Spontaneous Activity in Education by Maria Montessori (best historical biographies txt) 📕

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months after birth, at a period of life when the nervous system is not completely developed, and it is impossible for the infant to coordinate its movements, mothers wasted several half-hours of the day "teaching baby to walk." Holding the little creature by the body, they watched the aimless movements of the tiny feet, and deluded themselves with the belief that the child was already making an effort to walk; and because it does actually by degrees begin to arch its feet and move its legs more boldly, the mother attributed its progress to her instruction. When finally the movement had been almost established--though not the equilibrium, and the resulting power to stand on the feet--mothers made use of certain straps with which they held up the baby's body, and thus made it walk on the ground with themselves; or, when they had no time to spare, they put the baby into a kind of bell-shaped basket, the broad base of which prevented it from turning over; they tied the infant into this, hanging its arms outside,

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by a mass of unsolved problems.—The outcome of all these researches is a growing mass of unsolved problems. It has not been established whether males are more easily fatigued than females; whether the intelligent are more subject to fatigue than the unintelligent. With regard to the individual type, Tissié's conclusion seems to be the most noteworthy: "Each individual becomes fatigued or not according to his degree of will." In connection with the seasons it appears that fatigue increases from the first to the last day of school, but it is uncertain whether this is due to the influence of the seasons, or whether, as Schuyten affirms, the scholar's gradual exhaustion is due to the scholastic system. With regard to the time of day, "it is still a question whether the fatigue produced is less when the pupil works spontaneously, but this problem is a difficult one to solve." The days of the week when fatigue is least evident are Monday and Friday, but researches made in this connection are not definitive; as to habit, intervals of rest, interest: "in connection with these factors which are antagonistic to fatigue, it has been questioned whether they actually diminish fatigue, or merely cloak it, but no decision has been reached." A great variety of interesting researches have been made into the question of change of work with identical results—namely, that frequent change of work causes greater fatigue than continuous work of one kind, and that a sudden interruption is more fatiguing than persistence. The following experiment (quoted by Claparède) was made by Schultze: one day the girls were required to add up figures for twenty-five minutes, and then to copy out passages for another twenty-five minutes. Another day they performed the same work, but it was differently divided; they had to add for fifty minutes and to copy for another fifty minutes. Now these last tests gave results infinitely superior to the first. And yet it is well known that, in spite of such results, constant interruption and change of work are commonly practised in schools, as part of a scientific plan for combating fatigue.

One of the researches directly relating to schools is that of the ponogenic co-efficient of the various subjects of instruction, that is to say, of the degrees of fatigue induced by these. Wagner is of opinion a priori that one hundred, the maximum co-efficient, must be assigned to mathematics; in this case, we should get the following ponogenic co-efficients in schools, for each subject:

Mathematics 100 Latin 91 Greek 90 Gymnastics 90 History and Geography 85 French and German 82 Natural History 80 Drawing, Religion 77

We may note the arbitrary and surprising manner in which such results are established; nevertheless, in the name of "experimental science" it is possible to make such deductions as the following:

"It would be interesting to enquire if the order of the ponogenic co-efficients varies with the age of the children, which would enable us to know on the one hand when the brain is best fitted for the study of any particular subject and when therefore it would be most judicious to make it predominate in the program; on the other hand, it would help us in the arrangement of the daily time-table; we should take, if possible, the most fatiguing subjects at the beginning of the day" (Claparède, op. cit.).

Another order of recent researches is that made into the toxines produced by fatigue; Weichardt succeeded in isolating these toxines, and in fabricating anti-toxines with which he experimented successfully on rats. The experiments were also repeated in a clinic. With regard to the appearance of the toxines, it was found that they were abundantly produced during the performance of "wearisome" work, whereas there were only traces of them to be found when the work was "interesting."

Throughout this science so packed with researches which give as their result unsolved problems, we perceive that not one of the factors taken into consideration can alleviate fatigue; interruption and change of work merely aggravate it. The one means by which surménage (exhaustion due to overwork) can be eliminated is to make work pleasant and interesting, to give joy in work rather than pain.

"The necessity of making education and instruction attractive has been propounded by all pedagogists worthy of the name, such as Fénelon, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Spencer," says Claparède, "but it is still unrecognized in the everyday practise of the schools" (op. cit.).

"By common consent, the first duty of the educator is that of doing no harm: first do no harm, a precept also accepted in the practise of medicine. To obey it to the letter is, indeed, impossible, because every method of scholastic education is in some way prejudicial to the normal development of the child. But the educator will seek to alleviate the injury which instruction necessarily entails" (op. cit.).

This is indeed cold comfort, after all these studies and researches! A confession that problems have arisen at every step, and that not a single one has been solved! Indeed, underlying all this is the problem of problems: how to make that place attractive and joyous where hitherto the body has been tortured and contorted, and the blood poisoned by weariness! It is impossible to educate without doing harm; but we must do harm that will give pleasure! This is truly an embarrassing position! And this is why an interminable string of notes of interrogation serves as the decorative motive of this new science, which might be more appropriately styled: ignorabimus.

