Comments on the Maritime Educational Institutions Transformation Project

(Response to Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich) 2 Your Imperial Highness! Fulfilling your will, I have the honor to present my notes on the Project for the Transformation of Maritime Educational Institutions. The project was compiled with such an abundance of theoretical knowledge, gained by experience and observation, that it appears to those who read it carefully to be elegant, harmonious, whole, pleasing to the eye of the mind with its strength, definiteness, and size. Sound criticism should, in my opinion, not make futile efforts to find shortcomings, but evaluate the work and express to the public full sympathy for it, as one of the guarantees of state welfare. It may very well happen that when carrying out the project, some small details will require changes; but insignificant little things will require changes, which can be noticed when applying the project to business. The project can be likened to a ship carefully built on the shore and secured in good time against the difficulties of navigation, against storms and winds: such is the project both in relation to its execution and in relation to objections if they arose against it. I could limit myself to this brief review: it fully and with all sincerity expresses the consciousness that formed in me from reading the project. But I cannot forbid myself from the following indications of some particulars of the project, which aroused in me especially comforting sympathy. The instructions will serve as factual evidence before Your Imperial Highness that I am carrying out your will: I speak with all frankness. These instructions are few in number: have mercy on the non-specialist! Thirty-three years have already separated me from worldly life and its activities, even scientists. 1. The project eliminates the previous procedure for admitting students, and presents it to those who consider themselves capable of taking, so to speak, a placement in the building by storm in a public competitive examination. One cannot help but rejoice at this measure, the results of which should be filled with abundant benefits, public and private. Only those capable of naval service and only lovers of the sea will appear for the exam. If someone comes to the exam who has a false concept of himself, recognizing himself as capable and being incapable, he will be given a correct concept of himself. This is a great blessing for a young man. The previous admission procedure is completely unfounded. They were accepted for the merits of their father, uncle, under the patronage; Many children ended up in a special school without any vocation, without any ability for the sciences taught at the school. What were the consequences? Of the approximately forty students in the class, ten studied properly, while the rest did not study or studied superficially due to lack of ability, or being carried away by a calling for other subjects. The deadness of those who are unable and unwilling to learn has a very harmful effect on the capable and lovers of science. Upon graduation from a special school, all those who did not feel a calling to the branch of service and were not capable of it, hastened, at the first opportunity, to move to another branch of service for which they felt inclined and capable, especially since those who are not capable of one category of sciences are often very capable of another. The government was wasted, laboring in vain for the special education of many young people who were incapable of it, and for these young people the precious years spent in school were irretrievably lost. The new method of reception eliminates adversity, both official and private. A group of young people with a one-sided, exclusive direction, with abilities corresponding to the direction, enter the Naval Schools. This will bring unity to the society of students: it, as a like-minded society of living members, should have incomparably better success in science than a society with a diverse direction and many dead members. In order to preserve energy in the society of students, it is necessary, without any thoughtfulness, to exclude from it those members in whom deadness begins to be noticed. 2. Just as important in relation to official and private benefits is a thorough medical examination of those entering an educational institution. Parents, relatives and protectors send their child to school just to place him somewhere, for the most part not knowing the state of the child’s health, the amount of his bodily strength and what kind of strength and what kind of health the type of service intended for the child requires. For this reason, it happens that children of weak strength and health, but capable and diligent, learn well, make good progress, are supported by their superiors, but gradually, in an inconspicuous way, become exhausted, completely lose their health, and become useless for themselves and for society for the rest of their lives. 