“The criterion is to teach in accordance with the needs of the time” (L.N. Tolstoy). Few people know that immediately after writing the famous epic novel “War and Peace”, Lev Nikolayevich enthusiastically took up “Azbuka”. In the novel, the history and fate of Russian society are intertwined with scenes from the Patriotic War of 1812, the bicentennial of which we celebrate this year.
Count's ABC
Tolstoy's “Azbuka”, which was published 140 years ago, became an event in pedagogy at the time. It was a collection of educational materials from four books. It was a kind of children's encyclopedia, which revealed the basic concepts of physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology. The publication aroused heated debate. Improved by the author thanks to the comments of opponents, “Novaya Azbuka” was accepted by the Ministry of Education and went through more than thirty editions.
Later, Lev Nikolaevich created a whole literature for children's reading. Many of these works are included in all anthologies today: “Filipok”, “Three Bears”, “The Prisoner of the Caucasus”. But that was already the second period of his activity as a teacher, a methodological one.
Even earlier, from 1859 to 1862, Tolstoy had a time of “passionate fascination with teaching.” During these years, he taught at a free primary school for peasant children that he had revived, and also participated in the creation of 20 more such schools in the Tula province. Reopening his Yasnaya Polyana school after a ten-year break, he dreamed of “saving those drowning Pushkins, Ostrogradskys, Filarets, Lomonosovs who swarm in every school.”
Voyage with passion
Having become convinced that teaching is a difficult task, Lev Nikolaevich goes to Europe and visits educational institutions in France, Italy, Germany, England, and Switzerland.
“I could write entire books about the ignorance I saw in the schools of France, Switzerland and Germany,” he wrote in his diary. “…I saw orphanages in which four-year-old children, at the sound of a whistle, like soldiers, made evolutions around benches, at the command they raised and folded their hands and in trembling, strange voices sang hymns of praise to God and their benefactors, and I was convinced that the educational institutions of the city of Marseilles were extremely bad.”
In the schools that Lev Nikolayevich visited, there was discipline with a rod, corporal punishment was used, and mechanical memorization was prevalent. Having visited the public school in Kissengen, he noted in his diary on July 17, 1860: “I was at school. Horrible… A prayer for the king, beatings, everything by heart, frightened, disfigured children.”
Following his hot and uncompromising temperament, Lev Nikolaevich openly criticized the masters-teachers during his inspection of Europe, debated with the most venerable of them, offering his vision of the education system. In this way, he apparently managed to leave a mark on the granite of the European education system.
Returning home, the young count concluded that the Russians were in an incomparably more advantageous position because they did not yet have a history of public education. “It is much easier for us to take into account the mistakes of Europe when our activity has not yet begun,” he believed.
Russian educational institutions of that time were remembered by contemporaries for their drill, punishment cells and tightly buttoned uniforms. And before that, peasant children were taught mainly by deacons and retired soldiers.
A caring adherent of pedagogy, he draws the attention of the public to the fact that “schools are established not so that it is convenient for children to study, but so that it is convenient for teachers to teach. The teacher finds the children's speech, movement, and cheerfulness inconvenient, which constitute the necessary conditions for their learning.” And in schools, which are built, in his words, like prisons, questions, conversations, and movements are prohibited. The educator tried to surround his protégé with an impenetrable wall from the influence of the world, passing only through his school-educational funnel what he considered useful. Everywhere the influence of life was not recognized and was removed by the care of the educator. The Chinese wall of school wisdom separated school from life.
Education, in essence, was a striving for moral despotism raised to the level of a principle. The most precious time of a child's age is torn away from those necessary conditions for his development that nature has provided him. And he sits down unnaturally immobilized at his desk, and his body gradually gets used to this unusual immobility and muscular stagnation. And the child forever enters a different rut of life – a passive one.
Tolstoy expressed his indignation at the organization of education and his views on the pages of the magazine he published, Yasnaya Polyana, as well as in the published articles, On Public Education, On Methods of Teaching Literacy, and Upbringing and Education.
Having completed his pedagogical voyage, Tolstoy finally decided to have his own school. But the peasants initially treated the count's idea of opening a free school in his house with distrust.
The first students were only twenty-two. But after a few weeks their number tripled. Lev Nikolayevich believed that education could not be forced and that it should bring joy to the students.
The flock is not for the shepherd, but the shepherd is for the flock
Classes at his school began in the morning with a break for lunch and rest. Everyone sat where they wanted – at a table, on a windowsill, on the floor, or even in the master's rocking chair, and could come and go as they wished.
