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p It is difficult to overestimate the role of the individual teacher, his mind and knowledge in arousing and developing pupils’ ability, inclinations and talents. If among a school’s team of 174 teachers there is a talented teacher of mathematics in love with his subject, able and talented mathematicians are bound to emerge from among the pupils. If there is no good maths teacher there will not be any talented pupils; in such a case those who possess mathematical ability will never manifest that ability. A teacher is the first torch-bearer in a child’s intellectual progress. . . . (9, 26)

p Our team of teachers has grown up gradually. They were selected according to the following principle: firstly their moral right to teach and educate children; secondly their diligence; thirdly their love for children and faith in the fact that every child, whatever problems his education might involve, can turn out a worthwhile person. If someone possesses these qualities his lack of experience in teaching methods is no disaster; initial gaps in his knowledge are also not the end of the world—if he is energetic and has a thirst for knowledge he can continue his own studies while working in school as a teacher. If someone has no faith in children, if he is daunted by the slightest setback or convinced that nothing can come of a child’s schooling, then he has no business to be in a school: all he will do is cripple his charges’ future. (9, 28)

p The question as to whether someone has a vocation as a teacher or not, as to whether he should remain in our school or not is decided on a strictly corporate basis—by a resolution of 175 the teachers’ council—in strict accordance with the following rule: the corporate decision on such an important question is considered valid when it is taken unanimously, i.e., when the teacher in question, whose future is at stake, himself accepts that teaching is not his vocation. (9, 29)

p The most important preconditions for educating strong, courageous builders of communism is that the convictions and practical activities of those who educate them be truly revolutionary, communist and future-orientated and that they appreciated above all this point: the education of the individual from the very beginning of his conscious life must be closely linked with the implementation of social ideas. (7, 20)

p What does the phrase good teacher imply? First of all it means someone who loves children, who finds joy in contact with them and who believes that every child can become a worthy man or woman, someone who is able to make friends with children, who takes children’s joys and sorrows to heart, understands the workings of their minds and never forgets that he himself was once a child too.

p A good teacher is, secondly, someone who has a good grasp of the science of which the subject he teaches is a part, is really in love with that subject and keeps up-to-date with its development—new discoveries, research and achievements. The schools should pride themselves 176 in particular in teachers who, in addition to possessing the characteristics cited earlier, are not indifferent to the problems currently confronting the researchers working in his own particular field and are capable of undertaking independent research. A good teacher knows far more than the secondary school syllabus requires of him. For him his subject is merely the alphabet of science. Profound knowledge, a wide perspective and interest in current problems of his field are all essential for a teacher in order that he might present as attractive to his pupils the knowledge as such, his subject in particular, science and the process of study. The pupil must see in his teacher an intelligent, well-informed, thinking individual in love with knowledge. The more profound a teacher’s knowledge, the wider his horizons, and general erudition, the more he will be able not merely to instruct his pupils but to educate them. For a teacher of primary classes it is essential that he should have not merely a good general education but also particular interest in some specific subject or field of knowledge.

p Thirdly, a good teacher must be well-versed in psychology and the science of education; he must understand that it is impossible without grounding in the science of education to work with children.

p Fourthly, a good teacher must be completely at home in some type of handicraft or manual work.... In a good school every teacher must have some hobby of this sort which he finds truly fascinating.

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p Where are people with such versatile abilities to be found? There are such people in our midst and we must learn how to find them. I always strove to ensure my right to select teachers independently and hold that it is impossible to run a school properly otherwise. (11, 40)

p I set out to ensure that for me as director questions of education always took pride of place, as opposed to administrative ones. Each day I spend 10-15 minutes early in the morning before class discussing with the administrative bursar questions and then have done with such matters for the rest of the day. Everything connected with administrative affairs which occurs to me I note down (in preparation for my next talk with the bursar or for my next staff meeting: a large proportion of the school’s administrative affairs are discussed in connection with educational matters, to which they are always subordinated, discussed by children and teachers on a joint basis). (11, 39)

p I see my most important task as supervisor of the school to be to ensure that teachers become thoughtful researchers with a thirst for knowledge. Elements of the scientific quest and scientific deduction from individual study are intrinsic to truly creative teaching.... (13, 9)

p I should have not stayed a single day in the school without the moral approval of all the teachers there for my work as director. .. . (11, 41)

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p Ideas about teaching are the wings on which the creativity of a whole collective of teachers soars aloft. Ideas inspire the collective and provide the stimulus for joint research work—the most interesting and vital activity in school life. (11, 93)

p Friendly, frank, sincere conversation on a man-to-man basis is the best method for effective work between school head and his teachers. Education is the most subtle of intellectual activities. Indeed I should compare the impact of the educator on his charges with the impact of music.

