p A teacher’s personality largely develops on the basis of evaluations and self-evaluations. As a rule colleagues and experienced administrators lend their support to a young teacher who is just beginning his career. The way in which his pedagogical talents will develop greatly depends on their assessments.

p The Curriculum Head is still another pedagogical problem. In today’s schools he is directly responsible for establishing the scope of home assignments, for papers registering the results of study progress, and for teaching methods. As a rule such persons are hard working and responsible executives. But their position is not an easy one, for basically they have to see that a variety of instructions are carried out.

p Unfortunately, few such Heads are able to develop or perfect a systematic treatment of the teaching process into which any creative method or creative teacher could fit.

p Ideally such a person should be not a dispatcher (“Tomorrow you have a test, while you, on the other hand, have a free period, and as for you, please be so kind as to fill out your classroom register.”) but a generator of new teaching techniques and a model of pedagogical culture.

p Faik Samedovich was the first head of curriculum with whom I had occasion to associate closely. At the beginning of my stay in Solenga I lived in the same room with him. I arranged the mattress I had been given in a corner, used the floor as a writing desk, and two nails that Faik hammered into the wall served as a closet for my clothes.

p Faik was entirely different from Parfenov. He seemed to be drawn exclusively in pronounced oval lines. He possessed his own range of colours, as it were, and his own set of accounts to settle with civilisation. One could not drag him into the forest. He was not averse to beauty, providing that there was some advantage to be gained from it. While he himself barely read any books, he felt deep respect for the fact that 9 so many books had been written. This respect was combined with a natural practicality, which in local conditions easily passed for a high level of education. Above all he was concerned with the teachers’ accountability and with achieving a high rate of the students’ performance. My first conflict with him occurred during the very first quarter of the school year.

p The dictations and compositions that the children had written contained numerous errors. Initial estimates indicated that about half the class would receive "two’s.”  [9•* 

p “What is this?" asked Faik pointing to the class register.

p “Marks.”

p “A few things have to be corrected.”

p “What precisely?”

p “Here I believe you can give a three rather than a two. And here as well.”

p “But I can’t possibly put a three in this case,” I argued, "look at what is written.”

p “Why look? Simply change it.”

p The tone was friendly. Faik patted me on the back as if to reassure, me that I would find it easier in the next quarter.

p “You still do not yet know what a school is,” he suddenly added with great sincerity. "As soon as you submit such marks a commission will arrive, they will criticize you and will prove !hat you have taught the children poorly. To put it honestly, you have not yet fully mastered teaching methods, have you?”

p “No, I have not,” I agreed.

My spirits were low when I left the office. But my thoughts quickly turned away fom this nonsense, for I had other concerns. My mother had arrived.