Our School in Pavlysh: A Holistic Approach to Education, by Vasyl Sukhomlynsky, describes the inspirational work carried out at Pavlysh Secondary School in central Ukraine during the 1960s. For Sukhomlynsky’s readership of teachers and school principals, the word ‘Pavlysh’ stood for creative thought, inspiration, and the hope of finding answers to troubling questions. Raising his school from the ashes of World War Two, Sukhomlynsky created a system of education that was deeply embedded in the natural environment and that fostered the qualities of curiosity, empathy and creativity. One of the thousands of visitors to Pavlysh, a school principal from Armenia, wrote:

‘I have spent only one day in this remarkable school where so much is happening, but I have gained as much as I did in four years at the institute.’

Another visiting principal wrote:

‘Pavlysh Secondary School should be renamed a university! We say this quite responsibly: here a feeling of wonder and admiration comes over anyone with the slightest love for children and schools.’

Students enrolling in Sukhomlynsky’s school became part of a vibrant learning community in which teachers, parents, community members, and the students themselves all played a role in educating each other. Dozens of clubs operated after school, most attended by children of varying ages, and the older children played a significant role in educating younger children. These informal, extracurricular activities were extremely important in developing children’s talents, building their self-esteem, and providing an experiential background for formal studies. In this environment students became autonomous, lifelong learners.

Sukhomlynsky’s approach can still offer inspiration to educators in the twenty-first century, as we face the challenges of the Anthropocene. This new translation complements Alan Cockerill’s earlier translation of Sukhomlynsky’s My Heart I Give to Children.

Sukhomlynsky was born on 28 September 1918, so we are approaching the 100th anniversary of his birth. Sukhomlynsky died on 2 September 1970. It is hard to believe that someone who achieved so much did not reach his 52nd birthday. During his short life Sukhomlynsky survived a civil war and a famine, defended his country on the battlefield, where he was gravely wounded, brought the country school where he served as a teacher and principal from obscurity to being an educational magnet that attracted thousands of visitors, wrote over 30 books and over 500 articles, ran courses in parenting, started an innovative preschool group, and was an active member of his local community.

Sukhomlynsky’s books have sold millions of copies in multiple languages around the world. As well as being widely read in countries of the former Soviet bloc, he is one of the most influential foreign educators in China, where his books are widely read by teachers. In spite of this, the majority of English-speaking educators have never heard of him. This website, our monthly newsletter, and our publications, all serve the purpose of making this wonderful educator’s work more widely known in English speaking countries.

The next issue of our newsletter, in September 2018, will commemorate the 100th anniversary of Sukhomlynsky’s birth, and include an essay on his relevance in the 21st century. We will design it to provide an introduction to Sukhomlynsky’s work, and hope that subscribers will see fit to forward copies to those of their friends who might be interested.

Earlier this month, on 8 April, ABC Radio repeated the broadcast of my interview with Richard Fidler for his ‘Conversations’ program. The broadcast can be listened to at:
http://radio.abc.net.au/programitem/pe8DrVlb0D

This broadcast has stimulated renewed interest in Sukhomlynsky’s work, and in our publications: Sukhomlynsky’s My heart I give to children, and Tales from Pavlysh: A world of beauty, and our book about Sukhomlynsky, Each one must shine: The educational legacy of V.A. Sukhomlinsky. (When that work was first published, I spelt Sukhomlynsky’s name as it is transliterated from Russian, as Russian was the language I used to access his work.) For a brief period of time, two of these publications were numbers one and two on Amazon Australia’s ‘movers and shakers’ list, with My heart I give to children reaching number 5 on that site’s best seller list.

While this boost will naturally be fairly short-lived, I have received a number of emails over the past two weeks, which have given me great hope that Sukhomlynsky’s ideas will find acceptance among Australian educators and educators in other English speaking countries. The feedback has been very encouraging, and confirms my belief that Sukhomlynsky’s work has not lost any of its relevance. Indeed, current trends in Australian education, driven largely by a misplaced emphasis on NAPLAN results, have led many educators to feel a need to ‘defend childhood’ from pressures that seek to turn young children into little academics. It is in this context that Sukhomlynsky’s writing, imbued as it is with deep respect for childhood as an important stage in life, can help remind us of what we are in danger of losing, if we persist with our current direction.

An illustration of the difference between Sukhomlynsky’s approach and what is common practice today may be found in the April 2018 edition of Sukhomlinsky News. (I am very indebted to Melbourne student Berta Karaim for translating the main article in this newsletter from Ukrainian, as well as for translating the children’s stories from Russian.) In the main article, Sukhomlynsky writes about the importance of fairy tales in the life of a child, and of how we should allow children to imbue the real world with fairy tale images. Sukhomlynsky read and composed many fairy tales with his young students, and encouraged them to enter into the story, siding with good against evil. This is in stark contrast with a unit of work that is given to many seven year old grade two students in Queensland, in which they are expected to analyse the stereotypes in fairytales, and to compose a fairy tale in which they break the stereotype. Such academic analysis is incompatible with the direct ‘living’ of the fairytale.

Many early childhood educators are concerned about the abandonment of play-based approaches to education in the preparatory year, which is now becoming more and more like grade one used to be. Sukhomlynsky’s writings, especially My heart I give to children, are full of cogent arguments in defence of play, physical activity and artistic creativity in the early childhood years, not only for their intrinsic value, and to facilitate physical and emotional development, but also in order to lay a proper foundation for intellectual development.