p Tolstoy wrote that to shape intellectual activity by force was tantamount to catching sun-rays: for whatever you might try to cover them up with, they would always come out on top again. I can recall thousands of conversations I have had with teachers, some of which filled my heart with joy and others with disappointment. I have sometimes spent one, two or even three hours talking with a teacher in respect of a single word of his, or even a smile or an angry look. (11, 31)

p Anyone who understands everything he sees going on in a lesson is a bad director and useless teacher. You must be able to notice what is vague and poorly explained, and joint discussion with the teacher concerned about such presentation is the first stimulus in the direction of scientific quest and investigation. (13, 2)

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p The very logic, philosophical foundation and creative nature of teaching make the activity impossible without scientific research. If you are anxious for teaching to be a source of joy for those engaged in it, and that the daily round of lessons does not become a tedious, monotonous obligation, a mere formal procedure, then set every teacher on the path of research into the science of education. (13, 2)

p The close relationship between the work of the teacher and scientific research consists first and foremost in the analysis of factual material and the need to anticipate which both involve. The teacher who is unable or unwilling to think through factual material in depth and also the causal relationships between facts, turns into a mere hack and his work, bereft of the skill to anticipate, becomes torture for the pupils and himself alike. (13, 2)

p A teacher is preparing for good lessons for as long as he lives.... Such is the intellectual and philosophical foundation of our profession and the techniques of our work: in order to give pupils a spark of knowledge the teacher must imbibe a whole sea of light. (13, 2)

p An erudite, perceptive and experienced teacher does not sit glued to his desk for long periods as he prepares for his lessons, he does not devise detailed plans for each of his lessons, and still less likely is he to include in that plan details of the factual material for the 180 given lesson. All his life he is in search of new ideas and material to enrich his lessons. (13, 2)

p Without the ability to anticipate and to plan work in the classroom a teacher’s work is impossible, but a good lesson is planned only in outline in the teacher’s mind; a good lesson, truly creative activity on the part of the teacher, takes shape as it goes along. (13, 7)

p A good teacher—to be honest—does not know how a lesson with all its details and offshoots will develop: this is not because he is working in the dark, but because he knows quite well what a good lesson involves. (13, 7)

p When a teacher’s range of knowledge is infinitely wider than the school curriculum, when his grasp of the syllabus material is not of central interest to him but a side issue of his mental activity, so to speak, then and only then is he a true master of his profession, an artist, a poet of the classroom. A master of the teaching profession knows the elementary steps of his science so well that at lesson-time, while that elementary material is being studied, his attention is concentrated not on the content of what is being studied, but on the pupils, their mental activity, their thought processes and the difficulties they encounter in their mental activity.

p How can we ensure that each teacher knows not merely the elementary material he is presenting, but the background and sources of his subject?

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p Reading, reading and reading yet again. Reading not at the instigation or under supervision of the director, but as an essential intellectual need, vital food for the mind. A love of reading, browsing through books, the ability to pore over books and ruminate must be fostered: how best to ensure that reading became an instinctual need for every teacher? Here there are and indeed can be no specific methods for “educational work”. This need for reading is fostered by the intellectual climate created by the body of teachers in the school as a whole. (13, 10)

p The source of the staff’s intellectual wealth is first and foremost their individual reading. The true teacher is a book-lover. (11, 46)

p Our school library contains eighteen thousand books and the personal libraries of the teachers total over 49 thousand volumes. The personal library belonging to the literature teacher Daragan, for instance, numbers over a thousand volumes, physics teacher Philippov possesses 1,200, and director of studies Lysak over 1,500, language and literature teachers Skochko and Reznik own 1,400 and 1,500 respectively, handicrafts teacher Voroshilo has over 1,800, while at our home my wife and I managed to collect a library containing over 19,000 volumes of fiction, history, works on education and the history and theory of art. (11, 46)

p Of central importance to a school’s atmosphere and the teaching that goes on in it are 182 love and an almost reverent respect for books. If a school has everything else but is poorly supplied with books vital for furthering the allround development of the pupils and enriching their intellectual life, or if the pupils feel indifference rather than love for books then it is no school worthy of the name. A school can be poorly supplied with many things and still get by, it can be a modest establishment in many respects, yet if it has books necessary to open up a wide window into the outside world, then it will still be a real school. (11, 46)

p Often you can hear the expression: “a teacher must. ..”. He “must” prepare his lessons well, leave all his personal and family worries and troubles outside the door of the classroom. He “must” be able to find a path to every pupil’s heart. Often we lose sight of the fact that other people have obligations to the teacher. Other people here means school heads, all school organisations, and the public. We are duty bound to create an atmosphere distinguished by a rich cultural life, create conditions in which the teacher’s energy and precious time will not be spent in vain; that is our first and most important obligation with regard to the teacher—- Teachers must be freed wherever possible from all manner of paperwork and administrative functions. (13, 2)

