As to the third question, the distribution of the schools according to localities, the arrangements of the masses most markedly differ from those of the school council. In the first place, the distribution of the schools, that is, whether there shall be more or less of them for a certain locality, always depends on the character of the whole population (when the masses themselves attend to it). Wherever the masses are more industrial and work out, where they are nearer to the cities, where they need the rudiments,—there there are more schools; where the locality is more removed and agricultural, there there are fewer of them. In the second place, when the masses themselves attend to the matter, they distribute the schools in such a way as to give all the parents a chance to make use of the schools in return for their money, that is, to send their children to school. The peasants of small, remote villages of from thirty to forty souls, where half the population will be found, prefer to have a cheap teacher in their own village, than an expensive one in the centre of the township, whither their children cannot walk or be driven. By this distribution of the schools, the schools themselves, as arranged by the peasants, depart, it is true, from the required pattern of the school, but, instead, acquire the most diversified forms, everywhere adapting themselves to local conditions. Here a clerical person from a neighbouring village teaches eight boys at his house, receiving fiftykopeks a month from each. Here a small village hires a soldier for eight roubles for the winter, and he goes from house to house. Here a rich innkeeper hires a teacher for his children for five roubles and board, and the neighbouring peasants join him, by adding two roubles for each of their boys. There a large village or a compact township levies fifteen kopeks from each of the twelve hundred souls and hires a teacher for 180 roubles for the winter. There the priest teaches, receiving as a remuneration either money, or labour, or both. The chief difference in this respect between the view of the peasants and that of the County Council is this: the peasants, according to the more or less favourable local conditions, introduce schools of a better or worse quality, but always in such a way that there is not a single locality where some kind of instruction is not offered; while with the arrangement of the County Council a large half of the population is left outside every possibility of partaking of that education even in the distant future.
In matters of the petty villages, forming one-half of the population, the ministerial department acts most decisively. It says: "We provide schools where there is a building and where the peasants of the township have collected enough money to support a teacher at two hundred roubles. We will contribute from the County Council what is wanting, and the school is entered on the lists." The villages that are removed from the school may send their children there, if they so wish. Of course, the peasants do not take their children there, because it is too far, and yet they pay. Thus, in the Yásenets township all pay for three schools, but only 450 souls in three villages make use of the school, though there are in all three thousand souls; thus, only one-seventh of the population makes use of the school, though all pay for it. In the Chermóshen township there are nine hundred souls and there is a school there, but only thirty pupils attendit, because all the villages of that township are scattered. To nine hundred souls there ought to be four hundred pupils. And yet, both in the Yásenets and the Chermóshen townships the question of the distribution of schools is regarded as satisfactorily solved.
In matters of the choice of a teacher, the masses are again guided by quite different views from the County Council. In choosing a teacher, the masses look upon him in their own way, and judge him accordingly. If the teacher has been in the neighbourhood, and the masses know what the results of his teaching are, they value him according to these results as a good or as a bad teacher; but, in addition to the scholastic qualities, the masses demand that the teacher shall be a man who stands in close relations to the peasant, able to understand his life and to speak Russian, and so they will always prefer a country to a city teacher. In doing so, the masses have no bias and no antipathy toward any class in particular: he may be a gentleman, official, burgher, soldier, sexton, priest,—that makes no difference so long as he is a simple man and a Russian. For this reason the peasants have no cause for excluding clerical persons, as the County Councils do. The County Councils select their teachers from among strangers, getting them from the cities, while the masses look for them among themselves. But the chief difference in this respect between the view of the Communes and that of the County Council consists in this: the County Council has only one type,—the teacher who has attended pedagogical courses, who has finished a course in a seminary or school, at two hundred roubles; but with the masses, who do not exclude this teacher and appreciate him, if he is good, there are gradations of all kinds of teachers. Besides, with the majority of school councils there are definite favourite types of teachers, for the most part such as are foreign to the masses and antagonistic to them, and other types whichthe school councils dislike. Thus, evidently, the favourite type of many counties of the Government of Túla are lady teachers; the disliked type are the clerical persons, and in the whole of the Túla and Krapívensk counties there is not one school with a teacher from the clergy, which is quite remarkable from an administrative point of view. In Krapívensk County there are fifty parishes. The clerical persons are the cheapest of teachers, because they are permanently settled and for the most part can teach in their own houses with the aid of their wives and daughters,—and these are, it seems, purposely avoided, as though they were very harmful people.
