p One of the essential principles in my teacher’s creed is boundless faith in the educative power of books. Education involves above all words, books and meaningful human relationships. . . . Books are powerful tools without which I should be dumb or tongue-tied; for I should be unable to tell a child a hundredth part of what he needs to be told and what I actually do say. An intelligent inspired book can often be decisive in relation to a man’s future. (29)

p Reading is a window through which children see and come to understand the world and themselves. It is opened to a child only when, apart from actual reading, and even before he is first shown books, painstaking work on words is carried out, work which should embrace all spheres of children’s activity and emotional life—work, play, communication with Nature, music, creativity. Without creative work that gives rise to beauty, without fairy-tales and fantasy, play and music it is impossible to imagine reading as one of the spheres of a child’s intellectual life.... A child will remain blind to the beauty of the world around him if he has not been made aware of the beauty of words read from books. The path to a child’s heart and mind can take two forms, which at first glance might appear to contradict each other: it can lead from books, from reading to oral speech, or from living words, that have become part of a child’s intellectual life, to books, to reading and to writing. (10, 169)

p Life in the world of books is quite different from the ordered diligent performance of homework. It is possible for a child to leave school with flying colours in his exams and yet with no inkling of what intellectual life involves, and without having experienced that profound human joy to be derived from reading and thinking. Life in the world of books introduces us to the world of beautiful ideas, enables us to delight in the riches of our cultural heritage and to ennoble our character. (14, 8)

p Do not be afraid of devoting whole hours of classwork to books. Do not be afraid of devoting a whole day to a journey round the “ocean of books”. Let books thrill young hearts and capture young imaginations! (14, 8)

p One of the causes of spiritual poverty is a lack of real reading which enthralls a man’s mind and heart and stimulates thinking in relation to the world outside, in relation to man’s inner world.... How should an intelligent and beautiful book be made a means of self-education? What should we do to ensure that young people were held captive not only by tape-recorders and radiogrammes, dancehalls and cinemas but also by intelligent and beautiful books? (32)

p Let the most joyous of a school’s celebrations be its Book Festival. On that day our local collective farm makes presents of books to the pupils. . .. Encourage children not only to want 250 to read but to read and reread their favourite books. Let the rereading of good books become an intellectual need of older pupils just like repeated listening to favourite pieces of music.

p Yet how should we set about this? Vital in this connection, of course, is good literature teaching. (13, 2)

p It is impossible to assess pupils’ views and convictions from the answers they give to their teachers’ questions. (If it were possible to mould a child’s outlook by having him swot wise maxims education would be a very easy undertaking.) Still less can we draw conclusions relating to children’s interpretation of the world from the answers they proffer during literature lessons. I was always afraid of forgetting even for a minute the important principle that literature is studied not so that a few years after leaving school a young man or woman is still able to repeat what he was made to swot up at school. Life confronts the individual with “exams” at every step, and it is through his behaviour and activity that he is able to show he is equal to the test. The ultimate goal for the study of literature is the moulding of man’s inner world—his morals and his cultural and aesthetic sensitivity. When I observed how pupils in their early teens could be thrilled and almost overwhelmed by literary characters, and how after listening to works of literature they would start pondering on their own lives this was infinitely more important than the precision of their answers on the text in hand. Perhaps 251 that is to a certain extent an exaggeration but for the last thirty years now I have been constantly aware of the fact that putting questions to pupils after they have read a work of literature is sometimes just as ill-advised as asking them after they have been listening to music to reproduce in words what they have just heard. (12, 129)

p Without reading there can be no true and worthwhile communication between teacher and pupil.... When I was making a close study of what and the way pupils in their early and late teens read I was horrified to see that they had no idea that real reading involved thoughtful penetration of a book’s meaning and mental exertion. They were only used to one kind of reading—reading textbooks... .

p I have realised that adolescents need to be taught how to read. In our school we set aside a special “Thinking Room”. Here we collected together over three hundred of the “cleverest books" we could find. In practice it meant we had a small reading room. (13, 2)

p The room’s very name aroused interest among the pupils it was designed for. When we first opened that room I told the pupils about an interesting book which dealt with the life of Lomonosov. I also showed the pupils the list of books I had read which I had been keeping for over twenty years. I depicted the supreme happiness for the educated man and woman—happiness of communion with books. (13, 2)

p Reading in the “Thinking Room" was always a quiet occupation, for no one was allowed to disturb the peace there with a single word, and what was more, the room was specially set up in a quiet corner of the school garden. (13, 2)

p Some of our reading time was specially set aside for poetry. I used to recite from some of the finest poetic works that have become part of the world’s cultural heritage: verses by Pushkin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Nekrasov, Fet, Shevchenko, Lesya Ukrainka, Schiller, Mickiewicz, Heine, Beranger and various other poets. The children were soon eager to learn by heart a poem that had particularly appealed to their imagination. In the course of four years’ poetry sessions the pupils learnt a good number of poems. Yet they never started memorising them before they had come to appreciate their breathtaking beauty. ...

p The children were particularly fond of having long works read to them in instalments. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was spread over several weeks. The setting in which the children listened to the book enhanced their enjoyment. Other books which I read in instalments included Maxim Gorky’s Childhood, Valentin Katayev’s A White Sail Gleams in the Distance .. . and P. Bazhov’s Malachite Casket. (10, 173)

p A library was provided even for the pupils from Class 1. It consisted of four sections. The first contained stories that were in my opinion 253 particularly valuable for the children’s moral, intellectual and aesthetic education. (We used to buy enough copies of each book to be used at lesson-time.) This section catered for the four years of primary instruction.

p In the stories which were selected there was a profoundly humane message easily accessible to the child and conveyed through vivid artistic images. .. .

