The School at Yásnaya Polyána [excerpt] (Leo Tolstoy)

For the Months of November and December, 1862

GENERAL SKETCH OF THE CHARACTER OF THE SCHOOL 

We have no beginners. The lowest class reads, writes, solves problems in the first three arithmetical operations, and reads sacred history, so that the subjects are divided in the programme in the following manner: 

(1) Mechanical and graded reading, (2) writing, (3) penmanship, (4) grammar, (5) sacred history, (6) Russian history, (7) drawing, (8) mechanical drawing, (9) singing, (10) mathematics, (11) talks on the natural sciences, (12) religion. 

Before saying anything about the instruction, I must give a short sketch of what the Yásnaya Polyána school is and of what stage of its growth it is in. Like all living beings, the school not only becomes modified with every year, day, and hour, but also is subject to temporary crises, hardships, ailments, and evil moods. The Yásnaya Polyána school passed through such a crisis during this last summer. There were many causes for it: in the first place, as is always the case, all our best pupils left us, and we met them only occasion ally at work in the field, or in the pastures; secondly, new teachers had come to the school, and new influences began to be brought to bear upon it; thirdly, every day of the summer brought new visiting teachers, who were taking advantage of the summer vacation. Nothing is more detrimental to the regular progress of the school than visitors. In one way or another the teacher adapts himself to the visitors. 

We have four teachers. Two old ones, who have been teaching in the school for two years, and have become accustomed to the pupils, their work, the freedom and the external disorder of the school. The two new teachers both themselves fresh from school are lovers of external precision, programmes, bells, and so forth, and have not yet adapted themselves to the school so well as the first. What for the first seems reasonable, necessary, unavoidable, like the features of a beloved though homely child, that has grown up under one's eyes, to the new teachers sometime appears as a corrigible fault. 

The school is held in a two-story stone building. Two rooms are given up to the school, one is a physical cabinet, and two are occupied by the teachers. Under the roof of the porch hangs a bell, with a rope attached to the clapper; in the vestibule downstairs stand parallel and horizontal bars, while in the vestibule up-stairs there is a joiner's bench. The staircase and the floor of the vestibule are covered with snow or mud; here also hangs the programme. 

The order of instruction is as follows: At about eight o'clock, the teacher living in the school, a lover of external order and the administrator of the school, sends one of the boys who nearly always stay overnight with him to ring the bell. 

In the village, people rise with the fires. From the school the fires have long been observed in the windows, and half an hour after the ringing of the bell there appear, in the mist, in the rain, or in the oblique rays of the autumnal sun, dark figures, by twos, by threes, or singly, on the mounds (the village is separated from the school by a ravine). The herding feeling has long disappeared in the pupils. A pupil no longer has the need of waiting and shouting: “O boys, let's to school! She has begun." He knows by this time that “school” is neuter, and he knows a few other things, and, strange to say, for that very reason has no longer any need of a crowd. When the time comes to go, he goes. It seems to me that the personalities are becoming more independent, their char acters more sharply defined, with every day. I have never noticed the pupils playing on their way, unless it be a very young child, or a new pupil, who had begun his instruction in some other school. The children bring nothing with them, neither books, nor copy-books. No lessons are given for home. 

Not only do they carry nothing in their hands, but they have nothing to carry even in their heads. They are not obliged to remember any lesson, nothing that they were doing the day before. They are not vexed by the thought of the impending lesson. They bring with them nothing but their impressionable natures and their convictions that today it will be as jolly in school as it was yesterday. They do not think of their classes until they have begun. 

No one is ever rebuked for tardiness, and they never are tardy, except some of the older ones whose fathers now and then keep them back to do some work. In such cases they come running to school at full speed, and all out of breath. 

So long as the teacher has not arrived, they gather near the porch, pushing each other off the steps, or skating on the frozen crust of the smooth road, while some go to the schoolrooms. If it is cold, they read. write, or play, waiting for the teacher.

The girls do not mingle with the boys. When the boys have anything to do with the girls, they never address any one in particular, but always all collectively: “O girls, why don't you skate?" or, “I guess the girls are frozen,” or, “Now, girls, all of you against me!” There is only one girl, from the manor, with enormous, all-around ability, about ten years of age, who is beginning to stand out from the herd of girls. This girl alone the boys treat as their equal, as a boy, except for a deli cate shade of politeness, condescension, and reserve. 

