THE MONTESSORI PRINCIPLES 
 AND PRACTICE 
 
^M; a^i^^^ 
 
THE 
 
 MONTESSORI PRINCIPLES 
 AND PRACTICE - 
 
 BY 
 
 E. P. CULVERWELL, M.A, 
 
 FELLOW AND SENIOR TUTOR, TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN 
 PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN 
 
 LONDON 
 
 G. BELL & SONS LTD. 
 
 1913 
 

 O" 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Plato did a great disservice to humanity when, by 
 banishing from geometry all instruments save the 
 ruler and compass, he crystallised a new distinction 
 between the real and the ideal, between the practical 
 and the intellectual life. In this he was but following, 
 in his own aristocratic way, the highest conceptions 
 of the Greek mind — for the Greeks were a slave- 
 owning race. Thus arose the unhappy divorce between 
 thought and action, between liberal knowledge and 
 useful knowledge, which has always, sooner or later, 
 sapped the vitality of thought itself. And although 
 the renaissances of European thought have in every case 
 been due to the influence of the Greek writings, inspiring 
 great minds with the Greek passion for the exercise 
 of the pure intellect, yet they have always occurred in 
 connection with an intense interest in the actual 
 problems of life. And even in the Universities them- 
 selves, in proportion as that interest has declined, and 
 the curriculum has been given a purely disciplinary 
 character, there also thought has lost its vitality. 
 
 All this may seem remote enough from the Montessori 
 method as presented in these pages ; for what has 
 education up to seven years of age to do with the 
 
 285510 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 highest education of a nation ? Yet to the writer 
 its chief importance Ues in this, that it may help 
 towards the reinstatement of those* elements which 
 have been lost from the Greek conception, and thus 
 help to place education, even the most advanced, on a 
 biological basis, which is, indeed, the only basis suited 
 to a democratic State. 
 
 Half a century ago the educational system; of 
 Great Britain — if system it could be called — was 
 essentially aristocratic. Secure in their ample revenues, 
 the Universities gave no heed to the material problems 
 on which the welfare of the mass of their fellow- 
 countrymen depended ; as in the centuries of Rome's 
 decadence, a nice scholarship, with its artificial refine- 
 ments, was their highest ideal, and the way to attain 
 it was through disciplinary studies, which were re- 
 garded as the more valuable the further they were 
 removed from the real interests of life. The best 
 Secondary schools, always dominated by the Univer- 
 sities to which their pupils were sent, maintained the 
 same traditions of disciplinary studies ; and though in 
 the Primary schools — such as they were — the curri- 
 culum was frankly utilitarian, yet even there the 
 method — where there was any method — was based on 
 that of the Universities. Alike in the Universities and 
 in the schools, our educational methods were based on 
 the Greek tradition, but they had lost all that was most 
 valuable in the Greek conception. Left to itself, higher 
 education would have become more and more stagnant. 
 
 But meanwhile, in the great world outside the 
 Universities, the conception of evolution was revolu- 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 lionising thought ; science was showing the way to 
 new openings in industry ; above all, the democracy, 
 as represented by the middle classes, was beginning 
 to make an effective demand for recognition ; some 
 measure of reform in education could no longer be 
 delaved. 
 
 But the nation was not ready to take a compre- 
 hensive view of the educational problem ; changes 
 were made piecemeal, here a little, there a little. Thus 
 it happened that although the English Universities, 
 with their conservative traditions, had had no part in 
 these great movements of thought, — although they 
 were bitterly opposed to the new order of things, — yet 
 they still continued to hold a dominant position in the 
 patchwork methods by which the practical genius of 
 the English sought to effect the reform of education. 
 They were singularly unfitted for that position ; the 
 aristocratic traditions of knowledge had too firm a 
 hold to be dispossessed, except by the almost irresistible 
 demands of public necessity ; and even then the change 
 was less in broadening their ideals than in extending 
 their curricula. And since culture was still to be 
 sought through disciplinary studies, the fruits of which 
 were not apparent until after several years of study, 
 there grew up outside them a strong demand for 
 higher and yet useful education, and technical institutes 
 were established in which the element of culture, not 
 being sufficiently utilitarian, was discarded altogether. 
 A partial reconciliation of the two ideals is now being 
 sought in the endeavour to co-ordinate primary, 
 technical, secondary and universit}^ education, room 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 being made for culture in the lower grades and for 
 utility in the higher, but at the expense of mental 
 discipline, which is now, in many quarters, regarded 
 as a discredited conception. 
 
 This patchwork compromise, on the maintenance of 
 which so many millions are annually expended, is 
 wasteful in the extreme — even more wasteful of mental 
 material than of the tax-payers' resources. Broader 
 ideals are needed. Utility must be sought, not only 
 directly, i.e. through instruction which can be immedi- 
 ately utilised, but also through disciplinary training ; 
 and this training should be of the body as well as of the 
 mind. We have, in fact, to return to what was uni- 
 versal and vital in the Greek conception of education, 
 and to advance beyond it in the light of the wider 
 knowledge of the present day. We must insist on 
 disciplinary studies ; but we must use, as the means 
 of mental discipline, studies which are in close and 
 immediate touch with life as it now exists. The 
 logic of mathematics, as founded on deductions from 
 axioms and definitions, the grammatical study of 
 languages, and logic itself, these are, no doubt, fine 
 exercises for certain types of mind, but they are not 
 necessary to the highest type — they formed no part 
 of the education, or even of the subsequent mental 
 equipment, of the giants among the Greek thinkers, ^ 
 of whom Aristotle was the last. 
 
 ^ It was only in Plato's time that the Greeks began to erect 
 geometry into a science based on deductive logic. 
 
 Grammar, as a logical study, was, strange to say, still unknown. 
 Plato, himself a philosophic student of the origin of language, and 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 It does not follow that we are to abandon these 
 means of mental discipline ; the argument is that we 
 must no longer, in higher education, regard them as the 
 exclusive means. P'ollowing the earlier Greek plan, we 
 ought to pay more attention to the content of the 
 truths discoverable by the intellect ; and, above all, 
 to the proper use of the mother tongue, in which we 
 have an unrivalled instrument of mental discipline, 
 culture and utility combined, and one which is 
 especially important in a democratic State. To 
 analyse the arguments by which men are persuaded 
 to act — to discover the suppressed premises, so that 
 their validity may be examined into — this is a very 
 high type of discipUnary study. Properly arranged, it 
 might become entitled to the old designation of the 
 humanities, a group of studies which, in the truer 
 meaning of the word, has never yet been represented 
 in the Universities. Even in these democratic times 
 the State-founded Universities themselves, while 
 they devote a preponderating share of their attention 
 to the proper treatment of the inorganic material of 
 the national industries, have as yet scarce begun to 
 realise that the proper treatment of the human material 
 
 one of the greatest of prose writers, announced that there were 
 two classes of words, " words denoting actions, and words denoting 
 those who do the actions," and he adds that a succession of either 
 kind alone is not a discourse ; " it is only when both are mingled 
 that language is formed " ; — and Jowett, his admiring commentator, 
 writes that " he appears to have been wholly unaware of the differ- 
 ence between a root and a termination." 
 
 Formal logic was, indeed, known to Aristotle, but only after he 
 liad himself discovered its laws. 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 is at least as worthy of study. There is not in the 
 United Kingdom any University which requires that 
 its graduates — even those whose training is intended to 
 fit them for posts involving the management of large 
 bodies of men — shall have any knowledge of the 
 conditions under which human material is best em- 
 ployed. We pay the greatest attention to the utilisa- 
 tion of even waste products in our manufactories, pro- 
 vided only that the wastage is not of human material. 
 On that all-important subject we make no national 
 attempt to ascertain the facts and principles through 
 the recognition of which alone the wastage can be 
 remedied. Truly our educational system has not even 
 yet escaped from that which was local and temporary in 
 the traditions of liberal knowledge, as handed down by 
 the slave-owning Greeks, though we have lost much 
 of what in their conceptions was valid universally and 
 for all time. 
 
 In another respect we fall lamentably below the old 
 ideals. Recent experience and the magnificent results 
 of the early Greek education, in which rhythmic move- 
 ment played so large a part, indicate that mental power 
 would be directly increased by physical culture, 
 especially that directed to the finer muscles of the body. 
 But quite apart from that, there is a great and easily 
 preventable wastage of our intellectual output, due to 
 our pointed disregard of training in the physical 
 conditions of a healthy and complete life.^ No doubt 
 objection will be taken to this, for the training of the 
 
 * Even with our present conceptions, it is something of an 
 anomaly that physical culture finds no place in the work of, e.g., the 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 senses and muscles has been unduly discredited, 
 partly because it has been apphed empirically and by 
 those who do not understand the principles which 
 underlie it, partly because of the inherent obstacles 
 which oppose educational changes, and partly because 
 of the wide-spread belief that the ordinary experiences 
 of life provide all the training that can be required, — a 
 belief which is far too readily accepted, and is in the 
 teeth of the evidence. ^ 
 
 There are many influences which are making for 
 changes in education, and not all are in the right 
 direction. But so far as they arise from the recogni- 
 tion of the biological nature of the problem, so far they 
 will not be mistaken. In no method has that recog- 
 nition been so full and so frank as in that of the 
 Dotteressa Montessori. If the principles which she 
 has applied more fully than any other educationist 
 are recognised in early education, they cannot fail to 
 
 Indian Civil Service classes in the Universities, inasmuch as physical 
 fitness is a compulsory subject of the examination for which they 
 prepare, and a considerable number of students, otherwise qualified, 
 fail annually in this subject, often through no organic defect, but 
 only as a result of mere ignorance. No matter how gross the 
 ignorance, — no matter how serious the consequences may be, even 
 to the extent of so injuring the health as to render useless all the 
 teaching received at the University, — ^it is regarded as no concern of 
 the University. If the failure were due to any other kind of ignor- 
 ance, the University would at once take steps to remedy it. 
 
 1 The single fact that colour blindness is so widespread and so 
 seldom recognised, and that much might be done (as it is done in 
 Canadian schools) to improve the colour judgment of the colour 
 blind, may serve as a refutation of this so common belief. See also 
 the discussion, pp. 51-57. 
 
xiv PREFACE 
 
 react on all education. The careful attention to the 
 development of the body, if practised in the early years, 
 will draw attention to its importance in the later 
 ones. The successful employment of disciplinary 
 training, mental and physical, which is of the essence 
 of the method, and especially the fact that it is em- 
 ployed in connection with material of living interest 
 to the pupil, will help to reinstate the conception of 
 discipline in quarters where it is now discredited, chiefly 
 because it is employed on subjects which deaden 
 interest. The careful attention to the individual 
 child rather than to the group, and especially the 
 respect paid to his individuality and his right to self- 
 development, cannot fail to react on later education 
 and life, and, by elevating our conception of personality, 
 to assist in forming a healthy public opinion, founded 
 on knowledge as well of principles as of facts, through 
 which many of the injustices and inequalities of our 
 social system may be alleviated. 
 
 Nothing has been said in the text of the appUca- 
 tion of similar principles to the subsequent years of 
 school life, though they are perhaps in even greater 
 need of improvement. Methods so wasteful as those 
 we employ in education are only tolerated w^hen 
 they are time-honoured. ( Only under exceptional con- 
 ditions, such as a narrow or shaky bridge, do we 
 compel all traffic to move at the same rate ; but with 
 our uniformity of curricula and our method of class 
 teaching, we systematically do our best to reduce 
 the intellectual progress of our children to a uniform 
 level. The injury is great. Active minds are dis- 
 
PREFACE XV 
 
 couraged, nay more, they become idle, superficial 
 and over-confident, because their work is not sufficient 
 in quantit}^ or in difficulty to call for worthy effort ; 
 slow minds are even more discouraged, because their 
 work is too difficult — they cannot succeed, s 
 
 If we were to appty the principle of individual 
 freedom to these older pupils, — and the note on 
 p. 291 indicates that this is not impossible, — there 
 would, no doubt, be a great saving in these respects. 
 Yet, although reform is urgently needed, it is doubtful 
 whether it is best sought in just that direction. For, 
 as will be shown,, it is in the earlier years of childhood 
 that the principle of individual freedom is especially 
 applicable ; in the later stages of the pupil's life, 
 as in that of the race, it is almost certain that the 
 social instincts should be especially encouraged, 
 though still in an atmosphere of freedom. Thus it 
 is probable that the true direction of advance is to 
 be found in the co-operative educational work of the 
 class. How effective this may be, the success of 
 the " self-government " movement in many schools 
 has amply demonstrated. That the free control of 
 the pupils should have been tried on a more extensive 
 scale in regard to punishment and general school 
 discipline than in regard to any of the intellectual 
 functions of the school, is soniewhat remarkable. 
 But evidence of its successful operation in mental 
 education is not wanting, as, where each pupil has 
 been asked to bring to the lesson some contribution 
 culled from the school library. Quite lately, incited 
 by the example of Dr. Montessori, Mr. MacMunn 
 
XVI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 has tried this co-operative method in a systematic 
 way at the King Edward School at Stratford-on- 
 Avon with results which have astonished him, 
 especially in their inspiring effects on the slower 
 pupils. 
 
 He was wise who first gave, as the three conditions 
 of a happy life. Something to do, some one to love, 
 and something to hope for. Nor will the teacher go 
 far wrong who takes this as the motto of his method, 
 remembering always that by the first clause is meant 
 something worth doing, something that we can do, 
 but yet requiring effort enough to carry with it some 
 feeling of achievement in the completed task. 
 
 The Montessori method is itself but in the making. 
 Time will probably show the desirability of introducing 
 more of the ctsthetic element, and modifications of the 
 educational apparatus may also be found desirable, 
 as further experience is gained with different types 
 of children. In this connection the writer feels 
 bound to express, though with all respect, his view that 
 the restriction whereby only the complete set of 
 apparatus is sold, is undesirable. It is in itself an 
 infringement of the principle of freedom, which should 
 apply as well to the teacher as to the pupil, and it may 
 tend to strengthen the idea, the most dangerous of 
 all to the success of the method, that the secret lies 
 in the apparatus, the whole apparatus, and nothing 
 but the apparatus, whereas it really lies in the in- 
 telligent and untrammelled application, by the teacher, 
 of the principles on which the apparatus has been 
 designed. It may, however, be noted, that no licence 
 
PREFACE xvii 
 
 or permission is required to manufacture or use any 
 of the apparatus described in M'Clure's Magazine for 
 January 1912, since that periodical was available to 
 the public more than two months before the date of 
 application of the patent under which the licence for 
 the manufacture of certain of the apparatus therein 
 described is issued. 
 
 Sincere thanks are due to Mr. Bertram Hawker for 
 the photographs from the Montessori School at Runton 
 Old Hall, from which the illustrations in the text have 
 been reproduced ; to Miss H. E. Barton for the note, 
 p. 273 ; to Dr. Walter E. Fernand, of the Massa- 
 chusetts School for the Feeble-Minded, for his kindness 
 in enabling the writer to procure, from the Teachers' 
 College, Columbia University, a reprint of Seguin's 
 work, so often referred to in the text ; and especially 
 to Prof. A. F. Dixon, M.D., for his careful revision of 
 the physiological descriptions in Chap. HI. ; and 
 to the writer's wife for unfailing assistance in the 
 criticism and revision of proof sheets, as well as for 
 the account, in the note on p. 165, of how a great 
 nature treated a simple situation. But — and this 
 should perhaps have been made more clear — such 
 action is only for those who are reverenced by 
 children. 
 
 Acknowledgments are also due to Messrs. Philip & 
 Tacey for their courtesy in permitting the publishers 
 to use the blocks from their illustrated pamphlet of the 
 Montessori Apparatus as sold by them. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Introductory ..... i 
 
 II. The Predecessors of Dr. Montessori . . lO 
 
 III. Physiological Education , . . .24 
 
 IV. Spontaneity . . • . . .62 
 
 V. The Teaching of Writing and Reading . 115 
 
 VI. The Principle of Liberty . . . 161 
 
 VII. The Montessori School and Apparatus 208 
 
 VIII. Character and Discipline . . . 277 
 
 Index. ..... . 303 
 
I i>l ' 
 
 ^ 
 
 THE MONTESSORI PRINCIPLES 
 AND PRACTICE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 A NEW light has appeared in the educational world. 
 The remarkable advance made by Dr. Maria Montessori, 
 of Rome, in the theor}/ and practice of the home and 
 school education of children up to seven years of age, 
 will ultimately place her name with those of Pestalozzi 
 and Froebel as one of the greatest in the history of 
 educational progress, though injudicious advocacy 
 may long delay the recognition. 
 
 This prophecy is justified on two grounds. In the 
 first place, she has devised a method in closer accord 
 with the biological principles of child development v 
 than any previously known — a method which, in its 
 practical application, unites the physiological and 
 psychological laws of which, as educationists have 
 gradually been finding out, every rational system of 
 education must take account. In the second place, 
 her method proceeds along the lines which the political 
 development of society inevitably dictates. Long ago 
 
2 "THE MOisflESSORI METHOD 
 
 Herbert Spencer pointed out that the type of education 
 always follows the type of society — in a monarchical 
 state, for instance, arbitrary authority will be a far 
 more important factor in school discipline than in 
 a republic. Hence the Montessori method, being 
 founded on the idea of liberty, fulfils an essential con- 
 dition of democratic education — and the future of all 
 civilised states will be democratic. Furthermore, it 
 seems to offer some security against the danger of 
 democracies, that liberty may degenerate into licence 
 on the one hand and tyranny on the other. For in 
 her little pupils, freedom soon ceases to be licence 
 and becomes self-control, which is developed to an 
 extent very remarkable in such young children.^ Thus 
 discipline and steady application are obtained practi- 
 cally without the spur of rewards or punishments, 
 save so far as occupation is a reward, and idle playing 
 with toys a punishment .^ 
 
 There is, indeed, nothing new in this Utopian result. 
 In many other schools — notably that of the late 
 Colonel Parker in America — the pupils have been 
 like a happy family, each helping the other, loving 
 their teachers and loving their work so well that no 
 external motive of reward or punishment was needed. 
 But these results were almost wholly due to personal 
 qualities. You read Colonel Parker's book, and you 
 feel that if you were Colonel Parker you might use his 
 methods successfully, but that, being what you are, 
 the attempt would result in chaotic disorder. 
 
 No doubt the remarkable results Dr. Montessori 
 obtained are also due in part to her personal qualities. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 There are exquisite passages in her writings which no 
 sympathetic mind could study, even in translation, 
 without recognising an inspiration which reveals her 
 as one of those rare spirits whose devotion uplifts 
 humanity. 1 But her success appears to be chiefly due 
 to the extraordinarily thorough way in which she has 
 carried out the principles which have been gradually 
 accepted by careful psychologists as those which must 
 govern the early stages of education . In other words, her 
 method is based on knowledge rather than on intuition. 
 
 Thus to pass from the instinctive sympathy of the 
 born teacher to the forro.ulated principles of the 
 scientist is a great step in advance. For while know- 
 ledge can never supersede sympathy with the pupil, 
 it can direct it, nay, it can help to create as well as to 
 intensify it. For we grow to love those whom we 
 can help, and to like our work when we know how to 
 do it well ; and it is only where we understand that we 
 can truly sympathise.' 
 
 Dr. Montessori, indeed, brought to the work of teach- 
 ing scientific qualifications hitherto unequalled among 
 educational pioneers ; yet not even Pestalozzi or 
 
 1 It is somewhat unfortunate that Dr. Montessori does not seem 
 to have had any experience of typical modern schools in which 
 good methods are employed, while she has certainly seen some 
 extraordinarily poor ones, and she often writes of these as if she 
 thought they were typical of modern education. This feature in 
 her book is apt to irritate good teachers, making them not only un- 
 sympathetic, but hostile and suspicious. A generous recognition 
 of the good work done by other teachers of to-day, such as we find 
 in her acknowledgments of her obligation to Seguin and Itard, 
 would have gone far towards ensuring a more sympathetic attitude 
 on the part of teachers generally. 
 
4 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 Froebel seem to have appreciated so fully the useless- 
 ness of knowledge without sympathy. We need not 
 wonder. Strange though it may seem, no one has 
 such need to base all his teaching on love, as those who 
 aspire to teach idiots. This was the truth which 
 S6guin, her great master, and the greatest of all the 
 teachers of idiots, preached and practised ; as Itard, 
 whose disciple he was, had practised it before him. 
 Seguin never wearies of this theme. In season and 
 out of season — if, indeed, it can ever be out of season —   
 he tells us that unless the teacher can call to the 
 children with a spiritual voice, so as " to lead them forth 
 to lay hold upon the beauty and strength of life," he 
 can never attain to any measure of true success. 
 Almost at the close of his work he says : 
 
 " To make the child feel that he is loved, and to 
 make him eager to love in his turn, is the end of our 
 teaching as it has been its beginning." 
 
