Hymn to repeaters: there are no unsuccessful children

But we must not lose indestructible faith in the future. And the future will be how we raise our children, who must have the courage to cope with any challenges and threats of our time.

I am convinced that intolerance, fanaticism, and the division of people into friends and enemies stem from inferiority, which, in turn, is born from a feeling of inferiority of one’s personality. This inferiority is formed in a person from a young age, not without the help of adults, be it teachers or parents. They have no hesitation in dividing children into successful and unsuccessful.

Having devoted half a century to education, I am convinced that there are no unsuccessful children. This thesis strongly contradicts the so-called professional task that most of my colleagues set for themselves. It is formulated as follows: overcoming school failure. A terrible, oppressive sign of this very failure is considered to be repeating a year, which children are afraid of like fire, they are embarrassed, like an indecent disease, which, God forbid, friends, neighbors, and relatives find out about.

School administrators and teachers throw their efforts into the fight against repetition, often resorting to outright forgery and fraud when reporting to higher authorities. However, today, when methods of intermediate and final monitoring of the actual results of children’s education (a kind of external acceptance) are being introduced everywhere, it is becoming increasingly difficult to improve school reporting in such a dubious way. For example, in Moscow, the choice of a subject for which a particular school will be monitored is done publicly, live, on television by demonstrating a lottery drum, from which representatives of the parent community pull out a ball with the name of the subject being diagnosed. During verification work, double control is carried out: video cameras and independent observers. The latter take the work with them for an objective check, the results of which are reported to the school.

So should we be afraid of repeating a year? To the surprise of my colleagues, I will sing a hymn to him. And I will do this in a simple way: by listing the names of famous repeaters.

Edison was expelled from school “due to complete mediocrity.” By the way, it is appropriate to immediately dispel one of the legends: Edison was not at all a poor boy who lived by selling newspapers. His father was a wealthy manufacturer, and his mother was an experienced teacher, who taught her son very carefully and comprehensively at home. As for selling newspapers, Edison earned money in this way to buy chemicals and other materials with which he wanted to work.

Winston Churchill was chronically the second to last student in school. Which, by the way, did not really bother his grandfather, who said that “boys begin to work well only when they clearly see what they can excel in.” He was probably right.

Justus Liebig, the great chemist who discovered the phenomenon of isomerism, had to “due to inability” to leave school at the age of fourteen, which did not prevent him from becoming a professor in Giessen at the age of twenty-one.

For three years he sat in the same class of A.P. Chekhov, who was not good at foreign languages. The outstanding director V. Meyerhold also spent three years in the same class. Frankly speaking, he deceived his father and skipped school, disappearing from morning to night in the Penza circus.

The great biologist, academician-geneticist Timofeev-Resovsky (the same Bison about whom D. Granin wrote his story) did not have a secondary education.

Nobel Prize winner in literature I. Brodsky was expelled from the seventh grade.

Can anyone really say that these people were truly incapable? Without a doubt, it can be argued that they were unable to study in schools that were not suitable for them, with teachers who did not understand them. They were unable to learn just like everyone else. Because they were very different from the others. They were deprived of the property of “sameness” and were not conformists. They were the tops of other pyramids.

The most important thing is that they found themselves early. And having found themselves, they quickly expanded their knowledge through self-education, absorbing the achievements of world culture and the treasury of knowledge.

It should be noted that many brilliant discoveries are made at a young age. One of the proofs of the decisive role of heredity in the existence of certain human abilities are cases of extremely early manifestation of talent.

In particular, the famous German philosopher W. Ostwald names early maturity among the ten most important characteristics of a scientific genius, and the American thinker and public figure G. Lehmann proves that the early age of discoveries is characteristic not only of previous centuries, but also of the 19th century.

Here is a list of people named by Lehman (and by no means all-inclusive) who made major discoveries before the age of 21.

Mary Anning, at the age of 12, found the first specimen of an ichthyosaur described in science.

Jane Austen wrote her best book at the age of 20–21.

L. Bellini, at the age of 19, discovered that the stripes on the section of the kidney were tubes, not fibers.

J. Bizet wrote his first symphony at the age of 17.

W. Blake wrote his first collection of poems between the ages of 12 and 20.

Louis Braille, who became blind at the age of three, invented his alphabet for the blind at the age of 20.

Leibniz wrote important philosophical and legal articles at the age of 21, Giacomo Leopardi wrote outstanding poems at the same age, Marconi invented a method of transmitting signals by radio, Millet painted two paintings that made him famous.

Milton, at age 15, wrote a wonderful hymn.

Murphy became the champion of New Orleans at the age of 12, and the world chess champion at the age of 21.

Blaise Pascal invented a calculating machine at the age of 19.

A. Pop wrote his first outstanding poems at the age of 17.

At the age of 20, Raphael created his first famous painting, “The Marriage of Our Lady.”

D. G. Rossetti, the founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, wrote his best poem at the age of 19.

Rossini wrote the opera Tancred at the age of 21.

Schelling wrote his first major philosophical work at the age of 19.

Schubert created the music for his first song at the age of 17, and the famous melody to the words of “The Forest King” at the age of 18.

Robert Burns created his best poems and songs between the ages of 14 and 21.

S. Colt invented a revolver at the age of 18, and at 19 he designed a revolver and a gun, which were later patented.

M. Yu. Lermontov: at the age of 15 – the first edition of “The Demon”, “The Spaniards”, and at the age of 16 – “Masquerade”.

A. S. Griboedov graduated from the university at the age of 13, the second faculty by the age of 17.

The examples can be continued. But the pace of learning the material in itself does not mean anything.

Emmanuel Kant wrote: “What my friend understands in 1 day, I will understand in a week; What he understands in a week, I will understand in a month, but what I understand in a year, he will never understand.”

The same applies to so-called children with developmental problems. In the early nineties, I was lucky enough to directly observe the work of Jean Vanier, the founder of settlement communities for mentally retarded people called “Ark”.

As soon as he entered the school lobby and saw the children (and these were students from correctional classes), he started dancing with them. And he was already 73 years old then. A tall old man, he made incredible pretzels with the children. At the same time, they actively communicated in some kind of metalanguage. It is unnecessary to remind that the “correctional” children did not know French, but they and Vanier understood each other perfectly.

Later, already in the director’s office, he told me one story that determined my pedagogical worldview for years to come. “We spent a long time and unsuccessfully treating the abscess on the girl Laura’s face. Until we realized that we need to treat not the abscess, but work with the girl’s personality.” Let me remind you that we were talking about a girl with a deep mental illness.

Since then, I have abandoned the term “school failure”, and I am talking about learning difficulties that can occur in both gifted children and children with developmental problems.

Terrorism is a global evil that everyone needs to fight. But in this struggle, everyone has their own role: politicians, intelligence services, doctors, firefighters, the media… And we, teachers and parents, also have a task – educational. And it is no less important: do everything possible so that the child does not have a feeling of inferiority, which gives rise to envy and aggression.