HISTORY OF METHODS
If we are to develop a system of scientific pedagogy, we must, then,
proceed along lines very different from those which have been followed
up to the present time. The transformation of the school must be
contemporaneous with the preparation of the teacher. For if we make of
the teacher an observer, familiar with the experimental methods, then we
must make it possible for her to observe and to experiment in the
school. The fundamental principle of scientific pedagogy must be,
indeed, the _liberty of the pupil_;--such liberty as shall permit a
development of individual, spontaneous manifestations of the child's
nature. If a new and scientific pedagogy is to arise from the _study of
the individual_, such study must occupy itself with the observation of
_free_ children. In vain should we await a practical renewing of
pedagogical methods from methodical examinations of pupils made under
the guidance offered to-day by pedagogy, anthropology, and experimental
psychology.
Every branch of experimental science has grown out of the application of
a method peculiar to itself. Bacteriology owes its scientific content to
the method of isolation and culture of microbes. Criminal, medical, and
pedagogical anthropology owe their progress to the application of
anthropological methods to individuals of various classes, such as
criminals, the insane, the sick of the clinics, scholars. So
experimental psychology needs as its starting point an exact definition
of the technique to be used in making the experiment.
To put it broadly, it is important to define _the method_, _the
technique_, and from its application to _await_ the definite result,
which must be gathered entirely from actual experience. One of the
characteristics of experimental sciences is to proceed to the making of
an experiment _without preconceptions of any sort_ as to the final
result of the experiment itself. For example, should we wish to make
scientific observations concerning the development of the head as
related to varying degrees of intelligence, one of the conditions of
such an experiment would be to ignore, in the taking of the
measurements, which were the most intelligent and which the most
backward among the scholars examined. And this because the preconceived
idea that the most intelligent should have the head more fully developed
will inevitably alter the results of the research.
He who experiments must, while doing so, divest himself of every
preconception. It is clear then that if we wish to make use of a method
of experimental psychology, the first thing necessary is to renounce all
former creeds and to proceed by means of the _method_ in the search for
truth.
We must not start, for example, from any dogmatic ideas which we may
happen to have held upon the subject of child psychology. Instead, we
must proceed by a method which shall tend to make possible to the child
complete liberty. This we must do if we are to draw from the observation
of his spontaneous manifestations conclusions which shall lead to the
establishment of a truly scientific child psychology. It may be that
such a method holds for us great surprises, unexpected possibilities.
Child psychology and pedagogy must establish their content by successive
conquests arrived at through the method of experimentation.
Our problem then, is this: to establish the _method peculiar_ to
experimental pedagogy. It cannot be that used in other experimental
sciences. It is true that scientific pedagogy is rounded out by hygiene,
anthropology, and psychology, and adopts in part the technical method
characteristic of all three, although limiting itself to a special study
of the individual to be educated. But in pedagogy this study of the
individual, though it must accompany the very different work of
_education_, is a limited and secondary part of the science as a whole.
This present study deals in part with the _method_ used in experimental
pedagogy, and is the result of my experiences during two years in the
"Children's Houses." I offer only a beginning of the method, which I
have applied to children between the ages of three and six. But I
believe that these tentative experiments, because of the surprising
results which they have given, will be the means of inspiring a
continuation of the work thus undertaken.
Indeed, although our educational system, which experience has
demonstrated to be excellent, is not yet entirely completed, it
nevertheless constitutes a system well enough established to be
practical in all institutions where young children are cared for, and in
the first elementary classes.
Perhaps I am not exact when I say that the present work springs from two
years of experience. I do not believe that these later attempts of mine
could alone have rendered possible all that I set forth in this book.
The origin of the educational system in use in the "Children's Houses"
is much more remote, and if this experience with normal children seems
indeed rather brief, it should be remembered that it sprang from
preceding pedagogical experiences with abnormal children, and that
considered in this way, it represents a long and thoughtful endeavour.
