This December I read “And the Skylark Sings with Me:  Adventures in Homeschooling and Community-Based Education” by David Albert.  This father’s recount of homeschooling now 10 year old Ali and 6 year old Meera was well-written and full of references for further reading.  The reviews on Amazon are mixed, and I can understand why.  David’s tone is “self-congratulatory”, and I did tire of the seemingly endless accounts of Ali’s exceptional abilities.  Still, I also deepened my understanding of how parents can work to find resources in the community to meet a child’s special interests, and how I can advocate for my child to help her follow her interests.  Though I wouldn’t purchase “And the Skylark Sings with Me”, it was worth a library request and my time. 

After finishing the book I had a list of titles to explore from the author’s suggestions.  At one point, David (the author), takes a jab at textbooks designed to teach writing.  He suggests that we’d do better to teach our children to write from authors who have published more significant works.  It turns out that Leo Tolstoy wrote quite a bit about how to educate “the masses”.  The book “Tolstoy as Teacher” was available at my library, so I decided to take a peak. 

“Tolstoy as Teacher” has it’s slow parts, to be sure, but the largest part of the book is Tolstoy’s fascinating description of his free school for peasant children.  Tolstoy’s approach was shockingly modern.  School was free in every sense of the word:  no tuition, no attendance expectations, no tests, no forced order.  The Count found teachers who were willing to share his vision of providing an education that was so meaningful and pleasurable to the students that they would attend and participate voluntarily.  Wow!  His approach has much in common with modern freeschooling movements. 

How did it work?  Tolstoy says, “Schoolchildren – small though they are – are people, and as people they have the same needs we do, and they follow the same trains of thought.  They all want to learn, and come to school for this reason alone, and so they will naturally arrive at the conclusion that they must submit to certain conditions in order to learn” (pg. 81).  And so they did.  Tolstoy describes how the children clustered eagerly around the lecturing teacher, impatiently shushed distractions and willingly attended lessons until late into the night.

Tolstoy rejected using shame and punishment to correct bad behavior at school.  He preferred to allow the students to work it out amongst themselves and to leave the teaching of morality to parents.  I found myself chuckling as Tolstoy made such bold, modern statements as, “Our world of children – of simple, independent people – must remain pure, free from the self-deception and the criminal faith in the legality of punishment, the self-deception of believing that the feeling of revenge becomes justified as soon as you call it punishment” (pg. 86).  Here is the heart of the non-violent parenting approach, so popular today.  While I do not agree entirely, it is interesting to note that as the Bible says, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

Oh, and about tests and exams, I could not agree with him more, “Where examinations are introduced (by ‘examinations’ I mean any required answering of questions), there only arises a new useless subject, one that requires special efforts and special talent.  This subject is called ‘preparation for examinations or lessons’” (pg. 129).  Tolstoy asserts  that the teacher should only be answerable to the students.  How’s that for “No Child Left Behind”?  “If an outsider wants to evaluate our knowledge, let him or her live with us awhile so he or she can see the results of our knowledge, and its applications to life” (pg. 129). 

Tolstoy also explains why teaching history and geography to children is pointless unless those children have a real interest in the subject.  His detailed essay regarding how to teach writing focuses on allowing the child to write from the heart about things that interest the child.  “Most important, when looking through a piece composed by a student, never make any comments about the neatness of the notebook, about penmanship, spelling, and above all, about sentence structure or logic” (pg 48).  Tolstoy does explain that a child must learn these things in time, but stresses that a teacher should not dampen a child’s joy in self-expression by expecting too much too soon in the way of neatness, spelling, logic, etc.   

Reading “Tolstoy as Teacher” was refreshing, I suppose even more so than reading “And the Skylark Sings with Me.”  It’s nice to feel liberated to pursue this homeschooling adventure in my own way, knowing that children can flourish in many different environments and through differing approaches, so long as their needs are shaping the journey.