The Montessori Method. Maria Montessori Montessori

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      There is occasion enough in these questions, to be sure, for philosophical and scientific argument. The first question involves an ethical issue, the second a psychological issue, and both may be followed through to purely metaphysical issues. Dr. Montessori believes in liberty for the pupil because she thinks of life "as a superb goddess, ever advancing to new conquests." Submission, loyalty, self-sacrifice seem to her, apparently, only incidental necessities of life, not essential elements of its eternal form. There is obvious opportunity here for profound difference of philosophic theory and belief. She seems to hold, too, that sense perception forms the sole basis for the mental and hence for the moral life; that "sense training will prepare the ordered foundation upon which the child may build up a clear and strong mentality," including, apparently, his moral ideals; and that the cultivation of purpose and of the imaginative and creative capacities of children is far less important than the development of the power to learn from the environment by means of the senses. These views seem to agree rather closely with those of Herbart and to some extent with those of Locke. Certainly they offer material for both psychological and ethical debate. Possibly, however, Dr. Montessori would not accept the views here ascribed to her on the evidence of this book; and in any case these are matters for the philosopher and the psychologist. A pedagogical issue is never wholly an issue of high principle.

      Can it reasonably be maintained, then, that an actual situation like that in the first "House of Childhood" at Rome is the only situation in which the Montessori principle of liberty can justifiably find full application? Evidently the Roman school is a true Republic of Childhood, in which nothing need take precedence of the child's claim to pursue an active purpose of his own. Social restraints are here reduced to a minimum; the children must, to be sure, subordinate individual caprice to the demands of the common good, they are not allowed to quarrel or to interfere with each other, and they have duties to perform at stated times; but each child is a citizen in a community governed wholly in the interests of the equally privileged members thereof, his liberty is rarely interfered with, he is free to carry out his own purposes, and he has as much influence in the affairs of the commonwealth as the average member of an adult democracy. This situation is never duplicated in the home, for a child is not only a member of the family, whose interests are to be considered with the rest, but literally a subordinate member, whose interests must often be frankly set aside for those of an adult member or for those of the household itself. Children must come to dinner at dinner time, even if continued digging in the sand would be more to their liking or better for their general development of muscle, mind, or will. It is possible, of course, to refine on the theory of the child's membership in the family community and of the right of elders to command, but practically it remains true that the common conditions of family life prohibit any such freedom as is exercised in a Montessori school. In the same way a school of large enrollment that elects to cover in a given time so much work that individual initiative cannot be trusted to compass it, is forced to teach certain things at nine o'clock and others at ten, and to teach in groups; and the individual whose life is thus cabined and confined must get what he can. For a given school the obvious question is, Considering the work to be done in the time allowed, can we give up the safeguards of a fixed programme and group teaching? The deeper question lies here: Is the work to be done in itself so important that it is worth while to have the children go through it under compulsion or on interest induced by the teacher? Or to put it another way: May not the work be so much less important than the child's freedom that we had better trust to native curiosity and cleverly devised materials anyway and run the risk of his losing part of the work, or even the whole of it?

      For schools beyond the primary grade there will be no doubt as to the answer to this question. There are many ways in which school work may safely be kept from being the deadening and depressing process it so often is, but the giving up of all fixed and limited schedules and the prescriptions of class teaching is not one of them. Even if complete liberty of individual action were possible in schools of higher grade, it is not certain that it would be desirable: for we must learn to take up many of our purposes in life under social imperative. But with young children the question becomes more difficult. What work do we wish to make sure that each child does? If our schools can keep but half a day, is there time enough for every child to cover this work without group teaching at stated times? Is the prescription and restraint involved in such group teaching really enough to do the children any harm or to make our teaching less effective? Can we not give up prescription altogether for parts of the work and minimise it for others? The general question of individual liberty is thus reduced to a series of practical problems of adjustment. It is no longer a question of total liberty or no liberty at all, but a question of the practical mediation of these extremes. When we consider, furthermore, that the teacher's skill and the attractiveness of her personality, the alluring power of the didactic apparatus and the ease with which it enables children to learn, to say nothing of a cheerful and pleasant room and the absence of set desks and seats, may all work together to prevent scheduled teaching in groups from becoming in the least an occasion for restraint, it is plain that in any given school there may be ample justification for abating the rigour of Dr. Montessori's principle of freedom. Every school must work out its own solution of the problem in the face of its particular conditions.

      The adoption of sense-training would seem to be much less a matter for variable decision. Some children may need less than others, but for all children between the ages of three and five the Montessori material will prove fas[Pg xxxiii]cinating as well as profitable. A good deal of modern educational theory has been based on the belief that children are interested only in what has social value, social content, or "real use"; yet a day with any normal child will give ample evidence of the delight that children take in purely formal exercises. The sheer fascination of tucking cards under the edge of a rug will keep a baby happy until any ordinary supply of cards is exhausted; and the wholly sensory appeal of throwing stones into the water gives satisfaction enough to absorb for a long time the attention of older children—to say nothing of grown-ups. The Montessori apparatus satisfies sense hunger when it is keen for new material, and it has besides a puzzle-interest which children eagerly respond to. Dr. Montessori subordinates the value of the concrete mental content her material supplies to its value in rendering the senses more acute; yet it is by no means certain that this content—purely formal as it is—does not also give the material much of its importance. Indeed, the refinement of sensory discrimination may not in itself be particularly valuable. What Professor G. M. Whipple says on this point in his Manual of Menial and Physical Tests (p. 130) has much weight:

      The use of sensory tests in correlation work is particularly interesting. In general, some writers are convinced that keen discrimination is a prerequisite to keen intelligence, while others are equally convinced that intelligence is essentially conditioned by "higher" processes, and only remotely by sensory capacity—barring, of course, such diminution of capacity as to interfere seriously with the experiencing of sensations, as in partial deafness or partial loss of vision. While it is scarcely the place here to discuss the evolutionary significance of discriminative sensitivity, it may be pointed out that the normal capacity is many times in excess of the actual demands of life, and that it is consequently difficult to understand why nature has been so prolific and generous; to understand, in other words, what is the sanction for the seemingly hypertrophied discriminative capacity of the human sense organs. The usual "teleological explanations" of our sensory life fail to account for this discrepancy. Again, the very fact of the existence of this surplus capacity seems to negative at the outset the notion that sensory capacity can be a conditioning factor in intelligence—with the qualification already noted.

      It is quite possible that the real pedagogical value of the Montessori apparatus is due to the fact that it keeps children happily engaged in the exercise of their senses and their fingers when they crave such exercise most and to the further fact that it teaches them without the least strain a good deal about forms and materials. These values are not likely to be much affected by differing school conditions.

      In the use of the material for sense-training, English and American teachers may find profit in two general warnings. First, it should not be supposed that sense training alone will accomplish all that Dr. Montessori accomplishes through the whole СКАЧАТЬ