Beauty is a powerful source of education for moral purity, spiritual wealth, and physical perfection. The skill of education lies in the fact that from the beauty of the surrounding world - nature, art, human actions - the child draws spiritual nobility: genuine human kindness, cordiality, responsiveness, readiness to create and affirm the beautiful.
This is how a calling is born and how self-education occurs. In the process of work, moral relations between individuals arise from the moment a person begins to see in his own virtues, when another person becomes a mirror for them. It is precisely these moral relations in the team that create professional self-education.
Then workers' clubs, which operated after normal classes, were an integral part of the educational experience at Pavlysh, having a great influence on general atmosphere schools and on children's interest and academic success. They have also become a key area for pastoral care. Sukhomlinsky believed that a person's character is determined by their concept of happiness. Our concept of happiness grows from seeds sown in childhood. It seems true that as children and adults, we are attracted to happy people. We want to share this happiness and therefore we are more likely to learn from happy people and try to imitate them.
We tell students:
Beauty is the joy of your life. Man became Man because he saw the depth of the blue sky, the twinkling of stars, the pink spill of the evening and morning dawn, the crimson sunset before a windy day, the fluttering haze over the horizon, the boundless distance of the steppes, blue shadows in the snowdrifts March snow, a school of cranes in the sky blue, the reflection of the sun in transparent drops of morning dew, gray threads of rain on a cloudy autumn day, a purple cloud on a lilac bush, a delicate stalk and a blue bell of a snowdrop - I saw and was amazed, and walked along the earth, creating new beauty. Stop and you are amazed at the beauty - and your heart will blossom human beauty. The joy of life opened before a man because he heard the whisper of leaves and the song of a grasshopper, the murmur of the first spring stream and the ringing of the silver bells of a lark in the hot summer sky, the rustle of snowflakes and the howling of a blizzard outside the window, the gentle splash of a wave and the solemn silence of the night - he heard and, holding his breath, he listens for hundreds and thousands of years to the wonderful music of life. Know how to listen to this music, know how to enjoy the beauty.
Children also learn much easier when they are happy. To realize his dream, he took unusual strategy. He went to the parents of children who were due to start school in a year and asked them to send their children to school a year early. He overcame his reservations by promising that he would not shorten his childhood to formal schooling. At that time, children in the Soviet Union started school at the age of seven, so Sukhomlinsky asked parents to send it to their six-year-old children. This gave him the freedom to manage his own program as he worked outside the rigid curriculum set for 1st grade, to Sukhomlinsky being an artistically gifted individual.
We strive to bring this commandment of beauty into all spheres of the spiritual life of students: mental and physical work, creativity, social activities, spiritual-psychological and moral-aesthetic relationships, friendship.
Already the first autumn of school life convinces us that beauty is the mother of kindness and cordiality. All your admiration for a rosehip bush, on which the inflorescences of red berries and orange leaves are burning, a small maple, a slender apple tree, on which a few yellowed leaves remain, a tomato bush, scorched by the first breath of frost at night - all this awakens in the child an affectionate, friendly, caring attitude to the living and living. He sympathizes with plants preparing for a difficult time - winter.
As a young man, he published poetry in local newspapers and enjoyed drawing. Like many young men in his area, he knew how to make a folk trumpet from a thin branch of an older tree and make music on it. All his artistic talent found expression in his teaching.
Exploring the beauty of nature
As they sat in the shade and watched the sun's rays filter through the leaves, Sukhomlinsky composed a fairy tale in which he sought the children's own observations of the natural beauty around them. It was the story of giant blacksmiths who worked every day to forge a new crown for the sun, sparks from their blows showered with rays of light. The children suggested new reasons for his story, and when he spoke, he drew an illustration to match the words. This was his way of increasing children's awareness of their surroundings and the sense of joy in them, stimulating their imagination and establishing a joyful relationship with them.
Spring excursions and observations are especially important for developing a sense of beauty. “You can’t sleep for a long time these days,” we teach children, “you can sleep through the beauty.” And the children rise before sunrise, trying not to miss those moments when the first stream of sunlight illuminates the flowers covered with dew drops. This is an amazing play of colors and shades, and if a child, with bated breath, admires its unique beauty, then we are no longer afraid of callousness, indifference, and heartlessness. We develop and enrich the priceless spiritual wealth acquired through the contemplation of beauty through work aimed at creating joy for people.
He ended the lesson by giving each child two bunches of grapes - one to eat and one to give to their mothers. This was his plan for each child when they were strong enough to plant their vine and hold it. We can see here the key elements of Sukhomlinsky's approach: the selection of beautiful natural environments in which to teach lessons, the composition of stories about these surroundings, attention to children's nutrition and health, and care that children learn to bring joy to family and friends.
Sukhomlinsky did not have detailed plan events for the year. He saw himself as simply facilitating children's discovery of the world and responding creatively to it: The life of our school developed from an idea that inspired me: the child is by nature a witty explorer, an explorer of the world. So let's open up to him wonderful world in living colors, in bright and exciting sounds, in fairy tales and games, in your own creativity, in beauty that inspires the heart, in the desire to do good to others.
Create, create beauty - we teach children. Let a chrysanthemum bloom next to an ear of wheat, a rose next to a corn stalk, and a lilac bush next to a potato bush. By decorating the earth, you create your own beauty.
