p The concept of the fairy-tale looms very large in a child’s mind. His heart stands still when he hears or utters the word fairy-tale, which immediately conjures up a wondrous picture. I cannot imagine instruction in school without children having fairy-stories read to them or without them creating their own. (10, 29)

p But perhaps fairy-tales make it harder for children to understand the true laws of Nature? No, on the contrary, they help them to do so. Children are well aware that a clod of earth cannot turn into a living being, just as they realise that there are no giants, witches or sorcerers. Yet, if children were denied the world of fairy-tales, if they did not become absorbed in the battle between good and evil and did not sense that man’s ideals of truth, honour and beauty are reflected in fairy-tale adventures then their world would be a far more constricting and unfriendly place. (10, 58)

p The fairy-tale cannot exist without beauty.... Thanks to fairy-tales children become aware of the world not only through their minds, but with their hearts as well. Not only do they gain knowledge but they also react to events and phenomena in the world around them and are helped to express their attitudes 233 to good and evil. It is in fairy-tales that children find their first conceptions of justice and injustice. The initial stage of a child’s education in ideas also takes place through the fairytale. Children at that age grasp ideas only when they are embodied in vivid images. (JO, 154)

p Fairy-tales provide rich and unique opportunities for fostering children’s devotion to their homeland. The patriotic principle in the fairytale is rooted deep in the content; fairy-tale heroes created by the people and handed down across the centuries convey to children’s hearts and minds the creative spirit of the working people, its outlook on life, its ideals and its aspirations. Fairy-tales foster children’s love for their native earth for no other reason than that they are the people’s creation. When we behold the miraculous frescoes in Kiev’s Cathedral of St. Sophia we apprehend them as part of the people’s history, a creation of its mighty talent and our hearts are filled with a sense of pride in that people’s creative spirit, mind and skill. Folk-tales produce a similar impression on the heart of the child. It might appear at first glance that fairy-tales are based on simple “everyday” incidents: an old man and an old woman sowed a turnip ... an old man decided to outwit a wolf, by making an ox of straw ... yet every word in such fairytales is a delicate stroke in an immortal fresco, and every word and every character reflects the creative spirit of the people. The fairy-tale is part of the wealth of a people’s culture; as 234 he comes to know these folk-tales so a child reaches an emotional awareness of his own people. (10, 154)

p Three months after the “School of Joy" was first set up we installed the FairyTale Room in the school. With the help of older pupils we created a setting in which the small children felt themselves in a fairy-tale world. It required a good deal of work to fill this room with things that would remind children of the fairy-tales that their mothers had told them ever since they could first follow them, in the twilight before they went to bed or by the light of flickering flames. There is a house belonging to the wicked witch, Baba Yaga, standing on chicken-legs and surrounded by high trees and tree stumps, and next to the house stand fairy-tale characters: the Cunning Fox, the Old Grey Wolf, and the Wise Owl. In the opposite corner stands a cottage belonging to the Old Man and the Old Woman with a flock of swan geese flying over the roof, one of them carrying away perched on its wings little Ivasik-Telesik, the hero of a Ukrainian folktale. In the third corner is a blue sea and on its shores there stands a dilapidated old hovel belonging to the kind old fisherman and his wicked old wife, ... while in the sea nearby there swims the Goldfish. In the fourth corner there is a wood in winter complete with snowdrifts, through which trudges a small girl hardly able to make her way through the snow after her stepmother sent her out to 235 collect berries. A small kid is peeping out of one of the windows. Nearby there is a large mitten in which there lives a mouse, who is visited by unexpected strangers. We also made a large tree stump out of plywood and on this are placed puppets—Little Sister, Grey Rabbit, a bear, a wolf, a kid, a straw ox and Little Red Riding Hood.

p All this we made ourselves gradually over a period of time. I would cut out, draw, glew together and the children would help me about my work. I set great store by the aesthetic aspect of this room in which the children would listen to fairy-tales. Each picture, each fairytale character was designed to make the children more aware of what was being read to them and the ideas behind the tales. Even the lighting in the room had a part to play. When the tale of the Frog Princess was being read, small lamps would be switched on in our wood in the room which was then filled with a green gloom creating an atmosphere like that in which the events of the story actually unfold. (10, 155)

p I take the children into the Fairy-Tale Room only once a week or once a fortnight. Aesthetic needs should never be satisfied to the point of satiety. Satiety is the starting point of superciliousness, blase disillusionment, boredom, the search for ways to “kill” time—-(10, 155)

