Highlights / notes file: To Children I Give My Heart - Vasily Sukhomlynsky
Know the whole child (family, health, inner world) before teaching content. A teacher who meets pupils only across the desk, or sees them only through grades, can’t educate them; education is first of all teaching how to be a person.
From my highlights and notes
- Only someone who never forgets having been a child can become a real teacher.
- Many teachers measure a child’s inner world only by marks, splitting pupils into “those who study well and the rest”.
- Know each child’s health and family; for many, the teacher’s job is “to give back childhood” to those deprived of it.
- Teach children how to think, perceive and observe before passing on knowledge.
- Prevent early mistakes rather than “re-educate” later.
- Inspired by Janusz Korczak: to educate children, give them your heart.
- My note: to enter the “fairy castle” of childhood, become, to some degree, a child yourself.
So what (Claude)
- Sukhomlynsky is the Soviet-era humanist counterpart to Kohn’s critique of grades and to SEL. For Uzbek schools, he’s a culturally familiar authority for arguing against grade-only evaluation.
- Practical version: a short learner profile per child (interests, family, health flags) at the start of each course.
Connections
The case against grades · Know your learners before you plan · Psychological safety routines - check-ins and modelled mistakes · Pitch tasks inside the ZPD and hand over support