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 opena 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; themasses 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. Accordingto 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 thatten 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 forthe 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 replythat 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 asdaylight 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 thetransient 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 ofthe 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 oldteachers 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 orderthat 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 headteacher, 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.
The time of instruction ought to be, as is the wish of all peasants, during the seven winter months, and so the salary is to be determined by the month. With such an arrangement, leaving out the rapidity and the equal distribution of education, the advantage will be this, that the schools will be established in those centres where the necessity for them is felt by the masses, where they are established spontaneously and, therefore, firmly. Where the character of the population demands education it will be permanent. Just look: in the towns, the children of the innkeepers and well-to-do peasants learn to read in one way or another and never forget what they have learned; but in the backwoods, where a landed proprietor founds a school, the children learn well, but in ten years all is forgotten, and the population is as illiterate as ever. For this reason the centres, large or small, where the schools are established spontaneously, are particularly precious. Where such a school has germinated, no matter how poor it be, it will throw out roots, and sooner or later the population will be able to read and write. Consequently, these sprouts ought to be deemed precious, and not be treated, as they are everywhere,—they ought not to be forbidden, because the schools are not according to our taste, that is, the sprouts ought not to be killed, and branches stuck in the ground where they will not take root.
With merely such an arrangement, without the establishment of costly and artificial seminaries, the chosen ones—those selected from the best of the pupils themselves,and those who are educated in the schools—will form that contingent of cheap popular teachers who will take the place of the soldiers and sextons and will fully satisfy all the demands of the masses and of the educated classes. The chief advantage of such an arrangement is that it alone gives the development of popular education a future, that is, takes us out from that blind alley into which the County Councils have gone, thanks to the expensive schools and to the absence of new sources for the increase of their numbers. Only when the masses themselves choose the centres for the schools, themselves choose teachers, determine the amount of the remuneration, and directly enjoy the advantages of the schools, will they be ready to add means for the schools if such should become necessary. I know Communes that paid fifty kopeks a soul for a school in each of their villages; but it is difficult to compel the peasants to pay fifteen kopeks for a school in the township, if not all of them can make use of it. For the whole county, for the County Council, the peasants will not add a single kopek, because they feel that they will not enjoy the advantages of their money. Only with such an arrangement will be found soon the means for the proper maintenance of all schools, of one to each one hundred souls, which seems so impossible in the present state of affairs.
In addition to this, with the arrangement which I propose, the interests of the peasant Communes and of the County Council, as the representative of the intelligence of the locality, will indissolubly be connected. Let us say that the County Council gives one-third of what the peasants give. In furnishing this amount, it will evidently, in one way or another, see to it that the money is not wasted, and, consequently, will also keep an eye on the two-thirds given by the peasant Communes. The peasant Commune sees that the County Council gives its part, and so admits the right of the Council to follow theprogress of the instruction. At the same time, it has an object-lesson in the difference which exists between a school maintained at a smaller and that maintained at a greater expense, and chooses the one which it needs or which is more accessible to it in accordance with its means.
I will again take Krapívensk County, with which I am familiar, to show what difference the proposed arrangement would make. I cannot have the slightest doubt that the moment permission is granted to open schools, wherever wanted and of any description desired, there will at once appear very many schools. I am convinced that in Krapívensk County, in which there are fifty parishes, there will always be a school in each parish, because the parishes are always centres of population, and because among the church servants there will always be found one who is capable of teaching, likes to teach, and will find his advantage in it. In addition to the schools maintained by the church servants there will be opened those forty schools that have been closed (more correctly thirty, because ten of them were church schools), and there will be opened very many new schools, so that in a very short time there will be not far from four hundred instead of the twenty at present.