From an early age, we instill in children sensitivity to the aesthetic side of the environment: wherever we work and relax, it should be beautiful.
Through a fairy tale, fantasy, play, thanks to the unique creativity of children - this true path to the heart of a child. Sukhomlinsky often includes in the text of his books fairy tales and poems composed by his students, as well as some composed by himself. The children's first attempts were usually responses to his own stories, but they soon made up stories in response to each other. Stories helped children develop ideas about right and wrong and allowed them to express their hopes and fears and encourage observation and appreciation of nature.
Nature: source of life
The composition of the stories took place orally and collectively and provided Sukhomlinsky with the opportunity to observe the thought processes of each child: A fairy tale, figuratively speaking, is a fresh wind that fans the fire of thought and speech of a child. Children not only love to listen fairy tales. How bright and colorful their language is! Sukhomlinsky's approach to teaching early literacy skills was also very creative. Sukhomlinsky argued that reading and writing should not be taught until children’s interest in words is strengthened by emotional experiences mediated by feelings: I tried to ensure that for a child a word was not just a designation of an object or phenomenon, but an emotional coloring carried within it - its own aroma, its own subtle shades.
Subjects of great concern to student groups are the beauty of classrooms and school holidays. The students embroider tablecloths for the classroom table and napkins for a carafe of water. In the school workshop they make beautiful frames for wall newspapers and reproductions of paintings. High school students change out prints in the school art gallery twice each year.
Until the child feels the aroma of the word, until he sees its subtle shades, one should not begin learning to read and write, and if the teacher does this, he condemns the child to hard labor. This approach was undoubtedly partly Sukhumlinsky, following his natural inclination to organize enjoyable outdoor activities for children, as he had done since adolescence.
Making full use of the spell which nature was able to cast over her youthful charges, he tapped what he called the "emotional wellsprings of thought"; He referred to nature as a “source of living thought,” and to his excursions with children as “journeys to the sources of words”; The following excerpt gives some idea of how this approach worked in practice: We continued our “journeys” to the sources of words with sketchbooks and pencils. Here is one of our first “travels”. My goal was to show children the beauty and subtle nuances of the word meadow.
Love your native word. Read and reread outstanding works fiction. Just as listening to a beautiful melody reveals to you the beauty of music, so re-reading a poetic work reveals to you more and more spiritual riches, the beauty of life, the greatness of man. Love music - it ennobles your thoughts and feelings. Our goal is to ensure that reading works of art, especially lyric poetry, enters the spiritual life of every student and brings deep personal pleasure. Just as a musically educated person who feels the beauty of music has his favorite melodies and works, which he listens to dozens of times with pleasure, so every cultured person should have his favorite poetic, lifelong ones. works of art, repeated reading of which each time reveals to him more and more new shades of beauty - this is our program practical activities in this important area of education.
We sat under a weeping willow tree that leaned on the pond. In the distance, a meadow illuminated by the sun showed green color. Butterflies fly over the grass, bees buzz. In the distance is a herd of cattle that resemble toys. It seems that the meadow is a light green river, and the trees are dark green banks. The herd bathes in the river. Look at how many red flowers are starting to fall in autumn. And when we listen to the music of the meadow, do you hear the soft buzz of the flies and the song of the grasshopper? I draw a meadow in my sketchbook. Children are fascinated by the beauty of a quiet morning and they also draw.
For most children, letters are pictures. And every drawing reminds them of something. Sensitivity to the music of nature helps children sense the meaning of the word. The outlines of each letter are remembered. Children give each letter a vibrant sound, and each letter is easy to remember. The drawing of this word is perceived as a whole.
During excursions and walks, we reveal to the child the wealth of feelings, experiences, thoughts that the people have put into every word and carefully pass it on from generation to generation. Children admire the beauty of the morning dawn - and we reveal to them the emotional connotation of the word dawn, admire the twinkling stars - and we reveal to them the beauty, the aroma of the word twinkle. On quiet summer evenings, we spend conversations in the lap of nature dedicated to the words sunset, twilight, silence, whisper of grass, Moonlight. Here, in the lap of nature, we read immortal examples of Russian and world poetry.
The word is read, and this reading is not the result of lengthy exercises in sound analysis and synthesis, but is a conscious reproduction of a sound, musical image, which corresponds visual image words that were just drawn by the children. When there is such a unity of visual and auditory perception, filled with a wealth of emotional nuances that have been transmitted to the word, the letter and small word are remembered at the same time. Dear reader, this is not the discovery of some new method of teaching literacy.
Qualities required for a teacher
This is a practical implementation of what science has proven: that it is easier to remember what you don't have to remember, and that the emotional coloring of perceived images plays a decisive role in remembering. However, he had reservations about how easy it would be to duplicate his experience: We should caution here against trying to mechanically duplicate someone else's experience. Learning to read and write using this method is creative process, and creativity cannot be created using a template. To take on something new, you need to be creative.
Already in primary school matinees are held artistic reading, in middle and high schools - evenings. They become the most important form of instilling a love of words.
From the first days of school, we instill in children a love of music. Great importance We listen to the music of nature: the singing of birds, the buzzing of bees, the noise of an oak forest, the trembling of leaves, the howling of the wind, the rustles of the night. Not everyone is destined to become a musician, but everyone should enjoy the riches created by humanity. On musical evenings and matinees, students listen to tape-recorded folk melodies and works by outstanding composers.