3. One cannot help but rejoice from the heart at the proposed combination of theoretical teaching with abundant practical teaching at the Naval Schools. This assumption of the Project should be accepted by all special military educational institutions: it is so true! such abundant fruit is clearly seen in its results by anyone who is experienced in the shortcomings of previous teaching! In ancient times, an engineering officer first saw the fortress when he came to it for active service. What was briefly known to him from science and from drawings was made completely new when he saw it for the first time - this is what is briefly known in nature. This is the property of a person’s ability to perceive impressions. Getting impressions from drawings is not at all accurate - getting impressions from the objects themselves. He who has acquired impressions from drawings has only impressions of drawings: he must acquire impressions from objects again, because an object and a drawing of an object are two objects that differ from each other, and are by no means the same thing. This applies to all material... and fortification and artillery and naval art. Even the study of active Theology is completely different in its results when one is not content with the theoretical study of Christian virtues alone, but adds practical things to the theoretical. Drawings are very helpful for the most accurate study of an object when it is known in kind. For this reason, when examining objects, it is especially useful to photograph them by hand, as experience itself has decisively proven. Such photography does not take much time, but it unusually enhances the impression made by objects, develops the concept of objects and sharpens abilities. For example: whoever has become acquainted with artillery pieces from science and examined them from the drawings has a theoretical complete knowledge of them; who, moreover, had the opportunity to examine the tools in kind, has a more distinct and independent knowledge of them; whoever bothered to take pictures of the guns by hand, it is only possible to say with certainty that he studied them completely and quite satisfactorily. Proper photography takes a lot of time for one particular subject and prevents familiarization with other subjects that are just as necessary; it must be known to officers not assigned to the drawing room, to a certain extent; but freehand photography needs to be developed. The ability to obey impressions is so important in a person that even in the study of mathematics, those students who study it solely from a book have much less success than those who take the trouble to practice mathematical deductions with their own hands on paper or on a slate board. Those who practiced this method confessed and assured that the analysis of a theorem, carefully written by them on paper or on a board, was imprinted like a picture in their imagination, and contributed to the clearest understanding of the truth contained in the theorem. The ability to accept impressions is especially powerful in children and young people. This ability, although greater, is limited by the limitations of all human properties, must be used very prudently and carefully, not wasting it, not allowing it to be distracted by a variety of subjects, but concentrating it on what is essential for the person’s purpose. One should expect the greatest benefit if the walls of rooms in Naval Schools are dotted with correct drawings of the most famous European ships, harbors, and seaside fortresses: a child, in moments of freedom, looking at the drawings to satisfy his curiosity, is exposed, unnoticed to himself, to the most useful impressions. Drawings must be correct: looking at drawings, in the composition of which the artist’s imagination is allowed freedom, is as harmful to the correctness of concepts about objects as reading historical novels to acquire and preserve correct knowledge of history. The very plan, or yard where children play, should be filled with models of cannons, batteries and other objects, the impressions of which should fill the children’s imagination. If possible, all these items should be in their natural form for the correct impression, and so simple in work and cheap in price that they can be conveniently repaired and replaced with new ones in case of damage. At that time, the Engineering School had very expensive, intricate models of some European fortresses; even the houses that were in the fortresses were in models, and the houses had furniture. These expensive models were carefully shown to visitors to the school, and the students hardly saw them, being not allowed to see them for the purpose of lest one of them inadvertently damage a table or chair in some house of the precious model. 4. The number of sciences prescribed by the Project for Maritime educational institutions and the distribution of their teaching deserves full approval. Until now, due attention has not been paid to the fact that excess knowledge takes away its quality. The human mind, if it is given a vast field of activity in length and breadth, or on the surface, cannot in any way act in depth, or the mind, while acquiring a variety of knowledge, cannot acquire solid knowledge. With such, one might say, magnificent improvement that awaits the Maritime Educational Institutions, one cannot help but wish that in due time the training manuals would appear in printed books, and not in just lithographed notes. Printed textbooks will be compiled according to the natural course of human affairs incomparably more clearly than notes unknown to the public; teaching will gain greater certainty and positivity. 