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

The wet nurse is a social custom. A luxurious custom, on the one hand. Not very long ago, a girl of the middle-and not even the upper middle-class, who was about to marry, boasted in the following terms of the domestic comfort promised her by her future husband: "I am to have a cook, a housemaid, and a wet nurse." On the other hand, the robust peasant girl who has given birth to a son, looking complacently at her heavy breasts, thinks: "I shall be able to get a good place as wet nurse." It is only quite recently that hygiene has cried shame upon those mothers whose laziness makes them refuse to suckle their own children; in our times queens and empresses who suckle their children are still cited admiringly as examples to other mothers. The maternal duty of suckling her own children prescribed to mothers by hygienists is based on a physiological principle: the mother's milk nourishes an infant more perfectly than any other. In spite of this clear indication, the duty is far from being universally accepted. Often in our walks we still see a robust mother accompanied by a wet nurse gorgeously attired in red or blue, with gold and silver embroideries, carrying a baby. Wealthy mothers have untidily dressed wet nurses who do not go out with them, who always follow the modern nurse, an expert in infantile hygiene, who keeps the baby "like a flower."

And what of the other child?... For every infant who has a double supply of human milk at his disposal, there is another child who has none. The wealth in question is not an industrial product. It is apportioned by Nature with careful precision. For each new life, the ration of milk. Milk cannot be produced by any means other than the production of life. Cow-keepers know this well; their good cows are hygienically reared, and calves are sent to the butcher. Yet what distress is felt whenever the young of some animal is parted from its mother! Is it not so in the case of puppies and kittens? When a pet dog has given birth to a litter so numerous that she cannot suckle them all, and it is necessary to destroy some of the puppies, what sincere grief is felt by the mistress of the house, whose own baby is being suckled by a magnificent wet nurse! Well—the thing which excites her compassion above all is the eager, whimpering mother, who does not understand whether she has or has not the strength to suckle all the shapeless puppies she has borne, but who cannot lose one of them without despair. The wet nurse is quite another affair; she came of her own accord to offer her milk for sale. What the other—her own child—was to do, no one cared.

Only a clearly defined right, a law, could have protected him, for society is based on rights. These, it is true, are the rights of property, which are absolute; steal a loaf, even if you are starving, and you are a thief. You will be punished by the law and outlawed by society. The rights of property constitute one of the most formidable of the social bases. An administrator of landed estate who should sell the property belonging to his master, make money out of it for his own enjoyment, and leave the rightful owner in the direst poverty, is a criminal difficult to imagine. For who would buy a property without the signature of the owner? Society is so constituted that certain crimes would not only be punished if committed, but are almost impossible to commit. Yet in the case of young infants, this crime is committed every day, and is not regarded as a crime, but as a luxury. What can be a more sacred right than that of the baby to his mother's milk? He might say of this in the words of the Emperor Napoleon: "God has given it to me." There can be no doubt whatever as to the legitimacy of his claim; his sole capital, milk, came into the world with and for him. All his wealth is there: strength to live, to grow, to acquire vigor are contained in that nourishment. If the defrauded infant should become weak and rickety, what would become of him, condemned by poverty to a hard calling? What a claim for damages, what a question of accident during work with permanent injury resulting therefrom might be raised if some day the infant could present himself after the manner of a man before the tribunal of social justice!

In civilized countries rich mothers have been induced to suckle their children because hygienists have proved that this is beneficial to the baby's health, but not because it has been recognized that the "civil right" of the adult extends to the infant. These mothers consider countries where the wet nurse is still an institution as less highly developed, but on the same plane of civilization as their own.

It may be asked: what if the mother is ill and unable to suckle her child? In such a case the child of the sick woman is the unfortunate one. Why should another have to suffer for his misfortune? However poverty-stricken individuals may be, we do not allow them to take from others the wealth that is so urgently needed by them. If in these days an Emperor could be cured of terrible sufferings by immersion in a bath of human blood, he could not bleed healthy men for the purpose as a barbarian Emperor would have done. These are the things that make up our civilization. This it is which differentiates us from pirates and cannibals. The rights of the adult are recognized.