Let us suppose, for example, that according to the programme there is in the first, the lowest, class, mechanical reading, in the second, graded reading, in the third, mathematics. 

The teacher comes to the room, where on the floor lie screaming children, shouting, “The heap is not large enough!” or, “You are choking me, boys!” or, “That will do! Don't pull my hair!” and so forth. 

“Peter Mikháylovich!" a voice at the bottom of the heap calls out to the teacher as he enters, tell them to stop!” 

“Good morning, Peter Mikháylovich!” shout the others, continuing their game. 

The teacher takes the books and gives them to those who have gone with him up to the bookcase; those who are lying on top of the heap, without getting up, also ask for books. The heap becomes smaller by degrees. The moment the majority have books, the rest run to the bookcase and cry : “Me too, me too. Give me yesterday's book; and me the Koltsóvian book," and so forth. If there are two left who, excited from the struggle, still keep rolling on the floor, those who have the books cry out to them: 

“Don't bother us! We can't hear a word! Stop now!" 

The excited boys submit and, out of breath, take hold of their books, and only at first, while sitting at their books, keep swinging their legs from unallayed excitement. The martial spirit takes flight, and the reading spirit reigns in the room. 

With the same enthusiasm with which he was pulling Mítka's hair, he is now reading the Koltsóvian book (so they call Koltsov's works with us), almost clenching his teeth, his eyes aflame, and seeing nothing about him but his book. It will take as much effort to tear him away from the book as it took before to get him away from fighting 

They sit down wherever they please: on the benches, the tables, the windowsill, the floor, and in the armchair. The girls always sit down near each other. Friends, of the same village, especially the younger ones (they have greater comradeship), always sit together. The moment one such has decided to sit down in the corner, all his friends, pushing one another and diving under the benches, make for the same place, sit down near him, and, looking about them, express as much happiness and contentment in their faces as though their having taken up those seats would make them happy for the rest of their lives. The large armchair, which somehow found its way into the room, forms the object of envy for the more independent individuals, - for the manorial girl and for others. The moment one of them makes up his mind to sit down in the chair, another guesses his intentions from his looks, and there ensues a struggle. One boy pushes out another, and the victor spreads himself in it, with his head way below the back, and goes on reading like the rest, all absorbed in his work. 

I have never noticed anyone whispering, or pinching his neighbour, or giggling, or snorting into his hand, or complaining against another. When a pupil who has been studying with a sexton or in a county school comes to us with such a complaint, we say to him “Why don't you pinch back?”

The two lower classes meet in one room, while the advanced class goes to the next. The teacher comes, and, in the lowest class, all surround him at the board, or on the benches, or sit or lie on the table about the teacher or one of the reading boys. If it is a writing lesson, they seat themselves in a more orderly way, but they keep getting up, in order to look at the copybooks of the others, and to show theirs to the teacher.

According to the programme, there are to be four lessons before noon, but there sometimes are only three or two, and sometimes there are entirely different subjects. The teacher may begin with arithmetic and pass over to geometry, or he may start on sacred history, and end up with grammar. At times the teacher and pupils are so carried away, that, instead of one hour, the class lasts three hours. Sometimes the pupils themselves cry: “More, more!” and scold those who are tired of the subject. “If you are tired, go to the babies," they will call out contemptuously. 

All the pupils meet together for the class of religion, which is the only regular class we have, because the teacher lives two versts away and comes only twice a week; they also meet together for the drawing class. Before these classes there is animation, fighting, shouting, and the most pronounced external disorder: some drag the benches from one room into another; some fight; some of the children of the manorial servants run home for some bread, which they roast in the stove; one is taking something away from a boy; another is doing some gymnastics, and, just as in the disorder of the morning, it is much easier to allow them to quiet themselves and resume their natural order than forcibly to settle them. With the present spirit of the school it would be physically impossible to stop them. The louder the teacher calls, - this has actually happened, - the louder they shout: his loud voice only excites them. If you stop them, or, if you can do that, if you carry them away into another direction, this small sea begins to billow less and less until it finally grows calm. In the majority of cases there is no need to say anything. The drawing class, everybody's favourite class, is at noon when, after three hours' work, the children are beginning to be hungry, and the benches and tables have to be taken from one room to another, and there is a terrible hubbub; and yet, in spite of it, the moment the teacher is ready, the pupils are, too, and if one of them should keep them back from starting, he gets his punishment meted out to him by the children themselves. 