About fifteen years ago, being assistant doctor at the Psychiatric
Clinic of the University of Rome, I had occasion to frequent the insane
asylums to study the sick and to select subjects for the clinics. In
this way I became interested in the idiot children who were at that time
housed in the general insane asylums. In those days thyroid
organotherapy was in full development, and this drew the attention of
physicians to deficient children. I myself, having completed my regular
hospital services, had already turned my attention to the study of
children's diseases.
It was thus that, being interested in the idiot children, I became
conversant with the special method of education devised for these
unhappy little ones by Edward Seguin, and was led to study thoroughly
the idea, then beginning to be prevalent among the physicians, of the
efficacy of "pedagogical treatment" for various morbid forms of disease
such as deafness, paralysis, idiocy, rickets, etc. The fact that
pedagogy must join with medicine in the treatment of disease was the
practical outcome of the thought of the time. And because of this
tendency the method of treating disease by gymnastics became widely
popular. I, however, differed from my colleagues in that I felt that
mental deficiency presented chiefly a pedagogical, rather than mainly a
medical, problem. Much was said in the medical congresses of the
medico-pedagogic method for the treatment and education of the feeble
minded, and I expressed my differing opinion in an address on _Moral
Education_ at the Pedagogical Congress of Turin in 1898. I believe that
I touched a chord already vibrant, because the idea, making its way
among the physicians and elementary teachers, spread in a flash as
presenting a question of lively interest to the school.
In fact I was called upon by my master, Guido Baccelli, the great
Minister of Education, to deliver to the teachers of Rome a course of
lectures on the education of feeble-minded children. This course soon
developed into the State Orthophrenic School, which I directed for more
than two years.
In this school we had an all-day class of children composed of those who
in the elementary schools were considered hopelessly deficient. Later
on, through the help of a philanthropic organisation, there was founded
a Medical Pedagogic Institute where, besides the children from the
public schools, we brought together all of the idiot children from the
insane asylums in Rome.
I spent these two years with the help of my colleagues in preparing the
teachers of Rome for a special method of observation and education of
feeble-minded children. Not only did I train teachers, but what was much
more important, after I had been in London and Paris for the purpose of
studying in a practical way the education of deficients, I gave myself
over completely to the actual teaching of the children, directing at the
same time the work of the other teachers in our institute.
I was more than an elementary teacher, for I was present, or directly
taught the children, from eight in the morning to seven in the evening
without interruption. These two years of practice are my first and
indeed my true degree in pedagogy. From the very beginning of my work
with deficient children (1898 to 1900) I felt that the methods which I
used had in them nothing peculiarly limited to the instruction of
idiots. I believed that they contained educational principles _more
rational_ than those in use, so much more so, indeed, that through their
means an inferior mentality would be able to grow and develop. This
feeling, so deep as to be in the nature of an intuition, became my
controlling idea after I had left the school for deficients, and, little
by little, I became convinced that similar methods applied to normal
children would develop or set free their personality in a marvellous and
surprising way.
It was then that I began a genuine and thorough study of what is known
as remedial pedagogy, and, then, wishing to undertake the study of
normal pedagogy and of the principles upon which it is based, I
registered as a student of philosophy at the University. A great faith
animated me, and although I did not know that I should ever be able to
test the truth of my idea, I gave up every other occupation to deepen
and broaden its conception. It was almost as if I prepared myself for an
unknown mission.
The methods for the education of deficients had their origin at the time
of the French Revolution in the work of a physician whose achievements
occupy a prominent place in the history of medicine, as he was the
founder of that branch of medical science which to-day is known as
Otiatria (diseases of the ear).
He was the first to attempt a methodical education of the sense of
hearing. He made these experiments in the institute for deaf mutes
founded in Paris by Pereire, and actually succeeded in making the
semi-deaf hear clearly. Later on, having in charge for eight years the
idiot boy known as "the wild boy of Aveyron," he extended to the
treatment of all the senses those educational methods which had already
given such excellent results in the treatment of the sense of hearing. A
student of Pinel, Itard, was the first educator to practise _the
observation_ of the pupil in the way in which the sick are observed in
the hospitals, especially those suffering from diseases of the nervous
system.
