Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales

In matters of the remuneration of the teachers, the difference between the view of the masses and that of the County Council has almost all been expressed in the preceding pages. It consists in this: (1) the masses choose a teacher according to their means, and they admit and know from experience that there are teachers at all prices, from two puds of flour a month to thirty roubles a month; (2) teachers are to be remunerated for the winter months, for those during which there can be some instruction; (3) the masses, in the housing of the school as also in matters of the remuneration of the teachers, always know how to find a cheap way: they give flour, hay, the use of carts, eggs, and all kinds of trifles, which are imperceptible to the world at large, but which improve the teacher's condition; (4) above all, a teacher is paid, or is remunerated in addition to the payment, by the parents of the pupils, who pay by the month, or by the whole Commune which enjoys the advantages of the school, and not by the administration that has no direct interest in the matter.

The ministerial department cannot act differently in this respect. The norm of the salary for a model teacher is given, consequently these means have to be got together in some way. For example: a Commune intends to open a school, – the township gives it a certain number of kopeks per soul. The County Council calculates how much to add. If there are no demands made by other schools, it gives more, sometimes twice as much as the Commune has given; at times, when all the money has been distributed, it gives less, or entirely refuses to give any. Thus, there is in Krapívensk County a Commune which gives ninety roubles, and the County Council adds to that three hundred roubles for a school with an assistant; and there is another Commune which gives 250 roubles, and the County Council adds another fifty roubles; and a third Commune which offers fifty-six roubles, and the County Council refuses to add anything or to open the school, because that money is insufficient for a normal school, and all the money has been distributed.

Thus, the chief distinctions between the administrative view of the masses and that of the County Council are the following: (1) the County Council pays great attention to the housing and spends large sums upon it, while the masses obviate this difficulty by domestic, economic means, and look upon the primary schools as temporary, passing institutions; (2) the ministerial department demands that instruction be carried on during the whole year, with the exception of July and August, and nowhere introduces evening classes, while the masses demand that instruction be carried on only in the winter and are fond of evening classes; (3) the ministerial department has a definite type of teachers, without which it does not recognize the school, and has a loathing for clerical persons and, in general, for local instructors; the masses recognize no norm and choose their teachers preferably from local inhabitants; (4) the ministerial department distributes the schools by accident, that is, it is guided only by the desire of forming a normal school, and has no care for that greater half of the population which under such a distribution is left outside the school education; the masses not only recognize no definite external form of the school, but in the greatest variety of ways get teachers with all kinds of means, arranging worse and cheaper schools with small means and good and expensive schools with greater means, and turn their attention to furnishing all localities with instruction in return for their money; (5) the ministerial department determines one measure of remuneration, which is sufficiently high, and arbitrarily increases the amount from the County Council; the masses demand the greatest possible economy and distribute the remuneration in such a way that those whose children are taught pay directly.

It seems as though it would be superfluous to expatiate on how clearly the common sense of the masses is expressed in these demands, in contradistinction to that artificial structure, in which, at its very birth, they are trying to imprison the business of popular education. Even besides this, the feeling of justice is involuntarily provoked against such an order of things. See what is taking place. The masses have felt the necessity of education, and have begun to work in the direction of attaining their end. In addition to all the taxes which they pay, they have voluntarily imposed upon themselves the tax for education, that is, they have begun to hire teachers. What have we done? "Oh, you are able to pay," we said, "wait, then, for you are stupid and rude. Let us have the money, and we will arrange it for you in the best manner possible."

The masses have given up their money (as I have said, in many County Councils the levy for the schools has been turned directly into a tax). The money was taken, and the education was arranged for them.

