words and sentences upon a bright rug spread out on the nursery floor,
all the activities of the home in which he has a part and all his play
life may be used as the basis of his first reading. His favorite toys may
be placed about him as he constructs their names and little word stories
about them. Large colored pictures of simple design may be laid on the
floor as the child combines letters to spell the objects contained in
them. The mother may write in large script simple instructions which the
child may read and follow:
“Run to me.”
“Bring me your ball.”
“Close the door.”
Innumerable helps are to be procured for the drawing by means of which
Montessori establishes the muscular control preliminary to writing.
Our art stores and kindergarten supply shops offer beautifully colored
crayons and drawing paper at nominal cost. Blocks, the tin utensils of
the kitchen, and box covers offer geometric surfaces about which the
child may draw, if the drawing board and forms of Montessori are not
included in the home equipment. These outlines the child will delight
in filling with color, using the diagonal strokes that form a direct
preparation for the muscular control involved in writing. Following
this coloring of geometric forms is the filling in, similarly, of simple
outlined pictures. We find such outlined pictures in large variety in the
school and kindergarten supply shops. The toy dealers supply books of
really beautiful designs and pictures for coloring. It is also possible
to procure sets of cardboard figures, animals, paper dolls, and soldiers
which the home child may draw around and color.
One day, after having made his own, through the sense of touch, the form
of letters, and after having learned muscular control in _drawing form_,
your child will write. How can he help it? You will have established
artificial conditions, muscle and sense, similar to the conditions
through which he learns to talk.
The baby _hears_ speech, and because heredity perfected his vocal cords
for reacting upon mental stimulus of the sound—he _talks_. In the
Montessori method, he _feels_ letters, and through the perfecting of the
muscles involved in reproducing those letters which he has made his own
by feeling—he writes.
CLARA—LITTLE MOTHER
_The Social Development of the Montessori Child_
Clara always saw me before I caught the outline of her cherubic chubby
person. She had constituted herself the little four-year-old hostess of
the Trionfale Children’s House. Her limpid brown eyes shone with welcome
to a friend or stranger. Her lips were overflowing with sweetly liquid
words of greeting. Her fat arms reached out, her fat legs were winged
with her friendliness.
She was the motherly, hen type of child, never so full of joy as when
she was greeting someone or organizing a game or taking care of a child
younger than herself. An intensely feminine little person was Clara, who
would grow up into a kindly, gracious woman, forceful in her own tactful,
woman way if she were surrounded by the right influences in childhood or——
I very curiously watched the social development of the chubby little girl
in the bright pink frock.
Little Roman babies have the most fascinating play fancies, I believe,
of any in the world. Given a cart and a faded flower or so, and Otello
was transformed in a second’s space into a busy flower vender calling
his posies up and down the school yard, offering imaginary bunches and
twining imaginary wreaths. A pile of stones left by the architects in a
corner of the playground; Mario was suddenly fired with the building zeal
of his Roman ancestors. Gathering a group of boys to help him carry and
lift the stones, he would construct small models of the immortal walls of
the Cæsars and a possible arch of Titus.
Clara played, too, but not so much with _things_, as with _groups_. Her
play had the social quality so important in the all-round development of
the individual.
She would gather together a group of little ones for a festival
procession or a folk dance, apportioning strong partners for the weaker
ones and older ones for the babies. She played house daily, but in a
different, lavish kind of way. She had, always, eight or ten make-believe
children; found room in her house of sticks and stones for the fruit
seller, the cheese man, the porter, and a stray musician or two. Her
strongest instinct seemed to be a collective one. She wanted to brood.
She wanted to be, also, a leader.
The Montessori directress let Clara very much alone, smiling upon and
encouraging her play, but not trying to mold her instincts. If Clara
industriously swept out her domicile with a stick, the directress did
not run to her, offering her a toy broom. When Clara was a little slow
about going into the schoolroom when the out-of-door period was ended,
the directress did not fret at the little maid. She realized that Clara
had merged her own personality in the personalities of the group of
children with whom she had been playing. She had been so busy preparing
her imaginary family for going to school that she did not heed the call
herself.
How would the social instinct so prominent in Clara and in several
other of the children find vent inside the four walls of the Children’s
House, I wondered? Would the Montessori system, which has for its basic
principle auto-education, this system of perfecting the individual
through self-direction, give Clara and the others a chance to develop
group activities?
For some time the cool, white schoolroom was the scene of individual work
and personal endeavor. Otello worked alone with the solid insets; Mario’s
fascinated fingers sorted colors. Clara sat on the floor in the sunshine
and constructed the tower, but her keen eyes followed almost every
movement of the other children. Then, for the school was in its inception
and the children were new, came a transition period, when the peace was
broken by perfectly normal, healthy brawls. Someone overturned Otello’s
cylinders and Otello kicked the offender. Several children wanted
the same box of color spools at the same time. The directress kindly
interfered and gave the colors to Clara, who had been first upon the
scene. Clara motioned the crowd to follow her. Now had come her chance.
