Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral TalesTolstoy, Leo, graf
General
Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Russian literature -- Translations into English
The figures for the teachers' wages are not chosen arbitrarily by me: on
the other hand, the expensive teachers are given a larger salary than
they now get by the month for the whole year. Even so, the amount
apportioned to the church servants is what they now receive in the
majority of cases. But the cheap schools at two roubles per month are
assumed by me at a higher rate than what the peasants in reality pay, so
that the calculation may boldly be accepted. In this calculation is
included the kernel of ten chief teachers and ten or more church servant
teachers. It is evident that only with such a calculation will the
school business be placed on a serious and possible basis and have a
clear and definite future.
If what I have pointed out does not convince anybody that will mean that
I did not express clearly what I wanted to say, and do not wish to enter
into any disputes with anybody. I know that no deaf people are so
hopeless as those who do not want to hear. I know how it is with
farmers. A new threshing-machine has been bought at a great expense, and
it is put up and started threshing. It threshes miserably, no matter how
you set the screw; it threshes badly, and the grain falls into the
straw. There is a loss, and it is as clear as can be that the machine
ought to be abandoned and another means be employed for threshing, but
the money has been spent and the threshing-machine is put up. "Let her
thresh," says the master. Precisely the same thing will happen with this
matter. I know that for a long time to come there will flourish the
object instruction, and cubes, and buttons instead of arithmetic, and
hissing and sputtering, in teaching the letters, and twenty expensive
schools of the German pattern, instead of the needed four hundred
popular, cheap schools. But I know just as surely that the common sense
of the Russian nation will not permit this false, artificial system of
instruction to be foisted upon it.
The masses are the chief interested person and the judge, and now do not
pay a particle of attention to our more or less ingenious discussions
about the manner in which the spiritual food of education is best to be
prepared for them. They do not care, because they are firmly convinced
that in the great business of their mental development they will not
make a false step and will not accept what is bad,--and it would be like
making pease stick to the wall to attempt to educate, direct, and teach
them in the German fashion.
WHAT MEN LIVE BY
1881
WHAT MEN LIVE BY
We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love
the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.
(First Ep. of John, iii. 14.)
But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need,
and shutteth, up his heart from him, how dwelleth the love of God
in him? (_Ib._ iii. 17.)
My children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in
deed and in truth. (_Ib._ iii. 18.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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