Here is my translation of chapter 9 from Sukhomlynsky’s book, 100 Pieces of Advice for Teachers:

9. ‘Two programs of instruction’ – developing students’ thinking

A teacher does not have enough time mainly because students have difficulty studying. For many years I have reflected on how to make students’ work easier. Developing practical skills as a foundation for knowledge development is only the first step. Memorisation and storage of knowledge in long term memory is the next step. I advise every teacher: analyse the content to be taught and clearly demarcate those elements that must be stored securely in long term memory. It is important that a teacher is able to identify those knowledge ‘hubs’ or ‘nerve centres’, the strength of which determine the development of thought, of intellectual ability and of a capacity to make use of knowledge. These ‘hubs’ include important conclusions and generalisations, formulae, rules and laws that characterise a particular subject. Experienced teachers have their students keep special exercise books for recording material that must be memorised and committed to long term memory.

The more complex the material that needs to be memorised, the more generalisations, conclusions and rules that need to be stored in long term memory, the more significant the ‘intellectual background’ to the process of study becomes. In other words, in order to commit formulae, rules, conclusions and other generalisations to long term memory, students need to read a lot of material that they are not required to memorise. Reading must be closely connected with study. If it involves going more deeply into the facts, phenomena and objects that provide a basis for making generalisations, it facilitates memorisation. We might call such reading the creation of the intellectual background necessary for study, and for memorising material.  The more students read out of pure interest in the material, from a desire to find out, to think through, to make sense of something, the easier it is for them to memorise the material that they are required to learn and to commit to memory.

Keeping this important principle in mind, in my practical work I always had two programs of study in mind: the first made up of the material that it was essential to memorise, and the second made up of extracurricular reading and other sources of information.

Physics is one of the most demanding subjects in its requirement to memorise material, especially in grades six through to eight. The program at these levels contains many new concepts. I taught this subject for six years, and always tried to provide extracurricular reading to correspond to each new concept. The more complex the concept that is being studied at any given time, the more attractive and interesting the books that students read need to be. When studying the laws governing electrical currents, I compiled a special library for individual extracurricular reading. It contained fifty-five books about natural phenomena that demonstrated the diverse electrical properties of matter.

I was able to stimulate a wave of intense interest among the students. They literally showered me with questions. What? How? Why? About 80% of their questions began with the word ‘why’. There were many things that the students could not understand; and the more things in the surrounding world that they could not understand, the greater their desire to learn grew, and the more receptive to knowledge they became. The children literally ‘caught in mid-air’ everything I told them. When it was time to explain the concept of an electric current as a flow of free electrons it turned out that my adolescent students had many questions specifically about this complex physical phenomenon. The answers to their questions provided the missing bricks in the picture of the world that had formed in the students’ minds as a result of their reading and the other information they had received earlier.

I taught senior biology for three years. This course contains a host of difficult theoretical concepts, which are all the more difficult to commit to memory. When the students were first acquiring scientific concepts such as ‘life’, ‘living matter’, ‘heredity’, ‘metabolism’ and ‘organism’, I selected material for them from scientific and popular scientific journals, books and pamphlets. Their ‘second program of study’ included pamphlets, books and articles calculated to arouse a wave of interest in a number of complex scientific issues, and consequently in further reading. The young biology students began to take an interest in the natural phenomena that surrounded them, including the exceptional diversity of forms that metabolism could take. The more questions they had, the deeper their knowledge became. When I assessed their knowledge, there was not a single response that was evaluated lower than ‘4’. [In the Soviet system of assessment, ‘3’ meant ‘satisfactory’, ‘4’ meant ‘good’ and ‘5’ meant ‘excellent’.]

I advise all teachers: create an intellectual background for the memorisation and storage in long term memory of the required curriculum. Students only achieve lasting mastery when they think about what they are learning. Think about how to stimulate thought, analysis and observation relating to the material that is being studied or is soon to be studied at your lessons.

Here is my translation of chapter 8 from Sukhomlynsky’s book, 100 Pieces of Advice for Teachers:

