Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work/Chapter 14
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Tolstoy had several times started on educational work.
As far back as 1849, when he returned to Yasnaya Polyana from St. Petersburg, along with other institutions and reforms by means of which he tried to approach the people, he established a school for peasant children. From his "A Russian Proprietor" we know how unsuccessful these first attempts were. With his departure for the Caucasus, the school was closed. He reopened it on his return to Yasnaya Polyana after his resignation and his first journey abroad, as was mentioned in the proper place.
On recommencing his school work, Tolstoy soon realized his lack of theoretical knowledge and hastened to fill the void in his education by reading, foreign travel, personal relations with prominent educationists, and practical work in different schools. Feeling himself thus restored, he for the third time and with better zeal turned to his school and carried it up to a remarkably high level.
In one of his educational articles, he thus relates his endeavors and preparations to found a school:
[Tolstoy writes] 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.?...
In the whole mass of people who are interested in
education, there exists, as there 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 the rudiments, the most useful
information to give in a primary school is taken from the
natural sciences; others, even as now, that this was not
necessary, and was even injurious; while some, as now,
proposed history or geography, and others denied their
necessity; some proposed the Ecclesiastic-Slavonic
language and grammar to be taken in connection with
religion; others found that 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...
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
science of education 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 in connection with any science of Education as
such; as every educationist of every given school firmly
believed that the methods he used were the best, because
they were founded 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
else because I took up the matter without getting hold of
laws from a distance as to 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 some criterion by means of which I
could solve the question of what to teach and how to
teach it. Should I teach by heart the psalter or the
classification of the organisms? Should I teach
according to the sound-alphabet, taken from the Germans,
or simply use the prayer-book? In the solution of this
question I was aided by a certain tact in teaching, with
which I am gifted, and especially by that close and
passionate interest which I took in the subject.
When I entered at once into the close and direct
relations with those forty tiny peasants that formed by
school (I call them peasants because I found in them the
same characteristics of perspicacity, the same immense
store of information from practical life, of jocularity,
simplicity, and loathing for everything false, which
distinguishes the Russian peasant), when I saw their
susceptibility, their readiness to acquire the
information which they needed, I felt at once that the
antiquated church method of instruction had outlived its
usefulness and was of no use to them. I began to
experiment on other proposed methods of instruction; but
because compulsion in education, both by my conviction
and my character, are repulsive to me, I did not exercise
any pressure, and the moment I noticed that something was
not readily received, I did not put any compulsion on the
pupils but looked for something else. From these
experiments it appeared to me and to those teachers who
gave instruction with me at Yasnaya Polyana and in other
schools on the same principles of freedom, that nearly
everything which in the educational world was written
about schools was separated by an immeasurable abyss from
the truth, and that many of the proposed methods, such as
object-lessons, the teaching of natural sciences, the
sound method, and others, called forth contempt and
ridicule, and were not accepted by the pupils. We began
to look for those contents and those methods which were
readily taken up by the pupils and hit upon that which
forms my method of instruction.
But this method stood in a line with all other
methods, and the question why it was better than the rest
remained unsolved as before....
At that time I found no sympathy in all the
educational literature, indeed not even any
contradiction, but simply complete indifference in regard
to the question which I put. There were some favorable
criticisms of certain trifling details, but the question
itself evidently did not interest any one. I was young
then, and this indifference grieved me. I did not
understand that with my question "How do you know what to
teach and how to teach?" I was like a man who, let us
say, in a gathering of Turkish pashas who were discussing
the question in what manner they could collect the
greatest amount of revenue from the people, should make
them the following proposition: "Gentlemen, before
considering how much revenue to collect from each, we
must first analyze the question on what your right to
exact that revenue is based." Obviously, all the pashas
would continue their discussion of the measures of
extortion, and would reply only with silence to his
irrelevant remark.
Tolstoy's letters from abroad show the interest which he took in the school while he was away. During the whole of the time the teaching in the school went on without ceasing. It continued with greater regularity after his return to Yasnaya Polyana in the spring of 1861, and in 1862, as Tolstoy says in his article on Education:
[Tolstoy writes] Fourteen schools were opened in a
district containing ten thousand souls when I was a rural
judge, besides which there existed about ten schools in
the district among the clericals and on the manors among
the servants. In the three remaining districts of the
county there were fifteen large and thirty small schools
among the clericals and manorial servants....
