Pedagogical Anthropology by Maria Montessori (best novels of all time TXT) 📕

etc.; while, by regarding the children as the effects of biological and social causes, it establishes new and enlightening standards of morality and justice, and reveals to educators responsibilities not hitherto conceived. It will suffice to call to mind the fact that the most studious children, and therefore those who receive the greatest amount of praise and prizes, show a deficiency in weight, in chest development, and in muscular force; consequently, a physiological impoverishment the blame for which must be attributed to an ignorance of hygiene and of anthropology, such as still persists throughout the whole field of pedagogy; an ignorance which leads the teacher to encourage by his praises the impoverishment of the best forces that reveal themselves in the school (the most intelligent and studious children) in an age when social industries, multiplied and grown to a giant size, demand the cooperation of a vigorous race, and to inspire by rewards and praise a sentiment of superiority and of vanity in an age that is dominated by the sentiment of universal equality and brotherhood.

The teacher ought, on the contrary, to appoint himself the defender of the race, and to demand, among his other rights, that of making such social reforms and such reforms in the school and in pedagogies as may be necessary to the accomplishment of his purpose, which is the attainment of the highest degree of civilisation and of prosperity.

But this subject would lead us to repeat principles on which we have already insisted; it will suffice to reassert that the tendency of anthropology is undoubtedly toward a reform in the school and the opening of a new era in pedagogy.

The Significance of the So-called Physical Stigmata of Degeneration.—We have studied so many congenital malformations and pathological deformations that a synthetic statement of their significance becomes necessary. All the more so, because certain principles in this connection, already widely circulated among the general public, have now been rejected by science.

One of these principles refers to the so-called atavism and formed part of the original Lombrosian doctrines: but blessed is the scientist who is obliged to correct himself, for that means that his brain is still fertile.

Certain morphological anomalies call to mind forms of the inferior races and species, from which, according to the original Darwinian doctrine of evolution, the human species had descended in a direct line: hence the term "atavistic survival." It will suffice to mention the receding forehead that calls to mind the Neanderthal cranium, the long simian arms, the prognathism distinctive of the inferior human races and of animals, microcephaly which suggests the crania of anthropoid apes, the mongoloid eyes and protruding cheek-bones, which recall the yellow races; the "canine" ear, the wooly or smooth hair, polytrichia, the dark skin, etc.

Now, all this assemblage of stigmata which went under the name of atavistic, or absolute retrogression, were held to be in almost direct relation to degeneration.

Degeneration was supposed to revive in us forms that had been superseded in the course of evolution, and hence also psychic states that had also been superseded in the history of the human race; it is well known that, according to Lombroso, a criminal might be defined as a savage, a barbarian born among us, yet still having within him his particular instincts of theft and slaughter.

To-day, since the original interpretation of the Darwinian theory has been discarded, with it have fallen all those deductions which medicine and sociology were in too great haste to draw, in order to make scientific application of them.

In conclusion, the principle remains firmly established of a correlation between physical and psychic anomalies, which forms the very essence of the Lombrosian theory. What science wishes to-day to correct is the atavistic interpretation of stigmata and of types of degenerates. This takes nothing away from the brilliant record of Lombroso, who interpreted biological and pathological phenomena in the selfsame light that shed glory upon Ernest Haeckel, namely, the Darwinian theory. In the first enthusiasm of that luminous flame which had wrought a reawakening of thought throughout all Europe and the civilised world Lombroso tried to explain according to the letter what could properly be explained only according to the spirit; that is to say, in accordance with a very broad principle (evolution and the successive formation of species) which had been divined but not yet demonstrated.

We ought to have recourse, in interpreting congenital (degenerative) malformations to explanations analogous to those in the case of acquired deformations, i.e., to pathological explanations.

We find ourselves in all these cases in the presence of pathological phenomena affecting either the species or the individual. On the strength of analogies shown by certain malformations, the tendency to-day is to consider them as "arrests of development" or phenomena of infantilism, such, for example, as macrocephaly, macroscelia, nipples or shoulders placed too high, nose tending to flatness, handle-shaped ears, etc.—a whole series of stigmata which go by the name of stigmata of relative retrogression.

Meanwhile there are other malformations which merely deviate from the normal form (Morselli's "simple deviation"), and they may deviate either in the way of an excess (hyperplasia), or of a deficiency (hypoplasia), as, for example, macroglossia, microdontia, macro- and microphthalmia, etc.; or they may deviate in a true and actual sense (paraplasms), as, for example, in the various asymmetries (plagiocephaly, plagioprosopy, etc.). This whole group of above-mentioned stigmata, which seem to have a congenital origin, or, rather, to be connected in a general way with growth itself, are called malformations, to distinguish them from deformations, which evidently have an acquired origin, especially from pathological causes, such, for instance, as rachitis and forms of paralysis which arrest the development of a limb, etc., resulting in functional and morphological asymmetry.

Distribution of Malformations

Malformations (associated, as we have said, with individual development) may be found in all individuals who, through various causes (degeneration, disease, denutrition, defects of adaptment), have undergone any alteration in development. And, since we have not yet acquired a recognised standard of morality of generation, and the social environment, including the school, weighs heavily upon humanity in the plastic state, who is there without malformation? Complete normality is a desideratum, an ideal toward which we are progressing, and, we might add, it is the battle-flag of the teacher.

Accordingly, all men have malformations. It is interesting to see how they are affected by variations in age and social condition, and how they are distributed among normal persons and degenerates, in order to measure the extent of their contribution to the diagnosis between normal and abnormal man.