THE BEGINNINGS 7for their times - but grinding poverty and social humiliation had
demoralized them, had sapped their energy and ability at everceming
the laziness and apathy of their students. Serious learning and effective
teaching were handicapped by the very heteregeneous composition of
the student bedy. Half-wits and intelligent boys, eld and yeung,
the industrieus and the lazy - all were thrown together into one class,
in one roem. Under these cenditions; enly a very few ideas and facts
could at best penetrate into the reluctant minds of the students. To
attain even a limited result, the only method known then was to rely
exclusively on formal learning and memory. The essential aim ef this
pedagogy was to develop the ability to repeat accurately what was in
the textbooks, to. selve medel problems by a mechanical application
of a few fermal rules. Unfortunately, teo, the major fields of study
- theelogy, philosephy, seme smattering ef mathematics, religieus
history, and apelogetics - easily lent themselv~s to. such a "scholastic"
approach. The harshest discipline was impesed in an effort at securing
a minimum of the students' attention and at producing seme results.
Fear of punishment was the only principle ef centrel and incentive:
metionless kneeling in the cerner for long hours, deprivation of what
little foed and heat there was, cruel beatings. Such were the usual
means by which ,a demoralized and ineffectual faculty endeavored to.
keep the seminarians in line and force something into their heads.
Only the hardiest, the ablest, and luckiest ceuld survive the system
and extract any benefits from it; it is net surprising, therefere, that
many of the best "heads" in Russia at the end of the 18th century
had ceme through the teugh mill of the seminaries. Alene, these rare
individuals succeeded in abserbing the positive features ef the
"schelastic" methods: the principles of clear factual exposition, of
exact legical analysis, and of cenvincing argumentatIOn. The successful
seminary graduate alSo. learned early, and to perfectien, how to make
the best ef a most unfaverable environment; he learned hew to be
ingratiatingly obedient towards his superiers and to. perferm the
assigned tasks to. the satisfactien of an individual's idiesyncrasy; he
learned hew to make use ef his less gifted fellew students; he knew
how to recognize and assess the infermal "pewer structures" and to
eperate carefully within their framewerk. In short, the theolegical
seminaries inculcated habits of submissive ebedience, a skillful use of
tact and diplemacy, and a mastery ef the fermal techniques of
intellectual work.
It was to such a scheel in Vladimir that the yeung Michael Speransky
was sent when he was about twelve years eld. Immediately he was