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]

  1. D.T. Uspenskiy, "Archive Materials for Tolstoy's Biography." "Russian Thought", 1903, vol. ix.