p For many years now I have been wondering to myself where the results of education find their most vivid expression. When am I morally justified in saying that my efforts have borne fruit? Experience has shown me that the first and only tangible result of education finds expression in the fact that an individual has started to think for himself and started to work out what good and bad there is within him. The most subtle educational methods and practices remain meaningless if they do not bring the individual to look at himself and give thought to his own life. (29)

p Makarenko drew attention to the importance and difficulties of stimulating conscience: "I realised how easy it was to teach someone to behave properly in my presence or in the presence of the collective, while teaching him to 344 act correctly when no one can hear him, see him, and when no one will know whether he has done so or not is very difficult—-" (8, 71)

p We teachers are or indeed should be mentors, inspirers, guardians, and creators in relation to the individual’s intellectual and emotional life during the individual’s early childhood and teens. An active emotional and intellectual experience is of paramount importance in the complex process of character formation and development which takes place during school years. Will-power to the mind and emotions is as wind to sails. Self-control is essential intellectual and emotional sphere.

p Where do the delicate roots for this human capacity lie? They are planted in concentration of will-power, in efforts to overcome obstacles and in the individual’s attempts to force himself to take the harder rather than the easier road.

p Spiritual and moral activeness is the powerful force that forges the strong and staunch individual. This effort begins in early childhood, as soon as the individual has two feet firmly on the ground. (20)

p The individual comes to educate himself in increasing measure as he attains a deeper understanding of human beings and all that is human. (14, 4)

p I am firmly convinced that real education is education that encourages self-education. Teaching children to educate themselves is 345 immeasurably more difficult than organising Sunday outings. (32)

p The emotional and intellectual lives of schoolchildren, particularly those in the senior classes, are illumined by noble dreams of great exploits. Such dreams should be cultivated and nurtured, yet that is not enough: long patient work to achieve a number of goals and to pave the way to exploits is required. Exploits and achievement in the life of the individual are never matters of coincidence, but rather the logical continuation or manifestation of his intellectual and moral development. Exploits achieved within a short space of time ennoble man’s character to the same extent as a whole period of intellectually and morally stimulating activity.

p In my teaching work I try to ensure that each pupil before leaving school achieve something which as regards his age, his capacities and opportunities would be tantamount to an “exploit” or would be regarded as such by the collective. In the life of every schoolchild circumstances may well arise which demand tremendous mental concentration and emotional effort for an immediate act of the will, all-out activity. On occasion this variety of all-out intellectual and moral activity is required for action that covers a long period. The pupil who in the process of his overall intellectual and emotional development step by step approaches the capacity for the “exploit” and selflessness is well on the way to asserting himself as a mature individual. Helping him along 346 this path is a very important means of forging his character and intellectual and moral capacities. (6, 20-21)

Aspirations to achieve “exploits” should not be limited to mere heroic dreams. The importance of the exploit in the intellectual and emotional experience of senior pupils is so great that the teacher must on all accounts help them to find scope for manifesting courage and heroism. Whatever an exploit might involve— a short, even momentary concentration of will and emotional energy, or a long struggle to overcome problems, danger or privation—the individual who has once accomplished an exploit achieves a degree of moral fibre that can be won no other way, even by years of skilled, purposeful education. (6, 196).