Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/282

268 vague and indeterminate. Zakon, "law," remains to them an incomprehensible word.

I made these experiments six months ago, and at first was thoroughly satisfied and proud of them. Those to whom I read them said that it was thoroughly good and interesting; but after three weeks, during which I could not myself look after the school, I proposed to carry out what I had begun, and I became convinced that all that had gone before was nonsense and self-deception. Not one pupil was able to describe a frontier, Russia, a law, or the boundaries of the Krapivensky District; all they had learnt they had forgotten; but at the same time they knew it all in their own way. I was convinced of my mistake, but I could not make out whether my mistake consisted in a bad method of instruction, or in the very idea of it. Maybe there is no possibility before a certain period of general development, and without the help of newspapers and travel, to awaken in a child an interest in history and geography. Maybe we shall find the method by means of which this can be done, and I keep trying and experimenting. One thing only I know,—that this method will never be attained by so-called history and geography; that is, in the teaching by books, for this kills, and does not awaken, this interest.

still other experiments in teaching the history of our own time, and these experiments were thoroughly successful. I told the story of the Crimean campaign; I described the reign of the Emperor Nicholas, and I related the story of the year 1812. All this was in an almost narrative tone, for the larger part, with no attempt at historical accuracy, but grouping the events around some single individual. I obtained the greatest success, as I might have expected, from my story of the war with Napoleon.