METHODS FOR THE TEACHING OF READING AND WRITING
_Spontaneous Development of Graphic Language._ While I was directress of
the Orthophrenic School at Rome, I had already began to experiment with
various didactic means for the teaching of reading and writing. These
experiments were practically original with me.
Itard and Seguin do not present any rational method through which
writing may be learned. In the pages above quoted, it may be seen how
Itard proceeded in the teaching of the alphabet and I give here what
Seguin says concerning the teaching of writing.
"To have a child pass from design, to writing, which is its most
immediate application, the teacher need only call D, a portion of a
circle, resting its extremities upon a vertical; A, two obliques
reunited at the summit and cut by a horizontal, etc., etc.
"We no longer need worry ourselves as to how the child shall learn to
write: he designs, _then_ writes. It need not be said that we should
have the child draw the letters according to the laws of contrast and
analogy. For instance, O beside I; B with P; T opposite L, etc."
According to Seguin, then, we do not need to _teach_ writing. The child
who draws, will write. But writing, for this author, means printed
capitals! Nor does he, in any other place, explain whether his pupil
shall write in any other way. He instead, gives much space to the
description of _the design which prepares for_, and which _includes_
writing. This method of design is full of difficulties and was only
established by the combined attempts of Itard and Seguin.
"Chapter XL: DESIGN. In design the first idea to be acquired is that of
the plane destined to receive the design. The second is that of the
trace or delineation. Within these two concepts lies all design, all
linear creation.
"These two concepts are correlative, their relation generates the idea,
or the capacity to produce the lines in this sense; that lines may only
be called such when they follow a methodical and determined direction:
the trace without direction is not a line; produced by chance, it has no
name.
"The rational sign, on the contrary, has a name because it has a
direction and since all writing or design is nothing other than a
composite of the diverse directions followed by a line, we must, before
approaching what is commonly called writing, _insist_ upon these notions
of plane and line. The ordinary child acquires these by instinct, but an
insistence upon them is necessary in order to render the idiot careful
and sensitive in their application. Through methodical design he will
come into rational contact with all parts of the plane and will, guided
by imitation, produce lines at first simple, but growing more
complicated.
"The pupil may be taught: First, to trace the diverse species of lines.
Second, to trace them in various directions and in different positions
relative to the plane. Third, to reunite these lines to form figures
varying from simple to complex. We must therefore, teach the pupil to
distinguish straight lines from curves, vertical from horizontal, and
from the various oblique lines; and must finally make clear the
principal points of conjunction of two or more lines in forming a
figure.
"This rational analysis of design, _from which writing will spring_, is
so essential in all its parts, that a child who, before being confided
to my care, already wrote many of the letters, has taken six days to
learn to draw a perpendicular or a horizontal line; he spent fifteen
days before imitating a curve and an oblique. Indeed the greater number
of my pupils, are for a long time incapable of even imitating the
movements of my hand upon the paper, before attempting to draw a line in
a determined direction. The most imitative, or the least stupid ones,
produce a sign diametrically opposite to that which I show them and all
of them confound the points of conjunction of two lines no matter how
evident this is. It is true that the thorough knowledge I have given
them of lines and of configuration helps them to make the connection
which must be established between the plane and the various marks with
which they must cover the surface, but in the study rendered necessary
by the deficiency of my pupils, the progression in the matter of the
vertical, the horizontal, the oblique, and the curve must be determined
by the consideration of the difficulty of comprehension and of execution
which each offers to a torpid intelligence and to a weak unsteady hand.
"I do not speak here of merely having them perform a difficult thing,
since I have them surmount a _series_ of difficulties and for this
reason I ask myself if some of these difficulties are not greater and
some less, and if they do not grow one from the other, like theorems.
Here are the ideas which have guided me in this respect.
"The vertical is a line which the eye and the hand follow directly,
going up and down. The horizontal line is not natural to the eye, nor to
the hand, which lowers itself and follows a curve (like the horizon from
which it has taken its name), starting from the centre and going to the
lateral extremity of the plane.
"The oblique line presupposes more complex comparative ideas, and the
curve demands such firmness and so many differences in its relation to
the plane that we would only lose time in taking up the study of these
lines. The most simple line then, is the vertical, and this is how I
have given my pupils an idea of it.
