4

"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

								

classifications you may talk about objects anything you please, and you
may say all the nonsense imaginable, as we actually see. In any case,
the result of the conversation will be that the children are either
made to learn by heart the teacher's words about the suslik, or to
change their own words, place them in a certain order (not always a
correct order), and to memorize and repeat them. For this reason all the
manuals of this kind, in general all the exercises of development,
suffer on the one hand from absolute arbitrariness, and on the other
from superfluity. For example, in Mr. Bunákov's book the only story
which, it seems, is not copied from another author, is the following:

"A peasant complained to a hunter about his trouble: a fox had carried
off several of his chickens and one duck; the fox was not in the least
afraid of watch-dog Dandy, who was chained up and kept barking all night
long; in the morning he had placed a trap with a piece of roast meat in
the fresh tracks on the snow,--evidently the red-haired sneak was
disporting near the house, but he did not go into the trap. The hunter
listened to what the peasant had to say to him, and said: 'Very well;
now we will see who will be shrewder!' The hunter walked all day with
his gun and with his dog, over the tracks of the fox, to discover how he
found his way into the yard. In the daytime the sneak sleeps in his
lair, and knows nothing of what is going on, so that had to be
considered: on its path the hunter dug a hole and covered it with
boards, dirt, and snow; a few steps from it he put down a piece of
horseflesh. In the evening he seated himself with a loaded gun in his
ambush, fixed things in such a way that he could see everything and
shoot comfortably, and there he waited. It grew dark. The moon swam out.
Cautiously, looking around and listening, the fox crept out of his lair,
raised his nose, and sniffed. He at once smelled the odour of
horseflesh, and ran at a slow trot to the place, and suddenly stopped
and pricked his ears: the shrewd one saw that there was a mound there
which had not been in that spot the previous evening. This mound
apparently vexed him, and made him think; he took a large circle around
it, and sniffed and listened, and sat down, and for a long time looked
at the meat from a distance, so that the hunter could not shoot him,--it
was too far. The fox thought and thought, and suddenly ran at full speed
between the meat and the mound. Our hunter was careful, and did not
shoot. He knew that the sneak was merely trying to find out whether
anybody was sitting behind that mound; if he had shot at the running
fox, he would certainly have missed him, and then he would not have seen
the sneak, any more than he could see his own ears. Now the fox quieted
down,--the mound no longer disturbed him: he walked briskly up to the
meat, and ate it with great delight. Then the hunter aimed carefully,
without haste, so that he might not miss him. Bang! The fox jumped up
from pain and fell down dead."

Everything is arbitrary here: it is an arbitrary invention to say that a
fox could carry off a peasant's duck in winter, that peasants trap
foxes, that a fox sleeps in the daytime in his lair (for he sleeps only
at night); arbitrary is that hole which is uselessly dug in winter and
covered with boards without being made use of; arbitrary is the
statement that the fox eats horseflesh, which he never does; arbitrary
is the supposed cunning of the fox, who runs past the hunter; arbitrary
are the mound and the hunter, who does not shoot for fear of missing,
that is, everything, from beginning to end, is bosh, for which any
peasant boy might arraign the author of the story, if he could talk
without raising his hand.

Then a whole series of so-called exercises in Mr. Bunákov's lessons is
composed of such questions as: "Who bakes? Who chops? Who shoots?" to
which the pupil is supposed to answer: "The baker, the wood-chopper, and
the marksmen," whereas he might just as correctly answer that the woman
bakes, the axe chops, and the teacher shoots, if he has a gun. Another
arbitrary statement in that book is that the throat is a part of the
mouth, and so on.

All the other exercises, such as "The ducks fly, and the dogs?" or "The
linden and birch are trees, and the horse?" are quite superfluous.
Besides, it must be observed that if such conversations are really
carried on with the pupils (which never happens) that is, if the pupils
are permitted to speak and ask questions, the teacher, choosing simple
subjects (they are most difficult), is at each step perplexed, partly
through ignorance, and partly because ein Narr kann mehr fragen, als
zehn Weise antworten.

Exactly the same takes place in the instruction of arithmetic, which is
based on the same pedagogical principle. Either the pupils are informed
in the same way of what they already know, or they are quite arbitrarily
informed of combinations of a certain character that are not based on
anything. The lesson mentioned above and all the other lessons up to ten
are merely information about what the children already know. If they
frequently do not answer questions of that kind, this is due to the fact
that the question is either wrongly expressed in itself, or wrongly
expressed as regards the children. The difficulty which the children
encounter in answering a question of that character is due to the same
cause which makes it impossible for the average boy to answer the
question: Three sons were to Noah,[1]--Shem, Ham, and Japheth,--who was
their father? The difficulty is not mathematical, but syntactical, which
is due to the fact that in the statement of the problem and in the
question there is not one and the same subject; but when to the
syntactical difficulty there is added the awkwardness of the proposer of
the problems in expressing himself in Russian, the matter becomes of
greater difficulty still to the pupil; but the trouble is no longer
mathematical.

  [Footnote 1: The Russian way of saying "Noah had three sons."]

Let anybody understand at once Mr. Evtushévski's problem: "A certain boy
had four nuts, another had five. The second boy gave all his nuts to the
first, and this one gave three nuts to a third, and the rest he
distributed equally to three other friends. How many nuts did each of
the last get?" Express the problem as follows: "A boy had four nuts. He
was given five more. He gave away three nuts, and the rest he wants to
give to three friends. How many can he give to each?" and a child of
five years of age will solve it. There is no problem here at all, but
the difficulty may arise only from a wrong statement of the problem, or
from a weak memory. And it is this syntactical difficulty, which the
children overcome by long and difficult exercises, that gives the
teacher cause to think that, teaching the children what they know

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