 It was as one of the staff of the University of Rome 
 that Dr. Montessori was brought into contact with 
 vSeguin's work. As assistant doctor to the clinic for 
 idiot children she had to visit the asylums of the city, 
 and she became specially interested in the remedial 
 treatment of the insane by thyroid extract, which 
 was then attracting the attention of the medical world, 
 and she was thus led to study the methods of physio- 
 logical education for the mentally deficient, devised by 
 Seguin. Soon she became convinced that the problem 
 was educational rather than medical, and she brought 
 this view forward in medical circles. At first she did 
 not meet with much support ; but having expressed it 
 
INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 in an address on Moral Education at the Pedagogical 
 Congress in Turin, widespread interest was excited, and 
 fortunately the Italian Minister of Education recognised 
 its merit. As a result, she was given the opportunity 
 of teaching in a medical pedagogic institute, where the 
 idiot children from the insane asylums were brought 
 together. 
 
 Here she took charge for two years (1898-1900), 
 and either taught or was present from 8 a.m. to 7 
 p.m. without interruption. Becoming convinced that 
 similar methods would apply to normal children, 
 she then gave up this and all other work to prepare 
 herself for a new task. She registered herself as a 
 student of philosophy ; she studied current methods 
 for normal education ; but above all, she devoted 
 herself to studying the writings of Itard and his 
 disciple Seguin. Inspired and guided by these in- 
 vestigators she devised a method of teaching reading 
 and writing to idiot children, which resulted in their 
 passing the public examination held for normal 
 children. 
 
 While others were marvelling that idiots could be 
 brought to the standard of normal children, she was 
 searching for the reasons why the normal child did 
 not far surpass the well-taught idiots. She withdrew 
 from active work among deficients, giving herself over 
 to meditation and to a deeper study of Itard and 
 Seguin. She translated their works into Italian, 
 copying them out with her own hand, not in order to 
 republish them, but so that she might have time to 
 weigh the sense of each word, and to read, in truth, 
 
6 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 the spirit of the author. And she was rewarded. 
 " The voice of Seguin," she writes, " seemed to be Uke 
 the voice of the forerunner crying in the wilderness, 
 and my thoughts were filled v/ith the immensit}/ and 
 the importance of a work which should be able to 
 reform the school and education." For Seguin, the man 
 who for thirty years had studied abnormal children, 
 and had founded a physiological method for their 
 education, had himself expressed the belief that it 
 would in the course of time be applied to normal 
 children. During this period she tells us that she " not 
 only made practical experiments according to the 
 methods of Itard and Seguin, but through reverent 
 meditation absorbed the work of those noble and 
 consecrated men, who have left to humanity most 
 vital proof of their obscure heroism." 
 
 This work led to the teaching of Pedagogic Anthro- 
 pology in the University of Rome ; but that was not 
 enough. She had long wished to experiment on the 
 application of her methods to normal children. 
 In 1906 came her opportunity. She was invited to 
 organise the Infant Schools of certain model tenements 
 in Rome. In each school she gathered together fifty 
 or sixty little tots from two-and-a-half to six years of 
 age, leaving them full liberty of individual action. 
 There, for eight to ten hours each day they live and 
 learn and eat and sleep and teach. Observe — and 
 teach. Not themselves, indeed, but their teachers. 
 That is one of the secrets of Dr. Montessori's success. 
 She brought to her work high scientific attainments 
 and knowledge of physiological psychology ; in short, 
 
INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 qualifications and gifts beyond those of any of her 
 predecessors, and then ? — then she let the little 
 children teach her. More fully than any other of 
 the great reformers, she brings us back, through the 
 long centuries in which child nature was misunderstood 
 and mutilated, to another region and an earlier time, 
 when mothers pondered in their hearts the sayings and 
 doings of their children ; when one of the greatest of 
 Jewish teachers wrote that he had learned much from 
 his teachers, more from his fellow -scholars, but most 
 of all from his pupils ; to the time when the greatest 
 of all teachers said of little children, that of such 
 was the kingdom of heaven. In a new sense, and 
 yet not wholly new, she has shown us that except we 
 become as little children, casting off old prejudices 
 and ready with receptive minds to receive the truth 
 as nature gives it to us, we cannot attain to the 
 truth. 
 
 Such were the steps by which this devoted teacher 
 trained herself for her work. 
 
 Yet the prophecy with which this Introduction 
 commenced may be falsified, the real advance may 
 be lost for the time, and the " Montessori Method " 
 may in a few years be looked on as a fad that has 
 had its day. The danger lies in the direction of 
 too ready acceptance, rather than in that of hasty 
 and ill-considered rejection. The one thing which 
 may postpone for a generation or longer the benefits 
 of the method, is its indiscriminate adoption by 
 blind admirers who believe that they can use 
 the apparatus though they have not grasped the 
 
8 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 principles which underHe its efficiency. The mere 
 fact that there is apparatus intensifies the danger 
 tenfold. There are those who will think they can 
 use the apparatus in fewer days than Dr. Montessori 
 took years in which to train herself. To them the 
 apparatus will be everything, the principles nothing. 
 To her the principles were everything, the apparatus 
 was only the outcome and expression of the principles. 
 Mechanical teachers, who, because they are mechanical, 
 will get the worst results from a method which depends 
 more on principle than any other, they are the danger. 
 They will say it is a fad with nothing in it ; they 
 will claim that they know because they have tried 
 the method for themselves ; and they will claim, 
 too, that their " experience " as teachers entitles 
 them to judge, although to them experience means 
 nothing but a long continuance in routine. The 
 very name "the Montessori method'' or "system" is 
 incurably bad ; it is not a method, it is not a system, 
 and those who think it is a system or a method, or 
 something that you do when you get the apparatus — 
 they are the friends from whom we must pray to be 
 saved. > It is a living principle, and while it may turn 
 out that the " didactic material " used in Italy is 
 that which we shall find to be most suitable for 
 children in these islands, we must not jump to the 
 conclusion that it will be so. Neither the children 
 nor their environment are the same as in Italy, so 
 that we must solve our own problems for ourselves. 
 Material inventions can be adopted from another 
 country, without modification and without thought, 
 
INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 but great mental principles cannot be applied without 
 corresponding mental effort. 
 
 The writer's object has therefore been to treat very 
 full}/ of the principles which underlie the practice, 
 so that not only teachers, but parents and others in 
 charge of little children, who have made no previous 
 study of education, will be able to apply them intelli- 
 gently. It has not, however, been thought necessary 
 or even desirable to occupy space with an examination 
 of the objections with which the method has been 
 received in some quarters. It is well that innovations 
 should be submitted to unfriendly as well as to friendly 
 criticism, and it is inevitable that the earlier criticisms 
 should be in part due to misapprehension of the scope 
 and nature of the innovation, alike in regard to the 
 problem it proposes to solve, and to the solution it 
 offers. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PREDECESSORS OF DR. MONTESSORI 
 
 Modern theories of education do not always rest on 
 the sure foundation of estabUshed truth ; some of 
 them have no doubt been taken up too hastily as a 
 reaction against an opposite extreme. But there is 
 one direction in which education is making sure and 
 steady progress. Its methods are being based on the 
 physiological laws of growth ; in so far they can scarcely 
 be mistaken. Like everything else in education, this 
 is no new idea. Ancient education was based to a 
 large extent on the physiological knowledge of the 
 period. But the ancient view was almost abandoned 
 during the long centuries which preceded the modern 
 revival. Educational theories were based on the 
 mental and spiritual aspects of life alone — the child 
 was regarded as a mere personality, not as a growing 
 organism. For many centuries the current belief 
 ' was that the only way to educate the mind to be able 
 to think was by practising it in thinking. As it is 
 by that belief that the school curricula are still deter- 
 mined, we cannot wonder that it still holds its place 
 in the popular opinion. But the physiological student 
 of mental phenomena — the physiological psychologist. 
 
PREDECESSORS OF DR. MONTESSORI ii 
 
 to give him his proper title — now knows that in the 
 very early stages of life the nervous matter of the brain 
 can be trained or organised by muscular exercises- 
 even better than by actual thinking, and that the child 
 whose brain has been so organised will think more 
 effectively than the child whose brain education has 
 been chiefly conducted by practice in thinking. This 
 is one of the principles on which the Montessori 
 method is based. 
 
 This principle is, indeed, no new discovery. It was 
 recognised among the Athenian Greeks, as well by the 
 greatest of their thinkers as by the common practice 
 of their education. With them, as in the best con- 
 ducted reformatories of the present day, moral as 
 well as intellectual development was sought through 
 a physical training, in which the rhythm of both finer 
 and larger muscles had a conspicuous place. They 
 believed that they thus secured the co-operation of 
 action and thought, the fitting of conduct to precept, 
 of words to actions, and that there resulted that 
 harmony between the inner life of thought and the 
 outer life of conduct which formed the ideal of the 
 Greeks before luxury had lowered the standard. 
 Gymnastics, which to us often means little more than 
 the cultivation of the muscles to an unnatural degree 
 of strength, meant to them not only grace, rhythm, 
 skill, symmetry, and agility, but in especial the sub- 
 jection of the passions to the control of reason, so that 
 a beautiful symmetry of form and face was regarded 
 as the index of a beautiful mind. " Everything that 
 is fair is good," said Plato, " but the fair mind in the 
 
12 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 fair body will be the loveliest of all sights to him 
 who has the seeing eye " ; and they held that the 
 fair body ministered to the fair mind. But after the 
 golden age of Greece, this high ideal was not main- 
 tained : with the advent of luxury, conditions changed ; 
 the Greek education failed to form character ; and the 
 Christian Church, confronted with the colossal im- 
 morality of the Roman Empire, put its ban on all 
 that appealed to the flesh. Under its control, education 
 became wholly literary. The result was a complete 
 divorce between the education of the man of action 
 and of the man of thought. For centuries the soldier 
 and the statesman could neither read nor write, 
 and Europe presented the strange spectacle of two 
 opposite types of higher education, the education of 
 chivalry and that given in the Church schools. 
 Later the two coalesced ; and in the Public School 
 education of to-day the literary element is the 
 lineal descendant of the education given by the 
 Church, while the games, and probably such 
 customs as fagging, represent the education of 
 chivalry. 
 
 The effective reappearance of the Greek conception 
 of physical training as a means of mental and moral 
 education synchronised with the great awakening of 
 thought which led to the French Revolution. It was 
 Rousseau who preached it so loudly that the world 
 had to listen. French physicians took it up, partly 
 from its medical and partly from its philosophical 
 interest ; but it was not imtil well into the last century 
 that, through the devoted labours of Dr. Edouard 
 
PREDECESSORS OF DR. MONTESSORI 13 
 
 Seguin.i it took the definite form in which we know 
 it to-day. Nevertheless, the idea had never wholly 
 died out. Seguin, quoting apparently from a work of 
 Pinel on Mental Aberration, published in Paris in 1791, 
 tells us that long before physicians had thought of 
 drug treatment for lunacy, " Spain had produced 
 several generations of monks who treated with the 
 greatest success all kinds of mental diseases. . . . 
 Certain regular labours, the performance of simple and 
 assiduous duties, an enlightened and sovereign volition, 
 watching constantly over the patients, such were the 
 only remedies employed. ' We cure almost all our 
 lunatics,' said the good father, ' except the nobles, who 
 would think themselves dishonoured by working with 
 their hands.' " Nor was this the only contribution of 
 Spain to the education of deficients. It was doubtless 
 to his acquaintance with a Spaniard, Jacob Rodriguez 
 Pereira (1715-1780), that Rousseau owed the most 
 striking of the physiological ideas in his Emile. Pereira, 
 reputed as the first to teach deaf mutes to speak, had 
 moved to Paris with his school ; and as we know that 
 Rousseau, who lived near by, was on close and intimate 
 terms with him, we may safely assume that where 
 Rousseau's physiological theories correspond with 
 Pereira's practice, it was Rousseau w^ho was indebted 
 to Pereira rather than the reverse. If Seguin's de- 
 scription of Pereira's work is to be relied on, it is indeed 
 
 ^ This eminent Frenchman, after years spent as a teacher of idiots 
 in Paris, emigrated to the United States, and, continuing his work 
 there, he angHcised his name, but the accent is retained in the text, 
 as being the more familiar form for European readers. 
 
14 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 of extraordinary interest. He saw that since sound was 
 due to a vibration, the vibration might be transmitted 
 through other organs than the ear, and that the nervous 
 system might perceive and reproduce that vibration 
 even though the ear heard no sound. Ordinary people, 
 he conceived, heard the sound, without, most of the 
 time, noticing the vibration ; and if the deaf, who 
 cannot hear, could be got to notice the vibration and 
 then imitate its production in themselves, they would 
 do so by the only way in which they could produce 
 similar vibrations, that is, by the use of the vocal 
 organs. Acting on this principle, Pereira first got into 
 mental communication with his pupils by means of a 
 manual alphabet for the dumb, published in Madrid 
 in 1620, which he followed with a syllabic manual 
 alphabet of forty odd signs of his own invention — that 
 is, apparently, by a phonetic deaf and dumb alphabet — 
 and finally by gesture. Then, when they could under- 
 stand him, he got them to produce by their vocal organs 
 the vibrations corresponding to the sounds which he pro- 
 . duced. Thus, since the vibrations corresponded in their 
 minds to ideas, their language was a language of vibra- 
 tions, which to the hearer became a language of sound. 
 " It is thus," says Seguin, " that he practically made 
 his pupils hear through the skin and utter exactly what 
 they so heard'* ; and it would appear, if the account 
 is to be relied on, that he " communicated to them, not 
 only a natural voice and a correct pronunciation, but 
 even his accent gascon, or joeculiar southern emphasis. 
 So says every one who has followed his admirable teach- 
 ings, Buffon, Lecat, Bezout, Diderot, etc."; and Seguin 
 
PREDECESSORS OF DR. MONTESSORl 15 
 
 recounts that he had himself heard, in 1831, the last 
 surviving pupil of Pereira, who came to visit the grand- 
 sons of her beloved teacher. " Yes, we heard, decrepit, 
 the voice which Buffon heard in its silvery tones of 
 youth." 1 
 
 Following Pereira came Itard (1775-1838), who in 
 1799 was appointed Physician to the Paris Institute 
 for Deaf Mutes. Of Itard, Seguin writes that " he 
 was the first to educate an idiot with a philosophical 
 object and by physiological means. . . . Others may 
 have continued his task, even enlarged, completed, 
 systematised it, but we do not know of any one among 
 them who would not gladly exchange his subsequent 
 titles for the authorship of the two pamphlets [1801 
 and 1807] on the Savage of Aveyron. . . . We quit with 
 regret his few unrivalled pages, to follow the evolutions 
 of his idea through other minds, after his bodily death." 
 It was, however, Seguin himself, the great teacher to 
 whom Dr. Montessori owed her inspiration, who first 
 proved beyond all doubt that carefully chosen muscular 
 
 ^ The account of Pereira and his relations to Rousseau in these 
 two paragraphs is little more than a precis of Seguin. If adequate, 
 it would appear that Pereira relied solely on feeling the vibrations 
 (no doubt at the throat), and did not teach the proper positions 
 of the vocal organs. If so, the result indicates an extraordinary 
 sympathy between him and his pupils. Such a delicacy of percep- 
 tion of vibration would far exceed anything of which we read in 
 Miss Helen Keller's account of her delight in the feehng of vibration. 
 
 It also bears on certain of the unexplained phenomena for which 
 spiritualists are so ready to suggest their own explanations, because 
 it shows that we normally possess physiological means of dis- 
 crimination far beyond what we are accustomed to use. This is, of 
 course, a commonplace to the physiological psychologist. 
 
i6 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 movements might be directly auxiliary to mental 
 development. The following paraphrase from an article 
 of his in the Archives of Medicine (New York, October 
 1879) relates the case of a boy eight years old, who had 
 been idiotic from infancy. Before treatment the boy 
 could control only the movements of the arm as a whole, 
 without power to direct the separate movements of the 
 hand or fingers, nor could he prevent involuntary 
 movements, especially of the wrist. Seguin began the 
 training of the hand by getting the boy to practise 
 movements of the arm which necessarily involved some 
 corresponding movement of the muscles of the hand, 
 and thus he was able to extend, little by little, the power 
 of voluntary movement of the hand. In the course of a 
 year his hand had learned to help himself, to amuse 
 himself; not to put itself in his mouth to be bitten, nor 
 to slap his friends, though it remained subject to its 
 automatic agitation. His senses had been cultivated to 
 the point of being conscious of the ordinary variations 
 of temperature of water, food, etc., and he was able to 
 recognise and name, blindfold, about fifty things by 
 their shape, and quite as many by their texture, and 
 his eye had been drilled so as to recognise objects from 
 drawings, and to cut out shapes traced on paper. 
 In the following year, special attention was given to 
 training the boy's eyes and hands to act in concert. 
 As a result, the power of consecutive thinking was, as 
 it were, created, and he was finally able to enter a 
 school for ordinary children and to do fairly well at 
 his lessons. This little fellow had become idiotic as a 
 result of infantile convulsions. 
 
PREDECESSORS OF DR. MONTESSORI 17 
 
 Before Dr. Montessori learned of Seguin's work, 
 his methods had become systematised in numerous 
 schools for deficients, but it is only method that can 
 be systematised ; the spirit which animated the 
 method too often disappears when the method has 
 become established. Seguin's own book, with its 
 revelation of the spiritual side of his method, had been 
 for many years out of print — the "practical man" 
 had written systematic text-books on " the method," 
 and the result was that the theory and practice of the 
 education of idiots made no further advance. In the 
 majority of institutions, as Dr. Montessori writes, the 
 practice was far below that established by Seguin. 
 
 But though advance in the treatment of idiots had 
 ceased with Seguin's death, physiologists, psychologists, 
 and educationists were making great strides in other 
 directions. The conceptions of evolution revolu- 
 tionised the more advanced educational thought. 
 The normal child was no longer considered as a mere 
 personality ; it was studied as a growing organism, 
 and the laws of its growth were studied in the light 
 of the history of the race. These advanced thinkers 
 restated the problem of education in physiological 
 terms : — How is the immature baby, with its nervous 
 system, its muscles, its bones, and its internal organs, 
 to be developed into the mature man ? With the 
 last three divisions, indeed, the teacher as such has 
 never had any direct concern. With proper food, 
 proper clothing, and proper exercise, the muscles, 
 bones, and internal organs may be left to take care of 
 themselves ; or if not, it is a case for the doctor, not for 
 
1 8 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 the teacher. What we distinguish as education proper 
 relates to the nervous system alone. Thus the educa- 
 tional problem is — how can we best aid the develop- 
 ment of the nervous system, so as to obtain the best 
 results physical, mental, and moral ? 
 
 From this point of view great progress has been 
 made in the last half century. The physiological 
 side of the education of normal children has now 
 an established literature of its own. Dr. Montessori 
 scarcely does more than allude to this literature in 
 her account of her own mental development ; she 
 arrived at her results by applying to normal children 
 Seguin's principles for the education of idiots, a de- 
 velopment which he had himself predicted. Never- 
 theless, Dr. Montessori' s methods are precisely those 
 which serve to carry out the principles established by 
 the study of normal children. Even her fundamental 
 principle of the importance of the spontaneous mani- 
 festation of the child had been already established 
 and applied in education by careful psychologists, 
 though no one had suggested carrying it out to 
 its logical conclusion. Every physiological method 
 detailed by Dr. Montessori might have been deduced 
 as a simple application of what was previously known 
 about normal children. That two such different lines 
 of investigation should lead to the same conclusions, 
 is a striking confirmation of their truth. It indicates 
 that the principles on which they are based must have 
 their foundations very deeply seated in the nature 
 of the child. 
 
 How are we to explain this coincidence ? Why 
 
PREDECESSORS OF DR. MONTESSORI 19 
 
 should the experience gained in the teaching of idiots 
 be so helpful in the education of normal children ? 
 Why should it seem to lead so directly, and in the hands 
 of one observer only, to principles identical with those 
 which are being slowly established by the labours of 
 many investigators of normal children ? Above all, 
 why should one whose experience was gained in the 
 teaching of idiot or deficient children not be at a dis- 
 advantage, rather than an advantage, when suddenly 
 called on to teach the normal child ? It seems con- 
 trary to common sense that long-continued association 
 with the mentally deficient should be a fitting pre- 
 paration for teaching children whose minds are of an 
 order so much higher. 
 
