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p A child who has never known the joy of work in the context of his study and who has not experienced pride in overcoming difficulties is a most wretched person. A wretched man is a misfortune for our society, and a wretched child is a misfortune one hundred times over. I am far from being sentimental when I speak about childhood; it is a cause of constant regret to me that some people can become idlers while still children start hating work and even regard with contempt the very idea that they should work to the utmost of their capacity. But why do children become idlers? Because, dear fellow teachers, they do 165 not know the happiness to be derived from work. Once they have known that happiness and learnt to set store by it, then they will start to set store by their honour and start to enjoy their work.

p The first commandment for the teacher should be to let children experience the joy of work, the joy of success in their studies and to arouse a sence of pride, a sense of dignity in children’s hearts. In our schools there should not be any wretched children, children whose minds are gnawed at by the idea that they are not capable of anything. Success in study is the only fountain at which a child can replenish his inner resources, which gives him energy with which to surmount the difficulties he encounters and fan his desire to study. (10, 143)

p The most important work position for a schoolchild is his desk in his classroom, or a table in the school laboratory.... The main material for his work are textbooks and exercise books, and the main work to be done in school is study. (31)

p A true school is a kingdom of active thought. If a pupil in, for instance, Class 8 has been instructed to read at home some ten pages of a textbook he will only be engaging in active thought if he reads that same day 20, 30 or 40 pages of some interesting academic book or journal, not just for the sake of learning it off by heart but in response to his need to think, discover, learn, and finally to attain wonder.

166

p Einstein wrote that the most beautiful and profound emotion we experience is a sense of mystery; he who has lost that awareness, who is no longer capable of growing awestruck, might just as well consider himself dead. It is with deep sorrow that I behold those living corpses crippled by excessive hours spent tied to their books. (31)

p Deterioration of memory tends to strike precisely at puberty and the reason for this is that young people shake themselves “free” from the obligation to think, precisely at the time when they ought to be devoting the maximum energy to that activity. (14, 8)

p A few years ago the teachers in our school came to the conclusion that teacher’s efforts to make literally everything completely comprehensible and accessible in his exposition of material (as they recounted or explained) frequently mean that pupils are no longer obliged to think. .. . There will be no assimilation of knowledge if a teacher strives to the utmost to simplify his pupils’ mental exertion... .

p Our brain develops thanks to abstract thought and this is something every teacher should bear in mind, making it one of his basic principles. (13, 7)

p Experience has convinced me that the more pupils have to remember and retain (and the amount of material to be memorised in middle and senior classes is very large) the more need 167 there is for generalisation, for abstraction from concrete material, for thinking and discussion. (14, 8)

p Mental effort should never be aimed merely at retention, at rote-learning. Once analysis ceases, so does mental effort and all that is left is stultifying cramming. (3, 169)

p Cramming has a disastrous effect on the moral integrity of the pupil. As he carries out his heavy yet futile work day after day in the course of several years, a pupil acquires an incorrect picture of mental work in general and starts to hate study. In the long run he stops working. (3, 178)

p In order to satisfy young people’s need to engage in abstract thought, to analyse facts, the teacher as he presents his material must provide many facts and few generalisations. The most interesting material or lectures for pupils of the senior and middle classes is that in which something has been left unsaid. When we present pupils with facts, we should ask of pupils that they analyse and compare them. The transition from facts to broad conclusions is in my experience an intense, emotionally charged moment, like the conquest of a peak, a victory or triumph for the pupil. .. .

p The easier the subject (for example botany is considerably easier than mathematics in the complexity of the thought processes involved) the more indifferent young people will be when it comes to amassing their factual “ baggage”. (14, 8)

168

p Observations of young people’s behaviour shows that they deliberately do not notice details; what is too blatant or obvious seems to them unworthy of their attention, because it does not demand serious mental effort. This explains incidentally young people’s scornful attitude to literal, word-for-word rote-learning and their preference for carrying out difficult work of a creative nature as opposed to memorising poetry for instance. (16, 122)

p Young people have particular respect for those academic subjects which demand considerable mental effort, ingenuity and astuteness. This applies particularly in the case of mathematics. Study circles for young mathematicians, in which problems are set to develop their imagination and resourcefulness occupy a most important place in the lives of our boys and girls.

p Experience has made it clear to us that the teaching of mathematics to pupils of that age determines to a large extent the way in which a young person’s interest in intellectual activity develops, indeed his whole intellectual makeup. Gradually his awareness of the great importance of abstraction and generalisation sharpens purely intellectual sensitivity to the causal relationships in the outside world. They show a conscious urge to analyse in their mind’s eye what they may have no opportunity to observe closely. Self-evident, obvious causal relationships will not only fail to enhance but will even diminish their interest in a phenomenon or event. (6, 125)