Everybody will agree that, leaving aside the
question of the quality of instruction, such a relation
of the teacher to the parents and peasants is most just,
natural and desirable.
Finally, we may mention the names of the teachers of the schools under Tolstoy's jurisdiction where his views on the education of the people were supported. In the Golovenkovskiy school, the teacher was one Aleksandr Serdobolskiy, a pupil of the Kazan gymnasium; in the Trasnenskiy school, Ivan Aksentev, a pupil of the Penza gymnasium; in Lomintsevok, Aleksey Shumilin, a pupil of the Kaluga gymnasium; in the Bagucharov school, Boris Golovin, a pupil of the tula theological seminary; in the Baburino school, Alfonse Erlenwein, a pupil of the Kishinev gymnasium; and in Yassenki, Mitrofan Butovich, a pupil of the Kishinev gymnasium; in the Kolpeno school, Anatoliy Tomashevskiy, who finished his studies in the Saratov gymnasium; in the Gorodnya, Vladimir Tokaschevich, who finished his studies in the Penza gymnasium; in the Plekhanovo school, Nikolay Peterson, who finished his studies in the Penza gymnasium for the nobles; the Bogucharov village community chose Sergey Gudim, an ex-student of the Kazan University, in the place of its former teacher, Morozov. [1]
Perhaps some of these men may come across this biography and its perusal may induce them to write down memories of their collaboration with the great teacher.
In one of his articles on education, Tolstoy himself sets forth in detail the organization of the school at Yasnaya Polyana:
[Tolstoy writes] The school is held in a two-storied
stone building. Two rooms are given up to the school,
one is a cabinet of physical curiosities, and two are
occupied by the teachers. Under the roof of the porch
hangs a bell with a rope attached to the clapper; in the
vestibule downstairs stand parallel and horizontal bars,
while in the vestibule upstairs there is a joiner's
bench. The staircase and the floor of the vestibule are
covered with snow or mud; here also hangs the program.
The order of instruction is as follows: at about
eight o'clock, the teacher living in the school, a lover
of external order and the administrator of the school,
sends one of the boys, who nearly always stay overnight
with him, to ring the bell.
In the village people rise with the fires. From the
school the fires have long been observed in the windows,
and half an hour after the ringing of the bell, there
appear in the mist, in the rain, or in the oblique rays
of the autumnal sun, dark figures by twos, threes, or
singly on the mounds (the village is separated from the
school by a ravine). The necessity of herding together
has long disappeared for the pupils. A pupil no longer
requires to wait and shout: "Oh boys, let's go to
school. She has begun." He knows by this time that
"school" is neuter and he knows a few other things, and
strange to say, for that very reason, has no longer any
need of a crowd...
The children have nothing with them -- neither
reading books nor copy books. No lessons are given to
take home.
Not only do they carry nothing in their hands, but
they have nothing to carry even in their heads. They are
not obliged to remember any lesson or anything that they
were doing the day before. They are not vexed by the
thought of the impending lesson. They bring with them
nothing but their impressionable natures and their
convictions that today it will be as jolly in school as
it was yesterday. They do not think of their classes
until they have begun.
No one is ever rebuked for being late, and they
never are late, except in the case of some of the older
ones, whose fathers now and then keep them back to do
some work. In such cases they come running to school at
full speed, and all out of breath.
So long as the teacher has not yet arrived, they
gather near the porch, pushing each other off the steps,
or sliding on the frozen crust of the smooth road, while
some go to the school rooms. If it is cold, they read,
write, or play, waiting for the teacher.
The girls do not mix with the boys. When the boys
have anything to do with the girls, they never address
anyone in particular but always all collectively: "Oh,
girls, why don't you skate?" or "I guess the girls are
frozen," or "Now girls, all of you against me!" There is
only one girl, from the manor, with very great general
ability, about ten years of age, who is beginning to make
herself conspicuous among the herd. This girl alone the
boys treat as their equal and as a boy, except for a
delicate shade of politeness, condescension, and reserve.