"The first geometric formula is this: only straight lines may be drawn
from one given point to another.
"Starting from this axiom, which the hand alone can demonstrate, I have
fixed two points upon the blackboard and have connected them by means of
a vertical. My pupils try to do the same between the dots they have upon
their paper, but with some the vertical descends to the right of the
point and with others, to the left, to say nothing of those whose hand
diverges in all directions. To arrest these various deviations which are
often far more defects of the intelligence and of the vision, than of
the hand, I have thought it wise to restrict the field of the plane,
drawing two vertical lines to left and right of the points which the
child is to join by means of a parallel line half way between the two
enclosing lines. If these two lines are not enough, I place two rulers
vertically upon the paper, which arrest the deviations of the hand
absolutely. These material barriers are not, however, useful for very
long. We first suppress the rulers and return to the two parallel lines,
between which the idiot learns to draw the third line. We then take
away one of the guiding lines, and leave, sometimes that on the right,
sometimes that on the left, finally taking away this last line and at
last, the dots, beginning by erasing the one at the top which indicates
the starting point of the line and of the hand. The child thus learns to
draw a vertical without material control, without points of comparison.
"The same method, the same difficulty, the same means of direction are
used for the straight horizontal lines. If, by chance, these lines begin
well, we must await until the child curves them, departing from the
centre and proceeding to the extremity _as nature commands him_, and
because of the reason which I have explained. If the two dots do not
suffice to sustain the hand, we keep it from deviating by means of the
parallel lines or of the rulers.
"Finally, have him trace a horizontal line, and by uniting with it a
vertical ruler we form a right angles. The child will begin to
understand, in this way, what the vertical and horizontal lines really
are, and will see the relation of these two ideas as he traces a figure.
"In the sequence of the development of lines, it would seem that the
study of the oblique should immediately follow that of the vertical and
the horizontal, but this is not so! The oblique which partakes of the
vertical in its inclination, and of the horizontal in its direction, and
which partakes of both in its nature (since it is a straight line),
presents perhaps, because of its relation to other lines, an idea too
complex to be appreciated without preparation."
Thus Seguin goes on through many pages, to speak of the oblique in all
directions, which he has his pupils trace between two parallels. He then
tells of the four curves which he has them draw to right and left of a
vertical and above and below a horizontal, and concludes: "So we find
the solution of the problems for which we sought--the vertical line, the
horizontal, the oblique, and the four curves, whose union forms the
circle, contain all possible lines, _all writing_.
"Arrived at this point, Itard and I were for a long time at a
standstill. The lines being known, the next step was to have the child
trace regular figures, beginning of course, with the simplest. According
to the general opinion, Itard had advised me to begin with the square
and I had followed this advice _for three months_, without being able to
make the child understand me."
After a long series of experiments, guided by his ideas of the genesis
of geometric figures, Seguin became aware that the triangle is the
figure most easily drawn.
"When three lines meet thus, they always form a triangle, while four
lines may meet in a hundred different directions without remaining
parallel and therefore without presenting a perfect square.
"From these experiments and many others, I have deduced the first
principles of writing and of design for the idiot; principles whose
application is _too simple_ for me to discuss further."
Such was the proceeding used by my predecessors in the teaching of
writing to deficients. As for reading, Itard proceeded thus: he drove
nails into the wall and hung upon them, geometric figures of wood, such
as triangles, squares, circles. He then drew the exact imprint of these
upon the wall, after which he took the figures away and had the "boy of
Aveyron" replace them upon the proper nails, guided by the design. From
this design Itard conceived the idea of the plane geometric insets. He
finally had large print letters made of wood and proceeded in the same
way as with the geometric figures, that is, using the design upon the
wall and arranging the nails in such a way that the child might place
the letters upon them and then take them off again. Later, Seguin used
the horizontal plane instead of the wall, drawing the letters on the
bottom of a box and having the child superimpose solid letters. After
twenty years, Seguin had not changed his method of procedure.
A criticism of the method used by Itard and Seguin for reading and
writing seems to me superfluous. The method has two fundamental errors
which make it inferior to the methods in use for normal children,
namely: writing in printed capitals, and the preparation for writing
through a study of rational geometry, which we now expect only from
students in the secondary schools.