5. The project shrewdly discerned an important condition in the human soul, its natural logic, abolishing corporal punishment, giving other punishments the noble character of the necessary consequences of justice and the purpose of correction, which is respect and love for humanity, prohibiting the action of inciting passions, which is contempt and hatred for humanity. He who is carried away by passion and thoughtlessness when reprimanding or punishing, firstly, humiliates and tramples upon humanity in himself, and then in the person subjected to punishment, confusing vice with man, while the essential goal of any correction is to separate vice from man. It has been noted that a reprimand has the most salutary effect when the person giving it energetically exposes the black side of the vice and its harmful consequences to the person who has fallen into the vice, expressing at the same time a sincere feeling of regret and goodwill towards the person who has fallen into the vice. The effect of punishment is just as salutary when, when prescribed and executed, its effect stems from the above-mentioned view and feeling. One who acts in this way can be likened to pulling out someone mired in a swamp, cleansing him of the dirt and mud in which he has fallen. But the one who, when reprimanding and punishing, confuses vice with a person and attributes what belongs to vice to a person, in all fairness can be likened to someone who finds his neighbor mired in a swamp, becomes indignant at his neighbor for this and then tramples him even deeper into the harmful mud and mud, in which one can even drown 3. And they drown their neighbors, not suspecting this property in their actions, many who think of correcting them. With a thorough, long-term practical study of punishments for young people, it must be recognized that only two punishments should be allowed as essentially necessary and useful: reprimand and arrest. The arrest must certainly be accompanied by a diet and withdrawal from any shortest possible contact with comrades and with any person who could damage with reckless condolences and advice the way of thinking that should be formed in the arrested person during his arrest. The diet is necessary for the reason that with it only the mind of the guilty can prevail over his emotional agitation and bitterness. Removal from communication with comrades and with all strangers is necessary because it is extremely harmful for a person who is reasonably punished when he hears that he was punished too severely, that he suffers innocently, that those who subjected him to punishment are such and such. Reckless condolences destroy the purpose of the arrest, which is for the young man to come to his senses, recognize his wrongdoing and repent of it. To help him in this, his mentor must visit him, who is obliged to meekly instill in him the incongruity and baseness of his offense and advise him to bring sincere repentance, because only with sincere repentance is a lasting correction possible; in relation to someone who has been arrested, it is necessary to observe meekness combined with firmness. Meekness has a saving effect on the punished, actually confirming to him that there is no hostile feeling towards him, and firmness is necessary for the punishment to bear fruit. Otherwise it can only be harmful. The length of arrest must be determined by the repentance of the arrested person. When he brings repentance, this serves as a sign that the healing - the punishment - has produced a saving effect; further use of the medicine would be completely illogical. On the contrary, release from arrest before the arrested person has repented can have a very harmful effect on his morality. In a certain monastic monastery, the rector was engaged, according to the tradition of the Orthodox Church, in the moral education of young people who entered this monastery. His assistant was a hieromonk of a very pious life, who sympathized with him in his occupation. The punishments were reprimand in the above spirit and arrest. The hieromonk visited the arrested person three times a day, providing him with everything he needed, ensuring that the prescribed diet was maintained exactly, so that exclusion from communication with everyone who did not understand the mysteries of the correctional system was observed with all severity, admonishing the arrested person with the most meek and observant conversation, so that he recognized himself guilty, and repented of the punishment with a fair measure. After each visit, the hieromonk came to the abbot and told him about the condition of the arrested person, calling him immature or ripe. The one who admitted that he was right, who was punished too severely, who condemned his superiors was called immature; The one who came to the consciousness of his guilt and repentance was called mature. Having matured, according to the report of the hieromonk to the abbot, he undertook to write a letter to the abbot, which set out the view acquired by the arrested person during his arrest on his offense, repentance and a promise of correction. After this, the hieromonk took the prisoner out of his solitude and introduced him to the abbot, who, with all his love and sympathy, gave him instructions about the advantages of a virtuous life and about the means to help the young man acquire good morals. After severe punishment, the manifestation of love is necessary, albeit in a very serious form, just as after an operation emollient and healing plaster and ointment are needed. This is the advice of St. John Climacus 4. To release an immature person from arrest means to cause him and his comrades the greatest harm, as all experiments have unanimously proven. Those who emerge from solitude with feelings of conceit and bitterness internalize these feelings. The assimilation of these feelings puts a stamp on his character and further behavior. He receives disfavour from his superiors; he communicates