MORE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS IN A CASA DEI BAMBINI
Of course one day’s observations do not give even a bird’s-eye view of
all the operations of a Montessori school, and this chapter is intended
to supplement somewhat the very incomplete survey of the last and to
touch at least, in passing, upon some of the other important activities
in which the children are engaged. If this description seems lacking in
continuity and uniformity, it represents all the more faithfully the
impressions of an observer of a Casa dei Bambini. For there one sees
no trace of the slightly Prussian uniformity of action to which we are
accustomed in even the freest of our primary schools and kindergartens.
You need not expect at ten o’clock to hear the “ten-o’clock class in
reading,” for possibly on that day no child will happen to feel like
reading. You need not think that the teacher will call up the star
pupil to have him write for you. He may be lying on the floor absorbed
in an arithmetical game and a Montessori teacher would as soon blow up
her schoolroom with dynamite as interfere with the natural direction,
taken for the moment by the self-educating instincts of her children.
In planning a visit to a Casa dei Bambini, you can be sure of only one
thing, not, however, an inconsiderable thing, and that is that all
the children will be happily absorbed in some profitable undertaking.
It never fails. There are no “blue Mondays.” Rain or shine outdoors,
inside the big room there always blows across the heart of the visitor
a fine, tonic breath of free, and hence, never listless life. On days
in winter when the sirocco blows, the debilitating wind from Africa,
which reduces the whole population of Rome to inert and melancholy
passivity, the children in the Casa are perhaps not quite so briskly
energetic as usual in their self-imposed task of teaching and governing
themselves, but they are by far the most briskly energetic Romans in
the city.
It is all so interesting to them, they cannot stop to be bored or
naughty. Just as one of our keen, hungry-minded Yankee school-teachers,
turned loose for the first time in an historic European city, throws
herself with such fervor into the exploration of all its fascinating
and informing sights that she is astonished to hear later that it was
one of the hottest and most trying summers ever known, so these equally
hungry-minded, healthy children fling themselves upon the fascinating
and informing wonders of the world about them with such ardor that they
are always astonished when the long, happy day is done.
The freedom accorded them is absolute, the only rule being that they
must not hurt or annoy others, a rule which, after the first brief
chaos at the beginning, when the school is being organized, is always
respected with religious care by these little citizens; although to
call a Montessori school a “little republic” and the children “little
citizens,” gives much too formal an idea of the free-and-easy, happily
unforced and natural relations of the children with each other. The
phrase Casa dei Bambini is being translated everywhere nowadays by
English-speaking people as “The House of Childhood,” whereas its real
meaning, both linguistic and spiritual, is, “The Children’s Home.”
That is what it is, a real home for _children_, where everything is
arranged for their best interests, where the furniture is the right
size for them, where there are no adult occupations going on to be
interrupted and hindered by the mere presence of the children, where
there are no rules made solely to facilitate life for grown-ups, where
children, without incurring the reproach (expressed or tacit) of
disturbing their elders, can freely and joyously, and if they please,
noisily, develop themselves by action from morning to night. With the
removal by this simple means of most of the occasions for friction
in the life of little children, it is amazing to see how few, how
negligibly few occasions there are for naughtiness. The great question
of discipline which so absorbs us all, solves itself, melts into thin
air, becomes non-existent. Each child gives himself the severest sort
of self-discipline by his interest in his various undertakings. He
learns self-control as a by-product of his healthy absorption in some
fascinating pursuit, or as a result of his instinctive imitation of
older children.
For instance, no adult was obliged to shout commandingly to the
little-girl waitress not to drop her soup-tureen to brush the fly from
her nose. She was so filled with the pride of her responsible position
that she obeyed the same inner impulse towards self-control which
induces adult self-sacrifice. On the other hand, the buttoning boy did
not refrain by a similar, violent effort of his will from snatching the
blocks from the arithmetical children. It simply never occurred to him,
so happily absorbed was he in his own task.
I asked, of course, the question which obsesses every new observer in
a Children’s Home, “But what do you do, with all this fine theory of
absolute freedom, when a child _is_ naughty? Sometimes, even if not
often, you surely must encounter the kicking, screaming, snatching,
hair-pulling ‘bad’ child!” I was told then that the health of such a
child is looked into at once, such perverted violence being almost
certainly the result of deranged physical condition. If nothing
pathological can be discovered, he is treated as a morally sick child,
given a little table by himself, from which he can look on at the
cheerful, ordered play of the schoolroom, allowed any and all toys he
desires, petted, soothed, indulged, pitied, but (of course this is the
vital point) severely let alone by the other children, who are told
that he is “sick” and so cannot play with them until he gets well.