The pedagogic writings of Itard are most interesting and minute
descriptions of educational efforts and experiences, and anyone reading
them to-day must admit that they were practically the first attempts at
experimental psychology. But the merit of having completed a genuine
educational system for deficient children was due to Edward Seguin,
first a teacher and then a physician. He took the experiences of Itard
as his starting point, applying these methods, modifying and completing
them during a period of ten years' experience with children taken from
the insane asylums and placed in, a little school in Rue Pigalle in
Paris. This method was described for the first time in a volume of more
than six hundred pages, published in Paris in 1846, with the title:
"Traitement Moral, Hygiene et Education des Idiots." Later Seguin
emigrated to the United States of America where he founded many
institutions for deficients, and where, after another twenty years of
experience, he published the second edition of his method, under a very
different title: "Idiocy and its Treatment by the Physiological Method."
This volume was published in New York in 1886, and in it Seguin had
carefully defined his method of education, calling it the _physiological
method_. He no longer referred in the title to a method for the
"education of idiots" as if the method were special to them, but spoke
now of idiocy treated by a physiological method. If we consider that
pedagogy always had psychology as its base, and that Wundt defines a
"physiological psychology," the coincidence of these ideas must strike
us, and lead us to suspect in the physiological method some connection
with physiological psychology.
While I was assistant at the Psychiatric Clinic, I had read Edward
Seguin's French book, with great interest. But the English book which
was published in New York twenty years later, although it was quoted in
the works about special education by Bourneville, was not to be found in
any library. I made a vain quest for it, going from house to house of
nearly all the English physicians, who were known to be specially
interested in deficient children, or who were superintendents of special
schools. The fact that this book was unknown in England, although it had
been published in the English language, made me think that the Seguin
system had never been understood. In fact, although Seguin was
constantly quoted in all the publications dealing with institutions for
deficients, the educational _applications_ described, were quite
different from the applications of Seguin's system.
Almost everywhere the methods applied to deficients are more or less the
same as those in use for normal children. In Germany, especially, a
friend who had gone there in order to help me in my researches, noticed
that although special materials existed here and there in the
pedagogical museums of the schools for deficients, these materials were
rarely used. Indeed, the German educators hold the principle that it is
well to adapt to the teaching of backward children, the same method used
for normal ones; but these methods are much more objective in Germany
than with us.
At the Bicetre, where I spent some time, I saw that it was the didactic
apparatus of Seguin far more than his _method_ which was being used,
although, the French text was in the hands of the educators. The
teaching there was purely mechanical, each teacher following the rules
according to the letter. I found, however, wherever I went, in London as
well as in Paris, a desire for fresh counsel and for new experiences,
since far too often Seguin's claim that with his methods the education
of idiots was actually possible, had proved only a delusion.
After this study of the methods in use throughout Europe I concluded my
experiments upon the deficients of Rome, and taught them throughout two
years. I followed Seguin's book, and also derived much help from the
remarkable experiments of Itard.
Guided by the work of these two men, I had manufactured a great variety
of didactic material. These materials, which I have never seen complete
in any institution, became in the hands of those who knew how to apply
them, a most remarkable and efficient means, but unless rightly
presented, they failed to attract the attention of the deficients.
I felt that I understood the discouragement of those working with
feeble-minded children, and could see why they had, in so many cases,
abandoned the method. The prejudice that the educator must place himself
on a level with the one to be educated, sinks the teacher of deficients
into a species of apathy. He accepts the fact that he is educating an
inferior personality, and for that very reason he does not succeed. Even
so those who teach little children too often have the idea that they are
educating babies and seek to place themselves on the child's level by
approaching him with games, and often with foolish stories. Instead of
all this, we must know how to call to the _man_ which lies dormant
within the soul of the child. I felt this, intuitively, and believed
that not the didactic material, but my voice which called to them,
_awakened_ the children, and encouraged them to use the didactic
material, and through it, to educate themselves. I was guided in my work
by the deep respect which I felt for their misfortune, and by the love
which these unhappy children know how to awaken in those who are near
them.