8. Committing elementary knowledge to long-term memory
Thirty years of working in schools has led me to uncover an important secret, an educational principle. The students who fall behind in middle and senior school are those who in primary school did not commit to long term memory those elementary truths that form a basis for all knowledge. Imagine that the foundation for a tall building is laid on very unstable concrete. The mortar keeps crumbling and stones keep falling out. People continually have to repair what was not done properly in the first place, and live in constant fear of the building collapsing. This is the situation that many language and mathematics teachers find themselves in when teaching grades four to ten. They are trying to construct the building, but the foundation is crumbling.
Teachers in primary schools! Your most important task is to build a strong foundation for knowledge: so strong, that the teachers working after you do not need to think about that foundation. If you are commencing work with grade one, study the grade four program, mainly in language and mathematics, and have a look also at the grade five program in mathematics. In your class reader, compare the reading material on history, science and geography with the grade four programs in these subjects. Think about what a student needs to learn in grade three in order to study successfully in grades four and five.
Most importantly, think about elementary literacy. In our language there are roughly 2,000–2,500 spelling words that provide a framework for knowledge and literacy. Experience shows that if children firmly commit these words to long term memory, they will become literate adults. But that is not the whole story. If literacy is acquired in primary school, it becomes an instrument for acquiring knowledge in the middle and senior classes.
When teaching children in the primary school I always had this list of important spelling words in mind. That list in itself provides a program for elementary literacy. I distributed those two and a half thousand words in such a way that we studied three words on each school day. The children recorded them in their exercise books and memorised them. This work takes a few minutes each day. Young children’s memories are very sharp and versatile, and if you manage those memories well and do not overload them, they will become your best helpers. What a student memorises during the early years is never forgotten. The ‘technique for managing memory’ in this case consists of the following. At the beginning of the working day (before the first lesson) I write the three words for the day on the board, for example: steppe, warmth, rustle. As soon as they enter the classroom, the children write these three words in their spelling dictionaries, which they maintain for three years. They think about these words, and next to them write several words with the same root. This only takes three or four minutes, and the students gradually get used to this routine.
The work then takes on some of the characteristics of a game, incorporating elements of self-education and self-assessment. ‘On the way home,’ I say to the children, ‘Remember the three words we wrote this morning, and how they are spelt. Recall the outline of these words. In the morning when you wake up, the first thing I want you to do is remember the spelling of these words and write them in your exercise book.’ (The exercise book in question is a general exercise book that amounts to a second copy of their spelling dictionary.) There is no student who will not join in this game if you begin it in grade one, if teachers believe in its success, if they love children, and if they are always interested in everything the children do. During lessons at school a great variety of activities are conducted to ensure that the spelling words that have already been memorised are revised and put to use. One of the most important activities I conduct is to memorise 400 turns of phrase, which I am convinced provide a framework for oral language. During the primary years special attention is given to those turns of phrase that are commonly misused.
I would like to emphasise once more that it is very important to introduce an element of play into children’s studies. I have a list of 600 ‘fairy-tale’ words that are often used in children’s fairy tales. During the four years of primary schooling the children and I draw several dozen fairy-tales. The children write captions to these illustrations, using the 600 words. This has proved to be a very successful way of reinforcing basic spelling words.
When studying mathematics in the primary school, children memorise those operations that, due to their frequent repetition, may be considered mathematical generalizations. They are so habitual that it is meaningless to waste effort thinking about them each time they are required. I am speaking not only of the multiplication tables, but also of the most common instances of addition, subtraction, division and multiplication involving numbers up to one thousand. Children also memorise the most common measurements and conversions of measurements. I work on the principle that in the middle and upper grades students’ intellects should not be occupied with basic operations, but should be free to engage in creative work.
Of course all our work is based on conscious mastery of material, but at the same time we should recognise that it is not possible to explain everything. I aim for a combination of voluntary and involuntary attention and memorisation.
[Translator’s note: By ‘involuntary’ attention and memorisation Sukhomlinsky is referring to that which arises through spontaneous interest and engagement. He has commented elsewhere that when working with children in the early years, it is essential to engage their interest spontaneously through engaging content, as young children are for the most part incapable of forcing themselves to pay attention.]

