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

I watched the child intently without disturbing her at first, and began to count how many times she repeated the exercise; then, seeing that she was continuing for a long time, I picked up the little armchair in which she was seated, and placed chair and child upon the table; the little creature hastily caught up her case of insets, laid it across the arms of her chair, and gathering the cylinders into her lap, set to work again. Then I called upon all the children to sing; they sang, but the little girl continued undisturbed, repeating her exercise even after the short song had come to an end. I counted forty-four repetitions; when at last she ceased, it was quite independently of any surrounding stimuli which might have distracted her, and she looked round with a satisfied air, almost as if awaking from a refreshing nap.

I think my never-to-be-forgotten impression was that experienced by one who has made a discovery.

This phenomenon gradually became common among the children: it may therefore be recorded as a constant reaction occurring in connection with certain external conditions, which may be determined. And each time that such a polarisation of attention took place, the child began to be completely transformed, to become calmer, more intelligent, and more expansive; it showed extraordinary spiritual qualities, recalling the phenomena of a higher consciousness, such as those of conversion.

It was as if in a saturated solution, a point of crystallization had formed, round which the whole chaotic and fluctuating mass united, producing a crystal of wonderful forms. Thus, when the phenomenon of the polarisation of attention had taken place, all that was disorderly and fluctuating in the consciousness of the child seemed to be organizing itself into a spiritual creation, the surprising characteristics of which are reproduced in every individual.

It made one think of the life of man which may remain diffused among a multiplicity of things, in an inferior state of chaos, until some special thing attracts it intensely and fixes it; and then man is revealed unto himself, he feels that he has begun to live.

This spiritual phenomenon which may co-involve the entire consciousness of the adult, is therefore only one of the constant elements of the phenomena of "internal formation." It occurs as the normal beginning of the inner life of children, and accompanies its development in such a manner as to become accessible to research, as an experimental fact.

It was thus that the soul of the child gave its revelations, and under their guidance a method exemplifying spiritual liberty was evolved.

The story of this initiatory episode soon spread throughout the world, and at first it seemed like the story of a miracle. Then by degrees, as experiments were made among the most diverse races, the simple and evident principles of this spiritual "treatment" were manifested.

Psychical development is organized by the aid of external stimuli, which may be determined experimentally.—The contribution I have made to the education of young children tends, in fact, to specify by means of the revelations due to experiment, the form of liberty in internal development.

It would not be possible to conceive liberty of development, if by its very nature the child were not capable of a spontaneous organic development, if the tendency to develop his energies (expansion of latent powers), the conquest of the means necessary to a harmonious innate development, did not already exist. In order to expand, the child, left at liberty to exercise his activities, ought to find in his surroundings something organized in direct relation to his internal organization which is developing itself by natural laws, just as the free insect finds in the form and qualities of flowers a direct correspondence between form and sustenance. The insect is undoubtedly free when, seeking the nectar which nourishes it, it is in reality helping the reproduction of the plant. There is nothing more marvelous in nature than the correspondence between the organs of these two orders of beings destined to such a providential cooperation.

The secret of the free development of the child consists, therefore, in organizing for him the means necessary for his internal nourishment, means corresponding to a primitive impulse of the child, comparable to that which makes the new-born infant capable of sucking milk from the breast, which by its external form and elaborated sustenance, corresponds perfectly to the requirements of the infant.

It is in the satisfaction of this primitive impulse, this internal hunger, that the child's personality begins to organize itself and reveal its characteristics; just as the new-born infant, in nourishing itself, organizes its body and its natural movements.

We must not therefore set ourselves the educational problem of seeking means whereby to organize the internal personality of the child and develop his characteristics; the sole problem is that of offering the child the necessary nourishment.

It is by this means that the child develops an organized and complex activity which, while it responds to a primitive impulse, exercises the intelligence and develops qualities we consider lofty, and which we supposed were foreign to the nature of the young child, such as patience and perseverance in work, and in the moral order, obedience, gentleness, affection, politeness, serenity; qualities we are accustomed to divide into different categories, and as to which, hitherto, we have cherished the illusion that it was our task to develop them gradually by our direct interposition, although in practise we have never known by what means to do so successfully.

In order that the phenomenon should come to pass it is necessary that the spontaneous development of the child should be accorded perfect liberty; that is to say, that its calm and peaceful expansion should not be disturbed by the intervention of an untimely and disturbing influence; just as the body of the new-born infant should be left in peace to assimilate its nourishment and grow properly.

