Spontaneous Activity in Education by Maria Montessori (best historical biographies txt) π
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- Author: Maria Montessori
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In this environment, where free exercise is prohibited, as also the choice of work, and meditation, where every sentiment is oppressed, and from which every external stimulus which might enrich the intelligence with spontaneous acquisitions is eliminated, an attempt is made to excite the imagination by giving "compositions" to be written. This means that the child has to produce without having the necessary material; to give, without possessing; achieve internal activities which he is prevented from developing. And production is to come from the exercise of production; "constant practise in composition" is to develop the imagination; from the sterility of the void the most complex products of the intelligence are to be evolved!
It is well known that "composition" represents the great difficulty of our schools. All teachers have declared that children are "poor in ideas," that they have "disorderly minds," that they are "absolutely without originality." The examination in written composition has always been the most painful of all; every one knows the expression of the child who hears the title of an obligatory theme dictated; and who in a few hours must hand in a written composition, a product of the imagination; it is with anguish, with oppression of the heart, with cold hands and eyes anxiously interrogating the clock in terror of the fleeting hour, under the distrustful surveillance of a teacher who for the occasion is transformed into a spy-warder like those in penal prisons, that he undergoes his torture to the end. Woe to him if he does not hand in his composition! He will be ruined, for this is the principal test, the one in which he is free to manifest his own worth, to give the true individual fruit by which others will measure his intelligence. It is in this way that our young generations often find neurasthenia and even suicide. Scholars cannot answer as did the greatest poet of our times, Carducci, when he was requested to write an ode on the occasion of the death of a personage: "It is inspiration, not an occasion, which would make me write an ode."
It is interesting to study the methods by which, in "modern schools," where some elements of psychical hygiene have penetrated, attempts are made to help the pupils by diminishing their exhausting effort and leading them on gradually to composition. Composition (we must pass over the contradiction in terms for the moment) is "taught." The teacher gives collective lessons in composition, just as she would explain arithmetic: this is called "collective oral composition."
We will allow specialists in this method to speak, giving a passage containing a preparation of teachers for such lessons:
Method to be followed in the Manner ofindicating the Theme
"Let us take, by way of illustration, the following brief narrative, which consists of three phases: 1. Ernesto did not know his lesson; 2. The teacher scolded the child severely; 3. Ernesto wept and promised to do better. If we indicate the narrative by the words: 'Ernesto did not know his lesson' (first fact, cause), the pupil will go on easily to the effect, consisting of the two other phases which, logically and in chronological order, follow the cause. If, on the other hand, we give as the theme the indication corresponding to the second phase: 'The teacher scolded the child,' we oblige the pupil to go back to the cause and to make the third phase follow upon the second. We place the pupil in a more difficult position if we give as the theme: 'Ernesto wept and promised to do better,' since he will then be obliged to go back to the second and thence to the first phase.
"Hence the first phase in every brief narrative ought to serve to indicate the theme.
"Method. The teacher should write the theme on the blackboard, and invite the pupils to think of (not to say) a possible consequence of the fact indicated in the theme. The teacher must let it be understood that the pupils are to work independently, without the help of suggestion. Let us see:
"Luisa threw a piece of wool into the fire (theme). Think of a possible consequence, say what happened in consequence.
"The wool caused a bad smell. Very good. You repeat the narrative:
"Luisa threw a piece of wool into the fire. The wool caused a bad smell. Can any one add another little thought, another possible consequence?
"The teacher reproved Luisa. A pupil opened the window. The teacher repeats the exercise using the themes A. B. C. and causing the result arrived at with the collaboration of the scholars to be written in their copy-books.
"A theme may be proposed and the pupils may be left free to develop it without any further explanations.
Theme A.βLuisa threw a piece of wool into the fire. (The wool caused a bad smell. The teacher reproved Luisa. A companion opened the window to allow the bad odor to escape.)
Theme B.βErnesto upset the ink on the floor. (The floor was stained. The teacher reproved the child. Ernesto promised to be more careful.)
Theme C.βElisa read the story well. (The teacher praised her and gave her a good mark. Elisa was very much pleased.)
Theme D.βMario made a blot on his copy-book. (The teacher did not correct his exercise; she scolded him. The boy went home crying.)
"After all this collective practise the teacher gives a free theme such as the following: 'Maria knew her lesson well.' In developing it, the children are expected to follow the above examples: that is to say, they are to indicate in two sentences the logical effects of such a cause (the teacher gave her ten marks and praised her; then she told her to persevere in her industry)."
