p There are no more humane professions than those of the doctor and the teacher. A doctor fights for a man’s life up till the last moment, never letting the patient feel that his condition is serious or even hopeless. That is a fundamental principle of medical ethics. We teachers must develop and foster educational ethics in our collectives, we must uphold the humanist principle in education as the most important feature of the pedagogical training and skill of each teacher. For many, very many teachers the backward child is a tightly closed book. If a teacher cannot see into a child’s heart, and understand his own particular thought patterns and way of looking at the world around him, any talk of sensitivity is futile; without knowledge of a child’s heart no teaching training or scientific school organisation can have any effect. (13, 11)

p Children set infinite store by their ideas of right and wrong, of honesty and dishonesty, of human dignity; they have their own criteria of beauty, even their own sense of time, for a child a day can seem like a year and a year a whole eternity. Possessed of access to that fairy-tale palace that we call childhood, I always believed it was essential to become a child myself in a certain sense. Only then will children look upon you as someone other than a person who has accidentally strayed into the 63 gates of their fairy-tale world, who watches over that world while remaining indifferent to what goes on inside it. (10, 4)

p It is not sentimentality, when a child thinks that a toy car with a broken wheel suffers as much pain as a wounded fledgling—it is responsiveness, the very foundation of kindness and poetic imagination. (14, 6)

p Children know anxieties, disappointments, worries and disasters—both large and small— all of their own. A teacher responsive to emotion will notice at once if something is not right with a child. This we can see first and foremost from a child’s eyes. After realising there is something the matter with a child the sensitive teacher will not start asking questions at once. Meanwhile he will light on some means for making the child realise or feel that he, the teacher, is aware of the pupil’s concern. Later questions can be asked when the other pupils are not present. If a teacher has once realised that a child is in need of help, to remain impervious or even forget about it would be to deal the pupil yet another blow. (13, 3)

p Sometimes a child takes offence over matters that may appear trivial to the adult, for example, when someone hides his toy.... However, we have to remember that children have their own scale by which to measure joy and sorrow, right and wrong. The sensitive 64 teacher never forgets that he too has been a child. The teacher has to put himself in the child’s place, share his sorrow and help him. Often the most valued and welcomed help for a child is sympathy, compassion and sincere understanding. Meanwhile apathetic indifference can shatter a child.... (13, 3)

p Until a child has learnt to revel in childish joys, until a genuine thrill has lit up in his eyes, until a little boy has indulged in childish pranks, I have no right to claim any educative influence has been brought to bear. A child must be a child.... If when listening to a fairy-tale he is not carried away by the struggle between the powers of good and evil, if his eyes express casual indifference instead of radiating excitement, then something in that child’s heart has been trampled on, and considerable energy will be required to put it right. (10, 32)

p There is a chord in the secret corner of every child’s heart, which strikes a note of its own and so as to make a child’s heart respond to my words, my heart has to be in tune with that note. I have observed on several occasions, what desperate worries can afflict a child’s heart, when he is agitated, disappointed and his worries go unnoticed by those taking care of him. Will I be able to sense what is preoccupying my pupils each day? What is going on in their hearts? Will I always be fair with the children in my care. (10, 83)

p Fairness is the basis for a child’s trust in his educator. However, there is no such thing as abstract fairness outside individuals, outside personal interests, passions and urges. In order to be fair a teacher must have an intimate knowledge of each child’s inner world. This is why as a child made his way up the school, I came to regard education as none other than an increasingly profound awareness of each child. (10, 83)

p The more I got to know my future charges, the more I realised that one of my important goals that lay ahead was to restore childhood to those children who had been deprived of it at home....

p I knew several such children and life has convinced me that if a small child does not succeed in recapturing his faith in what is right and fair, he will never feel himself a real human being, or regain his sense of selfrespect. Pupils of this type become bitter and resentful in their teens; for them there is nothing sacred or lofty in life and teachers’ words never penetrate more than skin-deep.

