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p The notebooks I have kept throughout my teaching career total three thousand seven hundred pages and each one of those pages is devoted to one person and one person only— my pupil.

p Three thousand seven hundred lives.... .Almost the whole of the adult population in our village. Recently I felt the urge to leaf through those pages. ... Each of the children described was a world unto himself quite unique.

p It would be the worst possible punishment for me if a young man or woman had figured in my life without leaving any mark on my mind or heart. If a child leaves his teacher’s charge a faceless, grey individual, this means you as a teacher have failed to give him anything. Surely that is the saddest outcome for any teacher. For everything that goes by the name of education is a wondrous recreation of oneself in Man. (24)  [50•* 

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p What has been the most important thing in my life? Without hesitation I reply to that question: my love for children. (10, 3)

p The alpha and omega of my teaching creed has been my profound belief that what a man is depends upon his particular vision of happiness. (29)

p Truly communist education is first and foremost concern for real human happiness, that is life in the name of an idea, an ideal. (29)

p I see my educator’s mission as the stimulation of intellectual energy, the presentation of Lenin to my senior pupils as an example to be emulated. Seeking after knowledge in a Leninist spirit and setting store by knowledge in that same spirit are principles fundamental to the education of social and political awareness in our schools. (12, 226)

p The ideas of the Great October Socialist Revolution are the source of one of the New Man’s most important and valuable moral qualities—his orientation towards the future. (7, 80)

p In the man we are seeking to educate there should be side by side moral integrity, a rich 52 cultural background and physical perfection. The skill and art of education consists in a constant, vivid mindfulness of the essence of that harmony. Communist man is not a mechanical combination of all good features and qualities, but a merging together of the latter in a harmonious unity.

p . .. The easier life becomes, the more material and cultural benefits become accessible to the younger generation, . .. the harder work in education will be, the more responsibility will lie with all involved in education.... (2, 143)

p Childhood is the most vital period of man’s life; it is not preparation for adult life to come, but a real, vivid, unique life all of its own. The kind of man the child of today turns into is determined above all by the kind of childhood he had, the people who guided his early steps through life, and the experience of the world around him which imprinted itself on his mind and heart. (10, 11)

p Childhood is a day-by-day discovery of the world. It is important that this discovery should be above all a discovery of a child’s fellow-men and his Homeland, that the beauty inherent in a real Man, and the greatness and incomparable beauty of the Homeland imprint themselves on his mind and heart. (29}

p There is nothing richer or more complex in this world than the human being. The 53 all-round development of the individual and his moral perfection make up the goal of communist education. The path leading to attainment of this goal is as complex as man himself. (24)

p Discussion of the lives of concrete pupils led us to consider harmony of educational influences. In my view this is one of the most important underlying factors in education practice. The essence of this question can be summed up as follows: the educational effectiveness of every means of influencing the individual depends on how well-thought out, purpose-directed and- effective other means of influence are. The power of beauty as an educational influence depends on how skilfully work is used as an educational means, on the degree and detail with which education of the mind and emotions has been thought out. A teacher’s words become an educative force only when they are complemented by the personal example of elder people, when all other educational means are steeped in moral purity and nobility of spirit.

p There are tens, hundreds, even thousands of interdependences and mutually determining links between the various educational influences. The effectiveness of education in the long run depends on whether and in how far these interdependences and links are taken into account, or, to be more precise, on how they are applied in practice. (10, 213)

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p Any influence on the individual loses its power if it is not effected side by side with hundreds of other influences; any pattern is reduced to nothing if it does not proceed parallel to hundreds of others. The science of education is obsolescent in as far as it fails to investigate the dozens, indeed hundreds of interdependences and mutually determining links between influences brought to bear on the individual pupil. It becomes a genuine and precise science only when it investigates and elucidates the infinitely subtle and complex interdependences and links between educational phenomena. (10, 214)

p Mechanical unthinking conversion of a theoretical proposition into a practical experiment serves to emasculate a teacher’s vital ideas, robbing educational work of that which constitutes its core, its very soul—namely the unique nature of the phenomena in the life around us, the joy of renewal which each new generation of pupils brings the teacher, the essential urge to create.

