Learning and teacher. Pedagogical notes

Contents Book 1 Character education at school Book 2 Before the teacher begins to teach, he has an important task to do, which is usually left without any attention. The teacher must speak, i.e. be able to control his voice consciously, for he, first of all, must teach his students to speak (produce a voice) consciously. This, one might say, is the first stage of school learning and the first key to success. Everyone should strive to ensure that his speech is intelligible. Anyone who has difficulty pronouncing or who pronounces it in such a way that it is not easy to understand is deprived of the main tool necessary in dealing with people. It is especially impossible for a teacher to control his class and capture their attention if his pronunciation is slurred, rude, or stupid, or monotonous, without meaning. The voice is a great thing; it can attract and repel, excite and dull or irritate attention. Nature has endowed some with a good voice, and deprived others; but both of them must learn to control their voice and tune it. The teacher’s speech should be calm, restrained, and intelligible. Without verbosity, every word should have a price and meaning for the class. Learning to read means learning to speak, i.e. pronounce words and formulate speech consciously. In this sense, reading lessons are continuous until the very end of schooling, only the methods of the lessons are not the same, rising from simple to more complex. A small child first of all learns to pronounce each word correctly, and each reading should serve as a voice exercise. Following this exercise, we will test the children’s ability to grasp the meaning of a whole phrase. First let them think in their minds what it means; then, let one or the other say his thought; then, when the general meaning of the phrase is formed, let them read it clearly. Here the teacher’s job is to observe the intonation of reading: it should be such that it is clear that the reader understands the meaning of the phrase and wants to make it understandable to others. And it is necessary that the student himself reaches this understanding: if the teacher begins by reading the phrase himself, the repetition of it by the students will only be an imitation, and for the most part a bad imitation. When the student's reading experiments are over, then it will only be useful for the teacher to read in front of the students the same phrase on which they worked, from the book. It’s a different matter if, in a free moment, when the children don’t have a book in front of them, the teacher reads aloud to them, without visual aids, a phrase that is completely new to them, in order to show them how hearing should guide reading. Reading only from a book will be, and for others it remains for the rest of their lives, mechanical, lifeless: the eye works, but the thought does not work. It needs to work and control reading. Then every accent of tone will be correct, in its place, where, so to speak, the key to the meaning of the whole phrase turns out to be. One cannot praise the custom of mass reading, when children are forced to pronounce what they are reading all at once. This discordant reading in mixed voices serves no purpose, does nothing to arouse the teacher’s attention, and the discordance of the sound unpleasantly affects the ear. At every stage of school life, the importance of reading aloud continues and increases. It is necessary, firstly, so that the habit of reading intelligibly, expressively, and intelligently is not lost, but rather strengthened. Man is called to act with words, and for this work, like for any other, a serviceable, improved tool is needed. Moreover, undoubtedly, clarity of speech consists of a connection with clarity of thought: one corresponds to the other. In school pedagogy, the great importance of pronunciation and reading is still not sufficiently appreciated. At each stage of school development, it acquires a new meaning until it reaches the level of art. In this sense, reading itself becomes a free school of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and the best tool for developing taste both in literature and in the written expression of thoughts. Meaningful, expressive reading of the best literary works, especially poetic poems, leaves a lifetime of cherished impressions that form artistic taste. Intelligently guided reading - half unconsciously, half consciously - prepares the ground for the perception of the rules of grammar and style, which without this preparation would only be a painful burden on the memory. Any creation that is truly artistic in the field of words is and must be written with the help not only of thought and sight, but also with the help of hearing: without the participation of hearing there cannot be in it that harmony of words that is satisfactory for the taste of a truly artistic one. A teacher is mistaken if he thinks that all his work is contained in the lesson hours of teaching in the classroom. Much more important is the between-class and after-school hours of classes with children: here rich material is collected to revive interest, to excite thought and imagination, to convey concepts and information, here is a direct means of spiritual and emotional communication between the teacher and children and the guarantee of children’s heartfelt and mental attachment to school and to the teacher. When starting out, don’t imagine that the method of teaching is most important. The most important thing - at the very beginning - is the consciousness of one’s duty and loyalty to it. At the very beginning, remember: you need to get up early, you need to prepare for the lesson, correct your students’ notebooks carefully, and not drag out a single minute from the lesson time. If you want your class to be calm and attentive, be calm and attentive yourself - calm, first of all, in external techniques. The young horse senses an inexperienced, insecure rider, and begins to play pranks and kick. You need to know each of the students by name, and call him by name. A bad, indifferent teacher pokes his students namelessly. In a good school, I saw a kind teacher, how he called children without a last name, by name: “Vanya, Senya, Sasha.” Never forget that you have children in your class: try to be young with them, and they will feel it. When a student reads a poem, do not interfere with the reading, do not interrupt it with an explanation of who Oleg is and who the Pechenegs are. Let him read to the end - then you can give him real explanations. Don’t be a slave to the methods when it comes to asking questions to the student. When you know him and your eyes are open to him, he himself will tell you what to ask. If you rely on just one textbook for the history of literature, it will be of no use. Let a student read a poem by a poet, teach him to read it properly - and then it will be easy for you to explain, and for him to understand, who the writer was and what he means. When correcting notebooks, be patient and attentive: do not expect or demand everything at once and from everyone in the same way. Think about what your student’s head can be capable of at a given moment: what it didn’t understand today, it can understand tomorrow - don’t spoil the joy of self-awareness when you see that he’s trying to understand and working with his head. Do not doubt your success when you do your work with the thought that it should not be fruitless, and you work with a strong will so that the student truly learns from you. We have to fight laziness and indifference. But remember that every suggestion and punishment must be effective. Don't use up all your power at once. Sometimes a look is enough, a movement is enough. When this is not enough, the word acts. But where one word is enough, beware of verbosity. Don't get annoyed by little things and don't attach importance to them. The naughty man drew your figure on the table and signed it. What should you do? Calmly erase it or tell your neighbor to erase it. The trouble is if you get angry and even begin to investigate. Then the example will become contagious. When you sit in class and see 30 guys in front of you, don’t forget that you were once exactly the same. And also remember: what you demand from each of your students - both the last and the first - you yourself must be able to do. So, any work that you assign to them, you must first be able to do it yourself as best as possible. There is truth in this, but without truth - what teaching! I knew a teacher who was loved and feared - because they trusted him and he was confident in himself. He did not hesitate to once tell his disciples: “You did the translation correctly, but I made a mistake and was wrong.” Children feel the truth. In a verbal exercise, the first thing is that the work be done with diligence, as best as possible, as soon as the student is able to do it. What is knowledge? The ancients said that virtue is knowledge. We will say that conscientiousness in business is knowledge. What is the main point of your teaching? The fact is that you lead students to the possible completeness of work and thereby arouse in them the desire for perfection. Be natural: you need to speak in such a way that those to whom you speak clearly understand. So, when you speak, do not start from yourself, do not think about yourself, but about those to whom you are speaking. Life moves in them: they need to hear the living word. Beware of using abstract phrases, beware of stringing rule after rule. The road paved with abstractions and rules leads to dullness and leads away from life. Let the teacher remember that he is doing a great work, which cannot be done carelessly. It would be worthwhile, for example, for every teacher to write down as a keepsake: 1) The teacher, when a student bows to him, does not leave the bow without a return sign. 2) The teacher should not sit in his place like a slob and lean his hands on the table. 3) Neither the student in front of him, nor he in front of the student, stands with his hands in his pockets. 4) The teacher is not late in any way, and is the last one to leave the class When you hear our scientific teachers, they seem to think that their scientific rules give them a universal means of doing anything with the living material that is given to the teacher. It’s as if he has soft wax in his hands, from which a person who has the technique can sculpt any figures he wants. Fortunately, this is not the case in practice, and this technique in itself turns out to be a deadening letter. These teachers do not understand that each class of 20, 30, 40 children is a living being, living its own life, having its own soul, and that the teacher has to penetrate into this soul. When judging a person, it is necessary to look for not only the negative side in him, but first of all the positive one: we rather notice what is not in a person than what is in him. And what is there is most important. So, when discussing student work, we chase mistakes and mark them. This is not enough and this measure is wrong. You must be able to look inside, through mistakes. Those who know how, see through mistakes, what the student is capable of, what he can do, what can grow in him further. So, in vain does the boss think that, having reviewed many notebooks, based on the number of errors noted, he will get an idea about the whole class and the abilities of each student. Instructions and reprimands alone do not work well if the student is not accustomed to seeing in the teacher a living image of skill, diligence, and conscientiousness - and respecting him. When a student is afraid of a teacher in the moral sense of the word, one look, one word from the teacher awakens the student, shames him, encourages him, revives him, guides him. When work is used in school as a form of punishment, this is a bad indicator: it means that work is little valued, or in itself is considered a difficult and boring task. There are methodological labyrinths in which only an experienced and intelligent teacher can find an entrance and exit, while an unreasonable and beginner gets confused without an outcome. Such is the labyrinth of glorified “expository reading.” Playing out on this wide field, the teacher’s imagination can drive the student to dullness, interrupting his thoughts in reading at every step and confusing him with questions and suggestions. For some teachers, reading some fable turns into a lesson de omniè scibili et quibusdam aliis: 1 as if he enters the forest and stumbles on every bush and tree, completely forgetting about the essential subject of the lesson. Unreasonable admirers of this method, developing it, love to compose exemplary lessons of long explanatory readings; serving as models, these lessons lead one blind man after another into a hole from which one cannot find a way out. Teacher! teacher! Think about it - there is no science that cannot be turned into an instrument of torment for “these little ones” who are under your rule. Your job is to help them grow, but how many teachers consider it their duty to put chains and corsets on them as if to retard or distort their growth! Here is a seemingly simple matter - spelling, but how much torture is hidden in it, how many invented rules that reduce the matter of reason and logic to a dead letter. And what are the rules - one has one, the other has another. The notebooks of your students are stained with marks of errors where the neighboring teacher did not find an error. You bring the student to shame and tears for what he wrote: small children; and your neighbor - because he wrote: little children. For