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p Children’s mental effort differs from that of the adult. For a child the ultimate goal of the attainment of knowledge cannot be the main stimulus for his mental effort, as is the case 131 with the adult. The source of the desire to learn is inherent in the very nature of children’s mental effort, in the emotional implications of their ideas, in their intellectual interests and aspirations. If this source runs dry, then no amount of effort is going to force a child to sit over his books. (10, 57)

p Pupils, particularly those in their teens, are little moved by admonitions that seem so convincing to the teacher, in the vein: “You must work hard, you must do your duty as a pupil, your task is to study hard”, etc—-Young people are anxious to form their own, personal ideas about things, to weigh things up and analyse them for themselves.

p Pupils must be brought round to any idea, and particularly the idea that they should study hard, by degrees.

p Not direct but indirect persuasion, when the figure of the teacher remains in the background, is likely to prove greatly effective. (3, 111)

p Pupils must look upon newly acquired knowledge as the result of their own mental effort.... (3, 112)

p The best teachers in our school devote special lessons to elucidation of the nature of work carried out by outstanding scientists—- There is every reason to regard such lessons as character moulding in the full sense of that word. (3, 114)

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p The more our schoolchildren came to master the skills involved in brain work, the less they expressed their unwillingness to learn. In 12 years we have only come across one pupil who deliberately and resentfully refused to do his homework. In all other cases unwillingness to learn was the result of an inability to work. (3, 131)

p There are no such children, indeed there could not be, who would not want to learn from the very beginning of their school career. Inability to work gives rise to unwillingness, and unwillingness to laziness. Each new link in this chain of shortcomings grows ever firmer and breaking it becomes more and more difficult. The main means for forestalling these weaknesses is to teach pupils to carry out independent work from a very early age. (3, 133)

p All our plans, quests and schemes will turn to nothing if a pupil is unwilling to learn. Willingness comes only once success has been achieved in class. A sort of paradox results: in order for a child to do well and make good progress in school, it is important that he should not lag behind, that he learn away. But this apparent paradox actually conceals the whole complexity of the teaching profession. Interest in learning is only to be found where there is inspiration born of success. Assiduity I should refer to as inspiration enhanced by a child’s confidence that he will achieve success. (14, 8)

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p Study can become interesting for children and be fascinating, if it is brightened up by the glowing light of ideas, feelings, creativity, beauty and play. My efforts to ensure children make progress in their studies started with finding out whether a child was eating and sleeping properly, his general state of health, what games he played, how many hours a day he spent out in the fresh air, what books he used to read and what fairy-tales were read to him, what he used to draw and how he used to express his thoughts and feelings in drawing, what emotions were aroused in him by the music of nature, folk music and by melodies composed by musicians, what was his favourite form of work, how sensitive he was to other people’s joys and misfortunes, what he used to make for others and the emotions he experienced. (10, 108)

p Inquisitiveness and curiosity have been inalienable properties of human nature since time began. Where love of knowledge is lacking no school can thrive. Intellectual indifference, or poverty of intellectual response all blunt a child’s receptiveness to wisdom, innovation and the wealth and beauty of ideas and knowledge. If no questions are forthcoming after a teacher has addressed the class during a lesson and “everything is clear”, this is the first sign that the pupils in the class have ceased to experience intellectual needs and that all that remains is a tedious, wearisome obligation to learn the daily lesson. (14, 2)

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p Active thinking in the classroom starts when children begin to feel the urge to answer the questions put to them. To foster this urge the teacher must make sure that the mental activity engaged in has a definite goal. This is a most difficult task and achievement of this end is the surest indication of teaching skill. A child only searches for and moves towards answers to questions connected with phenomena, certain aspects of which are already familiar to him. If you tell a pupil from Classes 3 or 4 about something interesting but unfamiliar such as tides and then ask him why they behave the way they do, it is unlikely that he will feel any urge to find the answer to such a question. Yet if you tell the same child about plant life, about flowers, about how fruits grow and then ask him why sunflowers turn towards the sun, he will feel the urge to find the answer. (3, 154)

p I advise all teachers to tend and foster any spark of curiosity, inquisitiveness or love of knowledge wherever they find it. The only way to fan that spark into a flame is to ensure that a child discovers the happiness of success in work, the pride of accomplishment. Reward each success, each conquest of difficulties with the deserved good mark, but do not overuse the latter. Do not forget that the soil on which the edifice of your teaching skill is built is in the child himself, in his attitude to knowledge and to you, his teacher; it is his desire to learn, his inspiration, his readiness to surmount 135 difficulties. Take care to enrich that soil, for without it no school can flourish. (10, 153)

p There are teachers who regard as their prime accomplishment the fact that they have succeeded in creating an atmosphere of “ constant mental concentration" in their class. More often than not they achieve this by external means, which act as a straight-jacket holding in place a child’s attention: frequent reminders to listen attentively, abrupt transitions from one type of work to another, warnings that assimilation of new subject matter will be tested as soon as it has been presented (or rather threats of bad marks, if attention is not paid to what is being said), insistence that as soon as some theoretical concept has been explained it be exercised in practical assignments.