p The second section of that class library was made up of stories by modern Russian and Ukrainian authors: about our daily life, the work of Soviet men and women, the peace movement, the exploits of heroes during the Great Patriotic War (1941-45), about childheroes. My pupils showed particular interest in the verses of Sergei Mikhalkov and Samuil Marshak and the stories of Gaidar, Kassil, Nosov, Prilezhayeva, Trublaini, Yanovsky, Zbanatsky, Linkov, Ivanenko, Voronkova, Zhitkov and Alexandrova.

p The third section was reserved for fairy-tales, poems and fables. . ..

p The fourth section of the library contained Greek myths. Here after a lengthy search we had assembled books containing the myths of Ancient Greece presented in a form accessible for children. Ancient mythology has an important part to play in children’s intellectual and aesthetic education. Not only does it unfold before children a fascinating page from the history of man’s culture but it stimulates the imagination, stretches the mind and encourages interest in the distant past. (10, 171-72)

p Youth is an age of poetry in the broad sense of that word—-Boys and girls in their late teens sense the poetic element not only in lyric verse but also in prose. True poetry unfolds before them in works that reflect not only real life, with all its joys and sorrows, but also in works permeated with the conviction that life’s truth will triumph. A work can depict profound grief experienced by its heroes, a plot may have a tragic ending, but even death is interpreted by pupils in the senior classes as the supreme act to affirm life, if the hero dies in the name of those who shall live after him. By the time boys and girls have reached their late teens they have already formed 1 mature views on this subject. They scornfully dismiss works which tend to present everything through rosecoloured spectacles, and round off the plot with a happy end. “Such things don’t happen in real life" they say after reading works of this kind. (6, 208)

p There is a noticeable tendency for each new generation on approaching adulthood to adopt an uncreasingly uncompromising stand on the purity of intimate emotions. Boys and girls in their late teens hope to find in poetic works portrayals of love that is loyal and ennobling and strong enough to overcome all tribulation. (6, 209)

p A fast-moving plot in a work of fiction does not satisfy readers of this age group if it is not accompanied with profound ideas: ideas which 255 throw light upon the philosophical aspect of social relations, or men’s emotional and intellectual lives, are not only read and reread time and time again, but excerpts from books containing them are recorded for future reference and the ideas are analysed and interpreted. Pupils often look for opportunities for engaging in polemics with authors.... (6, 175)

p As they approach adulthood boys and girls not only feel a greater need for aesthetic experience but also for aesthetic activity—-Many try their hand at poetry. The boys’ verses are usually concerned above all with intellectual and philosophical assessment of phenomena from the world around them. They contain no expression of their feelings as yet, no descriptions of Nature. Verses by girls from 12 upwards are distinguished by more subtle, emotionally intense expression of feelings, particularly expression of love for Nature. (6, 159-60)

p Unfortunately there are still large numbers of literature teachers whose pupils are unable to write compositions. In their efforts to force pupils to write compositions these teachers swing from one extreme to the other: either they present their pupils with ready-made models borrowed from teaching manuals, or on the contrary, they demand that what a child writes be produced “absolutely independently”. The upshot of all this is that nothing is achieved for the simple reason that the teacher himself cannot write compositions and that his pupils 256 have never heard from him a single vivid word that is all his own. (13, 11)

p It would be naive to expect that a child be spurred on by the beauty of his environment to sit down and write a composition straight off. Creative activity is not something that children engage in intuitively or instinctively: it has to be taught. A child will only put together an essay, after he has heard a teacher describe a natural scene, for instance. My first composition which I read my pupils was composed on a quiet evening as we sat at the edge of a pond. I aimed to help the children understand and sense how a visual image could be conveyed in words. At first the children merely reproduced my own compositions, but gradually they progressed to independent descriptions of scenes from Nature which had impressed them: individual creativity was emerging. In this process it is very important that children should be made aware of the emotional and aesthetic nuances of words. A child will learn to write a composition only when each word before him is like a little brick which has a previously appointed place. Children will then select the only brick that is suitable in a given context. They will never be able to pick the first words which happen to come into their head. Their emotional and aesthetic sensitivity will prevent them from doing so. (10, 180)

p During childhood each boy or girl is a poet.... I am not one of those who go into 257 raptures over children’s natural talent, and am far from the belief that every child is a poet by nature. Man’s awareness of the beautiful brings out the poet in his soul. If this awareness is not nurtured a pupil remains indifferent to the beauty of Nature and the beauty of words, a creature for whom there is no difference between the acts of throwing a stone into a pond and at a singing nightingale. Introducing a child to the joy of poetic inspiration and awakening in his heart the living seeds of creativity is just as important as teaching a child reading and arithmetic. In some children the source of creativity is richer and in others poorer. I have observed how in some cases children’s poetic inspiration is not a short-lived soaring heavenwards, not an explosion, but a constant inner need. (10, 186)

p Once more I must stress that children’s poetic creativity should not be regarded as a sign of talent. It is just as common and natural a phenomenon as the ability to drawing: it is something all children work at, it is something every child experiences. Yet poetic creativity becomes a commonplace phenomenon in a child’s life only when a teacher opens up to his pupils the beauty of the world around them and the beauty of language. Just as love of music cannot be fostered without music, so love for poetic creativity cannot be fostered without creative activity. (10, 189)

A man who loves the works of Pushkin, Heine, Shevchenko, Lesya Ukrainka, who seeks to 258 express beautifully his impressions of the beauty which surrounds him, whose search for the right word has become for him as essential a need as his need to contemplate the beautiful, for whom the concept of the beauty of man finds expression above all in respect of human dignity, in the affirmation of the most just—- communist—relations between men, can never become coarse or cynical. (10, 189)