you, art with one s is considered a great sin, but for your neighbor, double s is expelled from this word. With great rebuke, you destroy commas where your neighbor puts them abundantly, reproaching the student for a mistake, and where you command a colon, your neighbor commands you to put a dash or a semicolon. Thus, while straining out mosquitoes, you at the same time absorb camels of sound pedagogy. Do you know where the root of both spelling and correct speech is? This root is meaningful, animated reading, from its first stage to the last. Anyone who is accustomed to practicing it learns to understand the meaning and movement of each phrase and, acquiring a taste, learns on his own where to put punctuation marks. And is it worth tormenting him on the intricacies of spelling, supposedly legitimized by someone, when he himself recognizes over time, in reading artistic speech, where what is required by the correct type of speech? The teacher’s circle of activity is apparently both meager and lonely. And if he is destined to teach and act in the wilderness, he becomes an ascetic. But it is good for him who, even in this place, did not have time to extinguish the spirit within himself... to preserve his wings... “He who is able to contain, let him contain” (Matthew 19:12). The teacher is not some affiliation of the school, which is assumed in it: this is the very essence of the school, and without a teacher no school is conceivable: the teacher must be created for the school. Any office can be composed of hunters and workers, but it’s a disaster if the school, of course, is not higher than the office; It’s a disaster if, when setting up a school, as well as when setting up an office, the same speech is heard: just call out the cry, and the teachers will appear, as many as there are, looking for work and bread. One can say - and now many seem to think so: let's set up schools - this is what education requires. Let's recruit teachers: we'll put programs and the latest teaching methods in their hands, we'll bind them with the rules of instruction - and things will go well. No, no, that's not true. Let them hold conferences of teachers and specialists, let them come up with better ways of teaching, let them write and print volumes of their protocols and opinions. Wasteful work - and the work may turn out to be something like the Krylov Quartet. Educational institutions will appear, but there will be no living soul in them until living teachers are created for them. They will say: we will create special institutions for training teachers; but in order to produce one, a living teacher, a living leader is needed for the living work of education. And it is in vain to think that courses of educational subjects, programs and instructions are sufficient for this. A teacher-artisan, a teacher-official, is not suitable for real work. A teacher must be an ascetic of his work, devoting his soul to the work of teaching and upbringing... Teachers are usually trained in special teacher training schools, taking care to provide them with knowledge of all kinds according to established programs, and especially scientific knowledge in the field of pedagogy. But even with the help of sciences and courses, the teacher needed for the job will not be developed if he has not passed through the laboratory of actual teaching in an elementary school, where the art of teaching is acquired, not through book lectures, but by dealing with living children, and not with this or that child, but with a whole organized mass of children. Therefore, it is hardly suitable to teach properly in secondary school if a teacher has not passed the test in primary school, where it is necessary to truly teach children. If, in the course of preparation for teaching, he is accustomed only to acquiring knowledge, but does not know how to communicate it, then secondary school will gain little in him. It is worth reviewing the lists of existing educational institutions of all degrees - and it becomes terrible to imagine what a mass of teachers are needed everywhere. But a teacher who belongs to an institution, who has become one with it and lives its life in it, is truly a gaga avis 2 in our time. Here and there you can still find an old teacher who has been sitting in his place for a long time, and even somewhere in a remote village you can find an old teacher, in hunger and cold, out of love for children, devoting his entire life to caring for them: such workers, together with old sextons, are a rarity today - these are respectable people, whom, when you meet them, you need to admire. But in the city, especially in a big city, the teacher seems to be some kind of hired hand of educational work, languishing in the melancholy of his title, and teaching takes on the appearance of a craft. In constant concern for the daily bread for himself and for his family, he carries out daily labor without interest, without animation, running or moving from one educational institution to another for lessons, and everywhere he appears tired, irritated, often stealing minutes and quarters of an hour from each lesson, and not devoting his labor to any of the schools in which he teaches. How can he know his students, how can he monitor their abilities and development? All that remains for him is to give a lesson, propose questions and put impersonal numbers of marks in response to answers. It is rare to find a teacher satisfied with his work, place and position - he is absorbed in worrying about improving his life and looking out for where it would be better to get a job in another place. You can establish as many teacher schools and institutes as you like, spend large sums on them, provide them with all the improved aids, fill them with teachers who stand at the height of science - and still not get the desired, real, animated and lasting teacher. Why? Because the idea of ​​teaching and education is shallow and inanimate; because on the minds of the students there is one main goal - in the work for which they are preparing - to obtain a means of living, to support themselves. That is why in this matter their left hand will always know what their right hand is doing; That’s why they look at their calling and their business as a temporary stage towards a better arrangement for their life. With the enormous development of industry, with the expansion of markets, with the multiplication of centers of production, attracting masses of workers to the machine, to mechanical labor, objects of production and consumption multiply, new needs are born and multiply, new capital is collected and distributed, but at the same time the forces of the people’s soul are depleted and decayed, living sources of animation are drowned out. The city swells unnaturally, attracting a mass of the rural population, growing either in idle unemployment, or in Egyptian work, a languishing crowd of people, rushing to God knows where, dissatisfied, irritated, homeless, living day after day without horizons, without hopes, without consciousness... Something similar threatens the school when it ceases to be a workshop of educational labor and enters the field of mechanical production, where eternal work at the machine takes place, where the human soul has no time to rest, identify itself and come to its senses. And a school can be like a factory powered by steam or electricity, a soulless machine that from time to time churns out hastily prepared candidates for exams and patents. In our age of general flood of books, a reasonable person who wants real work in his life has to look for a reasonable solution from a multitude of books. Books, words, speeches, not so much in quality as in quantity, often have too strong an effect on our entire life, on our way of thinking, on the direction of our will, on the formation of our character. Reading a book while sitting prevents you from seeing life in its action, knowing people and human affairs. Excessive nutrition upsets the body: similarly, excessive use of the printed word upsets a thought directed towards a serious matter. This danger is especially noticeable in the field of education. In this matter of life, the first need is not some new theory or smart book, but a real laboratory of pedagogy. One day in this laboratory can give an attentive mind and a receptive heart more than a dozen books on education read: here we truly learn to observe real facts and living people, without feeding only on verbal descriptions of both. The vital elements of educational work elude description and are accessible only to direct sensation. There are many higher educational institutions from which people go to teach and preach. In worrying about higher courses, difficult exams, scientific dissertations, they consider it beneath their dignity to learn how to teach children. And if anyone tried to offer them this remedy, they would reject it with indignation. In vain. Having missed the time to cultivate the soul of teaching in themselves, many will no longer acquire it and will remain with only the craft of teaching. Children could in time teach them the art of clear, simple, animated speech, understandable and sympathetic to the one to whom it is addressed. Children could wean them from the habit of verbose speech, stuffed with sonorous phrases, artificial expressions and false pathos, which serves only as a mask of animation. They may say: ideal demands are not enough for us - we now need the best school institution, we need to spread education among the people, and there is no time to wait. But in the matter of public education and upbringing, wisdom commands not to rush, but to strive consistently and steadily to achieve the ideal, approaching its implementation as far as possible. The only thing that is necessary is that the ideal be true, true, and not imaginary, fantastic and swayed by the winds of random directions. What good is it if we set up many schools everywhere, but we have not trained teachers, or we build our schools on a false ideal and in discord with the real needs of life and with the insurmountable conditions of place and time. Those who want to immediately receive a ready-made scheme for the school structure and school education and at once put it into execution, at once put a mass of schools and regiments of teachers everywhere, let them go to the pedagogical market to those who sell and buy ready-made recipes and programs of knowledge, let them listen to the speeches of the experts assembled at the meeting and read the lengthy minutes of their meetings, let them choose the recommended seating systems and organization of school rulers and leaders. Don’t you often meet a teacher who, knowing his students, would be able to assign topics for so-called “essays” to each, according to the degree of his abilities and development? Anyone who has had to review long lists of topics assigned for essays can only be surprised at the paucity of pedagogical reasoning in this important matter. The word “essay” usually means some kind of independent presentation of the student’s own thoughts about a subject about which the student is not able to judge for himself, but is forced only to look for and repeat or paraphrase other people’s thoughts and phrases. Hence, on the one hand, the obvious futility of such exercises, on the other hand, a complete distortion of the assessment of these exercises on the part of the teacher, which confuses the student. The student, who has filled his work with a set of phrases and lofty thoughts pulled from everywhere, receives praise for his work and can imagine himself as an artist of words and thoughts; and another, who has taken the trouble to conscientiously present what he knows about the subject of the topic, is reprimanded for the fact that his work is not independent. Written work should serve as an experience of thinking and presentation, and in this sense serves as a necessary indicator of the student’s mental development; but to demand independent thinking in it only means spoiling the matter. The essay should be nothing more or less than a clear presentation of facts and concepts accessible to the student. To do this, he must be shown the material from which he can draw these facts and concepts. So, in elementary school, the topic should be simple, in accordance with the sensations accessible to the child and with the impressions of simple reading. In the further course of the study, both the property and quantity of the material become more complicated, but the essence of the work remains the same. To study the indicated facts, bring them into consciousness, combine them in clarity and present them in such a way that it is clear to both the writer and the reader - this is the dignity of the work towards which it should be directed; and if each such task is completed conscientiously, then each time the student will gain strength and feel freer in mental work, acquiring the skill of accuracy of presentation and artistry in its decoration. This is how the ability to express thoughts and concepts is cultivated in him, and where there is skill, interest grows and sooner or later knowledge comes by itself. You teach children the Law of God.... Most of all, beware of making a textbook out of the Gospel: this is a sin. This means devaluing a book in a child, which should be for him a treasure and guide for his whole life. It must be terrible for the conscience to break the word of life into soulless pieces and turn them into painful questions for children. Starting to give speeches about the Gospel words to children and eliciting answers from them - this requires a soul that is sensitive to the