 Dr. Montessori gives a partial answer to these 
 questions. Following the much fuller discussion 
 of Seguin, she observes that idiocy is, generally 
 speaking, arrested development. Thus there is a 
 striking analogy (pointed out, as she remarks, by 
 Preyer) between the characteristics of the mentally 
 deficient child who has been unable to develop, and 
 those of the normal child who has not yet completed 
 his development. Acting on this analogy, she con- 
 sidered that the methods which made mental growth 
 possible for the mentally deficient (who were in them- 
 selves without the inner force which causes self- 
 development), ought to aid the development of normal 
 children who do possess that inner force. But that is 
 not enough. It may be true that a child of two or 
 three years of age has points in common with an 
 idiot of eight, but why is it not better to study your 
 
20 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 child directly than to study him indirectly through the 
 idiot ? And above all, how can experience in the 
 teaching of idiots be any help in teaching normal 
 children ? These questions require answers. 
 
 There are several advantages in studying the normal 
 child through the idiot or the deficient. In the idiot, 
 the stages of development are passed through so slowly 
 that they can be readily observed in detail. Thus 
 the observer is led to a very thorough analysis of 
 mental processes. And it is exactly this kind of 
 help that the teacher needs. From long practice he is 
 accustomed to accept his own complicated mental 
 processes as quite simple, as things which any one 
 can do. Thus he is very apt to ask too much from 
 very young children, even when he thinks he is 
 careful to guard against it. For instance, no adult 
 untrained in physiology would imagine that to use the 
 hand as we habitually do, directing it by the eye, is 
 a process requiring a very serious nervous effort in 
 those to whom it has not become second nature. 
 Only an exceptionally gifted teacher would get a 
 proper grasp of this from observing the progress of 
 normal pupils. For though they only acquire this 
 power of directing the hand by the eye with an effort, 
 sometimes painful, yet there is nothing to suggest 
 to the ordinary observer that, physiologically, the 
 process belongs to quite a different category from 
 those which train the hand alone. But with idiots, 
 the distinction is forced on the teacher ; he cannot 
 avoid it. It took Seguin a year to train the idiot 
 boy's hand, before he could venture to attempt to 
 
PREDECESSORS OF DR. MONTESSORI 21 
 
 direct it by the eye. He who teaches idiots is forced 
 to readjust his conceptions in regard to some of the 
 very preJTidices which tell against his success with 
 normal children. 
 
 Another reason has been already mentioned. No 
 true disciple of Seguin's could ever ignore the need 
 of sympathy with the pupil. " To make the child 
 feel that he is loved, and to make him eager to lov-e 
 in his turn, is the end of our teaching, as it has been 
 its beginning." Love, guided by knowledge, 'is the 
 only lever by which to raise the idiot's nature ; without 
 it, there is no real and scarcely any apparent progress. 
 But though it is no less the supreme factor in the 
 education of the normal child, the teacher may never 
 discover his deficiency. For his pupils will make 
 progress under almost any system. Especially in the 
 earlier years, the expansive forces of growth, which 
 impel the normal child to use his powers and to 
 develop himself through them, cover a multitude of 
 sins in the teacher. It is the idiot who supplies the 
 true test of the teacher's skill, because he only 
 develops in the most favourable environment. 
 
 The third reason, which concerns the spontaneity 
 of the child, bears very closely on Dr. Montessori's 
 work. Here, especially, the idiot calls for the teacher's 
 highest skill, in observing and utilising his spontaneous 
 tendencies. He makes no response to the means we 
 are accustomed to use with the normal child. We 
 cannot direct the idiot's mind into the desired channel 
 by any indirect means. Almost destitute of volition, 
 neither the hope of ultimate reward, nor the fear of 
 
22 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 ultimate punishment, can brace him to continued 
 effort. Deprived of all other means, the teacher must 
 rely altogether on the spontaneous tendencies of the 
 pupil. It is no wonder that for Dr. Montessori the 
 importance of these tendencies became the dominating 
 fact in education. 
 
 But to establish a principle is one thing ; to de- 
 termine the limits within which it is to be applied is 
 another. Especially is this true in education. For 
 education is always a compromise ; the end in view 
 is many-sided, and the teacher has. to apply now this 
 and now that principle. It is here that Dr. Montessori 
 shows her individuality. She differs from other 
 teachers not so much in her principles, as in the 
 relentless logic with which she applies what she con- 
 siders fundamental. It is a strange distinction for 
 a woman, that in dealing with children she should 
 exhibit a degree of logical consistency far beyond 
 that to which any educationist of the sterner sex has 
 attained. No one had ever dreamed of limiting the 
 intervention of the teacher to the same extent. 
 Before her there were many who laid stress on the 
 importance of giving full play to the spontaneity of 
 the child ; but of them all, not one had ever had the 
 courage to lay down the revolutionary principle that 
 the teacher must not correct the little pupil, not even 
 in the simplest of mistakes — that instead of correcting, 
 the lesson is to be left over till the next day. Far 
 less had any others the courage to put it into practice. 
 And never was such courage so well rewarded. 
 
 How far other teachers, not actuated by equal 
 
PREDECESSORS OF DR. MONTESSORI 23 
 
 faith, equal knowledge, or equal devotion, can venture 
 to follow her example, is a question which experience 
 alone can solve, and each country and each people 
 must solve it for themselves. But however that may 
 be, the work which has been done in Rome has 
 a profound meaning for all who are entrusted with 
 the care of little children. 
 
CHAPTERIII 
 
 PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 
 
 I. Outline View of the Nervous System 
 
 " Lead the child, as it were, by the hand, from the education 
 of the muscular system to that of the nervous system and of the 
 senses." — Seguin. 
 
 It is essential that teachers and parents should have 
 some idea of the general arrangement of the nervous 
 system of the body, and of its relation to the other parts 
 of the body. 
 
 The nervous system resembles all living tissue in that 
 it consists of cells. These nerve cells differ from other 
 kinds of cells not only in their stnicture, but in the 
 extraordinary size to which they may attain. While 
 other kinds of cells are more or less uniform in size, 
 a nerve cell, originally of a minute size, and apparently 
 almost as homogeneous in structure as a seed, may, 
 when used, grow to dimensions altogether unprecedented 
 in other cell tissue. All nerve cells appear to be built 
 up on the same original plan and to grow in the same 
 way, though the proportionate amounts by which the 
 different parts grow vary greatly. This uniform plan 
 of growth is easily described. Each nerve cell, as it 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 25 
 
 grows, sends out on the one hand a number of fine 
 processes by which it receives messages from other 
 nerve cells, and on the other hand a single thicker 
 process, called a nerve fibre, through which it sends 
 messages to other nerve cells or to the muscles or 
 organs of the body.^ This nerve fibre varies greatly in 
 form and size. Sometimes it is quite short, and gives 
 off many fine branches which intertwine with receiving 
 processes of other nerve cells. Sometimes it may be 
 very long, and may only give off a little brush of 
 processes at the end, as where it abuts on a muscle. 
 For instance, the nerve cells which stimulate the 
 muscles of the foot are situated in the spinal cord, and 
 their fibres extend from the trunk along the leg, 
 all the way to the foot. It is very remarkable 
 that a single cell should extend to this extraordinary 
 length. Whether long or short, the complete cell, 
 with its cell body, processes, and fibre, is called a 
 neuron. 
 
 In the brain we find many groups of cells, called 
 nerve centres, which are specially related to either some 
 organ of sense or to some group of muscles. Thus 
 there is a nerve centre for the right eye, and it is 
 connected by means of the motor nerve fibres with 
 the muscles which control the movements of the eye, 
 so that it can send messages to the muscles which 
 move the eye, so as to cause it to look in this direction 
 or that. There are also the sensory fibres along which 
 it receives messages from the eye which, being inter- 
 
 1 In the case of the sensory nerves, the cell receives messages 
 carried along its fibres. 
 
26 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 preted, tell it not only what objects the eye is looking 
 at, with all their details of colour, shape, etc., but 
 also in what position the eye itself is, and how it is 
 moving. There are similar nerve centres for the other 
 sense organs and parts of the body ; and there is a 
 similar dual relation between every nerve centre and 
 the part of the body under its control — the messages 
 are sent in both directions. 
 
 But the great nerve centres of the brain do not 
 exercise a direct control over any part of the body. 
 Their control is indirect, and is exercised through 
 smaller nerve centres called nuclei, situated either in 
 the brain itself or in the spinal cord. 
 
 As the nerve fibres from the great nerve centres 
 to the nuclei pass across each other, there is the curious 
 result that the nerve centres on the left side of the 
 brain control the limbs and trunk muscles on the right 
 side of the body, and vice versa.^ 
 
 While it appears almost certain that nervous action 
 
 ^ Prof, Dixon supplies me with the following interesting extract 
 from Dr. Clifton's translation of Hippocrates' Epidemical Diseases, 
 etc., London, 1752. In describing the symptoms of persons injured 
 in the head, he says, p. 199 : — " Case thirty-six. Phanius's son and 
 Euergus's, upon the bone being livid, attended with a fever, had a 
 separation of the skin from the bone, but the pus made its way 
 inwards. Upon applying the trepan, a thin, serous, palish, foetid 
 deadly sanies came up from the very bone." 
 
 "Vomitings came on in these patients, and towards the conclusion, 
 convulsions. . . . Again, if the wound happens on the right side, the 
 left is affected ; if on the left, the right." 
 
 The remarkable anatomical fact of the crossing of the nerve fibres 
 was therefore known and actually made use of in diagnosis as early 
 as the 5th century B.C. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 27 
 
 in the nerve centres accompanies all voluntary move- 
 ments, and all conscious sensations, it is not probable 
 that we are conscious of all such action, and it is quite 
 certain that a great deal of the control exercised over 
 the body by the nervous system is effected without 
 requiring the intervention of the great brain centres 
 at all — that the nuclei can act as it were automatically. 
 Similarly , when by constant practice an action originally 
 voluntary has become so habitual that it is done 
 automatically, it is not unlikely that, in many cases 
 at least, the great nerve centres are no longer neces- 
 sarily concerned in it — that all may be done through 
 the nuclei. The current gets short circuited, as it 
 were. 
 
 Besides being indirectly connected through the nuclei 
 with the various parts of the body — the sense organs, 
 the muscles, and the viscera — the various nerve centres 
 are very directly and intimately inter-connected with 
 each other through the nerve fibres which pass from 
 one group to another.^ 
 
 It is difficult to remember the relations of the various 
 parts of the nervous system to each other and to the 
 body from a mere verbal description. The analogy 
 and contrasts between the organisation of the body and 
 that of an army may help to make the matter clearer. 
 
 ^ It is interesting to observe that while in monkeys there is only 
 a very small part of the brain which has not some ascertainable 
 relation to some particular part of the body, in man there is a 
 considerable volume which does not appear to have any such definite 
 functions, and this portion in man is probably concerned in those 
 higher processes of thought and emotion by which personality 
 manifests itself. 
 
28 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 We may set out the correspondence in parallel 
 columns : 
 
 (a) Commander-in-Chief. {a) Personality which directs 
 
 the whole body. 
 
 (b) Headquarters Staff, with its {b) Various nerve centres in the 
 
 various separate depart- brain, 
 
 ments. 
 
 (c) Brigade Generals, Regi- (c) Nuclei controlling the 
 
 mental Officers, etc. muscles and organs of the 
 
 body. 
 
 (d) Masses of troops, e.g. Bri- (d) External organs of the body, 
 
 gades, etc. e.g. limbs, etc. 
 
 (e) Field Telegraph Message {e) Nerve fibres. 
 
 Carriers, etc. 
 (/) Scouts by which the army (/) Organs of sense, 
 gets into touch with the 
 enemy. 
 
 Further analogies and contrasts may be noted : 
 As the Commander-in-Chief knows very little of the 
 innumerable occurrences in the army, so a vast part of 
 our life is outside our consciousness ; we know nothing 
 of it. 
 
 Just as the Commander-in-Chief transmits his orders 
 through his staff, with the members of which he is in 
 the closest touch, so the personahty acts through the 
 brain, and thus deals with the several organs of the 
 body. The analogy between the Commander-in-Chief 
 and the personality cannot be carried at all as far as 
 that between the departments of the staff and the 
 various nerve centres in the brain, for the latter 
 occupy their own separate regions in the brain, while 
 it seems certain that there is no one locality which 
 the personality occupies to the exclusion of all other 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 29 
 
 functions. The question touches on matters which 
 are at once too difficult and too controversial for 
 incidental discussion in these pages, especially as it 
 does not lead to any practical result in education. 
 
 Again, as the scouts of the army are not in direct 
 communication with the headquarters staff, so in man 
 none of the organs of sense is directly connected with 
 the brain. 
 
 Yet another analogy. When the brain sends orders 
 to the limbs and the muscles of the trunk, it has to 
 communicate with them through the appropriate 
 nucleus, which thereupon sends on the message to 
 the limbs, for there is no direct communication between 
 the brain and the limbs. Just so when the Commander- 
 in-Chief or the staff desires to send an order to the 
 soldiers of the brigade, they will send it through the 
 general, who will transmit the message in the proper 
 form. Moreover, there are many matters in connection 
 with the brigade for which the general takes full 
 responsibility, not thinking it necessary to consult with 
 the staff. Just so, there are many matters connected 
 with the body for which the nucleus takes full responsi- 
 bility, not troubling the nerve centres at all. This 
 includes not only such internal actions as swallowing, 
 but also such muscular adjustments as those in walking. 
 
 The contrasts are even more important than the 
 analogies. They relate, as has been said, chiefly to 
 the way in which messages are transmitted. If the 
 Commander-in-Chief desires a brigade to advance ten 
 miles, a single order to that effect is sent by the proper 
 staff officer, and, so far as either of these two is con- 
 
30 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 cemed, that is the end of it. But with the brain or 
 nucleus it is quite different. It has to continue 
 saying "Go on" for the whole period of the motion. 
 The moment the nerve current ceases to stimulate it, 
 the muscle ceases to act.^ Similarly the organs of 
 sense have to keep on sending their messages con- 
 tinuously. And this helps to explain two other re- 
 markable contrasts. If the army has to march at 
 express speed for a long time, it is the fighting element 
 which tires first — it is just as easy for the staff to order 
 a fifty-mile march to be done at a pace of five miles 
 per hour as a one-mile march at three miles per hour. 
 But in the organism it is just the reverse — it is not the 
 muscles that get tired first, but the nerves. For as 
 the nerves have to keep stimulating the muscles all 
 the time, it follows that the more severe the effort 
 of the muscles the more energy the nervous system has 
 to expend in stimulating them. The nervous impulses 
 thus sent to the organs of the body, directing them to 
 move in this way or that way, are termed efferent 
 impulses, or efferent nerve currents, or, more familiarly, 
 motor impulses, because they are the impulses which 
 control the movement. 
 
 But the brain has not only to send a continuous set 
 of nervous impulses to the various organs, it has also to 
 receive a continuous set of nervous impulses from them, 
 
 ^ While this is true of all the voluntary muscles, it is not uni- 
 versally true. The muscles of the heart will continue to do their 
 work after all the nerves to them have been cut, and the function of 
 the vagus nerve is to prevent the muscles working too strongly — it 
 does not stimulate, it inhibits. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 31 
 
 by means of which it is kept informed of what happens 
 in the external world. These are called the afferent, or 
 the sensory, impulses, because they are the impulses by 
 which we receive sensations and, in addition, much 
 information that does not rise to the level of conscious 
 sensation. For example, when we walk over an 
 apparently level meadow by daylight we are quite un- 
 aware of the fact that our eyes are continually sending 
 messages defining the unevennesses of the ground to 
 the visual nerve centre, and that centre transmits 
 them, in properly modified form, to the nerve centres 
 controlling the various muscles by which the body is 
 balanced. It is only when we walk over the same 
 meadow in the dark that we become aware how much 
 the smoothness of our daylight walk was due to this 
 unconscious co-operation between the sensory and the 
 motor nerves. As these nervous impulses are con- 
 tinually passing in opposite directions between the 
 organs and the nervous system, it follows that there 
 must be two sets of impulses. This is a second contrast 
 to the arrangement in the army where the same 
 messenger may be used to convey dispatches to and 
 from headquarters. It has less educational significance 
 than we might suppose at first sight, for we cannot 
 infer that it is possible to educate the organs of 
 sense separately from teaching the control of the 
 muscles. For though each organ and each muscle 
 has a separate nervous control, both sets of nerves are 
 so accustomed to act in co-operation that it is not 
 possible to isolate one from the other. Even when 
 we believe that we are practising an organ of sense 
 
32 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 alone — e.g. in looking at a moving object, we are at 
 the same time practising the muscles of the eye in 
 making the responses appropriate to the sensory 
 stimulus, i.e. moving it so as to follow the object. 
 And, generally, when we use an organ of sense in order 
 to observe anything, we must keep it adjusted to the 
 point of observation by means of the muscles which 
 control the organ itself. Similarly, when we use the 
 muscles to do anything, we have to direct them in 
 accordance with the information we derive from the 
 organs of sense. It is only when we use words loosely, 
 and with a view to broad distinctions, that we can 
 speak of sense training and muscle training as if they 
 were two separate parts of education. 
 
 The real educational significance of the facts in the 
 preceding paragraph lies, not in the separation of the 
 sensory and motor nerve currents, but in their inter- 
 dependence. Without the co-operation of the sensory 
 nerve currents we are unable to direct the motor 
 currents properly. A familiar example may help to 
 explain. When the fingers are warm, it is quite easy 
 to button a coat without looking at them. When they 
 are very cold, it is difficult — they seem to move 
 clumsily. It feels as though the difficulty was in the 
 motor department — we cannot make the muscles do 
 what we want, we cannot send the proper nervous 
 impulses to them. That is a mistake. The difficulty 
 here is on the sensory side. The nerves at the finger 
 ends are numbed, and do not send the proper sensory 
 impulses to the central nerve, which is thus left without 
 sufficiently accurate information to enable it to direct 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 33 
 
 the muscles. As a result, the fingers are moved too 
 much or too little, or in wrong directions. (Even in 
 willed movements, as where we try to move two 
 fingers in directions at right angles to each other, the 
 difiiculty may be due to sensory defect. There is 
 not indeed any visible organ of sense involved, but 
 every such movement depends for its guidance on 
 the sensory nerve currents which inform the central 
 nervous system of the positions and velocities of the 
 moving parts.) 
 
 Another instance of the dependence of motor on 
 sensory impulses is found in the fact that we " start " 
 at a sudden sensory impulse of unusual strength, e.g. 
 a loud noise, — and, of course, a start is the result of a 
 motor impulse. 
 
 In ordinary life, there must, no doubt, be many cases 
 in which the difficulty of making the proper movement 
 does lie on the motor side, but it is not so easy to 
 identify them. A probable instance is to be found in 
 the familiar fact that we cannot write properly when 
 tired out with, say, a long run — the pen seems to 
 jerk about of itself every now and then as though it 
 were not under our control. Here there is much less 
 reason to think that the sensory impulses from the 
 finger tips are disturbed, and we may assume that the 
 imperfection is due to derangement in motor nerve 
 currents. 
 
 The interdependence of the two sets of movements is, 
 
 however, so intimate that it is almost certain that a 
 
 deficiency in the motor system may be taken to imply 
 
 a corresponding deficiency in the sensory system. The 
 
 3 
 
34 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 educational application is evident enough, on the 
 theoretical side at all events. It shows that we must 
 beware not to ask the motor nerves to make adjust- 
 ments for which the sensory nerves do not supply the 
 proper data.^ 
 
 The fact that the nervous impulses have to travel 
 continuously has a very intimate bearing on mental 
 education, because of its connection with fatigue, for 
 fatigue increases the difficulty of learning. Physio- 
 logically, the increased effort necessary to overcome 
 the difficult}'^ must be in some way connected with 
 increased difficulty in getting the nervous energy to 
 pass along the nerve paths relating to what we are 
 thinking of. So far as we can represent the unknown 
 processes within the brain to ourselves, there seem two 
 possible explanations of this increase in the effort 
 required. Either the resistance of the path along 
 which the nervous energy has to pass may have been 
 increased, or the store of nervous energy available to 
 send the discharge along the path may have decreased. 
 Somewhat more is known about the action of the first 
 cause than about that of the second. Nerves cannot 
 carry nervous discharges along their substance without 
 constant loss of nervous material. If that material is 
 not renewed as fast as it is expended, the resistance to 
 the discharge of nervous energy through the nerve is 
 
 ^ It is well, however, to observe that the gradual improvement 
 which training effects in the sensory and motor nerve-systems, is 
 for the most part, at all events, due to the growing organisation of 
 either the nerve centres or the nerve nuclei, rather than to greater 
 sensitiveness in the sense organs or in the nerve-endings at the 
 muscles. This will appear more plainly in the next section. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 35 
 
 increased. This is doubtless the explanation of the 
 fact that after a long spell of light work we may feel 
 tired of it, though we do not ourselves feel tired — we 
 feel full of energy w^hen we turn to some other kind of 
 work. The light work has not sensibly lowered the 
 general store of nervous energy, but the paths along 
 which the small discharge has been for so long con- 
 tinuously passing have become temporarily worn out, 
 and need an interval for recuperation. It is quite 
 different with the fatigue which follows a very long spell 
 of hard w^ork. Then we are fatigued all over. We 
 want to rest ; it is no relief to turn to another occu- 
 pation. Here the available store of nervous energy is 
 so exhausted that we are unable to overcome even the 
 resistance offered by a path which has not been used at 
 all in the day's work.^ Observe, too, that it is the store 
 of available energy which is exhausted, not the total 
 store. In fatigue, nature seems to provide against too 
 great exhaustion of nervous energy on ordinary oc- 
 casions, partly by keeping a large stock in reserve, and 
 partly by providing that when the store of energy gets 
 too low, the resulting fatigue prevents our continuing 
 the work. If a supreme effort is required, the ap- 
 parently exhausted man will make a new start and work 
 on far past his ordinary limit of strength. Later, when 
 the strain is over, there may be a nervous breakdown, 
 a sure sign either that the reserve store has been drawn 
 on to an excessive degree, or that the nerve paths have 
 been seriously injured. The same thing may happen 
 
 ^ There is, however, reason to think that the resistance of all 
 paths is increased as a secondary effect of the prolonged exertion. 
 