Here is my translation of chapter 7 from Sukhomlynsky’s book, 100 Pieces of Advice for Teachers:

7. A teacher’s time and the interdependence of various stages of schooling
This piece of advice is addressed mainly to the teachers of primary school classes. It is upon your work in the primary school that the budget of time available to middle school and upper school teachers depends. If we carefully examine the process of instruction in the middle school and upper school, we find that the most merciless consumer of time is the constant and fruitless ‘catching up of the tail’. No sooner has the teacher given an exposition of new material, than it turns out that a portion of the class has not grasped it. Instead of thinking about how to take the next steps on the path of knowledge, the teacher has to deal with those students who have fallen behind. (Sometimes the proportion of students who have fallen behind is so large that the teacher has to conduct supplementary lessons with almost the whole class.) This consumes much of the teacher’s time both at school and at home.
Why is it that so much of a teacher’s time is taken up with this seemingly unavoidable work of catching up so many students who have fallen behind?
I feel like giving the following advice to all primary school teachers. Remember, dear colleagues, that the budget of time for all teachers in the middle and upper school depends on you. You can give them the opportunity to be creative. Among the many tasks facing the primary school, the most important is to teach children how to study. One of your main concerns should be to establish a balance between the volume of theoretical knowledge that children are required to master, and their practical skills and abilities.
Remember that falling behind in the middle and upper school is mainly due to an inability to study, to acquire knowledge. Of course you need to be concerned about the children’s general level of development, but teach children first and foremost how to read and write well. Without the ability to read fluently, thoughtfully and expressively, understanding what is read, and to write fluently and without errors, there is no chance of successful study in the middle and upper classes, of study that does not call for the teacher to constantly ‘catch up’ those who have fallen behind. Teach all children in the primary school to read in such a way that they can think while reading, and read while thinking. The ability to read has to be brought to such a level of automaticity that perception and comprehension of the text significantly precede pronunciation aloud. The more significant this anticipation is, the more refined is the ability to think while reading, and this is an exceptionally important precondition for effective study and for intellectual development in general. I have been convinced a thousand times that successful study in the middle and upper school depends first and foremost on the ability to read thoughtfully: to think while reading and read while thinking. Therefore primary school teachers need to study how to develop this ability in every student. Thirty years of experience has convinced me that students’ intellectual development depends on their ability to read well. A student who can think while reading will cope with any work more quickly and successfully than one who does not have the ability to read fluently (and this is not as simple as it appears at first glance). In the intellectual work of students who can read fluently there is no cramming. Their reading of the textbook or any other book is different to the reading of a student who cannot read and think simultaneously. When fluent readers have read something they can perceive the subject as a whole and its component parts, with their interdependencies and interrelationships.
A student who can read and think simultaneously does not fall behind, and if students do not fall behind it is easy for teachers to work. Experience confirms that if reading has become a student’s window on the world of knowledge, there is no need to conduct the supplementary lessons that take so much time. The teacher now has the opportunity to conduct individual discussions with students, and these discussions are not lengthy; just brief coaching sessions, giving advice on how to acquire knowledge independently, and avoid falling behind.
Successful study in the middle and upper school also depends on how fluently and thoughtfully a student has learned to write in the primary school, and how they develop this ability further. Along with reading, writing is a tool for acquiring knowledge. Success and the economical use of time depend on the condition of this tool. I advise teachers of primary classes: set a goal for every student to be able to write fluently and semi-automatically by the time they complete primary school. Only then will they be able to study successfully, removing the constant need to catch up those who have fallen behind. We should aim for students to write while thinking, so that the writing of letters, syllables and words is not the focus of their attention. Set yourselves a more concrete goal. Tell the students about something, and have them write down their own thoughts while they are listening to you and thinking about what you are saying. Children should start practising this two years before they finish primary school. If you are able to achieve this goal I assure you: your students will never fall behind. Having the ability to acquire knowledge, they will spare the time and health of teachers in the middle and upper school.

