the window and looked out at the Roman hill rising back of the school.
To the child who had not received Montessori color teaching, the hill
would have been a shapeless, colorless bit of earth. To this child, who
could see color in its finest gradation, it was a landscape where one
could trace the gold outline of orange and lemon, the red tiling of a
vine-tender’s house near the top and back of it a sky that was violet—not
blue. He looked at the hill for a long time. Then he selected an outlined
picture of a tree, and looking intently at a box of colored pencils,
selected one that was just the color of a cedar and proceeded to fill in
the outline.
[Illustration: Grading each standard color and its related colors in
chromatic order.]
[Illustration: All the colors of nature may be found.]
To Raffaelo, the child was a spellworker. Watching this fascination, the
directress gave Raffaelo a box of color spools, emptying them out and
allowing him to try and differentiate the colors, putting each back in
its right compartment in the box. She did not burden his mind with names.
He was feeding his senses by just handling and feeling the colors, and
he was unspeakably happy. When the noon hour came, he did not want to go
home. When his bedtime came, that night, he escaped from his mother and
ran to the window, looking out. The night before, he had looked down at
the soiled, unbeautiful street; to-night he looked up. The sun was just
setting, a ruby ball in a sea of amber.
“See!” Raffaelo shouted, pointing to the sunset. “Red; yellow!”
As his mother picked him up and carried him away from the window, he
looked deep down into her eyes. “Blue,” he said, seeing them for the
first time in all their beauty. The hunger of Raffaelo was fed.
Every child is color hungry. Your child may be a painter in the making,
heir to a century-old talent that somebody had to bury, but which would
not die and rose and haunted. Or he may be an average child who will be
happier and better all his life if he can see each fine gradation of
color that tints the sunset and can feed his soul on a beautiful Titian
or a Fra Angelico.
We have thought that we were teaching our children color when we called
their attention to a colored object. A child is much more apt to
associate taste with the apple which we show him when we try to give him
a color lesson, and quite possibly we make a false statement when we
say that the apple is red. Very few apples are _red_; they are dark red,
light red, orange, or yellow in tint. Why not begin the other way round,
as Dr. Montessori does, and teach pure _color_, giving the child the joy
that comes from discovering for himself just what pigment nature used in
painting the apple.
In teaching children color, we will use, if possible, Dr. Montessori’s
own box of sixty-four color spools that include almost all the tints and
shades of the prismatic colors, black to gray, and the scale of browns.
If we are not so fortunate as to be able to use this apparatus, which
is a most careful and scientific analysis of color, we can try to study
color ourselves, and point it out to children as it is found in the home
in textiles, silk and worsted, papers, flowers, and colored crayons and
paints.
In teaching color at home we may all follow Dr. Montessori’s own simple
method. The Montessori directress might have tried to teach Raffaelo
color as we, in America, teach our children, saying:
“See the ball; it is red. The forget-me-not is blue. See the pretty
robin redbreast,” and in making these statements confusing in the child’s
mind the concepts of toy, flowers, birds, and colors when all he needs
is _color_. Every child wants to make his own application of knowledge.
Instead, the girl who had been trained under Dr. Montessori had followed
the only true method of teaching any fact, the method that lies at the
basis of Montessori education miracles. Dr. Montessori says that teaching
must be _simple_ and _objective_. There hasn’t been enough of “calling a
spade a _spade_” in our American schools and homes.
Show your child red, or the letter A, or a moral fact—it doesn’t matter
much which—and name it _red_, or _A_, or _right_.
Ask him to tell _you_ just what you told him about it.
Ask him to pick out red from other colors, or A from other letters, or a
moral act from immoral acts. This is Montessori teaching reduced to A B
C, but it is teaching that is successful.
Our homes may be made as full of color and beauty for little children as
are the Children’s Houses. The use of the prism, the Montessori color
spools, the color top, our beautifully graded colored crayons and water
colors for filling in outlined pictures, a study of the colored papers to
be had for paper dolls’ clothes, the daily watching of the color changes
in sunrise and sunset—all these open the spirit eyes of the child. Then
we will lead children to notice and appreciate harmonious blending
of tints and shades in our walls, our rugs, our gardens, our picture
galleries.