I am not going to repeat about the artificiality of the education, but how the whole matter has been arranged. In Krapívensk County there are forty thousand souls, including girls, according to the last census. According to Bunyakóvski's table of the distribution of ten thousand of the Orthodox population for the year 1862, there ought to be, of the male sex between six and fourteen years, 1,834, and of the female sex, 1,989, – in all 3,823 to each ten thousand. According to my own observations, there ought to be more, no doubt on account of the increase of the population, so that the average school population may boldly be put at four thousand. In a school there are, on an average, in the large centres, about sixty pupils, and in the smaller, from ten to twenty-five. In order that all may receive instruction, the smaller centres, forming the greater half of the population, need schools for ten, fifteen, and twenty pupils, so that the average of a school, in my opinion, would be not more than thirty pupils. How many schools are, then, needed for sixteen thousand pupils? Divide sixteen thousand by thirty, and we get 530 schools. Let us assume that, although at the opening of the schools all pupils from seven to fifteen years of age will enter, not all will attend regularly for the period of eight years; let us reject one-fourth, that is 130 schools and, consequently, 4,200 pupils. Let us say that there are four hundred schools. Only twenty have been opened. The County Council gives two thousand roubles and has added one thousand roubles, making in all three thousand roubles. From some of the peasants, not from all, fifteen kopeks are levied from each soul, in all about four thousand roubles. On the building of schools seven hundred roubles are spent, and on the pedagogical courses twelve hundred roubles have been used in one year. But let us suppose that the County Council will act quite simply and sensibly, and will not waste money on pedagogical courses and other trifles; let us suppose that all peasants will pay the new school tax of fifteen kopeks, what will the future of this matter be? From the peasants six thousand, from the County Council three thousand, in all nine thousand. Let us assume that ten more schools will be added. Nine thousand roubles will barely suffice for the support of these schools, and that only in case the school council will act most prudently and economically. Consequently, with the County Council administration, thirty schools to forty thousand of the population are the highest limit of what the dissemination of the schools in the county may reach. And this limit of the school business can be attained only if the peasants will levy fifteen kopeks on each soul, which is extremely doubtful, and if the disbursement of this money will be in the hands of the peasants, and not of the County Council. I do not speak of the possible increase of three thousand roubles, because this increase of three thousand roubles partly falls back on those same peasants, and on the other hand is not secured by anything, forming only an accidental means. Thus, in order to bring the business of popular education to the state in which it ought to be, that is, in order that there shall be four hundred schools to the forty thousand of the population, and in order that the schools shall not be a toy, but may answer a real want of the masses, there is no other issue than that the peasants be taxed, not fifteen kopeks, but three roubles a soul, in order that the necessary three hundred roubles to each school be obtained. Even then I do not see any reason for thinking that as many schools as are needed would be built.

Do we not see that now, when the simplest arithmetical calculation shows that the only means for the success of the schools is the simplification of methods, the simplicity and cheapness of the arrangement of the school, – the pedagogues are busy, as though having made a wager to concoct a most difficult, most complicated, and expensive (and, I must add, most bad) instruction? In the manuals of Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski I have figured up three hundred roubles' worth of aids to instruction which, in their opinion, are absolutely necessary for the establishment of a primary school. All they talk about in pedagogical circles is how to prepare improved teachers in the seminaries, so that a village might not be able to get them even for four hundred roubles. On that road of perfection, on which pedagogy stands, it is quite apparent to me that if 120,000 roubles were collected in a county, the pedagogues would find use for them all in twenty schools, with adjustable tables, seminaries for teachers, and so forth. Have we not seen that forty schools were closed in Krapívensk County, and that those who closed them were fully convinced that they thus advanced the cause of education, for now they have twenty "good" schools? But what is most remarkable is that those who express these demands are not in the least interested in knowing whether the masses for whom they are preparing all these things want them, and still less, who is going to pay for it all. But the County Councils are so befogged by these demands that they do not see the simple calculation and the simple justice. It is as though a man asked me to buy him two puds of flour for a month, and I bought him for that rouble a box of perfumed confectionery and reproached him for his ignorance, because he was dissatisfied.

As I wish to remain true to my rule that criticism should point out how that which is not good ought to be, I shall try to show how the whole school business ought to be arranged, if it is not to be a plaything, and is to have a future. The answer is the same as to the first two questions, – freedom. The masses must be given the freedom to arrange their schools as they wish, and as little as possible should any one interfere in their arrangement. Only with such a view of the matter will all the obstacles to the dissemination of the schools be obviated, though they have seemed insuperable. The chief obstacles are the insufficiency of the means and the impossibility of increasing them. To the first the masses reply that they are using all the measures at their command to make the schools cost little; to the second they reply that the means will always be found so long as they themselves are the masters, and that they are not willing to increase the means for the support of that which they do not need.

The essential difference between the view of the people and of the ministerial department consists in the following: (1) In the opinion of the masses there is no one definite norm and form of the school, outside and below which the school is not recognized, as is assumed by the ministerial department; a school may be of any kind, either a very good and expensive one, or a very poor and cheap one, but even in a very poor one reading and writing may be learned, and, as in a richer parish a better pope is appointed and a better church built, so also may a better school be built in a wealthy village, and a poorer school in a less well-to-do village; but just as one can pray equally well in a poor or in a rich parish, even so it is with learning. (2) The masses regard as the first condition of their education an even, equal distribution of this education, though it be in its lowest stage, and then only they propose a further, again an even, raising of the level of education, while the ministerial department considers it necessary to give to a certain chosen few, to one-twentieth of the whole number, a specimen of education, to show them how nice it is. (3) The ministerial department, either unable or purposely unwilling to calculate, has raised the educational business to such a high, expensive level, and one which is so foreign to the masses, that considering the high price at which the education is acquired, no issue from that situation can be foreseen, and the number of learners can never be increased; but the masses, who know how to calculate, and who are interested in that calculation, have no doubt long ago figured out what I have pointed out above, and see as clear as daylight that those expensive schools, which cost as much as four hundred roubles each, may be good indeed, but are not what they need, and try in every way possible to diminish the expenses for their schools.