The predominant form of teaching was not a lesson in the usual sense, but a free conversation with students. There were no homework assignments. The content of the teaching changed in accordance with the development of the children, the possibilities of the school and the wishes of the parents.
At the Yasnaya Polyana school they studied 12 subjects: reading, writing, grammar, Russian history, mathematics, drawing, discussions of natural sciences, drafting, singing, etc.
The school's fundamental distinction was its attitude to the knowledge and skills acquired by children outside of school. This knowledge was encouraged and respected.
This school was the complete opposite of the state schools that existed at the time – both Russian and foreign. But not everyone could teach in such a school. Creativity, improvisation and an immediate reaction to what was happening in the classroom were required from the teacher.
The degree of constant moral and intellectual tension was extremely high.
What? Where? When?
“Everything that we wish to achieve can only be achieved in future generations,” Tolstoy believed.
The following generations have indeed done a lot for the development of education. And the existing system is constantly developing, following the needs of society, although even today it is not free from shortcomings.
There are many glorious educational systems in Europe today. For example, the city of Göttingen in Lower Saxony is 20% student. 70 Nobel laureates taught or studied in Göttingen. Future German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was a student there, and Friedrich Weller isolated pure aluminum there in 1827. The university, whose forerunner was a comprehensive school opened in 1311, is magnificent.
But at one time, the city authorities had been trying to get it created for two hundred years!
But we are interested – what are the schools like in Europe now?
Schools in Germany are traditional in our understanding, correct. All, except one. True, in 2009 the Ministry of Education was going to close it due to its “non-standardness”, but… they couldn’t!
Teachers, educators and children came out to demonstrate for her and defended their right to study “out of the box”. Now she is recognized as the best in Germany.
NTV correspondent Konstantin Goldenzweig told about a school that teaches freedom, equality, and brotherhood not through slogans, but through practice.
In Germany, as everywhere, there are schools for the poor and for the rich, for Germans and for immigrants. But this one is special! Different children are accepted here without any competition. According to the figurative expression of the director Wolfgang Vogelsänger, future masons study together with future architects. In the future, this should help them build relationships and understand each other in real life.
All the strict school canons have been abolished here. There are no bells, no diaries, no teachers' councils, no parents' meetings. Tell me, does this remind you of anything?
Instead of grades – a detailed report on the child's achievements. Moreover, the student himself writes about them along with the teacher. Even Lev Nikolayevich could not have dreamed of such radicalism.
A standard lesson is more like our intellectual game “What? Where? When?”
Traditional education supporters from the city education department pester them with questions: “Why does the teacher evaluate the group instead of the child? Why do children have classes in the school circus and theater instead of homework?”
And in Marseille, mentioned by Tolstoy, there are now five pilot lyceums. The US education system is also widely known for its experiments.
Educators around the world are no longer afraid of experiments. Experimental schools are now considered an important condition for the development of school education. The global goal of education is the transition from obtaining a sum of knowledge to the ability to work with information and the acquisition of life skills.
In Lev Nikolayevich's homeland, a sharp surge of experimental activity occurred at the turn of the millennium. And today, many Russian schools participate in the experiment. One of them is the Yasnaya Polyana school, built in 1928 by the writer's youngest daughter Alexandra for the 100th anniversary of Lev Nikolayevich's birth.
Now it is Yasnaya Polyana Gymnasium No. 2 named after L. N. Tolstoy, known for its publishing and museum activities, as well as its scientific society of students. At the gymnasium, schoolchildren learn self-government skills and participate in the children's movement “Ant Brotherhood”.
Since 1990, the gymnasium has been involved in an experiment to revive Tolstoy's innovative ideas. In addition to schools in the Tula region, schools in Moscow, Voronezh, Nakhodka, Tolyatti, Yekaterinburg, Novokuibyshevsk, and Bryansk are participating in the “L.N. Tolstoy School” experiment. Japan, South Korea, and Belarus have not remained indifferent – they also teach in Tolstoy's schools.
Lev Nikolayevich's views were often contradictory, but always sincere. His differences with the church are well known, which to some extent served to cool attention to his merits in Russia. But the reading public beyond our borders remembered only three Russian classics – Tolstoy among them.
It is very difficult, almost impossible, to divide Lev Nikolayevich's worldwide fame into its components. Most value him as a writer, others know him for his pedagogical research, and many recognize his indisputable merits as a progressive thinker and humanist.
In any case, the scale of his personality still amazes and surprises.
And, without a doubt, many of the readers, having become acquainted with the teaching activities of Lev Nikolaevich, with this facet of his talent, will discover for themselves a new L.N. Tolstoy, whose birthday we celebrate on September 9.
