This similarity continues down to the minutest details. In either method all instruction previous to the school, all knowledge acquired outside the school, is not taken into account,--all entering pupils are regarded as equally ignorant, and all are made to learn from the beginning. If a boy who knows the letters and the syllables _a_, _be_, enters a church school, he is made to change them to _buki-az_--_ba_. The same is true of the German school. Just so, in either school it happens that some children cannot learn the rudiments. Just so, with either method, the mechanical side of instruction predominates over the mental. In either school the pupils excel in a good handwriting and good enunciation with absolutely exact reading, that is, not as it is spoken, but as it is written. Just so, with either method, there always reigns an external order in the school, and the children are in constant fear and can be guided only with the greatest severity. Mr. Korolév has incidentally remarked that in instruction according to the sound method blows are not neglected. I have seen the same in the schools of the German method, and I assume that without blows it is impossible to get along even in the new German school, because, like the church school, it teaches without asking what the pupil finds interesting to know, but what, in the teacher's opinion, seems necessary, and so the school can be based only on compulsion. Compulsion is attained with children generally by means of blows. The church and the new German school, starting from the same principles and arriving at the same results, are absolutely identical. But, if it came to choosing one of the two, I should still prefer the church school. The defects are the same, but on the side of the church school is the custom of a thousand years and the authority of the church, which is so powerful with the masses. Having finished the analysis and criticism of the German school, I consider it necessary,--in view of what I have said, namely, that criticism is fruitful only when, condemning, it points out how that which is bad ought to be,--I consider it necessary to speak of those foundations of instruction which I regard as legitimate, and on which I rear my method of instruction.