Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/251

Rh mark of five only from those professors whose notebooks I knew by heart.

Visitors, who have done so much injury to the instruction at the Yasno-Polyana school, have in one direction conferred a great service on me. They have definitely convinced me that written and verbal examinations are a relic of medieval scholastic superstition, and that in the present order of things they are decidedly impossible and only harmful.

Often, under the influence of a childish conceit, I have wished to show some esteemed visitor, in an hour's time, the attainments of our pupils, with the result either that the visitor would be persuaded that they knew what they did not know,—I surprised him by a certain hocus-pocus,—or else the visitor would suppose that they did not know what they really knew very well. And a regular confusion and misunderstanding arose at such a time between me and the visitor—an intelligent, talented man, a specialist in these matters, and a believer in absolute freedom of relations. What then would result from the official visits of directors and supervisors, to say nothing of the interruption of the course of study, and the confusion of ideas caused by such examinations among the pupils?

At the present time I am convinced that to sum up all the knowledge of a pupil is as impossible for the teacher or the stranger as it would be to sum up my knowledge or yours in any subject you please. To bring a cultivated man of forty to an examination in geography would be no more strange and stupid than to bring a man of ten to the same. The one as well as the other cannot answer the questions in any other way than word for word, and in an hour's time it is actually impossible to test their knowledge. Really to learn what either one knows it is necessary to live with him for months.

Wherever examinations are introduced—and by examinations I understand any demand for answers to questions—there appears only a new and useless object, demanding special labor, special qualities, and this object