Character education in school

Separating learning or science from education is a pernicious prejudice into which many people now fall, especially people who dream of preparing a citizen through school and accomplishing this through science. The teaching itself, whatever its programs, does not achieve its goal if in it mental education does not merge with moral education. Only he knows how to teach who has both inseparable in his thoughts. To teach well means to help the formation of good skills and to hinder the formation of bad skills, and these skills, inseparably mental and moral, are inconceivable without the other. It is in vain that others assume that knowledge is given through the communication and assimilation of facts - this is necessary, but this alone is not sufficient for the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge must have integrity, and in this sense it is equally necessary for everyone, although its improvement depends especially on the properties and needs of each. The educational education of a person has no limit: there is no and does not exist a person who has grown to perfection, and all the successes achieved by a person serve only as an indicator of what he can become. The ideal of perfection that religion sets before us is unattainable: we can only strive for it by consistent growth from strength to strength, such is the law of our existence and essence. This determines the task of the educator. He must provide his pet with incentives that open up the possibility of limitless improvement, impart the ability and strength to move forward, regardless of external circumstances and material support. But in bringing his pupil to this goal by careful discipline, he must proportion his strength, so as not to prematurely impose on him such a burden as he is not yet able to bear. Every person from childhood grows by himself through the action of his natural forces. Rely on them and leave it to grow, some say. Don't rely on them, teach him carefully, others say. The truth must be sought between these extremes. The teacher must act, but it’s a disaster if he forgets that the main figure in education should be the pet himself. Without his participation, the whole task of education will be lost. Some philosophers are inclined to think that the soul of a child is like a sheet of white paper on which the teacher can write whatever he wants, and that this is the main instrument of education. Such philosophers think that all knowledge comes directly from sensory representations and all mental processes are nothing more than the modification and combination of sensations - therefore, from the very beginning it is necessary to influence the student with reasoning: in this case, the sensation itself serves as the basis for reasoning, for which there is no other support. In this method there is almost no room for student initiative: all the work belongs to the teacher. The student seems capable of imagining ideas that are still beyond his cognitive capacity, and his memory is burdened with work in the hope that the “knowledge” acquired in this way will itself be assimilated to the mind by an unconscious mental process. On the other hand, constant appeal to sensation weakens the activity of attention and leaves no room for reflection; hence, in the formation of character, comes the common tendency among many in our time towards frivolity, both in a person’s actions and in his words. Whatever the natural properties of the pupil and the properties of the family and social environment from which he came, the duty of the educator is to arouse in him a self-active vital force and establish in him the consciousness that he can and must himself promote his spiritual growth at all times: both now and then, when there are no teachers and educators around him. To do this, it is necessary, first of all, to communicate and instill in him good habits and the ability to multiply them subsequently. The habit of doing in due time everything that is required by a good impulse, little by little forms such a discipline of impulses and actions that the right thing becomes simpler and more natural than the wrong. The first condition for developing good habits is order - the order of each individual and the whole class. A consciously established order should be such that it makes the acquisition of good habits easier and the acquisition of bad skills more difficult - this is the meaning of discipline. A great thing is skill: it contains a significant observant (conservative) force for human nature and for human society. Instinct alone is not enough for a protective purpose: instinct is a blind, unconscious urge caused by the need of physical nature, and its action is momentary. But the skill, although it finally acquires an automatic property, at its very beginning is based on consciousness and requires an effort of will. Good habits are confirmed by practice, and bad ones are eradicated by reducing the random reasons for them: so, the job of the educator is to multiply the reasons for a good skill, stimulating and encouraging it; To cultivate a good habit, a clean atmosphere and good nutrition are required, so that the will, directed towards good, is taught and strengthened by the habit. If you look closely at the root of both vice and virtue, it turns out that both virtue and vice are also skills that little by little acquire vital and creative power. How should a teacher act? First of all, he needs to remember that skills arise on the basis of physical, material relationships. It is necessary that a corresponding change take place in the nerves of the student. What is difficult the first time becomes difficult the second time and the third, and therefore the teacher should not be embarrassed when he initially fails in all his efforts with a student or even with the whole class, but he must not forget about the physical environment in the midst of which the skill must be established. In order to accustom students to cleanliness and neatness, it is necessary to furnish them neatly and lightly; Is it possible to achieve this in a dirty, uncleaned, disorderly classroom? Thus, through the visible environment, the teacher creates an atmosphere in the school that is conducive to discipline so that it becomes easy for everyone to enter into it. First, it is convenient to establish order in small things, to teach students so that they can manage themselves even in small things, that is, maintain discipline. Then, when they have acquired this skill, the teacher can rely on their freedom in many ways; then, for example, having given a task to the whole class, he leaves them in the confidence that everyone will cope with it on their own. But here, too, the main thing that needs to be monitored and used is the student’s desire for independence. The consciousness of one’s strength, the feeling of satisfaction with what one has done, what one has