p It is time we understood that the less free time a teacher has, the more he is tied down with all kinds of planning work, reports, 183 meetings, the more his intellectual and emotional life is impoverished, and the earlier will be the onset of that stage of his life when there will be nothing left for him to give to his pupils. Our staff adheres to the following practice: a teacher is never asked to write any reports or bulletins apart from drawing up his plan for educational objectives; he is not called upon to draw up any plans for his day-to-day teaching work, for his individual lessons—that is a practice for the teacher that forms part of his individual creative technique if he feels it necessary—all that is left to him. Only once a week is he required to do additional work (either immediately after hours or in the evenings) at the school (holding a seminar or study circle, etc.). Time—I repeat yet again—is an all-important source of intellectual enrichment for the teacher. (13, 10)

p During the whole of the winter holidays no claim of any sort is made on the teachers’ time and they can rest as they like. Everything that is organised for the pupils at school during the winter holidays is essentially outdoor recreation and the children can manage by themselves. In May and June we avoid arranging seminars and conferences. Moreover most teachers enjoy one free day without lessons in addition to Sundays. All this ensures that teachers have a necessary quota of free time. (13, 2)

p I have dwelt on this subject in such detail for the following reason; on no account—and 184 of this I am quite convinced—must a teacher feel at the climax of his career after twenty-five or thirty years in school that he has exhausted his physical and mental energy. This is probably one of the most acute questions connected with the huge problem of teaching creativity, the problem concerning the teaching staff in general. ... A teacher who has 25 or 30 years’ experience behind him should feel cheerful and indefatigable. The prospect of going out with his pupils on a hike or spending a night out of doors with them bedded down in a haystack should be a pleasant not a dreaded prospect. (13, 2)

p We do not let mothers of small children and mothers-to-be work out in the fields with their pupils. That is not work for women. It should also be noted that correcting exercise books is a tedious task for the teacher. We have a special system of our own for that job. In the junior classes many pieces of work are checked by the children themselves—they exchange exercise books and then correct each other’s. Teachers do not then check all the exercise books but select a few at random. The same system is used in all classes. We are adamantly opposed to senior pupils’ essays running in to large numbers of pages. Such assignments are unnecessary. The subjects of the essays set are formulated in such a way that they do not require more than two or three pages of exposition; also pupils are encouraged only to present teachers with their own ideas. Cross- 185 checking between pupils is widely practised in the senior classes in mathematics lessons. (13, 2)

p The teacher’s free time... is the root which nourishes the branches of creative teaching. (13, 2)

p In a village context it is difficult to give children wide experience of music. However, we try not to neglect that aspect of intellectual and cultural enrichment either. In the summer many teachers visit Moscow, Leningrad or Kiev. On each occasion the opportunity to hear an opera or a first-class symphony concert is made the most of, however our main window into the world of music is provided by television. (13, 2)

p The school trade union organisation and all the teachers make preparations to welcome any new teacher due to arrive .... The village Soviet provides houses not far from the school for all teachers coming to. the area from elsewhere. The rent is paid by the school for several months in advance to free the new teacher from worries of that sort at the outset. During the summer holidays before he arrives the house is repaired where necessary and all the rooms and garden are put in order___

p In preparation for the new arrival furniture is supplied . . . and when necessary the teacher is provided with such articles as kitchen utensils and china until he has had time to settle in. The school has the necessary supplies of these articles specially set aside for young teachers. 186 Sooner or later the young teacher will purchase his own and then the school property will be put back in store by the bursar.

p Presents are made ready for the young teacher: a set of textbooks on the subject he will be teaching, a small selection of books on teaching and novels. A newspaper subscription is taken out in his name. All this the teacher will find waiting for him in his new house. This preparation is not a difficult task, what is essential is that interest should be shown in the person concerned, and that teachers, schoolchildren and the local people should join forces to welcome him. (2, 32)

p The members of the staff never forget that almost all the teachers have children of their own who are pupils at the school. The way in which the teachers’ children study and behave determines to a large degree the authority of each individual teacher and the staff as a whole. The staff goes out of its way to ensure that the progress scored by the teachers’ children correspond to their potential and that their behaviour be irreproachable. (2, 37)

p How many teachers there are who have no enthusiasm left, who are marking time at one and the same spot and simply because they have lost faith in their own potential! For them work often degenerates into nothing better than the performance of a tedious duty.... In such cases only involvement in the active life of the pupils in their work and interests can rescue a 187 teacher from a state of indifference and apathy, can kindle again his lost faith in his own ability and allow him once more to experience the thrilling joy of success in his work of instruction. (2, 71)

To head a school is first and foremost an educational assignment and last of all an administrative one. (13, 9)