Formerly syllables were senselessly learned by heart (that was bad); diametrically opposed to this, the new fashion enjoins us not to divide up into syllables at all, which is absolutely impossible in a long word, and which in reality is never done. Every teacher, according to the sound method, feels the necessity of letting a pupil rest after a part of a word, having him pronounce it separately. Formerly they used to read the psalter, which, on account of its high and deep style, is incomprehensible to the children (which was bad); in contrast to this the children are made to read sentences without any contents whatever, to explain intelligible words, or to learn by heart what they cannot understand. In the old school the teacher did not speak to the pupil at all; now the teacher is ordered to talk to them on anything and everything, on what they know already, or what they do not need to know. In mathematics they formerly learned by heart the definition of operations, but now they no longer have anything to do with operations, for, according to Evtushévski, they reach numeration only in the third year, and it is assumed that for a whole year they are to be taught nothing but numbers up to ten. Formerly the pupils were made to work with large abstract numbers, without paying any attention to the other side of mathematics, to the disentanglement of the problem (the formation of an equation). Now they are taught solving puzzles, forming equations with small numbers before they know numeration and how to operate with numbers, though experience teaches any teacher that the difficulty of forming equations or the solution of puzzles are overcome by a general development in life, and not in school. It has been observed--quite correctly--that there is no greater aid for a pupil, when he is puzzled by a problem with large numbers, than to give him the same problem with smaller numbers. The pupil, who in life learns to grope through problems with small numbers, is conscious of the process of solving, and transfers this process to the problem with large numbers. Having observed this, the new pedagogues try to teach only the solving of puzzles with small numbers, that is, what cannot form the subject of instruction and is only the work of life.