There are many ways a teacher can be creative. Sukhomlinsky believed that the most important prerequisite for a teacher’s creativity is the ability to penetrate into the inner world of a child or, as another Soviet teacher put it, to relive the child’s childhood. Sukhomlinsky wrote: “I am firmly convinced that there are qualities of the soul without which a person cannot become a true teacher, and among them the ability to enter the inner world of a child is pride.”
It is the teacher's awareness inner world each child determined the nature of the relationship between teacher and student and dictated the means for teaching children individually and collectively. Without this awareness and proximity to it, teachers could find their relationships with students degenerating into one of open hostility. It is for this reason that Sukhomlinsky believed that it was so important for teachers to spend time with their students outside of the classroom and place such emphasis on the many extracurricular clubs and activities at school.
These are some aspects of our practical work By aesthetic education, introducing the child to the world of beauty.
V.A. Sukhomlinsky
HOW TO LOVE CHILDREN
Sometimes you can still hear a discussion among teachers: is it necessary for every teacher to love children? “What if I don’t like them? - one teacher flaunted his originality. - What if their noise gives me a headache? If I only know bright moments when I don’t hear or see them? So, will you order me to leave school and retrain?”
Sukhomlinsky’s learning style was associated with his personality and depended on a number of personal qualities and artistic abilities, which he developed throughout his life. Each of his school's teachers had special talents, skills, and interests that determined the methods they used. Everything they put together was an attempt to understand each individual child and bring out the best in them. Sukhomlinsky wrote an essay on the importance of teachers' love for their students, entitled "How to Love Children"; A teacher without love for a child is like a singer without a voice, a musician without an ear, an artist without a sense of color.
There can be only one answer to this original: yes, you need to leave school and acquire another specialty. Or to cultivate love for a child - there is no other option.
For love for a child in our specialty is the flesh and blood of the educator as a force capable of influencing the spiritual world of another person. A teacher without love for a child is like a singer without a voice, a musician without hearing, a painter without a sense of color.
It is impossible to understand a child without loving him. Sukhomlinsky suggests that one aspect of the psychology of love is the awareness of the uniqueness of each child: When small six-year-old children begin to educate me, a year before they begin their education, I am struck by the dissimilarities in children's perception of the world. And every small window unique, with its own characteristics. One child perceives the world through the music of nature - carefully listens to the song of birds and the buzzing of a bumblebee, the whispering grass and the rustling of leaves.
The other discovers the world with its colors and shades. Sukhomlinsky discovered that the contemplation of natural beauty, which depicts so much in his teaching methods, was effective way developing mutual understanding with children whose life experience made them close their hearts to people. When the teacher was able to respond to beauty with childlike enthusiasm, bonds of friendship were formed with the students. A child not only sees and understands, he evaluates emotionally, he loves, admires miracles, hates, and strives to come to the defense of good from evil.
You cannot know a child without loving him. All outstanding teachers of the past became lights of pedagogical culture and humanity, first of all, precisely because they loved children. Jan Amos Komensky, Pestalozzi, Ushinsky, Disterweg, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Leo Tolstoy, Krupskaya, Shatsky, Makarenko, Janusz Korczak - these names will always shine for us as Eternal flame wise human love. “If a teacher has only love for his work, he will be a good teacher,” wrote L. Tolstoy. - If the teacher has only love for the student, like a father, mother, he will better than that a teacher who has read all the books, but has no love for either the work or the students. If a teacher combines love for his work and for his students, he is a perfect teacher.”
It's about not about instinctive love, not ennobled by life wisdom, which sometimes brings great harm to the child. We're talking about wise human love, inspired by deep knowledge of humanity, understanding of all the weak and strong sides of the individual - about love, warning against reckless actions and inspiring honest, noble actions. Love that teaches you to live is not easy; it requires the exertion of all the forces of the soul, their constant giving.
At the same time, love for children inspires the teacher and is a source for him, from which he constantly draws new strength.
I can't imagine ever getting so tired of a child that I stop loving him. This is impossible, since it is impossible to fully recognize the humanity in a child and say: that’s it. There's nothing more about you that I don't know. Coldness, mutual hostility, and then disgust (and sometimes even hatred: unfortunately, in our most humane place in the world - at school, and this happens) arises when the teacher believes that he already knows the child like he knows his own fingers. Imagine that a blindfolded man undertakes, among many roses, to determine the brightest, most attractive flower to the human eye - what can such a sage say? This is how a teacher seems to me to be a sage, who believes that he already knows the child to the end. Yes, even a lifetime is not enough for this! When six-year-olds come to school a year before they start school and become my students, I am struck by the dissimilarity of children’s perceptions of the world. I look into the black, blue, blue, gray eyes, and it seems that every child has now opened his own small window into the world and is looking, enchanted, at the sky and the earth, the sun and the moon, a flower and a bird. And each window is unique, unique. One perceives the world through the music of nature - listens to the singing of birds and the hum of a bumblebee, to the whisper of grass and the rustle of leaves. The world opens up to others in colors and shades. One sees the phenomenon as a whole, while the other looks at the details. So we went into the forest. One child is captivated by all the majestic beauty of life and flowering, while others are amazed by some small stem; one is amazed by the polyphonic singing of birds, and the other cannot take his eyes off the ant, which is pulling a load several times heavier than itself.