36 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 from frequent small encroachments on the reserve 
 store of energy. It is easy to understand how this 
 may injure the general health, when we remember that 
 all the vital processes of the body, including the beating 
 of the heart, and the secretions and movements of the 
 viscera, are carried on under and in accordance with 
 the directions received from the brain through the 
 appropriate nerves. If the energy available to send 
 the proper nervous discharges along the nerves of the 
 sympathetic system be insufficient, derangement of the 
 great viscera is the inevitable result. And nature 
 provides but slight safeguards against this, for we are 
 unconscious of these perpetual nervous discharges, and 
 only become aware that they have become disordered 
 when the mischief has gone on so long that serious 
 results have ensued. 
 
 The importance of keeping up the general store of 
 nervous energy is not always sufficiently recognised 
 in the school, especially in connection with physical 
 exercise. The recess for gymnastics does not rest 
 the pupils nearly as much as many teachers expect, 
 because of the general drain of nervous energy in- 
 volved. Sometimes, indeed, it seems actually to tire 
 them for mental work. We then infer that the 
 advantage derived from resting the nerve paths used 
 in the school work is not sufficient to compensate for 
 the general loss of nervous energy due to the physical 
 exertion. Play is generally much more restful than 
 gymnastics, which, unlike play, often require a con- 
 siderable mental effort. 
 
 Very little is known of the physiological basis of 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 37 
 
 fatigue, except that a certain toxin in the blood wiU 
 cause fatigue. 1 The statement is put in this restricted 
 way because it is quite certain that the feeling of 
 fatigue is not proportional to the amount of toxin 
 in the blood. It is especially unfortunate that there 
 is no known test which distinguishes between in- 
 jurious fatigue, from which the subject takes an 
 abnormal time to recover — or perhaps may never 
 wholly recover — and healthy fatigue or even mere 
 
 ^ This has been proved by transfusion of blood from an exhausted 
 to a Hvely dog, which thereupon exhibits all the symptoms of 
 fatigue. The toxin, whose existence in the blood is thus proved, 
 is, as we should expect, one of the products of the natural disinte- 
 gration of our tissues, which goes on continuously day and night ; 
 it is continuously removed by our scavenging apparatus, which 
 also works day and night. When the waste products are produced 
 faster than the scavenging apparatus can remove them, the toxin 
 accumulates and we feel fatigue. This is probably the explanation 
 of the common experience that he who starts off with great energy 
 to undertake exceptional physical toil without preliminary training, 
 becomes greatly fatigued after a short time, but if he persists 
 the fatigue may pass off. For example, he who, after a sedentary 
 life, starts for a long walk at five miles per hour, may feel wearied 
 out after two or three miles, but if he keeps on till he begins to 
 perspire, the fatigue soon passes off, and he steps out for miles 
 with renewed vigour. He became wearied at first because his 
 scavenging apparatus was not equal to the sudden call upon it, 
 and therefore his system got clogged up with waste products. 
 The perspiration was a sign that the scavenging apparatus had got 
 into full working order, and the weariness passed off with the 
 removal of the accumulation of debris from the blood. Had he 
 set out at three miles an hour he might have worked up to five 
 without feeling any special weariness, because he would have 
 brought the scavenging apparatus into action pari passu with 
 the disintegration of the tissues. Festina lente, as the Latin motto 
 says ; Ohne Hast, ohne Rast, in the German ; these, and our slow hut 
 sure, all depend on the same physiological principle. 
 
38 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 ennui, except that the last named usually passes off 
 very rapidly if a new interest presents itself. Physio- 
 logical tests — such as the least distance apart at which 
 two sharp points pressed against the skin are felt as 
 two separate points; or tests of the power of converging 
 the eyes, and so forth, are, no doubt, of service in 
 formulating general laws of fatigue ; so also are mental 
 tests, such as the amount of work done or the number 
 of mistakes made in a given time ; but they are very 
 uncertain guides as to the character of the fatigue, 
 and they are very uncertain as guides to the fatigue 
 of an individual pupil, unless he is unaware that he 
 is being tested. 
 
 2. How the Nervous System is developed 
 
 All teachers should understand the process by 
 which the nervous system is developed. Speaking 
 generally, the most important property of the nervous 
 matter of the brain is that it only becomes organised 
 through use. This has been demonstrated experi- 
 mentally in the case of dogs. A physiologist took a 
 litter of nine puppies. These were divided into three 
 groups. The first group was pampered ; its wants 
 were always anticipated, so that none of the group 
 ever had to exert itself. The second group was treated 
 as ordinary puppies are. The third group was exercised 
 and trained in every possible way. After three months, 
 the puppies were painlessly killed and examined. The 
 brains of the first group were hardly developed at all ; 
 those of the second group showed the normal develop- 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 39 
 
 ment at three months ; those of the third group were 
 far more developed. 
 
 But this experiment, interesting though it be, does 
 not bring out the especial point of Seguin's physiological 
 education. He first applied the principle that although 
 the brain may be partially developed by muscular 
 action, there is an especial relation between the train- 
 ing of the hand and the development of the mental 
 functions of the brain.. 
 
 There are many evidences of this. In early infancy 
 the hand supplies the best index to the character and 
 condition of the brain. The surest and the earliest sign/ 
 of mental deficiency is deficient power of grasping. If 
 the hand be flapped a.bout or vibrated instead of being 
 employed to seize an object, the child will probably 
 grow up as an idiot unless appropriate means of physical 
 education, and especially of hand-training, are adopted. 
 Early want of dexterity, e.g. in catching a ball, is gener- 
 ally associated with imbecility or mental backwardness, 
 and here also the early education should be physical 
 rather than mental. Another sign is when a large 
 number of false or unnecessary movements are made, 
 such as shaking the whole arm, or partly closing the fist 
 when putting out the hand to seize an object. This 
 lack of control is usually due, not to a defect of the 
 muscles, but to a defect of the nerves. In most cases 
 the muscles are in fair order. If they received the 
 proper stimulations from the nerves, all would be well. 
 Sometimes the stimulation is insufiicient for want of 
 nervous energy. Then only a weak movement ensues. 
 Sometimes the defect is that it cannot be sufficiently 
 
40 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 finely divided — the organisation of the nervous system 
 is so low that a stimulus cannot be sent along the 
 required nerve fibre without an overflow passing along 
 nerve fibres connected with other muscles so that they 
 also are moved, and we get what are called false or 
 superfluous actions. It is, indeed, beyond all doubt 
 that in early infancy any marked deficiency in manual 
 dexterity implies a deficiency in the development of 
 the higher parts of the brain, with a corresponding 
 deficiency in mental power ; and, further, that in such 
 cases the brain must be educated through the hand 
 before it can be educated through the ordinary mental 
 channels. 
 
 But the connection between the hand and the higher 
 functions of the brain does not terminate with infancy. 
 It is well known that the nerve centres for speech — 
 there is more than one little region of the brain con- 
 cerned in speech — lie on one side or other of the brain, 
 according as the right or the left hand is the most used. 
 Owing, therefore, to the crossing of the nerve fibres 
 already mentioned, the speech centres in right-handed 
 people usually lie on the left side of the brain, and they 
 are very intimately connected with the nerve centre 
 which controls the right hand. In left-handed people 
 they are similarly related to the nerve centre for the left 
 hand.^ Whatever be the reason of this inter-dependence 
 
 ^ This has been established by post-mortem examinations of those 
 whose brains have suffered injury from one cause or another. For 
 instance, right-handed persons lose the power of speech if they have 
 a lesion on the left side of the brain — ^provided, of course, that the 
 position of the lesion is in the part of the brain which controls the 
 organs of speech. A corresponding lesion on the other side of the 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 41 
 
 of the hand centre and the speech centres, it assuredly 
 indicates a very close relation between the hand and 
 the reasoning powers, since the latter are so intimately 
 connected with speech. 
 
 Nor is direct evidence wanting. Experiments have 
 been made to ascertain whether there is any connection 
 between rapidity of muscular action in the hand and the 
 degree of intellectual progress. It was found that, as a 
 rule, those children whose movements are quick are 
 brighter mentally than the slow movers. Two hundred 
 children were divided by their teachers into two groups, 
 the good learners in one group and backward in the other, 
 and then examined as to muscular control of the hand ; 
 62 per cent, of the good learners were found to be quick 
 with their muscles, 30 per cent, were normal, while 
 only 8 per cent, were slow. On the other hand, in the 
 backward group, there were none who were quick in 
 muscular action, only 25 per cent, possessed normal 
 control over their muscles, 35 per cent, were slow, and 
 40 per cent, were strikingly slow and halting in their 
 movements. 
 
 Another very remarkable fact was first brought out 
 by the measurements of certain Frenchmen. They 
 have shown by tests with a dynamometer that while 
 the civilised races are inferior to the uncivilised in 
 strength of the leg, they are distinctly superior in 
 strength of the hand. Other experiments, comparing 
 
 brain does not affect speech in them — indeed it seems to have Uttle or 
 no effect of any kind . But in left-handed persons it is j ust the reverse ; 
 speech is lost if the lesion be at the speech centre next the centre for 
 the left hand — a lesion on the left side produces no apparent effect. 
 
42 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 individuals of different classes, have shown that the 
 pressure produced by the effort of flexing the fingers is 
 less with labourers or artisans whose profession is 
 exclusively manual than with those whose work re- 
 quires less muscular force but more intelligence, and, 
 further, that the muscular power is greatest with 
 those of the liberal professions involving most 
 thought. 
 
 The connection of the speech and hand centres in the 
 brain appears to be a natural result of the evolutionary 
 development of the race. In the first means of com- 
 munication, the language of gesture must have taken a 
 prominent place. It is a natural language and is still 
 used by us, both as an accompaniment of speech and 
 as a substitute for speech ; and the fact that in times 
 of great emotion or sudden shock we express ourselves 
 but in gestures and exclamations, not in consecutive 
 words forming sentences, is almost a proof that these 
 were fundamental activities, and prior in race develop- 
 ment to speech as we now know it. Even yet the hand 
 is used for many purposes of speech. No one who has 
 seen two Frenchmen conversing in an animated way 
 can doubt how intimately it has entered into their 
 thought. There are indeed strong reasons for think- 
 ing that gesture was the immediate forerunner of 
 speech — the parent, in fact ; in early years, too, the 
 centres for the hand and for speech are so closely 
 connected that it is often impossible to stimulate the 
 one without stimulating the other ; a fact which, as 
 has been pointed out, is no doubt the explanation of 
 the general habit of putting out the tongue when 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 43 
 
 learning to write in the common way. For the very 
 strong stimulus of nervous energy which is applied to 
 the nerve centre directing the hand spreads to and 
 stimulates the adjoining region of the tongue centre 
 in the brain and stimulates the tongue. Moreover, 
 since the stimulation is an indefinite one — i.e. not 
 directed to any special action — it results, as we 
 should expect, in one of the earliest of tongue move- 
 ments, that of protruding the tongue, as dogs do. 
 Gradually, with further practice in writing, it be- 
 comes possible to restrict the nervous energy to 
 the proper path so that the leakage to the tongue 
 is stopped, and there is a great economy of nervous 
 energy. 
 
 The relation of the hand to thought also admits of 
 a simple evolutionary explanation. When mankind 
 began to walk on two legs instead of four, the hands 
 became free for other purposes. Each new purpose 
 presented a new problem to the brain, for the hand 
 could be of service only in so far as the brain was able 
 to direct it. But it was the power to grasp with the 
 hand, and so to use a tool easily, to which we owe the 
 greatest advance.^ In monkeys this power just exists ; 
 in man it is fully developed. The difference between 
 the monkey's hand and the man's hand depends chiefly 
 on the flexibility of the thumb. In man, the thumb 
 
 1 This theory is a very ancient one, dating from the fifth century 
 B.C., when Anaxagoras argued that the mental superiority of man 
 was due to his possession of a hand. In later times, FrankUn elabo- 
 rated the idea of the tool-using hand ; and the theory of evolution 
 has supphed a scientific foundation for the speculation of the 
 Greek philosopher. 
 
44 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 can be moved laterally across the palm of the hand ; it 
 is not so in monkeys. As the rhyme runs : 
 
 " There lived an ape in days that were earlier, 
 Centuries passed and his hair became cudier, 
 Centuries more and his thumb got a twist, 
 And he was a man and a positivist." 
 
 The innumerable and complex purposes to which the 
 tool-using hands of man could be applied demanded 
 correspondingly complex thought for their attainment, 
 and nature responded by developing the brain pari passu 
 with the development of the hand. An illustration 
 may help to explain this. Consider for a moment the 
 evolution of the staff of an army. Where the nuniber 
 of the warriors is very limited, where all are of the same 
 kind and armed in the same way, the staff is non- 
 existent — the possible combinations are so few and so 
 simple that one man can easily think them all out. 
 But as the number of soldiers increases, as the com- 
 mander has to deal with infantry, cavalry, artillery, 
 and with the immense facilities for transport which 
 modern conditions afford, the difficulty of the problem 
 increases in the most astonishing way, because the 
 combinations which are open to him are almost endless 
 in their complexity and variety. For one man to 
 control them in detail would be out of the question. 
 A general staff is required in order to deal with the 
 details, in order to arrange them so that the problem 
 which is fmalh' presented to the Commander-in-Chief 
 shall be simplified as much as possible ; and even then 
 it requires a mind which has been trained by an 
 exhaustive study of war. Thus we see that the com- 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 45 
 
 plexity of thought which is now connected with modern 
 war is a direct consequence of the complexity of the 
 possible combinations from which the general may have 
 to choose, and the variety of the means by which he 
 can effect his purpose. Similarly, we explain the 
 extraordinary effect which the possession of the hand 
 must have had on mankind. For the muscular system, 
 with the bones on which it acts, bears somewhat the 
 same relation to thought that the soldiers and material 
 of war bear to the plans of the general. And what an 
 immense complexity of action has not the possession 
 of a hand made possible ? Thus we see that in the 
 earliest history of mankind all that could be called 
 intellectual must have been connected with the hand, 
 the instrument of all those activities which distinguish 
 man from the brute. And in the later stages, both 
 directly and indirectly, it has been the chief factor in 
 increasing the possibilities of life for man, for it has 
 made possible the use of tools, and with tools the 
 possibilities of life are multiplied a thousand times a 
 thousand fold. Each new possibility is a stimulus for 
 thought, each new complexity of action introduces of 
 necessity fresh complexity into thought. 
 
 3. Brain Development through Sense Training 
 and Muscle Training 
 
 The theory of the preceding section, while it explains 
 the immense importance of educating the hand as an 
 aid to mental education, serves also to indicate its 
 probable hmitations, for it was in the earlier stages 
 
46 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 of the development of the race that the hand played 
 the chief part in the organisation of thought. With 
 the use of tools another distinctively human factor 
 must have become of great and, later on, of para- 
 mount importance — the power of anticipating in 
 thought the result of this or that combination. 
 Thus the suggestion to the teacher is — educate the 
 brain chiefly by the hand (and, in a less degree, 
 by the muscular adjustments of other parts of the 
 body) in the earlier stages only. In the later stages, 
 educate chiefly by mental means. In adapting her 
 methods to children of under seven years of age, 
 Dr. Montessori has recognised the limitation here 
 implied. 
 
 The two aspects of education just referred to may 
 be shortly described as muscular and mental — train- 
 ing in skill, and training in knowledge ; but, of course, 
 there is no sharp line of separation. In learning to 
 ride a bicycle we must use the first method, and we 
 may use the second. We must use the first ; we can 
 only acquire the art of balancing by practice, and when 
 we have acquired it, we cannot express it in intellectual 
 terms — that would require an entirely different kind 
 of training. After we have learned the art, a long 
 course of careful self-observation might enable us to 
 connect the sensory indications which we receive 
 from the movements of the bicycle with the motor 
 adjustments by which we respond to them ; but it is 
 a very troublesome business. The few who can do 
 it successfully are those who can really teach the 
 art, provided that they can also put themselves in 
 
^ 
 
 PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 47 
 
 thought in the pupil's place. -^ One or two points are, 
 however, readily observed, e.g. not to press on the 
 up-going pedal — an almost invariable fault of beginners 
 because they use the feet to balance themselves. 
 Practice is, of course, necessary in order to enable us 
 to acquire the habit of lifting the foot so as to prevent 
 this ; but in so far as our action is guided by our 
 knowledge of what we ought to do, we are acquiring 
 the art in quite a different way from before — and, as 
 experience shows, we learn it more quickly. 
 
 Either of these methods develops the brain, though 
 one is a far higher type than the other — one is on the 
 perceptual level, the other is on the higher level of 
 conscious thought ; one is characteristic of the entire 
 animal world, the other, at least in its higher mani- 
 festations, is especially characteristic of the human 
 part of that world. The difference between the two 
 levels is very important. We have an excellent 
 example of the process by which skill is acquired on 
 
 1 This point is well illustrated in the published letters of Miss Fay, 
 an American musician, who became a pupil of Deppe, in Berlin, 
 after she had studied with Liszt himseU. To her dismay, Deppe 
 made her begin over again— as what music master does not ? But 
 in this case it was worth the two years he required from her, for, as 
 she tells us, Deppe differed from all her other teachers. When she 
 came to a passage into which she could not put the expression she 
 wished, they could only tell her to keep on practising and it would 
 come to her some time. But Deppe would sit down and watch her till, 
 seeing for himself wherein she was not sufficiently prepared, he would 
 explain her difficulty, and if necessary give her some special movements 
 to practise before again attempting the piece. Then, when she came 
 to play the piece again, she found that her difficulty had vanished. 
 
 The quaUty of analytical^observation possessed in so high a degree 
 by Deppe is but very rarely found in artists. 
 
48 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 the perceptual level in Prof. Lloyd Morgan's account 
 of the way in which his dog educated itself to open 
 a gate. When the dog's education was completed, 
 he used to walk straight to the gate, put his nose 
 under the latch, lift it up, push the gate open and walk 
 out. Not unnaturally, a countryman looking on said, 
 " Clever dog that, sir, knows exactly what he is doing." 
 But apparently that was exactly what the dog did 
 not know. He had learned the art very gradually. 
 Imprisoned by the gate, and greatly excited by th^ 
 sight of a cat on the road, he had one day poked his 
 head through, here, there, and everywhere, and at 
 last, by a happy chance, had poked his nose in at the 
 right spot and then jerked it upwards, releasing the 
 latch, and so had opened the gate. At once he rushed 
 out, and the cat rushed away ; he showed no surprise, 
 he never came back to examine the gate and see how 
 he had got out. Time after time the same thing 
 happened, and it was only very gradually that the 
 dog left off poking his head at the part of the railing 
 remote from the gate, and so got nearer and nearer to 
 the right spot. At long last he became perfect — always 
 putting his nose in the proper place. There was no 
 sudden realisation — and all the evidence went to show 
 that he never reflected on the connection between the 
 latch and the opening of the gate, just as we never 
 reflect on the way we learn to keep the bicycle from 
 falling. He learned to open the latch just as, and just 
 as gradually as, we acquire skill in a physical exercise. 
 A further illustration may help to make clearer not 
 only the difference, but the relation between the per- 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 49 
 
 ceptual level and the higher level, and it is especially 
 interesting because of its bearing on the question of a 
 dog's mental life. There are those who hold that 
 all the dog's " knowledge," as we call it, consists of 
 this kind of blind mental action, that he never recalls 
 the past or anticipates the future, but lives and acts 
 in the present. This hypothesis is not so impossible 
 as it probably appears to the lover of dogs, who is 
 almost certain to interpret their feelings by his own. 
 There is no justification for such interpretation, be- 
 cause it is almost certain that the mental life of two 
 organisms so diverse in the nervous structure of the 
 brain as men and dogs must be exceedingly different. 
 One case within the writer's experience seems to show 
 clearly enough that dogs may advance far beyond 
 the perceptual stage. A dog, half Yorkshire and half 
 Skye, belonging to the writer's daughter, and devotedly 
 attached to her, used to get very disconsolate when 
 her trunk was being packed for her school journeys, 
 because, as we should say, he knew he was going to 
 have an unhappy period of separation. But that 
 does not necessarily imply anything beyond the per- 
 ceptual level — it does not imply a conscious picture 
 of the future. For all animals, except perhaps the 
 very lowest, change their behaviour in response to 
 anything which is usually followed by unpleasant con- 
 sequences, as well as to actual hurt or pain — just as 
 we protect our eye by lowering the eyelid on the sign 
 given by a body moving towards it. This is a mere 
 perceptual response ; it does not imply any conscious 
 anticipation of the future. Similarly, what we call the 
 4 
 
50 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 sorrow of the domestic dog may be merely a perceptual 
 response, without any element of anticipation — some- 
 what like the dull, low-spirited feeling we often have 
 on a dull, oppressive day. But after she had finally 
 left school she was going on a visit and taking the 
 dog with her. All her attempts to tell him that he 
 was going with her failed to cheer him in the slightest ; 
 it was evident he could not understand, and he moped 
 more than ever, perhaps hurt by his mistress' cheer- 
 fulness. But when he saw her put his brush and comb 
 in her trunk, his spirits returned at once. It seems 
 hard to understand this except as a case of " under- 
 standing," or "putting two and two together." (The 
 dog is in many respects rather stupid.) 
 
 From our point of view, the importance of the dis- 
 cussion lies in showing how close is the relation between 
 the two types — that there is no clear-cut line of division ; 
 that the lower gradually rises into the higher type. 
 Thus it prepares us to accept, as our most probable 
 ^, conclusion, the hypothesis that the higher type of 
 \ mental action requires, as a precondition of its appear- 
 ^Vance, long and continuous experiences on the lower 
 or perceptual plane, and that within certain limits 
 the efficiency of life, even on the higher plane, is de- 
 pendent on our efficiency on the lower plane — that, 
 on the whole, the people whose senses give them the 
 most delicate indications of what is passing around 
 them, and who are most skilful with their limbs, es- 
 pecially their hands, are likely on the average to attain 
 a higher standard of intelligence— to grasp a situation 
 more rapidly, to see a point more quickly. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 51 
 
 4. The Need for Special Training of the Senses. 
 
 But admitting that quickness and skill on this 
 perceptual level are desirable, are we to conclude 
 that special training is necessary to secure them ? 
 It is necessary to discuss this, because there are 
 many — indeed they comprise the great majority of 
 mankind — who act as if it was quite unnecessary to 
 give deliberate training on this perceptual level, or 
 even on the somewhat higher level of conscious training 
 of the senses and the muscular system. They appear 
 to believe that life gives sufficient practice — that the 
 child's everyday contact with the world in which he 
 lives does all that need or can be done for the educa- 
 tion of the senses or the general muscular control. Yet 
 nothing is further from the truth, and the strange 
 thing is that mankind is aware of it all the time — 
 aware of it, though not alive to it. This can be 
 shown by instance after instance. Every one knows 
 that through the study of music, the ear is trained to 
 greater delicacy of perception for differences of tone — 
 that the music of an orchestra, which to the untrained 
 ear is a vast volume of harmonious but indistinguish- 
 able sound, appears to the trained ear an harmonious 
 blend of distinguishable parts. Again, to take a simpler 
 instance, the untrained ear is unable to distinguish 
 the difference between two notes, one of which is at 
 once recognised by the trained ear as being higher 
 than the other. (Observe, however, that it is not 
 physiologically correct to speak of this as a case of a 
 trained ear — the training is of all that part of the 
 
52 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 nervous system which is concerned in the process 
 of distinguishing differences of pitch or tone. A 
 similar remark applies throughout the discussion 
 whenever we speak of training a sense organ.) 
 
 Or again, take the training of the eye by mere 
 contact with the environment. So inadequate is it 
 that a man may never discover that he is colour 
 blind. It is quite certain that training can do a 
 great deal to improve the power of judging of shape, 
 distance, and colour, which is only another way oi 
 saying that the training provided by the natural 
 environment of the child is not sufficient to secure 
 that the eye shall attain to the full measure of its 
 efficiency. 
 
 It is easy to understand why the promiscuous train- 
 ing of the senses which the common experiences oi 
 life afford fails to give satisfactory results. Oui 
 senses are trained just so far as we use them, and we 
 do not generally use them beyond the average needs 
 of our daily life. For the child of a civihsed race, 
 those needs are restricted ; society guards him against 
 the worst consequences of his deficiencies, so that 
 there is little inducement for him to develop his senses 
 beyond the lowest requirements of civilised life. Thus 
 it results that most of us are but poorly equipped with 
 means of observation — our sense organs are far below 
 the standard for which nature designed them, because 
 the training we give them is far below that by which 
 nature designed to perfect them. For in nature's 
 plan of education, the method is very drastic. Nature 
 does not forgive mistakes ; her penalty for failure is 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 53 
 
 heavy, even to the extermination of the species which 
 does not satisfy her demands. But her penalties are 
 only for failure in that which is necessary ; she loads us 
 with no artificial lessons. Even the senses of the 
 savage, which we rightly judge to be keen beyond 
 ours, are keen only in regard to those details of his 
 surroundings which are essential to his life. Of that 
 which does not concern him, he takes but little notice 
 — in regard to it, his senses are not well trained, and 
 hence they are, in many respects, not to be compared 
 with those of civilised races. Take one example 
 only, that of draughts. There are society ladies and 
 city clerks who will detect the slightest draught 
 at once ; the nerves of the skin send instant warning 
 of, and the nerve centres of the brain take instant 
 cognisance of, movements of the air so slight that 
 the savage would never notice them. The reason is 
 plain. Nature visits unpleasant consequences — a chilly 
 feeling, or a cold, on the delicate person who sits in 
 a draught, but there is no such unpleasant effect on 
 the hardy savage. 
 
 There is another advantage in providing definite 
 sense training for children. It reveals deficiencies 
 which without it, would constantly pass unnoticed 
 as well by parents as by teachers. When a child's 
 external appearance presents nothing unusual, we are 
 all apt to take for granted that his functions are 
 working normally. Thus defects are allowed to 
 develop which might readily be lemoved by timely 
 treatment. That this is a matter of great importance 
 has been proved by careful examination of great 
 
54 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 numbers of children. By testing the sense organs 
 separately, unsuspected and serious deficiencies have 
 been discovered in a large proportion of the children 
 examined. And even if the medical inspection of 
 schools serves the purpose of discovering defects, 
 it will not be nearly so effective in rousing parents 
 to remedy them. Unless they realise that the defect 
 is a practical disadvantage, parents are apt to look 
 on the doctor's report as of no real importance ; he 
 is paid to discover defects, so he makes an artificial 
 standard of perfection ; but they are practical people, 
 and know better. They are more likely to approve 
 remedial measures if they find that their children 
 are behind other children in some test of skill, 
 rather than in something discovered with a scientific 
 instrument. Indeed, they often regard it as a re- 
 flection on themselves if their children are less 
 skilful than their neighbours'. And what is true of 
 the parents is true in a still greater degree of the 
 children themselves. They will be keen to improve 
 a power in which they fall below the common standard. 
 Thus many defects will be permanently cured which, 
 if left to develop, might result in a permanent in- 
 feriority for which subsequent medical treatment 
 could only supply a palliative. 
 
 Another great advantage in such systematic train- 
 ing is that it would call the attention of the teacher 
 to the existence of physical defects in a practical and 
 effective way. It is a common-place of educational 
 literature that children who suffer from unnoticed 
 defects of the eye or ear or nose are- often- treated wtfeh- 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 55 
 
 great though unintentional cruelty, often resulting in 
 serious ill-health, by teachers who are unaware that 
 it is the physical defect which puts the school work 
 beyond their power. If the teacher knew the physical 
 peculiarities of the child as well as she knows the 
 mental peculiarities this would be avoided. 
 
 The reason for dwelling at this length on the necessity 
 of definite sense training, if we would bring our sense 
 organs to a high level of efficiency, is that parents and 
 teachers so seldom realise that nature does not give 
 us all the training that is necessary. " Children," they 
 say, " are always using their senses, and using them, 
 too, in just the very way they require them. What 
 possible advantage can there be in deliberately teaching 
 them what they have ample opportunities of learning 
 without being taught at all ? " ^ Reasonable though 
 the argument appears, we have seen that it is founded 
 on a misapprehension of the facts. 
 
 5. The Need for Training of the Muscles 
 
 We find a similar low standard in muscle-training. 
 Most of us will naturally train our motor control just 
 
 ^ Even professors sometimes say it. In a recent address to 
 teachers, the head of the Department of Education in one of our 
 British Universities asks, " Do normally equipped children require 
 special sense training ? Is their sensory apparatus not sufficient 
 for their needs ? " and there he leaves the questions, evidently 
 considering that no reasonable being could giv« the answer in the 
 text. Another, also addressing teachers, declines to discuss the 
 M£>iitc33€a=i systei5f o/ sense ^raiiGa*fflr''0»- tk& ^mmifi, a,ra^h^ fffefeec^r 
 that " the senses have b^» so ridden to death that we are ^^k^ 
 of them." 
 
56 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 well enough to escape really unpleasant consequences 
 from our misdeeds. The child who breaks a few cups 
 is forgiven — accidents will happen, etc., — it is only the 
 child who breaks them frequently who is made to feel 
 ill consequences, and thus is led to improve, and so 
 it is throughout life. 
 
 We can readily detect imperfect muscular control — 
 we call it clumsiness. It often seems difficult to 
 improve it ; and in that, and indeed in any case, our 
 first duty is to see that the defect does not lie on the 
 sensory side. If it does, then the attention should 
 be directed, in the first place, to training the sensory 
 organs ; for, as we have seen, the motor side cannot 
 work smoothly if the sensory side does not supply 
 the necessary information.-^ It is only by direct 
 examination of the sensory side that we can ascertain 
 whether the defect lies chiefly with it ; because we 
 cannot, by merely looking at someone, discover what 
 his sensations are. We are compelled to ask him 
 
 1 No doubt it is impossible to train either side without also, to 
 some degree at least, training the other side ; for, as has been 
 already pointed out, every sensation involves some motor adjust- 
 ment, and every motor adjustment involves some sensation. But 
 we may direct the attention to either side at our will, and the rule 
 is that it is best to direct it first to the sensory side and then to 
 the motor side ; which is the common practice, as we see from the 
 maxim — Look before you leap. A man about to jump a stream 
 looks carefully at it to estimate its width, as he would say — that is, 
 he calls on the sensory side to supply all the information needed for 
 the correct adjustment of the motor side. Thus the man who 
 misjudges the energy needed for a jump must be trained on the 
 sensory side — he must be made to look carefully before he jumps. 
 Such practice gives the best hope of improvement. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 57 
 
 what he feels, whereas we can see what he is doing 
 perhaps even better than he can himself. 
 
 6. Sense Training and Muscle Training are Brain 
 
 Enough has been said to show that sense training 
 and muscle training involve brain training. But the 
 evidence justifies us in putting the argument much 
 more strongly. It is almost certain that what we look 
 on as sense training is not really a training of the 
 organs of sense at all, except, indeed, in the early years 
 of life, for there is strong reason to think that practice 
 does not increase the delicacy of the nerve fibres, or 
 the actual sensibility of the sense organs. In normal 
 individuals, indeed, both these appear to be far in 
 excess of the requirements of the brain. We might 
 increase the efficiency of the brain (or more accur- 
 ately of the central nervous system) much beyond its 
 present limits, and it would still be unable to deal 
 with the extraordinary complexity of the indica- 
 tions supplied by the sense organs, if the latter be in 
 a normal condition. 
 
 An illustration may help to explain this. When 
 an untrained eye looks at a bacteriological slide 
 through a microscope, it appears a meaningless area 
 of variegated colour — the eye is at first unable to 
 recognise what the teacher tries to point out. After the 
 appearance of the object has been recognised, progress 
 is rapid, and after some practice the attention is at 
 once caught by the bacteria — it would be impossible to 
 
58 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 glance at the slide without the eye recognising them 
 at once, unless, indeed, there were other nearly similar 
 objects in the slide. Yet the eye itself is no more 
 sensitive than it was before — it sends the same com- 
 plex of messages as it did before — it is the brain which 
 has been educated to sort out, combine, and interpret 
 certain elements in the messages sent to it through the 
 nerve fibres from the eye, elements which it had not 
 at first separated from the innumerable multitude of 
 other indications. If it were the reverse, if in the 
 short period of bacteriological training the eye itself 
 had become a more sensitive organ, we should expect 
 it to be more sensitive in detecting other minute 
 differences of shape and colour in the field of view — 
 those, for instance, by which a hunter sees whether 
 an animal has passed along a track. But no ; the 
 attainment of delicacy in that kind of observation 
 requires quite a different kind of training — the eye 
 must be practised in observing tracks, so that the 
 brain becomes practised in separating out from the 
 vast complex of messages sent by the eye those 
 particular elements which correspond to the object 
 for which we are now looking, and then combining 
 them into an object which has meaning for us. A 
 very striking instance of this power of sorting out 
 what concerns us is seen in the well-known cases in 
 which mothers, in a besieged town, sleep through the 
 loudest cannonade, but wake up at the slightest 
 sound made by a sick infant beside them. 
 
 Everr the ey liauidiiieiiy d e li ta ty of" ifravh Tir'tff& 
 blind seems to be no exception to this rule. Tested 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 59 
 
 on equal terms — that is, in regard to those indications 
 in the sense messages which they have had no special 
 practice in sorting out, it is found that the bhnd are 
 no more sensitive than normal individuals, from which 
 we infer that their greater power of interpreting the 
 nature of objects from touching them is not due to 
 the greater sensitiveness of their finger-tips, but to their - 
 greater power of interpreting the messages received 
 by the brain. The blind have had such varied practice 
 that it is difficult to get any test in which they have 
 no advantage. One such test is as follows : — A weight 
 is placed on the finger and the subject of the experi- 
 ment estimates it in his own mind as well as he can. 
 A liquid or a very finely divided substance is imper- 
 ceptibly added to it, and the subject has to say when 
 he perceives that the weight has been increased. 
 Compared in this way, the finger-tips of the blind are 
 on the average slightly less sensitive than those of the 
 normal person, which is probably due to their lower 
 average of general nervous organisatio-n. 
 
 Thus it appears that sense training — and the same ^ 
 may be said of muscle training — is really brain training ; 
 and though it is far from the highest type of brain 
 training, it is subservient to it — there is the strongest 
 reason to believe that a higher average of sense and 
 muscle training in the earlier years would lead to a 
 higher average of mental equipment in the later years, 
 and it would undoubtedly lead to a higher average of 
 industrial efficiency. Moreover, when we are develop- 
 ing. thR^conlroL aver, tha H^us^s- €^ the ;^^ we ai^" 
 certainly organising a part of the brain which, as we 
 
6o THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 have seen, is very closely related to our intellectual 
 activities. 
 
 7. Dangers of Muscle Training 
 
 But muscular control must not be carried too far, 
 otherwise it may be actually antagonistic to the kind 
 of brain organisation we desire. Take, for instance, 
 training in laying bricks. If it be practised until it 
 is done as a matter of mere habit, so that the attention 
 is no longer directed to seeing that each brick is pro- 
 perly laid, then it has ceased to promote educative 
 brain organisation. If the pupil is to be a tradesman, 
 it may be desirable that he shall attain to automatic 
 perfection in bricklaying ; but such automatism is 
 useless except to the bricklayer. When once an 
 operation is so automatically performed that atten- 
 tion is no longer required, we infer that the part of 
 the nervous system involved has become so completely 
 organised that it tends to pass from the control of 
 the will and to become automatic. Thus it tends to 
 defeat one of the principal objects of a general muscular 
 training, as distinct from mere training in a particular 
 muscular activity ; for that of the first is to improve 
 the general voluntary control over the muscular 
 system, that of the second is to reduce the voluntary 
 control to a minimum.^ 
 
 ^ In extreme cases of habit the interference with voluntary con- 
 trol is very marked, as in the well-known instance of the pensioner 
 who could not help dropping his dinner if, when he was carrying 
 it, some mischievous urchin were to shout " Tenshun ! " 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL EDUCATION 6i 
 
 There is another direction in which the muscular 
 training given in the school may fail in improving 
 the power of voluntary control. If the attention of 
 the pupil is not focussed on what he is doing, the 
 result maybe a general habit of carelessness in muscular 
 control. Hence it is of the utmost importance that 
 the exercises, both for sense training and for muscle 
 training, shall be so devised that they shall themselves 
 hold the pupil's attention. Physiological investiga- 
 tions alone are not sufficient to guide us here, though, 
 as we shall see, they may be of great assistance. Atten- 
 tion is known to us as a conscious state, and we must 
 discuss it from the mental side. Thus we are logically 
 led to discuss the spontaneity of the child, on which 
 Dr. Montessori claims that she bases all her methods. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SPONTANEITY 
 
 I. Why do we need Education? 
 
 Why is education needed at all ? And if needed at 
 all, why does not Mother Nature supply us with all 
 that we require ? Why is it that we alone of all the 
 animal world cannot trust to our instincts ? Or, to 
 put it in a slightly different way, why is it that our 
 education is a somewhat painful process, while that of, 
 say, the young kitten, is an easy and pleasant one ? 
 Why is it that in our lives work and play are regarded 
 as opposites, while in the kitten its work is its play 
 and its play is its education ? Watch it ; see how it 
 delights in learning the very actions which belong to 
 the full-grown cat. There is nothing which pleases 
 it so much as trying to catch in its teeth or with its 
 claws a piece of paper, or, better still, a piece of fur 
 about the size of a mouse, tied to a string and jerked 
 about. Watch it as it hides, and, appearing quite 
 unconscious of the presence of its foe, yet prepares 
 itself for the deadly pounce. Every activity of after- 
 life is practised in play — its play is its education. 
 With the domesticated cat there is indeed something 
 
SPONTANEITY 63 
 
 resembling our methods. One may see the watchful 
 mother chastening the unskilful kitten, but that is 
 only in order that progress may be more rapid when 
 to the joy of success is added the lower motive, so 
 often predominant with the schoolboy — the dread of 
 the result of failure. 
 
 Look at the same contrast from a slightly different 
 point of view. While in creative intelligence man 
 surpasses all the other animals, he appears far below 
 them in regard to the use and misuse of his powers. 
 Is there any one who has no natural tendency towards 
 actions which injure him ? Yet the natural instinctive 
 tendency of the young animal, which is possessed of a 
 nervous organisation lower than ours, is towards that 
 which will help it to be successful in its after-life. In 
 short, the boy tends to do that which is wrong ; the 
 animal, to do that which, for it, is right. 
 
 This contrast applies to all departments of action. 
 Consider the most fundamental of all — the acts which 
 promote physical well-being. Compare the tiger cub 
 with the boy. For the first, no medicines are required ; 
 or if by chance they should be, the cub itself knows by 
 instinct what grasses to eat — and moreover, eats them ; 
 it is natural to it to keep itself in health. But give 
 the children the run of the pantry, and how lament- 
 able will be the result ! And when the mischief has 
 happened, how much would the danger be increased 
 by leaving the children to select their own medi- 
 cines ! 
 
 Or take the larger adjustments to life. Even in 
 its play, the cub, like the kitten, wastes nothing — 
 
64 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 all is a direct preparation for adult life. But the boy 
 expends much of his energy on games which have no 
 place in the business of his after-life. 
 
