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

"You boys have never mistaken your companion Paul for this table or this tree?—Oh, no!—Why?—Because the table and the tree are inanimate and insensible, whereas Paul lives and feels.—Good. If you strike the table it will feel nothing and you will not hurt it; but have you any right to destroy it?—No, we should be destroying something belonging to others.—Then what is it you respect in the table? the inanimate and insensible wood, or the property of the person to whom it belongs?—The property of the person to whom it belongs.—Have you any right to strike Paul?—No, because we should hurt him and he would suffer.—What is it you respect in him? the property of another, or Paul himself?—Paul himself.—Then you cannot strike him, nor shut him up, nor deprive him of food?—No. The police would arrest us if we did.—Ah! ah! you are afraid of the police. But is it only this which prevents you from hurting Paul?—Oh! no, Sir. It is because we love Paul and do not want to make him suffer, and because we have no right to do so.—You think then that you owe respect to Paul in his life and his feelings, because life and feeling are things to respect?—Yes, sir.

Are these all you have to respect in Paul? Let us enquire; think well.—His books, his clothes, his satchel, the luncheon in it.—Well. What do you mean?—We must not tear his books, soil his clothes or his satchel, or eat his luncheon.—Why?—Because these things are his and we have no right to take things belonging to others.—What is the act of taking things that belong to others called?—Theft.—Why is theft forbidden?—Because if we steal we shall go to prison.—Fear of the police again! But is this the chief reason why we must not steal?—No, Sir, but because we ought to respect the property as well as the persons of others.—Very good. Property is an extension of human personality and must be respected as such.

And is this all? Is there nothing more to respect in Paul than his body, his books and his copy-books? Do you not see anything else? Can you not think of anything more? I will give you a hint: Paul is an industrious pupil, an honest, good-natured companion; you are all fond of him, and he deserves your affection. What do we call the esteem we all feel for him, the good opinion we have of him?—Honor ... reputation.—Well, this honor, this reputation, Paul acquired by good conduct and good manners. These are things which belong to him.—Yes, Sir; we have no right to rob him of them.—Very good; but what do we call this kind of theft, that is, the theft of honor and reputation? And first of all, how can we steal them? Can we take them and put them in our pockets?—No, but we can speak evil of him.—How?—We could say that he had done harm to one of his companions ... that he had stolen apples from a neighboring orchard ... that he had spoken ill of another.—That is so. But how could you rob him of honor and reputation by speaking thus?—Sir, people would no longer believe him if they had a bad opinion of him; he would be beaten, scolded, and left to himself.—Then if you speak evil of Paul, and what you say is false, do you give him pleasure?—No, Sir, we should cause him pain, and do him a wrong, which would be very odious and wicked of us.—Yes, boys, this lying with intent to injure would be odious and wicked, and it is called calumny. I will explain later that evil speaking differs from calumny or slander in that what is said is not untrue, and I will point out the terrible consequences of evil speaking and slander.

Now let us sum up what we have said: Paul is a living and sensitive creature. We ought not to cause him suffering, to rob him, or to slander him; we ought to respect him. The honorable things in Paul constitute rights, and make him a moral person. The obligation laid upon us to respect these rights is called duty. The obligation and the duty of respecting the rights of others is also called justice. Justice is derived from two Latin words (in jure stare), meaning: to keep oneself in the right.

The duties of justice enumerated by us are to be summed up thus: Not to kill ... not to cause suffering ... not to steal ... not to slander. Always reflect upon the words you say in which "Not" is followed by a verb in the imperative infinitive. What does that mean?

An obligation, a command, a prohibition.—Go on, explain. The obligation of respect ... the command to respect rights ... the prohibition of stealing. How may all these things be summed up? In doing no evil.

Positive science makes its appearance in the schools.—Positive science was invited to enter into schools as into a chaos where it was necessary to separate light from darkness, a place of disaster where prompt succor was essential.

Discoveries of medicine: distortions and diseases.—The first science, indeed, to penetrate into the school was medicine, which organized a special hygiene for the occasion, a kind of Red Cross service. The most interesting part of the hygiene that penetrates into schools was that which diagnosed and described the "diseases of school children," that is to say, the maladies contracted solely as a result of study in school. The most prevalent of these maladies are spinal curvature and myopia. The first is caused by excessive sitting, and by the injurious position of the shoulders in writing. The second arises from the fact that in the spot where the child has to remain seated, there is not sufficient light for him to see clearly; or this spot is too far from the blackboard, or from the places where the child has to read, and the prolonged effort of accommodation induces myopia. Other minor generalized maladies were also described: an organic debility so widely diffused that hygiene prescribed as an ideal treatment a gratuitous distribution of cod-liver oil or of reconstituent remedies in general to all pupils. Anemia, liver complaints, and neurasthenia were also studied as school diseases.

Thus a new field was opened to hygiene in connection with the most fertile source of professional disease, and reading and writing were carefully studied in relation to pedagogical methods, and in relation to spinal curvature and defective refraction of the eyes.

The figure of the child, that victim of unsuitable and disproportionate work, was not hereby brought into strong relief, as might have been expected, by the aid of medicine, but a new branch of "legal medicine" came into being. It was, indeed, medicine which drew attention to the diseases and deaths of the victims in orphan asylums, victims of artificial or irrational feeding, in conjunction with wet nursing; it was medicine which passed in review one by one all those individual cases which proclaim this legal fact: children have no civil rights. Medicine now entered into another sphere where the victims were not "cases," but the generality, the child-population in its entirety; and now it is the law itself which imposes duties upon them, and condemns them en masse to labor for many years in a manner which entails physical torture. If a branch of legal medicine has arisen in connection with criminals, how is it that none should ever have arisen in connection with the innocent?

Science has not fulfilled its mission in its dealings with children.—Medicine has confined itself to the treatment of diseases artificially produced. It has diagnosed a cause of disease and left this cause undisturbed, content merely to alleviate the resultant evils befalling a multitude of victims. It has not taken up the attitude proper to its great and dignified rôle of "protector" of life; it has merely come forward, like the Red Cross Service during war, to heal the wounded and alleviate the condition of the suffering; it has not considered that the authority it enjoys as the guardian of health would enable it to utter the supreme cry of peace, putting an end to a war so dangerous, unjust, and inhuman.

As, in its struggle against microbes, it was the standard-bearer in the most glorious of victories over death, so, fighting directly against the causes of the impoverishment of generations, it might have aspired to bear the banner of protector of posterity. Instead of this, it confined itself to the elaboration of a branch of study that mimics science: school hygiene; thus making itself the accomplice of a social wrong.

Let us glance into a recent treatise of school hygiene, which merely sums up the ideas and the work of the world at large: