[Illustration: _Maria Montessori_]
A
MONTESSORI
MOTHER
BY
DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER
Author of “The Squirrel-Cage”
_ILLUSTRATED_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1913
COPYRIGHT, 1912,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
Published October, 1912
THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.
_DEDICATED
BY PERMISSION
TO
MARIA MONTESSORI_
PREFACE
On my return recently from a somewhat prolonged stay in Rome, I
observed that my family and circle of friends were in a very different
state of mind from that usually found by the home-coming traveler.
I was not depressed by the usual conscientious effort to appear
interested in what I had seen; not once did I encounter the wavering
eye and flagging attention which are such invariable accompaniments to
anecdotes of European travel, nor the usual elated rebound into topics
of local interest after a tribute to the miles I had traveled, in some
such generalizing phrase of finality as, “Well, I suppose you enjoyed
Europe as much as ever.”
If I had ever suffered from the enforced repression within my own soul
of my various European experiences I was more than indemnified by the
reception which awaited this last return to my native land. For I found
myself set upon and required to give an account of what I had seen, not
only by my family and friends, but by callers, by acquaintances in the
streets, by friends of acquaintances, by letters from people I knew,
and many from those whose names were unfamiliar.
The questions they all asked were of a striking similarity, and I grew
weary in repeating the same answers, answers which, from the nature of
the subject, could be neither categorical nor brief. How many evenings
have I talked from the appearance of the coffee-cups till a very late
bedtime, in answer to the demand, “Now, you’ve been to Rome; you’ve
seen the Montessori schools. You saw a great deal of Dr. Montessori
herself and were in close personal relations with her. Tell us all
about it. Is it really so wonderful? Or is it just a fad? Is it true
that the children are allowed do exactly as they please? I should think
it would spoil them beyond endurance. Do they really learn to read and
write so young? And isn’t it very bad for them to stimulate them so
unnaturally? And....” this was a never-failing cry, “what is there in
it for our children, situated as we are?”
Staggered by the amount of explanation necessary to give the shortest
answers that would be intelligible to these searching, but, on the
whole, quite misdirected questions, I tried to put off my interrogators
with the excellent magazine articles which have appeared on the
subject, and with the translation of Dr. Montessori’s book. There were
various objections to being relegated to these sources of information.
Some of my inquisitors had been too doubtful of the value of the
perhaps over-heralded new ideas to take the trouble to read the book
with the close and serious attention necessary to make anything out of
its careful and scientific presentation of its theories. Others, quite
honestly, in the breathless whirl of American business, professional
and social life, were too busy to read such a long work. Some had read
it and emerged from it rather dazed by the technical terms employed,
with the dim idea that something remarkable was going on in Italy of
which our public education ought to take advantage, but without the
smallest definite idea of a possible change in their treatment of their
own youngsters. All had many practical questions to put, based on the
difference between American and Italian life, questions which, by
chance, had not been answered in the magazine articles.
I heard, moreover, in varying degree, from all the different
temperaments, the common note of skepticism about the results obtained.
Everyone hung on my first-hand testimony as an impartial eye-witness.
“You are a parent like us. Will it really work?” they inquired with
such persistent unanimity that the existence of a still unsatisfied
craving for information seemed unquestionable. If so many people in my
small personal circle, differing in no way from any ordinary group of
educated Americans, were so actively, almost aggressively interested in
hearing my personal account of the actual working of the new system,
it seemed highly probable that other people’s personal circles would
be interested. The inevitable result of this reasoning has been the
composition of this small volume, which can claim for partial expiation
of its existence that it has no great pretensions to anything but
timeliness.
I have put into it, not only an exposition, as practical as I can make
it, of the technic of the method as far as it lies within the powers
of any one of us fathers and mothers to apply it, but in addition I
have set down all the new ideas, hopes, and visions which have sprung
up in my mind as a result of my close contact with the new system and
with the genius who is its founder. For ideas, hopes, and visions are
as important elements in a comprehension of this new philosophy as an
accurate knowledge of the use of the “geometric insets,” and my talks
with Dr. Montessori lead me to think that she feels them to be much
more essential. Contact with the new ideas is not doing for us what it
ought, if it does not act as a powerful stimulant to the whole body
of our thought about life. It should make us think, and think hard,
not only about how to teach our children the alphabet more easily, but
about such fundamental matters as what we actually mean by moral life;
whether we really honestly wish the spiritually best for our children,
or only the materially best; why we are really in the world at all.