 At first we may be inclined to rest satisfied with 
 a partial answer to the question thus raised — to say 
 that it is on account of the greater complexity of 
 human life that we need education, in our sense of 
 the term — that, after all, the wild cat's actions can be 
 instinctively adjusted, because they are so simple that 
 they do not, in fact, require thought. But this is not 
 the real distinction, for very complicated adjustments 
 may be made without conscious thought. Look at the 
 wonderful organisation of a beehive. There may be 
 40,000 to 80,000 creatures all living an organised life 
 within it, each performing his own part with far less 
 individual uncertainty, far less need of direction from 
 a superior officer, than attends the performance of 
 the duties in a military camp. There is no confusion ; 
 each working bee does its work well and carefully ; 
 no policeman is required to keep order among this 
 crowded population. Even in the suffragette out- 
 rages on the drones there is no real disorder, there is 
 merely a wholesale execution for the good of the 
 community. And not the least remarkable feature 
 is that all this complicated social mechanism is appar- 
 ently carried on without anything which corresponds 
 to sympathetic feelings.^ All this is done without 
 education, for education in our sense of the term is 
 
 ^ If two bees are working next each other, and one is killed or 
 injured, then, as Lord Avebury tells us, the other bee takes no 
 notice of its comrade, except to push it out of the way. 
 
I 
 
 SPONTANEITY 65 
 
 impossible with insects. An insect when in its 
 pupa shape is wholly passive ; it merely follows the 
 laws of its own growth, as Httle influenced by the 
 external world as a seed within a pod. When that 
 process is completed it emerges from the pupa and, 
 although it is immediately launched into an absolutely 
 new world, it is quite ready to take its place, almost 
 as efficiently as it ever will, in fulfilling the duties of 
 life. Thus it seems impossible to doubt that the 
 wisdom of bees is instinctive. Complicated as their 
 life is, education, in our sense of the word, is not needed. 
 It may appear a sufficient answer to all this to say 
 that it is because the bee's life is all a life of routine 
 that instinct is a sufficient guide for it — that the bee 
 goes on from day to day doing the same thing in the 
 same way just like a machine, while we have to meet 
 unusual combinations. But the objection is easily 
 answered ; for there is at least one thing in the bee's 
 life which is not a part of its daily routine, a process 
 which appears to us more wonderful than anything 
 which we can attain by the utmost exercise of the 
 power's education has given us. Every one knows 
 how, before swarming, or if the queen bee of the hive 
 be accidentally killed, the worker bees will take some 
 of tlfie ordinary eggs, put them in " royal " cells, and 
 feecj them with "royal" jelly, and thus turn what 
 would have become an ordinary worker bee into a 
 queen bee. This marvellous process, without parallel 
 in intelligent life, is done by instinct and without 
 conscious education. The worker bees who do it 
 only live about nine months ; when the hive first 
 5 
 
66 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 swarms, not one of them has ever seen it done before. 
 Moreover, it is of no personal advantage to them, its 
 object is not their own preservation, but the preserva- 
 tion of the future generations ; the worker bees would 
 live as long and have far more honey to eat, if they 
 went on without a queen/ 
 
 The case of ants is even more striking. Some 
 of the South American ant-heaps rival London and 
 New York in population, and judged by the number 
 of tiers in their edifices, the sky-scrapers of New 
 York sink into insignificance. Yet complicated ad- 
 ministrative functions, such as sanitation, appear to 
 be perfectly performed, and each individual of each 
 species — and there are more varieties than in a beehive 
 
 1 Something very similar to the making of a queen bee from a 
 neuter egg takes place in the human body. Suppose a piece of 
 skin is destroyed, the microscopic organisms which carry on the 
 processes of life within us are not able to replace it with true skin, 
 which seems curious, because day after day they are gradually 
 replacing every particle of which the skin is composed. For some 
 reason they seem unable to make a true skin without a substratum 
 of the original pattern to build on. Accordingly they do something 
 which they never do except to repair an injury — they make a 
 false skin or scar. Similarly, if a tendon is ruptured they repair 
 it with a bit of different material, which, like the false skin, is 
 not quite as good as the original, but yet serves the purpose pretty 
 well. This adaptation is as it were stored up in these microscopic 
 organisms. For generations the parents of the injured man may 
 never have ruptured a tendon, yet the very first time it occurs in 
 the offspring, the process is performed without hesitation or mistake. 
 This is in striking contrast to the ways of intelligent beings. Watch 
 a carpenter making something he never made before, or a scientist 
 devising a new experiment — he does it better the second time — 
 in other words, he learns by experience. These little organisms do 
 by instinct what is far beyond even our intelligence to contrive. 
 
SPONTANEITY 67 
 
 — seems to find the completion of his own nature in 
 the services he renders to the commmiity. But 
 though there appear to be no internal divisions of 
 politics, there is state-craft, for these ant-cities are 
 confederated into States, and make war and peace 
 together/ 
 
 Instances of this kind, which could easily be 
 multiplied, put it beyond doubt that our deficiencies 
 as compared to the lower creation are not merely 
 dependent on the greater complexity of our actions. 
 We must find another explanation for the fact that 
 man, though endowed with a far higher capacity 
 of adjusting his actions to his own preservation and 
 that of the race , is far more inclined to actions whose 
 tendency is to injure his life, or to injure the race. 
 
 The principle of evolution explains this contrast 
 between the efficiency of instinctive tendencies in 
 
 1 Prof. Lloyd Morgan appears disposed to question this view. 
 He suggested that if an intelHgent ant were to watch the develop- 
 ment of the human species, it would conclude that their adult 
 activities were instinctive, as the youthful activities of the child 
 would appear to have little or no relation to the activities of the 
 adult. But surely Prof. Morgan writes here with less than his 
 usual acumen. If it were really intelHgent, that is exactly the 
 fact which would show the ant that the activities of men were 
 probably not instinctive. And if the ant, without being intelhgent, 
 were barely observant, he could hardly fail to see that the school 
 activities of the child, the three R's at all events, were very intimately 
 related to his adult activities. 
 
 While it appears tolerably certain that, with practice, ants do 
 improve in the performance of their activities, it seems extremely 
 improbable that they are capable of acquiring any new activity, 
 that is, any activity which is not so instinctive as to be a very 
 ready response to the appropriate stimulus. 
 
68 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 the higher among the animals, and the frequency 
 with which, in mankind, the}^ prompt to injurious 
 actions. For that bhnd response to environment 
 which we call instinct is formed only after long ages 
 of nature's drastic training, — a remorseless training in 
 which the penalty for failure is extermination. Only 
 that which for generation after generation has been 
 a necessary condition of successful life can become 
 an instinctive habit of the race. Nature does indeed 
 produce very perfect results, but only at a terrible 
 expense of life. Take a familiar case — that of the 
 common sparrow. It nests three or four times in a 
 year, and there are usually about five eggs each time. 
 An easy calculation shows that even if half the off- 
 spring were to perish before maturity, each pair of 
 sparrows would in ten years have more descendants 
 than the entire population of the British Isles. And 
 it is because those who are least adjusted to cope 
 with their surroundings perish year by year, that the 
 number of sparrows remains about the same from 
 year to year. 
 
 But these instinctive adjustments take time. The 
 old adage, " Like father, like son," does not hold in 
 regard to the rapidly acquired characteristics of the 
 parent. The shoemaker may so train his own body 
 that every action may be instinctively performed, — 
 he could do it all with his eyes shut, — but his son 
 will not thereby grow up a shoemaker by instinct. 
 It is only where the surroundings remain the same for 
 long periods that an instinct can be created. Instincts 
 cannot be formed when everything is in a state of 
 
SPONTANEITY 69 
 
 flux. If, when the germ of an instinct begins to 
 appear, the tendency it represents ceases to be useful, 
 then it disappears before it has attained any pro- 
 minence. It is only so far as the surroundings do not 
 change that the process of the elimination of the unfit, 
 carried on from generation to generation, can produce 
 those instinctive adjustments which are often so 
 perfect that little or no education is needed. 
 
 For mankind, so far as it is progressive, the 
 surroundings are always changing, because man 
 himself changes them. And the rate of change is 
 so rapid when compared with the period required for 
 the slow growth of an instinct, that we cannot expect 
 that our instinctive tendencies will suit the changed 
 environment. The function of education is not only 
 to produce in the individual those advantageous 
 aptitudes which have not yet become instinctive in 
 the race, it is also to repress disadvantageous instincts. 
 For if instincts arise slowly in the race, it is none 
 the less true that they take generations to die out 
 from the race, and that the period of civilisation has 
 been so short as compared with the earlier ages of 
 human existence, that a number of our instinctive 
 activities have to be modified or restrained rather 
 than developed. 
 
 We can now give a fair answer to the question why 
 education is needed. In the very early stages, indeed, 
 it is not needed ; the play of the infant is just as 
 educative as that of the kitten. Watch an eight 
 months' baby squirming along the floor ; every 
 feature, from the laughing eyes to the laughing mouth. 
 
70 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 . — every sound, from the low soft chortle of satisfaction 
 to the wild scream of success, — all join to show how 
 great is the pleasure of learning to walk. So it is 
 with all the fundamental activities which are common 
 to us and the savage. For them, education and 
 play are synonymous terms. But all too soon a new 
 stage is entered on. The period in which the child 
 develops those earlier characteristics of savage life 
 which still belong to civilisation is over ; character- 
 istics which civilised man has discarded begin to 
 appear ; those of civilised life, such as handwriting 
 and other subjects of the school curriculum, do not 
 spring into existence of themselves. Then, alas ! the 
 days of the early education, — the happy education of 
 play, too often cease, because the natural activities are 
 no longer regarded as helpful. The group of admiring 
 aunts is replaced by the schoolmaster, and education is 
 carried on by distasteful work rather than by happy play. 
 Here then is the contribution of biological history 
 to the problem of original sin. Because the ages of 
 uncivilised life have been long, the firmly formed 
 /instincts of uncivilised life still persist, so that we do 
 
 \/ by nature the things we ought not to do ; and because 
 the ages of civilisation have been short, and the changes 
 in civilisation very rapid, therefore there has been no 
 time to form instincts for it, such as the bee has for 
 bee life, and we leave undone the things we ought to 
 do. While in the young of the animal world — though 
 not always in domesticated animals — enjoyment and 
 utility go together, in children, pleasure and utility 
 so often seemed opposed that a large part of the 
 
SPONTANEITY 71 
 
 conscious education which mankind was beUeved to 
 require consisted of curbing the injurious tendencies. 
 And if the facts of Hfe, thus viewed, seemed to bear 
 out the old behef of the parent and the schoolmaster, 
 ihat education meant repression rather than growth, 
 no less did they support the theological view, that the 
 will of man was essentially evil, — that view which led 
 even the tender-hearted John Wesley to preach that 
 the parent's dut}^ to his children required that he 
 should " break their stubborn wills." Nor can we 
 be surprised at this when we remember that, untrust- 
 worthy as our bodily wants appeared in indicating 
 the path of physical health, they seemed even worse 
 adapted to further the higher interests of moral and 
 spiritual education. It is little wonder that, in the past, 
 men who were ignorant of the biological significance 
 of these apparent conflicts should have acted as though 
 there were three different aims in education, — the 
 moral and spiritual aim, the mental aim, and the 
 physical aim, and that these three aims were, for the 
 most part, contrary the one to the other. The work 
 of all the modern reformers in education has been to 
 combat this view, and to establish systems of educa- 
 tion in which the three aims shall all be attained 
 together, and with a minimum of interference with the 
 pupil's freedom. None of them has grappled with the 
 problem in so revolutionary a spirit as Dr. Montessori, 
 because no one had previously applied the principle 
 of education through spontaneity as intelligently as 
 she has. To understand the method, we must study 
 the relation of spontaneity to education very closely. 
 
72 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 2. Spontaneity and Instinct 
 
 An instructive lesson on spontaneity is afforded by the 
 contrast between a baby and a chick, as shown by 
 very careful experiments made by a Mr. Spalding. -"^ 
 When the chicks were about to break the shell he 
 broke it himself, and immediately put a hood over the 
 face of the chicks, so that they could not by any possi- 
 bility see anything. He allowed them to remain in 
 this state of darkness for two or three days, at the end 
 of which he placed them on a table, or a sheet of white 
 paper, on which a few small dead insects had been 
 placed ; and then he took the hood off. Almost 
 invariably they seemed a little stunned by the light, 
 and remained motionless for several minutes. After 
 a time, varying from two to fifteen minutes, they 
 pecked at the insects, showing not merely an instinc- 
 tive perception of distance, but an ability to judge 
 and measure distance with something like infallible 
 accuracy. They did not try to reach towards things 
 beyond their reach, as babies do. Almost invariably 
 they hit upon the object struck at ; they never missed 
 by the fiftieth of an inch. For instance, a chicken 
 that had been hooded for three days, remained still 
 for six minutes after the hood was taken off. At the 
 end of that time it followed the movements of a fly 
 twelve inches distant. After four minutes more it 
 
 ^ Macmillan's Magazine, February 1873. Some other observers, 
 experimenting on other chicks, did not get quite as remarkable 
 results as Mr. Spalding's chicks gave ; the instinctive adjustments 
 required some little practice before they became as perfect. 
 
SPONTANEITY 73 
 
 made a peck at its own toe, and the next instant it 
 made a vigorous dart at a fly which had come within 
 reach of its beak, and caught and swallowed it. For 
 seven minutes more it kept calling and looking about 
 it, when a hive bee came sufficiently near, and was 
 seized at the first dart, and thrown some distance 
 away, much disabled. After twenty minutes it was 
 placed on rough ground in sight of a hen with a brood 
 of chickens of its own age. It started off towards the 
 hen ; it leaped over the smaller obstacles that lay 
 in its path and ran round the larger ones, reaching 
 the mother in as straight a line as the nature of the 
 ground allowed. 
 
 Thus the chick does at once what it takes the 
 baby several years to learn. But that is not all. 
 To say that in the child the art of balancing, for 
 example, is obtained slowly while in the chick it appears 
 almost fully developed, is to omit one of the most 
 significant elements in the contrast. For it is not so 
 much that the child learns to make the proper move^ 
 ments, as that it learns to avoid the improper ones f 
 in other words, in the chick there is no redundancy of 
 action, while the child's actions abound in redundancy. 
 Let us admire the chick ! How perfect is its organisa- 
 tion, compared to that of the baby ! What a compli- 
 cated system it must possess ! For what we speak of 
 as the art of balancing is really the continuous adjust- 
 ment of most complicated muscular actions. We 
 recognise this in the familiar case of learning to ride 
 a bicycle. We make many false, that is, redundant 
 movements, because our nerve centres do not know 
 
74 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 what to do. Only after long practice, when we have 
 eliminated the redundant movements and the others 
 have become habitual, do we find that it is really 
 quite easy. 
 
 Yet the superiority of the infant chick is the proof 
 and badge of the inferiority of the hen, and in the 
 helplessness of the baby we find the certain sign of its 
 adult superiority. In the chick, as we have seen, there 
 are many purposeful and few or no purposeless actions ; 
 in the baby there are few purposeful actions and very 
 many purposeless ones. In other words, the ciijck 
 has little or no spontaneit}/, while the baby is faill of 
 spontaneity. By the spontaneous action of the baby, 
 is meant action which is not part of a definite series, 
 operating always in a definite order. Hence its 
 purposeless or spontaneous actions are those which 
 indicate the existence of ja. number of nerve centres 
 which as yet operate in no fixed manner. This fact 
 is of paramount ^gnificance, for on it the possibility 
 of education depends. From the physiological point 
 oi view, education consists in the establishment of new 
 -connections between nerves and body. If there is no 
 possibility of any nerve action except that which 
 follows a definite routine, then education is impossible. 
 If new activities are to be acquired, if there is to be 
 real progress, there must be undeveloped nerve paths, 
 that is, there must be spontaneity a distinguished from 
 instinct. The difference between the two is easily 
 described in physiological terms. Instinct depends 
 on the fact that the nerve paths corresponding to 
 the instinctive action are very thoroughly organised, 
 
SPONTANEITY 75 
 
 while purposeless spontaneity is due to a nerve dis- 
 charge passing along nerve matter whose organisa- 
 tion is so incomplete that it is impossible to predict 
 where it will pass, and what movements will result 
 from it. Progress or education, looked at from the 
 physiological point of view, means the organising, in 
 proper directions, of unorganised nervous matter, or, 
 as perhaps we ought to say, it consists in increasing 
 the organisation of incompletely organised nervous 
 matter. 
 
 Look at the bee. *' How doth the little busy bee 
 improve each shining hour ! " As Dr. Woods Hutch- 
 inson -^ says, our elders taught us to say this as our 
 tribute of praise ; and we did so, let us hope, with a 
 kind of dim feeling that there was something wrong 
 about it. vSo there is. If a biologist were to be told 
 this one fact about some otherwise unknown creature, 
 he would at once say : " Well, your animal has 
 its good points, no doubt ; but I'll tell you one thing 
 about it ; — you can't educate it ; it is practically 
 incapable of progress." Progress implies change ; it 
 is opposed to instinct, w^hich is fixed. W^hat the bee 
 does, it does by instinct. There is no semblance of 
 freedom about it. Because there are no varying 
 directions in which its energy tends spontaneously to 
 exhaust itself, therefore it cannot be educated. No 
 method of creating tendencies has been yet discovered. 
 All that the educator can do is ±0 take advantage 
 of some spontaneous tendency, and to cultivate it, 
 
 ^ Contemporary Review, September 1903. A lively and suggestive 
 article on the function of play in education. 
 
^6 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 making it the basis of the new activity. Therefore 
 to say that the bee wastes no time in idle play, is to say 
 that it has no other tendencies than those which relate 
 to the work of its everyday life, — no spontaneous 
 tendencies by which it can be educated to act as any- 
 thing but a working bee. If all its tendencies are 
 towards its work, then it will be a hopeless task to 
 divert it from its work. 
 
 We see the same thing with mankind in old age. 
 Old age is, indeed, often spoken of as a second child- 
 hood ; but the most important of all the character- 
 istics of childhood is absent — there is no real play — no 
 spontaneous energy seeking expression in a thousand 
 varying impulses. The mind works in fixed grooves, 
 and therefore, in the childhood of old age, education 
 is impossible. In fact, in every organism the possi- 
 bility of progressive improvement in the individual 
 involves the possibility of change in either direction, 
 that is, of retrogression as well as of improvement. 
 If man is to be able to rise above his normal standard, 
 it is a physiological necessity that he must also be able 
 to fall below it. Spontaneity or freedom has its dangers 
 as well as its advantages. It is the duty of the teacher, 
 as of the parent, to secure that the environment of the 
 pupil shall make for progress, not for retrogression. 
 
 3 Spontaneity and Cvilture Epochs 
 
 In the preceding section we have opposed spon- 
 taneity to instinct. We have seen that the purposeless 
 or spontaneous impulses of the baby are all-important 
 
SPONTANEITY 77 
 
 for its education ; that without them, education 
 is impossible. But as the baby grows into the child, 
 the number of its purposeless movements rapidly 
 decreases. The purposeless spontaneity of the baby 
 changes with advancing years into the playfulness of 
 the little one and the play of the boy or girl. Spon- 
 taneity ceases to be purposeless, it finds expression 
 in purposeful play. And even play does not seem to be 
 altogether spontaneous, if by that we mean dependent 
 on the individual, for it moves along lines which, on 
 the whole, follow a fairly definite order. There is a 
 remarkable if somewhat uncertain correspondence 
 between the progress of human civilisation and the 
 order in which the successive play instincts make 
 their appearance in the individual. The various 
 phases through which the child passes seem to bear 
 with them a faint echo of the history of the race — 
 indeed the more strenuous supporters of the Culture 
 Epoch theory, as it is commonly called, would never 
 admit that the echo was faint. The idea that the life 
 of the child is a kind of recapitulation of the history 
 of the race, was suggested in the literature of the 
 eighteenth century, but it was not till the nineteenth 
 that it became a recognised theory. Great names 
 are associated with it ; among them are Goethe, 
 Hegel, Comte, and Spencer. That it has a very 
 important bearing on education is evident ; the only 
 question is whether it is to be regarded as affording 
 suggestions to be investigated, or rules to be followed. 
 Some writers express the latter view far more positively 
 than the evidence appears to warrant. Thus Herbert 
 
78 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 Spencer holds that the education of the child must 
 reproduce in miniature the history of civilisation. 
 Dr. Montessori lays down the same rule in almost 
 similar terms (The Montessori Method, p. i6o, last two 
 paragraphs). In the opinion of the writer this is an 
 exaggeration, but it is certain that all who have to do 
 with children should know the outlines of the theory 
 and be ready to act on its suggestions. To those who 
 desire to apply the Montessori principles, this is 
 especially important. 
 