I may be believed or not, but I will assume that in Krapívensk County 380 additional schools will be opened, the moment they are given over to the masses, so that there will be four hundred in all, and I will try to determine whether the existence of these four hundred schools, that is, of twenty times as many as at present, is possible under the conditions which I have assumed in discussing the existing order.
Assuming that all peasants pay fifteen kopeks per soul, and the County Council gives three thousand roubles, there will be nine thousand roubles, which will suffice only for thirty schools with the former arrangement. But with the new arrangement:
I assume that ten of the old schools are left intact; in these schools the teachers get twenty roubles per month, which, for the seven winter months, amounts to fourteen hundred roubles.
I assume that in every parish there will be established a school with the teacher's salary at five roubles per month, which, for fifty schools, amounts to 1,750 roubles.
I assume the remaining 340 schools are of the cheap character, at two roubles per month; fifteen roubles for each of the 340 schools makes 5,100 roubles.
Thus the four hundred schools will demand an expenditure in salaries amounting to 8,250 roubles. There are still left 750 roubles for school appliances and transportation.
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 thescrew; 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
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.)Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. (Ib.iv. 7.)He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (Ib.iv. 8.)No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us. (Ib.iv. 12.)God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (Ib.iv. 16.)If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen. (Ib.iv. 20.)
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.)
Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. (Ib.iv. 7.)
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (Ib.iv. 8.)
No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us. (Ib.iv. 12.)
God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (Ib.iv. 16.)
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen. (Ib.iv. 20.)
A shoemaker was lodging with his wife and children at the house of a peasant. He had no house, no land of his own, and supported his family by his shoemaker's trade. Bread was dear, but work was cheap, and he spent everything he made. The shoemaker and his wife had one fur coat between them, and even that was all worn to tatters; this was the second year that the shoemaker had been meaning to buy a sheepskin for a new fur coat.
Toward fall the shoemaker had saved some money: three roubles in paper lay in his wife's coffer, and five roubles and twenty kopeks were outstanding in the village.
In the morning the shoemaker went to the village to get him that fur coat. He put on his wife's wadded nankeen jacket over his shirt, and over it his cloth caftan; he put the three-rouble bill into his pocket, broke off a stick, and started after breakfast. He thought:
"I shall get the five roubles from the peasant, will add my own three, and with that will buy me a sheepskin for the fur coat."
The shoemaker came to the village, and called on the peasant: he was not at home, and his wife promised to send her husband with the money, but gave him none herself. He went to another peasant, but the peasant swore that he had no money, and gave him only twenty kopeks for mending a pair of boots. The shoemaker made up his mind to take the sheepskin on credit, but the furrier would not give it to him.
"Bring me the money," he said, "and then you can choose any you please; we know what it means to collect debts."
Thus the shoemaker accomplished nothing. All he got was the twenty kopeks for the boots he had mended, and a peasant gave him a pair of felt boots to patch with leather.
The shoemaker was grieved, spent all the twenty kopeks on vódka, and started home without the fur coat. In the morning it had seemed frosty to him, but now that he had drunk a little he felt warm even without the fur coat. The shoemaker walked along, with one hand striking the stick against the frozen mud clumps, and swinging the felt boots in the other, and talking to himself.
"I am warm even without a fur coat," he said. "I have drunk a cup, and the vódka is coursing through allmy veins. I do not need a sheepskin. I have forgotten my woe. That's the kind of a man I am! What do I care! I can get along without a fur coat: I do not need it all the time. The only trouble is the old woman will be sorry. It is a shame indeed: I work for him, and he leads me by the nose. Just wait! If you do not bring the money, I'll take away your cap, upon my word, I will! How is this? He pays me back two dimes at a time! What can you do with two dimes? Take a drink, that is all. He says he suffers want. You suffer want, and am I not suffering? You have a house, and cattle, and everything, and here is all I possess; you have your own grain, and I have to buy it. I may do as I please, but I have to spend three roubles a week on bread. I come home, and the bread is gone: again lay out a rouble and a half! So give me what is mine!"