sensations of the child’s soul - but when they get down to business with only the mechanics of program questions, and put numerical marks for answering questions that are sometimes awkward and incomprehensible to the child, causing excitement and tears - the examiners take a sin on their souls and one can say about them: “they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34) with the soul of a child. There is some kind of hypocritical seduction in school affairs, when the Law of God and the inculcation of the principles of morality combined with it constitutes only one of the subjects of the curriculum. As if there is nothing more to desire and demand for a moral purpose than to have the cash of one or another digital mark for answers in a subject called the Law of God. There is a teacher of the law at school, there is a program, there is a score, an indicator of knowledge - e sempre bene. 3 The results of such a formulation of the doctrine are truly monstrous. I have seen textbooks in which it is indicated point by point what is required to save a person’s soul - and the examiner deducts a point number for someone who cannot remember all the points... Where is the reason here? Where is the morality? Where is finally - and above all - the faith that we hypocritically care about? If we want the truth in this great matter, then we will not hide from it. Both faith and morality are not equal subjects of study with others: lessons and instructions alone are not sufficient for this. Both faith and morality are cultivated in the soul through the integral influence (at home and speaking of school) of school life. If only this school life was not divided into two separate parts - religious and secular education, but in the harmony of the parts constituted one organic whole. The family must sow and cultivate in the soul a feeling of reverence and faith: the school must not only support this feeling, but also illuminate in the soul an idea, without which one feeling is vague and unstable. The school must put this feeling and this idea in a moral connection with life - influence the child with its moral environment. When students are connected with the teacher by a mutual, sympathetic, sincere relationship, then a living moral awareness of the truth of the teachings of Christ, which spiritualizes animal human nature with love, grows and is nurtured in children. Faith must be living and active, therefore, it must be inseparable from the church. The school, since it is a people's school, must reflect the people's soul and the people's faith - only then will it be loved by the people. So, the school has a direct place at the church and in close connection with the church. It must be imbued with churchliness in the best, spiritual sense of the word. Spiritualized by it, it itself must spiritualize it, for the soul of the people. Hence the indispensable participation of the school in the activities of church services: in reading and singing. Anyone who has experienced and seen it knows what a powerful spiritual, educational tool it is both for the school and for the soul of the people, into which it brings enlightenment of religious consciousness and feelings. Reasonable, meaningful reading in church introduces the student to the deep meaning, beauty and expressiveness of the Church Slavonic language, strengthening in the mind and imagination the root of reasonable, harmonious and expressive Russian speech. Singing, inseparable from the word, full of strength and beauty, penetrating into the Russian soul, richly gifted with the poetry of song, cultivates in it, along with the harmony of the sound akin to it, and the harmony of feeling. All educational significance of the school has perished where it serves as an instrument of political or social parties. Then it ceases to satisfy the needs of the people's soul, serving only the artificial needs of parties or the social teaching that has prevailed in the government, is violence for the people and becomes hateful to them. Having separated from the people's soul, the school loses its ground and becomes corrupted. The instincts of goodness, truth, order, common sense, and reverence lurk in the people's soul. When the school responds to these instincts, stimulating them, spiritualizing them and confirming them in good habits, the people understand the school and love it - the school merges with the people and the people with the school. It’s good when the school is bright and cheerful - this school is truly good. Alas! The poor, our poverty forces us to huddle in dark, cramped rooms - sometimes without any light at all. But a bad teacher is when his school is not fun, when children do not run there with joy, do not rush there in every free minute. Wherever possible, decorate your school, banish dirt and dust and gloomy, depressing colors from it. Let it be the favorite place of the hostel - if it is dark, the school will illuminate it, if it has become impoverished in spiritual interest, the school will instill in him thoughts and feelings, if it has become coarse and callous, the school will breathe love on him. Under favorable circumstances, a teacher may degenerate into the head of an institution. That’s when, if his strength has not yet been exhausted, he needs every effort not to extinguish the spirit within himself. The head of the establishment must belong entirely to him, living in the establishment the same life as him. School starts at 8 o'clock. School gets up at 7 or 6, and then the boss gets up too. Shame on the one who is still lying in bed when his school comes to life. It requires energy. What does energy mean? Others mean by this word a decisive tone, harsh commanding techniques; others – strictness in maintaining external orders and external rules of behavior. Energy does not mean mere persistence of the will, but the constant action of the will in the same spirit and direction. There is no longer enough conscientious accuracy in the work entrusted to the teacher. Not enough, because the boss must rule. To rule means first of all: to always be in place, and not relying on the power of orders, to act by example, to be the first worker. He is the first - not above those subordinate to those in power, but the first among fellow teachers, and should stand not above them, but in the midst of them, preserve and support their interest in teaching and science, reviving it with his interest. Next. What does it mean to rule? This means being able to distinguish the essential from the unimportant, the important from the trivial; to look for the possible in action, to feel the goodness and intelligence in every person. Another rules in the Eastern manner - with instructions, circulars, protocols, conferences, reforms, instructions, programs - and he sits in his office until they report to him and call him. Others think that in order to maintain power and respect one should, like the Shah of Persia, rarely appear in public. Bad calculation. However, a reasonable boss knows that there is no salvation in verbosity, as well as in profuse writing, and that it is possible to seriously discuss a serious issue without a conference and without protocol. It is necessary for the head of the school to be a knowledgeable and experienced teacher, to have a calling for teaching, and to be a person who is not only smart, but also animated, and not a careerist, looking out for honors and promotion. Nothing human is alien to him; he loves youth, is kind to his colleagues and takes care of them in need. Being the first employee himself, he inspires everyone in their work. He is natural in his attitude towards his colleagues, and knows how, when necessary, to slander them and make suggestions to them without harsh words or a bossy tone. He is firm in everything that is required by truth and a sense of duty, without indulgences or concessions, but treats everyone in accordance with the nature and character of each. These are the ideal traits of a boss. A great thing is animation in the matter of educating and treating people. But it should also be natural and not turn into pathos. It is good for those who, when animated, have humor in their character. This is the true salt of all animation, and a great force that eliminates dryness and formalism in relation to business and people. In every rank, a person must look after himself, so as not to “quench the spirit” (1 Thess. 5:19) within himself. The ordinary work of human hands, day after day, can suppress a person and master him, if he himself does not spiritually master him. This danger especially threatens the teaching profession. A teacher, stagnant in his subject and in monotonous classroom exercises, may freeze in the spirit of teaching. Thus, while remaining correct in appearance, he may little by little lose the ability to live the same life as his class and to excite it spiritually. “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6). But, unfortunately, there are incomparably more servants of the letter than ministers of the spirit. And the former sometimes have to dominate the latter: in this case, they are often extinguishers of the spirit. Beware of this when fate places you as an overseer or overseer of schools. It is necessary to distinguish between the essential and the unimportant, and animation, jealousy, love, and a sense of duty are the most essential in school work. And therefore, when you see a teacher who devotes his whole soul to teaching and raising children who cling to him and listen to him, beware of approaching him with an imperious, commanding air and do not confuse him with the demands of paper and programmatic formalism. The school is not an office, and if the office prevails in it, the school is lost. What is the use of literally following the form of questions and answers according to the textbook and program when the teacher acts like a machine in school. Literal answers do not yet mean knowledge, much less understanding, skill, and the ability to grow and improve. You have been appointed as an observer. Woe to you if, when you arrive at school, you consider the main or only duty of your title to review notebooks, marks and statements - and then move on. Look for a teacher everywhere - look at him, talk to him like a human being: after all, he is the main instrument of the school. If he hesitates, it's your job to support him. If in doubt, teach him. If he has put his heart to work and lives, exhausted by jealousy, in his children, beware of embarrassing him. If he lives in need, in hunger and in cold, do not pass by him indifferently: you will give an answer to God if you do not take care to encourage a person in his patience. And a word can be more valuable than a deed, but even for the benefit of a person, you can ask, convince, insist, if you want to not do the work of your calling with negligence. One hears about the barbarity of some forms of modern culture. It is not surprising to classify our exams in this category in the field of pedagogy. Their cruel and soulless form was formed and developed inseparably with the latest degeneration of our school, in all its degrees. Shouts were heard everywhere: light, light! That is, studies, schools, educational institutions! And schools began to grow everywhere like mushrooms, and masses of people who wanted to study began to push through the doors of the school - that is, to take a course of study and find their way out onto the path of life. The school wards and auditoriums became crowded for the many young people who flocked there. The need for teachers and professors began to increase enormously, and the work of teachers increased to the extreme. It has become extremely difficult, or even impossible, for a teacher to monitor the results of his work among the mass of students or listeners, and almost the only way to understand any of this mass at the end of a course or training is an exam. In these conditions, the exam for both the examiner and the examinees is a short time of extreme mental tension, often leading both of them into a state of nervous irritation. Exam means test. Testing in the true pedagogical sense presupposes a personal attitude towards the one being tested; it requires a calm attitude to the matter, reason, patience and time. And there is very little time to test a whole mass, one at a time; For calmness and patience, the conditions are the most unfavorable. It remains to apply to the test the mechanical formula of questions taken or extracted from the program of each subject. This is recognized as the shortest way to test the knowledge gained by the student from the year-long course. The mass is subjected to this verification; the examiner does not care about the identity of the student. Himself, brought into a nervous state by mechanical work, he pulls out questions that the student must answer. And asking questions is a matter of art, inseparable from observing the person to whom the questions are asked: for such observation, for the most part, there is neither the ability nor the time. It turns out something similar to measuring the height of a recruit. In five minutes you can deal with everyone by asking him several questions: if he is silent, or answers incorrectly, or does not remember the name of the king, city, river or the number of the year, then it is no good - there is no point in arguing. This kind of measurement turns out to be especially cruel during admissions exams. And here what is required is so-called knowledge, that is, memorizing answers, names, formulas and numbers, while the most necessary and essential thing is to recognize what is in the boy, what he understands, what he is capable of, to peer into his gaze and manner, to listen to his speech. For all this - alas! There is not enough time, skill and patience. Does this mean that exams are not needed at all? No, they are necessary, they are useful, they can excite the school and revive the educational work, but only in the case when the school itself is alive and is not just an inanimate mechanism of programmatic teaching. When the teacher knows his students, distinguishing them by name, that is, according to the ability and quality of each, when studying at school does not torment the students, but attracts them with lively interest and a desire to understand and think, then the exam acquires a lively interest for both the teacher and the student and takes on the appearance of a holiday crowning the school summer. The teacher is interested in seeing the living fruit of his labors and efforts put into influencing the mind and soul of his students; and for the student - the interest to consciously express in a living reflection what he perceived and understood in the lessons of the whole year. When he is preparing for an exam, artistic work takes place in his mind - how to collect, compare and better express what he will be asked to say in the exam. And the teacher thinks about what he should ask the boy, without only pulling out fragmentary questions from the program, without looking for names, numbers and formulas from the student’s memory alone; thinks about how to make separate groups of students in which he will conduct his test. In this form, the exam will no longer be a painful inquisition of imaginary knowledge, but will acquire a reasonable meaning. Character education in school (Barnett. Common sense in education and teaching. London. 