But not the rights of the infant. [1] What an implication of baseness the fact carries with it: we recognize the rights of adults indeed, but not those of the child! We recognize justice, but only for those who can protest and defend themselves; and for the rest, we remain barbarians. Because to-day there may be peoples more or less highly developed from the hygienic point of view, but they all belong to the same civilization—a civilization based on the right of the strongest.

When we begin seriously to examine the problem of the moral education of the child, we ought to look around us a little, and survey the world we have prepared for him. Are we willing that he should become like us, unscrupulous in our dealings with the weak? that like us, his consciousness should harbor ideas of a justice which stops short at those who make no protests? Are we willing to make him like ourselves half a civilized man in our dealings with our equals, and half a wild beast when we encounter the innocent and oppressed?

If not, then before we offer moral education to the child, let us imitate the priest who is about to ascend to the altar: he bows his head in penitence and confesses his own sins before the whole congregation.

This outlawed child is like a dislocated arm. Humanity cannot work at the evolution of its morality until this arm has been put into its place; and this will also end the pains and the paralysis of the injured muscles attached to it: women. The social question of the child is obviously the more complete and profound; it is the question of our present and of our future.

If we can reconcile to our conscience deeds of such grave injustice, not to say crimes, without recognizing them as such, what minor forms of oppression shall we not readily condone in our dealings with the child?

How we receive the infants that come into the world.—Let us look around. Only of late has any preparation been made to receive this sublime guest. It is not very long ago that little beds for children were first made; among all the innumerable tasteless, superfluous, and extravagant objects of commerce, let us see what things are intended for the child. No washstands, no sofas, no tables, no brushes. Among all the many houses, there is not one house for him and his like, and only rich and fortunate children have even a room of their own, more or less a place of exile.

Let us imagine ourselves subjected for even a single day to the miseries to which he is condemned.

Suppose that we should find ourselves among a race of giants, with legs immensely long and bodies enormously large in comparison with ours, and also with powers of rapid movement infinitely greater than ours, people extraordinarily agile and intelligent compared with ourselves. We should want to go into their houses; the steps would be each as high as our knees, and yet we should have to try to mount them with their owners; we should want to sit down, but the seats would be almost as high as our shoulders; clambering painfully upon them, we should at last succeed in perching upon them. We should want to brush our clothes, but all the clothes-brushes would be so huge that we could not lay hold of them nor sustain their weight; and a clothes-brush would be handed to us if we wanted to brush our nails. We should perhaps be glad to take a bath in one of the washstand basins; but the weight of these would make it impossible for us to lift them. If we knew that these giants had been expecting us, we should be obliged to say: they have made no preparations for receiving us, or for making our lives among them agreeable. The baby finds all that he himself needs in the form of playthings made for dolls; rich, varied and attractive surroundings have not been created for him, but dolls have houses, sitting-rooms, kitchens and wardrobes; for them all that the adult possesses is reproduced in miniature. Among all these things, however, the child cannot live; he can only amuse himself. The world has been given to him in jest, because no one has yet recognized him as a living man. He discovers that society has prepared a mockery for his reception.

That children break their toys is so well known that this act of destruction of the only things specially manufactured for them is taken to be a proof of their intelligence. We say: "He destroys it because he wishes to understand [how things are made];" in reality he is looking to see if there is anything interesting inside the toys, because externally they have no interest whatever for him; sometimes he breaks them up violently, like an angry man. Then, according to us, he is destroying out of naughtiness.

It is the tendency of the child actually to live by means of the things around him; he would like to use a washstand of his own, to dress himself, really to comb the hair on a living head, to sweep the floor himself; he too would like to have seats, tables, sofas, clothes-pegs, and cupboards. What he desires is to work himself, to aim at some intelligent object, to have comfort in his own life. He has not only to "behave like a man," but to "construct a man;" such