Seguin, too, expressed himself in the same way on this subject. Reading
his patient attempts, I understand clearly that the first didactic
material used by him was _spiritual_. Indeed, at the close of the French
volume, the author, giving a resume of his work, concludes by saying
rather sadly, that all he has established will be lost or useless, if
the _teachers_ are not prepared for their work. He holds rather original
views concerning the preparation of teachers of deficients. He would
have them good to look upon, pleasant-voiced, careful in every detail of
their personal appearance, doing everything possible to make themselves
attractive. They must, he says, render themselves attractive in voice
and manner, since it is their task to awaken souls which are frail and
weary, and to lead them forth to lay hold upon the beauty and strength
of life.
This belief that we must act upon the spirit, served as a sort of
_secret key_, opening to me the long series of didactic experiments so
wonderfully analysed by Edward Seguin,--experiments which, properly
understood, are really most efficacious in the education of idiots. I
myself obtained most surprising results through their application, but I
must confess that, while my efforts showed themselves in the
intellectual progress of my pupils, a peculiar form of exhaustion
prostrated me. It was as if I gave to them some vital force from within
me. Those things which we call encouragement, comfort, love, respect,
are drawn from the soul of man, and the more freely we give of them, the
more do we renew and reinvigorate the life about us.
Without such inspiration the most perfect _external stimulus_ may pass
unobserved. Thus the blind Saul, before the glory of the sun, exclaimed,
"This?--It is the dense fog!"
Thus prepared, I was able to proceed to new experiments on my own
account. This is not the place for a report of these experiments, and I
will only note that at this time I attempted an original method for the
teaching of reading and writing, a part of the education of the child
which was most imperfectly treated in the works of both Itard and
Seguin.
I succeeded in teaching a number of the idiots from the asylums both to
read and to write so well that I was able to present them at a public
school for an examination together with normal children. And they passed
the examination successfully.
These results seemed almost miraculous to those who saw them. To me,
however, the boys from the asylums had been able to compete with the
normal children only because they had been taught in a different way.
They had been helped in their psychic development, and the normal
children had, instead, been suffocated, held back. I found myself
thinking that if, some day, the special education which had developed
these idiot children in such a marvellous fashion, could be applied to
the development of normal children, the "miracle" of which my friends
talked would no longer be possible. The abyss between the inferior
mentality of the idiot and that of the normal brain can never be bridged
if the normal child has reached his full development.
While everyone was admiring the progress of my idiots, I was searching
for the reasons which could keep the happy healthy children of the
common schools on so low a plane that they could be equalled in tests of
intelligence by my unfortunate pupils!
One day, a directress in the Institute for Deficients, asked me to read
one of the prophecies of Ezekiel which had made a profound impression
upon her, as it seemed to prophesy the education of deficients.
"The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of
the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of
bones.
"And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very
many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.
"And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered,
O Lord God, thou knowest.
"Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O
ye dry hones, hear the word of the Lord.
"Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath
to enter into you, and ye shall live:
"And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and
cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye
shall know that I am the Lord.
"So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a
noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his
bone.
"And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and
the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.
"Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and
say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O
breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.
"So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and
they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.
"Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of
Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we
are cut off for our parts."
In fact, the words--"I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall
live," seem to me to refer to the direct individual work of the master
who encourages, calls to, and helps his pupil, preparing him for
education. And the remainder--"I will lay sinews upon you, and will
bring up flesh upon you," recalled the fundamental phrase which sums up
Seguin's whole method,--"to lead the child, as it were, by the hand,
from the education of the muscular system, to that of the nervous
system, and of the senses." It was thus that Seguin taught the idiots
how to walk, how to maintain their equilibrium in the most difficult
movements of the body--such as going up stairs, jumping, etc., and
finally, to feel, beginning the education of the muscular sensations by
touching, and reading the difference of temperature, and ending with the
education of the particular senses.
But if the training goes no further than this, we have only led these
children to adapt themselves to a low order of life (almost a vegetable
existence). "Call to the Spirit," says the prophecy, and the spirit
shall enter into them, and they shall have life. Seguin, indeed, led
the idiot from the vegetative to the intellectual life, "from the
education, of the senses to general notions, from general notions to
abstract thought, from abstract thought to morality." But when this
wonderful work is accomplished, and by means of a minute physiological
analysis and of a gradual progression in method, the idiot has become a
man, he is still an inferior in the midst of his fellow men, an
individual who will never be able fully to adapt himself to the social
environment: "Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost; we are cut off
for our parts."