This quiet isolation, with its object-lesson of good-natured play among
the other children, has a hypnotically calming effect, the child’s
“naughtiness” for very lack of food to feed upon, or resistance to blow
its flames, disappears and dies away.
This, I say, was the explanation given me at first, but later, when I
came to know more intimately the little group of Montessori enthusiasts
in Rome, I learned more about the matter. One of my Montessori friends
told me laughingly, “We found that nobody would believe us at all when
we told the simple truth, when we said that we never, literally never,
do encounter that hypothetical, ferociously naughty, small child. They
look at us with such an obvious incredulity that, for the honor of the
system, we had to devise some expedient. So we ransacked our memories
for one or two temporary examples of ‘badness’ which we met at first
before the system was well organized, and remembered how we had dealt
with them. Now, when people ask us what we do when the children begin
to scratch and kick each other, instead of insisting that children as
young as ours, when properly interested, never do these things, we tell
them the old story of our device of years ago.”
I have said that the real translation for Casa dei Bambini is The
Children’s Home, and I feel like insisting upon this rendering, which
gives us so much more idea of the character of the institution. At
least, from now on, in this book, that English phrase will be used from
time to time to designate a Montessori school. It is, for instance,
their very own home not only in the sense that it is a place arranged
specially for their comfort and convenience, but furthermore a place
for which they feel that steadying sense of responsibility which is one
of the greatest moral advantages of a home over a boarding-house, a
moral advantage of home life which children in ordinary circumstances
are rarely allowed to share with their elders. They are boarders
(though gratuitous ones) with their father and mother, and, as a
natural consequence, they have the remote, detached, unsympathetic
aloofness from the problem of running the house which is characteristic
of the race of boarders.
In the Casa dei Bambini this is quite different. Because it is their
home and not a school, the hours are very long, practically all the day
being spent there. The children have the responsibility not only for
their own persons, but for the care of their Home. They arrive early
in the morning and betake themselves at once to the small washstands
with pitchers and bowls of just the size convenient for them to handle.
Here they make as complete a morning toilet as anyone could wish,
washing their faces, necks, hands, and ears (and behind the ears!),
brushing their teeth, making manful efforts to comb their hair,
cleaning their finger-nails with scrupulous care, and helping each
other with fraternal sympathy. It is astonishing (for anyone who had
the illusion that she knew child-nature) to note the contrast between
the vivid purposeful attention they bestow on all these processes when
they are allowed to do them for themselves, and the bored, indifferent
impatience we all know so well when it is our adult hands which are
doing all the work. The big ones (of five and six) help the little
ones, who, eager to be “big ones” in their turn, struggle to learn as
quickly as possible how to do things for themselves.
After the morning toilet of the children is finished, it is the turn of
the schoolroom. The fresh-faced, shining-eyed children scatter about
the big room, with tiny brushes and dust-pans and little brooms. They
attack the corners where dust lurks, they dust off all the furniture
with soft cloths, they water the plants, they pick up any litter which
may have accumulated, they learn the habit of really examining a room
to see if it is in order or not. One natural result of this daily
training in close observation of a room is a much greater care in the
use of it during the day, a result the importance of which can be
certified by any mother who has to “pick up” after a family of small
children.
After the room is fresh and clean, the “order of exercises” is very
flexible, varying according to circumstances, the weather, the
desire of the children. They may perhaps sing a hymn together before
dispersing to their different self-chosen exercises with the apparatus.
Sometimes the teacher gives them some exercises in manners, showing
them how to rise gracefully and quietly from their little chairs, how
to say good-morning; how to give and receive politely some object;
how to carry things safely across the room, etc., etc. Sometimes they
all sit about the teacher and have a talk with her, an exercise in
ordinary well-bred conversation which is sadly needed by our American
children, who are seldom, at least as young as this, trained to express
themselves in any but trivial requests, or, as in the kindergarten,
in repeating stories. The teacher questions the children about the
happenings of their lives, about anything of more general interest
which they may have observed, or on any topic which excites a general
interest which they may have observed. Of course, because she is a
Montessori teacher she does as little of this talking as possible
herself, confining herself to brief remarks which may draw out the
children. Such conversation is of the greatest help to the fluency and
correctness of speech and to an early enriching of the vocabulary, all
important factors in the release of the child from the prison of his
baby limitations. The habit of listening while others talk acquired in
these general morning conversations is also of incalculable value, as
is attested by the proverbial rarity of the good listener even among
adults.
