On Popular Education Page #7

"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

								

most comfortably stumps about in one spot.

This explains why our pedagogical literature is overwhelmed with manuals
for object-lessons, with manuals about how to conduct kindergartens (one
of the most monstrous excrescences of the new pedagogy), with pictures
and books for reading, in which are eternally repeated the same articles
about the fox and the blackcock, the same poems which for some reason
are written out in prose in all kinds of permutations and with all kinds
of explanations; but we have not a single new article for children's
reading, not one Russian, nor Church-Slavic grammar, nor a Church-Slavic
dictionary, nor an arithmetic, nor a geography, nor a history for the
popular schools. All the forces are absorbed in writing text-books for
the instruction of children in subjects they need not and ought not to
be taught in school, because they are taught them in life. Of course,
there is no end to the writing of such books; for there can be only one
grammar and arithmetic, but of exercises and reflections, like those I
have quoted from Bunákov, and of the orders of the decomposition of
numbers from Evtushévski, there may be an endless number.

Pedagogy is in the same condition in which a science would be that would
teach how a man ought to walk; and people would try to discover rules
about how to teach the children, how to enjoin them to contract this
muscle, stretch that muscle, and so forth. This condition of the new
pedagogy results directly from its two fundamental principles: (1) that
the aim of the school is development and not science, and (2) that
development and the means for attaining it may be theoretically defined.
From this has consistently resulted that miserable and frequently
ridiculous condition in which the whole matter of the schools now is.
Forces are wasted in vain, and the masses, who at the present moment are
thirsting for education, as the dried-up grass thirsts for rain, and are
ready to receive it, and beg for it,--instead of a loaf receive a stone,
and are perplexed to understand whether they were mistaken in regarding
education as something good, or whether something is wrong in what is
being offered to them. That matters are really so there cannot be the
least doubt for any man who becomes acquainted with the present theory
of teaching and knows the actual condition of the school among the
masses. Involuntarily there arises the question: how could honest,
cultured people, who sincerely love their work and wish to do good,--for
such I regard the majority of my opponents to be,--have arrived at such
a strange condition and be in such deep error?

This question has interested me, and I will try to communicate those
answers which have occurred to me. Many causes have led to it. The most
natural cause which has led pedagogy to the false path on which it now
stands, is the criticism of the old order, the criticism for the sake of
criticism, without positing new principles in the place of those
criticized. Everybody knows that criticizing is an easy business, and
that it is quite fruitless and frequently harmful, if by the side of
what is condemned one does not point out the principles on the basis of
which this condemnation is uttered. If I say that such and such a thing
is bad because I do not like it, or because everybody says that it is
bad, or even because it is really bad, but do not know how it ought to
be right, the criticism will always be useless and injurious. The views
of the pedagogues of the new school are, above all, based on the
criticism of previous methods. Even now, when it seems there would be no
sense in striking a prostrate person, we read and hear in every manual,
in every discussion, "that it is injurious to read without
comprehension; that it is impossible to learn by heart the definitions
of numbers and operations with numbers; that senseless memorizing is
injurious; that it is injurious to operate with thousands without being
able to count 2-3," and so forth. The chief point of departure is the
criticism of the old methods and the concoction of new ones to be as
diametrically opposed to the old as possible, but by no means the
positing of new foundations of pedagogy, from which new methods might
result.

It is very easy to criticize the old-fashioned method of studying
reading by means of learning by heart whole pages of the psalter, and of
studying arithmetic by memorizing what a number is, and so forth. I will
remark, in the first place, that nowadays there is no need of attacking
these methods, because there will hardly be found any teachers who would
defend them, and, in the second place, that if, criticizing such
phenomena, they want to let it be known that I am a defender of the
antiquated method of instruction, it is no doubt due to the fact that my
opponents, in their youth, do not know that nearly twenty years ago I
with all my might and main fought against those antiquated methods of
pedagogy and coöperated in their abolition.

And thus it was found that the old methods of instruction were not good
for anything, and, without building any new foundation, they began to
look for new methods. I say "without building any new foundation,"
because there are only two permanent foundations of pedagogy:

(1) The determination of the criterion of what ought to be taught, and
(2) the criterion of how it has to be taught, that is, the determination
that the chosen subjects are most necessary, and that the chosen method
is the best.

Nobody has even paid any attention to these foundations, and each school
has in its own justification invented quasi-philosophical justificatory
reflections. But this "theoretical substratum," as Mr. Bunákov has
accidentally expressed himself quite well, cannot be regarded as a
foundation. For the old method of instruction possessed just such a
theoretical substratum.

The real, peremptory question of pedagogy, which fifteen years ago I
vainly tried to put in all its significance, "Why ought we to know this
or that, and how shall we teach it?" has not even been touched. The
result of this has been that as soon as it became apparent that the old
method was not good, they did not try to find out what the best method
would be, but immediately set out to discover a new method which would
be the very opposite of the old one. They did as a man may do who finds
his house to be cold in winter and does not trouble himself about
learning why it is cold, or how to help matters, but at once tries to
find another house which will as little as possible resemble the one he
is living in. I was then abroad, and I remember how I everywhere came
across messengers roving all over Europe in search of a new faith, that
is, officials of the ministry, studying German pedagogy.

We have adopted the methods of instruction current with our nearest
neighbours, the Germans, in the first place, because we are always

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