I must explain myself. In presenting a description of the Yásnaya Polyána school, I do not mean to offer a model of what is needed and is good for a school, but simply to furnish an actual description of the school. I presume that such descriptions may have their use. If I shall succeed in the following numbers in presenting a clear account of the evolution of the school, it will become intelligible to the reader what it is that has led to the formation of the present character of the school, why I regard such an order as good, and why it would be absolutely impossible for me to change it, even if I wanted. 

The school has evolved freely from the principles introduced into it by teacher and pupils. In spite of the preponderating influence of the teacher, the pupil has always had the right not to come to school, or, having come, not to listen to the teacher. The teacher has had the right not to admit a pupil, and has had the possibility of bringing to bear all the force of his influence on the majority of pupils, on the society, always composed of the school children. 

The farther the pupils proceed, the more the instruction branches out and the more necessary does order become. For this reason, in the normal non -compulsory development of the school, the more the pupils become educated, the fitter they become for order, and the more strongly they themselves feel the need of order, and the greater is the teacher's influence in this respect. In the Yásnaya Polyána school this rule has always been observed, from the day of its foundation. At first it was impossible to subdivide into classes, or subjects, or recess, or lessons; everything naturally blended into one, and all the attempts at separation remained futile. Now we have pupils in the first class, who themselves demand that the programme be adhered to, who are dissatisfied when they are disturbed in their lessons, and who constantly drive out the little children who run in to them. 

In my opinion, this external disorder is useful and not to be replaced by anything else, however strange and inconvenient it may seem for the teacher. I shall often have occasion to speak of the advantages of this system, and now I will say only this much about the reputed inconveniences: First, this disorder, or free order, is terrible to us only because we are accustomed to something quite different, in which we have been educated. Secondly, in this case, as in many similar cases, force is used only through haste and through insufficient respect for human nature. We think that the disorder is growing greater and greater, and that there are no limits to it, we think that there is no other means of stopping it but by the use of force, —whereas we only need to wait a little, and the disorder (or animation) calms down naturally by itself, growing into a much better and more permanent order than what we have created. 

School children, small men though they be, have the same needs as we, and they reason in the same manner; they all want to learn, coming to school for this only, and so they will naturally arrive at the conclusion that they must submit to certain conditions in order to acquire knowledge. They are more than merely men, they are a company of men, united by one idea. And where three are gathered in My name, there will I be with them! When they submit only to natural laws, such as arise from their natures, they do not feel provoked and do not murmur; but when they submit to your predetermined interference, they do not believe in the legality of your bells, pro grammes, and regulations. 

How often have I seen children fighting, when the teacher would rush up to take them apart, which would only make the separated enemies look awry at each other, and would not keep them, even in the presence of a stern teacher, from rushing later against each other in order to inflict a more painful kick! How often do I see every day some Kiryúshka, with set teeth, fly at Taráska, pull his hair, knock him down, and, if it costs him his life, try to maim his enemy, - and not a minute passes before Taráska laughs underneath Kiryushka, - it is so much easier personally to square up accounts; in less than five minutes both become friends and sit down near each other. 

The other day, between classes, two boys got into a hand-to-hand fight in the corner; one of them is a remarkable mathematician, about nine years of age, of the second class; the other, a close-cropped manorial servant's son, an intelligent, but revengeful, tiny, black- eyed boy, nicknamed Pussy. Pussy had grabbed the mathematician by his hair and jammed his head against the wall; the mathematician in vain tried to get hold of Pussy's cropped bristles. Pussy's black little eyes were triumphant. The mathematician with difficulty restrained his tears and kept saying: “Well, well! What? What?” He was evidently badly off, though he tried to brace himself. 

This lasted quite awhile, and I was in a quandary what to do. “They are fighting, they are fighting!” cried the boys, crowding in the corner. The little boys laughed, while the big ones, without taking them apart, exchanged serious looks, which, together with the silence, did not escape Pussy. He saw that he was doing something bad, and began to smile criminally and to let go of the mathematician's hair by degrees. 