What, then, is to be done? How are the County Councils to act in order that this business may not be a plaything and a pastime, but shall have a future? Let them conform with the needs of the masses, and, so far as possible, cheapen and free the forms of the school, and afford the Communes the greatest possible power in the establishment of the schools.

For this it is necessary that the County Councils shall entirely abandon the distribution of the taxes to the schools and the distribution of the schools according to localities, but shall leave this distribution to the peasants themselves. The determination of the pay to the teacher, the hiring, purchase, or building of the house, the choice of place and of the teacher himself, – all that ought to be left to the peasants. The County Council, that is, the school council, should only demand that the Communes inform it where and on what foundations schools have been established, not in order that, upon learning the facts, it shall prohibit them, as is done now, but in order that, learning about the conditions under which the school exists, it may add (if the conditions are in conformity with the demands of the council) from its County Council's sums, for the support of the school newly founded, a certain, definite part of what the school costs the Commune: a half, a third, a fourth, according to the quality of the school and the means and wishes of the County Council. Thus, for example, a village of twenty souls hires a transient man at two roubles a month to teach the children. The school council, that is, a person authorized by it, of whom I shall speak later, upon receiving that information, invites the transient to come to him, asks him what he knows and how he teaches, and, if the transient is the least bit educated and does not represent anything harmful, apportions to him the amount determined upon by the County Council, one-half, one-third, or one-fourth, in precisely the same way the school council proceeds in reference to a clerical person hired by the Commune at five roubles per month, or in reference to a teacher hired at fifteen roubles per month. Of course, that is the way the school council acts in reference to the teachers hired by the Communes themselves; but if the Communes turn to the school council, the latter recommends to them teachers under the same conditions. But in doing so the County Council must not forget that there should not be merely teachers at two hundred roubles; the school council should be an employment agency for teachers of every description and of every price, from one rouble to thirty roubles a month. On buildings the school council ought not to spend or add anything, because they are one of the most unproductive items of expense. But the County Council ought not to disdain, as it now does, teachers at two, three, four, five roubles per month and locations in smoky huts or by rotation from farm to farm.

The County Council ought to remember that the prototype of the school, that ideal toward which it ought to tend, is not a stone building with an iron roof, with blackboards and desks, such as we see in model schools, but the very hut in which the peasant lives, with those benches and tables on which he eats, and not a teacher in a Prince Albert or a lady teacher in a chignon, but a male teacher in a caftan and shirt, or a female teacher in a peasant skirt and with a kerchief on her head, and not with one hundred pupils, but with five, six, or ten.

The County Council must have no bias or antipathy for certain types of teachers, as is the case at present. Thus, for example, the Túla County Council just now has a special bias for the type of school-teachers from the gymnasia and clerical schools, and the greater part of the schools in Túla County are in their charge. In Krapívensk County there exists a strange antipathy for teachers from the clerical profession, so that in this county, where there are as many as fifty parishes, there is not one clerical person employed as a teacher. The County Council, in proposing a teacher, ought to be guided by two chief considerations: in the first place, that the teacher should be as cheap as possible; in the second, that by his education he should stand as near to the masses as possible. Only thanks to the opposite view on the matter can be explained such an inexplicable phenomenon as that in Krapívensk County (almost the same is true of the whole Government and of the majority of Governments) there are fifty parishes and twenty schools, and that for these twenty schools there is not a single clerical teacher, although there is not a parish where a priest, or a deacon, or a sexton, or their daughters and wives could not be found, who would not be glad to do the teaching for one-fourth the pay that the teachers coming from the city would be willing to take.