Seguin here confuses ideas in a most extraordinary way. He has suddenly
jumped from the psychological observation of the child and from his
relation to his environment, to the study of the origin of lines and
their relation to the plane.
He says that the child _will readily design a vertical line_, but that
the horizontal will soon become a curve, because "_nature commands it_"
and this _command of nature_ is represented by the fact that man sees
the horizon as a curved line!
The example of Seguin serves to illustrate the necessity of a _special
education_ which shall fit man for _observation_, and shall direct
_logical thought_.
The observation must be absolutely objective, in other words, stripped
of preconceptions. Seguin has in this case the preconception that
geometric design must prepare for writing, and that hinders him from
discovering the truly natural proceeding necessary to such preparation.
He has, besides, the preconception that the deviation of a line, as well
as the inexactness with which the child traces it, are due to "_the mind
and the eye, not to the hand_," and so he wearies himself _for weeks and
months in explaining_ the direction of lines and in guiding _the vision_
of the idiot.
It seems as if Seguin felt that a good method must start from a superior
point, geometry; the intelligence of the child is only considered worthy
of attention in its relation to abstract things. And is not this a
common defect?
Let us observe mediocre men; they pompously assume erudition and disdain
simple things. Let us study the clear thought of those whom we consider
men of genius. Newton is seated tranquilly in the open air; an apple
falls from the tree, he observes it and asks, "Why?" Phenomena are never
insignificant; the fruit which falls and universal gravitation may rest
side by side in the mind of a genius.
If Newton had been a teacher of children he would have led the child to
look upon the worlds on a starry night, but an erudite person might have
felt it necessary first to prepare the child to understand the sublime
calculus which is the key to astronomy--Galileo Galilei observed the
oscillation of a lamp swung on high, and discovered the laws of the
pendulum.
In the intellectual life _simplicity_ consists in divesting one's mind
of every preconception, and this leads to the discovery of new things,
as, in the moral life, humility and material poverty guide us toward
high spiritual conquests.
If we study the history of discoveries, we will find that they have
come from _real objective observation_ and _from logical thought_. These
are simple things, but rarely found in one man.
Does it not seem strange, for instance, that after the discovery by
Laveran of the malarial parasite which invades the red blood-corpuscles,
we did not, in spite of the fact that we know the blood system to be a
system of closed vessels, even so much as _suspect the possibility_ that
a stinging insect might inoculate us with the parasite? Instead, the
theory that the evil emanated from low ground, that it was carried by
the African winds, or that it was due to dampness, was given credence.
Yet these were vague ideas, while the parasite was a definite biological
specimen.
When the discovery of the malarial mosquito came to complete logically
the discovery of Laveran, this seemed marvellous, stupefying. Yet we
know in biology that the reproduction of molecular vegetable bodies is
by scission with alternate sporation, and that of molecular animals is
by scission with alternate conjunction. That is, after a certain period
in which the primitive cell has divided and sub-divided into fresh
cells, equal among themselves, there comes the formation of two diverse
cells, one male and one female, which must unite to form a single cell
capable of recommencing the cycle of reproduction by division. All this
being known at the time of Laveran, and the malarial parasite being
known to be a protozoon, it would have seemed logical to consider its
segmentation in the stroma of the red corpuscle as the phase of scission
and to await until the parasite gave place to the sexual forms, which
must necessarily come in the phase succeeding scission. Instead, the
division was looked upon as spore-formation, and neither Laveran, nor
the numerous scientists who followed the research, knew how to give an
explanation of the appearance of the sexual forms. Laveran expressed an
idea, which was immediately received, that these two forms were
degenerate forms of the malarial parasite, and therefore incapable of
producing the changes determining the disease. Indeed, the malaria was
apparently cured at the appearance of the two sexual forms of the
parasite, the conjunction of the two cells being impossible in the human
blood. The theory--then recent--of Morel upon human degeneration
accompanied by deformity and weakness, inspired Laveran in his
interpretation, and everybody found the idea of the illustrious
pathologist a fortunate one, because it was inspired by the great
concepts of the Morellian theory.