And it is for this reason that the considerations indicated by hygiene and psychology now tend to do away altogether with the sum total of irreparable evils, "commuting the sentence," that is to say, abbreviating hours of study, cutting down the curriculum, avoiding written exercises. Thus a new specter, that of ignorance, and henceforth the abandonment of the child for the greater part of the day, present themselves as a substitute for the specter of destruction. Meanwhile our epoch demands an intensive care of the new generation, and the preparation of a culture ever vaster and more complex.

True, it would appear that to-day a way of escape may be offered by the discovery of the anti-toxine for fatigue. "Just think!" exclaims Claparède, "a serum against fatigue. How valuable this would be!" From this point of view, I should say that the ponogenic co-efficients might find a more practical and rational application than that of the revelation of "programs"; indeed these co-efficients indicating the production of toxines would appear destined to determine the dose of anti-toxine necessary to nullify the evil effects resulting from each different subject of instruction. In the not far distant future, when these auxiliary sciences of the school and pedagogy shall have made due progress, we shall perhaps see, side by side with the orthopædic ward, a physio-chemical clinic, where every evening the pupils, as they leave the beneficent suspensory apparatus which counteracts injury to their skeletons, may enter with a kind of ponogenic prescription regulated by the teaching they have undergone, and receive an injection which will deliver them from the poisonous effects of fatigue!

This reads like an irony of the worst kind, perhaps; but this is not the case. Where the orthopædic institution is already an accomplished fact, we may very soon see the chemical clinic established. If a problem of liberty is to be solved with machines, and if a problem of justice is to be regarded from the chemical point of view, similar consequences will be the logical end of sciences developed upon such errors.

It is obvious that a real experimental science, which shall guide education and deliver the child from slavery, is not yet born; when it appears, it will be to the so-called "sciences" that have sprung up in connection with the diseases of martyred childhood as chemistry to alchemy, and as positive medicine to the empirical medicine of bygone centuries.

I think it will be of interest here to record the impressions of a person who, leaving the field of mathematics, entered upon the study of biology and experimental psychology.

It is an account of a young English engineer, who had evidently mistaken his vocation, and who, after studying my method for two years, returned to the universities of his own great country as a student of biology.

This is his opinion of experimental psychology:

In psychology we are studying the most modern experimental researches. At present we are engaged upon Thought and Imagination. I must confess that I do not find this course very illuminating, though I agree that it is necessary to know something of these researches. In modern psychology there is nothing at all adequate to the subject of our method. These investigators seem to me like persons looking at a tree, and noting the most obvious of its external forms: the shape of a leaf, a stem, etc., doing all this with great gravity and using very precise language (perhaps believing that this constitutes science), but often confusing the function of definition with that of description.

In this manner descriptions of wonderful and fascinating things are reduced to arid definitions, in order to be clothed in their science, and thus are rendered powerless to inspire thought. They never meditate; they read a great deal; they think in mental images which no more represent facts than a diagram on the blackboard represents a living organ; and these images differ among different psychologists, but their language is always the same. They do all this believing they are making progress, and instead of training their pupils to observe for themselves without prejudice, they instil their own prejudices into the minds of the students, cramming them with definitions and descriptions of the strangest and most amorphous kind, which effectually prevent them from thinking for themselves.

But within the tree there is the fundamental structure which they have not begun to examine, though the revelation of this would explain all the external data. The details would diminish in importance; all these details issuing from a single root might be classified in the simplest manner. This "science" reminds me of that antiquated lore which dealt with the constellations, when the laws of planetary motion were not yet known, and the so-called science confined itself to descriptions of the "Great Bear," the "Crab," the "Goat," etc.

I detest those dryasdusts who, unaware of their own ignorance, write enormous arid tomes with an air of great majesty, as if they were revealing absolute knowledge, books that lie heavy on the minds of the students, making them dry as their teachers. But the students seem to me to care only about passing their examinations and to have no thought of discovering new knowledge; and the professors "serve" them to this end. Thus we are all in a state of servitude due to a mistaken system of education, which calls loudly for reform.

III MY CONTRIBUTION TO EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE

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The organization of psychical life begins with the characteristic phenomenon of attention.—My experimental work with little children from three to six years old has been, in fact, a practical contribution to research which has for its aim the discovery of the treatment required by the soul of the child, a treatment analogous to that which hygiene prescribes for its body.

I think, therefore, that it is essential to record the fundamental fact which led me to define my method.

I was making my first essays in applying the principles and part of the material I had used for many years previously in the education of deficient children, to the normal children of the San Lorenzo quarter in Rome, when I happened to notice a little girl of about three years old deeply absorbed in a set of solid insets, removing the wooden cylinders from their respective holes and replacing them. The expression on the

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