169

p The most important skills which a pupil has to master in the course of his ten years’ schooling I listed as follows:

p 1. Fluent, expressive, perceptive reading; 

p 2. Fluent, relatively rapid and correct reproduction in writing of texts dictated by teachers; 

p 3. Thinking, comparing and contrasting objects and phenomena; 

p 4. Detailed observation of phenomena from his environment; 

p 5. The expression of ideas in words; 

p 6. The singling out of logically complete parts from a text that has been read through, and the establishment of the links and interdependences between them; 

p 7. The finding and selection of a book on a subject of interest; 

p 8. The finding of relevant material on a subject of interest in a book; 

p 9. Advance logical analysis of a text during the process of reading it; 

p 10. Listening to a teacher and at the same time making notes on the main points of the material presented; 

p 11. Reading a text while at the same time listening to the teacher’s instructions concerning work on the text and its logical component parts; 

p 12. Writing an essay telling of what the pupil sees around him and observes, etc.... (13, 11)

170

p Just as a carpenter cannot make a ruler with an axe, so a pupil who is unable to write sufficiently rapidly and correctly cannot write an essay or make notes on a teacher’s lecture. Scientifically grounded guidance of education, which envisages a correct approach to pupils’ skills and abilities, makes it possible to provide pupils with a firm base for their secondary education, namely with the ability to study. If we observe attentively pupils going about their homework, we shall see that they are carpenters vainly attempting to make a ruler with an axe or a hatchet. A child not yet proficient in reading is asked to grasp and learn the reasons for the emergence and decline of the slaveowning state in ancient Greece.... A child not yet proficient in writing is asked to go home and write a composition entitled “A Sunny Winter Day"....

p Before giving children difficult home assignments they must be armed with the complex skills required. (13, 11)

p Without high levels of reading ability there can be no real school education, and no real brain work. Poor reading levels are like dirty windows through which nothing can be seen. (31)

p In order for a child to make good progress at school his writing skills must become more or less automatic: his mental effort must be aimed first and foremost at understanding the sense of what he is writing, on thinking, and 171 not on the actual process of writing. Long experience has shown me that in order to learn to write quickly, clearly and intelligently, and in order that writing should be a means or instrument for study and not its ultimate goal, a pupil during his years of primary education ought to complete between 1,400 and 1,500 pages of writing in his exercise books. For this purpose special practice is required to develop writing speed and technique. (11, 285)

p Helping a pupil reliably to memorise a rule (definition or conclusion) without specially sitting down to do so is a particularly valuable achievement on the part of the skilled teacher. In primary classes we avoid learning off rules, just as we avoid testing knowledge of the latter by asking pupils to repeat by heart these rules. If a pupil does not know or has forgotten this or that rule (that has never been formally memorised) he needs to do repeated exercises and analyse factual material, designed to think it through again and only after having understood it to remember it.

p It is just as important that a child should not be made to learn a rule ahead of time as it is to ensure that he understands the material concerned. Sometimes it is essential that a pupil forget a rule, put it out of his mind, since the formula is something he does not understand; he must then start from the beginning again so as to think through the essence of the facts and phenomena concerned. (11, 265)

172

p All the most vital rules, definitions, laws and other generalisation formulae that have to be incorporated into the first five years at school (Classes 1-5) are memorised only through work in class and only with the help of explanations, and not from textbooks. ... This makes it possible for pupils during those five years to memorise rules and other formulae before they start reading textbooks, which means that later they will never just cram them without understanding their meaning. (3, 174)

p The more vividly the meaning of concepts is revealed, the more expressive the teacher’s explanations and the more the pupils understand of what they are called upon to remember, the better they will retain material until they are called upon to complete special assignments designed to consolidate the knowledge in question.... When schoolchildren’s mental effort is directed towards understanding, towards analysing material they should not be called upon to work towards yet another goal, namely its retention. (3, 172)

p If consolidation of knowledge is not based on active thinking, but only on effort of the memory, on rote-learning, the act of memorising not only absorbs all a child’s mental effort, but checks and holds back his development. This danger is particularly great in Classes 1-4. It is precisely at that stage when, as a result of weakness and errors in work designed to consolidate knowledge, pupils start to feel a sense of revulsion in relation to their studies. (3, 173)

173

p Idleness at the school desk is a terrible danger: idleness for six hours at a stretch every day, for months and years on end corrupts and cripples a child’s character and moral principles; no school workteam, no workshop, no school garden, indeed nothing can make up for what has been lost in the most important field of human activity, a field where one has to be a worker, that of thought. (31)

I am profoundly convinced that if everyone seated at a school desk did some hard thinking then no one would be condescending about the work of a plumber or tractor-driver, stone mason or cowman because real mental work is something devilishly difficult.... If thought is equated with work and school becomes a kingdom of work, then those who pass through school will develop profound respect for any kind of work—-The individual’s mental activities and physical exertion can only become as one, when thinking and comprehension of the world are a work process. (31)