Here is my translation of chapter 6 from Sukhomlynsky’s book, 100 Pieces of Advice for Teachers:

6. How do I find the time? There are only 24 hours in a day.

I have taken the words in my heading straight from the letter of a teacher from Krasnoyarsk. It is true. There is not enough time. This is the scourge of educational work. It not only affects our school work, but even our family lives. Teachers are human beings like everyone else, and need time for their families, for the upbringing of their own children. I have precise data showing that many graduates from high school avoid teacher training courses because they believe educators do not have any free time, in spite of their long holidays.
I have some other interesting data: 500 teachers, whose children had embarked on tertiary education, were asked: ‘In which tertiary institutions and in which faculties are your children studying?’ Only fourteen answered ‘at a pedagogical institute’ or ‘at a university, training to be a teacher’. Then they were asked: ‘Why did your child not want to become a teacher?’ 486 people responded: ‘Because he/she sees how difficult our work is. We do not have a moment’s free time.’
Is it possible for teachers to work in such a way that they have free time? Sometimes this burning question is even expressed like that. In fact the situation has developed where a language or mathematics teacher, in addition to having classes for three or four hours a day, has to prepare lessons and mark exercise books for five or six hours a day, and take on extracurricular work for another two hours or more.
How can we solve the problem of time? This is one of those all-encompassing problems of school life, which, like the problem of students’ intellectual development, depends literally on everything that happens at school.
The most important thing is the very style and character of educational work. One history teacher, who had been working in the school for thirty-three years, conducted an open lesson on the topic: ‘The moral ideal of a young soviet person’. Those present included participants in a district seminar, and the district inspector. The lesson was conducted brilliantly. The visiting teachers and the inspector, who had intended to take notes during the lesson, so as to offer a critique, completely forgot about their notepads. They sat with bated breath and listened with great interest, as did the students.
After the lesson a teacher from a neighbouring school said, ‘You certainly teach with heart and soul. Every word had a lot of thought behind it. How long did you spend preparing for that lesson? It must have taken some hours.’
‘I have been preparing for that lesson all my life,’ answered the teacher. ‘And I could say that of every lesson. But the time I actually spent preparing for that particular topic, my actual ‘planning time’, was about fifteen minutes.’
This lesson throws light on one of the secrets of teaching proficiency. In our district I know about thirty teachers like that history teacher. They do not complain about the lack of free time. Each of them would say, about each of their lessons, that they had prepared for it all of their lives.
What form does this preparation take? It is reading: a constant, daily friendship with books; the unceasing flow of a murmuring stream that feeds a river of thought; reading not for tomorrow’s lesson, but to satisfy an inner need, a thirst for knowledge. If you want more free time, and for your preparation time to be more than a boring session with the text book, read scholarly literature. For you the text book should be just the alphabet, a mere drop in the ocean of your knowledge about the subject you are teaching. Then you will not need several hours to prepare for lessons.
The high level of proficiency of the best teachers is a result of constant reading that feeds the ocean of their knowledge. If the knowledge of beginning teachers is ten times more than they are required to pass on to their students, then by the time they have been teaching for fifteen or twenty years that ratio has increased to 20:1, 30:1 or 50:1, thanks to the reading they do. With each year the knowledge in the text book represents a smaller and smaller drop in the ocean of their knowledge. We are speaking here not only of a quantitative growth in the teacher’s theoretical knowledge. Quantity is transformed into quality. The broader the teacher’s background knowledge, the more they are able to develop the foundation of teaching proficiency: the ability to divide their attention while giving an exposition of material at a lesson. The teacher may be explaining trigonometric functions, for example, but his attention is focused not on those functions, but on the students. He is observing each student’s work, and the difficulties they may be experiencing in understanding or memorising the material. He is not only teaching, but encouraging intellectual development in the process of instructing.
The problem of time is closely connected with a number of other elements of educational work. All may be viewed as streams that feed the river of a teacher’s time for work and creativity. I would like to give some words of advice about how to keep these streams alive and flowing.
(To be continued in the next post.)

