Chapter VIII: The School (2)

It is nearly always useless to hang up a large complete picture
or figure, because a beginner is quite at a loss before it, as he
would be before an object from nature. But the growth of the figure
before his eyes has an important meaning. In this case the pupil
sees the backbone and skeleton of the drawing on which the body is
subsequently formed. The pupils were always called on to criticise
the lines and their relation, as I drew them. I often purposely
drew them wrong, to find out in how far their judgment of the
co-relation and incorrectness of the lines had been developed. Then
again, when I was drawing my figure I asked the boys where they
thought the next line should be added; and I even made one or other
of them invent the shape of the figure himself.

In this way I not only aroused a more lively interest, but got the
boys to participate freely in the formation and development of
the figures; and this prevented the question. Why? which boys so
naturally put when they are set to draw from copies.

The ease or difficulty with which it was understood, and the more
or less interest evoked, chiefly influenced the choice of the
method of instruction; and I often quite abandoned what I had
prepared for the lesson, merely because it was dull or foreign to
the boys.

In the singing class, Tolstoy very soon found that notes written on the staff were not easily grasped by the pupils, and after using the staff for some ten lessons, he once showed the boys the use of numbers instead, and from that day forward they always asked him to use numbers, and they themselves always used numbers in writing music. This method is much more convenient, Tolstoy considers, for explaining both the intervals and the changes of key. The pupils who were not musical soon dropped out of the class, and the lessons with those who were, sometimes went on for three or four hours at a stretch. He tried to teach them musical time in the usual manner, but succeeded so badly that he had to take that and melody separately. First he took the sounds without reference to time, and then beat the time without considering the sounds, and finally joined the two processes together. After several lessons he found that the method he had drifted into, combined the chief features (though not some of the minor peculiarities) of Chevet's method, which, as already mentioned, he had seen in successful operation in Paris. After a very few lessons, two of the boys used to write down the melodies of the songs they knew, and were almost able to read music at sight.

From the limited experience he had in teaching music, Tolstoy--to quote his own words almost textually--became convinced that: (1) To write sounds by means of figures is the most profitable method; (2) To teach time separately from sound is the most profitable method; (3) For the teaching of music to be willingly and fruitfully received, one must from the start teach the _art_ and not aim merely at dexterity in singing or playing. Spoilt young ladies may be taught to play Burgmüller's exercises; but it is better not to teach the children of the people at all, than to teach them mechanically; (4) Nothing so harms musical instruction as what looks like a knowledge of music: namely the performance of choirs, and performances at examinations, speech-days, or in church; and (5) In teaching music to the people, the thing to be aimed at is to impart our knowledge of the general laws of music, but not the false taste we have developed among us.

In one of the most remarkable of his articles, Tolstoy tells how he discovered that Fédka and Syómka possessed literary ability of the highest order. Composition lessons had not gone well, until one day Tolstoy proposed that the children should write a story of peasant life to illustrate a popular proverb. Most of them felt this to be beyond their powers, and went on with their other occupations. One of them, however, bade Tolstoy write it himself in competition with them, and he set to work to do so, till Fédka, climbing on the back of his chair, interrupted him by reading over his shoulder. Tolstoy then began reading out what he had composed, and explaining how he thought of continuing the story. Several of the boys became interested, not approving of Tolstoy's work, but criticising and amending it, offering suggestions and supplying details. Syómka and Fédka particularly distinguished themselves, and showed extraordinary imagination, and such judgment, sense of proportion, restraint, and power of clothing their thoughts in words, that Tolstoy was carried away by the interest of the work and wrote as hard as he could to their dictation, having constantly to ask them to wait and not forget the details they had suggested. Fédka--of whom Tolstoy says that 'The chief quality in every art, the sense of proportion, was in him extraordinarily developed: he writhed at every superfluous detail suggested by any of the other boys,'--gradually took control of the work, and ruled so despotically and with such evident right, that the others dropped off and went home, except Syómka, who along his own more matter-of-fact line continued to co-operate.

We worked from seven in the evening till eleven. They felt neither
hunger nor weariness and were even angry with me when I stopped
writing; and they set to work to do it themselves turn and turn
about, but did not get on well and soon gave it up....

I left the lesson because I was too excited.

'What is the matter with you? Why are you so pale: are you ill?'
asked my colleague. Indeed, only two or three times in my life have
I experienced such strong emotion as during that evening....

Next day Tolstoy could hardly believe the experience of the night before. It seemed incredible that a peasant boy, hardly able to read, should suddenly display such marvellous command of artistic creative power.