 Even those who are least inclined to admit that the 
 baby has any of the peculiar characteristics of the 
 savage, cannot but admit that it shows no sign of 
 the activities which are especially characteristic of 
 civilisation. On the contrary, it will be found that it 
 does resemble the savage in such instinctive activities 
 or desires as it does exhibit ; and the resemblance 
 persists through the earlier years of childhood. We, 
 indeed, usually put it the other way, and say that 
 savages are like children. In their sudden tempera- 
 mental changes, in their impulsiveness, in their lack 
 of power to control present actions by taking thought 
 for the future consequences, in their little vanities 
 and egoisms no less than in their delight in strong 
 contrasts and bright colours, the resemblance is 
 unmistakable. And from the commencement of life 
 there are more definite resemblances too, e.g. the 
 baby's first mode of examining objects is by putting 
 them in the mouth, just like the savage or the monkey,^ 
 
 1 A mischievous or playful child is often called " little monkey " 
 by its mother. From the physiological point of view, however, 
 
SPONTANEITY 79 
 
 and later on we find echoes of the history of the 
 gradual ascent of man in the various stages of the 
 children's play. 
 
 Very early in the baby's conscious life comes the 
 stage when safety is sought in concealment ; and in 
 the. vigour with which the little one plays the game of 
 peep-bo, — hiding behind any shelter, darting out 
 as suddenly as he retired, — we see an indication of 
 the strength of the impression left upon the race by 
 the long ages of struggle between man and beast. No 
 other of all the early play instincts is so permanent 
 as this one. Not only has the writer known young 
 people spontaneously recur to ,it even when almost 
 grown up, but, in the modified form of hide-and-seek, 
 it is the game which always gets the votes when, 
 having tired themselves with games belonging to the 
 
 there is far more justification for the rarer use of the name as appUed 
 to the httle baby. For the baby, unhke the child, still shares 
 with the monkey a number of pre-human attributes, of which the 
 most striking is the arrangement of the muscles which move the 
 thumb. It is not until it is several months old that it acquires the 
 human characteristic of being able to move the thumb laterally 
 across the palm of the hand, or that it loses the prehensile character 
 of the toes. 
 
 On the other hand, though in regard to its special aptitudes the 
 baby has not yet wholly emerged from the pre-human condition, 
 in certain of the larger characteristics which especially distinguish 
 men from other animals,- — ^viz. the size of the brain, the softness 
 and hairlessness of the skin, and the smallness and comparative 
 softness of the bones, — the baby seems as far in advance of the man 
 as the man is of the monkey, a fact which seems to suggest the 
 expectation of still further physiological advance in the race. But 
 the advance, if advance there be, is extremely slow — there is cer- 
 tainly no evidence of any advance during the past two or three 
 thousand years. 
 
So THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 later stages of civilisation, the cMdren say — " What 
 shall we play now ? " The earliest and most per- 
 sistent of the play impulses belongs, as we should 
 expect, to the earliest and most prolonged of the stages 
 of prehistoric life — ^the stage of hunting and being 
 hunted. 
 
 A little later, as increasing strength gives a greater 
 sense of power, the child becomes the hunter rather 
 than the hunted. A walk in the field, or even along 
 the roadside, has deligjits into which we, alas ! can 
 no longer enter. Probably we can scarcely remember 
 that we ever had such impulses. There are no doubt 
 " grown ups " who, having forgotten their own child- 
 hood, have so little sympathy with the young people 
 around them that they are never told of the prowling 
 expeditions which healthy children enjoy so thoroughly, 
 especially if they can get a lad or man to join them.^ 
 
 ^ It would bonify sooie wdMxoug^-up peofie did the wnt»r 
 tdl tibein of Iht temble zad \Aoodj excaaaaoos he had, now many 
 jeaa ago, wifli a raMna deiicate and vary geafie little msadea ci 
 tome aewen. or ei^A yeaa oi age. For tihe time bmig we wese a 
 big bear and a cub ; and every aom and Ihen some roadside weeds 
 or stooes, pethafs, were poooired to be taen waSldng witii cbfldDm. 
 Tboi, after a stealtlrf advance, fbe foe was readied, and the big 
 bear poonded the man, wbUe tiie littie cob nnasiied up fbe dtiild, 
 and blood and bcatns woe scattered an aromid. And worse remains 
 tobetfrfd. These pfDwls were takiOi before breakfast, and Ibebiead 
 and bfrtto' woe enjoyed tibe more because fbey wore eaten as the 
 biatns or the heart of fhe poor ebUd who had been pomided np to 
 make it tendo* eating. For two months tins was a never-ending 
 sooice of mental joy and of ^bjrsical vigour, and without a trace of 
 bftttahsing efiect. Quite snddody fhe j^ibauBe passed off, and some 
 yeais lata- the maidoi, now sixteen years of age, and althoujgli 
 stoM^jer, not less |^ende, is afked whether libe lecoOects tiiose 
 
SPONTANEITY 8i 
 
 The stages of tribe life come later with the child, 
 as doubtless they came later with the race. Organised 
 games of w'arfare succeed, such as ** Prisoners* Base," 
 " French and English," " King of the Castle." In these 
 games there are sides ; there is usually a captain ; 
 and they are exciting and enjoyable just so far as 
 they are realistic, — there must be captiu^es and rescues 
 and hair-breadth escapes. Sometimes, too, a nimiber 
 of boys will combine in gang^, and organise themselves 
 on the model of Robin Hood and his merr>* men. and 
 perhaps carry their mimic warfare too far for the com- 
 fort of the neighbourhood. 
 
 These later games have in them much of the " make- 
 believe " element. No matter how fully the boy 
 outers into them, he yet knows that they are but plays, 
 and remote from the actual facts of evervday life. 
 But the commercial instinct which manifests itself a 
 little later than the war instinct, is much more of a 
 reality. The marbles and odds and ends with which 
 the schoollxn' fills his jxH-kets are veiA^ real possessions 
 to him. Valueless as they are, he cannot lose them 
 without far more than the [xissing regret with which 
 he may lose a game. This is what we shoxild 
 expect. Activities which are no longer required 
 nuist have less significance: they are felt to be less 
 real. The activities which developed later in the 
 
 huntiii^ walks!; at aU ? The answer at first is ** Xo," but as the 
 details are ti^ld they seem to rouse a very faint echo in the mind, — 
 theiv is no tn»e recollection, but only some sort of dim recojinition 
 that it m*y be true. Left to ourselves, all ivcv>llection of the*e 
 earliest stitgos visually dis»ppe«is completely, 
 6 
 
82 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 race and are still essential to life appear later in 
 the child, but they have more significance ; there 
 is less of make-believe than with those that are 
 dying out. 
 
 Yet other instances of the immense impression 
 made by the past activities of the race will be found 
 in the childish delight in keeping domestic pets. Even 
 the spoilt only child who does nothing for anybody else, 
 and insists that every one shall attend to his or her 
 wants, will delight in doing all kinds of things for its 
 pet rabbit or bird — nay, will let no one else attend 
 to it. Who can fail to see in this a survival from the 
 long history of the domestication of animals ? A 
 process of such transcendent importance to mankind 
 must leave its impression behind it . Equally suggestive 
 of the past are the strange and solemn rites with 
 which the dead pet is often buried. The doll instinct 
 is even more fundamental, and it will be a bad day 
 for the race if it weakens.^ 
 
 These are only a few examples ; any one can add 
 others. For instance, it is a common observation 
 that the old-fashioned and simple toys have a far 
 more enduring hold on the affections of quite young 
 children than the expensive mechanical toys, the 
 novelties with which the shops are filled nowadays. 
 They are a nine days' wonder ; the older toys were a 
 lasting delight. Should the motor car ever drive the 
 
 ^ The mechanical doll, which performs for the child when a 
 spring is touched, does not fulfil the true purpose of the doll. It 
 appeals to two different stages of mental development in the child, 
 and does not develop the little mother in the child as it should. 
 
SPONTANEITY 83 
 
 horse out of existence, it is a safe prophecy that for 
 long ages after that unhappy if convenient time, 
 the primeval hobby - horse will still be a lasting 
 joy, a sure testimony to the immense importance 
 of the horse to mankind in the early history of 
 the race. 
 
 Something of this history of evolution may be 
 observed in the order in which juvenile literature is 
 appreciated, but not at all so plainly. For such 
 universal games as those described are the natural 
 outcome of child development — their universality 
 proves it ; but in the taste for literature there is much 
 that is artificial. 
 
 Nor are the evidences of our savage origin confined 
 to children. It is no mere accident, nor due to selfish 
 misuse of his position, that the professional man takes 
 a long and complete holiday. Until a further period 
 of civilisation shall have worked out the earlier element 
 far more completely, it will always be true that he 
 who uses in his daily occupation only those abstract 
 powers of mind which have developed very late 
 in the history of the race, will require to take a 
 special period of recreation in order to re-create the 
 fundamental physical powers common to us and 
 the savage, which form, in fact, the physical 
 foundation on which the higher powers of the mind 
 have been established.^ Therefore the man whose 
 lifework is most remote from them is the man who 
 
 1 The reference here is to what is known as the Biogenetic Law, 
 as expressed in the formula, ontogenesis equals phylogenesis. 
 It will be referred to later on. 
 
84 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 finds it most necessary to revert to the earlier 
 activities such as fishing or cUmbing. He expresses 
 it to himself by saying that he needs a change. 
 What is really necessary is that the higher mental 
 functions shall find in his bodily system that sup- 
 porting material by the aid and transformation of 
 which, in the long course of history, these highest 
 functions were evolved. 
 
 There have been several attempts to give a definite 
 classification of these epochs, but the fact that there 
 are several schemes is sufficient evidence of their 
 hypothetical nature. In the present state of our 
 knowledge, or perhaps it would be more candid to 
 say, of our ignorance, we are not justified in attempting 
 to draw hard-and-fast lines of demarcation. Indeed 
 we are not even able to predict what echoes of the 
 past would appear, and in what order, in a normal 
 child and in a normal environment. Some of these 
 stages may be skipped over by one child, others by 
 another. The environment, too, may do much to 
 suppress one stage or to encourage another. And 
 notwithstanding Dr. Montessori's own adoption of 
 the dictum that the education of the child should 
 follow that of the race, it would even appear that under 
 the guise of giving the fullest play to the child's 
 spontaneous tendencies, the Montessori method itself 
 has for its underlying principle the provision of an 
 environment which shall be so unfavourable to certain 
 of these spontaneous tendencies that they die a very 
 unnatural death ; they are, as it were, smothered on 
 their first appearance. 
 
SPONTANEITY 85 
 
 4. What is Spontaneity ? 
 
 [The excuse for this section is that, repulsive though 
 it be, it had to be written. Whether it has to be read 
 or not is a matter for the reader, not for the author, 
 whose responsibihty ends with the writing. Those 
 whose minds are of the critical type will perhaps read 
 it ; others, who belong to the assimilative type, will 
 probably skip it.] 
 
 The words spontaneous and spontaneity have been 
 used a good deal in the two preceding sections, but no 
 proper explanation of their meaning has been given, 
 except perhaps in connection with the purposeless 
 spontaneity of the baby, which has been contrasted 
 with the instinct of the chick. So far as the spontaneity 
 of the growing child manifests itself in play, it has. 
 been shown in the last section that there is a good deal 
 of ground for believing that play is not so spontaneous 
 as we might suppose ; that it is, in fact, due to inherited 
 tendencies, and that it follows a more or less definite 
 plan. Thus while the existence of purposeless spon- 
 taneity in the baby is evidently the basis of its 
 capacity for education, the way in which the child's 
 purposeful spontaneity is related to its education is 
 not at all so clear. 
 
 If the conception of spontaneity did not play such 
 an important part in the Montessori method, we might 
 let any difficulties of this kind dissolve away grad- 
 ually. But as it is, we are bound to make a careful, 
 if tedious, examination of the whole position, and in 
 especial, of the meaning we attach to spontaneity. 
 
86 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 When we turn to the dictionary/ we find that spon- 
 taneity is 
 
 " that character of any action of any subject by virtue of which 
 it takes place without being caused by anything distinguishable 
 from the subject itself. Spontaneity does not imply the absence 
 of a purpose or external end, but the absence of an external incite- 
 ment or external efficient cause." 
 
 Further on we find that in biology it relates to activities 
 which develop in the organism 
 
 " under no influence of external conditions or stimuli," 
 
 and that it is 
 
 " the tendency to purposeless activity of the muscular system of 
 animals, whereby they execute movements independent of ex- 
 ternal stimulus. Such actions, though voluntary, appear to lack 
 recognisable motive, and appear to depend on the tension of a 
 vigorous nervous system refreshed by repose. Such spontaneity 
 is notable in the great activity of children and the gambols of young 
 animals." 
 
 Without casting any aspersion on the dictionary 
 maker, we must observe that these definitions are not 
 satisfactory from the educationist's point of view. 
 They do, indeed, exclude certain activities which we 
 do not regard as spontaneous, e.g. actions depen- 
 dent only on an external stimulus (perhaps the best 
 example of such " mechanical " acts is that of a reflex 
 movement), while, again, they include voluntary 
 movements, which are among the most important 
 instances of spontaneity. But between these extremes 
 there are many intermediate groups, and it is just here, 
 
 ^ Century Dictionary. 
 
. SPONTANEITY 87 
 
 where our real need of assistance begins, that the 
 definitions fail us. In the case of an idiot, they include 
 the loose and meaningless flappings of the hand. They 
 also include those instinctive activities which do not 
 depend for their exercise on an external stimulus, as 
 well as various activities due to disorders, e.g. the 
 optical activities which accompany delirium tremens, for 
 the stimulus which gives rise to the nervous discharges 
 causing these activities is internal, not external.-^ 
 
 For our purposes it is very confusing to include 
 under one term such widely different activities as those 
 we find in the dictionary. The fact is that short 
 definitions of real things are unsatisfactory. If we 
 interpret them logically, we almost always find that 
 they are either too wide or too narrow. Phenomena 
 pass from one class to another gradually, while logical 
 definitions pass per saltum. In endeavouring to get 
 a very short set of words which shall include all the 
 cases we have in mind, we are almost certain to include 
 others which we have not in mind. The definition, 
 which is a short sentence, can never have the same 
 meaning as the enumeration of all the individual 
 cases it defines, which would require many long 
 sentences. Thus we cannot truly understand de- 
 
 ^ Unless, indeed, we regard the circulation of the blood in the 
 brain, or the matters it carries with it, as an " external " cause, which 
 would probably compel us to attribute all brain action to an " ex- 
 ternal " cause. And if it be said that in delirium tremens there are 
 certainly " external " matters in the shape of toxins in the blood, 
 the answer is that the same thing occurs in many mental conditions, 
 e.g. there is a toxin in the blood in anger, yet we do not class angry 
 acts as non-spontaneous. 
 
88 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 finitions of natural processes until we know the facts 
 on which they are based, — and then the definition 
 means for us far more than it expresses. Nevertheless 
 a definition is often very useful ; it is, in fact, an 
 abbreviated note, the value of which is twofold. In 
 the first place, it should serve as a nucleus, enabling us 
 readily to recall our previous knowledge ; and, in the 
 second place, it should not only help, but compel us 
 to analyse our conceptions and to sift out the essential 
 similarities which are common to the different cases 
 which we bring under the definition. In this case 
 the analysis, if followed up, shows that the definitions 
 are unreal — there is no activity of which we can be 
 sure that it is wholly uninfluenced by external con- 
 ditions or stimuli ; nor any action of any subject of 
 which we can assert that " it takes place without being 
 caused," in part at least, " by something indistin- 
 guishable from the subject." 
 
 For the educationist, the more scientific standpoint 
 is to consider that in the activities of an organism 
 there are two factors — the organism and the environ- 
 ment, and that the peculiar character of an organism, 
 as distinguished from lifeless matter, is that its re- 
 actions to stimuli, whether internal or external, are, 
 under normal conditions, such as to make for the subse- 
 quent well-being of the organism itself or of its species. 
 Of the nature of the physiological process by which 
 this is done, we have not the slightest idea, nor is 
 there any analogy in the physical world which could 
 assist us. It is this property of the organism that 
 enables it to adjust itself to an environment, so as to 
 
, SPONTANEITY 89 
 
 react to it more successfully than before. If it seems 
 to imply something like choice, it certainly does not 
 imply conscious choice, nor even consciousness, since 
 it is just as essential a property of plants as of animals. 
 On it depends what is, for educationists, the spon- 
 taneity of the organism. Observe, however, that we 
 do not class as spontaneous all the adjustments by 
 which the organism responds to stimuli. When the 
 response is fixed and unvarying in character, either 
 because it is instinctive or because it has become so 
 habitual as to be inevitable, then we look on it as 
 " mechanical " rather than spontaneous. This is 
 doubtless because in that case the organism seems to 
 have lost its peculiar power of modifying its response 
 so that it shall make for the well-being of itself or 
 its species. We keep the word " spontaneous " for 
 those uncertain responses whose character we cannot 
 predict, because they depend on the non-mechanical 
 element in the response, the element which baffles 
 all our attempts to investigate the mode of its opera- 
 tion. Thus our conception of spontaneity, like all 
 forms of thought which assume that phenomena do 
 not follow ascertained laws, is to be regarded as 
 essentialty imperfect, because it depends on the 
 limitations of our knowledge. What to-day we 
 regard as spontaneous, because we can see nothing 
 in the environment which renders the response in- 
 evitable, we may to-morrow cease to regard as spon- 
 taneous, because we may have discovered that it 
 was the " mechanical " response to a stimulus of 
 which we were not previously aware. Nay, we must 
 
90 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 recognise that, with fuller knowledge, even the con- 
 ception of spontaneity itself might have to be aban- 
 doned as no longer valid. Nevertheless, we must act 
 on the best knowledge we have, no matter how im- 
 perfect it be, and we do not abandon either the con- 
 ception or the word ; we continue to use both, though 
 we know they represent, not the complete facts, but 
 our imperfect beliefs about them. It is only on 
 special occasions like the present, when we are 
 examining a theory of education which claims to be 
 based on the conception of spontaneity, that we are 
 compelled to examine our conception, so as to assure 
 ourselves that we are relying on that which is valid 
 in the conception, and not on that which is merely 
 the outcome of our ignorance. 
 
 If the foregoing analysis of what the educationist 
 means by spontaneity be correct, it is a mere truism 
 to say that education must be based on spontaneity. 
 For as the purpose of all education is to modify the 
 responses which the organism makes to stimuli, only 
 that can be educated which is modifiable, and, accord- 
 ing to our explanation, that which is modifiable has 
 in it an element of spontaneity. 
 
 Or, again, we may put it thus : — When we can pre- 
 dict what the response to a stimulus will be, and will 
 remain, it is not a case for education ; it is a case of 
 education being either ineffective or unnecessary — 
 ineffective, if the response, although undesirable, is so 
 fixed that it cannot be altered by any efforts on our 
 part ; unnecessary , if the response is desirable. Indeed 
 the latter case, if it relates to education at all, is a 
 
SPONTANEITY 91 
 
 case for examination, not for teaching. So long, for 
 instance, as the response to the stimulus supplied 
 by the question, " How many are two and two ? " is 
 uncertain, we teach ; when the invariable response is 
 " Four," we cease to teach it. Examination furnishes 
 the test whether the response is sufficiently fixed to 
 dispense with further teaching. 
 
 The discussion has been long and tedious. It will 
 not have been futile if it serves to show how little 
 we advance a problem by discussions about words. 
 Its real use is negative, not positive ; it should prevent 
 our running away with the idea that we have laid 
 down some great principle when we announce that 
 education must be based on the spontaneity of the 
 pupil. Until we know the details included under the 
 statement, it is merely a verbal proposition. That is 
 what the discussion brings out. Except for one or 
 two physiological facts which are mentioned in the 
 discussion, the positive conclusion amounts to little 
 more than the statement that education is concerned 
 with what is educable. Its especial purpose here is 
 to serve as a warning to those who read Dr. Montes- 
 sori's book, that they are not to think that they have 
 grasped the principles on which her technique is really 
 founded, because they have convinced themselves 
 that education ought to be based on what they are 
 easily content to call spontaneity. Until we have 
 filled in the details, statements of this kind do not 
 advance us one iota ; for all methods of education are 
 equally based on spontaneity, if we take that word in 
 its educational meaning. Nor are we any better off 
 
92 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 if we say that education must be based on freedom, 
 because all education involves subjecting the pupil 
 to an environment, so that no system of education 
 can permit complete freedom to the pupil, — the very 
 conception of complete freedom is an impossible one, 
 for all environments affect or control the pupil's 
 action, and there must always be an environment. 
 But when we do know what the details are, then such 
 statements may be full of meaning for us. To fill 
 the details in is our next task. 
 
 5. Spontaneity and Education 
 
 The step next to be taken is to examine how edu- 
 cation and spontaneity are related in practice — to 
 outline in a very general way the details which alone 
 give meaning to the proposition that education must 
 be based on spontaneity. 
 