Of course the main business of the day is the use of the apparatus, the
different Montessori exercises, and these soon occupy the attention
of all the children. With intervals of outdoor play in the courtyard
garden, care of the plants there, the morning progresses till the lunch
hour, which has been described. After this, or indeed, whenever they
feel sleepy, the smaller children take their naps, and they do not go
home until five or six o’clock in the afternoon, having back of them
a peaceful, harmonious day, every instant of which has been actively,
happily, and profitably employed, and which has been full from morning
till night of goodwill and comradeship.
From time to time it happens that a new brother or sister is
introduced into this big family, with its régime of perfect freedom
from unnecessary restraint. The behavior of children who are brought
into the school after the beginning of the school-year is naturally
extremely various, since they are allowed then, as always, to express
with perfect liberty their own individualities. Some join at once, of
their own accord, in one or another of the interesting “games” they see
being played by the other children already initiated, and in half an
hour are indistinguishable from the older inhabitants of that little
world, drawing their fingers alternately over sandpaper and smooth wood
to learn the difference between “rough” and “smooth,” or delightedly
matching the different-colored spools of silk. Others, naturally shy
ones, naturally reserved ones, those who have been rendered suspicious
by injudicious home treatment, or those who have naturally slow mental
machines, hold aloof for a time. They are allowed to do this as long as
they please. They are welcomed once smilingly, and then left to their
own devices.
I remember, in the Via Giusti school, seeing for several days in
succession a tiny girl, not more than three, with wide, shy, fawn-eyes,
sitting idle at a little table, in the middle of the morning, with all
her wraps on. When I inquired the meaning of this very unusual sight,
the Directress told me that, apparently, the child had something of
the wild-animal terror of being caught in a trap, and had indicated,
terrified, when her mother, on the first morning, tried to take off
her cap and cloak, that she wished to be free at any moment to make
her escape from these new and untried surroundings. So her wraps
were not removed, she was allowed to sit near the door, which was
kept ajar, and not a look or gesture from the Directress disturbed
the reassuring isolation in which that baby, by slow degrees, found
herself and learned her first lesson of the big world. I think she
sat thus for three whole days, at first starting nervously if anyone
chanced to approach her, with the painful, apprehensive glare of the
constitutionally timid child, but little by little conquering herself.
One day she reached over shyly for a buttoning frame, left on the next
table by a child who had wandered off to other joys. She sat with
this some time, looking about suspiciously to see if some adult were
meditating that condescending swoop of patronizing congratulation
which is so offensive to the self-respecting pride of a naturally
reserved personality. No one noticed her. Still glancing up with
frequent suspicious starts, she began trying to insert the buttons in
the buttonholes, and then, by degrees, lost herself, forgot entirely
the tragic self-consciousness which had embittered her little life,
and with a real “Montessori face,” a countenance of ardent, happy,
self-forgetting interest in overcoming obstacles, she set definitely
to work. After a time, finding that her cape impeded her motions, she
flung it off, taking unconsciously the step into which, three days
before, only superior physical force could have coerced her.
I watched her through the winter with much interest, her reticent,
self-contained nature always marking her off from the other little ones
more or less, and I rejoiced to see that all the natural manifestations
of her differing individuality were religiously respected by the wise
Directress. It was not long before she was trotting freely about the
room choosing her activities with lively delight, and looking on with
friendly, though never very intimate, interest at the doings of the
other children. But it was months before she cared to join at all in
enterprises undertaken in common by the majority of the pupils, the
rollicking file, for instance, which stamped about lustily in time
to the music. She watched them, half-astonished, half-disapproving,
wholly contented with her own permitted aloofness, like a slim little
greyhound watching the light-hearted, heavy-footed antics of a litter
of Newfoundland puppies. At least one person who saw her thanked Heaven
many times that a kind Providence had saved her from well-meaning adult
efforts to make her over according to the Newfoundland pattern. Hers
was a rare individuality, the integrity of which was being preserved
entire for the future leavening of an all-too-uniform civilization. For
although the Montessori school furnishes the best possible practical
training for democracy, inasmuch as every child learns speedily first
the joys of self-dependence and then the self-abnegating pleasure of
serving others, it is also preparing the greatest possible amelioration
of our present-day democracy, by counteracting that bad, but apparently
not inevitable, tendency of democracy to a dead level of uniform
and characterless mediocrity. The Casa dei Bambini proves in actual
practice that even the best interests of the sacred majority do not
demand that powerful and differing individualities be forced into
a common mould, but only guided into the higher forms of their own
natural activities.