Had anyone, instead, limited himself to reasoning thus: the original
form of the malarial insect is a protozoon; it reproduces itself by
scission, under our eyes; when the scission is finished, we see two
diverse cells, one a half-moon, the other threadlike. These are the
feminine and masculine cells which must, by conjunction, alternate the
scission,--such a reasoner would have opened the way to the discovery.
But _so simple_ a process of reasoning did not come. We might almost ask
ourselves how great would be the world's progress if a special form of
education prepared men for pure observation and logical thought.
A great deal of time and intellectual force are lost in the world,
because the false seems great and the truth so small and insignificant.
I say all this to defend the necessity, which I feel we face, of
preparing the coming generations by means of more rational methods. It
is from these generations that the world awaits its progress. We have
already learned to make use of our surroundings, but I believe that we
have arrived at a time when the necessity presents itself for
_utilising_ human force, through a scientific education.
To return to Seguin's method of writing, it illustrates another truth,
and that is the tortuous path we follow in our teaching. This, too, is
allied to an instinct for complicating things, analogous to that which
makes us so prone to appreciate complicated things. We have Seguin
teaching _geometry_ in order to teach a child to write; and making the
child's mind exert itself to follow geometrical abstractions only to
come down to the simple effort of drawing a printed D. After all, must
the child not have to make another effort in order to _forget_ the
print, and _learn_ the script!
And even we in these days still believe that in order to learn to write
the child must first make vertical strokes. This conviction is very
general. Yet it does not seem natural that to write the letters of the
alphabet, which are all rounded, it should be necessary to begin with
straight lines and acute angles.
In all good faith, we wonder that it should be difficult to do away
with the angularity and stiffness with which the beginner traces the
beautiful curve of the O.[13] Yet, through what effort on our part, and
on his, was he forced to fill pages and pages with rigid lines and acute
angles! To whom is due this time-honoured idea that the first sign to be
traced must be a straight line? And why do we so avoid preparing for
curves as well as angles?
[13] It will, of course, be understood that this is a criticism
of the system in use in Italian schools. A. E. G.
Let us, for a moment, divest ourselves of such preconceptions and
proceed in a more simple way. We may be able to relieve future
generations of _all effort_ in the matter of learning to write.
Is it necessary to begin writing with the making of vertical strokes? A
moment of clear and logical thinking is enough to enable us to answer,
no. The child makes too painful an effort in following such an exercise.
The first steps should be the easiest, and the up and down stroke, is,
on the contrary, one of the most difficult of all the pen movements.
Only a professional penman could fill a whole page and preserve the
regularity of such strokes, but a person who writes only moderately well
would be able to complete a page of presentable writing. Indeed, the
straight line is unique, expressing the shortest distance between two
points, while _any deviation_ from that direction signifies a line which
is not straight. These infinite deviations are therefore easier than
that _one_ trace which is perfection.
If we should give to a number of adults the order to draw a straight
line upon the blackboard, each person would draw a long line proceeding
in a different direction, some beginning from one side, some from
another, and almost all would succeed in making the line straight.
Should we then ask that the line be drawn in a _particular direction_,
starting from a determined point, the ability shown at first would
greatly diminish, and we would see many more irregularities, or errors.
Almost all the lines would be long--for the individual _must needs
gather impetus_ in order to succeed in making his line straight.
Should we ask that the lines be made short, and included within precise
limits, the errors would increase, for we would thus impede the impetus
which helps to conserve the definite direction. In the methods
ordinarily used in teaching writing, we add, to such limitations, the
further restriction that the instrument of writing must be held in a
certain way, not as instinct prompts each individual.
Thus we approach in the most conscious and restricted way the first act
of writing, which should be voluntary. In this first writing we still
demand that the single strokes be kept parallel, making the child's task
a difficult and barren one, since it has no purpose for the child, who
does not understand the meaning of all this detail.
I had noticed in the note-books of the deficient children in France (and
Voisin also mentions this phenomenon) that the pages of vertical
strokes, although they began as such, ended in lines of C's. This goes
to show that the deficient child, whose mind is less resistant than that
of the normal child, exhausts, little by little, the initial effort of
imitation, and the natural movement gradually comes to take the place of
that which was forced or stimulated. So the straight lines are
transformed into curves, more and more like the letter C. Such a
phenomenon does not appear in the copy-books of normal children, for
they resist, through effort, until the end of the page is reached, and,
thus, as often happens, conceal the didactic error.