The mathematician got away from Pussy, pushed him so that he fell with the back of his head against the wall, and walked away satisfied. Pussy burst out weeping, made for his enemy, and struck him with all his might, though not painfully, on his fur coat. The mathematician wanted to pay him back, but just then several disapproving voices were heard.

“I declare, he is fighting a little fellow!” cried the spectators. “Run, Pussy!” 

This was the end of the matter, and it was as though it had never happened, except, I suppose, that the dim consciousness of both fighting is not a pleasant matter, because it causes both pain. 

It seems to me I observed here the sentiment of justice, which guides a crowd. How often such matters are settled no one knows on the basis of what law, and yet satisfactorily to both sides. How arbitrary and unjust in comparison with it are all educational methods employed in such cases! 

“You are both guilty, get down on your knees!” says the educator, and the educator is wrong, because only one of them is guilty, and that guilty one is now triumphant, as he is kneeling and ruminating his unspent rage, while the innocent boy is doubly punished. 

Or, “You are guilty of having done this or that, and you will be punished,” says the educator, and the punished boy hates his enemy so much the more, because the despotic power, the legality of which he does not acknowledge, is on his enemy's side. 

Or, “Forgive him, as God orders you to, and be better than he,” says the educator. You tell him to be better than he, and he only wants to be stronger, and does not, and cannot, understand anything better. 

Or, "Both of you are wrong: ask each other's forgive ness and kiss each other, children!” That is worst of all, on account of the lie and the flimsiness of that kiss, and because the feeling which was being allayed only flames out anew. 

Leave them alone, if you are not a father, or mother, and simply sorry for your child, and, therefore, always right when you pull away by the hair the one that has given your son a beating, leave them alone and see how simply and naturally the whole matter will settle itself, and at the same time in what a complicated and varied manner, like all unconscious vital relations. 

It may be that teachers who have had no experience in such disorder, or free order, will think that without the teacher's interference such a disorder may have physically injurious results, and so forth. In the Yásnaya Polyána school there have been only two cases of injuries since last spring. One boy was pushed down the porch and he skinned his leg to the bone (the wound healed up in two weeks), and they scorched another boy's cheek with burned rubber, from which he had a mark left for about two weeks. It happens not oftener than once a week that somebody cries, and then not from pain, but from anger or shame. With the exception of these two cases, we cannot recall any bruises or bumps for the whole summer among thirty to forty pupils left entirely to themselves. 

I am convinced that the school ought not to interfere in that part of the education which belongs to the family; that the school has no right and ought not to reward and punish; that the best police and administration of a school consist in giving full liberty to the pupils to study and settle their disputes as they know best. I am convinced of it, and yet, in spite of it, the old habits of the educational schools are so strong in us that we frequently depart from that rule in the Yásnaya Polyána school. Last semester, namely in November, there happened two such cases of punishment.

During the class in drawing, the newly arrived teacher noticed a boy who kept shouting, without paying any attention to the teacher, and madly striking his neighbours without any cause. Finding it impossible to assuage him with words, the teacher led him out from his seat and took his slate away from him ; that was his punishment. During the rest of the lesson the boy was bathed in tears. It was the very boy whom I had not received at the opening of the Yásnaya Polyána school, as I regarded him as a hopeless idiot. The main characteristics of the boy are dullness and meekness. His comrades never let him play with them, laugh at him, and ridicule him, and in surprise say of him: “What a funny boy Pétka is! If you strike him, even the little fellows strike him, he just picks himself up and goes away." 

“He has not any heart at all,” a boy said to me about him. If such a boy was wrought up to such an extent that the teacher punished him, the punished boy was certainly not the one who was at fault.

 Another case. In the summer, while the building was being repaired, a Leyden jar had disappeared from the physical cabinet; later, when there were no longer any carpenters or calciminers in the house, there disappeared on various occasions pencils and books. We asked the boys: the best pupils, those who had been with us the longest, our old friends, blushed, and looked so timid that any prosecuting magistrate would have taken their embarrassment for the surest proof of their guilt. But I knew them, and could answer for them as for myself. I understood that the mere thought of a suspicion offended them deeply and painfully: a boy whom I will call Fédor, a talented and tender nature, was all pale, and he trembled and wept. They promised to tell me if they found it out; but they refused to make a search. 

A few days later the thief was found: he was a manorial boy from a distant village. He had influenced a peasant boy who came with him from the same village, and both together had hidden the stolen objects in a small chest. This discovery produced a strange effect on his schoolmates: something like relief, and even joy, and at the same time contempt and compassion for the thief. 