This brief digression is an illustration of the way in which every
thoughtful observer in a Montessori school falls from time to time into
a brown study which takes him far afield from the busy babies before
him. No greater tribute to the broadly human and universal foundation
of the system could be presented than this inevitable tendency in
visitors to see in the differing childish activities the unchaining
of great natural forces for good which have been kept locked and
padlocked by our inertia, our short-sightedness, our lack of confidence
in human nature, and our deep-rooted and unfounded prejudice about
childhood, our instinctive, mistaken, harsh conviction that it will be
industrious, law-abiding, and self-controlled only under pressure from
the outside.
It must be admitted that there is one variety of child who is the
mortal terror of Montessori teachers. This is not the violently
insubordinate child, because his violence and insubordination at
home only indicate a strong nature which requires nothing but proper
activities to turn it to powerful and energetic life. No, what reduces
a Montessori teacher to despair is a child like one I saw in a school
for the children of the wealthy, a beautiful, exquisitely attired
little fairy of four, whose lovely, healthful body had been cared for
with the most scientific exactitude by trained nurses, governesses,
and nurse-maids, and the very springs of whose natural initiative and
invention seemed to have been broken by the debilitating ministrations
of all those caretakers. It is significant that the teacher of this
school admitted to me that she found her carefully-reared pupils
generally more listless, more selfish, harder to reach, and harder
to stimulate than poor children; but the least prosperous of us need
not think that because we cannot afford nurse-maids our children will
fare better than those of millionaires, for one too devoted mother can
equal a regiment of servants in crushing out a child’s initiative, his
natural desire for self-dependence, his self-respect, and his natural
instinct for self-education.
The great point of vantage of a Montessori school over an ordinary
school in dealing with these morally starved children of too prosperous
parents, is that it catches them younger, before the pernicious habit
of passive dependence has continued long enough entirely to wreck their
natural instincts. Beside the beautiful child of four with the sapped
and weakened will-power mentioned above, was an equally beautiful,
exquisitely dressed little tot of just three, whose glowing face of
happy energy provided the most welcome contrast to the saddening mental
torpor of the older child, who, though naturally in every way a normal
little girl, stood hopelessly apathetic before all the fascinating
lures to her invention which the Montessori apparatus spread before
her. The little girl of three, without a word from the teacher,
regulated for herself a busy, profitable, happy, purposeful life,
getting out one piece of apparatus after another, “playing” with it
until her fresh interest was gone, putting it away, and falling with
equal ardor upon something else. The older child regarded her with the
curious passive wonder of a Hindu when he sees us Occidentals getting
our fun out of dancing and engaging in various active sports ourselves
instead of reclining upon pillows to watch other people paid thus to
exert themselves. She was given a choice of geometric insets, and
provided with colored pencils and a big sheet of paper, baits which not
even an idiot child can resist, and, sitting uninventive before this
delightful array, remarked with a polite indifference that she was used
to having people draw pictures for her. The poor child had acquired
the habit of having somebody else do even her playing.
In the face of this melancholy sight, I was comforted by the teacher’s
hopeful assurance that the child had made some advance since the
beginning of the school, and showed some signs that intellectual
activity was awakening naturally under the well-nigh irresistible
stimulus of the Montessori apparatus.
One exception to the general truth that the children in a Montessori
school do not take concerted action is in the “lesson of silence.” This
is often mentioned in accounts of the Casa dei Bambini, but it is so
important that it may perhaps be here described again. It originated as
a lesson for one of the senses, hearing, but though it undoubtedly is
an excellent exercise for the ears it has a moral effect which is more
important. It is certainly to visitors one of the most impressive of
all the impressive sights to be seen in the Children’s Home.