In many ways, this “Montessori System” is a new religion which we are
called upon to help bring into the world, and we cannot aid in so great
an undertaking without considerable spiritual as well as intellectual
travail.
The only way for us to improve our children’s lives by the application
of these new ideas is by meditating on them until we have absorbed
their very essence and then by making what varying applications of
them are necessary in the differing condition of our lives. I have
set down, without apology, my own Americanized meditations on Dr.
Montessori’s Italian text, simply because I chance to be one of the
first American mothers to come into close contact with her and her
work, and as such may be of value to my fellows. I have, however,
honestly labeled and pigeon-holed these meditations on the general
philosophy of the system, and set them in separate chapters so that it
should not be difficult for the most casual reader to select what he
wishes to read, without being forced into social, philosophical, or
ethical considerations. I confess that I shall be greatly disappointed
if he takes too exclusive advantage of this opportunity, for I quite
agree with the Italian founder of the system that its philosophical and
ethical elements are those which have in them most promise for a new
future for us all.
Finally, in spite of all my excuses for the undertaking, I seem to
myself, now that I am fairly embarked upon it, very presumptuous
in speaking at all upon such high and grave matters, fit only for
the sure and enlightened handling of the specialist. But this is
a subject differing from biology, physiological psychology, and
philosophy (although the foundations of the system are laid deep in
those sciences), inasmuch as its usefulness to the race depends upon
its comprehension by the greatest possible number of ordinary human
beings. I hearten myself by remembering that if it is not to remain an
interesting and futile theory, it must be, in its broad outlines at
least, understood and practised by just such people as I am. We must
all collaborate. And here is the place to say that I consider this book
a very tentative performance; and that I will be very grateful for
suggestions from any of my readers which will help to make a second
edition more useful and complete.
This volume of impressions, therefore, lays no claim to erudition. It
is not written by a biologist for other biologists, by a philosopher
for an audience of college professors, or by a professional pedagogue
to enlighten school-superintendents. An ordinary American parent,
desiring above all else the best possible chance for her children,
addresses this message to the innumerable legion of her companions in
that desire.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Miss M. I. Batchelder and Miss Mary
G. Gillmore, both of the Horace Mann School, for helpful suggestions;
to Miss Anne E. George, who also read the manuscript; to Dr. Maria
Montessori’s book “The Montessori Method” (Frederick A. Stokes Company,
New York); and to the House of Childhood, Inc., 200 Fifth Avenue, New
York, for the use of illustrations. Dr. Montessori’s didactic apparatus
is manufactured and distributed by the House of Childhood, Inc.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE v
I. SOME INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ABOUT PARENTS 1
II. A DAY IN A CASA DEI BAMBINI 7
III. MORE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS IN A CASA DEI BAMBINI 29
IV. SOMETHING ABOUT THE APPARATUS AND ABOUT
THE THEORY UNDERLYING IT 48
V. DESCRIPTION OF THE REST OF THE APPARATUS AND
THE METHOD FOR WRITING AND READING 67
VI. SOME GENERAL REMARKS ABOUT THE MONTESSORI
APPARATUS IN THE AMERICAN HOME 91
VII. THE POSSIBILITY OF AMERICAN ADAPTATIONS OF,
OR ADDITIONS TO, THE MONTESSORI APPARATUS 105
VIII. SOME REMARKS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SYSTEM 117
IX. APPLICATION OF THIS PHILOSOPHY TO AMERICAN HOME LIFE 127
X. SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON THE NATURE OF “DISCIPLINE” 141
XI. MORE ABOUT DISCIPLINE, WITH SPECIAL REGARD TO OBEDIENCE 153
XII. DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF A UNIVERSAL ADOPTION
OF THE MONTESSORI IDEAS 165
XIII. IS THERE ANY REAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE
MONTESSORI SYSTEM AND THE KINDERGARTEN? 171
XIV. MORAL TRAINING 195
XV. DR. MONTESSORI’S LIFE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE
CASA DEI BAMBINI 210
XVI. SOME LAST REMARKS 232
INDEX 239
ILLUSTRATIONS
Maria Montessori _Frontispiece_