We proposed to them to mete out a punishment to the thief: some demanded that he be flogged, but that they themselves should do the flogging; others said that a label with the inscription “thief” ought to be sewn on his coat. This punishment, to our shame be it said, had been used by us before, and the very boy who the year before had worn such a label, with the inscription “liar," was the most persistent in demanding that label for the thief. We agreed on the label, and while a girl was sewing it on, all the pupils, with malicious joy, looked at the punished boys, and made fun of them. They demanded that the punishment be increased: “Take them through the village! Let them keep on the labels until the holidays," said they. 

The punished boys wept. The peasant child, who had been influenced by the manorial boy, a talented story-teller and joker, a white-skinned, plump little fellow, was crying his heart away at the top of his boyish voice. The other, the chief criminal, a hump-nosed boy, with fine features and an intelligent face, was pale; his lips quivered; his eyes looked wildly and angrily at the triumphant boys, and now and then his face twitched unnaturally as though getting ready to cry. His cap, with torn visor, was poised on the back of his head, his hair was disheveled, and his clothes soiled with chalk. 

All that struck me and everybody else forcibly, as though we saw it all for the first time. The hostile attention of all was directed upon him. And this he was painfully conscious of. When he, without looking around and with bent head, and with a peculiar criminal gait, as I thought, walked home, and the children, running after him in a crowd, teased him in a peculiarly unnatural and strangely cruel manner, as though an evil spirit were guiding them against their will, something told me that it was not good. But the matter stood as it was, and the thief went with the label for a whole day. From that time on I thought he was studying with less zeal, and he no longer took part in the games and conversations of the boys outside the school. 

Once I came to the classroom, when all the pupils with a certain terror informed me that the boy had again stolen. He had taken away twenty kopeks in copper from the teacher's room, and he had been caught hiding the money under the staircase. We again attached the label to him, and the old monstrous scene was repeated. I began to admonish him, just as all educators admonish; a grown up boy, a good talker, who was present, began to admonish him, too, repeating the words which he, no doubt, had heard from his father, an innkeeper. 

“You steal once, and you steal a second time,” he spoke, solemnly declaiming his words, “and it becomes a habit, and leads to no good." 

I began to feel vexed. I was almost enraged against the thief. I looked at the face of the punished boy, which now was even paler, more suffering, and more cruel than before; I for some reason thought of prisoners in jail, and I suddenly felt so ashamed and felt such loathing for myself that I tore off the stupid label, told him to go wherever he pleased, and suddenly convinced myself, not through reasoning, but with my whole being, that I had no right to torment the unfortunate boy, and that I could not make of him what I and the innkeeper's son would like to make of him. I convinced myself that there were secrets of the soul, hidden from us, upon which only life can act, and not moral precepts and punishments.

What nonsense! The boy has stolen a book. By a whole, complicated road of feelings, thoughts, faulty ratiocinations, he was led to take a book belonging to somebody else, which he for some reason locked up in a chest, and I paste on him a piece of paper with the word “thief,” which means something entirely different! What for? To punish him by shaming him, I shall be told. To punish him by shaming him? What for? What is shame? How do we know that shame destroys the inclination toward thieving? Maybe it only encourages it. Maybe that which was expressed in his face was not at all shame. Indeed, I know for sure that it was not shame, but something quite different, which might have slept forever in his soul, and which it was not good to evoke. Maybe there, in the world, which is called real, in the world of the Palmerstons, Cayenne, - in the world where not that is reasonable which is reasonable, but that which is real, - let people, who themselves have been punished, invent rights and duties to punish. Our world of children - of simple, independent men - must remain pure from self-deception and the criminal faith in the legality of punishment, free from that self-deception and belief that the feeling of revenge becomes just the moment you call it punishment. 

We will proceed with the description of the daily order of instruction. At about two o'clock the hungry children run home. In spite of their hunger, they lag behind a few minutes to find out their grades. The grades at the present time amuse them very much, though they give them no privileges. 

“I have five plus, and Olgúshka has caught a whopper of a cipher! - And I got four!” they cry. 

The grades serve to them as a measure of their work, and dissatisfaction with grades is expressed only when they are not just. There is trouble when a pupil has tried hard, and the teacher by oversight gives him less than he deserves. He will not give the teacher any rest and will weep bitter tears, if he cannot get him to change it. Bad marks, if they are deserved, remain without pro test. However, marks are left with us from the old order and are beginning to fall into disuse. 

At the first lesson after the dinner recess, the pupils gather just as in the morning, and wait for the teacher in the same manner. It is generally a lesson in sacred or Russian history, for which all the classes meet together. This lesson generally begins at close of day. The teacher stands or sits down in the middle of the room, and the crowd gathers around him in amphitheatrical order, on benches, on tables, on window-sills. 

All the evening lessons, especially the first, have a peculiar character of calm, dreaminess, and poetry, differing in this from the morning classes. You come to the school at fall of day: no lights are seen in the windows; it is almost quiet, and only tracks of snow on the stair case, freshly carried in, a weak din and rustling beyond the door, and some urchin clattering on the staircase, by taking two steps at a time and holding on to the balustrade, prove that the pupils are at school. 

Walk into the room! It is almost dark behind the frozen windows; the best pupils are jammed toward the teacher by the rest of the children, and, turning up their little heads, are looking straight into the teacher's mouth. The independent manorial girl is always sitting with a careworn face on the high table, and, it seems, is swallowing every word; the poorer pupils, the small fry, sit farther away: they listen attentively, even austerely; they behave just like the big boys, but, in spite of their attention, we know that they will not tell a thing, even though they may remember some. 

Some press down on other people's shoulders, and others stand up on the table. Occasionally one pushes his way into the crowd, where he busies himself with drawing some figures with his nail on somebody's back. It is not often that one will look back at you. When a new story is being told, all listen in dead silence; when there is a repetition, ambitious voices are heard now and then, being unable to keep from helping the teacher out. Still, if there is an old story which they like, they ask the teacher to repeat it in his own words, and then they do not allow any one to interrupt him." 

“What is the matter with you? Can't you hold in? Keep quiet!” they will call out to a forward boy.

 It pains them to hear the character and the artistic quality of the teacher's story interrupted. Of late it has been the story of Christ's life. They every time asked to have it all told to them. If the whole story is not told to them, they themselves supply their favourite ending, - the history of Peter's denying Christ, and of the Saviour's passion. 

You would think all are dead: there is no stir, - can they be asleep? You walk up to them in the semi-darkness and look into the face of some little fellow, - he is sitting, his eyes staring at the teacher, frowning from close attention, and for the tenth time brushing away the arm of his companion, which is pressing down on his shoulder. You tickle his neck, he does not even smile; he only bends his head, as though to drive away a fly, and again abandons himself to the mysterious and poetical story, how the veil of the church was rent and it grew dark upon earth, — and he has a mingled sensation of dread and joy. 

Now the teacher is through with his story, and all rise from their seats, and, crowding around their teacher, try to outcry each other in their attempt to tell what they have retained. There is a terrible hubbub, the teacher barely can follow them all. Those who are forbidden to tell anything, the teacher being sure that they know it all, are not satisfied: they approach the other teacher; and if he is not there, they importune a companion, a stranger, even the keeper of the fires, or walk from corner to corner by twos and by threes, begging everybody to listen to them. It is rare for one to tell at a time. They themselves divide up in groups, those of equal strength keeping together, and begin to tell, encouraging and correcting each other, and waiting for their turns. Come, let us take it together,” says one to another, but the one who is addressed knows that he can't keep up with him, and so he sends him to another. As soon as they have had their say and have quieted down, lights are brought, and a different mood comes over the boys. 

In the evenings in general, and at the next lessons in particular, the hubbub is not so great, and the docility and the confidence in the teacher are greater. The pupils seem to evince an abhorrence for mathematics and analysis, and a liking for singing, reading, and especially for stories. 

“What's the use in having mathematics all the time, and writing? Better tell us something, about the earth, or even history, and we will listen,” say all. 

At about eight o'clock the eyes begin to get heavy; they begin to yawn; the candles burn more dimly, - they are not trimmed so often; the elder children hold themselves up, but the younger, the poorer students, fall asleep, leaning on the table, under the pleasant sounds of the teacher's voice. 

At times, when the classes are uninteresting, and there have been many of them (we often have seven long hours a day), and the children are tired, or before the holidays, when the ovens at home are prepared for a hot bath, two or three boys will suddenly rush into the room during the second or third afternoon class-hour, and will hurriedly pick out their caps.  