The more you understand these subtleties of a child’s worldview, the more you love each child. If I did not recognize the multifaceted humanity in a child, if every day did not reveal something new to me in every child, all children would seem to me similar friend on a friend - I would not see the child. And the one who does not see the child cannot love him.
A teacher's love for children is born in grief, in the struggle for a person, and often in agony. It would be naive to imagine that all children who come to school - beautiful roses; and the teacher has no choice but to admire them. There are roses and there are thistles. How many ugly things children bring with them, how many things happen when a child’s heart is like an abscess, like an ulcer, the roots of which go back to the depths of those days when a window into the world just opened before the child. It happens that it is not pure, honest, frank eyes that look at you, but arrogant, hypocritical eyes. Is it possible to love all this? I love the child not as he is, but as he should be. And when it is possible to cleanse a child’s heart from abscesses and ulcers, when the spirituality of beauty shines in the child’s eyes, and a hypocritical grin does not wander, I love this real person, for in him is a piece of my soul.
Probably the worst of all the ugly things that you sometimes find in a child’s soul is childish cynicism. It is a product of those family conditions where a person is humiliated. I will never forget seven-year-old Stanislav K. It’s hard to believe, but it’s really true: a seven-year-old cynic. Before his eyes, everything that was bright and dear in a person was defamed, distorted, and exposed to the light in the stinking dirt. For a child, there was nothing sacred in life. He did not know what a mother’s affection was and that in general there was warmth, sincerity, and sensitivity in the world. The boy could not imagine that one person could give up his spiritual powers for the benefit of another person. He saw the exact opposite in the family: everything was done only for personal gain.
Only disgust and disgust was caused by the ugly thing that was in the boy’s soul. But it was a man. He was going to be great! The art of our profession is to hate evil without enduring hatred towards the one in whose soul it lives.
In my opinion, the overwhelming majority of conflicts between the teacher and “incorrigible”, “hopeless” schoolchildren are precisely
arises where the teacher transfers hatred of evil to the child. However, re-
A child is a child, and adults are to blame for the evil that has taken root in his heart. In my teaching practice there is a rule: no matter how scary .
no matter how evil there is in a child’s soul, one must see in this disfigured soul first of all
a person who is waiting to be helped - to be cured of evil. I'm appealing
not to the voice of evil, but to the voice of human beauty, which is necessarily present in a child, which cannot be drowned out by anything.
Stanislav is experiencing amazing feelings at these moments. This is confusion, confusion, and sincere passion for beauty. I see a child in front of me: he appears before me the way I will love. Of course, there is still a long way to go until a complete cure for evil occurs. Patiently, gradually I am looking for more and more new paths to the child’s heart. These paths are, first of all, our common spiritual interests - we are passionate about flowers, we live in a world of play of colors, we are inspired by the beauty of life; then this hobby is supplemented by interest in the book. We read interesting works about man, about his joys and sorrows, about man’s loyalty and devotion to man. Gradually, like the great mystery of life, like the amazing world of the truly human, noble human feelings are revealed to the boy: affection, cordiality, kindness. First, the child recognizes these feelings in other people, then they awaken in himself. So Stanislav began to live in a new way, to know a person with his heart.
Months pass, a year passes, a second, a third year school life. The boy learns affection and warmth, kindness and sympathy. Cynicism disappears without a trace. Every year I become more and more attached to the boy. I didn’t tell him a word about what he saw and sees in the family. I spoke to him simply, like person to person, and from the time the person in him awakened, everything good that came to life in the child’s heart became my ally, an assistant in education.
Children by their very nature are optimists. They are characterized by a bright, sunny, cheerful worldview. Loving children means loving childhood, and for childhood optimism is the same as the play of colors for the rainbow: no optimism - no childhood.
But here we often encounter a serious misfortune in school life: the teacher, sometimes, without knowing what he is doing, cuts off the roots of optimism, cuts it down methodically, mercilessly. Optimism is like a magical colored glass through which the world around us seems like a great miracle to a child. A child not only sees and understands, he evaluates emotionally, he loves, is carried away, is surprised, hates, and strives to defend good against evil. You cannot take this magic glass away from a child. You can’t turn him into a cold, rational reasoner. Here we come to the meadow. Twilight silence. Butterflies fly over the flowers, blue sky The lark sings, a fish jumps up on the reach. The children are excited, they run from flower to flower, hide in the bushes, and call to each other. All this is childish optimism, all this is light through a magic glass. Let the children enjoy the wonderful vision of the world through the magic glass. Let them run and play. Let each of them be surprised and, with bated breath, look at what surprised him. Don’t do anything like teachers who don’t love childhood do: they don’t allow this childish cheerfulness to blossom, they rather rush to gather the children together, put them two in a row, and the tedious “analysis” begins...