Of what value is it that the child’s chromatic sense be trained by
learning to know and discriminate between red, blue, and yellow, and from
this to acquire a facility in knowing the scale of grays and browns? It
means more for the child than just the soul-satisfaction that comes from
learning how to use the eyes. It means _starting_ the brain machine and
then looking out for the switch.
The first morning that I met little Mario, one of my child Montessori
friends in Rome, he looked me over from head to foot, ran to a color box,
selected a color spool of the exact shade of gray blue of my suit and
showed it to me joyfully. In almost the same second that he made this
mental decision, he saw that the quick movements of little Valia were
threatening the safety of a glass vase that stood, holding flowers, on a
table at the opposite end of the room. Like a flash, Mario ran, held the
vase, and prevented the catastrophe.
To be able to think down the color scale from blue to a blue that is
mixed with gray; to be able to think in another kind of mental scale from
cause to effect—these are both _chromatic_ mind operations.
To know color means satisfying your child’s beauty hunger. It means,
also, starting him on the road to logical thinking.
THE GOING AWAY OF ANTONIO
_Directing the Child Will_
Antonio had a longing to _do_.
Since babyhood, he had watched the _madre_ _doing_ about the house, the
_padre_ who left each morning and returned each night after a day of
_doing_ somewhere.
All of Antonio’s most interesting world of little things revolved about
a circle of persistent activity. The earth in the garden moved with its
life of roots and bulbs, the very small ant creatures crept about from
sunrise to sunset with their sand burdens, the gray branches of the olive
opened to show their hidden treasures of leaves; the birds built; Luigi,
the old farmer beyond the garden, continually loaded and unloaded his
creaking yellow cart. Antonio absorbed this life energy with as much
hunger as he ate his soup and figs.
“I will, also, _do_ all day,” he decided, ready to try the adventure.
“I will make a little garden,” he chose one morning.
The spade was too huge for baby fingers, the frost-hardened ground
demanded force in digging. Some hyacinth stalks, just pushing their
odorous, purple way up through the mold, were broken by Antonio’s eager
effort. Still, the little boy persisted, endeavoring to accomplish the
task that his imagination pictured—a little round flower-bed of his own,
made by his hands, and in which flowers of all colors might raise their
heads overnight. Now he smelled them; now he could feel their velvet-soft
petals.
“Stop! Come here, naughty Antonio. You cannot make a garden; you are too
small. And you dirty your clean apron.”
Antonio dropped the spade as the words of his _madre_ shrilled through
the air. He sat down in a discouraged heap on the edge of the path.
Always, his _madre_ could persist in tasks, but he was continually
interfered with. Why?
But with the buoyancy of childhood, the little man suddenly jumped up. A
rattle of tin bells and a strident shriek of protesting, ungreased wheels
were the prelude to Luigi’s approach. In his cart of oranges and lemons,
with bunches of poppy and wheat stuck in the chinks, Luigi rode down the
lane. His smiling face was as russet and wrinkled as an old nut, bits of
miracle-hiding clod stuck to his blue smock. As he passed, he tossed an
orange to Antonio.
“I will be a farmer. How fine to earn money for my family, as Luigi
does,” little Antonio decided. He ran to the house and, pulling out his
little cart, loaded it with some of the vegetables that stood in baskets
in the kitchen. He trundled it up and down, calling his wares as he had
heard Luigi. At first his _madre_ laughed. Then, watching him, her smile
furrowed itself into a frown.
“Why play that you are Luigi, who is only a farmer?” she expostulated.
“Be a great general. Here are your toy soldiers.” She pulled his little
cart away from Antonio and pushed into his arms a box of gaudy tin
soldiers.
“Drill them; command them,” the _madre_ urged Antonio.