Popular education has always and everywhere been to
me an incomprehensible phenomenon. The people want
education, and every separate individual unconsciously
seeks education. The more highly cultured class of
people -- society, the officers of the Government --
strive to transmit their knowledge and to educate the
less educated masses. One would think that such a
coincidence of necessities would lead to satisfaction
being given to both the class which furnishes the
education and the one that receives it. But the very
opposite takes place. The masses continually counteract
the efforts made for their education by society or by the
Government, as the representatives of a more highly
cultured class, so that these efforts are frequently
frustrated.
As with every conflict, so also here, it was necessary to solve the question: Which is more lawful, the resistance or the action itself? Must the resistance be broken, or the action be changed?
The question has been somehow always settled in favor of violence. But some sound reasons ought to be produced for the use of such violence. What are they? To this question Tolstoy gives the following answer. The arguments may be religious, philosophical, experimental, and historical, and then he discusses each of these kinds of arguments separately:
[Tolstoy writes] But in our time, when religious
education forms but a small part of education, the
question what good ground the school has for compelling
the young generation to receive religious instruction in
a certain fashion remains unanswered from the religious
point of view.
The philosophical arguments cannot afford a reason
for coercion.
All the philosophers, beginning with Plato and
ending with Kant, tend to this one thing, the liberation
of the school from the traditional fetters which weigh
heavily upon it. They wish to discover what it is that
man needs, and on these more or less correctly divined
needs they build up their new school.
Luther wants people to study Holy Writ in the
original, and not according to the commentaries of the
holy fathers. Bacon enjoins the study of Nature from
Nature, and not from the books of Aristotle. Rousseau
wants to teach life from life itself, as he understands
it, and not from previous experiments. Every step
forward taken by the philosophy of history consists only
in freeing the school from the idea of instructing the
younger generation in that which the elder generations
considered to be science, in favor of the idea of
instructing them in what they themselves need. This one
common and, at the same time, self-contradictory idea is
felt in the whole history of educational theories: it is
common, because all demand a greater measure of freedom
for the school; contradictory, because everybody
prescribes laws based on his own theory, and by that very
act that freedom is curtailed.
The educational experiments tend still less to
convince us of the lawfulness of compulsory education.
Not only is the experiment sad in itself, but the school
stupefies the children by distorting their mental
faculties; it tears them away from the family during the
most precious time of their development, deprives them of
the happiness of freedom, and converts the child into a
jaded, crushed being, wearing an expression of fatigue,
fear, and ennui, repeating with its lips strange words in
a strange language; and in reality the experience of
school work gives nothing besides these, for it takes
place amid conditions destroying any possible value in
the experiments.
School, so it would appear to us, ought to be a
means of education and at the same time, an experiment on
the young generation, constantly giving new results.
Only when experiment is at the foundation of school-work,
and every school is, so to speak, an educational
laboratory, will the school keep pace with the universal
progress and experiment will be able to lay firm
foundations for the science of education.
The historical arguments are as feeble as the
philosophical. This progress of life, of technical
knowledge, of science, proceeds faster that the progress
of the school, and the school therefore remains more and
more behind the social life, and becomes ever worse and
worse.
The argument that as schools have existed and are existing, therefore they are good, Tolstoy meets by describing his personal experience of schools in Marseilles, Paris and other towns in Western Europe, which brought him to the conclusion that the greater part of the people's education is acquired not at school but in life, and that free, open instruction by means of public lectures, sights, meetings, books, exhibitions, and so on, quite surpasses all school tuition.
Finally, Tolstoy addresses himself especially to Russian educationists, saying that if we are, for example, to acknowledge the existence of German schools as desirable, in spite of their defects, on the ground of historic experiment, still the question remains: On what grounds are we Russians to defend the school for the people, when no such schools yet exist with us? What historic reasons have we to declare that our schools must be the same as those of the rest of Europe?
[Tolstoy writes] What are we Russians to do at the
present moment? Shall we all come to some agreement and
take as our basis the English, French, German, or North
American view of education and any one of their methods?
Or shall we, by closely examining philosophy and
psychology discover what in general is necessary for the
development of a human soul, and for making out of the
younger generation the best men possible according to our
conception? Or shall we make use of the experience of
history -- not in imitating those forms which history has
evolved, but in comprehending those laws which humanity
has worked out through suffering? Shall we say frankly
and honestly to ourselves that we do not know and cannot
know what future generations may need but that we feel
ourselves obliged to study this need, and that we wish to
do so; that we do not wish to accuse the people of
ignorance for not accepting our education, but that we
shall accuse ourselves of ignorance and self-conceit if
we persist in educating the people according to our
ideas?