p Theory remains a source of inspiration for the teacher to expand and develop his skills, until it assumes a life of its own in practical experience. Once theory lives it must of necessity become enriched, perfect itself, for life will bring out new facets in it and discard that which is outdated, that has lived out its time. While theory lives in practical experiment, in the creative individual work of thousands upon thousands of teachers, it develops. If 55 theoretical precepts are regarded as something eternal and unchanging, universally applicable, then they become ossified. (28)

p What in fact really is the education or learning process? It has three ingredients: scientific knowledge, skill and art.... Education in the wide sense is a many-faceted process of constant spiritual enrichment and renewal both for those being educated and those who educate. In this process many phenomena acquire widely differing implications in individual cases: any educational idea that is apt in one case, can be of neutral significance in a second one, or even absurd in a third. Such is the nature of our work in education. (13, 9)

p If no scientific predictions were made, if no one succeeded in planting in man those seeds which will only bear fruit decades later, education would be turned into primitive supervision, teachers would be nothing but illiterate child-minders and the science of education mere quackery. Scientific forecasts are important; indeed they are essential to the education process and the more subtle and thoughtful these forecasts, the less unforeseen catastrophes there will be. (12, 50)

p Every moment of life and every patch of earth are educationally important, every person encountered by the individual in his formative years, even those encountered by chance, or in passing as it were. (14, 2)

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p The intellectual and emotional world of the child should not be thought of as classroom activity and no more. If we go out of our way to see to it that all a child’s intellectual and emotional input are absorbed in lessons, then his life becomes intolerable. He must be not just a schoolchild, but first and foremost a person with a wide variety of interests, needs and aspirations. (34)

p I am firmly convinced that the most precise definition would be the following: the educational process finds expression in a coming together of the spiritual life of the teacher and his pupils, in the unity of their ideals, aspirations, interests, ideas and experiences. (13, 11)

p Tens and hundreds of threads between the minds and emotions of teacher and pupil are the tiny paths which lead to the human heart; they are the vital precondition for friendship, for comradeship between teacher and pupil. I and my colleagues go out of our way to ensure that teacher and pupils should share interests and aspirations; provided that this community of interests exists, children soon forget that their teacher is a supervisor and mentor.

p If a teacher has once become a child’s friend, and if this friendship is enhanced by some absorbing and noble interest, positive, sensible aspirations then a child’s heart will remain free of any evil. And if there are children in a school who are on their guard, oversensitive to criticism, and mistrustful, and sometimes even malicious children, this is only 57 because teachers did not get to know them properly, did not find the right approach and failed to get through to them. Education without ties of friendship between teacher and pupil, without shared interests is a futile exercise. (9, 78)

p In this hobby group for constructing mechanical models I am not the supervisor, but just another pupil and workman like all the children. What a fine feeling that is to be the children’s comrade and friend, to take pleasure in their success, listen to the justified comments of the real craftsman, if something fails to work out. When children see in you one of their equals, they open out and confide things they would never have mentioned, if they only saw their teacher as a supervisor (9, 77).

p Learning to love children is something that cannot be achieved in any educational establishment, or with the help of textbooks; this ability takes shape in the process of the individual’s participation in the life of society, of his interrelating with other people. Indeed by its very nature work as a teacher—daily contact with children—deepens our love for man, our faith in him. Vocation for the teaching profession develops inside the school, during the process of teaching. (11, 25)

p It is only possible to be a good teacher for the man who is a good educator. ... If there is no concern with broad education of the 58 whole individual, then all teaching techniques and knowledge of education theory are nothing but ballast. (2,75)

p I always went out of my way to convince teachers that if they only set eyes on their pupils when seated at their teacher’s desk, if their pupils only come up to them when called upon to answer questions, if their conversation with the teacher only consists of answers to his questions, then no knowledge of psychology whatever can be of any help. A child must be welcomed as a friend, a like-minded friend with whom to share the joys of victory and the sorrow of loss. (11, 33)

p During the first years of my work as a teacher I realised that school in the true sense of the word is not only a place where children acquire knowledge and skills. Study is very important, but it is not the only sphere of a child’s intellectual and emotional life. The closer the study I made of what we have come to call the education or learning process, the more I have grasped that school in the true sense of the word is the many-faceted emotional and cultural life of the children’s collective in which the educator and those to be educated are linked together by a multitude of interests and preoccupations. (10, 6)

p Study is only one petal of that flower known as education, education in the wider sense of the word. In education there is nothing more, 59 or less, important, just as no petal of a flower is set apart among all those which make up its beauty. In education everything is of paramount importance—lessons, development of children’s diverse interests outside lesson-time, and the relationships between pupils within the collective. (10, 8)

p Each of us must be not an abstract embodiment of educational wisdom, but a living individual helping young people to attain closer knowledge of not only the world, but of themselves as well. The kind of people boys and girls see us to be, is a factor of decisive importance. We have to set them an example of a rich inner life; only then are we morally justified in seeking to educate. Nothing amazes or absorbs young people so much, nothing awakens the desire to learn so forcefully as a clever, intellectually stimulating and generous person. In our pupils there slumber talented mathematicians and physicists, philologists and historians, biologists and engineers, skilled craftsmen at the work-bench and plough. These talents will only come to fruition when boys and girls find in those who educate them that “life-giving water" without which those talents will wilt and fade. Mind is fostered by mind, conscience by conscience, devotion to one’s country by effective service to this country. (12, 114)

p School becomes the centre of children’s intellectual and emotional life, if teachers give 60 lessons that are interesting in both form and content. . . . Yet remarkable brilliant lessons are to be found wherever there are other remarkable things apart from lessons, where a host of opportunities are provided for pupils to develop their various abilities outside lessons and are used to the full. (14, 4)

p The word education is uttered dozens of times in every school every day. The subject of education is being pondered and discussed more and more in homes and public organisations. Yet do all teachers, let alone all parents, have a clear idea of what education is and, consequently, how it should be achieved? (14, 2)

p I once came across a survey on the work of a school drawn up by an inspector from a district education department. It was noted that lessons were being conducted on an “ appropriate level”, that the pupils had attained a satisfactory degree of knowledge but that the general behaviour of the pupils left much to be desired.. . . Mothers or fathers often complain to their children that they have been “taught well, but brought up badly”. (14, 2)

p In both instances we find ourselves up against a one-sided view of upbringing or education in the broader sense as somethingseparate from instruction. Can we accept the view that upbringing in the narrow sense of 61 the word has nothing to do with instruction and teaching, but does include the formation of pupil’s world outlook and moral attitudes, the shaping of aesthetic taste and physical development? (14, 2)

p What does “upbringing in the narrow sense of the word" mean? Can a world outlook be formed separately from the processes of teaching and instruction? Can an individual’s mind and emotions be influenced with no reference to what he sees, learns, discovers, grasps in the process of learning? On the other hand, the learning process is surely unthinkable divorced from the formation of the individual’s world outlook? (14, 2)

p However interesting and purpose-directed children’s school education might be, it should not be confined to preparation for school leaving exams. The transition from study to work is the most serious of all those steps to be undertaken by boys and girls on the threshold of adulthood. It is precisely at the initial stage of their working lives that work to foster positive attitudes and standards assumes prime importance. (5, 105)

I am a firm believer in the great power of education—in that which Nadezhda Krupskaya and Makarenko and other outstanding educationists believed in. (10, 4)