Antonio watched, sadly, the demolition of the little cart which stood for
playing into breadwinning. His soldiers were painted manikins, not very
steady on their legs and only slightly interesting. He tried to stand
them in rows and they all tumbled down. He changed them for his ball, and
his _madre_ suggested that a picture book would be a better plaything for
the house, taking the ball away from him. When he was absorbed in the
book, she tore him from it for a walk with her in the streets.
So it always happened with Antonio. No one allowed him to _persist_ in an
occupation, no one allowed him to _choose_ what he should do, and each
day’s activities were _decided for him_.
From a strong-willed baby whose impulses were all good, Antonio drifted
into weak-willed little boyhood. It was as if he were daily followed by a
spirit of indecision.
“Shall I concentrate on this play?” Antonio would ask himself, and in
reply the spirit which had risen from his babyhood influences whispered
in his ear, “No.”
Then came his manhood, and he asked himself the same question.
“Why persist? It is easier to shift, continually, from one occupation to
another, not doing anything long, or well.
“Why trouble to choose? My mother made decisions for me when I was a
little boy; the public school teachers chose my studies for me; now that
I am a man, let other men think for me. I have no power to control my
will.”
How simple a solution of the life question! The fingers of Antonio that
had itched in babyhood to make the earth bloom and to earn bread closed
quiescently about a dagger handed him by a man who said, “Come with me;
do as I decide for you.” The crime Antonio did was not his fault, nor the
fault of his accomplice. It was the fault of his _madre_.
Dr. Montessori tells the story of the child whose will is misdirected in
babyhood. He is the child whom his mother and the public school system
mold into a lump of putty by thinking for him.
The greatest problem of to-day in child-training is, how shall we help
our little ones to strength of will? Civilization is being sapped by our
weaklings. Home-training, the public schools do not develop character.
Dr. Montessori tells us that this is because parents and teachers do not
know what will, fundamentally, is.
Dr. Montessori says, “To will is to be _able_. The little child who
persistently struggles to pile block upon block until a miniature tower
or castle rises under his fingers, _persisting until he completes_ the
labor, is taking his first step toward will-training.
“Family life, trade life are built up on this persistency. Whether it
shows itself in loving, or giving or working, constancy makes the social
will. Every motor activity is an act of will, and constancy in _right_
activities makes character.”
Other great teachers have said the study of mathematics and the dead
languages, the military discipline of the army, mortification of the
flesh, make character. To train a child’s will we feel we must crucify it
upon the cross of our desires. A child must obey us, we say, follow our
caprices and chisel himself into a likeness to us, because we wish him to
be like us. Why should children be little men and women? Are we so sure
of our own perfection that we have a right to force our personality upon
that of our children?
Dr. Montessori gives us a new rule for developing character in children.
She says:
“_Seek the child’s first longings_ if you would train his will. Give him
the foundation of will by helping him to concentrate on something he
instinctively craves to be busy about and so lay the foundation stones of
his character.”
The little child’s first impulses to be active are good. He wants to be
about his father’s business by taking part in the activities of the home.
We make our children weak-willed by our own capriciousness in interfering
with their attempts to be active. We dress them, we feed them, we wait on
them, we drive them to play, we lead them; we put them in kindergartens
where they flit from one occupation to another without an opportunity to
concentrate on one; we put them in schools where their days are cut up
into little bundles of study, tied with the iron chains of Schedule that
make prisoners of children; we continually decide for our little ones and
kill their characters with the sword of misdirected kindness.
Some children are born with the color of painters in their souls, and
we punish them for soiling _our_ pictures and mussing _our_ tapestries
and trampling upon _our_ gardens. May we not look beyond their impotent
acts to the spirit-longing that prompted them and put into their hands
the best in the way of color: paints, crayons, books, flowers that will
satisfy their desires and give them an opportunity to concentrate on the
activity they instinctively crave. So they gain will power.
Other children are born with a vision of the builder in their eyes,
and we thwart them when they try to use the furnishings of the home in
a process of reconstruction. May we not equip our little architects
with materials for building, call their attention to the classic in
architecture and art, give them a chance to build their own characters?