1899) 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 - no matter what its programs are - 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 inseparably 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 are inseparably mental and moral: one without the other is unthinkable. 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 not and never has been 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 impose on him ahead of time such burdens 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, it is necessary from the very beginning to influence the student with reasoning: in this case, the sensation itself serves as the basis of 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 assimilating ideas that currently exceed his cognitive ability, and his memory is burdened with work in the hope that the “knowledge” acquired in this way will be assimilated by itself into the mind through 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 inclination of many in our time towards frivolity both in the actions and in the speeches of a person. 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 inform 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 each 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. Skill is a great thing: it has a significant protective (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 teacher’s job 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 must 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 easy the second time and the third, and therefore the teacher should not be embarrassed when he fails in all his efforts at the beginning with a student or even with the whole class, but he must not forget about the physical environment in 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 necessary to establish order in small things, to accustom students so that in small things they can control themselves, 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 independently. But here, too, the main thing that needs to be monitored and used is the student’s desire for initiative. 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 - 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 for the 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, but 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, etc. When they grow up, it is necessary that they develop the concept of common interests, honor, and responsibilities of the whole 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, its furnishings and accessories, in activities, entertainment, games, etc., is useful. This purpose is served by the establishment of monitors, prefects, elders, headmen, etc. It must be remembered that each of the students will someday become a citizen in his own place, with participation in public affairs, and the school must accustom him so that over time and in such an important matter he will not be guided 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, in order for everyone to enjoy freedom, firm rules are necessary for everyone about what should be done and what cannot be done, and what one should 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 persistent, 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 most reliable thing is to awaken in him a sense of dignity and 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 that has not been done 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 and explanation. And the teacher must watch himself when he gives explanations or answers 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 must serve as an example - his authority is shaken if students notice that he himself is a charlatan in his lessons. A smart teacher is when he himself realizes that in a decision, for example. task or in some other work he does not have solid skills, uses this opportunity to introduce the student to an understanding of the subject, in order to find a way out of the difficulty together with him: 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. A teacher is sometimes able to animate a young man with this image and 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. One mental or imaginary virtue 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 rivals. The same phenomenon is reflected in small aspects of school life. Rivalry 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 (laudum immense cupido) 4. Of all types of reward, the best, most valid is a word of approval spoken at the right time by a kind and reasonable mentor. But the most essential and most natural reward of a deed is the feeling of satisfaction with a completed 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, at 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 is difficult to subsequently eradicate or cure through the action of rational reasoning and 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 by 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 duty of a teacher is, first of all, 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 told the same thing, that he is worthless, that he is evil, etc., 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 about 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 the educator cannot and should not be indifferent to the content and nature of the books that circulate in the hands of his students. The great significance of religion for character education is that, by reviving in us the consciousness of God and the presence of God, it gives unity to our entire life. How necessary, but also how difficult it is to maintain this feeling of unity! The more our civilization improves, the more it separates people from each other and breaks the life of each of us into different parts that have little connection with each other. The more complicated life becomes, the more dismembered it becomes. The success of industry is based on the division of labor, the success of knowledge is based on the specialization of sciences. Our life is fragmented into pieces, and our responsibilities are fragmented. Some lie on us in the home and in the family, others outside the home, in relationships with people; they are all written out and numbered, sometimes in homeopathic doses, so as not to confuse us too much. The desire to divide life into small parts, to which man has always been inclined, has taken possession of everyone in our time. What can now unite our fragmented lives into one? Nothing else - only the thought of God and His relationship to our life, only this will reveal to us the true meaning of our existence, will make it possible, through the mass of details, of which our life necessarily consists, to recognize the one great universal goal that animates and elevates human existence. The entire success of our life lies in the consciousness of this basic unity, in which the mutual connection of all parts of our life becomes clear, the true meaning of all the small deeds and phenomena that make up our life becomes clear. Following our actions and deeds, we should hear the voice of a reviving spirit, reminding us that we strive to embody the highest principle in life, to see before us a clear end and a clear goal. And this is possible only in God; Only in the thought of God can we find the balance of earthly existence, understand the idea of ​​the unity of life; Only in the thought of God do we find ourselves in the midst of the countless details of life. The teaching of faith should be centered on the face of the Lord Jesus and the teaching of the gospel. But every believer belongs to the church, and church teaching is based on dogma, and therefore the basis of teaching must be dogmatic. Those who think that this basis should be predominantly moral are mistaken. The principles of moral teaching are fragile and shaky if they are not rooted in faith. Left to himself, a person is brought up by his environment, perceiving those ideas, those teachings, those examples that he sees and hears around him. In order for a person not to become confused in his impressions, habits and desires, he needs to have in his soul a hidden source of strength that will teach and help him reject the evil and choose the good, distinguish between lies and truth, create an inner life for himself and clearly recognize the purpose of his life. The only source of this power is faith, and our beliefs must be accurate and capable of expressing themselves clearly and definitely in our minds. That is why dogmatic knowledge is necessary in the teaching of faith. Another is ready to say: “the entire teaching of the Gospel consists of love - and this is enough for me, and I stand before everyone with the beginning of love for all people.” But this principle alone is not yet effective and easily dissolves in sterile sentimentalism. It does not produce lasting results. Love alone is not enough to solve all the issues of life. Love must be combined with knowledge, and this is the goal of education and the beginning of the formation of character in a person. That is why true education must be based on religion. Only a good teacher is one who has a religious mood: this alone serves as a support for moral teaching. Otherwise, how will he establish in the student’s soul the concept of good and evil, of moral action and immoral action? Punishment is not enough for this: punishment in itself is the action of brute force alone. New attempts to establish a school, in addition to religion, on moral teaching everywhere are and will always be fruitless. The moral principles of the teaching will evaporate and disappear, or fade to the point of indifference, giving way to material motives. But a teaching based on religious principles introduces the soul into a new, spiritual sphere, opens to it the horizons of spiritual life, leaves in it ideas and concepts that, even if they turn pale, cannot completely disappear and are not forgotten; and even, having turned pale, they often return to the soul again, refreshing it. The concept of a person’s spiritual integrity is being supplanted by its fragmentation into separate abilities and forces, each of which develops and acts according to its own special laws and in complete separation from others. An idea arises of some kind of box with blank partitions: in this cage there is a place for dogma - this is part of grace; and next to it, behind a partition, art is placed - this is the department of taste; there, on the sidelines, is science, where no ability other than abstract thought should penetrate; and then there is morality. Naturally, for someone who has become accustomed to these ideas, it is difficult to admit that all human abilities are subordinated to the highest spiritual power by the consciousness of enlightened self-control, and that in essence everyone has one task - to create an integral image of a moral person. And so a person becomes clear to us as an indifferent container in which different abilities fit, and we continue to talk about the high significance of personality, not noticing that we have undermined it by discarding the concept of internal integrity. It does not seem at all impossible to us that the same person believes in one thing, knows another, admires a third... When necessary, you can open one box and close all the others. Anyone who happened to monitor the development of mental and spiritual abilities in a child from a very early age probably noticed that, first of all, his attention focused on the most general, abstract and at the same time the most practical issues, in their direct relation to the personality of each person. He tries to understand for himself what God is, his relationship to God, how Providence is expressed, where good and evil come from; he listens to the first babble of his conscience and greedily asks about the relationship of the visible world to the invisible world, the initial dark sensation of which manifests itself in a special feeling