But let us observe the spontaneous drawings of normal children. When,
for example, picking up a fallen twig, they trace figures in the sandy
garden path, we never see short straight lines, but long and variously
interlaced curves.
Seguin saw the same phenomenon when the horizontal lines he made his
pupils draw became curves so quickly instead. And he attributed the
phenomenon to the imitation of the horizon line!
That vertical strokes should prepare for alphabetical writing, seems
incredibly illogical. The alphabet is made up of curves, therefore we
must prepare for it by learning to make straight lines.
"But," says someone, "in many letters of the alphabet, the straight line
does exist," True, but there is no reason why as a beginning of writing,
we should select one of the details of a complete form. We may analyse
the alphabetical signs in this way, discovering straight lines and
curves, as by analysing discourse, we find grammatical rules. But we all
_speak_ independently of such rules, why then should we not write
independently of such analysis, and without the separate execution of
the parts constituting the letter?
It would be sad indeed if we could _speak_ only _after_ we had studied
grammar! It would be much the same as demanding that before we _looked_
at the stars in the firmament, we must study infinitesimal calculus; it
is much the same thing to feel that before teaching an idiot to write,
we must make him understand the abstract derivation of lines and the
problems of geometry!
No less are we to be pitied if, in order to write, we must follow
analytically the parts constituting the alphabetical signs. In fact the
_effort_ which we believe to be a necessary accompaniment to learning to
write is a purely artificial effort, allied, not to writing, but to the
_methods_ by which it is taught.
Let us for a moment cast aside every dogma in this connection. Let us
take no note of culture, or custom. We are not, here, interested in
knowing how humanity began to write, nor what may have been the origin
of writing itself. Let us put away the conviction, that long usage has
given us, of the necessity of beginning writing by making vertical
strokes; and let us try to be as clear and unprejudiced in spirit as
the truth which, we are seeking.
"_Let us observe an individual who is writing, and let us seek to
analyse the acts he performs in writing_," that is, the mechanical
operations which enter into the execution of writing. This would be
undertaking the _philosophical study of writing_, and it goes without
saying that we should examine the individual who writes, not the
_writing_; the _subject_, not the _object_. Many have begun with the
object, examining the writing, and in this way many methods have been
constructed.
But a method starting from the individual would be decidedly
original--very different from other methods which preceded it. It would
indeed signify a new era in writing, _based upon anthropology_.
In fact, when I undertook my experiments with normal children, if I had
thought of giving a name to this new method of writing, I should have
called it without knowing what the results would be, the
_anthropological method_. Certainly, my studies in anthropology inspired
the method, but experience has given me, as a surprise, another title
which seems to me the natural one, "the method of _spontaneous_
writing."
While teaching deficient children I happened to observe the following
fact: An idiot girl of eleven years, who was possessed of normal
strength and motor power in her hands, could not learn to sew, or even
to take the first step, darning, which consists in passing the needle
first over, then under the woof, now taking up, now leaving, a number of
threads.
I set the child to weaving with the Froebel mats, in which a strip of
paper is threaded transversely in and out among vertical strips of paper
held fixed at top and bottom. I thus came to think of the analogy
between the two exercises, and became much interested in my observation
of the girl. When she had become skilled in the Froebel weaving, I led
her back again to the sewing, and saw with pleasure that she was now
able to follow the darning. From that time on, our sewing classes began
with a regular course in the Froebel weaving.
I saw that the necessary movements of the hand in sewing _had been
prepared without having the child sew_, and that we should really find
the way to _teach_ the child _how_, before _making him execute_ a task.
I saw especially that preparatory movements could be carried on, and
reduced to a mechanism, by means of repeated exercises not in the work
itself but in that which prepares for it. Pupils could then come to the
real work, able to perform it without ever having directly set their
hands to it before.
I thought that I might in this way prepare for writing, and the idea
interested me tremendously. I marvelled at its simplicity, and was
annoyed that _I had not thought before_ of the method which was
suggested to me by my observation of the girl who could not sew.
In fact, seeing that I had already taught the children to touch the
contours of the plane geometric insets, I had now only to teach them to
touch with their fingers the _forms of the letters of the alphabet_.