Let us cease looking upon the people's resistance to
our education as upon a hostile element, but let us
rather see in it an expression of the people's will,
which alone ought to guide us. Let us finally adopt the
view which we are so plainly told, both by the history of
educational methods and the whole history of education,
that if the educating class is to know what is good and
what is bad, the classes which receive the education must
have full power to express their dissatisfaction, or, at
least, to swerve from the education which instinctively
does not satisfy them -- that the only criterion of
educational methods is liberty.
The article ends in the following avowal:
We know that our arguments will not convince many.
We know that our fundamental convictions that the only
method of education is experiment, and its only criterion
freedom, will sound to some like trite commonplace, to
some like an indistinct abstraction, to others again like
a visionary dream. We should not have dared to disturb
the repose of the theoretical pedagogues and to express
these convictions, which are contrary to all experience,
if we had to confine ourselves to the reflections made in
this article; but we feel ourselves able to prove step by
step, and taking one fact after another, the
applicability and propriety of our convictions however
wild they may appear, and to this end alone do we devote
the publication of the periodical "Yasnaya Polyana".
The magazine "Yasnaya Polyana", which was in fact itself an interesting educational experiment, lasted for one year. Twelve numbers were issued.
The first issue began with the following appeal to the public:
[Tolstoy writes in "Yasnaya Polyana" No. 1]
Entering on a new work, I am under some fear, both for
myself and for those thoughts which have been for years
developing in me, and which I regard as true. I am
certain beforehand that many of these thoughts will turn
out to be mistaken. However carefully I have endeavored
to study the subject and have involuntarily looked upon
it from one side, I hope that my thoughts will call forth
the expression of a contrary opinion. I shall be glad to
afford room for all opinions in my magazine. Of one
thing only am I afraid -- that these opinions may be
expressed with acridity, and that the discussion of a
subject so dear and important to all as that of national
education may degenerate into sarcasms, personalities,
and journalistic polemics; and I will not say that
sarcasms and personalities could not affect me, or that
I hope to be above them. On the contrary, I confess that
I fear as much for myself as for the cause itself; I fear
being carried away by personal polemics instead of
quietly and persistently working at my subject.
I therefore beg all future opponents of my views to
express their thoughts so that I may explain myself and
substantiate my statements in those cases in which our
disagreement is caused by our not understanding one
another, and might agree with my opponents when the error
of my view is proved. Count L. N. Tolstoy
Each issue contained one or two theoretical articles, then reports of the progress of the schools under the management of Tolstoy, bibliography, description of school libraries, accounts of donations, and a supplement in the shape of a book for reading.
The motto of the magazine was the saying: Glaubst zu schieben und wirst geschoben, that is to say, "You mean to push, but in reality it is you who are pushed."
This magazine has become a bibliographical rarity. True, Tolstoy's own principal articles have been included in the fourth volume of the full edition of his works, but besides those articles, there appeared in the magazine many different short notices, descriptions and reports of great interest for teachers in a theoretical as well as in a practical sense.
In his article "On methods of teaching to read and write," Tolstoy tries in the first place to prove that reading is not the first step in instruction, but only an intervening one.
[Tolstoy writes] Since it is not the first, then it
is not the principal one.
If we want to find the foundation, the first step in
education, why should we look for it perforce in the
rudiments instead of much deeper? Why should we stop at
one of the endless number of the instruments of education
and see in it the alpha and the omega of education, when
it is only one of the incidental, unimportant
circumstances of education?
By "Education" we do not mean merely a knowledge of
"Reading and Writing."
We see people who are well acquainted with all the
facts necessary to know for the purpose of farming, and
with a large number of interrelations of these facts,
though they can neither read nor write; or excellent
military commanders, excellent merchants, managers,
superintendents of work, master mechanics, artisans,
contractors, and people simply educated by life, who
possess a great store of information and of sound
reasoning based on that information, who can neither read
nor write. On the other hand we see those who can read
and write, and who have acquired no new information by
means of those accomplishments.