of horror, from somewhere unknown, sinking into the child’s soul. Then, as the circle of his sensations expands and new ideas, one after another, stand out from the continuous mass of phenomena, he first of all tries to adapt them in his own way to the concepts he has already acquired, to connect the new with the old, and to turn everything that happens to him or in his eyes into a lesson for himself. The unexpectedness of these applications and the speed with which judgment follows each observation are often astonishing and indicate the inner, never-ceasing work of the soul. There, on some kind of unquenchable fire, all the material acquired from the outside seems to be melted and, in a new form, immediately goes into the work of self-education. It seems that the main task is precisely to facilitate this internal work, so that the content required for it never becomes scarce and at the same time does not suppress amateur activity with its abundance. And in the development of an entire people, the initial is essentially assimilated and determined at the beginning. Take any education that has completed the full circle of its development, and you will find at its core a system of religious beliefs. Moral concepts flow from them, under the influence of which family and social life is formed. It is impossible to imagine a whole and fresh people who would not have faith. Faith presupposes a conscious and unattained ideal, a supreme and binding law; and whoever has assimilated the law and brought it into his life, through this very thing he has become above the world of phenomena and acquired creative power over himself: he no longer vegetates, but creates himself... (Samarin). The first, main, living and effective school of the Law of God is the church, i.e. the church of God, with its worship, reading and singing. It is good for the one who learned the first lessons of faith in this school, which later, in an artificially created school, could seem like a heavy burden to him. Our Orthodox Church has an invaluable treasure for this, which others are deprived of. There is not a single dogma, not a single great or important person or event in the Old Testament and Gospel history that does not find not only an echo, but also a living image in the composition of our worship. Everything will be reflected here in stichera, dogmatism, antiphons, canons, psalms and proverbs. And all this appears in the word, filled with deep poetry and in connection, in the inextricable connection of the word with singing, measured and calculated for the word. But we use this treasure so sparingly that many are completely unfamiliar with it; so these most essential, most intelligible and instructive parts of our divine service are neglected, for the sake of brevity, in the performance of the ritual, and only its skeleton is left, enlivened only by the prayer of simple souls who come to church. It is good for those who had their own parish church as this school of worship and doctrine, a church where the whole family from generation to generation prayed and sanctified with prayer all important events of family life. Nowadays, with the enormous growth of cities, with the continuous change of urban population, with the influx of crowds to urban centers, this significance of the parish and the parish church is drying up or completely lost. In large cities, especially in the capitals, house churches serve as a substitute for a parish for the upper strata of society, with their ceremonial appearance, with their truncated, often crippled worship - a pitiful substitute, in the midst of which the spiritual connection of the family with the church disappears. In educational institutions with a dormitory, a church is started - it is usually assumed that students living together should form, as it were, one family, gathering in the church or near the church. But how rarely is this ideal realized in reality; - this requires a rare connection in the same educational spirit between the authorities and the teaching staff and with the rector of the church and the teacher of the law: a grace-filled phenomenon, extremely rare. Enter such a church - you will see rows of students mechanically assembled to certain places, or girls, like dolls, straightened to stand, you will see the authorities, soullessly standing and bored - perhaps to monitor order... Every school considers itself entitled to be known as a school of religious instruction when the Law of God is listed in the first place among its subjects. But what does teaching the Law of God mean? Little, poor, if this means only educational sacred history and questions and answers to memory from the catechism. Teaching the Law of God should mean: teaching living faith. It is not enough to teach only how the Lord Jesus lived and taught and died and rose again: children must feel that they cannot live without the Lord Jesus, that His words and speeches must pass into their lives and into their nature; so that they understand and feel what it means to bear the name of Christ, to be a Christian, what it means to walk with God, to keep truth in their souls and the fear of God - that is, to keep their purity before God. And the one who teaches them must remember that the children look into his eyes and not only listen to his speeches and lessons, but seek to see in him a Christian who preserves and does the truth... This is the ideal. But when we turn to reality, we see textbooks with an addition of teaching aids, we see programs with a nomenclature of subjects and with the division of courses into classes. In the foreground is the sacred history of the Old and New Testaments, and from the first year, in subsequent years, the schedule of the same subjects is repeated, with the supposed only expansion of what has already been taught, and the Holy Gospel is part of the sacred history and is divided into “lessons” and into many questions that the examiner will offer to the “tested” children, and with which many of them will be confused and in tears. No faith can be separated from a cult combined with faith, that is, from worship, and especially from our Orthodox worship. Here belief, clothed in words, images and sounds, enlivens and elevates the heartfelt feeling and illuminates its truth with beauty. Detached from worship, the teaching of the Law of God is detached from the church. But where it is inextricably linked with the church, where children, participating in church reading and singing, become accustomed to living its life in the church and understanding and feeling the depth and beauty of church ritual, there only the teaching of the Law of God acquires the desired completeness. However, even where it is detached from the church, the program of the Law of God contains within itself a teaching about worship, which is also divided into many questions. Such a teaching is dead in itself, and in children’s minds and in the mouth of the teacher it becomes an unbearable torment for children when they are asked questions about the details of church vessels and vestments, the performance of sacraments and various church orders... Educational institutions are growing and filling up, and at the same time the programs of subjects are expanding, inflating and swelling, which must be taught and presented in full in certificates and diplomas, which constitute the ultimate goal of teaching. Teachers are needed - and they are trained in numerous teacher training institutes and seminaries. All this is painted in order, marked and approved by the states, and all this is displayed in exhibitions, arranged from time to time for display to the whole society. And all this is a ringing cymbal and clanking brass, if all this is devoid of the spirit of life and is not held together by the only true, the only strong connection of all education and training - the consciousness of duty in any task, no matter what one is preparing for. This consciousness of duty must permeate the entire structure of the educational institution, starting from the authorities and ending with the last of the students: where it is not there, the whole system is bursting at the seams and little by little falls apart; where it is not there, there is no spiritual connection either between the members of the teaching staff or between them and the students; there is no interest in educational work, none of the teachers and students have that love for their school, on which every school lives, grows and strengthens from generation to generation. And education and teaching becomes only mechanics - therefore, a lie and deception - and its fruits, bitter for the soul, are bitter for growing generations - no matter how brilliant the final results of the teaching may seem in the form of commendable certificates and those obtained with the help of their places, ranks and distinctions. Nowadays we hear a lot of speeches about love in education and training - but what does this self-talking love mean when it is not based on the same consciousness of duty, is not guided by it and is not strengthened? From the very beginning, this consciousness of duty must be cultivated in a child, especially in a young man, in every work included in training, in every action included in education. But he must be steadily educated: neither a rule nor an order in itself is enough for this, because it has no spiritual basis. It is the teacher’s job to give work to the intelligence, understanding and skill of each student - and his job is to demand that each work be done conscientiously, to the extent that everyone is able to understand and do it. He must make sure what is understood and what is not understood, and what is not understood must be corrected in the mind of the student in order to inform him and strengthen in him the habit of thinking about what he is doing, and the desire to do it correctly and satisfactorily, so that everyone can understand and appreciate his work. Only under this condition does the work become of interest to the one who does it. If the teacher understands his entire assessment of work only as a bare number of marks, a reprimand or a punishment, without caring about what trace this or that will leave in the mind of the student, the student remains in the same place of dullness or protest, without moving forward, and the teacher himself reveals in himself only a doll, mechanically wound up and mechanically moving. Thus mechanical school days and hours go one after another, filled with irritation and boredom, until they lead to the critical epoch of each school year - to an equally mechanical exam: to the web, which the big fly breaks through, while the small flies get entangled in it. Nevertheless, both big and small somehow complete the entire journey of learning, receiving certificates - e sempre bene. 5 But what are the results of this entire operation carried out on the mass of the growing generation? The result is a flabby, frail generation, without a sense of duty, therefore, without the will, without the ability to do a certain thing; Only those who are capable are separated from the masses, who do not know where to direct their ability and for the most part direct it only towards the material improvement of their life and towards making any kind of profit. It is good for those of them who manage to fall into the hands of a knowledgeable, experienced and warm-hearted person, who wants and is able to put him to work and actually educate him. But what did the school give him, what did the school prepare him for, providing him with a patent to seek his destiny in all four directions? The sense of duty has no reason to look for legal grounds in the concept of right and duty. Its roots are in the organic nature of man and family. It originates in the union of husband and wife, parents and children, in the common life of the family and in the common household. In this area there are direct principles of mutual care, mutual service, care of elders for younger ones, order and obedience, correctness and conscientiousness in work: everyone knows their place and their job. Where a simple family is well-organized, a sense of duty arises and develops naturally, uniting with the judgment of conscience, and little by little the habit of doing what is due is formed. When a child from a family goes to school, the school must strengthen and further develop both this feeling and this habit - with its entire structure, and, above all, by the example of those in charge of school education and upbringing. To accustom children to the order of conscious and conscientious work means to serve to create in a mixed mass of individuals and to the formation of characters, a great thing and a great service to society and the state. If the school does not satisfy this main goal, if the people running it look at their business as a craft, and do not treat their actions conscientiously, then the school can give children only bad skills instead of good ones, and can destroy the good inclinations of character taken from the family. What is sown in primary school goes with children to secondary school and grows in it, to strengthen good or bad skills. Strengthened in the consciousness of duty, in the clarity of work, in maintaining order, the school develops into a strong force the new generation of young people graduating from it - they will become builders not only of their own destiny, but also of the destiny of the whole society in the successive succession of workers entering the common field of work. There has never been so much concern as in our time about the structure of education and upbringing; but what is she referring to? For