18621862
People :
Author : Leo Tolstoy
Translator : Nathan Haskell Dole
Text :
The views of the people have changed since the first in regard to the school. Of their former ideas of it we shall have occasion to speak in the history of the Y. P. school; even now it is said among the people "that everything all the sciences are taught there, and the teachers are so extraordinary there why! they even make thunder and lightning! In other respects the boys learn well, and know how to read and write!" Some rich householders [15] send their children, out of vanity, to go through the whole course, so that they may learn "division" division being for them the highest concept of scholastic wisdom. Other fathers consider that learning is very advantageous; but the majority send their children without reasoning about it, yielding merely to the spirit of the times. Of these children, who form the larger number, the most gratifying result to us is shown in the fact that these thus sent have come to be so fond of study that their fathers yield to their children's desires, and begin themselves unconsciously to feel that something good is doing for their children, and so cannot make up their minds to take them away.
One father was telling me how he once burned out a whole candle, holding it above his son's book, and he was loud in his praises both of his son and of the book. It was the Testament.
"My pa, [16] also," said one of the boys to me, "the other day listened as I was reading one of my stories; he laughed at first, but when he found that it was religious, he sat up till midnight to listen, and he himself held the light!"
I went with one of the new teachers to a pupil's house, and in order to have the boy make a good showing before the teacher, I made him do an algebra example. The mother climbed up on the oven, and we forgot all about her as her son carefully and boldly formed his equation, and said:
"2 ab minus c, equals d divided by three."
She all the time was covering her mouth with her hand, and trying to restrain herself, but at last she burst out laughing, and could not explain to us what she was laughing at.
Another father, a soldier, who came to fetch his son, found him in the drawing class; and when he saw his son's skill, he began to address him with the respectful you instead of thou, and could not make up his mind during the class to give him the present which he had brought him.
The general impression, it seems to me, is this: "It is superfluous and idle to teach everything, as in the case of the children of the nobility, but here reading and writing are taught with dispatch therefore we can send our children."
Injurious rumors about us circulate, but they are beginning to find less credence. Two fine boys lately left school on the ground that writing was not properly taught.
Another soldier was on the point of sending his son, but, after questioning the best of our boys, and finding that he stumbled in reading the Psalter, he made up his mind that learning was poor business, and only glory was good.
Some of the Yasnopolyansky peasants still have some apprehension lest the rumors that were once in circulation may have some foundation; they imagine we are teaching for some ulterior end, and that before they know it they will be bundled into carts and carried off to Moscow.
There is now scarcely any dissatisfaction because we do not punish by whipping, and because we have no rank-list; and I have often had occasion to notice the perplexity of some parent who came to school after his son, and found the running, confusion, and scuffling going on before his very eyes. He is persuaded that such indulgence is harmful, and he believes that education is a good thing, but how the two are united he cannot comprehend.
Gymnastic exercises even now occasionally give rise to comment, and the conviction that they tear the viscera is not to be overcome. At the end of their fasting, or in the autumn when vegetables are ripe, gymnastic exercises seem to do most harm; and old grandmothers, [17] as they put on the pots, will explain that over-indulgence and breaking is the cause of all the trouble.
For some of the parents, though the number is small, the spirit of equality that obtains serves as a cause for dissatisfaction. In November there were two girls, daughters of a rich householder, who came in cloaks and caps, who at first held themselves quite aloof from the others; but afterwards, becoming accustomed to things, began to study excellently, and did not mind the tea and the cleaning of their teeth with tobacco. Their father, who drove up in his Crimean tulup tightly buttoned, came into school, and surprised them in the midst of a throng of dirty, clog-wearing children, who, leaning their elbows on the girls' caps, were listening to the teacher. The father was affronted, and took his girls from school, though he did not confess the cause of his grievance.
Finally, there are pupils who have left the school because their parents, who have entered them there in order to please some one, have withdrawn them when this sense of obligation was past.
Thus we have twelve subjects, three classes, forty pupils all told, four teachers, and from five to seven recitations in the course of the day. The teachers keep a diary of their occupations, which they communicate to one another on Sundays, and in accordance with this they make their plans for the teaching during the next week. These plans are not always carried out, but are often modified in accordance with the demands of the pupils.
From : Wikisource.org.
Chronology :
September 30, 1862 : Chapter 18 -- Publication.
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