Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1862
Source: From RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
All that I have said relates to instruction in sacred as well as Russian history, to natural history, to geography, partly to physics, chemistry, zoology, especially to all subjects except singing, mathematics, and drawing. As to the instruction in sacred history especially, I must now speak as follows:
In the first place, Why is the Old Testament chosen at the very beginning? Not to speak of the fact that a knowledge of sacred history is demanded by the pupils themselves as well as by their parents, of all the oral accounts which I have experimented with in the course of three years, nothing has been found so suited to the comprehension and mental capacity of the children as the Bible. The same thing has been repeated in all other schools which I have had a chance to observe in the beginning. I tried the New Testament, tried Russian history and geography, tried what is so popular in our day, "Explanations of the Phenomena of Nature," but it was all speedily forgotten, and was listened to reluctantly. But the Old Testament was remembered and repeated passionately, enthusiastically, both in the class room and at home, and was remembered so well that two months after the stories had been told the children could, from their heads, with scarcely an omission, write out their sacred history copied into their note-books.
It seems to me that the book of the childhood of the human race will always be the best book for the childhood of every man. To alter this book seems to me impossible. To alter, to abridge the Bible, as is done in the manuals of Sontag and others, seems to me injurious. Everything, every word in it, is correct as revelation and correct as art. Read in the Bible about the creation of the world and then the same in some abridgment of sacred history, and the transformation of the Bible into "sacred history" will seem to 'you perfectly incomprehensible: your "sacred history" can be learned in no other way than by rote, while by the Bible it presents itself to a child as a living and majestic picture which he will never forget. Why, for example, is it always omitted from all "sacred histories" that when there was nothing, the Spirit of God moved over the void, that God at the Creation looked at His work and saw that it was good, and that the morning and the evening made up the day? Why is it omitted that God breathed the soul into Adam's nostrils, that having taken out a rib He replaced it with flesh, and so forth. All you have to do is to read the Bible to unspoiled children to realize how essential and true all these details are. Maybe one ought not to put the Bible into the hands of depraved young ladies, but in reading it to peasant children I have never altered or omitted a single word. And not a child ever giggled behind his neighbor's back, and all listened with awe and with genuine reverence. The story of Lot and his daughters, the story of Judah, arouse horror, not ridicule.
How clear and comprehensible, especially for a child, and at the same time how dignified and solemn! .... I cannot imagine how education could be carried on if it were not for this boon. But it seems when one has learned these stories only in childhood and afterwards partly forgotten them, what good are they to us? Would it not be just the same as if we did not know them at all?
So it seems to you until, beginning to teach, you detect in other children all the elements of your own education. Theoretically, it is possible to teach children to write, to read, to give them an idea of history, geography, and the phenomena of nature without the Bible, and before the Bible: and yet this is never done. Everywhere, first of all, the child knows the Bible, its stories, and extracts from it. The first relation of the teacher and the taught is based on this book. A phenomenon so universal is not a mere matter of chance. My perfectly free relations to my pupils at the beginning of the Yasnopolyana school helped me to explain this phenomenon.
A child or a man entering the school I make no difference between a person of ten, of thirty, or of seventy gathers from his life and brings with him his own peculiar and favorite view of things. In order that a person of any age may study, he must love study. In order that he love study, he must recognize the falsity, the insufficiency of his view of things, and must have a presentiment of the new aspect which education is to open up for him. No man or child ever would have the power to study if the future of his teaching presented to him merely the art of writing, reading, or reckoning; no teacher could ever teach if he had not in his control views of the universe loftier than his pupils had. In order that the pupil may wholly surrender himself to the teacher, there must be opened before him one corner of that curtain which hides from him all the charm of that world of thought, knowledge, and poetry into which education is to lead him. Only when the pupil finds himself under the constant charm of this light gleaming before him will he be in a condition to work over himself as we require him to do.
What means have we for lifting before our pupils this corner of the curtain? ....
As I have said, I thought, as many think, that, finding myself in that world into which I wanted to lead my pupils, it would be easy for me to do this, and I taught reading and writing. I explained the phenomena of nature. I told them, as primers do, that the fruits of learning are sweet; but the pupils did not believe me, and avoided me.
I tried reading the Bible to them, and I completely conquered them. The corner of the curtain was lifted, and they gave themselves to me heart and soul. They began to love the book, and teaching, and me. All I had to do was to lead them on farther.
After the Old Testament I took up the New Testament; they loved learning and they loved me more and more. Then after the Bible I told them about general history, Russian history, natural history; they listened to everything, they believed everything, and they kept going farther and farther, and the horizon of thought, knowledge, and poesy kept opening up before them farther and farther.
Maybe this was an accident. Maybe, having begun with another method in another school, the same results would have been reached. Maybe; but this accident happens too universally in all schools, and in all families, and the explanation of this phenomenon is too clear for me to allow me to call it chance.
In order to open before the pupil the new world, and without knowledge to start him in the love of knowledge, no book is needed but the Bible. I say this even for those that do not look on the Bible as a revelation. No, at least I know of no production which unites in itself in such a concise poetic form all the sides of human thought as the Bible does. All questions arising from the phenomena of nature are explained in this book; all the primitive relations of men, of the family, of government, of religion, are recognized in this book. The generalization of thought, wisdom in its simple, childlike form, for the first time subjects the pupil's mind to its enchantment. The lyrical quality of the Psalms of David has its effect, not only on the mind of the adult pupils, but, moreover, every one from this book recognizes for the first time the full charm of epic poetry in its inimitable simplicity and force.