the expansion and supply of educational institutions, for the production of teachers, for compulsory measures of compulsory education for children, for raising funds for the maintenance of schools. In the midst of these worries and efforts, there is often little freedom and leisure to think about how to treat children when we get them to school, how and what to teach them. When setting up a school, we assume that all this has already been thought out in advance and arranged through the specialists in charge of the educational departments. It would seem that the main subject of care is precisely the children for whom the school is organized. Caring for children is caring for ourselves, for the whole society, for the generation that is growing: we need to prepare them for life and activity, and prepare them better than we ourselves were prepared. Children come to school and sit down and wait to see what will happen to them. The teacher appears and carries with him a book and a pointer. This pointer replaces the teaching system at all times. Children are told what they need to know and then asked. And what a child’s soul is, the teacher doesn’t care about that when he mechanically conducts his work: in every soul there is a depth into which the longer you look, the more mysteries are revealed in it. But an adult, approaching children, usually applies to them the mindset of his adult mind, and not the mindset of a child - and this mindset is completely special. The child begins by looking, noticing and collecting into himself. The adult mind wears out what is ready and acquired from its stock. The child's mind works in images and draws its conclusions from direct observation and experience. That is why education should strive to protect and cultivate in the child’s mind this receptivity of observation and readiness to raise questions about what he wants to know: this is the root of the interest that enlivens learning and the first guarantee of all success - and not only for school time, but throughout life. But this ability is not only not supported, but suppressed by our usual system of education, blindly applying so-called school discipline to it at the first steps. Why? Alas! because the usual system sets itself the main goal of achieving a known, assumed and prescribed result in a due time. However, everything that suppresses in a person the desire and ability to be interested, to seek and ask, is contrary to the main task of education - to strengthen a person so that he becomes needed for life and for business. If a young man takes away from school a little of the educational material, his education will not be in vain when he takes away from school a sensitive mind and queries that require an answer. St. Augustine, discussing the doctrine, says: “A golden key is useless when it does not have to go to the lock, but a simple wooden key is good for everything when it does have to go to the lock.” This word involuntarily comes to mind when you look at our multi-subject and broad programs, applied indifferently to a whole mass of students: many of them cannot open their locks with a large key. But our programs are of decisive importance, and when a prudent teacher would apply them wisely, he will not be praised, but condemned in the exam. And how many schools are there in the remote corners of Russia, where these locks can only be opened with a simple wooden key, and a large patented key cannot penetrate there. And it won’t help matters when only proprietary keys are required everywhere. Education seekers strive to be educated. But what is education? To become educated, it is not enough to take a well-known course and pass an exam. It is necessary to acquire the inclinations of real knowledge and take away from school both the desire and ability to further cultivate it in oneself. Lack of education is usually confused with ignorance, that is, the absence of concepts about objects of knowledge. This is a natural lack of education, the kind we see among simple village people who have not seen the world and have not gone through school. But in this natural lack of education there is still grateful soil hidden - when knowledge touches it. Much worse, much more dismal is the lack of education that comes from half-education. This kind of half-education, fed by reading newspapers and flying works of current literature, is especially widespread in our time and constitutes an ulcer in public life. Disorderly reading conveys to the undisciplined mind only general views and current opinions: it in itself only confuses thought and excites one pretension of knowledge. Only real knowledge helps a person to distinguish and evaluate the truth of current opinions and form a firm, right opinion for himself. It is desirable to turn natural lack of education into education; but a simply ignorant person, aware of his ignorance, has no pretensions to talk about what he does not know; but when from this state we bring a person into semi-education, we bring him into the worst ignorance: as ignorance progresses, a false claim to knowledge develops in him and he strives to talk about anything, having neither knowledge nor experience. Real knowledge, educating a person, makes him able to say “I don’t know” about what he doesn’t know, and refrains him from disorderly reasoning outside the limits of his knowledge. It is in vain to think that a teacher is formed by knowledge, that knowledge creates a teacher. Knowledge is necessary: ​​a teacher must know what he is called to teach, but the main thing is not the teacher’s learning. The teacher forms a sympathetic unity with nature, with the life and everyday life of the children whom he is called to teach. A good teacher lives one life with his school. No method, no system of education in itself will help the success of teaching if the teacher applies the same standard of learning to all children with whom he deals. Each child is on his own, with his own nature, and is significantly different from the other. The stupid teacher has memorized one formula and repeats it to everyone. But a living teacher understands that he is dealing with a living soul in every child: each has its own thoughts and interests, and each is capable of responding only to such speech as it understands; but besides that, the whole school as a whole has its own soul and lives its own life, and looks into the teacher’s eyes with open eyes. To master it, to speak with it, the teacher must respond to these requests, arousing and maintaining inquisitive interest in everyone. And what he teaches, what he speaks about, he must know so firmly and imagine so clearly that he can at any moment answer all the questions with which the children respond to the lesson and to his speech. When such a living connection has been formed between the teacher and the school, the teacher’s teaching and educational action on the students, like any action of the spirit, is something intimate, inaccessible to external verification. An inspector or observer, during an external inspection of a school, is unable to penetrate it. Therefore, it sometimes happens that an observer, measuring the state and success of a school by the external standard of an exam, is very mistaken, and cannot distinguish goodness and success where they are hidden in the inner life. The teacher put a thought into the child’s head, and the boy understands the teacher’s speech addressed to him; but when it is necessary to present it to an outsider in the form of an answer to his question - he is confused and does not know how to answer - it is necessary for this thought to flash through his head and take root before he is able to express it meaningfully. This condition, unfortunately, is not recognized by the external standard of the exam, and therefore often requires from children what they cannot give - but which sometimes only gives the mechanical action of unreflected memory. We tend to attribute effective power to the method of teaching. But the use of one or another method can only have a mechanical effect if the student does not understand why he needs this or that lesson. It is possible to make a student learn only when he begins to understand why he is studying: in this sense, real teaching consists in bringing the student to knowledge. To do this, a good teacher turns to two spiritual qualities on which all knowledge is based: curiosity and observation. A good teacher will find these qualities in everyone’s soul if he takes the trouble to look into it. It is possible to assimilate the teaching only through internal assimilation: the external alone is powerless for this. But usually with us, unfortunately, it is only external: the student’s mind seems like a chest of drawers with many drawers and corners, which all need to be filled with facts: it is assumed that they will remain in the mind forever and that each room serves as their repository, from which the necessary knowledge can be extracted at any time. And when the time comes for the exam, all these boxes open up; but a little time will pass, and all these reserves will disappear without a trace, because the knowledge was mechanical, done, and not vital. Socrates was a great teacher, and how many learned people since his time have borrowed their teaching from him. But in the sense of our school teaching, he would be unsuitable. He did not infuse his students with any knowledge. Speaking about himself, he called himself a mental midwife, 6 i.e. helped human minds to resolve themselves with ideas, to expel ideas. Socrates created the art of asking questions, which is still called the Socratic method; but the answers to his questions were already hidden in the mind of the one to whom the question was proposed. However, none of his students would be able to answer the school exam: the exam requires knowledge. And Socrates possessed an amazingly subtle art of moving minds with his questions, arousing work in them that forced them to test ideas and concepts within themselves. And thus, without teaching anything, Socrates brought out students who could learn everything themselves. Blessed Augustine (in his confession), describing his years of schooling, says: “We loved to play at will, and for this we were punished by people who did the same thing as us; Only trifles among big people are called business, and when children do the same, their elders punish them for it.” There is no doubt that big people often call trifles matters. You see, people are extremely busy, and when you ask, they say they are busy; but half of what they do turns out to be just a game of trivia. This is how we, adults, sometimes talk about the affairs and activities of other people; but, after all, children have eyes no worse than ours, they notice everything, look closely at everything. You teach a child, give instructions and lessons, and he looks at you and judges you as you are, and not by your speeches. An exam in the sense of a test is a necessary and useful thing. In this sense, it excites and supports the conscious energy of both teacher and student! But in reality, the exam ceases to be a test and turns into a mechanical measure of material placed in the head and memory of the student as knowledge. In this sense, the exam becomes a disaster for school affairs. Then leading the whole class through the exam becomes the main goal and the main subject of teaching: the main concern of both the teacher and the student is that the exam goes well, and the teacher involuntarily strives to reduce as much as possible the nervous tension of the entire operation with short and quick questions addressed to the student’s memory. At the same time, the main goal of education is completely forgotten - the mental development of the student. In the last days of the course, all the tension of both the teacher and students is concentrated in order to fit into the heads of all the amount of educational material that should appear on the exam as knowledge. The educational authorities begin to take special care to protect the integrity of the so-called test from any tricks on the part of the students, all kinds of mechanical precautions are invented for this, and restrictions on the student’s freedom during the exam; and on the part of the disciples means are invented to answer the supposed questions without difficulty, or with the least difficulty. Meanwhile, in the whole class, day and night, the so-called cramming of educational material takes place according to programs and exam tickets, and finally, by the morning of the appointed day, the entire exhausted crowd gathers for the test court. The matter ends, sometimes only at night, with the triumph of some and the bitter weeping of others, with some of the latter becoming first, and the former becoming last. If you ask on what basis, it will be difficult to answer. They will say: based on the answers to tickets taken from the subject teaching program. This program usually tries to cover all parts of the subject, both in general terms and in all details, and it is assumed that all this has been covered, that all this must be understood and assimilated, and that all this must be inscribed in the memory of each student... In the exam system, everything seems designed to keep students in nervous tension, and not give them time to come to their senses and exchange, so that they direct all their strength, especially memory, without rest to preparing for the exam. But when training took place throughout the year with the true purpose of the mental development of the students, it would be necessary, on the contrary, to leave them several days free before the exam, so