Thus the shoemaker came up to a chapel at the turn of the road, and there he saw something that looked white, right near the chapel. It was growing dusk, and the shoemaker strained his eyes, but could not make out what it was.
"There was no stone here," he thought. "A cow? It does not look like a cow. It looks like the head of a man, and there is something white besides. And what should a man be doing there?"
He came nearer, and he could see plainly. What marvel was that? It was really a man, either alive or dead, sitting there all naked, leaning against the chapel, and not stirring in the least. The shoemaker was frightened, and thought to himself:
"Somebody must have killed a man, and stripped him of his clothes, and thrown him away there. If I go up to him, I shall never clear myself."
And the shoemaker went past. He walked around the chapel, and the man was no longer to be seen. He went past the chapel, and looked back, and saw the man leaningaway from the building and moving, as though watching him. The shoemaker was frightened even more than before, and he thought to himself:
"Shall I go up to him, or not? If I go up, something bad may happen. Who knows what kind of a man he is? He did not get there for anything good. If I go up, he will spring at me and choke me, and I shall not get away from him; and if he does not choke me, I may have trouble with him all the same. What can I do with him, since he is naked? Certainly I cannot take off the last from me and give it to him! May God save me!"
And the shoemaker increased his steps. He was already a distance away from the chapel, when his conscience began to smite him.
And the shoemaker stopped on the road.
"What are you doing, Semén?" he said to himself. "A man is dying in misery, and you go past him and lose your courage. Have you suddenly grown so rich? Are you afraid that they will rob you of your wealth? Oh, Semén, it is not right!"
Semén turned back, and went up to the man.
Semén walked over to the man, and looked at him; and saw that it was a young man, in the prime of his strength, with no bruises on his body, but evidently frozen and frightened: he was leaning back and did not look at Semén, as though he were weakened and could not raise his eyes. Semén went up close to him, and the man suddenly seemed to wake up. He turned his head, opened his eyes, and looked at Semén. And this one glance made Semén think well of the man. He threw down the felt boots, ungirt himself, put his belt on the boots, and took off his caftan.
"What is the use of talking?" he said. "Put it on! Come now!"
Semén took the man by his elbows and began to raise him. The man got up. And Semén saw that his body was soft and clean, his hands and feet not calloused, and his face gentle. Semén threw his caftan over the man's shoulders. He could not find his way into the sleeves. So Semén put them in, pulled the caftan on him, wrapped him in it, and girded it with the belt.
Semén took off his torn cap, intending to put it on the naked man, but his head grew cold, and so he thought: "My whole head is bald, while he has long, curly hair." He put it on again. "I had better put the boots on him."
He seated himself and put the felt boots on him.
The shoemaker addressed him and said:
"That's the way, my friend! Now move about and get warmed up. This business will be looked into without us. Can you walk?"
The man stood, looking meekly at Semén, but could not say a word.
"Why don't you speak? You can't stay here through the winter. We must make for a living place. Here, take my stick, lean on it, if you are weak. Tramp along!"
And the man went. And he walked lightly, and did not fall behind.
As they were walking along, Semén said to him:
"Who are you, please?"
"I am a stranger."
"I know all the people here about. How did you get near that chapel?"
"I cannot tell."
"Have people insulted you?"
"No one has. God has punished me."
"Of course, God does everything, but still you must be making for some place. Whither are you bound?"
"It makes no difference to me."
Semén was surprised. He did not resemble an evil-doer, and was gentle of speech, and yet did not say anything about himself. And Semén thought that all kinds of things happen, and so he said to the man:
"Well, come to my house and warm yourself a little."
Semén walked up to the farm, and the stranger did not fall behind, but walked beside him. A wind rose and blew into Semén's shirt, and his intoxication went away, and he began to feel cold. He walked along, sniffling, and wrapping himself in his wife's jacket, and he thought:
"There is your fur coat: I went to get myself a fur coat, and I am coming back without a caftan, and am even bringing a naked man with me. Matréna will not praise me for it!"
And as Semén thought of Matréna, he felt sorry; and as he looked at the stranger and recalled how he had looked at him at the chapel, his blood began to play in his heart.