In the children themselves, in their optimistic worldview, is the source of my love for them. I want to be with children. This desire becomes especially strong when, for some internal reason, I feel a decline in spiritual strength. You know that communication with children will instill vigor and replenish spiritual strength, and therefore at such moments you strive more than ever to be with children. But...there is one very important pattern here education, which must be remembered. And if you forget about her, then neither you will love children, nor children will love you. This pattern can be formulated as follows: if the entire time during which the teacher is with his students is considered a single whole, then two thirds of it should be relaxed, comradely , friendly communication, in which children forget that they are pupils, and the teacher is their educator. This communication should permeate activities not related to learning, mastering material, grades, academic performance, etc. In this communication, the intellectual inequality that is the result of unequal mental capabilities should recede into the background. Here, in this communication, everyone feels equal; here everyone is, first of all, not a student, but a person. In such communication, everyone appears before you, the educator, not as he is assessed, but as he is when all his human abilities and inclinations are revealed. This communication itself is an inexhaustible source of that joy that forever leaves an imprint on the emotional memory of the teacher, thanks to which the days and hours of communication with children are remembered as the happiest time of life. It would be naive to think that finding such communication with children in which they would respect the teacher means that the teacher will stoop to the level of the children. Children understand and feel the intellectual superiority of the teacher, they strive to rise to his thoughts and life wisdom. But in order to raise children to their level, the teacher must deeply understand their spiritual world. And this world is extremely multifaceted, and its intellectual basis is not limited to studies and grades. What is this wealth?
First of all, in the communication of children and teachers with nature. The natural world is a rich source of emotions, and it is thanks to its direct impact on the feelings that nature also affects the mind, it makes the window through which the child looks at the world wide, clear, and bright. The knowledge of beauty ennobles the heart, the child becomes beautiful, as if for the first time you see children in front of you whom you are accustomed to seeing in other conditions. Over the course of ten years of friendship with each group of my students, I discover several - sometimes seven, sometimes eight or nine magical corners of nature of indescribable beauty: in the forest, in the field, on the banks of a lake, river, pond, in dense thickets of meadow bushes, in ravines and groves. The beauty of these corners of nature fascinates with its harmony; it awakens noble human experiences in the most indifferent hearts. I take children to these corners during the periods of the brightest flowering or the equally bright decline of nature - early and late spring, summer, autumn. We don't talk much here, and when I explain something, every word is filled here. We admire nature, and the fact that each of us in these moments opens our hearts towards beauty makes us friends, as if for the first time we see in each other those features that we had not noticed before. Here, in these moments, the seeds of love sprout wildly.
We have such secluded corners in nature where we come to live here for two or three days. This happens not so often - two or three times a year, mainly in the summer. We build huts, put up tents, and prepare food. Every hour of being among nature brings us more and more new discoveries. But the most valuable thing is what we discover in each other.
I will forever remember Peter S. He graduated from school ten years ago and now works as an engineer. And when I remember it, a picture appears: a warm summer evening, the sun is setting, purple colors are playing on the reach of the pond, we came to the Mother’s Garden, to the mother of two sons who died in the war. Peter S., a dark-eyed fifth grader, walked up to the apple tree, picked several ripe pink apples, put them on a plate, stood there admiring them. Now he will carry the apples to his mother, but he wants to relive this unforgettable moment longer, since he admires not just the apples, but his own labor embodied in them, he is proud of the human beauty in himself. This picture has been imprinted in my memory for the rest of my life and always appears before me as if alive as soon as I hear the name of Peter S.
When I remember Tamara Sh., who graduated from school and is now studying at the university, I also see bright picture spiritual work. From the first grade, the girl became interested in flowers. On the school estate she has her own flower garden, her own three rose bushes. Dewy May morning. Tamara, a little sixth-grader, came to her flower garden. She cuts the roses carefully, holding her breath so as not to shake off the drops of cold dew. She is preparing a bouquet for her grandmother, today she is eighty years old. It was for her that she planted a rose bush, on which blue flowers of unprecedented, amazing beauty bloom. Joy shines in the girl’s eyes, and this radiance has entered my soul forever, I love the girl exactly the way I saw her on that dewy morning.
And Fedya D. is remembered dejected, sad, with tears in his eyes, with an expression of despair. In the school Beauty Corner, he planted a lilac bush, carefully looked after it, watered it, and waited for the flowers. Today he came to the garden to cut several purple tassels and take them to his mother, who is in the hospital with her newborn sister... He came and saw: someone had broken and mutilated the lilac. I will never forget the expressions of childhood suffering. This is how I remember Fedya for the rest of my life.
These memories, forever imprinted in the memory of the heart, are those springs, those small streams that give birth and nourish great love for every child. Our work time goes by quickly, the hours of communication with children are fleeting, but they do not pass without a trace: they leave exciting memories in our memory and in our hearts. And the brighter they are, the more of them are imprinted in the heart, the stronger the attraction to children, the deeper the joy new communication with them brings, the more unique I discover in the new generation of kids coming to school. The sensitive and emotionally rich sphere of a teacher, the ability to imprint and preserve in the heart pictures of communication with children is what a teacher acquires, what he can educate V myself over the years of my teaching work.
Wise love for children is the pinnacle of our pedagogical culture, thoughts and feelings. Cordiality, warmth, goodwill towards the child - what can be called a general word kindness, is the result of a large, long-term work of the teacher on the self-education of feelings.