She organized her group. She selected a red spool and spread out upon a
white table its beautiful gradations from deepest crimson to palest rose
pink. Then she offered the blue spools to Mario, showing him how to grade
the varying shades. It was fascinating, Mario thought, to have Clara for
his little teacher. He motioned to several of the other children to join
them. Tables were drawn up; brown and golden heads bent close together
as the little ones dabbled in the colors, advising, helping, learning
from each other.
The directress hovered outside of the group, suggesting but not forcing
herself upon the children. They turned to her when they needed her, but
their greatest interest lay in the joy and power of working and learning
together.
As one watched the phenomenon of this natural unfolding of the social
instinct in the method, there were daily examples of its spontaneity. The
children, from a collection of units, had been transformed into a small
community in which there were groups of workers, some large, some small,
but all co-operative. The children carried on the sense exercises and
took bold adventures into the fields of reading and writing together.
The Montessori directress was always their captain and guide, but the
grouping and working with some other child or children was the result of
childish initiative.
It developed in this way.
The children learned to _live_ together. They found that the integrity
of Clara’s group, of Mario’s, or Otello’s, was preserved only if the
individuals in it gave themselves up to the good of the whole. It was
pleasanter to move tables and chairs softly, to wait one’s turn, and
to avoid jostling one’s neighbor. So kindness and neighborliness and
gentleness were learned by the children through their own endeavor.
The children _learned_ together. There were groups of various grades of
age and mental ability. Here the children of three and four emptied out
an entire box of color spools and, each choosing a color, helped each
other grade. There, a trio of energetic babies slopped in their basins,
endeavoring to wash each other to a common cleanliness. In a quiet corner
an older child taught less advanced children to spell with the movable
alphabet or to work out arithmetic calculations with the rods. This group
learning was carefully watched and safeguarded by the directress, but she
never forced her personality upon the children. The children, left to
their own efforts, found a stimulus to a wholesome kind of competition.
They tried to outstrip each other in learning, and put forth more effort
than if they had been urged by the teacher.
And, best of all, the children were _good_ together.
If one child did anything that interfered with the rights of the others
he was kindly but effectually isolated. He was denied nothing save his
privilege of being an active, happy member of the child republic. To be
allowed to go back to it was his ultimate joy.
The Montessori House of the Children is a place of more unusual
development of group activities among little children than we have
realized. There is a larger opportunity for making children into little
citizens than in almost any other scheme of education.
We have thought that the present practice of the kindergarten, in which
group activities are organized and directed by the kindergartner, gives
little children the opportunity for the development of the social
instinct which they so much need. At a signal, they rise and carry
chairs, or march in step, or play a game, but the signal was given by the
teacher. She directs the game. We have wandered so far from the leading
of the gentle Froebel whose guiding star was the natural impulses of
individual children in his garden of little ones.
It is vastly more difficult to lead a number of children safely through
a first transition period, when all their self-activity turns into
channels of disorder, than to check that disorder by force of adult will.
This is the task Dr. Montessori sets for us, however, and she shows us,
as the result of our patient leading of the children into habits of
self-directed order, her peaceful, industrious Houses of the Children.
Like a hive of bees, the little ones swarm in the flowering of their
interests. They are intent upon community welfare.
The problem of helping a child to be a perfect social unit is as pressing
a problem for the home as for the school. We are following the letter and
not the spirit of Montessori when we offer a home child the intellectual
stimulus of her didactic apparatus and deny him companionship in the
use of it. It is eye-opening for a child to so learn form that he
can detect slight variation of outline and is able to perceive the
beautiful combination of lines which make a cathedral or an arch. It is
soul-opening for this same child to help another child to a perception of
this beauty.
The three periods of the spontaneous developing of the Montessori
children into collective activity, as I observed them, have an even
more direct bearing upon the home. Left alone, offered the scientific
apparatus for mental, moral, and physical growth, the Montessori children
make these important social adjustments.
They learn to _live_ together.
They _learn_ together.
They are _good_ together.
A great deal is involved in the development of each of these adjustments.
We must study the method of Montessori by means of which success in group
activity is made spontaneous.
To say to a child, “You must be polite. You mustn’t be rude. It is
ugly to be clumsy. It isn’t nice to be selfish,” was the part of the
older decalogue in child-training. To teach a child by careful physical
and rhythmic exercise and through simple acts of home helpfulness,
so that he is naturally graceful and courteous, is the Montessori
way. To provide him with play or educational materials which have
greater possibilities of interest if shared—blocks, games, handicraft
materials—accomplishes unselfishness. Such community play as is found in
imitating the activities of the childhood of the race—digging, cooking,
collecting, all kinds of building, trade, plays, weaving, gardening in
groups, and camping—is valuable because it helps children to merge their
personalities in the interests and life of a _group_. The center of these
child activities is child interest, not adult pressure.