Who has not wept over the story of Joseph and his meeting with his brethren? Who has not felt an oppression of the heart in telling about Samson, bound and shorn, when, in order to avenge himself on his enemies, he perishes, overwhelming his enemies under the ruins of the fallen palace? And a hundred other impressions on which we are fed as on mother's milk
Let those that deny the educational significance of the Bible, that declare it has outlived its usefulness, invent such a book, such stories, such explanations of the phenomena of nature, either from general history or from imagination, which should have such a reception as the Bible ones have, and then we will agree that the Bible is superannuated.
Pedagogy serves as a verification of many, many vital phenomena, of social and abstract questions.
Materialism will have the right to proclaim itself as victorious only when the bible of materialism shall have been written, and childhood shall have been educated according to this bible. Owen's experiment cannot be regarded as a proof of such a possibility, any more than the growth of a lemon tree in a Moscow greenhouse is proof that it could grow without the open sky and the sun.
I repeat it, my conviction, drawn perhaps from a one-sided experiment, is that the development of a child and a man is as unthinkable without the Bible as it would have been in Greek society without Homer. The Bible is the only book for the elementary education of the young. The Bible, both in its form and in its content, ought to serve as the model for all children's manuals and reading books. A simple popular translation of the Bible would be the most popular of all books. The appearance of such a translation in our day would make an epoch in the history of the Russian people.
Now, in regard to the method of teaching sacred history, I consider all the short treatises on this subject in Russian doubly criminal against sanctity and against poesy. All these transcriptions, purporting to render easier the reading of sacred history, make it more difficult. The Bible is read as a delight at home, the reader sitting with his head resting on his hands; the history books are learned by heart as a task. Besides being stupid and incomprehensible, these history books spoil the child's capacity of enjoying the poetry of the Bible. More than once I have noticed how their bad, obscure style has prevented understanding the inner thought of the Bible. Obsolete and incomprehensible words take their place in the memory alongside with events, distract the pupils' attention by reason of their novelty, and serve them as way-marks whereby they guide themselves through the story.
Very often a pupil will speak merely for the sake of using some word which pleases him, and he is not yet simple enough to get a gleam of an idea of its meaning. More than once I have also noticed how pupils from other schools have always far less, and sometimes not at all, felt the charm of the Bibical stories, destroyed for them by the necessity of learning them, and by the teacher's brutal methods connected with it. These pupils have even spoiled the younger ones and their brothers by adopting in their stories the wretched tricks of the manuals of sacred history. Such wretched stories, by means of these harmful books, circulate among the people, and frequently children bring from their homes very odd legends about the creation of the world, Adam, and Joseph the handsome. Such pupils are past experiencing what the unsophisticated ones experience, as they hear the Bible with awe, taking in each word, and thinking that now at last all the wisdom of the world will be opened before them.
I have taught, and I still teach, sacred history in accordance with the Bible only, and I consider every other mode of instruction harmful.
The New Testament is related exactly in accordance with the Gospel, and is then written down in notebooks. The New Testament is found to be harder to remember, and therefore demands more frequent repetitions.
Here are some examples from the New Testament history:
About the Last Supper.[40] Once Jesus Christ sent His disciples into the city Jerusalem and said to them: "The first man you meet carrying water, you must follow and ask him: ' Master, show us a chamber where we may prepare the passover.' He will show it to you; and there you must prepare it."
They went and found it as He had said, and they made ready. In the evening Jesus Himself went there with His disciples. During the supper Jesus Christ tore off His garment and girded Himself with a towel. Then He took a wash-hand basin and filled it with water, and went to each of His disciples and washed their feet. When He came to Peter and was going to wash his feet, Peter said to Him:
"Lord, thou shalt never wash my feet!"
But Jesus Christ said to Him:
"If I do not wash thy feet, then thou shalt never be with Me in the Kingdom of Heaven."
Then Peter was alarmed and said:
"Lord, not merely my feet, but my head and my whole body."
But Jesus said to him:
"If a man is clean, his feet only need to be washed."
Then Jesus Christ put on His clothes and sat down at the table, took bread and blessed it and broke it, and began to distribute it among His disciples, saying:
"Take and eat this is My body."
They took and ate. Then Jesus took a cup with wine, blessed it, and began to pass it to His disciples, saying:
"Take and drink: this is My blood of the New Testament."
They took and drank. Then Jesus Christ said:
"One of you shall betray Me."
And His disciples began to ask "Lord! it is not I, is it?"
But Jesus Christ said:
"No!"
Then Judas said:
"Lord, it is not I, is it?"
And Jesus Christ said in a low voice:
"Thou!"
After this Jesus Christ said to His disciples:
"He shall betray Me to whom I give a piece of bread."
Then Jesus Christ gave bread to Judas. Then Satan entered into him, so that he was confused and left the room.
From the note-book of R. B. Then Jesus Christ went with His disciples into the Gefsimansky Garden and said to His disciples:
"Wait for Me, and do not sleep."
When Jesus came and found His disciples sleeping, He woke them up, and said: -
"You could not watch for Me one hour."
Then again He went off to pray to God. He prayed to God, and said:
"Lord, is it not possible for this cup to pass by Me?" And He kept praying until a bloody sweat came. An angel flew down from heaven and began to strengthen Jesus. Then Jesus returned to His disciples and said to them:
"Why are ye sleeping? The hour is at hand in which the Son of Man shall be given into the power of His enemies."
Now Judas had said to the High Priest:
"The one whom I kiss is He, seize Him."
Then the disciples followed Jesus out and they saw a throng of people. Judas came up to Jesus and was going to kiss Him. Jesus said to him:
"Dost thou betray Me by a kiss?"
And to the people He said:
"Whom seek ye?"
They said to Him:
"Jesus, the Nazarene."
Jesus said:
"I am He."
At this word all fell.