Lev Tolstoy, A Founder of Democratic Education

Simple item page
Author(s)Matusov, Eugene
Date Accessioned2024-08-08T15:22:20Z
Date Available2024-08-08T15:22:20Z
Publication Date2024-07-22
DescriptionThis article was originally published in Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-024-09860-w. © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
AbstractIn this philosophical-theoretical study of Lev Tolstoy’s pedagogical legacy of his Yasnaya Polyana school in the Russian Empire (1859–1862), I raised three major questions: (1) was Lev Tolstoy a democratic educator, and if so, why can one claim that, (2) if so, what kind of a democratic educator was he, and (3) what kind of limitations to his democratic education have I observe and what were the sources of these limitations? My answer to the first question was unequivocally positive. I argue that Tolstoy was the conceptual founder of democratic non-coercive education and the first known practitioner of democratic education for children. In my view, his democratic education was based on educational offerings provided by the teachers. His democratic educational philosophy was based on non-coercion, naturalism, anarchism, liveliness, pragmatism, pedagogical experimentation, student responses, pedagogical self-reflection, and dialogism. At the same time, his democratic education was limited to his uncritical acceptance of conventionalism. Tolstoy’s attraction to Progressive Education was facilitated by ignoring his enormous powers, both explicit and implicit, that he manifested exercised in the school and enacted through his “pervasive informality.” In my judgment, Tolstoy overemphasized pedagogy over self-education and did not distinguish learning from education. Still, Tolstoy’s pioneering work in democratic education, both in theory and practice, remains mostly unacknowledged and unanalyzed while continuing to be highly relevant and potentially influential.
CitationMatusov, E. Lev Tolstoy, A Founder of Democratic Education. Integr. psych. behav. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-024-09860-w
ISSN1936-3567
URLhttps://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/34668
Languageen_US
PublisherIntegrative Psychological and Behavioral Science
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
KeywordsDemocratic education
KeywordsTolstoy
Keywordseducational offerings
Keywordsprogressive education
Keywordseducational coercion
Keywordsanarchistic education
Keywordsnaturalism
Keywordsself-organizing
TitleLev Tolstoy, A Founder of Democratic Education
TypeArticle
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Lev Tolstoy, A Founder of Democratic Education.pdf
Size:
1.33 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Main article
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
2.22 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description:
Download
Collections
Open Access Publications