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

We have seen him in the Case dei Bambini happy and patient, slow and precise like the most admirable workman, and the most scrupulous conservator of things. The smallest trifles suffice to make him happy; it delights him to hang up his clothes on pegs fixed low down on the walls, within reach of his hands; to open a light door, the handle of which is proportioned to the size of his hand; to place a chair, the weight of which is not too great for his arms, quietly and gracefully. We offer a very simple suggestion: give the child an environment in which everything is constructed in proportion to himself, and let him live therein. Then there will develop within the child that "active life" which has caused so many to marvel, because they see in it not only a simple exercise performed with pleasure, but the revelation of a spiritual life. In such harmonious surroundings the young child is seen laying hold of the intellectual life like a seed which has thrown out a root into the soil, and then growing and developing by one sole means: long practice in each exercise.

When we see little children acting thus, intent on their work, slow in executing it, because of the immaturity of their structure, just as they walk slowly because their legs are still short, we feel intuitively that life is being elaborated within them, as a chrysalis slowly elaborates the butterfly within the cocoon. To impede their activity would be to do violence to their lives. But what is the usual method with young children? We all interrupt them without compunction or consideration, in the manner of masters to slaves who have no human rights. To show "consideration" to young children as to adults would even seem ridiculous to many persons. And yet with what severity do we enjoin children "not to interrupt" us! If the little one is doing something, eating by himself, for instance, some adult comes and feeds him; if he is trying to fasten an overall, some adult hastens to dress him; every one substitutes an alien action to his, brutally, without the smallest consideration. And yet we ourselves are very sensitive as to our rights in our own work; it offends us if any one attempts to supplant us; in the Bible the sentence, "And his place shall another take" is among the threats to the lost.

What should we do if we were to become the slaves of a people incapable of understanding our feelings, a gigantic people, very much stronger than ourselves? When we were quietly eating our soup, enjoying it at our leisure (and we know that enjoyment depends upon being at liberty), suppose a giant appeared and snatching the spoon from our hand, made us swallow it in such haste that we were almost choked. Our protest: "For mercy's sake, slowly," would be accompanied by an oppression of the heart; our digestion would suffer. If again, thinking of something pleasant, we should be slowly putting on an overcoat with all the sense of well-being and liberty we enjoy in our own houses, and some giant should suddenly throw it upon us, and having dressed us, should in the twinkling of an eye, carry us out to some distance from the door, we should feel our dignity so wounded, that all the expected pleasure of the walk would be lost. Our nutrition does not depend solely on the soup we have swallowed, nor our well-being upon the physical exercise of walking, but also upon the liberty with which we do these things. We should feel offended and rebellious, not at all out of hatred of these giants, but merely from our recognition of the innate tendency to free functions in all that pertains to life. It is something within us which man does not recognize, which God alone knows, a something which manifests itself imperceptibly to us to the end that we may complete it. It is this love of freedom which nourishes and gives well-being to our life, even in its most minute acts. Of this it was said: "Man does not live by bread alone." How much greater this need must be in young children, in whom creation is still in action!

With strife and rebellion they have to defend their own little conquests of their environment. When they want to exercise their senses, such as that of touch, for instance, every one condemns them: "Do not touch!" If they attempt to take something from the kitchen, some scraps to make a little dish, they are driven away, and mercilessly sent back to their toys. How often one of those marvelous moments when their attention is fixed, and that process of organization which is to develop them begins in their souls, is roughly interrupted; moments when the spontaneous efforts of the young child are groping blindly in its surroundings after sustenance for its intelligence. Do we not all retain an impression of something having been forever stifled in our lives?

Without being able to give any definite reason, we feel that something precious was lost on our life-journey, that we were defrauded and depreciated. Perhaps at the very moments when we were about to create ourselves, we were interrupted and persecuted, and our spiritual organism was left rickety, weak, and inadequate.

Let us imagine to ourselves certain adults, not mature and stable like the majority of grown men, but in a state of spiritual auto-creation, as are men of genius. Let us take the case of a writer under the influence of poetic inspiration, at the moment when his beneficent and inspiring work is about to take form for the help of other men. Or that of the mathematician who perceives the solution of a great problem, from which will issue new principles beneficial to all humanity. Or again, that of an artist, whose mind has just conceived the ideal image which it is necessary to fix upon the canvas lest a masterpiece be lost to the world. Imagine these men at such psychological moments, broken in upon by some brutal person shouting to them to follow him at once, taking them by the hand, or pushing them out by the shoulders. And for what? The chess-board is set out for a game. Ah! such men would say, "You could not have done anything more atrocious! Our inspiration is lost; humanity will be deprived of a poem, an artistic masterpiece, a useful discovery, by your folly."