It seemed to me strange and offensive that I, the author of
_Childhood_, who had achieved a certain success and was recognised
by the educated Russian public as possessing artistic talent,
should in artistic matters not merely be unable to instruct or
help eleven-year-old Syómka and Fédka, but should hardly be able,
except at a happy moment of excitement, to keep up with them and
understand them.

Next day we set to work to continue the story. When I asked Fédka
if he had thought of a continuation, he only waved his hand and
remarked: 'I know, I know!... Who will do the writing?'... We
resumed the work, and again the boys showed the same enthusiasm,
and the same sense of artistic truth and proportion.

Half-way through the lesson I had to leave them. They wrote two
pages without me, as just in feeling and as true to life as the
preceding ones. These two pages were rather poorer in detail, some
of the details were not quite happily placed, and there were also a
couple of repetitions. All this had evidently occurred because the
actual writing was a difficulty for them. On the third day we had
similar success.... There could no longer be any doubt or thought
of its being a mere accident. We had obviously succeeded in finding
a more natural and inspiring method than any we had previously
tried.

This unfinished story was accidentally destroyed. Tolstoy was greatly annoyed, and Fédka and Syómka, though they did not understand his vexation, offered to stay the night at his house and reproduce it. After eight o'clock, when school was over, they came, and (to Tolstoy's great pleasure) locked themselves into his study, where at first they were heard laughing but then became very quiet. On listening at the door Tolstoy heard their subdued voices discussing the story, and heard also the scratching of a pen. At midnight he knocked and was admitted. Syómka was standing at the large table, writing busily; his lines running crookedly across the paper and his pen constantly seeking the inkstand. Fédka told Tolstoy to 'wait a bit,' and insisted on Syómka's adding something more, to his dictation. At last Tolstoy took the exercise-book; and the lads, after enjoying a merry supper of potatoes and _kvás_, divested themselves of their sheepskin coats and lay down to sleep under the writing table; their 'charming, healthy, childish, peasant laughter' still ringing through the room.

The story just mentioned, and other stories written by the children, were published in the magazine; and Tolstoy declares them to be, in their way, superior to anything else in Russian literature. It was largely on the model of these peasant children's stories that, years later, he wrote his own famous stories for the people.

The rules for encouraging composition which he deduces from his experience are these:

(1) To offer as large and varied a choice of themes as possible;
not inventing them specially for the children, but offering such as
most interest the teacher and seem to him most important.

(2) To give children stories written by children to read, and to
offer only children's compositions as models; because these are
juster, finer and more moral than those written by adults.

(3) (Specially important.) Never, when looking through the
compositions, make any remarks to the children about the neatness
of the exercise-books, the handwriting, or the spelling; nor, above
all, about the construction of the sentences, or about logic.

(4) Since the difficulty of composition lies not in size nor in
subject, nor in correctness of language, but in the mechanism of
the work, which consists: (_a_) in choosing one out of the large
number of thoughts and images that offer themselves; (_b_) in
choosing words wherewith to clothe it; (_c_) in remembering it
and finding a fitting place for it; (_d_) in remembering what
has already been written, so as not to repeat anything or omit
anything, and in finding a way of joining up what has preceded to
what succeeds; (_e_) and finally in so managing that while thinking
and writing at one and the same time, the one operation shall not
hamper the other,--I, having these things in view, proceeded as
follows.

At first I took upon myself some of these sides of the work,
transferring them gradually to the pupils. At first, out of the
thoughts and images suggested, I chose for them those which seemed
to me best, and I kept these in mind and indicated suitable places
to insert them, and I looked over what had been written to avoid
repetitions, and I did the writing myself, letting them merely
clothe the thoughts and images in words. Afterwards I let them
select, and then let them look over what had been written, and
finally they took on themselves the actual writing....

One of the profoundest convictions impressed on Tolstoy's mind by his educational experiments was that the peasants and their children have a large share of artistic capacity, and that art is immensely important because of its humanising effect on them, and because it arouses and trains their faculties. Unfortunately the works: literary, poetic, dramatic, pictorial and plastic, now produced, are being produced expressly for people possessed of leisure, wealth, and a special, artificial training, and are therefore useless to the people. This deflection of art from the service of the masses of whom there are millions, to the delectation of the classes of whom there are but thousands, appears to him to be a very great evil.

He says with reference to two realms of art which he had loved passionately, and with which he was specially familiar: music and poetry, that he noticed that the demands of the masses were more legitimate than the demands of the classes.