Most children are born little cosmopolites—small world citizens who
explore with the greatest interest the strange, new environment in
which they find themselves. These are the children whom our present
system of coercion in home and school hurts most. We crush their wills
by not giving them an opportunity to follow their instinctive interests
in babyhood. The innate impulses of such children are good. They must
explore and produce around themselves. They must be helped to wise choice
and right decisions. So they grow to willed man and womanhood.
Is this following of personal impulse, as shown in Montessori-trained
children, productive of better concentration than we find in our public
schools to-day?
Part of the Montessori didactic material for teaching numbers consists
of a cardboard case into which cards bearing big black figures may be
slipped, giving the child an opportunity to work out number combinations.
A little lad of five discovered one morning, when I was observing at the
Via Giusti Montessori school in Rome, that he could slip into his case
cards in regular succession that would count to one hundred by fives.
He spread out his cards upon the sunny floor, provided himself with the
polished counting sticks for verifying each operation; then kneeling in
front of his counting frame, he went to work, alone, concentrated.
It was visiting day at the School. Tourists, teachers, students lined the
room to the number of forty or fifty, leaving the children scant space
to work, and as the little boy’s numerical adventure began, they crowded
closer to watch him. An American public school child would have grown
restive and self-conscious, but this little Montessori lad might have
been alone in the Sahara, so quiet, so unheeding of anything but his own
occupation was he. The number cards are large, and it took a good many to
reach one hundred. The little fellow spread them out in the center of the
floor, then carried the row under the chairs of the visitors, not seeming
to notice the presence of the grown-ups.
The morning grew gold with noon, and the other children, quietly putting
away their materials, spread the low tables for the midday meal. Little
white bowls, snowy napkins, carefully laid spoons—then the steaming
chicken broth. Still the little counter did not move. He had reached
seventy-five, after verifying every number he had registered in the case.
One of the wee waitresses for the day carried his red and green luncheon
basket and set it down on the floor in front of him; he did not heed it.
“Why doesn’t somebody stop that child’s counting and _make_ him eat
his lunch,” expostulated a nervous American school teacher, watching.
“Children should be made to do certain things at certain times,” she
explained.
Just then the boy slowly and with great pains fitted a figure one and two
ciphers into the counting case. Like a little conqueror he stood up,
folded his arms, and looked at the perfect result of two hours’ willed,
concentrated work. A smile broke the baby face into dimples, and running
out into the garden, he began to play like a little colt. He was not
tired. He was not hungry. He was only joyful at this conquest of his will.
Montessori will-training proves itself in results.
The practical life and gymnastic exercises of the method have a peculiar
value in relation to the strengthening of the child will. Once a
child has learned to inhibit his scattering muscular disorder in such
co-ordinations as are involved in dressing and undressing, feeding
himself, bathing, taking part in the everyday work of the home as far as
possible; in walking, running, marching, skipping, dancing to music, and
the other rhythmic and gymnastic exercises involved in the Montessori
system, he has fixed a permanent habit of muscular control which
establishes, also, mental control. To be able to place dishes and silver
in an orderly way on a table, to carry and balance a tray containing
several filled cups or glasses, to be responsible for a certain drawer
or cupboard shelf or case in which are contained play materials is to be
able to control mind as well as body.
The muscular education of Montessori that has a direct bearing upon the
direction and development of the child’s will is included in the primary
activities of everyday life, in walking, greeting, rising, and handling
objects gracefully; in the proper care of the person, in taking part
in the management of the household, in gardening, in such handwork as
clay modeling and drawing and in all properly co-ordinated gymnastic and
rhythmic movements. This new and direct will-training is possible in any
home.
A more subtle but quite as important phase of control of the will through
_doing_ is seen in connection with the child’s use of the didactic
apparatus, especially the solid and geometric insets, the tower, and the
broad and long stair. In the use of each of these there lies for the
child a very important quality of self-correction. A broad cylinder will
not fit into a narrow hole; the plain rectangular inset cannot be made
to slip into the outline of the board intended for a square; a misplaced
block or rod spoils the sequence of form and number in the tower or the
stairs. After being shown the perfect way of carrying on each of these
exercises, the child experiments with them alone. He discovers that the
material admits of two possibilities: error and success. The success
possibility is the greater, however; it is easier to drop a solid inset
into an opening that fits than to endeavor to crush it into a hole that
is too small. So, by persistent and repeated experiment, the child
attains a habit of correcting his own mistakes. This habit he carries
over into the other willed activities of his life.