But I shall be told: What kind of schools will those be with bigots, drunken soldiers, expelled scribes, and sextons? And what control can there be over those formless schools? To this I will reply that, in the first place, these teachers, bigots, soldiers, and sextons are not so bad as they are imagined to be. In my school practice I often had to do with pupils from these schools, and some of them could read fluently and write beautifully, and soon abandoned the bad habits which they brought with them from those schools. All of us know peasants who have learned the rudiments in such schools, and it cannot be said that this learning was useless or injurious. In the second place, I will say that teachers of that calibre are especially bad because they are quite abandoned in the backwoods and teach without any aid or instruction, and that now there is not to be found a single one of the old teachers who would not tell you with regret that he does not know the new methods and has himself learned for copper pence, and that many of them, especially the younger church servants, are quite willing to learn the new methods. These teachers ought not to be rejected without further ado as absolutely worthless. There are among them better and worse teachers (and I have seen some very capable ones). They ought to be compared; the better of them ought to be selected, encouraged, brought together with other better teachers, and instructed, – which is quite feasible and precisely the thing in which the duty of the school council is to consist.

But how are they to be controlled, watched, and taught, if they breed by the hundred in each county? In my opinion the work of the County Council and school council ought to consist in nothing but watching the pedagogical side of the business, and that is feasible, if these means will be taken: in every County Council, which has taken upon itself the duty of the dissemination of popular education, or the coöperation with it, there ought to be one person – whether it be an unpaid member of the school council, or a man at a salary of not less than one thousand roubles, hired by the County Council – who is to attend to the pedagogical side of the business in the county. That person ought to have a general, fresh education within the limits of a gymnasium course, that is, he must know Russian thoroughly and Church-Slavic partly, arithmetic and algebra thoroughly, and be a teacher, that is, know the practice of pedagogy. This person must be freshly educated, because I have observed that frequently the information of a man who has long ago finished his course even in a university, and who has not refreshed his education, is insufficient, not only for the guidance of teachers, but even for the examination of a village school. This person must by all means be a teacher himself in the same locality, in order that in his demands and instructions he may always have in view that pedagogical material with which the other teachers have to deal, and that he may sustain in himself that live relation to reality which is the chief preservative against error and delusion. If a County Council does not possess such a man and does not wish to employ one, it has, in my opinion, absolutely nothing to do with the popular education, except to give money, because every interference with the administrative side of the matter, in the way it is done now, can only be injurious.

This member of the County Council, or the educated person hired by it, must have the best model school, with an assistant, in the county. In addition to conducting this school and applying to it all the newest methods of instruction, this head teacher ought to keep an eye on all the other schools. This school is not to be a model in the sense of introducing into it all kinds of cubes and pictures and all kinds of nonsense invented by the Germans, but the teacher in this school should experiment on just such peasant children as the other schools consist of, in order to determine the simplest methods which may be adopted by the majority of the teachers, sextons, and soldiers, who form the bulk of all the schools. Since with the arrangement which I propose there will certainly be formed large complete schools in the larger centres (as I think, in the proportion of one to twenty of all the other schools), and in these large schools the teachers will be of a grade of education equal to that of the seminarists who have finished a course in a theological school, the head teacher will visit all these larger schools, bring together these teachers on Sundays, point out to them the defects, propose new methods, give counsel and books for their own education, and invite them to his school on Sundays. The library of the head teacher ought to consist of several copies of the Bible, of Church-Slavic and Russian grammars, arithmetic, and algebra. The head teacher, whenever he has time, will visit also the small schools and invite their teachers to come to see him; but the duty of watching the minor teachers is imposed on the older teachers, who just in the same way visit their district and invite those teachers to come to see them on Sundays and on week-days. The County Council either pays the teachers for travelling, or, in adding its portion to what the Communes levy, makes it a condition that the Communes furnish transportation. The meetings of the teachers and the visits in similar or better schools are one of the chief conditions for the successful conduct of the business of education, and so the County Council ought to direct its main attention to the organization of these meetings, and not spare any money for them.

Besides, in the large schools, where there will be more than fifty pupils, there ought to be chosen, instead of the assistants which they now have, such of the pupils, of either sex, as show marked ability for a teacher's calling, and they should be made assistants, two or three in each school. These assistants should receive a salary of fifty kopeks to one rouble per month, and the teacher should work with them separately in the evenings, so that they may not fall behind the others. These assistants, chosen from among the best, are to form the future teachers, to take the place of the lowest in the minor schools.

Naturally the organization of these teachers' meetings, both for the smaller and the larger schools, and the head teacher's visits of inspection, and the formation of teachers from pupils acting as assistants may take place in a large variety of ways; the main point is that the surveillance of any number of schools (even though it may reach the norm of one school to every one hundred souls) is possible in this manner. With such an arrangement the teachers of both the large and the small schools will feel that their labours are appreciated, that they have not buried themselves in the backwoods without hope of salvation, that they have companions and guides, and that in the matter of instruction, both for their own further education and for the improvement of their situation, they have means for advancement. With such an arrangement, the devotee and the sexton who are able to learn will learn; while those who are unable or unwilling to do so will be replaced by some one else.