Terrible to say, I came to the conviction that all that we have
done in those two departments has been done along a false and
exceptional path, which lacks importance, has no future, and is
insignificant in comparison with the demands upon, and even with
the samples of, those same arts which we find put forward by the
people. I became convinced that such lyrical compositions as,
for example, Poúshkin's 'I remember the marvellous moment,' and
such musical productions as Beethoven's Last Symphony, are not so
absolutely and universally good as the song of 'Willy the Steward'
or the melody of 'Floating down the river, Mother Vólga'; and that
Poúshkin and Beethoven please us, not because they are absolutely
beautiful, but because we are as spoiled as they, and because they
flatter our abnormal irritability and weakness. How common it is to
hear the empty and stale paradox, that to understand the beautiful,
a preparation is necessary! Who said so? Why? What proves it? It
is only a shift, a loophole, to escape from the hopeless position
to which the false direction of our art, produced for one class
alone, has led us. Why are the beauty of the sun and of the human
face, and the beauty of the sounds of a folk-song, and of deeds of
love and self-sacrifice, accessible to every one, and why do _they_
demand no preparation?

For years I vainly strove to make my pupils feel the poetic
beauties of Poúshkin and of our whole literature, and a similar
attempt is being made by innumerable teachers not in Russia alone;
and if these teachers notice the results of their efforts, and will
be frank about the matter, they will admit that the chief result of
this attempt to develop poetic feeling, is to kill it; and that it
is just those pupils whose natures are most poetic who show most
aversion to such commentaries....

I will try to sum up all that I have said above. In reply to the
question: Do people need the _beaux arts_? pedagogues usually grow
timid and confused (only Plato decided the matter boldly in the
negative). They say: 'Art is needed, but with certain limitations;
and to make it possible for all to become artists would be bad for
the social structure. Certain arts and certain degrees of art can
only exist in a certain class of society. The arts must have their
special servants, entirely devoted to them,' They say: 'It should
be possible for those who are greatly gifted to escape from among
the people and devote themselves completely to the service of art.'
That is the greatest concession pedagogy makes to the right of each
individual to become what he likes.

But I consider that to be all wrong. I think that a need to
enjoy art and to serve art, is inherent in every human being, to
whatever race or class he may belong; and that this need has its
right and should be satisfied. Taking that position as an axiom,
I say that if the enjoyment and production of art by every one,
presents inconveniences and inconsistencies, the reason lies in the
character and direction art has taken: about which we must be on
our guard, lest we foist anything false on the rising generation,
and lest we prevent it from producing something new, both as to
form and as to matter.

Tolstoy goes so far as to doubt whether, so long as no suitable literature is produced for the people, it is even worth their while to learn to read.

Looking closer at the results of the rudiments in the form in which
they are supplied to the masses, I think most people will decide
that the rudiments do more harm than good, taking into account
the prolonged compulsion, the disproportionate development of
memory, the false conception of the completeness of science, the
aversion to further education, the false vanity, and the habit of
meaningless reading acquired in these schools....

'Let us print good books for the people!'... How simple and easy
that seems--like all great thoughts! There is only one obstacle,
namely that there exist no good books for the people, either here
or in Europe. To print such books, they must first be produced; and
none of our philanthropists think of undertaking _that_ work!

Before closing this rapid summary of Tolstoy's educational writings, let me quote a few more sentences which sum up his essential position:

In my articles on Education I have given my theoretic reasons for
considering that only freedom on the part of the pupils to select
what they will learn and how they will learn it, can furnish a
sound basis for any instruction. In practice I constantly applied
those rules to the schools under my guidance ...and the results
were always very good both for the teachers and the pupils, as well
as for the evolution of new methods; and this I assert boldly, for
hundreds of visitors came to the Yásno-Polyána school and know how
it worked.

For the masters, the result of such relations with the pupils was
that they did not consider any methods they happened to know,
to be the best, but they tried to discover new methods and made
acquaintance with other teachers whose ways they could learn. They
tested fresh methods, and above all, they themselves were always
learning. A master never allowed himself, in cases of failure, to
think that it was the pupils' fault: their laziness, naughtiness,
stupidity, deafness or stuttering; but he was convinced that the
fault was his own, and for every defect on the side of the pupil or
pupils, he tried to discover a remedy.