Dr. Montessori makes it possible for little children to learn together,
not according to schedule, but in line with child interest.
A mother wrote me at great length and anxiously in regard to what seemed
to her a little son’s lack of adaptability to the home use of the
Montessori didactic apparatus. The boy had toys, books, colored pencils,
blocks; he was endowed with a vital interest in the world about him and
an alert mind, but he refused to play alone. He preferred playing in the
street with a group of other children, their only play material being
pebbles, sand, or bricks, to playing at home with his own beautiful
equipment.
“How can I persuade Harold to work alone with the Montessori apparatus?”
his mother queried.
It was important for this child and for all children not to work alone.
Any child will make greater educational strides if the stimulus of other
child minds helps his intellectual growth.
To set a group of children of different heredity, different mental and
emotional development, and different interests the same task is not only
futile but dangerous. It is apt to mold their plastic minds to one line
of thinking, is bound to make them slaves of authority instead of free
personalities. But to offer a group of children the tools of knowledge
as exemplified in the Montessori didactic materials and give them the
opportunity to gather in selected, interested groups for competitive
research and for helping where help is needed is the most fruitful kind
of learning.
This may be brought about in any home where a few children from three
to four or five years of age meet regularly under the same conditions
for intellectual development that exist in the Children’s Houses. Older
children may be formed into a neighborhood home study club. Released
from the bondage of the iron curriculum, they may find in this club an
opportunity for original research along those intellectual lines which
interest them most; nature, the practical application of mathematics
in measuring and constructing toys, further study of history and
literature through story-telling, making and dressing dolls to illustrate
historical characters, and the writing and dramatizing of simple plays.
As a further development of the Montessori group activities we see, in
imagination, in every community a municipal Children’s House. Here,
children of all classes, ages, and degrees of intellectual growth might
meet, freely selecting from a large variety of materials for mental
and constructive development those which they most need. Also, we see
them selecting their own social plane, finding help and inspiration
in collective work with other children. In this municipal Children’s
House we would find groups of child artisans, fashioning boards and
molding bricks to make the buildings for a toy village. There would be
little sculptors and painters, and perhaps a child poet or dramatist.
We would see small _modistes_ and milliners learning, through designing
doll costumes, the finger deftness and artistic sense which come from
combining beautiful colors and textiles. Such a Children’s House would
have its own kitchen, where the children could study foodstuffs and
cook and serve simple meals. Music would be a development of the group
activities. This would constitute a laboratory for the most fruitful
kind of child study on the part of physicians, psychologists, teachers,
and parents, because child growth under these conditions would be quite
spontaneous and along natural interest lines.
The last phase of Montessori collective work is seen as a kind of
flowering. After children learn how to live together, after they have
worked out intellectual problems together, they are suddenly discovered
as being very kindly disposed toward each other. It is as if the ultimate
development of co-operation were the elimination of war.
It is not necessary to say to a group of Montessori children, “Be good.”
They could not be otherwise than good.
PICCOLA—LITTLE HOME MAKER
_The Helpfulness of the Montessori Child_
The visitor to a Montessori school in Rome is faced by an anomaly.
Piccola, the emotional, eager little Italian girl of five years, who is
more difficult to control at home than even the average American child,
is seen to be a self-controlled, useful member of a child republic.
Piccola’s first work of the morning is to find her own pink apron that
hangs on a peg on the wall, and button herself into it with patient
perseverance. If the younger children have difficulty putting on their
aprons, Piccola will patiently help them. Her next activity is, also,
along lines of helpfulness. She looks about the wide spaces of the
big room, where low white tables and chairs, growing ivy plants, and
plain gray wall make a beautiful color scheme, to determine if there is
anything she,—wee Piccola,—may do to help this beauty. Ah, Piccola sees
a speck of dust in one corner of the white stone floor. Darting to the
outer room, where the children remove and hang their wraps and wash their
hands before school, Piccola seizes a red broom that is just the right
length for her chubby arms to handle easily and a shining little tin
dustpan. Hastening back, she brushes up the dust. Then she waters the ivy
with a small green watering pot, fetches a white basin and a little white
scrubbing brush, and slops gayly in an energetic attempt to wash off the
tables. Last, she takes some of the soft green and gray rugs that the
children use for working on when they sit on the floor, and beats them in
the garden with much energy.
The other children have come, now, and having selected their materials
from the white cupboards that line the wall, are busily at work. Piccola,
too, is busy, piling pink blocks in orderly fashion, one upon the other.