p To correct a youth of that type is one of the hardest tasks that ever confronts the educator; the subtle, painstaking work involved represents the supreme test in our understanding of man. To possess this understanding requires not only the ability to see and feel how a child apprehends what is right and wrong but also the ability to protect a vulnerable child’s heart against that wrong. (10, 17)

p As a child each one of us has need of sympathy and kindness. If a child grows up in an atmosphere of heartlessness he, in his turn, will be indifferent to goodness and beauty. School cannot fully take the place of the family, in particular a child’s mother, but if a child is deprived of kind concern, warmth and care at home, we teachers must be particularly attentive to his needs. (10, 78)

p When I welcome my pupils each day, I look into their faces. A child’s sad eyes are the most difficult thing we have to face in the complex process of education. If a child’s heart is filled with grief then he is only physically present in the classroom. He is like a taut string, and any careless touch can cause him pain. Each child reacts to suffering in his own way: some find relief in kind sympathy, whereas kind words only add to the pain for others. In such situations a teacher’s skill depends first and foremost on his understanding of his fellow-men. He must learn to spare a heart that is filled with grief, how to avoid adding to his charge’s sorrow, and avoid rubbing salt in his wounds. When overwhelmed with grief and bewildered, a pupil cannot of course take part in lessons as usual; his grief leaves its mark on his mind. The golden rule for the teacher is to be ever sensitive to children’s grief and suffering. He must be able to apprehend and respond to what is going on in a child’s heart. His ability to respond to a child’s sorrow, to understand and sense what 67 is going on in a child’s heart is the very foundation of his teaching skill. (10, 201)

p First and foremost a teacher must understand a child’s heart. This is something that cannot be learnt with the help of any special devices. This particular skill is only found in teachers with rich emotional and moral resources of their own. (10, 201)

p There is no doubt that giant schools are an undesirable way of organising the work of education. I for one am worried when I see architects’ plans for schools catering for 2,200 pupils and over. In large schools with over a thousand children, I should recommend that steps be taken to create special conditions to ensure a warm, “family” atmosphere; for example, each collective should contain paralled classes, an arrangement which would serve to keep down noise, rushing about and hustling. This is an elementary requirement for good teaching. (13, 8)

p If I was asked what was the most difficult thing about my work, I should reply talking to a child about his father and mother. The slightest indiscretion, awkwardness or inaccuracy can lead to disastrous results. (18}

p Situations can arise when a child feels as if he has a knife at his throat: he is terror-struck and goes cold all over. This sensation occurs when intimate family relationships are laid 68 bare which a child would rather conceal or hide.

p This is why I should like to say to fathers: realise and remember that your failures and degradation are experienced by your children as their sorrow, your joys are shared by them as their own. Preserve your child’s love for his fellow-men, strengthen his faith in man. (18)

p The path from childhood to adolescence should be one of joy and cheerfulness: this is one of the most important rules underlying the whole of our system of education. Joy as a source for a child’s optimistic confidence in his own abilities is a condition for the wealth of actual relationships with the surrounding world, without which there can be no intellectual and moral development. ... (6, 33)

p I always feel a sense of deep regret when I think of the large number of schools where backward pupils obliged to repeat a year are sitting way back like so many wretched outcasts, frustrated or just indifferent to everything around them. It is an inexcusable state of affairs if they leave school embittered by their encounter with learning, or indifferent to it altogether. If a mentally sound individual achieved no success in any subject and has no favourite subject then the school itself must be at fault. (14, 8)

p Those who understand by a humane approach a teacher’s even, controlled tone 69 disguising exhortations in a syrup of kindness are profoundly misled. Kindness is not a question of tone and specially selected words. The born educator is always someone capable of a wide range of emotions; his joy, disappointment, anxiety and indignation all run deep. If children sense that their mentor’s emotions are genuine—then they are being shown real kindness. (13, 3)

p The true educator seldom appeals to his charges to “be good”. His pupils sense the kindness of his heart in his upright truthfulness and profound sincerity. Kindness is in essence truthfulness, which is by no means always pleasant. Often truth can be bitter or worrying, for it can humiliate and disappoint. Yet even the most bitter of truths implants in a child’s heart the urge to be good, because kindness by its very nature never debases human dignity. (13, 3)

The great Russian educationist Konstantin Ushinsky wrote it is possible deeply to love someone whom we are living beside all the time without realising it, until some great misfortune brings out the depth of our attachment; it is possible to live out your whole life and never know how deeply you were attached to your native land unless some chance occasion, like a long absence, suddenly pinpoints that love in all its power. I recall those words every time I go for a long time without seeing children, without being able to observe their joys 70 and disappointments. Every year I grew more and more convinced that one of the all- important aspects of a teacher’s ability is his sense of attachment to children. Yet if feelings cannot be ordered about, to use Stanislavsky’s phrase, at least it can be said that fostering emotions in the teacher and educator is the essential concern of educational science. (10, 10)