The schoolroom in the convent of the Franciscan
nuns in the Via Giusti page 8
The meal hour “ 22
The morning clean-up “ 26
Waiter carrying soup “ 26
Exercises in practical life “ 56
Building “the Tower” “ 56
Buttoning-frames to develop co-ordinated movements
of the fingers and prepare the children for exercises
of practical life “ 68
Solid geometrical insets “ 70
The broad stair “ 74
The long stair “ 74
Insets which the child learns to place both by sight
and touch “ 78
Tracing sandpaper letters “ 86
Tracing geometrical design “ 86
Training the “stereognostic sense”--combining
motor and tactual images “ 100
Color boxes comprising spools of eight colors and
eight shades of each color “ 116
Materials for teaching rough and smooth “ 138
Counting boxes “ 162
Insets around which the child draws, and then fills
in the outline with colored crayons “ 188
Word building with cut-out alphabet “ 224
A MONTESSORI MOTHER
CHAPTER I
SOME INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ABOUT PARENTS
An observation often made by philosophic observers of our social
organization is that the tremendous importance of primary teachers is
ridiculously underestimated. The success or failure of the teachers of
little children may not perhaps determine the amount of information
acquired later in its educative career by each generation, but no one
can deny that it determines to a considerable extent the character of
the next generation, and character determines practically everything
worth considering in the world of men. Yet the mind of the average
community admits this but haltingly. The teachers of small children are
paid more than they were, but still far less than the importance of
their work deserves, and they are still regarded by the unenlightened
majority as insignificant compared to those who impart information to
older children and adolescents, a class of pupils which, in the nature
of things, is vastly more able to protect its own individuality from
the character of the teacher.
But is there a thoughtful parent living who has not quailed at the
haphazard way in which Fate has pitchforked him into a profession
greatly more important and enormously more difficult? For it is not
quite fair to us to say that we chose the profession of parent with
our eyes open when we repeated the words of the marriage service. It
cannot be denied that every pair of fiancés know that probably they
will have children, but this knowledge has about the same degree of
first-hand vividness in their minds that the knowledge of ultimate
certain death has in the mind of the average healthy young person:
there is as little conscious preparation for the coming event in the
one case as in the other. No, we have some right on our side, under the
prevailing conditions of education about the facts of life, in claiming
that we are tossed headlong by a force stronger than ourselves into
a profession and a terrifying responsibility which many of us would
never have had the presumption to undertake in cold blood. We might
conceivably have undertaken to build railway bridges, even though the
lives of multitudes depended on them; we might have become lawyers and
settled people’s material affairs for them or even, as doctors, settled
the matter of their physical life or death; but to be responsible to
God, to society, and to the soul in question for the health, happiness,
moral growth, and usefulness of a human soul, what reflective parent
among the whole army of us has not had moments of heartsick terror at
the realization of what he has been set to do?
I say “moments” advisedly, for it must be admitted that most of us
manage to forget pretty continually the alarming possibilities of our
situation. In this we are imitating the curious actual indifference to
peril which, from time immemorial, has been observed among those who
are exposed to any danger which is very long continued. The incapacity
of human nature to feel any strong emotion for a considerable length
of time, even one connected with the supposedly sacrosanct instinct
for self-preservation, is to be observed in the well-worn examples
of people living on the sides of volcanoes, and of workers among
machinery, who will not take the most elementary precautions against
accidents if the precautions consume much time or thought. Consequently
it is not surprising that, as a whole, parents are not only not
stricken to the earth by the responsibilities of their situation, but
as a class are singularly blind to their duties, and oddly difficult to
move to any serious, continued consideration of the task before them.