I had a beautiful alphabet manufactured, the letters being in flowing
script, the low letters 8 centimetres high, and the taller ones in
proportion. These letters were in wood, 1/2 centimetre in thickness, and
were painted, the consonants in blue enamel, the vowels in red. The
under side of these letter-forms, instead of being painted, were covered
with bronze that they might be more durable. We had only one copy of
this wooden alphabet; but there were a number of cards upon which the
letters were painted in the same colours and dimensions as the wooden
ones. These painted letters were arranged upon the cards in groups,
according to contrast, or analogy of form.
Corresponding to each letter of the alphabet, we had a picture
representing some object the name of which began, with the letter. Above
this, the letter was painted in large script, and near it, the same
letter, much smaller and in its printed form. These pictures served to
fix the memory of the sound of the letter, and the small printed letter
united to the one in script, was to form the passage to the reading of
books. These pictures do not, indeed, represent a new idea, but they
completed an arrangement which did not exist before. Such an alphabet
was undoubtedly most expensive and when made by hand the cost was fifty
dollars.
The interesting part of my experiment was, that after I had shown the
children how to place the movable wooden letters upon those painted in
groups upon the cards, I had them _touch them repeatedly in the fashion
of flowing writing_.
I multiplied these exercises in various ways, and the children thus
learned to make _the movements necessary to reproduce the form of the
graphic signs without writing_.
I was struck by an idea which had never before entered my mind--that in
writing we make _two diverse_ forms of movement, for, besides the
movement by which the form is reproduced, there is also that of
_manipulating the instrument of writing_. And, indeed, when the
deficient children had become expert in touching all the letters
according to form, _they did not yet know how to hold a pencil_. To hold
and to manipulate a little stick securely, corresponds to the
_acquisition of a special muscular mechanism which is independent of the
writing movement_; it must in fact go along with the motions necessary
to produce all of the various letter forms. It is, then, _a distinct
mechanism_, which must exist together with the motor memory of the
single graphic signs. When I provoked in the deficients the movements
characteristic of writing by having them touch the letters with their
fingers, I exercised mechanically the psycho-motor paths, and fixed the
muscular memory of each letter. There remained the preparation of the
muscular mechanism necessary in holding and managing the instrument of
writing, and this I provoked by adding two periods to the one already
described. In the second period, the child touched the letter, not only
with the index finger of his right hand, but with two, the index and the
middle finger. In the third period, he touched the letters with a little
wooden stick, held as a pen in writing. In substance I was making him
repeat the same movements, now with, and now without, holding the
instrument.
I have said that the child was to follow the _visual_ image of the
outlined letter. It is true that his finger had already been trained
through touching the contours of the geometric figures, but this was not
always a sufficient preparation. Indeed, even we grown people, when we
trace a design through glass or tissue paper, cannot follow perfectly
the line which we see and along which we should draw our pencil. The
design should furnish some sort of control, some mechanical guide, for
the pencil, in order to follow with _exactness_ the trace, _sensible in
reality only to the eye_.
The deficients, therefore, did not always follow the design exactly with
either the finger or the stick. The didactic material did not offer _any
control_ in the work, or rather it offered only the uncertain control of
the child's glance, which could, to be sure, see if the finger continued
upon the sign, or not. I now thought that in order to have the pupil
follow the movements more exactly, and to guide the execution more
directly, I should need to prepare letter forms so indented, as to
represent a _furrow_ within which the wooden stick might run. I made the
designs for this material, but the work being too expensive I was not
able to carry out my plan.
After having experimented largely with this method, I spoke of it very
fully to the teachers in my classes in didactic methods at the State
Orthophrenic School. These lectures were printed, and I give below the
words which, though they were placed in the hands of more than 200
elementary teachers, did not draw from them a single helpful idea.
Professor Ferreri[14] in an article speaks with amazement of this
fact.[15]
[14] G. Ferreri--Per l'insegnamento della scrittura (Sistema della
Dott M. Montessori) Bollettino dell' Associazione Romana per
la cura medico--pedigogica dei fanciulli anormali e deficienti
poveri, anno 1, n. 4, ottobre 1907. Roma Tipografia delle Terme
Diocleziane.