Her active mind is busy, though, along another line as well; she watches
the other little ones furtively to see if there is anything which she can
do to help them. Bruno drops his color spools; Piccola runs to help him
gather them up in his apron. Little Brother tumbles down in a trip from
his table to the material cupboard; Piccola helps him to balance himself
again on his fat legs, and, winding two tender little brown arms about
him, she steers him in safety on his way.
The hour for the midday luncheon comes. Piccola daintily helps to spread
the white luncheon cloths, to lay the spoons in regular order at each
child’s place, to sort and place the bright baskets in which the children
have brought their sandwiches and fruit. Not until all the others are
served does Piccola slip into her own empty place and partake of her own
luncheon.
Piccola’s mother marvels at the change that has been wrought in Piccola
by a few months in the Montessori House of the Children. She reports her
observations to the Montessori directress who has Piccola’s education in
charge.
“Piccola dusts the home now, without my bidding.
“She picks up her dolls and her toys when she has finished playing with
them.
“She helps me lay the table for the noon meal.
“How did you teach these things to my wayward little Piccola, Signorina?”
It is the query of the American mother who finds her little one who has
spent a day in a good Montessori school more helpful in the home than
before.
She also asks herself:
“How may I teach helpfulness to my child?”
Dr. Montessori has discovered for us the marvel that to bring helpfulness
to a very little child is not so much a matter of teaching as of
fostering. She shows us the instinct to help which manifests itself in
the very little child which we must detect, watch, and foster until we
form a _habit_ of _usefulness_ in children. After all, to be useful to
oneself and to others is the greatest value of education for life. Dr.
Montessori puts this education for utility on a very high plane.
The mother who carefully observes and analyzes all the acts of the child
of two and a half or three years of age will discover that the baby has
a great desire to be busy, continually, and in imitation of his mother’s
busy-ness about the home. He handles with the greatest eagerness and
interest his shoes, his father’s neckties, his mother’s brush and comb,
the family silver, the kitchen utensils, the door latches and knobs,
the window fastenings. He is more interested in the tools of grown-up
housekeeping than he is in his toys. Why is this?
A baby of twenty months spent an entire morning collecting all the shoes
he could find in his mother’s room and carrying them about from one room
to another. He climbed up in a chair and pulled a button hook off a
dressing table. His mother substituted his dolls, his rubber toys, a ball
for these, but the baby refused them. Finally his mother snatched away
the huge boot of his father’s, which he was lovingly tugging about from
room to room and slapped his hands because he cried at giving it up. The
little man cried again, and struggled against the brutal force of his
mother, who held him tightly in her lap and changed his shoes for going
out in the afternoon. Again his hands were slapped.
The baby had not been in the least naughty. He wanted to learn how to
button his own shoes and his mother couldn’t understand this longing
which he had to express in action, having no words with which to explain
himself.
Nearly all the instincts of babyhood are _right_ instincts, leading to
good conduct. The child’s first longing is to be able to fit himself
to his environment, and this means that he must learn to handle those
objects and do those things which he sees his family doing. The average
American child grows up rather helpless and useless when it comes to
making social adjustments, because we continually interfere with his
first attempts to be useful. We do for him those acts of utility which he
should learn himself, very early, while he is still interested in them.
It is undoubtedly less time-taking to put on a small boy’s shoes, button
and lace them for him, button his under and outer clothes, to tie his
necktie, and put on his rubbers, than to slowly and patiently teach
him to dress himself. To bathe a child and brush and comb his hair is
simpler than to allow the baby to splash in water and revel in soapsuds,
as he must in learning the intricate movements necessary for keeping
himself tidy. We wish to preserve, also, the immaculate order of our neat
bathrooms.
We like to open and close doors for the toddler; it is our privilege
of service, we feel. We prefer to lay the table ourselves, and keep
our spotless kitchens free of child finger marks. What about the baby,
though, who finds his attempts to make himself useful thwarted at every
turn until he forms the habit of being waited on? This is a wrecking
habit for childhood; it is, also, a habit that leads to our present
extravagantly high cost of adult living. The little child who expects
to be continually waited on is going to grow up into a man or woman who
will expect to be waited on through life. Service is what doubles the
grocer’s, the butcher’s, the landlord’s, the shopkeeper’s bills.
The useful helpfulness of the Montessori-trained child is easily
explained.
The Montessori schoolroom is so planned that there is nothing which a
child can hurt and a good deal that he can help by his first clumsy,
baby attempts to be useful to himself and to others with his hands.
The children are free to move about as much as they like, changing the
position of the light little chairs and tables, opening and closing the
doors that lead into the garden, unrolling and then rolling up again the
rugs, putting away the didactic materials in the cupboards after they are
through with them, washing the tables and blackboards, caring for plants
and animals, and carrying on countless other activities that bring about
hand and eye training.