This gives us another reason why the tedious method of Seguin was so
often abandoned; the tremendous difficulty of the means, did not justify
the end. Everyone felt this, and many said, "There is still so much to
be done for normal children!"
Having through actual experience justified my faith in Seguin's method,
I withdrew from active work among deficients, and began a more thorough
study of the works of Itard and Seguin. I felt the need of meditation. I
did a thing which I had not done before, and which perhaps few students
have been willing to do,--I translated into Italian and copied out with
my own hand, the writings of these men, from beginning to end, making
for myself books as the old Benedictines used to do before the diffusion
of printing.
I chose to do this by hand, in order that I might have time to weigh the
sense of each word, and to read, in truth, the _spirit_ of the author. I
had just finished copying the 600 pages of Seguin's French volume when I
received from New York a copy of the English book published in 1866.
This old volume had been found among the books discarded from the
private library of a New York physician. I translated it with the help
of an English friend. This volume did not add much in the way of new
pedagogical experiments, but dealt with the philosophy of the
experiences described in the first volume. The man who had studied
abnormal children for thirty years expressed the idea that the
physiological method, which has as its base the individual study of the
pupil and which forms its educative methods upon the analysis of
physiological and psychological phenomena, must come also to be applied
to normal children. This step, he believed, would show the way to a
complete human regeneration.
The voice of Seguin seemed to be like the voice of the forerunner crying
in the wilderness, and my thoughts were filled with the immensity and
importance of a work which should be able to reform the school and
education.
At this time I was registered at the University as a student of
philosophy, and followed the courses in experimental psychology, which
had only recently been established in Italian universities, namely, at
Turin, Rome and Naples. At the same time I made researches in Pedagogic
Anthropology in the elementary schools, studying in this way the methods
in organisation used for the education of normal children. This work led
to the teaching of Pedagogic Anthropology in the University of Rome.
I had long wished to experiment with the methods for deficients in a
first elementary class of normal children, but I had never thought of
making use of the homes or institutions where very young children were
cared for. It was pure chance that brought this new idea to my mind.
It was near the end of the year 1906, and I had just returned from
Milan, where I had been one of a committee at the International
Exhibition for the assignment of prizes in the subjects of Scientific
Pedagogy and Experimental Psychology. A great opportunity came to me,
for I was invited by Edoardo Talamo, the Director General of the Roman
Association for Good Building, to undertake the organisation of infant
schools in its model tenements. It was Signor Talamo's happy idea to
gather together in a large room all the little ones between the ages of
three and seven belonging to the families living in the tenement. The
play and work of these children was to be carried on under the guidance
of a teacher who should have her own apartment in the tenement house. It
was intended that every house should have its school, and as the
Association for Good Building already owned more than 400 tenements in
Rome the work seemed to offer tremendous possibilities of development.
The first school was to be established in January, 1907, in a large
tenement house in the Quarter of San Lorenzo. In the same Quarter the
Association already owned fifty-eight buildings, and according to Signor
Talamo's plans we should soon be able to open sixteen of these "schools
within the house."
This new kind of school was christened by Signora Olga Lodi, a mutual
friend of Signor Talamo and myself, under the fortunate title of _Casa
dei Bambini_ or "The Children's House." Under this name the first of our
schools was opened on the sixth of January, 1907, at 58 Via dei Masi. It
was confided to the care of Candida Nuccitelli and was under my guidance
and direction.
From the very first I perceived, in all its immensity, the social and
pedagogical importance of such institutions, and while at that time my
visions of a triumphant future seemed exaggerated, to-day many are
beginning to understand that what I saw before was indeed the truth.
On the seventh of April of the same year, 1907, a second "Children's
House" was opened in the Quarter of San Lorenzo; and on the eighteenth
of October, 1908, another was inaugurated by the Humanitarian Society in
Milan in the Quarter inhabited by workingmen. The workshops of this same
society undertook the manufacture of the materials which we used.
