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

Free movement.—It is now a hygienic principle universally accepted that children require movement. Thus, when we speak of "free children," we generally imply that they are free to move, that is, to run and jump. No mother nowadays fails to agree with the children's doctor that her child should go into parks and meadows, and move about freely in the open air.

When we talk of liberty for children in school, some such conception of physical liberty as this rises at once in the mind. We imagine the free child making perilous leaps over the desks, or dashing madly against the walls; his "liberty of movement" seems necessarily to imply the idea of "a wide space," and accordingly we suppose that, if confined to the narrow limits of a room, it would inevitably become a conflict between violence and obstacles, a disorder incompatible with discipline and work.

But in the laws of "psychical hygiene," "liberty of movement" is not limited to a conception so primitive as that of merely "animated bodily liberty." We might, indeed, say of a puppy or a kitten what we say of children: that they should be free to run and jump, and that they should be able to do so, as in fact they often do, in a park or a field, with and like the children. If, however, we wish to apply the same conception of motor liberty to our treatment of a bird, we should make certain arrangements for it; we should place within its reach the branch of a tree, or crossed sticks which would afford foothold for its claws, since these are not designed to be spread out on the ground like the feet of creeping things, but are adapted to gripping a stick. We know that a bird "left free to move" over a vast, illimitable plain would be miserable.

How then is it that we never think thus: if it be necessary to prepare different environments for a bird and a reptile in order to ensure their liberty of movement, must it not be a mistake to provide the same form of liberty for our children as that proper to cats and dogs? Children, indeed, when left to themselves to take exercise, show impatience, and are prone to quarrel and cry; older children feel it necessary to invent something whereby they may conceal from themselves the intolerable boredom and humiliation of walking for walking's sake, and running for running's sake. They try to find some object for their exertions; the younger children play pranks. The activity of children thus left to themselves has rarely a good result; it does not aid development, save as regards the physical advantage of general nutrition, that is, of the vegetative life. Their movements become ungraceful; they invent unseemly capers, walk with a staggering gait, fall easily, and break things. They are evidently quite unlike the free kitten, so full of grace, so fascinating in its movements, tending to perfect its action by the light jumping and running which are natural to it. In the motor instinct of the child there appears to be no grace, no natural impulse towards perfection. Hence we must conclude that the movement which suffices for the cat does not suffice for the child, and that if the nature of the child is different, his path of liberty must also be different.

If the child has no "intelligent aim" in his movements, he is without internal guidance, thus movement tires him. Many men feel the dreadful emptiness of being compelled to "move without an object." One of the cruel punishments invented for the chastisement of slaves was to make them dig deep holes in the earth and fill them up again repeatedly, in other words, to make them work without an object.

Experiments on fatigue have shown that work with an intelligent object is far less fatiguing than an equal quantity of aimless work. So much so, that the psychiatrists of to-day recommend, not "exercise in the open air," but "work in the open air," to restore the individuality of the neurasthenic.

"Reconstructive" work—work, that is to say, which is not the product of a "mental effort," but tends to the coordination of the psycho-muscular organism. Such are the activities which are not directed to the production of objects, but to their preservation, as, for instance, dusting or washing a little table, sweeping the floor, laying or clearing the table, cleaning shoes, spreading out a carpet. These are the tasks performed by a servant to preserve the objects belonging to his master, work of a very different order to that of the artificer, who, on the other hand, produced those objects by an intelligent effort. The two classes of work are profoundly different. The one is simple; it is a coordinated activity scarcely higher in degree than the activity required for walking or jumping; for it merely gives purpose to those simple movements, whereas productive work entails a preliminary intellectual work of preparation, and comprises a series of very complicated motor movements, together with an application of sensory exercises.

The first is the work suitable for little children, who must "exercise themselves in order to learn to coordinate their movements."