that they could calmly identify themselves in their information, consciously distinguishing the essential from the unimportant details and prepare themselves for the real test. Poor children! An exam is difficult for them even in the home environment of a school, when its only purpose is to check whether they have absorbed within themselves, within the allotted time, and by the allotted day, all that knowledge, or better yet, all those subjects and questions that are posed in the program. It looks like how things would go about pouring precious liquid from a large bottle into small vessels placed: is everything poured out of the large vessel and are all the small vessels filled... But how much more difficult it is for them when this test is carried out by a Commission that gathers at the school on the appointed day and is composed of representatives of various bodies supervising the verification of the authorities! What excitement precedes this fateful day, especially when the school is located somewhere in a remote village, where you can’t get to it soon, and where you sometimes have to wait for days for an arrival. Strict judges sit down, none of whom know either the school or the children - and none of them have time to get acquainted with the inner world of the school and enter in any way into its life; they are in a hurry to finish here and move to another place. And in the face of them, what fear, what embarrassment - for the teacher, for the teacher, for the children, expecting a certificate and one or another benefit for the answer, because the benefit is always connected with the exam. And among the strict judges, how many are there who have an understanding of the subject of teaching and examination? Why know the program and a series of questions in front of them? It’s worth suggesting any question and then hearing how the child answers, and when he hesitates, interrupt him with questions that come to mind. Blessed is the school where such a test is passed peacefully and successfully! But how much crying sometimes happens after it at school, both for the children and the teacher! A common exercise and test in academic work is to write essays on given topics. This is an extremely necessary and useful matter when it is carried out wisely, which is not always the case. First of all, it is necessary to select topics adapted to the level of development of each student, to the subjects about which he has an understanding, and finally to his interest and taste, to what extent both are noticed. If the topics are chosen thoughtlessly or expressed vaguely, the work will be difficult and fruitless. Another teacher approaches his students with the following requirement: express your thoughts in an essay, and then judges the essay by how, in his opinion, what thoughts are expressed in the essay. However, it is not easy in each case to figure out what thoughts this or that student may have about this or that subject. They tell him: read books and then think about it. But what books? This requires reasonable guidance, and if there is none, then from random and disorderly reading your head will only fill with thousands of incoherent words, phrases and concepts. Moreover, meaningful reading requires time and a certain amount of leisure, but where can a student get both of these in the mass of subject-based lessons in the curriculum? But what does it mean for a student to think? Everyone thinks and argues about this differently. And teaching him to think is the first thing, it would seem, at school. Think, i.e. to be aware of how concepts and images fit together and how everything comes out of one another as a consequence and a cause, and how an exact and definitive concept is expressed in words. Anyone who has the habit of thinking this way can correctly express in his words the thought about the subject of thought. At school, the ability to think and judge sensibly, which is most valuable both for a person and for the whole society, should be conceived and nurtured. They say that school exists for learning, not for education. This is not true. On this false basis, educational institutions are established, filled with a mass of students distributed in classes, the teacher deals with an impersonal mass, and it does not matter to him whom he teaches and whom he asks, but only what is important is what answer is given to the formal questions of the program and how many students passed the exam successfully and received the license connected with the success number. It is not surprising that students leave such a school with joy and leave with dissatisfaction with the school or even disgust with it. No, learning without education is impossible, because character must be developed through learning, interest in the subject of study is based on learning, and the habit of conscientious and conscious performance of work is formed on learning; The teaching inculcates neatness in the external customs of life and treatment of people. In a reasonable system of education, each student is a unit, a person from whom the teaching must extract and develop the abilities and inclinations that are found in him. Where this is absent, there remains only mechanics and teaching and education, mechanics without content. Where this is the case, the student becomes attached to the school and takes away love and gratitude from it. But where there is a good teacher, what a great task he has to peer into the soul of a child and youth, and work on it, and penetrate into the mystery of each soul with which he deals, discover in it the complex and subtle threads of motives and inclinations, recognize its high and noble aspirations. Is it not in this sense that it was said from ancient times: maxima debetur pueris reverentia? 7 Speaking about general education courses, do we clearly understand the purpose and objectives of what is called general education? These problems are usually resolved by selecting subjects, drawing up programs that determine the educational content of each subject, and scheduling them according to courses. The belonging of this entire organization is the so-called educational or classroom literature, consisting of a mass of textbooks, endlessly emerging - a mass that is littered with teaching tables and book warehouses. The compilers of these books, for the most part, use a set of different rules and formulas, located in one system or another under different technical names, in order to sort it all out into different corners of the student’s memory and retrieve it from there on demand. An expressive example of all this literature are countless grammars, strewn with many technical terms, rows of names meaning all the features and turns of verbal speech, all ways of expressing thoughts and concepts in words. And all this could be simply learned by explanation and use to each student, without a severe test of memory; but when a teacher is dealing with a mass of forty or more students, he has to use his memory alone with the help of a textbook. Can a particularly gifted and animated teacher cope with this complex network of names and rules and through it convey the interest of verbal art and the light of simple understanding? Many sciences are indicated in the distribution of courses and teaching hours, and it is undeniable that this knowledge is necessary. Definitive and precise concepts are needed about history and geography, about the earth and physical forces and phenomena, about the laws of number, about culture and literature, concepts animated by interest. But, for all that, something must serve as the main subject, the essential knowledge that the student must take away from the school of general education, the tool with which he can reliably enter the work of higher education. This is, firstly, the normal development of religious knowledge and mood, in connection with the church - the spiritual, moral basis of life and activity. Another, and very significant, is verbal art and knowledge. A good school is one that teaches its students to think and express thoughts in words clearly, accurately and definitely. If a person who has completed a course of education is not able to understand the exact meaning of the words of his native language and uses them in his speech randomly and unconsciously, he cannot be considered sufficiently educated; and when the majority is deprived of this art of speech, hence comes the confusion of concepts in both private and public life, which is so clearly reflected in our time. With the enormous development of sciences and scientific culture in our time, many new concepts, new words and new terms have entered literary speech, repeated without precise consciousness both in oral and written speech. And so it turns out that the most precious asset of the spirit - the native word - loses its spiritual meaning, and its power and beauty are blurred into the meaninglessness of stupid talk and disordered writings; and instead of the art of writing in one’s native language (instead of what forms a style everywhere in the cultural environment), the art of using phrases, easy and accessible to any uncultured mind, is spreading. Bad habits of easy writing are formed, which infect both teachers and through them the school. Those who value the true principles of education cannot be indifferent to this disease, which is corroding the school education of new generations. The ancient languages ​​(now banished from school) could render an invaluable service in this respect; They provided it in the old days, when school teaching was in the hands of skilled teachers who were experts in both the ancient and native language. Their advantage lies in the fact that in them the thought is expressed with particular definition and force, and the word and the concept corresponding to the word are distinguished by extreme precision. As a result, the study of Hellenic and Latin speech serves as the best school for knowledge of one’s native language and for the art of expressing oneself in one’s language clearly and harmoniously. He who loves his native language should value these very qualities in it, and strives to feel and understand the depth and beauty of the word in his native language. Expressing Latin speech in his native language, the student is forced to think and look for the exact expression of the same thought and the same concept in the properties of his language, and so little by little he learns to comprehend the meaning and beauty of the word and the beauty of the order that makes up the verbal clothing of thought. Thus, Hellenic and Latin speech, languages ​​that are not used in living speech and therefore considered dead, are precisely capable of reviving the composition of a new living speech with a young spirit. This very deadness of speech in ancient languages ​​gives them special pedagogical significance. The speech of a living language is studied, since the child perceives the living speech of his mother, through unconscious imitation, which little by little acquires the ability to speak: a mechanical action of memory, instinctively collecting material for the expression of impulses and thoughts. But the ability to speak alone does not give the ability to use words intelligently. It is known that learning new living languages ​​is accomplished successfully not through grammar, but through living speech, that is, also through imitation and memory - and memory, accumulating only material, is still powerless to comprehend it. On the contrary, the classical speech of the ancient language encourages the student to think about every word and the construction of every phrase, more and more consciously with each step, and learn in his language to seek the exact expression of concepts and the art of composing speech clearly, powerfully and beautifully. It goes without saying that when a teacher uses memory alone mechanically, the study of ancient languages ​​becomes fruitless. Another tool of verbal science for the Russian people is our Church Slavonic language - the great treasure of our spirit, the precious source and inspirer of our folk speech. Its strength, expressiveness, depth of thought reflected in it, the harmony of its consonances and the structure of the entire speech create its inimitable beauty. And in this language its creators, brought up on the beauty and power of Hellenic speech, gave us the books of the Holy Scriptures. But even here, of course, if all science is based on memory and on the study of grammatical forms, it will turn out to be fruitless. A school building, built somewhere in a city or in a large village, on a public street, equipped with desks, teaching aids and all school supplies, is a pleasant sight. Life moves around, there are books, and sometimes there are social gatherings. Another thing is a school, hidden somewhere in a corner, far from any road, sometimes far from housing, cut off from all traffic, sometimes far from the churchyard or church itself. Alas! There are many such corners in vast, vast Russia - everything around is empty, a forest or a steppe, or a swamp, or a deserted lake, and you can’t get anything from anywhere, there is not a cow or a chicken anywhere - and water itself is obtained with difficulty from afar. Rarely does anyone come here, and having arrived, they are in a hurry to leave for a crowded place. However, when here, too, some kind person started a school in a poor, cold hut, and life begins here - and children, sensing a school, come here, off-road, through snow and mud, when there is any opportunity to get here. And in these corners it is often possible for a traveler who accidentally stops