achieved, is the most powerful educational tool: this consciousness encourages one to move forward and improve. Every new mental effort is more or less painful, and in school life the student often encounters difficult, unpleasant work that requires an effort of will. The teacher should take advantage of all such cases, ensuring that the effort of will does not weaken and is strengthened by frequent practice. Otherwise, self-activity may weaken and become frozen in a mechanical skill. This is why it can be difficult to cope with children who grew up at home in strict discipline and mechanical obedience, which left no room for development and willpower. And in school such a system of external discipline alone does not lead to goodness, strict observance of which is considered the main sign of good behavior. The course of development can be expressed in three words, meaning its stages: I’ll try - I’ve done it - I’ll move on. The first step is to make an effort. Difficulty motivates effort. The feeling of difficulty is unpleasant. We must overcome it with effort. Discipline excites the student to make an effort to achieve a goal, that is, to do what is needed. The reward of effort will be, firstly, success, and secondly, the facilitation of further efforts: the student moves forward, and the end result will be a qualitative transformation in the student’s character. In a physiological sense, his entire nervous mood is transformed from abnormal to normal and constant. In adults we often see an inability to behave in society, rude speech and techniques, and a manifestation of selfishness. This happens for the most part not so much from special natural properties as from bad manners. That is why the attention of the teacher of good habits must be drawn to this important subject. He must notice early manifestations of rudeness and selfishness, stopping them, but at the same time, taking advantage of all cases in which the student learns to restrain himself. Small children should not roughly fight or pinch, they should sit in order at the table, and so on. When they grow up, it is necessary that they develop the concept of common interests, the honor and duties of an entire class. For this purpose, the custom existing in many schools of entrusting to the students themselves reasonable and responsible care for the needs of the whole class and maintaining order in the classroom, in its furnishings and accessories, in activities, entertainment, games, and the like, is useful. This purpose is served by the establishment of observers, inspectors, elders, elders, and the like. It must be remembered that each of the students will someday become a citizen with participation in public affairs, and the school must teach him so that over time and in such an important matter he will be guided not by personal interest and pride, so that he learns to understand that true freedom does not consist at all in self-will, but, on the contrary, so that everyone can enjoy freedom; There must be firm rules for everyone about what to do, what not to do, and what to abstain from. It is a great thing to teach children to be truthful. The roots of lies are hidden deep in the nature of every child: in some they are more stubborn, in others less, for not everyone has a healthy nature and a sound mind. In the fight against lies, you must act on both the mind and the heart. First of all, the teacher needs the strictest justice in relation to his students; it must evoke in everyone a corresponding consciousness of the truth. The source of lies in each individual case is almost always the motivation of egoism or selfishness - the desire for profit, the desire to avoid punishment or the bitter consciousness of one’s guilt. The teacher must begin to treat this lie, but extremely carefully, and the more carefully the younger the culprit is. Neither fear nor strict orders can cure this disease. God forbid that insisting on the depravity of a child, addressing him as a scoundrel, means ruining the whole thing. You can only little by little win the mind and heart of a child, lead him into the realm of truth. The safest thing to do is to awaken a sense of dignity in him and to appeal to this feeling. The ideal for a child is to be a great person: he must understand how this ideal is distorted and destroyed by lies. And in teaching it is necessary for the teacher to observe mental truth. Any matter of mental work in the classroom should be seen by everyone as it really is. Whether a problem is being solved, a grammatical structure is being drawn up, an essay is being written, or a lesson is being taught, one should not allow something undone to take on the appearance of being done, ignorance to seem like sufficient knowledge, a current word without a definite meaning to be accepted without consciousness or explanation. And the teacher must watch himself when he gives an explanation or answer to the student’s questions, so that his thoughts and words are clear and not vague; he himself must study in preparation for the lesson. All the learning was in vain if the student did not take away from him the habit of conscientiousness and accuracy in work, the habit of thinking through everything he does, the habit of using words in their true, precise meaning. In this regard, the teacher should serve as an example; his authority is shaken if his students notice that he himself is a charlatan in his lessons. An intelligent teacher, when he himself realizes that he does not have solid skills in solving, for example, a problem or in some other work, uses this opportunity to introduce the student to an understanding of the subject, in order to find a way out of the difficulty together, this revives interest and strengthens in the student the consciousness of the fruitfulness of conscientious work. Every teaching must be imbued with a moral principle, but cultivating a moral sense with instructions alone is an impossible and false thing. French educators make morality a school subject; introduce moral textbooks, build moral teaching into a system; the system establishes categories of morality with an explanation of sometimes negative phenomena in subjects about which the student has no idea in life. Such a teaching can only bring harm, not benefit. You can imagine the abstract features of this or that virtue, the rule of good behavior, but what will this rule serve when along with it there is no ready-made opportunity to apply this rule to life? Character formation occurs at a consistently slow pace, and a young, immature mind is not able to vividly and effectively assimilate an abstract concept or an abstract image. The teacher is sometimes able to animate a young man with this image, to arouse his warm sympathy, but this will only be an impression, and, repeated, can only give rise to sentimentality if life and the situation do not provide the student with ready-made opportunities to test himself