By creating the wealth of his emotional sphere, the teacher protects himself from the emotional elements - this can be called the state that takes possession of him in hours of failure and disappointment. If you don’t see anything bright, joyful in a child, if communication with him has not brought a single joyful memory to your emotional memory, then the child simply annoys you - both by laughing loudly, and by being silent, and by being naughty , and those who come to you with complaints about naughty people... A teacher who does not have access to the joy of communicating with children does not understand children's feelings and actions. The child’s cheerful worldview seems to him like deliberate pranks, and he tries to extinguish the child’s joy.
Wise human love for a child and childhood is a feeling inspired by deep thought and richness of thought. Spiritual emptiness has never awakened or nourished true love. You have probably seen more than one example of cold indifference, some strange alienation in the relationship between teacher and students. Students cannot say whether they like or dislike the teacher: he only comes to class to retell the next section of the textbook, ask questions, and give grades. He does not reveal himself to them as a living embodiment of human culture. This is one of the most annoying phenomena that, unfortunately, can still be encountered in our schools. Such a teacher brings evil with his facelessness, because he sows emptiness in the souls of his students.
It is possible to become a true educator of childhood, adolescence and youth only when the teacher and his students are united by common views, thoughts, and aspirations. Without a soul and high thoughts there is no path from heart to heart - these words of the great Goethe make us think deeply about the nature of the relationship between teacher and students. Take a teacher who does not enjoy authority among schoolchildren, whom children do not like, and analyze: what is he talking about with his students? What thoughts and feelings does he convey to his students, and what do they convey to him? This analysis will cause you great anxiety. You will come to the conclusion that the point of such a teacher’s address to students is always to retell other people’s thoughts, and the students would never say a word to their teacher if they did not have to answer the lesson in order to get a grade.
There can be no talk of any feeling of love here, since there is no basic respect between man and man. Such a teacher does not know the souls of his students. Several similar teachers in the teaching staff - and schooling turns into dead rote learning, the individual strengths, abilities, and inclinations of children are not revealed. To love your students, you need to create a culture of thinking in them, awaken their own living, personal thoughts. For students to love a teacher, they must see in him a living embodiment of the culture of human thought. What we mean by the concept teacher's love for children, children's love for the teacher, It begins, in my opinion, with surprise, with one person’s reverence for the spiritual riches of another and, above all, for the richness of thought.
How can we practically ensure that high thoughts reign in the relationships between teachers and students?
First of all, it is necessary that in the thoughts that the teacher conveys to the consciousness of schoolchildren, he expresses himself, so that the child’s heart is touched not by cold truths, but by the living, passionate personality of the teacher. It depends on how much the knowledge that the teacher teaches to his students has become his personal beliefs and entered his soul. This also depends on the general culture, erudition, and breadth of the teacher’s scientific horizons. The spark that a teacher throws into a child’s mind can light a fire only when, figuratively speaking, it has not just been carved, but has been burning for more than one day and more than one year in his thoughts. In other words, the fire of living thought in the minds of his students will be lit only by that teacher who knows a hundred times more than what is required by the compulsory program. If a teacher has this wealth, then his intellectual communication inevitably goes beyond the scope of the lesson and takes on an individual character: the intellect of the teacher and the intellect of individual students are connected by dozens of threads - these are living paths from heart to heart.
Intellectual communication with the children's team and especially with individual students is as rich a source of joy as spiritual work. The forms of this communication are very diverse. First of all, this is a lively, passionate, exciting conversation about science, about a book - a conversation with a group or with individual schoolchildren. It is difficult to foresee and determine in advance what will be discussed. This is not some kind of consultation or additional classes, but a transfer from heart to heart of those sparks from which the flame of the student’s thoughts flares up.
Loving a child means protecting him from the evil that still surrounds many children in life.
(we mean family first of all). Every year, when first-graders cross the school threshold, you look with alarm into the eyes of children who carry an open wound in their hearts. I know these children well, I know their parents, I know the pains and anxieties of the child’s soul, I know that individual children no longer need to be educated, but re-educated. These children are in my special care; I call their upbringing protective education- it is important integral part my pedagogical system.
What kind of wounds in their hearts do children crippled by the evil of their family environment come with?
In my opinion, a very dangerous wound (and it is dangerous because it affects the hearts of children even in many seemingly prosperous families) - loneliness, when a child knows and feels that no one needs him. The point here is not that the mother or father abandons the child, that he is left to the mercy of fate. Such cases are rare and should be specially discussed. We are talking about a much more complex phenomenon of spiritual loneliness. A child has the ability to live with his heart, to give it to a loved one, another living creature, or even inanimate objects. This ability to love unselfishly ennobles the child’s soul, makes his life rich and bright. The vast majority of children who come to school have someone dear to them, they gave their soul to someone, and this gives them happiness, fullness of spiritual life. And for some children, life turned out in such a way that they could not give their hearts to anyone and feel lonely, do not know the happiness of spiritual closeness, kinship. This happens in those families where the people closest to the child - mother, father - are deprived of heartfelt sensitivity and are unable to respond to the desire of the child’s heart to establish a sincere, sincere friendship. The emotional ignorance of parents, who are limited by material needs, sometimes by animal instincts, all this cripples the child’s soul: such children come to school deaf to goodness; their heart is like a hardened sole. Protecting a child from spiritual loneliness and awakening the ability to live with the heart is one of the most important tasks of protective education.