Among the reasons which cause a contradiction between the real needs of the people and the tuition imposed upon the people by the cultured classes, Tolstoy points out certain features in the historic development of educational institutions.
[Tolstoy writes] First were founded, not the lower,
but the higher schools: at first the monastic, then the
secondary, then the primary schools....The rudiments are
in this organized hierarchy of institutions the last
step, or the first from the end, and therefore the lower
school is to respond only to the exigencies of the higher
schools.
But there is also another point of view, from which
the popular school appears as an independent institution,
which is not obliged to perpetuate the imperfections of
the higher institution of learning, but which has an aim
of its own, viz., that of supplying popular education.
The school for reading and writing exists among the
people in the shape of the workshop, and, as such,
satisfies the need for those accomplishments, and reading
and writing are for the people a certain kind of art or
craft.
Having made clear the gist of this matter of writing and reading, and pointed out its place in the life of the people, Tolstoy goes on further to investigate different methods of teaching to read and write.
After having examined the defects and merits of the old fashioned methods of teaching to read letter by letter, and the method of learning by sound; after having further discussed the comical and pedantic German Lautieranschauungsunterrichtsmethode, he came to the conclusion that all methods are good and all are bad, that the talent and ability of the teacher are at the foundation of any method, and he finally addresses to the teacher the following advice:
[Tolstoy writes] Every teacher of reading must be
well grounded in the one method which has been evolved by
the people, and must further verify it by his own
experience; he must endeavor to find out the greatest
number of methods, employing them as auxiliary means;
must, by regarding every imperfection in the pupil's
comprehension, not as showing a defect in the pupil, but
a defect in his own instruction, endeavor to develop in
himself the ability of discovering new methods. Every
teacher must know that every method invented is only a
step, on which he must stand in order to go farther; he
must know that if he himself will not do it, another will
adopt that method, and will, on its basis, go farther,
and that, as the business of teaching is an art,
completeness and perfection are not obtainable, while
development and improvement are endless.
With still greater detail and clearness does Tolstoy present his educational ideas in his article "Education and Instruction".
In the first place, he states the fact that the majority of educationists, Russian and European, confuse these two ideas. Then he tries to restate the distinction between these conceptions, giving his own definitions to the three principal educational terms -- Education, Training, and Instruction..
[Tolstoy writes] Education in the broad sense of the
term is, according to our conviction, the sum total of
all those influences which develop man, give him a
broader outlook and new knowledge, children's games and
their sufferings, punishments inflicted by their parents,
books, work, study, whether compulsory or free, art,
science, life -- all these educate.
Training is the influence exercised by one man on
another for the purpose of making him adopt certain moral
habits.
Instruction is the transmission of knowledge from
one man to another (one can be instructed in chess, or
history, or boot-making). Teaching, an aspect of
instruction, is the influence exercised by one man upon
another for the purpose of leading him to acquire certain
accomplishments (to sing, to do carpentering, to dance,
to row, to recite). Instruction and teaching are means
of education when they are exercised without compulsion,
and means of training when teaching is compulsory, and
when instruction is directed in an exclusive way, i.e.,
when only those subjects are given which the teacher
regards as necessary.
There are no rights of education. I do not
acknowledge such, nor have they been acknowledged, nor
will they ever be, by the young generation under
education, which always and everywhere is set against
compulsion in education.
Education is compulsory, instruction is free. Where
lies to right to compulsion?
Where do we find the justification of any compulsion
by humanity? [To this question Tolstoy gives the
following answer:]
If such an abnormal condition as the use of force in
culture -- education -- has existed for ages, the causes
of this phenomenon must be rooted in human nature. I see
these causes -- (1) in the family, (2) in religion, (3)
in the State, and (4) in society (in the narrower sense,
which in our country embraces only the official circles
and the gentry).
While not approving of the influence of the first three sources of compulsion, Tolstoy admitted that it was intelligible.
It is difficult to hinder parents from bringing up
their children to be different from what they are
themselves; it is difficult for a believer not to strive
to bring up his child in his own faith; finally, it is
difficult to claim that Governments should not educate
the officials whom they require
But by what right does the privileged, progressive
society educate by its own standard the people alien to
itself? this can be explained by nothing but gross
egotistical error.
What is the reason of this error?