and the rule in practice. Mental or imaginary virtue alone is worthless and produces only self-delusion. It is rightly noted that when the mind is overly occupied with abstractions and images, the energy of the will is often weakened at the same time. Frequently repeated instructions and prohibitions, no matter how convincing and strict, bring little benefit, and from repetition they lose all force. But school life presents the teacher, one might say, at every step with ready-made opportunities to arouse the student with a timely spoken word, in order to instill in him an attraction to good and an aversion from evil... Rewards and punishment require special attention. In real life, in the market of human affairs, every activity serves as an arena for competition for success and rewards, and the more people strive for both, the livelier and more zealous the competition. The biggest rewards are achieved through the intense struggle of one against the rest of the opponents. The same phenomenon is reflected in small aspects of school life. Competition in the pursuit of honors and fame serves as the mainspring of all activity and a strong driver of success in science and art. But when applied to school, the development of such rivalry leads to undesirable consequences. It arouses and supports in the student the desire to obtain for himself personally what others do not get, and interferes with the development of the desired disposition to be pleasant to all those whose opinions should be valued. We get used to measuring our dignity by what we are able to do, but this measure is deceptive: the right measure of dignity is in the inner man, and that measure, if it prevails, can introduce unsociable feelings into life and relationships - vanity and envy. It is up to the common sense and vigilance of the educator to balance these currents as much as possible. With small children, caution is especially required in the distribution of rewards, and in any case, the dignity should belong not so much to a perfect deed as to conscientious effort: the deed is not so important as the quality of doing. Excessive pursuit of school awards can have a disastrous effect on the further development of young people and in their future activities it will turn into a passion for praise, awards and distinctions. Of all types of reward, the best, most effective is a word of approval spoken at the right time by a kind and reasonable mentor. But the most significant and most natural reward of the deed is the feeling of satisfaction for any accomplished deed or work. If the mentor managed to bring his students to a living feeling of their success, forward movement is guaranteed. When a doer is interested in improving his work and does it conscientiously and can consciously say to himself: “well done,” this is his own reward, which can be called the creative consciousness of perfection. Sound discipline cannot do without punishment. But both in rewards and in punishments, the mentor must be extremely thrifty and judicious. A school where punishments are poured in is a bad, unhealthy school. In small children, sensations are concentrated mainly in the sphere of physical nature, and for them the material side of both rewards and punishments is most noticeable. But as they grow, this side loses its significance, and it becomes more reliable for both to turn to imagination, sympathy and reason. In a healthy school organization, the most sensitive punishment should be the feeling of condemnation and reproach from the teacher and comrades. In the mental realm, the movement and development of thought is accomplished through the association of ideas. A thought lurks in the soul until another thought, inspired by one or another phenomenon, touches it and sets it in motion. The same thing happens in the area of ​​moral sensations: an excited thought, coming into motion, seeks to be expressed in appearance, in action. Wherever two or three people come together, mutual suggestion and influence begins and occurs continuously. It often happens that a person, looking closely at the methods and methods of bad and criminal actions, himself is inclined to do the same; but the inclination towards good is also subject to the same law of suggestion and receptivity and is closely connected with the desire for imitation, which is more or less characteristic of everyone. Delving into this property, we see that in many cases it acts by automatic impulse, in the beginning - even without the participation of the will. In this sense, imitation can be considered the source and engine of human institutions, morals and customs of all kinds, and what is aroused by it and established in it can be difficult to subsequently eradicate or cure through the action of rational reasoning or will, both in the mental area and in the area of ​​moral feelings and concepts. There is, undeniably, some hidden inner force that arouses a sympathetic movement in a person’s soul at the sight of a human action or a person acting and captures the imagination. The teacher must keep this property in mind in his relationship with his students: the living word of the teacher, his living example - these are the main ways of suggestion through which he acts on the student, arousing active force in him, educates his will with good motives and skills, confirms his living ideas and concepts in his mind. The property of a strong character is the ability to control people, that is, the ability to suggest, the ability to evoke and revive sympathy and imitation in them. So, the teacher’s duty, first of all, is to watch himself vigilantly: his whole manner of action in dealing with students has, in his position of authority, impressive power. And we must also remember that every person in his actions has a second thought about how he is understood and what is expected of him - it is very important to realize that they expect good from him and not bad. If a student, out of habit, is always told the same thing, that he is unfit, that he is evil, and the like, and he, getting accustomed to this thought, becomes unfit. The more confidently the teacher can rely on his student, the more confident the student is that the teacher treats him with confidence. On the contrary, constant distrust, suspicion, frequent repetition of reprimands, instructions, prohibitions, can lead to demoralization of the student and to a weakening of the active force in him. Speaking about suggestions, we must not forget what a powerful tool of suggestion, especially in our time, is literature, both books and newspapers. Everyone's character is now formed under the strong influence of reading: taking possession of the imagination, ideas and ideas, snatched from books, little by little affect the entire nervous organization. That is why a teacher cannot and should not be indifferent to the content and nature of the books that come into the hands of his students.