Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/219

Rh correctly employs, in speaking, the punctuation marks when he understands what he says. Therefore it is easier to teach him to comprehend what he reads from a book—for sooner or later he must attain this—than it is to teach him by punctuation marks to sing as if by notes. But it seems so comfortable for the teacher!

The teacher is always involuntarily impelled to select for himself the most convenient method of teaching.

The more convenient this method is for the teacher, the more unsuitable it is for the scholar.

That method is the only good one which renders the pupils contented.

These three laws of instruction are reflected in the most palpable way in the Y. P. school in the mechanical reading.

to the vitality in the spirit of the school, especially when its older pupils returned from their village occupations, this method of reading failed of itself, they began to grow listless, to play pranks, they cut the lessons. The main point,—the reading of stories,—which would go to prove the success of this mechanical method, showed that there was no success at all, that during five weeks not a step of progress had been made, many had fallen behind. The best mathematician of the first class, R, who could perform examples in square root in his head, got during this time so out of the practice of reading that he even had to spell out words.

We dropped reading in books and racked our brains in trying to invent a method of mechanical reading. The simple notion that the time had not yet come for good mechanical reading, and that there was no necessity for it as yet, that the pupils themselves would find the best method, did not occur to us for some time.

During these experiments the following scheme