There is an even more formidable loneliness: some children understand that they were born into the world by chance and are not needed by either their father or mother. These children come to school with severe mental trauma. They usually carry in their hearts open wound- embitterment. An embittered child does not believe in humanity. He shows wariness and distrust towards the sincere, heartfelt words of the teacher. Protective education of children with this trauma requires the teacher’s deep, selfless love for the person, a high culture of feelings, and a subtle ability to separate evil from the child’s personality.
Children come to school with a serious wound; they are raised in the family in the spirit of deceit, dishonesty, selfishness, and disrespect for people. They are not able to feel the person next to them in their hearts, they do not believe in goodness. If you do not protect children from the evil that dominates the family, they will grow up to be cruel people, ready to do anything for their own benefit, including treason, to the brutal desire to destroy anyone who stands in their way. Deprived of protective education, with a wound in their hearts that the teacher did not notice, these children, becoming adults, often take the path of the most terrible crimes.
Children come to school with a crippled heart, having been subjected to corporal punishment from the first steps of their adult lives. A father who beats a child kills what is most precious in his heart: that ability to live with his heart, which was mentioned above. Kicks, slaps on the head, blows with a belt - not only violence against the body. These are also blows to the sensitive heart of a child. With each blow it becomes less and less sensitive to these very blows, it becomes thick-skinned. Brought up in early childhood in the spirit of violence against body and spirit, a child becomes immune to any measures of educational influence. He is often cruel and heartless. The protective education of these children is, in essence, a test of the teacher's pedagogical culture - a test of his love for a person.
They also need a kind of protective education caressednew in family children spoiled by complete and unrestricted freedom of expression. There is a certain part of children whose parents do not teach them to subordinate their personal interests to the interests of other people. These children bring from their family a wild, absurd principle: “I want it this way, so I do it, I like it, so it’s possible.” Unhappy is the child in whose soul lives
animal
confidence that his interests are the most important. He becomes a boor, an insolent person, a hooligan, if he is not protected from the “benefits” of complete freedom of expression. Such a child experiences the teacher’s advice and demands about behavior in a group as a personal insult.
Protective education is a deeply individual creativity of the teacher.
Here you need to be able to touch the painful, crippled heart of the
child, so that his upbringing does not turn into suffering for him. The best protection against spiritual loneliness is to awaken a feeling of love, sympathy for a teacher or an older schoolmate, for one of the same lonely people - for an old man or woman, for a woman-mother who has lost her son.
Getting closer to a person begins with the teacher teaching a lonely child to empathize: telling him about the grief, tragedy experienced by those with whom he intends to bring his pupil closer. Empathy is the first step to knowing a person with your heart. I teach a child who, for one reason or another in the family, has not known love for the closest, dearest being, to take someone else’s grief to heart. The deeper the empathy, the more sensitive the child becomes to the people around him.
In the protective education of single children, it is very important that the child does not feel educational premeditation: the teacher tries to bring him closer to someone specifically in order to educate him... If even a small drop of indifference is added to this “planned good”, the child will resist, hate both the teacher and the person with whom the teacher is going to bring him closer. The rapprochement of a lonely child with another person should occur in natural conditions. The person to whom the child will give his heart must have something in his heart that would enrich the child spiritually. Only a spiritually rich and generous person can dispel childhood loneliness.
There are very few children embittered by the heartlessness of their parents, children who are not needed by either father or mother. Over the thirty-two years of working at school, nine such children came into my life. They always aroused a keen feeling of pity in my heart, and I tried to give them what they did not know in the family. I became a friend to such children, and they paid for my heartfelt concerns with sincere, generous, selfless love. It was friendship with these children that became for me a life-giving source of inspiration, that healing water that every teacher needs when hard work tires his heart and depletes his spiritual strength.
To become a friend of such a child, to awaken a feeling of love in his heart, to love him with all the strength of his soul - this requires great art. Embittered by the indifference of their parents, children are very wary; they are distrustful of affection, although they need it like moisture to the thirsty earth. But we shouldn’t start with showing affection. I try to find such a common spiritual interest and activity with the child that the child feels human in me and reaches out to the human. As a rule, this common activity is born in a team. Then the child becomes my friend, we seem to forget that we are a teacher and a student. Spiritual communication becomes a necessity for us. The child's suspicion and anger disappear. The child pays for love and cordiality with a sincere willingness to give away the riches of his soul, to somehow affirm his sympathy. Personal friendship is satisfactionneeds in man- one of the highest moral needs that the school should affirm from childhood.
The most effective way to protect a child from deception, dishonesty, and selfishness is to awaken respect for oneself, to awaken sensitivity to the human in oneself. Raising such children requires long-term individual work. Here one must also find a commonality of spiritual interests in order to see the path to a child’s heart. Most often, the basis of this community for me is a book. Through a book and talking about a book, I open a child’s eyes and heart to good and evil, I ensure that he admires good and despises evil.