p Each time that we come into the Fairy-Tale Room the children want to start playing. Each 236 one of them—boys and girls alike—have a favourite puppet or toy. These games always take the form of creative activities: the children pretend to be fairy-tale characters and the puppets they wield help them to express their ideas and emotions. (10, 156)

p I was not distressed by the fact that the small girls and boys enjoyed playing with the puppets for several years. There is nothing “ babyish" about that, as some teachers believer dolls and puppets are just another form of fairy-tale, they give life to the characters they represent, that same life which permeates the creative process of composing and listening to fairy-stories. Puppets provide animated images of the characters the children want ... to bring alive. Every child is anxious to have something infinitely dear and precious to him. I have made a careful study of the emotional relationships which grow up between children and their favourite puppets. (10, 156)

p Making up fairy-stories is one of the most interesting forms of poetic creativity for children. At the same time it provides an important means of furthering their mental development. If teachers are keen for children to create and invent fictitious characters, then they must impart at least a spark of their own creativity to the child’s mind. If you yourself are unable to create or you regard adapting to the world of children’s interests as a futile pastime then nothing will come of it. (10, 158)

p Children’s feats of imagination in the FairyTale Room know no bounds. As soon as a child has looked at some new object which in his mind he already associates with some other one, then a picture is conjured up in his mind, his childish imagination comes into play, his thoughts throb with excitement, his eyes sparkle and the words pour forth smoothly. In view of this I made sure there was a wide range of different objects round the room, between which the children could find some real or imaginary link. I did my best so that the children could give play to their fancy and invention, that they compose new stories. Next to the heron standing on one leg there was a small frightened kitten and the children soon started thinking up interesting stories about Heron and Kitty. Then next to a small boat with a single oar in it crouched a frog simply asking its way into a story. We also had a cave with a bear cub peeping out of it, a mosquito and a fly (vastly out of proportion in relation to the bear cub but then in fairy-tales such details can be overlooked), a small piglet next to a basin and soap and all these objects did not simply make the children smile, but stirred their imagination.

p If I was able to bring a child with serious problems in his mental development to the point where he made up a fairy-story and linked together in his mind several objects in his immediate surroundings then I could say with confidence that the child had learnt to think. (10, 157)

p I have taken down various stories made up by children at twilight. These stories are dear to me as bright sparks of thought which I succeeded in kindling in my pupils’ minds. If it was not for this invention and creative activity, for this composition of fairy-stories many children’s speech would be jerky and confused, and their sequences of ideas chaotic. I have come to realise that there is a direct interdependence between children’s aesthetic sense and the wealth of their vocabulary and speech patterns. Their aesthetic sense lends emotional colour to what they say. The more interesting the fairy-tale and the more unusual the setting in which the children find themselves, the more active the play of a child’s imagination and the more unexpected the characters conjured up by the young inventors. At twilight my pupils would invent fairy-tales by the dozen, which were then written down in a manuscript anthology entitled Twilight Tales. (10, 159)

p The subject of creativity is still unexplored territory for educationists and in order to master it detailed investigation has to be carried out on the subject of the educational significance of creativity. (12, 315)

p Why does the adolescent’s “toothache of the heart" (Heine) take the form of indifference, and cooling enthusiasm in relation to studies, or quite simply an unwillingness to study? One of the main reasons for this phenomenon is a lack of, or an insufficient, creative 239 element in their emotional and intellectual life. Those stimuli that were sufficient for young schoolchildren are scant fare for the adolescent; for him to carry out the wishes and behests of an adult he respects and likes, praise and encouragement are not enough. He needs to express himself, and not only through the results of his studies but also in his own inner world. He is no longer willing to be a passive consumer of cultural riches and values. He feels the need to create. Creative inspiration through work that produces cultural values is a vital condition for a full intellectual and emotional life. (12, 316)

I have come to believe in the existence of one very important, as far as I am concerned, pattern underlying education practice, ignorance of which complicates the problems involved in educating adolescents. In Classes 5 and 6 pupils are overwhelmed with a regular avalanche of knowledge, ten times more than ever confronted them in the primary classes; the wider the range of knowledge a pupil has to assimilate the more intellectual effort he has to make and the more importance must be attached to individual, particularised work to nurture the pupil’s emotions, otherwise cold rationality will gain the upper hand. This special work for moudling character should involve reading, dramatising, telling, listening, and taking to heart fairy-tales. It should not come to a halt once a pupil gets as far as Class 5 or 6. (14, 6)