It consists of the so-called exercises of practical life which correspond to the psychical principle of "liberty of movement." For this it will be sufficient to prepare "a suitable environment," just as we should place the branch of a tree in an aviary, and then to leave the children to follow their instincts of activity and imitation. The surrounding objects should be proportioned to the size and strength of the child: light furniture that he can carry about; low dressers within reach of his arms; locks that he can easily manipulate; chests that run on castors; light doors that he can open and shut readily; clothes-pegs fixed on the walls at a height convenient for him; brushes his little hand can grasp; pieces of soap that can lie in the hollow of such a hand; basins so small that the child is strong enough to empty them; brooms with short, smooth, light handles; clothes he can easily put on and take off himself; these are surroundings which invite activity, and among which the child will gradually perfect his movements without fatigue, acquiring human grace and dexterity, just as the little kitten acquires its graceful movement and feline dexterity solely under the guidance of instinct.

The field thus opened to the free activity of the child will enable him to exercise himself and to form himself as a man. It is not movement for its own sake that he will derive from these exercises, but a powerful co-efficient in the complex formation of his personality. His social sentiments in the relations he forms with other free and active children, his collaborators in a kind of household designed to protect and aid their development; the sense of dignity acquired by the child who learns to satisfy himself in surroundings he himself preserves and dominates—these are the co-efficients of humanity which accompany "liberty of movement." From his consciousness of this development of his personality the child derives the impulse to persist in these tasks, the industry to perform them, the intelligent joy he shows in their completion. In such an environment he undoubtedly works himself and fortifies his spiritual being, just as when his body is bathed in fresh air and his limbs move freely in the meadows, he works at the growth of his physical organism and strengthens it.

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The phenomenon to be expected from the little child, when he is placed in an environment favorable to his spiritual growth, is this: that suddenly the child will fix his attention upon an object, will use it for the purpose for which it was constructed, and will continue to repeat the same exercise indefinitely. One will repeat an exercise twenty times, another forty times, and yet another two hundred times; but this is the first phenomenon to be expected, as initiatory to those acts with which spiritual growth is bound up.

That which moves the child to this manifestation of activity is evidently a primitive internal impulse, almost a vague sense of spiritual hunger; and it is the impulse to satisfy this hunger which then actually directs the consciousness of the child to the determined object and leads it gradually to a primordial, but complex and repeated exercise of the intelligence in comparing, judging, deciding upon an act, and correcting an error. When the child, occupied with the solid insets, places and displaces the ten little cylinders in their respective places thirty or forty times consecutively; and, having made a mistake, sets himself a problem and solves it, he becomes more and more interested, and tries the experiment again and again; he prolongs a complex exercise of his psychical activities which makes way for an internal development.

It is probably the internal perception of this development which makes the exercise pleasing, and induces prolonged application to the same task. To quench thirst, it is not sufficient to see or to sip water; the thirsty man must drink his fill: that is to say, must take in the quantity his organism requires; so, to satisfy this kind of psychical hunger and thirst, it is not sufficient to see things cursorily, much less "to hear them described"; it is necessary to possess them and to use them to the full for the satisfaction of the needs of the inner life.

This fact stands revealed as the basis of all psychical construction, and the sole secret of education. The external object is the gymnasium on which the spirit exercises itself, and such "internal" exercises are primarily "in themselves" the end and aim of action. Hence the solid insets are not intended to give the child a knowledge of dimensions, nor are the plane insets designed to give him a conception of forms; the purpose of these, as of all the other objects, is to make the child exercise his activities. The fact that the child really acquires by these means definite knowledge, the recollection of which is vivid in proportion to the fixity and intensity of his attention, is a necessary result; and, indeed, it is precisely the sensory knowledge of dimensions, forms and colors, etc., thus acquired, which makes the continuation of such internal exercises in fields progressively vaster and higher, a possible achievement.

Hitherto, all psychologists have agreed that instability of attention is the characteristic of little children of three or four years old; attracted by everything they see, they pass from object to object, unable to concentrate on any; and generally the difficulty of fixing the attention of children is the stumbling-block of their education, William James speaks of "that extreme mobility of the attention with which we are all familiar in children, and which makes their first lessons such rough affairs.... The reflex and passive character of the attention ... which makes the child seem to belong less to himself than to every object which happens to catch his notice, is the first thing which the teacher must overcome.... The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again is the very root of judgment, character and will.... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence."

Thus man, acting by himself alone, never successfully arrests and fixes that inquiring attention