Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/218

204 "Ivanof read!"

Ivanof will hunt around for the place and begin to read. All are attention; watchful of the teacher, every word is accurately pronounced, and the reading goes with considerable smoothness. It seems admirable, but probe it a little; the one who is reading is reading the same thing for the thirtieth or the fortieth time.

A printed leaf suffices for at least a week, for to purchase new books every time would be terribly expensive, and books comprehensible to the children of peasants are not more than two: the tales of Khudyakof and Afanasief. Moreover, the books used once by one class become so familiar that some know them by heart, and all get tired of them, and they are a bore even to the families of the scholars.

The one that reads is bashful, hearing his own voice ringing through the silence of the room; all his energies are concentrated on the observation of signs and accents; and he contracts the habit of reading without trying to make out the sense, for he is burdened with other distractions. Those who listen do the same, and in their efforts to keep the place when they may be called on, they run their fingers regularly along the lines, and this bores them, and they are easily distracted by outside incidents. The sense of what is read, being an extraneous affair, sometimes against their will sticks in their minds, sometimes does not.

The chief harm lies in that eternal conflict of sharpness and trickery between teacher and pupils which always develops in such an order of things, and which we had hitherto escaped in our school; while the sole advantage of this method of reading—namely, the correct pronunciation of words—had no influence on our pupils.

Our pupils began to read phrases put on the walls, and pronounced by themselves; and all were aware that the word kogo—whose—is pronounced as if it were kavó. I opine that it is useless to teach them to keep their voices up, or to change their voices in accordance with arbitrary marks, since every five-year-old child