This attitude bears a close relation to the axiom which has only to be
stated to win instant recognition from any self-analyzing human being,
“We would rather lie down and die than _think_!” We cannot, as a rule,
be forced to think really, seriously, connectedly, logically about the
form of our government, about our social organization, about how we
spend our lives, even about the sort of clothes we wear or the food
we eat,--questions affecting our comfort so cruelly that they would
make us reflect if anything could. But we ourselves are the only ones
to suffer from our refusal to use our minds fully and freely on such
subjects. It is intolerable that our callous indifference and incurable
triviality should wreak themselves upon the helpless children committed
to our care. The least we can do, if we will not do our own thinking,
is to accept, with all gratitude, the thinking that someone else has
done for us.
For there is one loop-hole of escape in our modern world from this
self-imprisonment in shiftless ways of mental life, and that is
the creation and wide diffusion of the scientific spirit. There is
apparently in human nature, along with this invincible repugnance
to use reason on matters closely connected with our daily life, a
considerable pleasure in ratiocination if it is exercised on subjects
sufficiently removed from our personal sphere. The man who will eat
hot mince-pie and rarebit at two in the morning and cry out upon the
Fates as responsible for the inevitable sequence of suffering, may be,
often is, in his chemical laboratory, or his surgical practice, or his
biological research, an investigator of the strictest integrity of
reasoning.
Reflection on this curious trait of human nature may bring some
restoration of self-respect to parents in the face of the apparently
astounding fact that most of the great educators have been by no
means parents of large families, and a large proportion of them have
been childless. This but follows the usual eccentric route taken by
discoveries leading to the amelioration of conditions surrounding
man. It was not an inhabitant of a malarial district, driven to
desperation by the state of things, who discovered the crime of the
mosquito. That discovery was made by men working in laboratories not
in the least incommoded by malaria. Hundreds of generations of devoted
mothers, ready and willing to give the last drop of their blood for
their children’s welfare, never discovered that unscalded milk-bottles
are like prussic acid to babies. Childless workers in white laboratory
aprons, standing over test-tubes, have revolutionized the physical
hygiene of infancy and brought down the death-rate of babies beyond
anything ever dreamed of by our parents.
But let it be remembered as comfort, exhortation, and warning to
us that the greatest army of laboratory workers ever financed by a
twentieth-century millionaire, would have been of no avail if the
parents of the babies of the world had not taken to scalding the
milk-bottles. Let us insist upon the recognition of our merit, such as
it is. We will not, apparently we cannot, do the hard, consecutive,
logical, investigating thinking which is the only thing necessary in
many cases to better the conditions of our daily life; but we are
not entirely impervious to reason, inasmuch as the world has seen us
in this instance following, with the most praiseworthy docility, the
teachings of those who have thought for us. The milk-bottles in by
far the majority of American homes are really being scalded to-day;
and “cholera morbus,” “second summers,” “teething fevers,” and the
like are becoming as out-of-date as “fever ’n’ ague,” “galloping
consumption,” and the like.
The lessened death-rate among babies is not only the most heartening
spectacle for lovers of babies, but for hopers and believers in the
general advancement of the race. This miraculous revolution in the
care of infants under a year of age has taken place in less than a
human generation. The grandparents of our children are still with us
to pooh-pooh our sterilizings, and to look on with bewilderment while
we treat our babies as intelligently as stock-breeders treat their
animals. Let us take heart of grace. If scientific methods of physical
hygiene in the care of children can be thus quickly inculcated, it is
certainly worth while to storm the age-old redoubts sheltering the no
less hoary abuses of their intellectual and spiritual treatment.
A scientist of another race, taking advantage of the works of all the
other investigators along the same line (works which nothing could have
induced us to study), laboring in a laboratory of her own invention,
has been doing our hard, consecutive, logical, investigating thinking
for us. Let us have the grace to take advantage of her discoveries,
many of which have been stumbled upon from time to time in a haphazard,
unformulated way by the instinctive wisdom of experience, but the
synthesis of which into a coherent, usable system, with a consistent
philosophical foundation, has been left to a childless scientific
investigator.