In such an attitude ought we to await the miracles of the inner life, its expansions and also its unforeseen and surprising explosions; just as the intelligent mother, only giving her baby nourishment and rest, contemplates it, seeing it grow, and awaits the manifestations of nature: the first tooth, the first word, and finally the action by which the baby will one day rise to his feet and walk.

But to ensure the psychical phenomena of growth, we must prepare the "environment" in a definite manner, and from this environment offer the child the external means directly necessary for him.

This is the positive fact which my experiment has rendered concrete. Hitherto the liberty of the child has been vaguely discussed; no clearly defined limit has been established between liberty and abandonment. We were told: "Liberty has its limits," "Liberty must be properly understood." But a special method indicating "how liberty should be interpreted, and what is the intuitive quid which ought to co-exist with it," had not been determined.

The establishment of such a method should open up a new path to all education.

It is therefore necessary that the environment should contain the means of auto-education. These means cannot be "taken at random"; they represent the result of an experimental study which cannot be undertaken by all, because a scientific preparation is necessary for such delicate work; besides, like all experimental study, it is laborious, prolonged, and exact. Many years of research are required, before the means really necessary for psychical development can be set forth. Those educationalists who leave the great question of the liberty of the pupil to the good sense or to the preparation of the master are very far from solving the problem of liberty. The greatest scientist, or the person most fitted by nature to teach, could never of himself discover such, because, to preparation and natural gifts, the further factor of time must be added—the long period of preparatory experiment. Therefore a science which has already provided the means for self-education must exist beforehand. To-day, he who speaks of liberty in the schools ought at the same time to exhibit objects—approximating to a scientific apparatus—which will make such liberty possible.

The scientific instrument must be constructed upon a basis of exactitude. Just as the lenses of the physicist are constructed in accordance with the laws of the refraction of light, so the pedagogic instrument should be based on the psychical manifestations of the child.

Such an instrument may be compared to a systematized "mental test." It is not, however, established upon a basis of external measurement, for the purpose of estimating the amount of instantaneous psychical reaction which it produces; it is, on the contrary, a stimulus which is itself determined by the psychical reactions it is capable of producing and maintaining permanently. It is the psychical reaction, therefore, that in this case determines and establishes the systematic "mental test." The psychical reaction which constitutes the sole basis of comparison in the determination of the tests, is a polarization of the attention, and the repetition of the actions related to it. When a stimulus corresponds in this manner to the "reflex personality," it serves, not to measure but to maintain a lively reaction; it is therefore a stimulus to the "internal formation." Indeed, upon such activity, awakened and maintained, the accompanying organism initiates its internal elaborations in relation to the stimuli.

This does not penetrate into the ancient ambit of pedagogy as a science that measures the personality, as the experimental psychology introduced in schools has hitherto done, but as a science that transforms the personality, and is therefore capable of taking its stand as a true and real pedagogy. Whereas the ancient pedagogy in all its various interpretations started from the conception of a "receptive personality"—one, that is to say, which was to receive instructions and to be passively formed, this scientific departure starts from the conception of an active personality—reflex and associative—developing itself by a series of reactions induced by systematic stimuli which have been determined by experiment. This new pedagogy accordingly belongs to the series of modern sciences, and not to antique speculations, although it is not directly based on the purely metric studies of "positive psychology." But the "method," which informs it—namely, experiment, observation, evidence or proof, the recognition of new phenomena, their reproduction and utilization, undoubtedly place it among the experimental sciences.

External stimuli may be determined in quality and quantity.—Nothing can be more interesting than such experiments. By their means external stimuli may be determined with the greatest precision, both as regards quality and quantity. For instance, very small objects of various geometric forms will only attract the fugitive attention of a child of three years old; but by increasing the dimensions gradually, we arrive at the limit of size when these objects will fix the attention; then such objects excite an activity which becomes permanent, and the resulting exercise becomes a factor of development. The experiment is repeated with a number of children, and thus the dimensions of a series of objects are established.

It is the same with colors and with every kind of quality. In order that a quality should be felt to such a degree as to fix the attention, a certain extension and a certain intensity of the stimulus are necessary, which may be determined by the degree of psychical reaction shown by the child; as, for instance, the minimum chromatic extension sufficient to attract the attention to the colored tablets, etc. Quality, therefore, is determined by a psychical experiment demonstrating the activity it produces in a child, who will