Thanks to the vitality in the spirit of the school, especially when its older pupils returned from their village occupations, this method of reading failed of itself, they began to grow listless, to play pranks, they cut the lessons. The main point, the reading of stories, which would go to prove the success of this mechanical method, showed that there was no success at all, that during five weeks not a step of progress had been made, many had fallen behind. The best mathematician of the first class, R, who could perform examples in square root in his head, got during this time so out of the practice of reading that he even had to spell out words.

We dropped reading in books and racked our brains in trying to invent a method of mechanical reading. The simple notion that the time had not yet come for good mechanical reading, and that there was no necessity for it as yet, that the pupils themselves would find the best method, did not occur to us for some time.

During these experiments the following scheme worked itself out: While the reading classes were in progress as yet only nominally divided into graded and mechanical, the poorest readers would each two have a book between them, sometimes tales, sometimes the Gospels, sometimes a collection of songs, or a journal of popular reading, and they would read this in duet merely for practice; but when this book is a story within their comprehension they read it understandingly, and insist on the teacher hearing them, even though the class is nominally one in mechanical reading.

Occasionally the students for the most part those that are dull take the same book several times, open it at the same page, read the same story, and remember it by heart, not only without, but even against, the teacher's recommendation; sometimes these dull ones come to the teacher or to the elder pupils and ask permission to read with them.

Those that had read best in the second class do not like so well to read before company, more rarely read for mere practice; and, if they learn anything by heart, it is poetry, and not prose tales.

The same phenomenon took place among the older ones with a particularity which especially surprised me last month. In their class in graded reading some book was given them, and they took turns in reading it, and then all of them in concert repeated its contents. This autumn they were joined by a pupil named Ch, of remarkably gifted nature, who had been to school two years to the sacristan, and was therefore ahead of them all in reading. He reads as well as we do, and consequently in the class in graded reading the pupils understand what little they understand only when Ch is reading, and nevertheless each of them is stirred with desire to read.

But as soon as a poor reader begins, all express their dissatisfaction, especially when the story is interesting; they turn it into ridicule, they grow angry, the poor reader becomes abashed, and endless disorder ensues.

Last month one of them declared that, at any cost, he would succeed in a week's time in reading as well as Ch did; others also made the same vow, and suddenly mechanical reading became a favorite occupation.

For an hour, or an hour and a half, they would sit still, clinging to the book which they could not understand, they would take it home with them, and actually in three weeks they made most unexpected progress.

With them precisely the opposite happened to what generally happens with those who know how to read.

It generally happens that a man learns how to read, but without understanding; in this case it resulted that the scholars became convinced that there was something to read and to understand, and that to attain this skill was required, and so they began to acquire fluency in reading.

Now we have entirely abandoned mechanical reading, but the matter is left as described above: each pupil is given the chance to employ all the methods he pleases, and it is noticeable that each employs all the methods known to me.

I. Reading with a teacher.

II. Reading for practice.

III. Reading and learning by heart.

IV. Reading together.

V. Reading with a comprehension of what is read. The first method, which is employed by mothers all over the world, is, as a rule, not a scholastic but a family method; according to this the pupil comes and asks some one to read with him; the teacher reads, showing the pronunciation of each syllable and word. This is the first and most rational expedient no other can take its place; and the pupil himself demands it before all others, and the teacher instinctively falls back upon it.

Notwithstanding all the means calculated to improve the education and to facilitate the teacher's work with the majority of students, this remains the best, and indeed the only, method of teaching children to read, and to read fluently.

The second meuiod of instruction in reading is likewise very popular, and every one who learns to read fluently makes use of it. In this case, the pupil is given a book and is left wholly to himself to make out and comprehend what he pleases. The pupil who has gained sufficient prowess not to feel the need of asking some one [18] to read with him, but trusts to himself, always acquires that passion for process reading which is too severely satirized in Gogol's "Petrushka," and in consequence of this passion makes great progress. God knows how such kind of reading gets into his head, but in some way he becomes accustomed to the shape of the letters, to the formation of syllables, to the pronunciation of words, and even to their meaning; and I have more than once by experiment satisfied myself how we have been put back by our strenuous insistence on the pupil understanding absolutely what he reads.

Many self-taught persons have learned to read well in this way, although its faults must be manifest to every one.

The third method of teaching reading consists in the learning by heart prayers, verses, or any printed page, and in pronouncing what has been learned, following it from the book.

The fourth method that which was found so injurious in the Y. P. school is reading from a single book. It corrected itself in our school. At first we had not books enough to go around, and so each two pupils had one book put before them; then this began to amuse them, and when the announcement was made, "Class in Reading," the students of equal strength would pair off and sit down sometimes three with one book and one would read and the rest would follow and make corrections.

You would make a muddle of the whole thing if you tried to seat them yourselves; they know who are their mates, and Taraska will infallibly select Dunka.

"Now, come here and read, and you go to your place!"

Some do not like at all such reading in common, because it is not necessary.

The advantage of reading together in this way con sists in the greater clearness of pronunciation, in the greater chance for the one who does not read, but follows, to understand; but all the advantage produced by this method is rendered injurious as soon as this method or any other is applied to the whole school.

Finally, the fifth method, which is still in favor with us, is a graded reading that is, the reading of books with interest and comprehension growing ever more and more complicated.

All of these methods, as has been said above, have been employed experimentally in the school, and the advancement made in one month has been considerable.

The teacher's business is merely to propose a choice of all known and unknown methods of possibly helping the pupil in the business of learning. To be sure, in a certain way, that of reading by single book, instruction is made easy and convenient for the teacher, it has an appearance of regularity and progressiveness; but in our system it not only proves to be difficult, but to some it seems impossible.

People will ask: "How can one foretell what is necessary to every pupil, and decide whether the demand of each one is legitimate or not?" People will ask: "How can you help getting confused in this varied throng, if it is not subjected to some general principle?"

To these questions I will reply: The difficulty presents itself merely because we cannot divest ourselves of the ancient view of a school as of a disciplined corps of soldiers which one lieutenant commands one day, another the next. For the teacher accustomed to the freedom of the school, every pupil represents an individuality with his own needs, to satisfy which freedom of choice is the only possible condition.

Had it not been for this freedom and external disorder which to some people seems so strange and impossible, we should not only never have hit upon these five methods of learning to read, but moreover we should never have dared to employ and proportion them to the demands of the pupils, and consequently we should never have attained those brilliant results which we attained in reading during the last part of the time.

How many times has it happened to us to witness the perplexity of visitors to our school, who wished in the course of two hours to learn our method of instruction when we had none at all! and, moreover, in the course of those two hours insisted on telling us their method! How many times have we not heard these visitors advising us to introduce the very method which, unknown to them, was employed under their very eyes in the school, but only not in the form of a despotic law imposed on all!