 | Yasnaya Polyana School — Chapter 26 : The Writing Of CompositionsBy Leo Tolstoy (1862) |
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| Yasnaya Polyana School — Chapter 26 : The Writing Of CompositionsBy Leo Tolstoy (1862) |
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Father of Christian Anarchism
: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "The Government and all those of the upper classes near the Government who live by other people's work, need some means of dominating the workers, and find this means in the control of the army. Defense against foreign enemies is only an excuse. The German Government frightens its subjects about the Russians and the French; the French Government, frightens its people about the Germans; the Russian Government frightens its people about the French and the Germans; and that is the way with all Governments. But neither Germans nor Russians nor Frenchmen desire to fight their neighbors or other people; but, living in peace, they dread war more than anything else in the world." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
• "It usually happens that when an idea which has been useful and even necessary in the past becomes superfluous, that idea, after a more or less prolonged struggle, yields its place to a new idea which was till then an ideal, but which thus becomes a present idea." (From: "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....)
• "People who take part in Government, or work under its direction, may deceive themselves or their sympathizers by making a show of struggling; but those against whom they struggle (the Government) know quite well, by the strength of the resistance experienced, that these people are not really pulling, but are only pretending to." (From: "A Letter to Russian Liberals," by Leo Tolstoy, Au....)
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Chapter 26
In the first and second classes the choice of compositions is granted the scholars. The favorite subject for these boys are the Old Testament stories, which they will write two months after they have been related by the teacher.
The first class not long ago began to write on New Testament history, but this was not nearly so successful as the Old; they even made more mistakes in spelling in it. They did not understand it so well. In the first class we tried compositions written on given themes. The early themes, which, by the most natural process, first came into our heads, were descriptions of simple objects, such as corn, a cottage, a tree, etc.; but to our extreme amazement their labors on these subjects almost brought the tears into the pupils' eyes, and in spite of the help of the teacher, who divided the description of corn into the description of its growth, or of its manufacture, or about its use, they strenuously refused to write on themes of such a nature; and if they wrote, they made incomprehensible and most ridiculous mistakes in spelling, in language, and in ideas.
We tried the experiment of giving up compositions on such subjects, and all were as delighted as if we had bestowed a gift on them. Compositions on socalled simple subjects, so much affected in schools, such as a pig, a kettle, a table, seemed immeasurably more difficult than the writing of whole stories based on their own experiences.
One and the same mistake is always repeated as in all other matters of instruction the simplest and most common seems to the teacher to be easiest, while to the pupil only the complicated and vivid seems easy.
All the text-books of natural sciences begin with general principles, text-books of language with definitions, history with divisions into periods, even geometry with definitions of such abstract concepts as space and the mathematical point.
Almost all teachers, guiding themselves along such a path of thought, give out for their first subjects of composition the definition of a table or a bench, and cannot persuade themselves that for the description of a table or a bench one needs to stand on the very highest plane of philosophical and dialectical development, and that the same lad who is shedding tears over his composition about tables or benches will describe admirably the sentiment of love or hate, the meeting of Joseph and his brethren, or a squabble among his companions.
The subjects which they best like to write about are the description of events which have taken place under their own eyes, or the repetition of stories which they have heard.
The writing of compositions has come to be their favorite exercise. Outside of school, as soon as the older scholars have got hold of paper and pencils, they write, not Milostivui, "Dear Sir," but a story of their own composition.
At first I was troubled by the irregularity and sense of disproportion in the form of the compositions. I gave them such directions as I thought were necessary, but they absolutely mistook my meaning, and the affair went badly; it seemed as if they were unwilling to recognize any other necessity upon them than that there should be no mistakes. Now, however, the time has come when they themselves often complain when a composition is stretched out, or when there are frequent repetitions or jumps from one subject to another. It would be hard to decide wherein their demands are founded, but their demands are law.
"Nonsense!" some of them cry, when they hear the composition of some schoolmate; some are unwilling to read their own after hearing the reading of a composition which has struck them as good; some will tear their copybooks from the teacher's hand, dissatisfied that they did not sound as they expected, and will read them themselves.
Different natures are so sharply expressed that we used to try the experiment of having the scholars guess who wrote such and such a composition, and in the first class they rarely made a mistake in their selection.
From : Wikisource.org
Father of Christian Anarchism
: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "Only by recognizing the land as just such an article of common possession as the sun and air will you be able, without bias and justly, to establish the ownership of land among all men, according to any of the existing projects or according to some new project composed or chosen by you in common." (From: "To the Working People," by Leo Tolstoy, Yasnaya P....)
• "You are surprised that soldiers are taught that it is right to kill people in certain cases and in war, while in the books admitted to be holy by those who so teach, there is nothing like such a permission..." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
• "The Government and all those of the upper classes near the Government who live by other people's work, need some means of dominating the workers, and find this means in the control of the army. Defense against foreign enemies is only an excuse. The German Government frightens its subjects about the Russians and the French; the French Government, frightens its people about the Germans; the Russian Government frightens its people about the French and the Germans; and that is the way with all Governments. But neither Germans nor Russians nor Frenchmen desire to fight their neighbors or other people; but, living in peace, they dread war more than anything else in the world." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
Nathan Haskell Dole (August 31, 1852 – May 9, 1935) was an American editor, translator, and author. He attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and graduated from Harvard University in 1874. He was a writer and journalist in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. He translated many works of Leo Tolstoy, and books of other Russians; novels of the Spaniard Armando Palacio Valdés (1886–90); a variety of works from the French and Italian. Nathan Haskell Dole was born August 31, 1852, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He was the second son of his father Reverend Nathan Dole (1811–1855) and mother Caroline (Fletcher) Dole. Dole grew up in the Fletcher homestead, a strict Puritan home, in Norridgewock, Maine, where his grandmother lived and where his mother moved with her two boys after his father died of tuberculosis. Sophie May wrote her Prudy Books in Norridgewock, which probably showed the sort of life Nathan and his older brother Charles Fletcher Dole (1845... (From: Wikipedia.org.)
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Chapter 26