“What's up?” 

" Going home."

“And studies? There is to be singing yet!”

 “The boys say they are going home,” says one, slipping away with his cap. 

“Who says so? ”

 “The boys are gone! ” 

“How is that?” asks the perplexed teacher who has prepared his lesson. Stay! ” 

But another boy runs into the room, with an excited and perplexed face. 

"What are you staying here for?” he angrily attacks the one held back, who, in indecision, pushes the cotton batting back into his cap. “The boys are way down there, - I guess as far as the smithy."

“Have they gone?” 

“They have." 

And both run away, calling from behind the door: “Good-bye, Iván Ivánovich!” 

Who are the boys that decided to go home, and how did they decide it? God knows. You will never find out who decided it. They did not take counsel, did not conspire, but simply, some boys wanted to go home, “The boys are going!” - and their feet rattle down-stairs, and one rolls down the steps in catlike form, and, leaping and tumbling in the snow, running a race with each other along the narrow path, the children bolt for home. 

Such occurrences take place once or twice a week. It is aggravating and disagreeable for the teacher, — who will not admit that? But who will not admit, at the same time, that, on account of one such an occurrence, the five, six, and even seven lessons a day for each class, which are, of their own accord and with pleasure, attended by the pupils, receive a so much greater significance? Only by the recurrence of such cases could one gain the certainty that the instruction, though insufficient and one sided, was not entirely bad and not detrimental. 

If the question were put like this: Which would be better, that not one such occurrence should take place during the whole year, or that this should happen for more than half the lessons, we should choose the latter. At least, I was always glad to see these things happen several times a month in the Yásnaya Polyána school. In spite of the frequently repeated statements to the boys that they may leave any time they wish, the influence of the teacher is so strong that, of late, I have been afraid that the discipline of the classes, programmes, and grades might, imperceptibly to them, so restrict their liberty that they would submit to the cunning of the nets of order set by us and that they would lose the possibility of choice and protest. Their continued willingness to come to school, in spite of the liberty granted them, does not, I think, by any means prove the especial qualities of the Yásnaya Polyána school, - I believe that the same would be repeated in the majority of schools, and that the desire to study is so strong in children that, in order to satisfy their desire, they will submit to many hard conditions and will forgive many defects. The possibility of such escapades is useful and necessary only as a means of securing the teacher against the most detrimental and coarsest errors and abuses. 

In the evening we have singing, graded reading, talks, physical experiments, and writing of compositions. Of these, their favourite subjects are reading and experiments. During the reading the older children lie down on the large table in star-shaped form, - their heads together, their feet radiating out, and one reads, and all tell the contents to each other. The younger children locate themselves with their books by twos, and if the book is intelligible to them, they read it as we do, by getting close to the light and making themselves comfort able, and apparently they derive pleasure from it. Some, trying to unite two kinds of enjoyment, seat themselves opposite the burning stove, and warm themselves and read.

Not all are admitted to the class in experiments, only the oldest and best, and the more intelligent ones of the second class. This class has assumed, with us, a vesper-tine, most fantastic character, precisely fitting the mood produced by the reading of fairy-tales. Here the fairy like element is materialized, - everything is personified by them: the pith-ball which is repelled by the sealing wax, the deflecting magnetic needle, the iron filings scurrying over the sheet of paper underneath which the magnet is guided, present themselves to them as living objects. The most intelligent boys, who understand the cause of these phenomena, become excited and talk to the needle, the ball, the filings: “Come now! Hold on! Where are you going? Stop there! Ho there! Let her go!” and so forth. 

Generally the classes end at between eight to nine o'clock, if the carpentry work does not keep the boys longer, and then the whole mass of them run shouting into the yard, from where they begin to scatter in groups in all the directions of the village, calling to each other from a distance. Sometimes they scheme to coast down-hill into the village on a large sleigh standing outside the gate, by tying up the shafts: they crawl in and disappear with screaming in the snow -dust, leaving, here and there along the road, black spots of children tumbled out. Outside the school, in the open air, there establish them-selves, despite all the liberty granted there, new relations between pupils and teachers, of greater liberty, greater simplicity, and greater confidence, - those very relations, which, to us, appear as the ideal of what the school is to strive after…