I think it is that we do not hear the voice of those
who attack us; we do not hear it, because it does not
speak in print or down from the professor's chair. But
it is the mighty voice of the people, which one must
listen to carefully in order to hear it.
Tolstoy then began the examination of the methods of this educational compulsion, i.e., those practiced in the schools from the lowest to the highest, and he found nothing cheering in them. He criticized especially the organization of our universities.
Without rejecting university instruction on principle, Tolstoy declared:
[Tolstoy writes] I can understand a university,
corresponding to its name and its fundamental idea, as a
collection of men for the purpose of their mutual
culture. Such universities, unknown to us, spring up and
exist in various corners of Russia; in the universities
themselves, in the students' clubs, people come together,
read and discuss, until at last rules establish
themselves when to meet and how to discuss. There you
have real universities! But our universities, in spite
of all the empty talk about the seeming freedom of their
structure, are institutions which, by their organization,
in no way differ from female boarding schools and cadet
academies.
Besides the absence of freedom, of independence, one
of the chief defects of our university life is its
aloofness from real life.
See how the son of a peasant learns to become a
farmer; how the sexton's son, reading in the choir,
learns to be a sexton; how the son of a Kirgiz cattle
dealer becomes a herder; he enters very early into direct
relations with life, with Nature, and with men; he learns
early, while working, to make his work productive; and he
learns, being secure on the material side of life, that
is, so far as to be sure of a piece of bread, of clothes
to wear, and of a lodging. Now look at a student, who is
torn away from home, from the family, cast into a strange
city, full of temptations for his youth, without means of
support (because the parents provide means only for bare
necessities, while all is spent on frivolity), in a
circle of companions who by their society only intensify
his defects; without guides, without an aim, having
pushed off from the old and having not yet landed at the
new. Such, with rare exceptions, is the position of a
student. From this results that which alone can result;
you have officials who are fit only for Government posts;
or professional officials, fit for society, or people
aimlessly torn away from their former surroundings, with
a spoiled youth, and finding no place for themselves in
life, so-called people with university culture --
advanced, that is, irritable, sickly Liberals.
The university is our first and our chief
educational institution. It is the first to arrogate to
itself the right of education, and it is the first, so
far as the results which it obtains indicate, to prove
the impropriety and impossibility of university
education. Only from the social point of view is it
possible to justify the fruits of the university. The
university trains not such men as humanity needs, but
such as corrupt society needs.
Tolstoy foresaw the timid objections to his radical solution of the question on the part of those fearing a change, and he answered these at once, concluding his answer with the following reply:
[Tolstoy writes] "What are we to do then? shall
there, really, be no county schools, no gymnasia, no
chairs of the history of Roman law? What will become of
humanity?" I hear.
There certainly shall be none, if the pupils do not
need them, and you are not able to make them good.
"But children do not always know what they need;
children are mistaken," and so forth, I hear.
I will not enter into this discussion. this
discussion would lead us to the question: Can man's
nature be judged by a tribunal of men? and so forth. I
do not know that, and do not take that stand; all I can
say is that if we know what to teach, you must not keep
me from teaching Russian children by force, French,
medieval genealogy, and the art of stealing. I can prove
everything as you do.
"So there will be no gymnasia and no Latin? Then
what am I going to do?" I again hear.
Don't be afraid! There will be Latin and rhetoric,
and they will exist another hundred years, simply because
the medicine is bought, so we must drink it (as a patient
said). I doubt whether the thought, which I have
expressed, perhaps indistinctly, awkwardly,
inconclusively, will become a common possession in
another hundred years; it is not likely that within a
hundred years will die those ready-made institutions,
schools, gymnasia, universities, and that within that
time will grow up freely formed institutions, having for
their basis the freedom of the learning generation.
Of course, such audacious ideas could not be accepted by educationists, who during the 1860s have been at the head of national instruction in russia. Offended science did not even deign to take such ideas seriously. In "The Collection of Criticisms Upon Tolstoy" by Zelinskiy, a book very carefully composed, there are only two serious articles devoted to the magazine "Yasnaya Polyana", and to the school of the same name. The are printed in "The Contemporary" of 1862.
To one of these, the article of E. Markov, Tolstoy replied in his magazine by an article, "the Progress and Definition of Instruction."