Here is my translation of chapter 5 from Sukhomlynsky’s book, 100 Pieces of Advice for Teachers:

5. Remember that there is no such thing as an abstract student

Why is it that even in grade one there are students who fall behind, and in grade two and three you sometimes come across students who are hopelessly behind, who a teacher has ‘given up’ on. It is because there is no individual approach to students in the most important area of school life: intellectual work.
Imagine that all the seven-year-old children commencing grade one were required to complete exactly the same physical work, carrying water for example. One is already exhausted after carrying five buckets, while another can manage twenty. If you force the weaker child to carry twenty buckets it will overstrain them. The next day they will not be able to do anything, and may end up in hospital. Children’s capacity for intellectual work is just as varied. One understands, makes sense of things and remembers things easily, storing them in their long term memory. Another experiences intellectual work completely differently, taking in the material very slowly, and storing knowledge in their memory for only a short time; though it often happens that later on the slower student achieves more significant success in their studies and in their intellectual development than the one who found it easier to study at the beginning. There is no such thing as an abstract student to whom we can mechanically apply guidelines for instruction and education. There are no prerequisites for ‘success in study’ that are the same for all students. And the very concept of ‘success in study’ is relative: for one success in study means getting an ‘A’, while for another a ‘C’ is a major achievement. The ability to determine what each student is capable of at a given point in time, and work out how to develop their intellectual capabilities further, is an exceptionally important component of educational wisdom.
The preservation and development of each student’s feelings of self-worth depends on what the teacher considers to be personal success in study for them. We should not demand the impossible of a child. Any program in any subject represents a certain area and level of knowledge, but not a living child. Different children have different pathways to that knowledge. One child can independently read and solve a maths problem in grade one; another will not be able to do that until the end of grade two or even grade three. We need to determine by what route, with what delays and difficulties, each child can attain the required level, and how to concretely implement the program in the intellectual work of each student.
The art and craft of instruction and education consists in developing the strengths and capabilities of every student, and giving them the joy of success in intellectual work. And this means there must be individualised instruction, both in the content of intellectual work (in the nature of the tasks set) and in its timing. An experienced teacher gives one student two, three or even four tasks to complete during a lesson, while another has only one. One is given a more complex task, while another is given a simpler one. One is completing a creative writing task, such as an essay, while another is working on the text of a work of literature.
With such an approach all students move forward, some more quickly, some more slowly. In the grades that children receive for their work they see their own labour, their effort. Study brings them moral satisfaction and the joy of discovery. In this case the mutual goodwill between teacher and student is combined with mutual trust. The student does not see the teacher just as a strict controller and the grade as a stick to punish him with. He will openly say to the teacher, ‘I could do this, but I couldn’t do that.’ His conscience is very sensitive, and he is incapable of copying another’s work or using a cheat-sheet. He wants to affirm his own worth.
Success in study, figuratively speaking, is a path leading to that corner of a child’s heart, in which the desire to be good burns brightly. We must maintain that path and that fire.
I have a friend, a wonderful teacher of mathematics, I.G. Tkachenko, at the Bogdanovka Secondary School in the Kirovograd region. This is what he says about how he prepares for lessons:
‘I think about what each student will do. For each one I choose work that they can succeed at. If a student has not taken at least a small step forward in mastering knowledge, the lesson is wasted. Work with no result—there could hardly be a more serious danger for student or teacher.’
Consider the maths lessons of Pavlysh Secondary school teachers A.G. Arishchenko and M.A. Lysak. During problem solving (and problem solving takes up 90% of the time) their classes divide into several groups. In the first group are those children who are most advanced in their studies, who can easily solve any problem independently, and one or two of whom can solve problems orally without recourse to any notes: the teacher has not even finished reading out the problem and the student already has their hand up with the answer. For this group, apart from problems normally included in the program, there are problems that are beyond the program. We need to give these students work that is within their capabilities, but not easy, so they have to make some effort. Sometimes we also need to give them a problem that they cannot solve independently, but where the teacher only needs to give minor assistance, possibly just a hint.
A second group is made up of hard-working, conscientious students, for whom an excellent solution to the problem involves a degree of mental effort and inquiry in order to overcome difficulties. These are students of whom the teacher says, ‘They get there through hard work and effort; they succeed because they are diligent and persistent.’
A third group consists of children who can solve problems of medium difficulty without assistance, but who sometimes cannot solve more difficult problems. Assisting these students while they are working requires great educational skill.
A fourth group includes students who are slow to make sense of a problem and slow to solve it. They can complete two or three times less in a lesson than students in the second and third groups, and should not be rushed under any circumstances.
A fifth group is made up of individual students who cannot cope with a problem of even medium difficulty. The teacher selects special problems for them, always providing an opportunity for success, however insignificant.
These groups are not fixed and set in stone. Intellectual work that brings the joy of success always results in a further development of capabilities.
Examine the intellectual work of students during the lessons of a teacher who has managed to ensure that every one of his pupils tastes success. There is an atmosphere of mutual goodwill, about which we wrote earlier, an atmosphere of intellectual inspiration. Each student strives to achieve goals through their own efforts. You see in the children’s eyes intense concentration of thought, a flash of joy (I’ve found the way!), or thoughtfulness (what is the best way to approach this problem?). It is a great pleasure for a teacher to work in such an atmosphere. Believe me, my dear colleague, however intense a teacher’s work is at such a lesson, he has enough breathing space to maintain his energy for four or five lessons in a row.
For several years I taught mathematics in grades five through to seven, and believe me, those lessons, alternating with lessons in literature and history, were really refreshing. Lessons during which each student experiences an individual, personal joy at success do not overstrain a teacher or wear them out. They do not have to be on tenterhooks. They not have to be constantly watching those lively, restless children, who, with nothing better to do, from time to time ‘treat’ the teacher to their pranks. During such lessons the energy of these children is channelled in the right direction. How diligently and with what concentration those pranksters and clowns work, if the teacher manages to ‘harness’ their energies to intellectual work that matches their capabilities, that promises and delivers success! In intense work their active souls are revealed and they become unrecognisable. All their attention is focused on how to complete the work as well as possible.
I always experience annoyance and surprise when a teacher complains that a child is misbehaving during the lesson and getting up to mischief… That would not happen, dear friends, if you really thought about how to get each student to work!
Now we are touching on a critical issue in our work: how to we ensure that our work does not wear us out, through constant stress on our nerves and heart, due to the fact that we constantly have to deal with either some ‘crisis’ or some ‘innocent prank’, which may be small and seemingly insignificant, but if it happens all the time, prevents us from working or living normally.