p At first glance all these devices create the impression that energetic mental activity is going on: different types of work follow one after the other as in a kaleidoscope, children concentrate hard as they listen to every word the teacher says, and productive silence reigns. Yet at what cost is this achieved and what results does it yield? Constant stretching of the mind to remain attentive and ensure that nothing is missed—although pupils at this age are not yet able to force themselves to be attentive—wears children out making them overwrought and exhausted, and saps them of nervous energy. In work as subtle as that involved in the making of man there is nothing more stupid than insisting that not a moment 136 be lost during lesson-time and that active mental exertion never let up. A one-track approach like this simply means that teachers are attempting to squeeze out of their pupils everything the latter are capable of giving. After “effective” lessons of this kind a child goes home worn out. Such a child quickly loses his temper and easily becomes overexcited. All he needs to do is have a proper rest, while there is the prospect of homework to face and the mere sight of his school satchel loaded with books is enough to make him sick. (10, 101)

p No, that price is far too high to pay to ensure attentiveness, concentration and mental exertion from a class. The mental and nervous energy of schoolchildren, especially those from the younger classes, is not a well that never runs dry. Water should be drawn from that well carefully and sensibly, and most important of all a child’s nervous energy must be constantly replenished. This can be done through observation of objects and happenings in a child’s immediate surroundings, through nature study, reading of a type designed to stimulate interests and the desire to discover, but not through instilling fear of failing to answer when called upon next time in class or through “voyages” to the sources of thought and knowledge. (10, 102)

p In the life of a collective of schoolchildren there is an elusive factor which can perhaps be referred to as emotional equilibrium. By 137 this I mean children’s awareness of the fullness of life, their clarity of thought, confidence in their own abilities and faith in their capacity for overcoming difficulties. Characteristic features of this emotional equilibrium is a peaceful atmosphere of purposeful work, stable friendly relationships, an absence of irritability. If there is no emotional equilibrium it is impossible to work normally; when the equilibrium is disrupted the life of the school becomes pure hell, for pupils start insulting and annoying each other and the school is fraught with bad temper.

p How should this emotional equilibrium be created and, more important, maintained? The experience of leading education experts and teachers has convinced me that most important of all for this subtle aspect of education is constant mental activity, which avoids overexertion, jerky abrupt transitions, haste and nervous exhaustion. (10, 102)

p It is always with great anxiety that I contemplate cases of mania to succeed and strive after the best marks, an ailment which takes root at home, infects teachers as well as pupils and which places sometimes a crippling heavy burden on the minds of young schoolchildren. If a child at a certain stage has not the capacity to achieve top marks in all subjects while his parents will content themselves with nothing but A’s or at the most A minus, then whenever he is given lower marks he will feel a real criminal. (10, 103) 

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p Vain, fruitless labour is repellent, stultifying and futile for the adult, let alone the unfortunate child. If a child sees no hope of success in his work, his eagerness for knowledge will be stifled, and cold bitterness will grip a child’s heart which no effort whatsoever will be able to thaw out until the spark of eagerness lights up again (and kindling it a second time is an infinitely difficult task); a child loses faith in his capacity, shuts up like a clam, becomes wary and prickly, responds with brazen resentment to advice and remonstrations from his teachers. Or worse still—his sense of dignity is undermined and he reconciles himself to the thought that he has no real ability. My heart is always filled with anger and indignation, when I see one of these apathetic, resigned children who is ready to listen patiently to a teacher’s exhortations for hours at a stretch and completely indifferent to the words of his classmates; when they reproach him with lagging behind or repeating a class. ... There is nothing more immoral than kill another person’s sense of dignity! (10, 142)

p Assessing children’s knowledge, which might at first glance appear a simple task, involves the teacher’s ability to find a correct approach to each child, and encourage the thirst for knowledge in his heart. During their four years of primary education I never gave pupils bad marks, neither for written nor oral work. Children at that stage are learning to read, write and master the principles of arithmetics. One 139 child may already have achieved positive results in his mental exertions, while another may not yet have arrived at that level. One pupil may have mastered what the teacher is trying to get across to the class, while another may not yet have done so, but this does not mean that he is not eager to learn. I started giving pupils marks for their work only after a child was starting to make headway in his mental work. If a pupil had not yet achieved the results he was aspiring after in the process of his work then I refrained from giving him any marks at all. A child must be given time to think, collect his thoughts, and start at the beginning again. (10, 143)

p From the very early days of his school career a child conceives of an idol on that thorny path to knowledge—excellent marks. For one child that idol will be a kind and accessible idol and for others the idol will be a cruel, pitiless and inexorable one. Children are unable to understand the reason why the idol takes one person under its wing and tyrannises another. A seven-year-old child cannot after all understand the connection between his marks and the work he does, his personal effort; the connection remains for the time being inscrutable. He tries to satisfy, or at least to deceive the idol and gradually learns to exert himself not for the sake of personal pleasure but for the sake of the mark. I am far from believing that marks should be ruled out of school practice altogether; they are 140 an unavoidable part of school life. But they should only be introduced to a child when he has already come to understand the connection between the quality of his intellectual achievement and the effort he devotes to his studies.