On the fourth of November following, a third "Children's House" was
opened in Rome, this time not in the people's Quarter, but in a modern
building for the middle classes, situated in Via Famagosta, in that part
of the city known as the Prati di Castello; and in January, 1909,
Italian Switzerland began to transform its orphan asylums and children's
homes in which the Froebel system had been used, into "Children's
Houses" adopting our methods and materials.
The "Children's House" has a twofold importance: the social importance
which it assumes through its peculiarity of being a school within the
house, and its purely pedagogic importance gained through its methods
for the education of very young children, of which I now made a trial.
As I have said, Signor Talamo's invitation gave me a wonderful
opportunity for applying the methods used with deficients to normal
children, not of the elementary school age, but of the age usual in
infant asylums.
If a parallel between the deficient and the normal child is possible,
this will be during the period of early infancy _when the child who has
not the force to develop_ and _he who is not yet developed_ are in some
ways alike.
The very young child has not yet acquired a secure co-ordination of
muscular movements, and, therefore, walks imperfectly, and is not able
to perform the ordinary acts of life, such as fastening and unfastening
its garments. The sense organs, such as the power of accommodation of
the eye, are not yet completely developed; the language is primordial
and shows those defects common to the speech of the very young child.
The difficulty of fixing the attention, the general instability, etc.,
are characteristics which the normal infant and the deficient child have
in common. Preyer, also, in his psychological study of children has
turned aside to illustrate the parallel between pathological linguistic
defects, and those of normal children in the process of developing.
Methods which made growth possible to the mental personality of the
idiot ought, therefore, to _aid the development of young children_, and
should be so adapted as to constitute a hygienic education of the entire
personality of a normal human being. Many defects which become
permanent, such as speech defects, the child acquires through being
neglected during the most important period of his age, the period
between three and six, at which time he forms and establishes his
principal functions.
Here lies the significance of my pedagogical experiment in the
"Children's Houses." It represents the results of a series of trials
made by me, in the education of young children, with methods already
used with deficients. My work has not been in any way an application,
pure and simple, of the methods of Seguin to young children, as anyone
who will consult the works of the author will readily see. But it is
none the less true that, underlying these two years of trial, there is a
basis of experiment which goes back to the days of the French
Revolution, and which represents the earnest work of the lives of Itard
and Seguin.
As for me, thirty years after the publication of Seguin's second book, I
took up again the ideas and, I may even say, the work of this great
man, with the same freshness of spirit with which he received the
inheritance of the work and ideas of his master Itard. For _ten years_ I
not only made practical experiments according to their methods, but
through reverent meditation absorbed the works of these noble and
consecrated men, who have left to humanity most vital proof of their
obscure heroism.
Thus my ten years of work may in a sense be considered as a summing up
of the forty years of work done by Itard and Seguin. Viewed in this
light, fifty years of active work preceded and prepared for this
apparently brief trial of only two years, and I feel that I am not wrong
in saying that these experiments represent the successive work of three
physicians, who from Itard to me show in a greater or less degree the
first steps along the path of psychiatry.
As definite factors in the civilisation of the people, the "Children's
Houses" deserve a separate volume. They have, in fact, solved so many of
the social and pedagogic problems in ways which have seemed to be
Utopian, that they are a part of that modern transformation of the home
which must most surely be realised before many years have passed. In
this way they touch directly the most important side of the social
question--that which deals with the intimate or home life of the people.
It is enough here to reproduce the inaugural discourse delivered by me
on the occasion of the opening of the second "Children's House" in Rome,
and to present the rules and regulations[4] which I arranged in
accordance with the wishes of Signor Talamo.
[4] See page 70.
It will be noticed that the club to which I refer, and the dispensary
which is also an out-patients' institution for medical and surgical
treatment (all such institutions being free to the inhabitants) have
already been established. In the modern tenement--Casa Moderna in the
Prati di Castello, opened November 4, 1908, through the philanthropy of
Signor Talamo--they are also planning to annex a "communal kitchen."