But the child in like case does not lose some single production; he loses himself. For his masterpiece, which he is composing in the recesses of his creative genius, is the new man. The "caprices," the "naughtinesses," the "mysterious vapors" of little children are perhaps the occult cry of unhappiness uttered by the misunderstood soul.

But it is not only the soul that suffers; the body suffers with it. For the influence exercised by the spirit on the entire physical existence is a characteristic of man.

In an institution for deserted children, there was one extremely ugly little creature, who had nevertheless greatly endeared himself to a young woman who had the care of him. This nurse one day told one of the patronesses that the child was growing very pretty. The lady went to look at it, but found it very ugly, and thought to herself that daily habit soon accustoms us to the defects of others. Some time after this the nurse made the same remark as before, and the lady good-naturedly paid another visit; impressed by the warmth with which the young woman spoke of the child, she was touched to think that love had made the speaker blind. Several months elapsed, and finally the nurse, with a triumphant air, declared that henceforth no mistake would be possible, for the child had undoubtedly become "beautiful." The lady, astounded, had to admit that this was true; the body of the child had actually been transformed under the influence of a great affection.

When we delude ourselves with the idea that we are giving everything to children by giving them fresh air and food, we are not even giving them this: air and food are not sufficient for the body of man; all the physiological functions are subject to a higher welfare, wherein the sole key of all life is to be found. The child's body lives also by joyousness of soul.

Physiology itself teaches us these things. A frugal meal taken in the open air will nourish the body far better than a sumptuous repast in a close room, where the air is impure, because all the functions of the body are more active in the open air, and assimilation is more complete. In like manner a frugal meal eaten in common with beloved and sympathetic persons is much more nutritious than the food a humble, harassed secretary would partake at the lordly table of a capricious master. Liberty in this case is the cry that explains all. Parva domus sed mea (a little house, but my own), has been quoted ever since the Roman epoch to indicate which is the most healthful of houses. Where our lives are oppressed, there can be no health for us, even though we eat of princely banquets or in splendid buildings.

With man the life of the body depends on the life of the spirit.—Physiology gives an exhaustive explanation of the mechanism of such phenomena. Moral activities have such an exact correspondence with the functions of the body that it is possible to appreciate by means of these the various emotional states of grief, anger, weariness, and pleasure. In grief, for instance, the action of the heart becomes feebler, as under a paralyzing influence; all the blood-vessels contract, and the blood circulates more slowly, the glands no longer secrete their juices normally, and these disturbances manifest themselves in a pallor of the face, an appearance of weariness in the drooping body, a mouth parched from lack of saliva, indigestion caused by insufficiency of the gastric juice, and cold hands. If prolonged, grief results in mal-nutrition and consequent wasting, and predisposes the debilitated body to infectious diseases. Weariness is like a rapid paralysis of the heart; it may induce fainting, as expressed in the popular phrase "dead tired"; but a reflex action will nearly always restore the sufferer, like an automatic safety-valve; thus a yawn, that is to say, a deep, spasmodic inspiration, which dilates the pulmonary alveoli, causes the blood to flow to the heart like a suction pump, and sets it in motion again. In anger there is a kind of tetanic contraction of all the capillaries, causing extreme pallor, and the expulsion of an extra quantity of bile from the liver. Pleasure causes dilatation of the blood-vessels; the circulation, and consequently all the functions of secretion and assimilation are facilitated; the face is suffused with color, the gastric juice and the saliva are perceptible as that healthy appetite and that watering of the mouth which invite us to supply fresh nourishment to the body; all the tissues work actively to expel their toxins, and to assimilate fresh nourishment; the enlarged lungs store up large quantities of oxygen, which burn up all refuse, leaving no trace of poisonous germs. It is an injection of health.

In Italy, where after the abolition of the death penalty the punishment of solitary confinement was substituted, we have a proof even more eloquent of the influence of the spirit upon the functions of the body. With our modern measures of hygiene in prisons, the prison cell cannot be called a place of torture for the body: it is merely a place where all spiritual sustenance is withheld. It consists of a cell with perfectly bare gray walls,