[15] Riassunto delle lezion di didattica, della dott. Montessori
anno 1900, Stab. lit. Romano, via Frattina 62, Disp. 6a,
pag. 46: "_Lettura e Scrittura simultanee._"
"At this point we present the cards bearing the vowels painted in red.
The child sees irregular figures painted in red. We give him the vowels
in wood, painted red, and have him superimpose these upon the letters
painted on the card. We have him touch the wooden vowels in the fashion
of writing, and give him the name of each letter. The vowels are
arranged on the cards according to analogy of form:
_o_ _e_ _a_
_i_ _u_
"We then say to the child, for example, 'Find o. Fat it in its place.'
Then, 'What letter is this?' We here discover that many children make
mistakes in the letters if they only look at the letter.
"They could however tell the letter by touching it. Most interesting
observations may be made, revealing various individual types: visual,
motor.
"We have the child touch the letters drawn upon the cards,--using first
the index finger only, then the index with the middle finger,--then with
a small wooden stick held as a pen. The letter must be traced in the
fashion of writing.
"The consonants are painted in blue, and are arranged upon the cards
according to analogy of form. To these cards are annexed a movable
alphabet in blue wood, the letters of which are to be placed upon the
consonants as they were upon the vowels. In addition to these materials
there is another series of cards, where, besides the consonant, are
painted one or two figures the names of which begin with that particular
letter. Near the script letter, is a smaller printed letter painted in
the same colour.
"The teacher, naming the consonant according to the phonetic method,
indicates the letter, and then the card, pronouncing the names of the
objects painted there, and emphasizing the first letter, as, for
example, '_p-pear_: give me the consonant _p_--put it in its place,
touch it,' etc. _In all this we study the linguistic defects of the
child._
"Tracing the letter, in the fashion of writing, begins the muscular
education which prepares for writing. One of our little girls taught by
this method has reproduced all the letters with the pen, though she does
not as yet recognise them all. She has made them about eight centimetres
high, and with surprising regularity. This child also does well in hand
work. The child who looks, recognises, and touches the letters in the
manner of writing, prepares himself simultaneously for reading and
writing.
"Touching the letters and looking at them at the same time, fixes the
image more quickly through the co-operation of the senses. Later, the
two facts separate; looking becomes reading; touching becomes writing.
According to the type of the individual, some learn to read first,
others to write."
I had thus, about the year 1899, initiated my method for reading and
writing upon the fundamental lines it still follows. It was with great
surprise that I noted the _facility_ with which a deficient child, to
whom I one day gave a piece of chalk, traced upon the blackboard, in a
firm hand, the letters of the entire alphabet, writing for the first
time.
This had arrived much more quickly than I had supposed. As I have said,
some of the children wrote the letters _with a pen and yet could not
recognise one of them_. I have noticed, also, in normal children, that
the muscular sense is most easily developed in infancy, and this makes
writing exceedingly easy for children. It is not so with reading, which
requires a much longer course of instruction, and which calls for a
superior intellectual development, since it treats of the
_interpretation of signs_, and of the _modulation of accents of the
voice_, in order that the word may be understood. And all this is a
purely mental task, while in writing, the child, under dictation,
_materially translates_ sounds into signs, and _moves_, a thing which is
always easy and pleasant for him. Writing develops in the little child
with _facility_ and _spontaneity_, analogous to the development of
spoken language--which is a motor translation of audible sounds.
Reading, on the contrary, makes part of an abstract intellectual
culture, which is the interpretation of ideas from graphic symbols, and
is only acquired later on.
My first experiments with normal children were begun in the first half
of the month of November, 1907.
In the two "Children's Houses" in San Lorenzo, I had, from the date of
their respective inaugurations (January 6 in one and March 7 in the
other), used only the games of practical life, and of the education of
the senses. I had not presented exercises for writing, because, like
everybody else, I held the prejudice that it was necessary to begin as
late as possible the teaching of reading and writing, and certainly to
avoid it before the age of six.
But the children seemed to demand some _conclusion_ of the exercises,
which had already developed them intellectually in a most surprising
way. They knew how to dress and undress, and to bathe, themselves; they
knew how to sweep the floors, dust the furniture, put the room in order,
to open and close boxes, to manage the keys in the various locks; they
could replace the objects in the cupboards in perfect order, could care
for the plants; they knew how to observe things, and how to see objects
with their hands. A number of them came to us and frankly demanded to be
taught to read and write. Even in the face of our refusal several
children came to school and proudly showed us that they knew how to
make an O on the blackboard.