For the pupils the results were that they learnt eagerly, always
begged to have additional lessons on winter evenings, and were
quite free in class--which, in my conviction and experience, is the
chief condition of successful teaching. Between the teachers and
the pupils friendly and natural relations always arose, without
which it is not possible for a teacher to know his pupils fully....

With reference to the methods of instruction, the results were that
no method was adopted or rejected because it pleased or did not
please the teacher, but only because the pupil, without compulsion,
accepted or did not accept it. But besides the good results which
unfailingly followed the adoption of my method both by myself and
by all--more than twenty--other teachers (I say 'unfailingly'
because we never had a single pupil who did not master the
rudiments)--besides these results, the adoption of the principles
of which I have spoken produced this effect, that during fifteen
years all the different modifications to which my method has been
subjected, have not only not removed it from the demands of the
people, but have brought it closer and closer to them.... In my
school... every teacher, while bringing his pupils forward, himself
feels the need of learning; and this was constantly the case with
all the teachers I had.

Moreover, the very methods of instruction themselves--since they
are not fixed once for all but aim at finding the easiest and
simplest paths--change and improve according to what the teacher
learns from the pupils' relation to his teaching.

The children had not to pay anything for attending the school, and the relations between them and Tolstoy are illustrated by the account a visitor has given of seeing Tolstoy rush through a gate followed by a crowd of merry youngsters who were snow-balling him. Tolstoy was intent on making his escape, but on seeing the visitor he changed his mind, acknowledged his defeat, and surrendered to his triumphant pursuers.

Tolstoy does not stand before the world to-day primarily as a school-master, and even were I competent to deal with the subject, it would exceed the limits of this biography to attempt a detailed criticism of his precepts and practice; but he evidently possessed, as he claims in one of his articles, 'a certain pedagogic tact'; and he is clearly right in his belief that the rigid discipline of schools, the lack of freedom and initiative, the continual demand for silence and obedience, and the refusal to allow pupils to criticise the lessons they receive, have a constantly stupefying effect.

All that he allowed at Yásnaya Polyána was denied to us when I was at Christ's Hospital, in 1868-1874; and I look back on those six years of mental stultification as the most wretched of my life. At the preparatory school in Hertford, so stupefied were the little boys by terror and discipline, that when the head-master (traditionally an incarnation of all the virtues) became grossly harsh and unfair, they could not see what was happening until his insanity was so pronounced that the doctors had to take him in hand: an event that occurred soon after I had left for the upper school in London.

There, one of the masters (who evidently did not believe that 'history is experience teaching by example') in intervals between whacking the boys on their backs or hands with a long cane, used, I remember, emphatically to announce that 'dates and names are the most important parts of history.' A Latin master, a barrister, who was usually busy at some sort of law work when he should have been teaching us, used to set us to learn by rote rules and illustrations which we did not in the least understand. On one occasion the example given in the grammar was:

_Opes irritamenta malorum effodiuntur._

Riches the incentives of crime are dug out of the earth.

The top boy had learnt the rule and illustration by heart (which I never could do); but, departing from his usual routine, the master unexpectedly asked which Latin word corresponded to which English. Each of the first twenty-four boys in the class in turn got caned and sent to the bottom; so that by the time I, who had been last, had come to the top, and it was my turn to reply, only one possible combination remained untried, and I was able to announce that _effodiuntur_ meant 'are dug out of the earth.' Unluckily there was another rule that day, and over this I, in turn, came to grief, and was caned and sent to the bottom.

In the drawing class I remember doing the outline of a cube to the master's satisfaction, and being promoted to the shading class. I had no idea how to shade, and the attempt I made was certainly a very bad one; but instead of receiving advice or assistance, my ears were boxed so violently that I should be tempted to attribute to that assault the slight deafness from which I have since suffered, were it not that such treatment was so common at Christ's Hospital, that none of the victims whose hearing may have been impaired, could be sure to which of the masters they owed that part of their preparation for the battle of life.

I feel sure the stultifying effects of such cruel and senseless treatment would have been even more serious, had not the school authorities, by some strange oversight, allowed _one_ really readable and interesting periodical to find a place among the Sunday magazines and other sterilised literature obtainable in the School Library. This one publication, which I read ardently during my school years, was _Chambers's Journal_. It contained novels by James Payn, and other matter suited to my powers of mental digestion. From smuggled copies of Captain Marryat's novels I also got a good deal of culture: far more, I am sure, than from any of the lessons we endured.

CHIEF AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER VIII

Tolstoy's Educational articles, and N. V. Ouspensky, _Iz Proshlago_.