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

In order that we may have a clear understanding regarding malformations, it is well to insist upon still another point: Malformation does not signify deviation from a type of ideal beauty, but from normality.

Now, there are normal forms which are very far from beautiful and which are associated with race. For instance, prognathism, ultra-dolichocephaly, a certain degree of flat-foot, prominent cheek-bones, the Mongolian eye, etc., are all of them characteristics which are regarded by us as the opposite of beautiful, but they are normal in certain races (therefore practical experience is indispensable). These principles which, when thus announced, are perfectly clear, must be extended far enough to include that sum total of individuals whom we are in the habit of calling our race. That we are hybrids, still showing more or less trace of the racial stocks which originally concurred in our formation, is well known, but not clearly enough. The primitive races are more or less evident in different centres of population; for instance, in the large and promiscuous cities, hybridism tends more or less completely, to mask the types of race, producing individual uniformity through an intermixture of characteristics that renders all the people very much alike (civilised races). These are the individuals who form the majority of the population, and whom we are in the habit of regarding as being normally formed. But when we get away from the big centres it may happen, and indeed does happen, that the primitive racial forms or types become more apparent; thus, for example, I found in Latium almost pure racial types at Castelli Romani (dolichocephalics, brunette type, short stature), and at Orte (brachycephalics, blond type, tall stature); the nuclei of population at Castelli were especially pure. Now, as a result of a highly particularised series of observations I found normal forms that were not beautiful in each of these races; thus, for example, in the brunette race, while the face is extremely beautiful and delicate, the hands are coarse, the feet show a tendency toward flat-foot, the breasts are pear-shaped, pendent and abundantly hairy; in the blond type, on the contrary, while the facial lineaments are coarse and quite imperfect, the hands, feet and breasts are marvellously beautiful.

Accordingly, the marks of beauty are distributed in nature among the different races; there is no race in existence that is wholly beautiful, just as there is no individual in existence who is perfect in all his parts.

Furthermore, since there is for every separate characteristic a long series of individual variations, both above and below (see chapters on Biometry and Statistical Methodology), it is very easy to assume that we are on the track of a malformation, when it is really a matter of racial characteristic. And this is all the more likely to constitute a source of error, because the school of Lombroso promulgated the morphological doctrine that a degenerate sometimes shows an exaggeration of ethnical characteristics.

Thus, for example, we meet with ultra-brachycephalics and ultra-dolichocephalics among the criminal classes.

Let us suppose that a teacher who has made a study of anthropology receives an appointment in one or another of the Castelli Romani. Among the normal individuals studied by me, certain ones showed a cephalic index of 70. Now, a teacher accustomed to examine the crania of city children and to find that the limits range more or less closely around mesaticephaly, would be led to assume that he was in the presence of an abnormal individual.

Now, in the places where morphological characteristics of race are most persistent, the social forms are primitive, and so also are the sentiments, the customs and the ethical level, because purity of race means an absence of hybridism, i.e., an absence of intimate communication with human society evolving in the flood-tide of civilisation. Consequently, in addition to the above-mentioned characteristic (ultra-dolichocephaly), the individual would probably show an intellectual inferiority, an inferiority of the ethical tense, etc., and this would serve to strengthen the teacher's first impression. But the normal limits of growth for a given age, the absence of real and actual malformations (for instance, in this case there is probability of facial beauty, etc.), would cause him very quickly to correct his first judgment with a more thoughtful diagnosis. Therefore a study of local ethnical characteristics would be very useful as a basis for pedagogical anthropology, as I have tried to show in one of my works (Importanza della etnologia regionale nell'antropologia pedagogica, "The importance of regional ethnology in pedagogical anthropology").

And this also holds good for the interpretation of true malformations.

We have hitherto been guided in our observation of so-called stigmata by analytical criteria, that is, we have been content with determining the single or manifold malformations in the individual without troubling ourselves to determine their morphological genesis or their genesis of combination.

For example, the ogival palate is a well-known anomaly of form, but in all probability it will occur in an individual whose family has the high and narrow palate that is met with, for instance, as the normal type among the dolichocephalics of Latium; the same may be said in regard to flat-foot, etc. Multifold diastemata and macrodontia will, on the contrary, be more easily met with in families whose palate is wide and low (brachycephalics). And just as certain normal forms or characteristics are found in combination in a single individual (for instance, brachycephaly, fair hair, tall stature, etc.), so it is also in the case of stigmata, which will be found occurring together in one individual, not by chance, but according to the laws of morphological combination, and probably as an exaggeration of (unlovely) characteristics which belong, as normal forms, to the family or race.

There are already a number of authorities on neuropathology, De Sanctis among others, who have noted that there is an ugly family type which sometimes reproduces itself in a sickly member of the family, in such a way as to exaggerate pathologically the unlovely but normal characteristics of the other members, and furthermore, that an exaggeration of unlovely characteristics may increase from generation to generation, accompanied by a disintegration of the psychic personality.

Consequently, a knowledge of the morphological characteristics which in all probability belong to the races from which the subjects to be examined are derived, has a number of important aspects. The literature of anthropology is certainly not rich in racial studies, consequently, I feel that it will not be unprofitable to summarise in the following table the characteristics that distinguish the two racial types encountered by me among the female population of Latium.

TABLE OF THE DIFFERENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TWO RACIAL TYPES

Brunette Dolichocephalics and Blond Brachycephalics

Organs to which the characteristics refer Dolichocephalic, brunette type of low stature Brachycephalic, blond type of tall stature Visage. Elongated ellipsoidal or ovoidal; fine, delicate lineaments, rounded curves, softly modeled. Rounded, broad; coarse features; contour frequently angular, especially around the cheek-bones. Eyes. Large, usually almond-shaped; pigmentation brown, shading from black to chestnut. Not so large, the form frequently tending to the oblique; the contours of the inner angle of the eye less clear-cut, owing to the plica epicantica. Pigmentation light gray, blue. Nose. Very leptorrhine; nostrils delicate and mobile. Leptorrhine, tending toward mesorrhine; sometimes the nose is fleshy, nostrils thick and slightly movable only. Mouth. Labial aperture small, lips finely modeled and very red. Labial aperture wide, lips frequently fleshy, and not well modeled. Teeth. Small, with curved surface, gleaming, almost as wide as long, not greatly dissimilar, "like equal pearls." Teeth large and flat, enamel dull; difference between incisors, canines, etc., sharply marked. Palate. Very high and narrow (ogival). Flat and wide. Profile. Proopic. Platyopic. Ear. Finely modeled, small, delicate. Often irregular, large, thick. Frontal line of roots of hair. Very distinct; forehead small. Indistinct; forehead protuberant. Neck. Long and slender, flexible. Short, more or less stocky. Thorax. Flattened in antero-posterior direction. Projecting forward. Breasts. Position low, form tending to pear-shape; nipples slightly raised, aureole broad; often hairy between the breasts. Position high, breasts round; nipple prominent, aureole small and rose-colored; always hairless. Pelvis and abdomen. High and narrow; the abdomen becomes prominent toward the thirtieth year, even in unmarried women. Low and broad; the abdomen does not become prominent. Lumbar curve. Slightly pronounced; position of buttocks low. Quite pronounced; position of buttocks high. Limbs. Distal portion slightly shorter (as compared with the proximal) limbs slender. Distal portion slightly longer (as compared with the proximal); limbs well endowed with muscles. Hands. Coarse; palm long and narrow; fingers short. Delicate, palm broad, fingers long. Fingers. Short, thick, with flattened extremities; nails flat, not very pink nor