DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF A UNIVERSAL ADOPTION OF THE MONTESSORI IDEAS
Now, of course, it is infinitely easier in the first place to cry
out to a child, “Oh, don’t be so careless!” than to consider thus
with painful care all the elements lacking in his training which
make him heedless, and throughout years of conscientious effort to
exercise the ingenuity necessary to supply those lacking elements.
But serious-minded parents do not and should not expect to find life
a flowery bed of ease, and it is my conviction that most of us will
welcome with heartfelt joy any possible solution of our desperately
pressing problems, even if it involves the process of oiling and
setting in motion the little-used machinery of our brains.
I am opposed in this optimistic conviction by that small segment of the
circle of my acquaintances composed of the doctors whom I happen to
know personally. They take a gloomy view of the matter and tell me that
their experience with human nature leads them to fear that the rules
of moral and intellectual hygiene of childhood, of this new system,
excellent though they are, will be observed with as little faithfulness
as the equally wise rules of physical hygiene for adults which the
doctors have been endeavoring vainly to have us adopt. They inform
me that they have learned that, if obedience to the laws of hygiene
requires continuous effort, day after day, people will not obey them,
even though by so doing they would avoid the pains and maladies which
they so dread. “People will take pills,” physicians report, “but they
will not take exercise. If your new system told them of some one or
two supreme actions which would benefit their children, quite a number
of parents would strain every nerve to accomplish the necessary feats.
But what you are telling them is only another form of what we cry so
vainly, namely that they themselves must observe nature and follow her
laws, and that no action of their doctors, wise though they may be, can
vicariously perform this function for them. You will see that your Dr.
Montessori’s exhortations will have as little effect as those of any
other physician.”
I confess that at first I was somewhat cast down by these pessimistic
prophecies, for even a casual glance over any group of ordinary
acquaintances shows only too much ground for such conclusions. But
a more prolonged scrutiny of just such a casually selected group of
acquaintances, and a little more searching inquiry into the matter has
brought out facts which lead to more encouraging ideas.
In the first place, the doctors are scarcely correct when they assume
that they have always been the repository of a wisdom which we laity
have obstinately refused to take over from them. Comparatively
speaking, it is only yesterday that the doctors themselves outgrew the
idea that pills were the divinely appointed cures for all ills. So
recent is this revolution in ideas that there are still left among us
in eddies, out of the main stream, elderly doctors who lay very little
of the modern fanatical stress on diet, and burn very little incense
before the modern altar of fresh air and exercise. It seems early in
the day to conclude that the majority of mankind will not take good
advice if it is offered them, a sardonic conclusion disproved by the
athletic clubs all over the country, the sleeping-porches burgeoning
out from large and small houses, the millions of barefooted children in
rompers, the regiments of tennis-playing adolescents and golf-playing
elders, the myriads of diet-studying housewives, the gladly accepted
army of trained nurses. We may not do as well as we might, but we
certainly have not turned deaf ears to all the exhortations of reason
and enlightenment.
Furthermore, beside the fact that doctors have been preaching “hygiene
against drugs” to us only a short time, it is to be borne in mind that,
as a class, they do not add to their many noble and glorious qualities
of mind and heart a very ardent proselytizing fervor. It seems to be
against the “temperament” of the profession. If you go to a doctor’s
office, and consult him professionally he will, it is true, tell you
nowadays not to take pills, but to take plenty of exercise and sleep,
to eat moderately, avoid worry, and drink plenty of pure water; but
you do not ever run across him preaching these doctrines from a
barrel-head on the street-corner, to all who will hear. The traditional
dignity of his profession forbids such Salvation Army methods. The
doctors of a town are apt, prudently, to boil the water used in their
own households and to advise this course of action to any who seek
their counsel, rather than to band together in an aggressive, united
company and make themselves disagreeably conspicuous by clamoring
insistently at the primaries and polls for better water for the town.
It is perhaps not quite fair to accuse us laity of obstinacy in
refusing advice which has been offered with such gentlemanly reserve.
Then, there is the obvious fact that doctors, like lawyers, see
professionally only the ailing or malcontents of the human family,
and they suffer from a tendency common to us all, to generalize from
the results of their own observation. Our own observation of our
own community may quite honestly lead us to the opposite of their
conclusions, namely that it is well worth while to make every effort
for the diffusion of theories which tend to improve daily life, since,
on the whole, people seem to have picked up very quickly indeed the
reasonable doctrine of the prevention of illness by means of healthy
lives. If they have done this, and are, to all appearances, trying
hard to learn more about the process, it is reasonable to hope that
they will catch at a similar reasonable mental and moral hygiene for
their children, and that they will learn to leave off the unnecessary
mental and moral restrictions, the unwise interference with the
child’s growth and undue insistence on conformity to adult ideas of
regularity, just as they have learned how to leave off the innumerable
layers of starched petticoats, the stiff scratchy pantalets, and
the close, smothering sunbonnets in which our loving and devoted
great-grandmothers required our grandmothers to grow up.
Lastly, there is a vital element in the situation which is perhaps
not sufficiently considered by people anxious to avoid the charge of
sentimentality. This element is the strength of parental affection,
perhaps the strongest and most enduring passion which falls to the
lot of ordinary human beings. Only a Napoleon can carry ambition to
the intensity of a passion. Great, overmastering love between man
and woman is not so common as our romantic tradition would have us
believe. In the world of religion, saints are few and far between.
Most of us manage to live without being consumed by the reforming
fever of those rare souls who suffer under injustice to others as
though it were practised on themselves. But nearly every house which
contains children, shelters also two human beings the hard crust of
whose natural egotism and moral sloth has been at least cracked by the
shattering force of this primeval passion for their young, two human
beings, who, no matter how low their position in the scale of human
ethical development, have in them to some extent that divine capacity
for willing self-sacrifice which comes, under other conditions, only
to the rarest and most spiritual-minded members of the race. It is
not sentimentality but a simple statement of fact to say that there
is in parents who take care of their own children (as most American
parents do) a natural fund of energy, patience, and willingness to
undergo self-discipline, which cannot be counted upon in any other
numerous class of people. The Montessori system, with its fresh, vivid
presentation of axiomatic truths, with a fervent hope of a practical
application of them to the everyday life of every child, addresses
itself to these qualities in parents; and, for the sound development
of its fundamental idea of self-education and self-government, trusts
not only to the wise conclaves of professional pedagogues, but to the
co-operation of the fathers and mothers of the world.