Finally, many of the mothers came to beg us as a favour to teach the
children to write, saying, "Here in the 'Children's Houses' the children
are awakened, and learn so many things easily that if you only teach
reading and writing they will soon learn, and will then be spared the
great fatigue this always means in the elementary school." This faith of
the mothers, that their little ones would, from us, be _able to learn to
read and write without fatigue_, made a great impression upon me.
Thinking upon the results I had obtained in the school for deficients, I
decided during the August vacation to make a trial upon the reopening of
the school in September. Upon second thought I decided that it would be
better to take up the interrupted work in September, and not to approach
reading and writing until October, when the elementary schools opened.
This presented the added advantage of permitting us to compare the
progress of the children of the first elementary with that made by ours,
who would have begun the same branch of instruction at the same time.
In September, therefore, I began a search for someone who could
manufacture didactic materials, but found no one willing to undertake
it. I wished to have a splendid alphabet made, like the one used with
the deficients. Giving this up, I was willing to content myself with the
ordinary enamelled letters used upon shop windows, but I could find them
in script form nowhere. My disappointments were many.
So passed the whole mouth of October. The children in the first
elementary had already filled pages of vertical strokes, and mine were
still waiting. I then decided to cut out large paper letters, and to
have one of my teachers colour these roughly on one side with a blue
tint. As for the touching of the letters, I thought of cutting the
letters of the alphabet out of sandpaper, and of gluing them upon smooth
cards, thus making objects much like those used in the primitive
exercises for the tactile sense.
Only after I had made these simple things, did I become aware of the
superiority of this alphabet to that magnificent one I had used for my
deficients, and in the pursuit of which I had wasted two months! If I
had been rich, I would have had that beautiful but barren alphabet of
the past! We wish the old things because we cannot understand the new,
and we are always seeking after that gorgeousness which belongs to
things already on the decline, without recognising in the humble
simplicity of new ideas the germ which shall develop in the future.
I finally understood that a paper alphabet could easily be multiplied,
and could be used by many children at one time, not only for the
recognition of letters, but for the composition of words. I saw that in
the sandpaper alphabet I had found the looked-for guide for the fingers
which touched the letter. This was furnished in such a way that no
longer the sight alone, but the touch, lent itself directly to teaching
the movement of writing with exactness of control.
In the afternoon after school, the two teachers and I, with great
enthusiasm, set about cutting out letters from writing-paper, and others
from sandpaper. The first, we painted blue, the second, we mounted on
cards, and, while we worked, there unfolded before my mind a clear
vision of the method in all its completeness, so simple that it made me
smile to think I had not seen it before.
The story of our first attempts is very interesting. One day one of the
teachers was ill, and I sent as a substitute a pupil of mine, Signorina
Anna Fedeli, a professor of pedagogy in a Normal school. When I went to
see her at the close of the day, she showed me two modifications of the
alphabet which she had made. One consisted in placing behind each
letter, a transverse strip of white paper, so that the child might
recognise the direction of the letter, which he often turned about and
upside down. The other consisted in the making of a cardboard case where
each letter might be put away in its own compartment, instead of being
kept in a confused mass as at first. I still keep this rude case made
from an old pasteboard box, which Signorina Fedeli had found in the
court and roughly sewed with white thread.
She showed it to me laughing, and excusing herself for the miserable
work, but I was most enthusiastic about it. I saw at once that the
letters in the case were a precious aid to the teaching. Indeed, it
offered to the eye of the child the possibility of comparing all of the
letters, and of selecting those he needed. In this way the didactic
material described below had its origin.
I need only add that at Christmas time, less than a month and a half
later, while the children in the first elementary were laboriously
working to forget their wearisome pothooks and to prepare for making the
curves of O and the other vowels, two of my little ones of four years
old, wrote, each one in the name of his companions, a letter of good
wishes and thanks to Signor Edoardo Talamo. These were written upon note
paper without blot or erasure and the writing was adjudged equal to that
which is obtained in the third elementary grade.