p The most important, in my opinion, implication of marks in primary school are the enthusiasm and optimism they can impart. Marks should be a reward for diligence, not a punishment for laziness or negligence. If a teacher uses poor marks as a stick to goad on a lazy horse, and good marks as carrots, soon children will start to hate both the stick and the carrot. Poor marks are a very pointed and subtle instrument, which a wise, experienced teacher of primary pupils always keeps up his sleeve, without ever actually using. To be frank poor marks are an instrument which in primary school should exist precisely so as never to be used. The wisdom of the educator consists in making sure that a child never lose faith in his potential, and never come to believe that nothing will ever work out right for him. Each assignment must represent for the pupil at least a small advance. A sevenyear-old who has only just entered school and is still hardly able to make out the letters of the alphabet is quite bewildered at receiving a bad mark and at first does not even feel bitterness or anxiety. He is simply stunned. “ Sometimes a sensible child stops short in his tracks faced by the aggression of caustic, grey-haired stupidity,” wrote Janusz Korczak. His words: “Respect children’s lack of knowledge" are 141 something I have never forgotten. Only when a teacher has mastered the ultimate wisdom in knowledge of his fellow-men, namely the ability to respect children’s lack of knowledge, do bad marks become the most pointed, subtle instrument at his command, yet one that is never to be used in primary classes. (10, 65)

p An undeserved bad mark is often the beginning of one of the worst evils to be encountered in schools—deceitfulness on the part of a child in relation to both teachers and parents. There is no end to the kinds of subterfuge that children will resort to in order to conceal their failures at school from their parents and their negligence from their teachers. The more mistrust is shown a child the more resourceful a child becomes in deceit, the more fertile the soil for laziness and negligence. Laziness is a direct offshoot of mistrust. Those whom I teach I regard first and foremost as living individuals and children and only then as pupils. The marks I give them are not only assessments of their knowledge, but, far more important, they reflect my attitude to them as people. (10, 153)

p In Class 2 a few weeks after the beginning of the school year children started to keep work records, in which they wrote down the marks given to them at lessons. There was not a single case of a child attempting to hide his marks from his parents. Indeed it will never be otherwise if marks reflect the joy children 142 glean from their success. All that is a source of joy children are unable to conceal from their parents. There is no need for a teacher to ratify work records with his signature; that is a practice left over from the past, from schools with an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion between teachers and pupils. If there is no mutual trust in a class, if children try to deceive their teacher, if marks degenerate into mere sticks used by adults to goad children on, then the very foundation of proper education has collapsed. (10, 153)

p Yet at the same time it is impermissible that marks should spoil pupils, as is unfortunately far too often the case. Sometimes a child only has to open his mouth to be given an excellent mark. It happens quite often that at the lesson one and the same question is put to a number of pupils and each of them is given a good mark for his answer. As a result children start to develop a frivolous attitude to their studies. A child should always see in his marks the result of mental effort. (10, 152)

p It is unforgivable to let marks become fetters for a child that hamper his thought. I always used to let even the weakest of pupils, the apparently hopeless dimwits, have time to think over problems that they had so far been unable to solve. My pupils never used to lose interest in their studies. Through stimulation of their sense of pride and honour, their sense of dignity I created an atmosphere in which 143 children went out of their way to learn how to work independently. (10, 151)

p Certain teachers use the mark, that subtle instrument at their disposal, indiscriminately and unwisely. In many schools the satisfactory rating has come to be regarded as something reprehensible. It is not only at Pioneer rallies that the appeal for pupils to avoid marks as low as the satisfactory rating are to be heard. Such appeals can also be found in children’s newspapers. By encouraging such an attitude to satisfactory ratings in schoolwork, teachers are in effect taking the wind out of their own sails: they are fostering in their children frivolity and superficiality. (10, 152)

p When joy gleaned from work and successful study is the main stimulus for positive effort at school then a class will be free of loafers. True masters of the teaching craft rarely resort to campaigns with individual loafers, instead they campaign against laziness as a result of mental hibernation. (10, 152)

p A system based on the principle that marks should only be given in recognition of positive results of mental effort was gradually introduced in the work of all teachers in the primary, middle and senior classes. Perhaps the reader will ask but what will happen at the end of the term or school year when it emerges that a pupil has not been given a mark for any subject? Yet this is the whole point, for the absence of any mark whatsoever is an 144 infinitely greater disaster for the child than unsatisfactory marks would have been. The idea that he has no mark because he has not yet worked as hard as he should have done takes root in the child’s mind. This means that there are hardly any cases of children who by the end of the school year still have no marks. In four years there were only six occasions when I did not give a child any mark at the end of the term. The parents knew that if their son or daughter had no marks listed in his or her work record something was amiss. They also knew that an absence of marks is not the child’s fault but rather his misfortune . .. and children should be helped in misfortune. And indeed, together we would help the child. I persuaded the parents never to demand top marks from their children and not to regard satisfactory ratings as indications of laziness, negligence and a lack of diligence. (10, 152)

A conscientious attitude to study is moulded over the years in the process of study itself and only thanks to the fact that the pupil is aware of his efforts and their results, namely knowledge and skills. (3, 187)