the mood of his spirit to his comrades. “They took something!” - this is how an immature person usually expresses himself upon release from arrest in front of his comrades: “They starved for a whole day or two under arrest, godless ones! They themselves would try to live on some cabbage soup and bread and water! They interrogated, interrogated - he said nothing! Right, yes right, and that’s all! Tell me that such and such a beggar brought me vodka! The beggar will be sent away, left without his daily bread, and the loophole will be tightly sealed: and then everyone will perish. It is a strange and stupid demand of people who are dying out that a young man should never have fun in the spaciousness of his soul. Without space there is no fun. I told them: keep it for a week, but I don’t know anything: it seemed to you that I was drunk! You have the worst thoughts about me, I don’t know why! meanwhile, I received a letter that my uncle, who was like a father to me, died, and out of sadness I became not myself... At these words, I burst into tears; I cry, but I laugh in my heart! They believed it, fools: they released it. Here's what to do with them! not like so-and-so! I sat for only eight hours and became blurry: I told them everything, and they, as we know, disposed of it in their own way.” Sin has its own breaking point, its own truth, its own power of speech! Such poison quickly spreads in the society of youth, and therefore one condition for release from arrest is true repentance, which is actually proven by immediate correction. Anyone incapable of repentance should be immediately excluded from society, as having made it known that he is incorrigible, and as a sure guarantee of social damage. Young people are smart. If she sees that the power of the boss and teacher, despite its meekness, is filled with firmness and determination, that it is not shaken by tenderness or flattery, forcing the boss to deviate from the demands of prudence and true love, then she receives respect and trust in the power, and accepts a relatively harmonious, respectful position. A meek, polite request from a superior is recognized as an order that must be followed and carried out. It is human nature to think about one’s neighbor the way they thought or are thinking about him, to act towards one’s neighbor the way one has treated or is treating him. In particular, a child almost always looks at his educators and teachers without analysis, with gullibility, and assimilates their concepts and rules for the rest of his life. For this reason, the head of the educational institution and his assistants have an important duty to acquire Christian moral rules and to carefully observe, firstly, themselves, restraining themselves from being carried away by passions, especially restraining themselves from any action at the moment of being carried away by passion. A person cannot help but have passions: one must learn to control them. The manner in which educators treat and act towards their pupils will subsequently serve as a guide for pupils in their treatment and conduct towards humanity. You must have the conviction, and this is very quickly acquired by observing yourself and others, that when carried away by anger a person says and does nothing but stupid things - that at a time when he is carried away by vanity, then he becomes ridiculous and very capable of seduction. Bosses who indulge in these two passions in front of their subordinates lose their respect and destroy sincerity in their relationships with themselves. – Corporal punishment, severe reprimands, the manifestation of passions in the teacher, the manifestation of his selfishness, have a devastating effect on the morality of the pupils. The wrong view of man saw in such treatment a necessary condition for subordination: experience shows the completely opposite. There is nothing more harmful to subordination and to a person’s morality in general than the deprivation of his rights that belong to him, perhaps not clearly understood by him, but certainly felt in the spirit. A person whose rights are violated loses respect for the rights of others. A pupil, a child and a youth, has his rights as a person and a citizen. He must be given a correct understanding of these rights, introduced to the correct knowledge of the rights belonging to his neighbors, and learn respect for rights. For him to respect the rights of others, his rights must be respected. How should a civil society be recognized as truly free? one to whom all the rights that can be enjoyed on earth by human society are delivered, harmless to themselves, whose members have received the correct understanding of their rights and sacredly preserve these rights in all their mutual relations. Society cannot achieve such a state except through the correct moral education of youth. A young man brought up in this direction will become the best subordinate: understanding and respecting the rights of civil society, including his own, he will understand and respect the rights of his superior, he will inviolably preserve them, carry out his orders equally both before his eyes and outside his eyes. This type of education creates noble characters, with sincerity and directness, incapable of flattery. The educator has the necessary need to learn to distinguish between sincere and direct words and daring words, to distinguish between respect and politeness from affection, which is certainly combined with ill-intention. All this can be taught by observing oneself in the light of the Gospel teaching. He