The Montessori method presents three steps in the home development of
the child’s will. First, we must give our children as wide and free an
opportunity as possible to be active, especially with their hands, along
those lines which will lead to muscular control. Second, we must not
interfere with a little child’s concentrated occupation through play.
Last, whatever task we set for him to do, we must outline a right way
in which it should be accomplished and encourage him to correct his own
errors in it.
A mother said to me recently, “I keep the children in bibs still,
although I suppose they have outgrown them. We can’t have our meals
delayed while we wait for three active youngsters to fold napkins.”
Dr. Montessori would have patiently and painstakingly instituted the
napkin habit, realizing that in even so simple and homely an operation
as folding a square of linen neatly lie undreamed possibilities of
strengthening a child’s will.
ANDREA’S LILY
_The Nature-Training of the Method_
“If you put it to sleep in the good brown earth, Andrea, if you tend it
and wait with patience,” explained the Signorina, “you will see a wonder.”
Andrea turned the brown lump over and over in his hand. He rubbed it on
the sleeve of his apron. He held it up to the light. It had no appearance
of wonder; it was cold, it did not shine, it would not reflect the light.
Did the Signorina, after all, _know_, Andrea wondered, as his big,
wistful eyes looked out from the warm cheerfulness of the schoolroom to
the chill, wind-swept spaces of the Convent garden. Memories of great
banks of gold daisies, roses so heavy with crimson petals that they bent
as low as the little green winding paths, winds sweet with perfume of
the grape filled Andrea’s imagination. These had made the garden of the
Children’s House yesterday. But how different it was to-day! Could the
dead bulb which was his, now, to tend, to watch, to believe in, make for
itself life and bloom?
Andrea, the matter-of-fact little man of four, was skeptical.
“Of what use is it to plant?” he queried.
“Try it! I will help you dig a hole,” Bruno, the helpful, volunteered.
“We will not let any child take it out of its bed; we will protect it
for you, Andrea,” assured Piccola, flashing eyes full of the fire of
anticipated battle.
“Cover it carefully with earth, and only be patient,” reiterated the
Signorina. “Believe me. It will make for you a surprise.”
It was a momentous morning that marked Andrea’s planting. His fat
fingers, holding the trowel, trembled. Like a circle of small acolytes,
Bruno, Little Brother, Piccola, and the rest, white aprons fluttering
in the wind, watched the sacrifice. Covered out of vision in its winter
grave, the bulb disappeared and the children, now almost as skeptical
as Andrea of its possible germ of life, ran back to their work in the
schoolroom. All, save Andrea.
His baby hands, like two warm, brown leaves, fluttered over the earth
prison of his bulb. Kneeling down on the frosty path, he bent low,
listening, as if he hoped that he might perhaps hear the groping of new
roots. It was all very cold, and perfectly still about the place where he
had buried his little dead hope, but Andrea whispered to it:
“I will wait,” he promised.
The bleak Roman winter spent its chill days. Flurries of snow shrouded
the garden and the wide doors of the Convent, open so many days of the
year, were closed. Andrea did not forget his bulb, though. Every day he
ran out to the place where he had buried it, eagerly watching for the
slim green fingers he had been told would push their way through the
frosty earth. As the weeks drifted by, and while the garden was still
bare, a strange thing happened to the soul of little Andrea. The patience
that was necessary for keeping alive his hope in the brown bulb began to
show itself in other ways.
“Andrea no longer frowns when the little brother of Bruno takes away his
letters,” the Signorina exclaimed. “Instead, he goes to the cabinet and
fetches a buttoning frame, offering it to the little one instead of the
letters for which he is not ready.”
[Illustration: Every child should have a pet.]