Sometimes the teaching has a psychological purport rather than a logical one. In such a case the "little thoughts" are not linked together as cause and effect, but by the display of psychical activities in three spheres: "knowing, feeling, and willing." Examples:
Amelia made me smell some ammonia (fact perceived).β
What a horrible smell! (sentiment).βI will not smell it again (volition).
Gigi pulled my hair (fact perceived).βIt hurt me (sentiment). I pulled my companion's hand away quickly (volition) (I Diritti della Scuola, Year xiv, No. 16, p. 232).
With methods such as these it is obvious that every possibility of inspiration and creation will be destroyed. The child has to follow phrase by phrase what the teacher indicates; thus every spark of aptitude for original composition is quenched. Not only does the child remain empty of material wherewith to create, as in the past, but the very capacity for creation disappears, so that if, to-morrow, material should be formed in his mind, he would no longer have the impulse to utilize it, and his thought would be fettered by his school routine.
Intellectual education carried on by the teacher on such a system makes one think of a chauffeur who should shut up the motor of an automobile and try to propel it by the strength of his arms. He would in this case be a porter, and the automobile a useless machine. When, on the other hand, the motor is open, the internal force moves the car and the chauffeur only has to guide it that it may go safely along the street, not run into obstacles or rush into ditches, and not injure any one upon its course.
This guidance is the only thing necessary; but the real progression is due solely to the internal impulse, which no one can create.
It was thus that the first Italian literary Renascence came about, when the "new sweet style" arose with Dante as the spontaneous expression of feeling:
"Count of me but as one
Who am the scribe of Love, that when he breathes
Take up my pen and as he dictates, write."
(Carey's translation, Purgatorio, Canto XXIV.)
The child must create his interior life before he can express anything; he must take spontaneously from the external world constructive material in order to "compose"; he must exercise his intelligence freely before he can be ready to find the logical connection between things. We ought to offer the child that which is necessary for his internal life, and leave him free to produce. Perhaps it would not then be impossible to meet a child running with sparkling eyes to write a letter, or walking and meditating as he cultivates a nascent inspiration.
We ought to tend and nourish the internal child, and await his manifestations. If imaginative creation comes late, it will be because the intelligence is not sufficiently mature to create until late; and we should no more force it with a fiction than we would put a false mustache on a child because otherwise he will not have one till he is twenty.
The Moral QuestionWhen we said, to begin with, that positive science had only given the "reform" of physical life, together with the modern rules of hygiene, as its contribution to society, we were unjust to positive science. It has considered not only physical life, but moral life.
It is enough to think of those studies in bacteriology which refer to the vehicles of infectious maladies in the environment, in order to recognize therefrom a primary token of the important place which is assigned to the community of human interests, and this is now affirmed with an emphasis never before displayed. Microbes multiply chiefly in damp and dirty places; underfed people are more prone to illness than others, and so are those who are overtired. Therefore illness and early death must be the heritage of the poor who, underfed and overtired, live in damp and dirty places? No. It is a question of vehicles. Microbes spread in all directions from the sources of infection, by means of dust, insects and all the usual objects of life, in fact by all the means of transport. They exist in inconceivable and fabulous numbers; and every sick person is an almost incredible source of illness and death. One single person would suffice to contaminate the whole of Europe.
The means of transport allow microbes to cross oceans and continents in every sense. We need only observe the transatlantic lines, and those of the railways of the world, in order to realize the lines of communication between the maladies which afflict humanity in all the places of the earth. We need only study the industrial changes of matter in order to follow in detail the daily path of the microbes, which put all classes of society into intimate communication. The rich lady wears linen on her person which comes from the hands of the poor, and is constantly in their keeping; she cannot put food into her mouth unless it is offered to her by the poor who have handled it over and over again.
The air which is breathed by the rich may contain in its dust the desiccated germs which a consumptive workman has scattered on the ground. There is no way of escape. Statistics prove this: the death rate from infectious diseases is tremendously high in all countries, among both rich and poor, although the poor die in a double proportion to the rich. How can we deliver ourselves from this scourge? Only on condition that there be no more sources of infection, that is to say, that there be no longer unhealthful places in the world, and no underfed people constrained to work beyond their strength. The only way by which the individual may escape is that by which all humanity may be saved. This
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