No matter how much a child’s heart is struck by the ugliness of the home atmosphere, a spark of empathy glimmers in it, and the smaller the child, the greater the ability to empathize. Valery G. came to the first grade - soulless, heartless, cruel - this was what made him so in the family atmosphere of cynical contempt for everything pure and holy that is in man. I aroused the boy's interest in the book. We read with him G. Senkevich’s story “Yanko the Musician.” Vivid pictures of the struggle between good and evil shocked the child. While reading the story, I watched as the boy mentally entered into a duel with cruelty and tyranny. Valery felt in his heart that there are things in life that are incomparably more valuable to a person than the appropriation of material values and profit. It is the joy of doing good for people. We read books about human nobility one after another, then he began to read himself. I saw with joy how the atmosphere of domestic greed, deception, and cynical humiliation of human beauty became alien to the boy. He found joy in giving the warmth of his heart to other people. Already in the fourth grade, the boy became the leader of the October group. For him, giving happiness to children became true happiness. Somewhere in the forest he found a stream flowing from a spring. He brought the children to the stream and together with them made a toy here - a water mill. He built a hut for the children.
In the first weeks of Valery’s stay at school, when I met his eyes - hypocritical, indifferent to human grief, a dull indignation rose in my soul against those who crippled the child’s heart. I hated evil and was afraid that I would hate the boy. And now human nobility shone in Valery’s eyes. Here he is enthusiastically talking about a water mill in the depths of the forest, about how next winter he is thinking of building a small wind power plant here with his boys: let a small light come on near the feeder for forest birds, let the light attract feathered friends. Yes, these were not at all the same eyes with which the boy looked at the world five years ago. You can't help but love these eyes.
Raising children whose hearts have been crippled by beatings, harsh shouts, and abuse requires not only care and sensitivity, but also great perseverance. The mission of the teacher is, first of all, to protect the child from violence against body and soul. I try to get the father to stop beating the child. But in many cases, beatings and abuse have already hardened the child’s heart, making it cruel and deaf to goodness. Here the most complex tools of pedagogical art must be used in order to awaken in the child’s heart sensitivity to the subtlest ways of influencing
research on human soul- first of all, to beauty and to the teacher’s word. I strive to ensure that a child, crippled by beatings and abuse, never hears screaming or threats, never expects punishment.
Then I begin to awaken his heart with beauty. Treatmentbeauty- this can be called one of the facets of my pedagogical system. You can’t tell about that edge in a few words. Here it is necessary to characterize the complexity and versatility of subtle spiritual influences on feelings, on the heart, and through the heart on the mind. In front of a child with a hardened, “thick-skinned” heart, I reveal the beauty of nature, music, and painting. This takes time and a lot of patience. Some children have to open their eyes to dozens of pictures of nature until their heart, figuratively speaking, perks up and feels shades of beauty. In spring and summer, autumn and winter, I go with my children to the forest, to the field, to the garden, to the oak grove, to the meadow - to listen to the music of nature. This is one of the most effective beauty treatments. Awakening the heart, beauty seems to open its innermost corners, and they become sensitive to the word of the teacher.
An important way to protect children crippled by beatings and abuse from adults is to take care of living beings, flowers, plants - everything living and beautiful. We have an animal hospital and bird feeders especially for these children. Children, whose sensitive hearts need to be awakened, take care of birds, hares, hedgehogs, picked up in the cold winter... We also take these children to the collective farm livestock farm, where they take care of small lambs and calves.
The protection of children, spoiled by unrestricted freedom of self-expression, from the arbitrariness of their parents requires a lot of attention and pedagogical tact, because only arbitrariness can be called the satisfaction of children’s whims, life according to the principle “everything is allowed to me.” There is no need to try to immediately, from the first day, break the will of such a child. In raising such children, I adhere to the principle collisions desires, interests. I strive to ensure that the child, spoiled by the arbitrariness of his parents, understands: my desires, my interests, completely legitimate and motivated, collide with the same legitimate desires and interests of other people. I want to satisfy my desire, but the other person also wants to satisfy his desire, which contradicts mine. I convince the child: if you and the person whose desire collides with your desire act only in your own interests, life will turn into hell, the person will descend to the level of a cave savage. Such “freedom” will only bring misfortune and suffering. Consequently, in order to enjoy the benefits of true freedom, one must curtail the freedom of one’s self-expression, limit one’s desires, and remember that the principle “everything is allowed to me” is the animal law of savages and hooligans.
And for a child to comprehend all this, he must be convinced from his own experience that without restrictions on freedom of expression, without the ability to curtail desires, there can be no real freedom. It is very important to be able to create situations in which desires and interests collide. A class, for example, goes on an interesting hike into the forest, but there is a strict order at school: every day one student from each class is included in a self-service team that works in the dining room, in the yard, and in the greenhouse. Try to disturb the school order, and the wrath of the team will fall on you. Dozens of such lessons - and the most spoiled child begins to understand that he lives not on a desert island, but among people.
At D.I. Pisarev has an interesting idea: “Human nature is so rich, strong and elastic that it can retain its freshness and its beauty in the midst of the most oppressive ugliness of the environment.”
Of course, these riches, strength, elasticity do not arise by themselves, they are not given to the child by nature, as a kind of immunity against unwanted influences. They need to be created, grown, approved. And for this it is necessary to protect the riches of human nature in a child’s soul. In order to protect a child from evil, overcome it and establish goodness, one must see, understand the past and imagine the future of the child, and clearly outline the ideal of upbringing. We must love everything human, pure, and noble in a child.
Radyanskaya school, 1967, No. 7
