To begin
with the peasantry, who are by far the most numerous class, we must
admit that they are very far from being well educated, but they are keen
to learn and they gladly send their children to the village schools,
which have been greatly increased and improved in recent years. Another
source of education is the army. Since the introduction of universal
military service every unlettered recruit must learn to read and write.
A third educational agency is the peculiar village organization. As
every head of a family has a house of his own and a share of the
communal land, he is a miniature farmer; and, unlike agricultural
laborers, who need not look much ahead beyond the weekly pay day, he
must make his agricultural and domestic arrangements for an entire year,
under pain of incurring starvation or falling into the clutches of the
usurer. This is in itself a sort of practical education. Then he has to
attend regularly the meetings of the village assembly, at which all
communal affairs are discussed and decided. To this I must add that he
is by no means obstinately conservative. Habitually cautious, he may be
slow to change his traditional habits and methods of cultivation, but he
does change them when he sees, by the experience of his neighbors, that
new methods are more profitable than old ones. Ask any dealer in
improved implements and machines how many he has sold to peasants in a
single year.
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