Here is my translation of chapter 4 from Sukhomlynsky’s book, 100 Pieces of Advice for Teachers:

4. Goodwill
This piece of advice relates to the ABC of educational practice in general, and to the emotional side of educational practice in particular. To have goodwill means to relate to each child as if they were your own son or daughter. A child is struggling and falling behind in their studies; a child has difficulty studying at the same level as their classmates; a child or adolescent commits an act of vandalism—all of these things are misfortunes… How would you behave if your own child met with such misfortune? You would hardly be likely to suggest such measures as exclusion from school, or lowering their marks for behaviour… Of course an intelligent mother or father would see the sense in such measures, but their heart would prompt them to do whatever was necessary to save their child, and would realise that punishment alone will not save a person. Their heart would demand something that would morally cleanse their child’s soul and create beauty there; that would make them a true human being. This heartfelt wish is what we mean by goodwill. A teacher’s goodwill is expressed first and foremost in an ability to prevent a child from going down the wrong path, to protect them from evil. To wish goodness in a motherly or fatherly way means to protect a child’s heart from evil, to bar its way. If your heart feels such a deep concern for each child, if each child is not just a line in your mark book, but a living human being, a personality, a unique human world, then you may be sure that your heart will tell you want needs to be done if a child is in trouble. Such heartfelt impulses are goodwill in action.
It is easy to say: have goodwill. But goodwill has to be educated, and this state of mind can only be educated when it is mutual; that is to say, when the teacher wishes the student well, and the student wishes the teacher well. This is a most subtle aspect of school harmony. Mutual goodwill is educated in an atmosphere of emotional refinement. I always considered it one of my most important educational objectives to teach children to apprehend the world with their hearts, to feel with their hearts the emotional states of other people—no only those who are near and dear, but any compatriot they encounter on their life’s journey. To teach little children to sense when someone they meet is heavy of heart, when they have met with misfortune, is one of the most subtle educational skills. I want to share an experience of how a teacher can educate this ability in themselves, how to educate emotional refinement in children, and how this refinement can provide a foundation for mutual goodwill.
It is spring, and in a field neighbouring the school women from the collective farm are working on a crop of beet. Each morning, as soon as the sun’s red disc peeps above the horizon, the women walk to the field one after another. At this time my grade one students also come to the school grounds. We meet the sunrise in our Nook of Beauty, in a green classroom under the open sky. This is a large green shelter covered in grape vines that protect us from the heat of the sun. At a distance of only two or three metres from us the farm women pass by. We can see their eyes and every feature of their faces. If we sit very quietly, holding our breath, we can even hear their breathing. They do not see us. I teach the children: look into the women’s eyes, learn to feel and understand what each of them is feeling—a serene peace of mind or the dark cloud of sadness. Each day we observe the same women, young and old. We are already accustomed to the way that one young woman, with blue eyes and thick plaits of red hair, a mother of two young children, always sings one song or another on the way to work. She often stops on a rise in the path, gazes at the blue sky, listens to the song of a lark, and smiles. “She is enjoying life, she is happy,” I tell the children, and at the sight of human happiness we all experience joy as well. Another woman, as she turns onto the narrow path to the field, picks a few wildflowers each day, and we read in her eyes thoughts of something bright and joyful. Two young women approach a spring, flowing into the meadow, and look into it as into a mirror, rearranging their hair and admiring their beauty. Look children, in their eyes you can see a bright dream of the future. And that dark-eyed woman has not only picked some wildflowers, but has sat down on a stump and woven a garland from them. Of course such garlands are only made for little girls. Look into her eyes, children, and you will see the warmth of a mother’s love. But look carefully, children, at that grey-haired lady. Look at her eyes, how sad they are. There is so much grief and longing in her eyes. Now she has stopped and looked at the sun, and at the village with its green orchards, and she sighs deeply. She is not following the path to the field, but is taking the road into the centre of the village. She picks wildflowers along the side of the road, and takes them to the war memorial, honouring those who died here in a battle with the fascists. She lays her flowers on a grave and weeps.
Children this is the greatest grief in the world: a mother’s grief. Now she is coming back past our Nook of Beauty. Look carefully, once more, at her eyes.
The children sit, holding their breath. Not a leaf stirs, not a blade of grass. Everything around us is quiet. Now we can see the sad eyes of a mother. We hear her sigh deeply as she turns and looks once more towards the war memorial…
No words or explanations are necessary for the children to see that the mother has lost a son during the war. I tell the children about this mother’s great misfortune: she has lost both sons and her husband…
One after another there are new lessons in coming to know people with our hearts. We set off towards the field and sit by the side of the road, and from time to time people pass us by.
Studying people’s faces, looking into their eyes, the children feel their inner worlds. One experiences the joy of existence, another dreams of something exciting and dear to them, a third appears just tired and indifferent—no, that person is not feeling well…; a fourth person appears preoccupied—it may be just some insignificant, everyday concerns, or it may be anxiety about something important. Then we see an old man who is experiencing real grief. The children sit up with alarm. They have never seen such grief in human eyes. ‘He is suffering… He is in real trouble… We need to ask him how we can help,’ the children say.
They approach the old man and ask, ‘How can we help?’ The old man places a gentle hand on the blonde head of my little Zina, sighs deeply, and says, ‘You cannot help me, my dear children… My wife has just died in hospital… I’m going to get a car… We lived together for forty-seven years… You cannot help me, but I do feel a bit better, knowing that you are good people…’
This is how emotional refinement is educated. It is a very subtle, lengthy process, demanding great tact, attention, thought, and a deep knowledge of the inner world of each child.
Children who learn to apprehend another person with their heart develop goodwill. But it is very important also that they are receptive to the goodwill of the teacher, that they sense it, and repay kindness with kindness. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this in educational work. A child’s soul must be prepared for an education that is transmitted via affection, kindness and heartfelt warmth. You have probably heard teachers’ complaints (and perhaps you have had the same thought yourself): ‘What can you do? The child does not understand a kind word… I come to him with affection and an open heart, but he heartlessly mocks my kindness.’ Unfortunately this does happen, and the roots of such coarseness of heart lie in a lack of emotional education, in the fact that from the earliest years the child was not taught how to sense another person with their heart.
If you do teach your students how to feel another’s feelings with their hearts, your goodwill is capable of performing miracles. To what is the teacher’s goodwill directed? First and foremost, at a student’s intellectual work. To have goodwill in intellectual work means to understand all of a child’s strengths and weaknesses, to sense subtle aspects of their intellectual work. Your goodwill acts as a powerful educational force as long as your pupil wants to be good, as long as they continue to develop a sense of self-worth. In educational work many things are closely connected: children’s success in study is reflected in the richness of their spiritual lives, and in a teacher’s health. If a student strives to be good, and wants to study well, that already provides half the joy of your work.
Children’s sense of self-worth depends on their success in study, and their success in study depends on the goodwill of the teacher, and of course, on how well the child’s soul is prepared to be receptive to the teacher’s goodwill. Remember that children’s success in study, their feelings of self-worth, provide the spark of joy in your creative work, dear colleague. As long as that spark is alive, you will feel the richness of your spiritual life, and the joy of creativity.
But now the question arises, how do you ensure that your students constantly enjoy success in their study? How do you cultivate their feelings of self-worth? How do you inspire them with that enormous spiritual energy: the desire to be good? This leads us to the next piece of advice.

