Few know that the great Leo Tolstoy started and ran a school for peasant children on his estate, Yasnaya Polyana (in English, "Clear Glade")-- and that he had specific, radical and effective ideas about how humans learn best. Here are a few excellent quotes from his writing/ observations on the subject:
"The only criterion of pedagogy is freedom, the only method-- experience."
"Because compulsion in education, both by my conviction and by my character, are repulsive to me, I did not exercise any pressure, and the moment I noticed that something was not readily received, I did not compel my students and looked for something else. From these experiments it appeared to me... based on this same principle of freedom-- that nearly everything which the pedagogical world wrote about schools was separated by an immeasurable abyss from reality." (I find this same to be largely the case today in mainstream educational/ pedagogical circles, training-- and the nature/ structure and assumptions underlying educational institutions/ systems themselves.)
"Nobody, I suppose, will deny that the best relation between teacher and student is that of naturalness, and that the contrary relation is that of compulsion. If so, the measure of all methods is to be found in the greater or lesser naturalness of relations and, therefore, in the lesser or greater compulsion in instruction. The less children are compelled to learn, the better the method; the more-- the worse. I am glad I do not have to prove this evident truth."
"The only instruction that has been regarded as good everywhere and in all ages takes place when the pupil becomes completely equal to the teacher-- and the more this occurs, the better the school is, and the less so the worse."