by to find school life in full swing when a young teacher ends up in such a school, who was attracted here by love for children, pity for the poor and their darkness and an ardent desire to build children's souls. Then a whole swarm of children gathers around her, whom you cannot drive away from school, because in her they find the first rays of light from the darkness, draw their first interests in the blossoming of spiritual life, and meet tender love, care and affection. Work in such a school is a great feat of the soul, a feat that exhausts but also nourishes souls, a feat of which a woman’s soul is capable. Here you have to live in need, in hunger and cold, sometimes for whole months without hot food, and share this life with the poor living in hunger and cold. Feeling the warmth and light, children are rushing there from all sides, but how can they get to school and from a nearby place, when they have nothing but a shirt and shabby rags, no dress, no shoes, and they have to get to school from afar, through snowdrifts, and bad weather off-road. Happiness is when from somewhere a kind heart with a beneficent hand sends help - to clothe the naked or feed hungry children. When somewhere in a remote village there is such a teacher in such a school, sometimes the whole village comes to life. Both day and evening, the wretched house is filled: in the evenings, following the children, parents sometimes come to listen to how the teacher reads to the children, how they begin to sing under her leadership, and if she manages to form a choir for the wretched rural church, and a good priest happens to be there, the whole church is transformed, and in the midst of the hopeless melancholy and emptiness into which the village is plunged in winter, a light of prayerful mood, a light of spiritual interest is lit. When a person, tired of the emptiness and vulgarity of city life, the vulgarity and emptiness of speeches heard everywhere, sometimes has to look into such remote corners, lost in the middle of forests and swamps in snowdrifts, and discover there these ascetics and ascetics, the saddened people of darkness and poverty, seeking to bring a living soul to the light, he is ready to exclaim in tenderness: “Lord!... You have hidden this from the wise and prudent.” and revealed it to babes” (Matthew 11:25)! God bless! There are many remote corners in Russia, closed from the big world, where workers known only to the world live, “as having nothing, but containing everything” (2 Cor. 6:10) - people’s mourners and educators, wretched priests, ignorant in consistories, ordinary teachers from among the people, working for decades in an ignorant school established by them, and especially teachers, compassionate female those who have comprehended with their soul the secret of good deeds and good goals in life. Touching and instructive is the daily life of such a teacher, from early morning until late evening, in the circle of children who cannot be kept away from school, where they find light and warmth and maternal care for themselves. The morning is all about lessons, the evening is all about reading, singing, working with the same children. Living in need herself, she thinks about how to warm and cover the poor and the need of the children - and everyone runs to her with their needs, and she spends her own - not rubles, but pennies - to cover penny needs, asking who can help the children. The holiday comes - she thinks about how to arrange festive joy for them, and collecting from everywhere, she prepares a Christmas tree for them, arranges reading and singing, enlivening the whole village with children's fun. Anyone who knows the Russian village can imagine the situation of a rural teacher. Somewhere in a place of comfortable life, school affairs are organized according to the rank of educational institutions. At a certain hour, children come to lessons, at a certain hour they leave, the teacher is free and the school is empty. Not so in the village, and even in the remote and deserted village, which vast Russia is filled with. Here children cling to school all day long until the evening, and when they are not at school, how many of them get to come to the environment of home life, where there is a corner for studying, and the care of father and mother and food at the right time! For many children, school is home, which they saw for the first time in their lives, and so for them the teacher is both a mother and a nurse, if she herself has something to feed! And often she herself has nothing to feed herself and barely anything to wear - her home is cold and she has to ask everywhere to get firewood, to get lighting in the evening. And around her there are often poor people, from whom it is impossible to get help, and children without warm clothes and without shoes, and often her school is separated from crowded housing by distant space and impassable snow. She often has to wait months for her meager salary until it reaches her from distant school administration points. And happiness will come when she finds around her a kind and diligent priest, a compassionate peasant neighbor, and an attentive boss. Otherwise, she will face a difficult struggle with ignorance, with indifference, and sometimes with the enmity of all those from whom she longed for help and assistance. What kind of - not only patience - but what kind of love and pity for the poor and ignorance must be kept in one’s soul in order to endure months and years of life in such an environment, and in such a strain of spiritual strength. After all, a good teacher does not deal with a mass of children, but she knows each one especially, like Vanya, Kolya, Sasha, Katya, Masha, etc., and she deals with each soul in a special way and each one brings to her its own special nature and its own need and care. And it’s no wonder that, like a candle that gives light but also burns itself out, a teacher becomes exhausted and burns out in a few years. This is the kind of work that numerous female souls in our time, languishing in search of a living cause and life goal, can strive for. And in this matter there is a lot of hard work, but also a consoling consciousness. The idea of ​​making primary school a stepping stone to higher education is a false idea and sets primary school an artificial goal and an impossible task. The purpose of the primary school is to give a boy or girl the first elements of mental and moral culture and then leave them in the place and environment to which they belong; After that, it depends on each of them in particular, according to their inclination and ability, to seek improvement and occupation outside their environment. This task is of particular importance for us, since the vocation of our elementary school is to operate in an environment of a completely uncultured rural population, and to excite and educate in the child’s mind and in the child’s soul the elements of natural curiosity and religious and moral feelings hidden in each. Moreover, if from the elementary school it was intended to create something like a staircase leading to courses of secondary and higher education, it would be necessary, in accordance with this goal, to organize the elementary school course itself, introduce new subjects into it, expanding and complicating the programs: and this would be both materially and technically impracticable, therefore, in execution it would only be a lie and violence. It is in vain to establish universities for the purpose of higher education if they cannot at once be placed under the direction of authoritative experts of science, but are subject only to the control of an external authority. If a university aims only to prepare people for one or another kind of social or state activity, it is deprived of the essential meaning of being a house of pure science, a laboratory of scientific research, gathering people to representatives of science - for the sake of science. The university in its true meaning should serve society as the highest authority for the analysis, testing and verification of all ideas arising in society. The history of all the most ancient universities shows that they originally arose from a free association of scientists, lovers of science, united in a corporation for a scientific purpose. And now the success of the university and the correct structure of its life and activities certainly depend 1) on the mutual spiritual connection of scientific interest between the science professors who make up the corporation; 2) from the spiritual connection between the professor and the student, due to which the latter perceives from the former the interest and method of scientific research; and 3) from mutual communication between students in the spirit of friendly camaraderie and mutual assistance. Where these three conditions are absent, only the name of the university remains. What is learning? Its elements are drawn from life, its purpose is to form a person and prepare him for life and activity. But often in reality it turns out that this very teaching alienates a person from life, distracts him from life, leading him, instead of knowledge about life, to ignorance of life or to a false idea of ​​​​life. Any teaching, in its essence, is a distraction - a distraction of the simplest possible provisions and rules from life, and life is not only not simple, but complex to the highest degree. We acquire more or less knowledge from one science or another - as if this science were something existing in itself. But the world lives and moves on its own, in an infinity of diverse phenomena, regardless of all distractions. These abstractions, to which we resort for our convenience in science, and all the separate branches into which our knowledge is divided, do not contain a whole and self-sufficient truth. Science is necessary: ​​everyone must undergo training for his education, but science alone is not enough for life. Let's imagine a person who has completed all the training courses and completed higher education. He leaves, say, the university, with a wealth of abstract ideas drawn from science: but these ideas and the language of these ideas are something alien and incomprehensible to an ordinary person, “living among his people” in his circle - something detached from life with its complexity and diversity. His speeches may be smart, but in order to understand them, you need to take the same science courses with him. Doesn’t it follow from this that every teaching complicates a person’s attitude towards real life and that everyone who has gone through school still has to improve his teaching, simplifying it, i.e. to descend with him, to verify him, into real life. Only reality can revive it, sprouting living water after the dead. Science reveals to us the laws of humanity, but to live we also need to know a living person. Only then will it be revealed to us how it is possible to apply to the given conditions of life and business the principles that science has told us. Here it turns out that the essential goal of mental education is to maintain and develop constant curiosity and observation in a person: if it has led a person to the conviction that, having completed all his courses, he already knows everything for life, such education is deceptive. Only here, when we enter into reality, does the time of real science come. Here we must learn, each one around us, from everything that surrounds us in life. Here, and wherever we have to live, if our mind remains alive and inquisitive, new ideas will begin to arise in us, new points of view will be revealed to us, new questions will arise one after another, which the same science acquired in school will help us pose. And we will see how the theories we have studied and read - political, economic, social, etc., are refracted in the environment of life, as we learn about it, and to what extent and under what conditions they can be applied to reality. This is a decisive requirement of life, but many do not think about it or forget it, remaining with the unreasonable and deceptive consciousness that they know everything for life and have nothing to learn. A young man who grew up in his homeland among his people, when he finds himself in a big city, is inclined to completely renounce the consciousness of the needs and demands of the life in which he grew up, and then higher education takes him into the world of abstractions and theoretical views. If he remains in this world and there, far from real life, establishes his activity - what truth will it bring to life! Let us remember the ancient admonition: know yourself. When applied to life, this means: get to know your environment, in which you need to live and act, get to know your country, get to know your nature, your people with their soul and way of life, and needs, and requirements. This is what we should all know and what for the most part we do not know. But what a benefit it would be for us and for the whole society if we tried to know all this, at least in that place, in that region, in that corner of the region where fate placed us... About all things accessible to knowledge, and about some others (lat., editor's note: The ABCs of Faith). Rare bird (lat., editor's note ABC of Faith). So much the better (lat., editor's note: The ABCs of Faith). Unbridled passion for praise (lat., editor's note: The ABCs of Faith). It’s always good (lat., editor’s note: The ABCs of Faith). Socrates called his method maieutics (ancient Greek μαιευτική - midwifery, obstetrics; editor's note. The ABCs of Faith). (The child) must be treated with the greatest respect (lat., editor's note. The ABCs of Faith).