(Chapter 5 is entitled: ‘Remember, there is no such thing as an abstract student’.

We are continuing our translation of Sukhomlynsky’s 100 Pieces of Advice for School Teachers with chapter 3, which is about how to avoid nervous exhaustion.

3. How to avoid nervous exhaustion in the process of our daily work
Our work takes place in the world of childhood, something that we should not forget for a moment. And this is a special, an incomparable world. We should get to know that world, but that is not enough. We should live in that world. You could say that in every teacher a spark of childhood should shine and never grow dim.
What is the world of childhood? Here I am merely giving practical advice to teachers and do not claim to be providing an academic, psychological definition of all the characteristics of childhood. I would say that childhood is first and foremost an emotional discovery of the surrounding world. The world of childhood is above all the heartfelt apprehension of everything that children see around them and do: a bright, full-blooded, expressive life of the heart, a play of feelings and emotions. That is what the world of childhood presents to us as the object of our labours and the environment in which we work.
Hour by hour the life of children’s hearts brings us satisfaction and dissatisfaction, joy and sorrow, sadness and delight, bewilderment and amazement, affection and anger. In this extremely broad range of feelings presented to us by the world of childhood there are pleasant and unpleasant, joyful and disappointing melodies. Being able to make sense of this harmony is an important precondition for finding spiritual fulfilment, joy and success in educational work. If associating with children brings a teacher only disappointment, anger and indignation, this not only leaves unpleasant impressions on his soul; it disturbs the function of his internal organs. Teachers who are not able to appreciate the world of childhood and its complex emotional harmony, often develop psychosomatic conditions, the most unpleasant and serious of which is nervous exhaustion.
‘I only teach three lessons a day,’ writes Lydia N. from the Tambovsk Region, ‘But I come home completely exhausted. I don’t have the energy to even think, let alone prepare for lessons or read. Why is this? During my hours or work at the school I am stretched to breaking point. The children’s pranks give me no rest. It seems as if each little boy thinks of nothing else but how to cause me some unpleasantness. During the lesson I see Fedya dig Vanya in the ribs, and Vanya returns in kind, hitting Fedya over the head with his ruler… The other teachers say these things are trivial, but I cannot observe these things calmly: a hot wave of feeling surges through my body and my heart nearly jumps out of my chest. My arms and legs feel numb. I lecture the student, trying to speak calmly, but my voice shakes. The children notice this and seem to be making fun of me, thinking up new tricks. What should I do?’
This has already reached the stage of a nervous disorder, caused by a failure to understand the world of childhood. On the whole this is a wonderful world, dear colleague, and if you know it and feel at home in it, like a fish in water, it will bring you far more positive experiences and emotions than negative. You must learn to listen to that music that we call childhood with your heart, and to discern the brighter, more joyful melodies. And do not content yourself merely to listen to the music of childhood; help to create it by becoming a composer. In the music of childhood, create those bright, joyful melodies upon which depend your health, your strength of spirit, and the condition of your heart. Your piano and your manuscript paper, upon which you write the music of childhood, your conductor’s baton, with which you direct the melodies, come from a very simple and at the same time very complex thing, from your optimism. Remember that amongst children, adolescents and young men and women there are none with criminal intent, and if such do sometimes appear—one in a thousand or one in ten thousand—they are created by evil, and healed by goodness and humanity, and by that same magic violin and magic baton—optimism.
There is nothing in a child that would demand cruelty from a teacher. And if vices do arise in a child’s soul, then that evil is overcome mainly through kindness. This is not preaching non-resistance to evil, but a realistic view of the world of childhood. I hate grating suspicion towards children, and the formal regulation of demands and prohibitions. I am not preaching sloppiness and ‘free education’, but I firmly believe that kindness, affection and love towards a child—not some abstract kindness, affection and love, but real, human feelings embodying faith in young people—constitute a mighty force, capable of affirming all that is beautiful in people and leading them towards an ideal. I do not believe that a child who has been correctly educated can become a hooligan, a parasite, a cynic, or a false and depraved creature.
Optimism and faith in people provide an inexhaustible source of creative and nervous energy, and of health for both teacher and student. Do not allow the seeds of suspicion or a lack of faith in people to grow in your soul. A lack of faith in people, however small and insignificant it may seem at first, can grow into what I might call—since we are talking about physical and mental health—a cancerous tumour of ill will. Ill will is a dangerous condition of the soul, which affects the heart and nerves. This condition covers the eyes of a teacher with scales, so that he cannot see the goodness in a person. Ill will is like a pair of magic glasses, whose lenses diminish anything good to microscopic proportions, making it invisible, and magnify anything bad to monstrous dimensions, so that it hides more subtle human characteristics. The deterioration in a teacher’s health begins, my young friend, by allowing ill will to grow, feeding it with intentions and actions that have nothing in common with an optimistic faith in people. Ill will is the mother of anger and bitterness, and bitterness, figuratively speaking, is a sharp thorn that constantly pricks the most sensitive corners of the heart, wearing out the soul and weakening the nerves.
Most of all avoid the malice that takes pleasure in another’s misfortune. Suppose you have managed—may this never happen—to really get under a student’s skin and hurt him. You have written in his diary about his misbehaviour, and somewhere in the depths of your consciousness a joyful thought has flashed: ‘Your father will read my note, and he is very demanding your father, he will give it to you…’ You glance at the child’s sad eyes and they do not bother you; you remain calm. Understand, dear friend, that such moments mark the beginning of your great misfortune. Malice is taking root in your heart. It seems at first a weak, harmless creature, but in actual fact it is a poisonous serpent. Malice in turn gives rise to intolerance. A malicious heart becomes deaf and blind, incapable of sensing the subtle movements of a child’s soul. A malicious person sees evil intentions in ordinary childish pranks. Intolerance of childish misbehaviour and pranks turns a teacher into a cold logician, a calculating overseer, hateful to children. And they pay him back for his petty fault-finding by baiting him and trying to unsettle him. Once this process starts, the teacher’s heart gradually burns out from having to continually suppress his anger. Avoid this great misfortune my friend. If you do not manage to avoid this, you will become a peevish, irritable, gloomy creature. Your work will become hard labour, and you will develop a hundred ailments and a hundred vices.
Goodwill and rational kindness—that is the atmosphere that should characterise the life of a class of children, and relations between a teacher and children. What a beautiful word that is, and at the same time what a deep, complex, many-facetted human quality—goodwill. If it is mutual, one human being opens up to another with all the depth of their soul.
I have said it a thousand times, and will repeat it till the day I die, that mutual goodwill between a teacher and children creates those subtle threads that connect hearts, and thanks to which—this is so important in our educational work—one person understands another without words, feeling the subtle movements of their soul. Many years working in schools has firmly convinced me that if I have goodwill towards the children, and have educated goodwill in them, they will spare my heart and my nerves, and will understand when my soul is troubled, and when it is hard for me even to speak. Sensing my state of mind, feeling that my soul is troubled, the children even talk softly, avoid making a noise, and try to afford me as much peace and quiet as possible, during both lessons and breaks. In this mutual reading of hearts and souls is an inexhaustible source of health for you, my dear colleague. But here we are entering a very special aspect of school life, an area about which very little is said, but much needs to be said. We are speaking of the very essence of goodwill as one of the most important aspects of emotional education.