who has undertaken the study of a high science in himself - Christian psychology - no matter how much he improves himself, will always find even greater improvement necessary and will use all the methods that provide him with perfect knowledge. One of the most important means for studying a person in himself is the sincerity of our loved ones with us. One cannot be offended by a direct word, as long as it is not combined and bold. He who rejects the sincerity and directness of his neighbor rejects his own moral improvement, and, just as morality cannot exist without movement, he is subject to moral decline. – When, during education, with the teacher’s incorrect understanding of subordination, all the rights of the pupil are trampled upon, the respect that he should have for himself, as a person, as an image of God, is trampled into the dirt, then the sense of honor in the pupil is destroyed. This is not about vanity and love of honor, but about consciousness and a sense of one’s purpose and dignity, one’s rights. With the loss of a sense of honor, with the loss of consciousness of his rights in a young man, the consciousness of the rights of all humanity is destroyed. Conscientiousness, good intentions, and the desire for the public good are replaced by humiliating, petty selfishness. Subordination is replaced by mere people-pleasing, so much condemned in the Holy Scriptures, 5 which consists of pleasing the passions of the boss with complete contempt for him, for all his plans, orders and orders. People-pleasing grovels before his superiors in his eyes, flatters him, is hypocritical and pretends; behind her eyes she mocks him, boasts of her ability to deceive, to fool him with her violations of his will, her skillful distortion and destruction of his plans. The well-being and property of neighbors, the well-being and property of the state do not constitute an inviolable shrine for someone who has lost honor and conscience, for someone who has lost the concept of rights. He laughs at everything, as if he has lost respect for everything, and considers it stupid not to sacrifice, when the opportunity and opportunity presents itself, the public benefit of his selfish, vile in their baseness and malignancy, views. The whole concern of the one who has lost his honor is to maintain some plausibility with the help of lies, hypocrisy, deception, slander and all other baseness. The education which the Project intends to provide to young people in the Maritime educational institutions guarantees that these institutions will provide the State with officials who highly value the good of their neighbors and the public. It has been noticed that those who do not study science are usually naughty. A saving measure for a society of young people is to immediately exclude from this society members who turn out to be unreliable in abilities and behavior, and not waste time and effort on correcting the incorrigible, poisoning the entire society. They will say: such exclusion from society can make society too small, and those who want to join it can be frightened and turned away from joining. Experience proves the opposite. We repeat: young people are smart. We can guarantee, based on experience, that the exclusion of a few members will lead those remaining to extraordinary vigilance over themselves, will make punishments almost unnecessary and extremely rare, and through this will elevate society morally, instill respect and trust in it in the public, and attract many of the most useful members to it. This is where I limit my comments. It remains for me to express my utmost gratitude to Your Imperial Highness for giving me true heartfelt consolation by introducing me to the Project for the Transformation of Maritime Educational Institutions. In him I found support for many of my thoughts; I found clearly stated what I was unconsciously aware of; I found many instructions that will be useful to me, if God’s favor follows, in my ministry. “It remains for me to wish that the destiny of Your Highness will be crowned with the most prosperous success, according to the testament of the Holy Scripture, which says: begin a good work in you (Phil. 1:6). Invoking God’s abundant blessing on this matter with feelings of deepest reverence and complete devotion, I have the happiness of being Your Imperial Highness [by your most humble servant Ignatius, Bishop of the Caucasus and Black Sea]. Reprinted by: Leonid Sokolov. Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov. His life, personality and moral and ascetic views. T. 2. Appendix. Kyiv, 1915. pp. 48–58. As a deeply educated man, His Grace Ignatius was always on the side of everything reasonable and sympathized with every useful movement. In 1860, the Chairman of the Admiralty Council, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich (1827–1892), addressed him with a letter dated October 7, 1860, No. 2263, in which, transmitting a copy of the project drawn up by Admiral Count E.V. Putyatin (1804–1883) for the transformation of Maritime educational institutions with the establishment of a new gymnasium, asked Vladyka Ignatius “to take the trouble, as a special personal favor to me, to communicate to me, quite frankly, your comments on this project.” As a result of this letter, a real answer to the Grand Duke appeared. – Note. L. Sokolova. This idea belongs to St. Anthony the Great. Memorable tales of the Fathers, ch. 29. John, abbot of Mount Sinai, Ladder. A special word to the shepherd, ch. 15. Ps. 52:6; Gal. 1:10 ; Eph. 17:6; Col. 3:22.