One may be moving about between the groups of busy children, or sitting
watching their lively animation or listening to the cheerful hum of
their voices, when one feels a curious change in the atmosphere like
the hush which falls on a forest when the sun suddenly goes behind a
cloud. If it is the first time one has seen this “lesson,” the effect
is startling. A quick glance around shows that the children have
stopped playing as well as talking, and are sitting motionless at their
tables, their eyes on the blackboard where in large letters is written
“Silenzio” (Silence). Even the little ones who cannot read, follow
the example of the older ones, and not only sit motionless, but look
fixedly at the magic word. The Directress is visible now, standing by
the blackboard in an attitude and with an expression of tranquillity
which is as calming to see as the meditative impassivity of a Buddhist
priest. The silence becomes more and more intense. To untrained ears it
seems absolute, but an occasional faint gesture or warning smile from
the Directress shows that a little hand has moved almost but not quite
inaudibly, or a chair has creaked.
At first the children smile in answer, but soon, under the hypnotic
peace of the hush which lasts minute after minute, even this silent
interchange of loving admonition and response ceases. It is now evident
from the children’s trance-like immobility that they no longer need
to make an effort to be motionless. They sit quiet, rapt in a vague,
brooding reverie, their busy brains lulled into repose, their very
souls looking out from their wide, vacant eyes. This expression of
utter peace, which I never before saw on a child’s face except in
sleep, has in it something profoundly touching. In that matter-of-fact,
modern schoolroom, as solemnly as in shadowy cathedral aisles, falls
for an instant a veil of contemplation, between the human soul and the
external realities of the world.
And then a real veil of twilight falls to intensify the effect. The
Directress goes quietly about from window to window, closing the
shutters. In the ensuing twilight, the children bow their heads on
their clasped hands in the attitude of prayer. The Directress steps
through the door into the next room and a slow voice, faint and clear,
comes floating back, calling a child’s name.
“El...e...na!”
A child lifts her head, opens her eyes, rises as silently as a little
spirit, and with a glowing face of exaltation, tiptoes out of the room,
flinging herself joyously into the waiting arms.
The summons comes again, “Vit...to...ri...o!”
A little boy lifts his head from his desk, showing a face of sweet,
sober content at being called, and goes silently across the big room,
taking his place by the side of the Directress. And so it goes until
perhaps fifteen children are clustered happily about the teacher.
Then, as informally and naturally as it began, the “game” is over. The
teacher comes back into the room with her usual quiet, firm step; light
pours in at the windows; the mystic word is erased from the blackboard.
The visitor is astonished to see that only six or seven minutes have
passed since the beginning of this new experience. The children smile
at each other, and begin to play again, perhaps a little more quietly
than before, perhaps more gently, certainly with the shining eyes of
devout believers who have blessedly lost themselves in an instant of
rapt and self-forgetting devotion.
And, in a sense, they too have been to church. This modern scientific
Roman woman-doctor, who probably never heard of William Penn, has
rediscovered the mystic joys of his sect, and has appropriated to her
system one of the most beneficial elements of the Quaker Meeting.
Before seeing this “lesson of silence” one does not realize that there
is a lack in the world of the Casa dei Bambini. After seeing it one
feels instantly that it is an essential element, this brief period of
perfect repose from the mental activity which, though unstimulated, is
practically incessant; this brief excursion away from all the restless,
shifting, rapid things of the world into the region of peace and calm
and immobility. And yet who of us, without seeing this in actual
practice, would ever have dreamed that little children would care for
such an exercise, would submit to it for an instant, much less throw
themselves into it with all the ardor of little Yogis, and emerge from
it sweeter, more obedient, calmed, and gentler as from a tranquilizing
prayer? Sometimes, once in a day is not enough for them, and later
they ask of their own accord to have this experience repeated. Their
pleasure in it is inexpressible. The expression which comes over their
little faces when, in the midst of their busy play, they feel the first
hush fall about them is something never to be forgotten.
It makes one feel a sort of envy of these children who are so much
better understood than we were at their age. And the fact that our own
hearts are somehow calmed and refreshed by this bath of silent peace
makes one wonder if we are not all of us still children enough to
benefit by many of the habits of life taught there, to profit by the
adaptation to our adult existence of some of the principles underlying
this scheme of education for babies.