The gist of markov's argument, given in a resume at the end of his article, consists in an open acknowledgment of the right of compulsory education on the part of society, and its right of rejecting free instruction, after making which he proceeds to express his approval of contemporary systems of instruction. As to the school in Yasnaya Polyana, he speaks with enthusiasm of its practice but holds that it is inconsistent with the theories of its founder and guide, L.N. Tolstoy.
In his reply to Markov, Tolstoy repeats and explains what has been said by him in his preceding articles, and he comes to the conclusion that their principal difference is the fact that Markov believes in progress and he does not.
In explanation of his want of belief in progress, he says:
[Tolstoy writes] The process of progress has taken
place in all humanity from time immemorial, says the
historian who believes in progress, and he proves this
assertion by comparing, let us say, England of the year
1685 with the England of our time. Even if it were
possible to prove, by comparing Russia, france, and Italy
of our time with ancient rome, Greece, Carthage, and so
forth, that the prosperity of the modern nations is
greater than that of antiquity, I am still struck by one
incomprehensible phenomenon; they deduce a general law
for all humanity from the comparison of one small part of
European humanity in the present and the past. Progress
is a common law of humanity, they say, except for Asia,
Africa, America, and australia, except for one thousand
mission people.
We have noticed the law of progress in the dukedom
of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, with its three thousand
inhabitants. We know China, with its two hundred million
inhabitants, which overthrows our whole theory of
progress, and we do not for a moment doubt that progress
is the common law of all humanity, and that we, the
believers in that progress, are right, and those who do
not believe in it are wrong, and so we go with cannons
and guns to impress the idea of progress upon the
Chinese. Common sense, however, tells us that if the
history of the greater part of humanity, the whole so-
called East, does not confirm the law of progress, but on
the contrary, overthrows it, that law does not exist for
all humanity, but only as an article of faith for a
certain part of it.
I, like all people who are free from the
superstition of progress, observe only that humanity
lives, that the memories of the past augment as much as
they disappear; the labors of the past frequently serve
as a basis for the labors of the present, and just as
frequently as an impediment; that the well-being of
people now increases in one place, in one stratum, and in
one sense, and now diminishes; that, not matter how
desirable it would be, I cannot find any common law in
the life of humanity; and that it is as easy to
subordinate history to the idea of progress as to any
other idea or to any imaginable historical fancy.
I will say even more; I see no necessity for finding
common laws for history, independently of the
impossibility of finding them. The common eternal law is
written in the soul of each man. The law of progress, or
perfectibility, is written in the soul of each man, and
is transferred to history only through error. As long as
it remains personal, this law is fruitful and accessible
to all; when it is transferred to history, it becomes an
idle, empty prattle, leading to the justification of
every insipidity and to fatalism. Progress in general in
all humanity is an unproved fact, and does not exist for
all the Eastern nations; therefore, it is as unfounded to
say that progress is the law of humanity as it is to say
that all people are fair except the dark-complexioned
ones.
The propositions stated are developed in detail by Tolstoy in his article, but as this subject over steps the limits of our narrative, we will conclude by mentioning one more paper entitled "A Project For A General Plan of People's Schools Organization." This article contains some witty criticisms, and a readable review of the Government regulation concerning schools in 1862.
Tolstoy's general critical remarks on the regulation can be summed up thus: (1) The regulation is based upon the American system; the people are to pay school rates, and the schools are to be maintained by the Government with the sum collected. But what is good in a democratic republic may turn out very bad in a despotic state, where the law expressing the so-called "will of the people" becomes a gross invasion of the rights of the people. (2) The general inefficiency of the project follows from its inadaptability to the needs of the people, owing to entire ignorance of Russian life on the part of the author. (3) The control of popular education sanctioned by this regulation will prove an obstacle to the popular education already existing, which is freely spreading.
After having finished this brief summary of Tolstoy's opinions on education, we must give our own conclusion, which is in opposition to the conclusion of M. Markov and is this, that the practice of the school at Yasnaya Polyana does not in the least contradict Tolstoy's views, but, on the contrary, amounts to their direct application, which is accomplished with unique success.
Footnotes [edit]
- ↑ D.T. Uspenskiy, "Archive Materials for Tolstoy's Biography." "Russian Thought", 1903, vol. ix.