 We can find an illustration of the statement even in 
 the case of the chick, referred to in a preceding chapter. 
 For, perfect though its adjustments apparently were, 
 it yet required education so as to enable it to dis- 
 criminate between what to peck at and what to leave 
 alone ; and this education was supplied through its 
 spontaneous tendency to avoid unpleasant sensations. 
 It is through that tendency that it " learns " not to 
 repeat undesirable actions ; — having once pecked at a 
 bee and rejected it, it will not peck at a bee again. It 
 is only because the range of the chick's spontaneous 
 tendencies is exceedingly small that we cannot educate 
 it in the ordinary sense. 
 
SPONTANEITY 93 
 
 The child has a far larger range of spontaneous 
 tendencies than the young of any other animal. 
 Some of these are so fundamental that their origin 
 goes back far beyond the race history of mankind ; 
 others are much more recent, they belong to the era 
 of civilisation. The two most fundamental tendencieS| 
 which are common to all organisms are the tendency ^ 
 to repel or avoid hurtful experiences, and the tendency 
 to attract and repeat pleasurable ones. Intimately 
 connected with the first are the tendencies to resent- 
 ment, anger, and hate ; and with the second, the 
 tendencies to gratitude, sympathy, and love. 
 
 Less fundamental than these is the tendency to 
 imitation, which we appear to share with the higher^- 
 animals only. It is, indeed, not uncommonly said that 
 monkeys, parrots, and a few other talking birds are 
 the only animals which imitate, though sometimes 
 dogs are added to the list, as by Professor Stout. ^ 
 This only means that monkeys, some kinds of birds, 
 and perhaps dogs, are the only animals which imitate 
 man. But further evidence has been adduced to show 
 that dogs and cats do not imitate their own species. 
 It is pretty well established that a cat or a dog trying 
 to get out of a cage does not imitate another cat or 
 dog which gets out of the cage before its eyes. These, 
 however, are very artificial activities, and it is quite 
 erroneous to conclude from such experiments that 
 young animals do not imitate their parents or guardians 
 in activities which are natural to the species. It 
 
 ^ " Dogs often imitate their masters" (Stout, Manual of 
 Psychology, igoi, p. 282). The writer has never observed it. 
 
94 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 appears certain, from the experience of Signor Ferrari 
 (p. 96), that birds, Uke cats and dogs, cannot be got 
 to learn tricks by imitation ; yet it is well established 
 that singing birds learn their song by imitation, for a 
 singing bird put with foster parents of a different 
 species learns their song, not that of its own species. 
 It was evidently through imitation that the vast 
 majority of the Kea parrots of New Zealand learned 
 to kill sheep, biting through the fleece to eat the liver. ^ 
 As, however, parrots are known to imitate men, 
 the chief interest of this case lies in its analogy to the 
 observation of an American psychologist. Berry, ^ 
 quoted by Claparede in his Experimental Pedagogy, 
 to the effect that cats which as kittens were brought 
 up without seeing grown cats kill mice, do not kill 
 them, but only play with them, — which is probably 
 the explanation of the known fact that some domestic 
 cats are quite useless as mousers. But though it 
 seems very unlikely that the higher animals resemble 
 insects in performing all their essential activities 
 instinctively, and not by imitation, it is quite 
 clear that their imitation is instinctive rather than 
 
 1 This habit began by the parrots picking at the fleshy sides of 
 skins_hung up to dry. After a time some one or more parrots 
 thought of getting to the other side of the fleece on the hving sheep ; 
 and the speed with which this habit became common, and the way 
 in which the young parrots took it up, compels us to look on it as a 
 case of imitation. 
 
 2 Berry, " An Experimental Study of Imitation in Cats," Journal 
 of Comp. Neurol, xviii., 1908. No doubt if such a cat were hungry 
 and irritated, it would quarrel with the mouse, draw blood and take 
 to killing mice, just as the man-eating tiger takes to eating men. 
 
SPONTANEITY 95 
 
 conscious. Imitation in which we first watch what is 
 done, then form an image of it, and then make our 
 action follow our image, is probably far beyond them. 
 This is the kind of imitation which is needed for 
 getting out of a trap by observing another doing so. 
 
 Perhaps the tendency to solve puzzles is not suffi- 
 ciently distinct from curiosity to rank separately, 
 but it marks a higher stage of development. 
 
 These are the more general tendencies only — there 
 are many special tendencies, some of which are in- 
 stinctive, which it is quite unnecessary to enumerate, 
 e.g. breathing, talking, laughing, crying, sneezing, 
 and so on. In addition to these, there is what we 
 look on as purposeless spontaneity, such as manifests 
 itself in free movements and the many forms of 
 spontaneity shown in the play of children. 
 
 Connected with every vigorous manifestation of 
 these tendencies is what we call attention.^ Its 
 importance in education is so great that it would 
 be scarcely an exaggeration to assert that the 
 eternal problem for the teacher is how to secure the 
 attention of the pupil. It is as important in the 
 education of animals as in that of children. An 
 example, given in Darwin's Descent of Man, affords 
 an excellent illustration for the teacher. He tells 
 of a man who trained monkeys to act in plays. He 
 used to pay the Zoological Society £5 apiece for them, 
 but offered to pay £10 for those he retained if he might 
 have them on approbation for a few days. " Asked 
 how he could possibly learn so soon whether a parti- 
 
 1 In the baby it may hardly rise to attention. 
 
96 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 cular monkey would turn out a good actor, he answered 
 that it all depended on their power of attention. If 
 when he was talking and explaining anything to a 
 monkey its attention was easily distracted, as by a 
 fly on the wall or other trifling object, the case was 
 hopeless. If he tried by punishment to make an 
 inattentive monkey act, it turned sulky. On the 
 other hand, a monkey which attended to him could 
 always be trained." 
 
 This was not the view of vSignor Ferrari, whose 
 success in training birds was so remarkable. In 
 1904, in response to an inquiry made by the writer, 
 he replied as follows : 
 
 " I have no way of selecting birds to do any special 
 performance , but have to find out, often after much 
 patience and training, which is the most likely one for 
 the object I have in view, although there may be two 
 or three of the same species under the same training. 
 But I venture to say that the birds that have failed 
 in the before-mentioned, will nearly always take to 
 some other trick, and I have no hesitation in saying 
 that I can train any bird." ^ On the question of 
 imitation in birds, his observation that his birds never 
 learned tricks quicker by seeing other birds perform 
 them has been already referred to. 
 
 Signer Ferrari's method of watching for the spon- 
 taneous tendencies is that of Dr. Montessori, as 
 of all the best modern exponents of infant educa- 
 
 ^ Of course, this does not mean that he could train a bird of any 
 species. His experience was, no doubt, restricted to birds which, 
 having the play instinct, were capable of education. 
 
SPONTANEITY 97 
 
 tion. But it is not quite so easy to place the monkey 
 trainer. At first we might be disposed to rank him 
 with the teachers of ancient Egypt, whose maxim 
 was — " A lad has a back, and he hears when we strike 
 it." But the monkey didn't hear when the trainer 
 struck his back ; he turned sulky, whereas the lad 
 would probably have given some response. Now this 
 difference is worth examining into. The explanation 
 appears to be that the monkey trainer failed because 
 he desired to make the monkey do something it had 
 at the moment no spontaneous impulse to do ; and, 
 as we may reasonably assume, he could not get the 
 monkey to connect the punishment with his failure 
 to do the desired acts. In other words, he was unable 
 to utilise the monkey's spontaneous tendency to 
 avoid punishment. With the boy it is different. 
 If he has no direct spontaneous desire or tendency to 
 learn, the teacher can create in him what may be called 
 an indirect desire to do it, because he can, as it were, 
 graft 1 this desire on the spontaneous desire to avoid 
 punishment. If the grafting process is skilfully 
 carried out, the result may be to create a new spon- 
 taneity : a boy who is forced into what he regards as 
 
 1 All analogies misrepresent the facts in some particulars, and 
 this analogy of " grafting " is no exception. But as it serves to 
 express a conception which would otherwise involve circumlocution, 
 it seems worth while to use it, and there is after all a good deal of 
 analogy. The graft does not grow on its own root, but receives its 
 nourishment and support from what it is grafted on ; yet after a 
 time the two become so closely united that the graft ceases to be a 
 foreign body, and becomes part of the plant on whose stem it was 
 grafted. Other analogies will be readily apparent, 
 
 7 
 
98 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 the useless habit of washing his hands before meals 
 will probably continue to do so, not only through 
 the force of habit, but through a really spontaneous 
 desire for it. He would feel uncomfortable if he 
 omitted it. 
 
 But just as in plants so in education, the grafting 
 process has its limitations. We cannot graft one 
 tendency on another unless it be a tendency which 
 is at least a possible one for the organism. In dogs 
 we can graft many tendencies, called tricks, on the 
 two fundamental spontaneities — avoiding what is 
 hurtful, and seeking to repeat what is a source of 
 satisfaction. But you could never, in this way, 
 graft articulate speech on any spontaneity of a dog. 
 There must, in fact, be what we may call a possibility 
 of spontaneity in the tendency we would graft. You 
 can only use rewards and punishments to teach a 
 dog a " language " based on the sounds it can make 
 spontaneously. Nor is that the only limitation. 
 Just as in plants so in education, too great a dis- 
 similarity may be fatal to grafting. A boy may be 
 quite capable of a spontaneous love for his teacher, 
 but it could never be grafted on the fear of punishment. 
 This is so obvious that no teacher is likely to attempt 
 it. But the Egyptian type of teacher attempts quite 
 as impossible a process every time he endeavours, 
 through the fear of punishment, to make a boy attend 
 to and understand a reasoning process for which his 
 mind is not yet sufficiently matured, to take only one 
 of many examples. In this respect the boy is not 
 at all so happily situated as the monkey ; for as soon 
 
SPONTANEITY , 99 
 
 as the monkey trainer found that he could not graft 
 any performance at all on the monkey's fear of punish- 
 ment, he ceased to punish. But the teacher, who knows 
 he can graft some activities, does not lose heart so 
 quickly, and therefore he keeps on punishing in cases 
 where it is just as useless as it was with the monkey. 
 
 We may then roughly divide spontaneous tendencies 
 into two classes. We may desire to do something 
 for the mere doing of it ; the sole motive is the im- 
 mediate desire to exercise the activity ; there is no 
 mental representation of future satisfaction ; no desire 
 to stand well with another person ; there is simply 
 an inner tendency to action without any other stimu- 
 lus than is afforded by the actual environment of 
 the moment. This we may call direct or primary 
 spontaneity. 
 
 On the other hand, we may desire to do something, 
 not for the mere sake of doing it, but for some ulterior 
 motive — e.g. one of these excluded in the first case. 
 This we may call indirect or secondary spontaneity. 
 So far as the teacher relies on indirect spontaneity, it 
 is a case of education by grafting. 
 
 Using this nomenclature, it will appear that in 
 regard to the education of senses and muscles, Dr. 
 Montessori's object is to be guided as completely as 
 possible by the direct or primary spontaneities ; 
 that the same is, for the most part, true in regard to 
 intellectual activity ; but that, in regard to the 
 activities which relate to social conduct, she is guided, 
 not by the child's primary spontaneities, but by her 
 own conceptions of what is desirable conduct, and 
 
lOO THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 that, in inculcating these conceptions upon the child, 
 she relies chiefly on sympathetic encouragement, 
 and on the child's spontaneous desire to please those 
 who treat him kindly. But it would seem that she 
 does not hesitate to employ whatever measure of 
 " absolute rigour " may be required to suppress anti- 
 social conduct in the case of normal children. In 
 this she follows the practice of all good and sym- 
 pathetic teachers, but she is far in advance of the 
 majority in her insistence on the medical examination 
 of refractory children, believing that, at that early 
 age, moral defects are usually founded on physical 
 infirmities. 
 
 6. Higher and Lower Spontaneities 
 
 The discussion in the preceding sections is necessary 
 to an intelligent comprehension of Dr. Montessori's 
 work, because, following Seguin, she bases her methods 
 of education on the spontaneity or freedom of the 
 child. If, indeed, she always relied on the direct spon- 
 taneity of the child, if she never used the grafting 
 process, we might draw a sharp line of division between 
 her method and that of the Egyptian type. But, as 
 we shall see, she does use the grafting process — no 
 teacher can do without it. And, as we have seen, 
 the Egyptian teacher, so far at least as he succeeds, 
 does so because he utilises the spontaneous tendencies 
 of the child — no teacher can succeed at all except 
 so far as he does so. How then are we to express 
 the difference between the two types ? 
 
SPONTANEITY ''^ ^''''"'VoT 
 
 The truth is that the difference between the modern 
 teacher and the old teacher, even that between Dr. 
 Montessori and the Egyptian teacher, is not one of 
 principle but of application. The new education 
 is quite ready to graft one tendency on another, but 
 it chooses its tendencies with much more care than the 
 old. For one thing, it tries as far as possible only 
 to graft tendencies when they are almost, if not quite, 
 strong enough to develop of themselves. Hence it 
 lays great stress on observing the child, so as to find 
 out what the child's spontaneous tendencies are, in 
 order that they may be utilised at the proper time. 
 Then it usually casts about for some more funda- 
 mental tendency on which the new tendencies may be 
 grafted and made permanent. (Here reinforced, or 
 strengthened, is perhaps a better term than grafted.) 
 Dr. Montessori is especially distinguished from other 
 modern teachers by the extraordinary thoroughness 
 with which she has applied the modern view, a 
 thoroughness which is forced on those who, like 
 Itard, Seguin, and their disciples, have to educate the 
 idiot or deficient child. 
 
 It is not only that the two processes, the old and the 
 modern, are different ; the results are different, even 
 when each process appears to attain the same end. 
 Suppose, for example, that we desire to bring up a 
 boy to be a professional stamp collector. Probably we 
 could, in eight or nine cases out of every ten, succeed 
 fairly well by grafting this activity on the fear of 
 punishment or the hope of reward. No matter at 
 what age the lad was taken in hand, a skilful teacher 
 
'ibV "' ' THE'Mb^tESSORI METHOD 
 
 might expect to make a fair success of it. But if we 
 can catch the boy at the time the collecting impulse 
 begins to show itself, we shall probably succeed far 
 better and with much less trouble. It will only be 
 necessary to encourage the tendency by affording it 
 reasonable opportunities of satisfying itself — reasonable 
 opportunity, not full opportunity, if by that we mean 
 opportunity to acquire collections without effort. 
 Human organisms in their early stages are above all 
 working organisms, and we treasure that which has 
 cost us an effort ; we may be surfeited even with that 
 which we desire, especially when we obtain it without 
 effort. If the stamp-collecting tendency be wisely 
 utilised, it is likely, in after-life, to become much more 
 than a business ; it will probably unite with higher 
 interests than when the cruder method of grafting is 
 employed, and the whole life will be on a higher 
 intellectual level. Still, we cannot be sure that the 
 results of the later method will in all cases be better 
 than that of the earlier — with some pupils it may be 
 that the Spartan training of earlier times would result 
 in a more thorough grounding than even the best of 
 the " softer " methods of to-day, and might produce 
 a more permanent effect. Applied to classics, it is at 
 any rate certain that, even if it may have spoiled 
 many a promising scholar, the old method has at 
 least turned out some very fine ones. 
 
 But whatever doubt there may be as to the effect 
 on the actual knowledge of the pupil, there can 
 be none as to the more civilising effect on character 
 of the modern method. For it is of the very essence of 
 
SPONTANEITY 103 
 
 civilisation that the motives which we share with the 
 animal and the savage shall become less and less the 
 mainsprings of our action. In the course of civilisa- 
 tion, not only are new tendencies, new mainsprings 
 of action, developed, but even the older or more funda- 
 mental ones are transformed. The desire of the animal 
 or the savage to avoid immediate pain is trans- 
 formed into the civilised man's desire to avoid long 
 deferred pain. Nor is that all. The very nature of 
 pain and pleasure is transformed ; they acquire a moral 
 and spiritual character incomprehensible to the savage. 
 These new tendencies, or new motives, or new char- 
 acteristics, whatever we like to call them, are of the 
 very essence of civilisation. The education which 
 fails to call them into being fails in the most essential 
 of all the requirements of progress. 
 
 Thus there is a second aspect of the contrast between 
 the modern and the old education. Not only does 
 the modern education select with far more care the 
 tendencies or activities which it proposes to reinforce 
 or graft on other stronger tendencies, but it also 
 selects with far more care the stronger tendencies on 
 which the new ones are to be grafted. If we under- 
 stand by the more fundamental activities those which 
 developed earlier in the history of the race, then we 
 may express the contrast thus — while the older educa- 
 tion endeavoured to graft all other activities on the 
 most fundamental ones, the later education endeavours 
 to graft them on the less fundamental ones, meaning 
 those which developed later in the history of the race. 
 In times gone by, the generally recognised method was 
 
104 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 to graft all other activities on the tendency to avoid 
 violently hurtful experiences, which is perhaps the 
 most fundamental of all. We read, for instance, in 
 the ceremony of inception of a schoolmaster in the 
 Renaissance period, that, the candidate being provided 
 with a lively new cane, the Bedell of the school pro- 
 vided a " shrew de boy " on whom to whet the cane. 
 If the caning was that of a master hand, the ceremony 
 was satisfactorily concluded — at least to all but one 
 of those concerned, and as he got a groat on that 
 occasion, perhaps he was well satisfied too. Even 
 still the candidate for a scholarship or a fellowship 
 in Trinity College, Dublin, has to make a declaration 
 that he was educated " suh ferula M. N.," his teacher. 
 The modern method, on the other hand, endeavours to 
 utilise the higher activities, the social instincts, and 
 thus to give force and volume to tendencies which 
 make for the higher heritages of the race. This is as 
 it should be ; but we must not forget that just as these 
 tendencies belong to the later history of mankind, 
 so they belong to the later stages of the pupil's life, 
 and we meet with no response if we appeal to them 
 in the earlier stages. For instance, while very young 
 children, like dogs and savages, may be trained to 
 avoid wrong acts by the dread of immediate punish- 
 ment, it is only civilised man who is withheld by the 
 mental representation of long deferred evil to himself 
 or to others, whether it be physical pain or mental or 
 moral suffering. It follows necessarily that with very 
 young children, education should be confined to en- 
 couraging the spontaneous manifestations as they 
 
SPONTANEITY 105 
 
 develop, because at that age the only method of en- 
 couraging other activities would be by endeavouring 
 to graft them on the lowest motives ; and even that 
 is scarcely likely to succeed because, just as with the 
 monkey, it is difficult to establish a connection in 
 the infant mind between the pleasure or pain and 
 the reason for which the teacher gives it. Nor is this 
 the only, or even the chief objection. It is injurious 
 to use these early punishments at all. There is more 
 than one reason for this. In the first place, physical 
 pain is a hindrance to physical development, and in so 
 far it is injurious. But there is a moral objection. 
 It is only when punishment has moral significance for 
 the child that it can be morally justifiable to inflict 
 it. Before that stage, it may be necessary to use 
 physical force as a means of deterring the child from 
 some injurious action ; but though this may be painful 
 to the child, it is not to be confused with punishment 
 proper. And after the child can recognise the moral 
 significance of punishment, it is immoral to employj/ 
 pain as a mere deterrent, and without any moral 
 recognition on the child's part, because that would 
 be to give unnecessary prominence to the lower part 
 of his nature, and so far to place him on the same 
 level as the savage or the animal. Observe, however, 
 that this does not apply to pain resulting from a 
 violation of mere physical laws, because the child 
 should not recognise such pain as morally significant. 
 It should be treated as impersonal, and should never 
 be given the moral significance of punishment inflicted 
 by a moral being. Nurses and others not infrequently 
 
io6 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 fall into error here. When a child knocks up against 
 a table and hurts himself, the nurse will sometimes try 
 to soothe him by slapping the table and saying, 
 " Naughty table," and perhaps she encourages him to 
 do the same. That is a disastrous way to treat the 
 situation. It brings a non-moral accident into the 
 sphere of morality, and in the worst possible way, 
 because it excites the immoral sentiment of anger in 
 the child, and encourages him to vent anger in a slap. 
 It also dulls the point of the lesson the child should 
 learn, namely, to avoid bumping against the table. 
 All such pain should be treated as simple pain, con- 
 veying no other meaning than the natural warning to 
 be more careful in future.^ 
 
 ; Biologically, reward stands on an entirely different 
 ^- footing from punishment, so different that the two 
 should never be classed under the single heading 
 of " rewards and punishments." Psychologically they 
 serve the same purpose as incentives — one may indeed 
 be replaced by the other. But, physiologically, they 
 are absolutely opposed — there is nothing in common 
 between them ; for while pain is a hindrance to growth, 
 *^pleasure is an aid to it.^ It is not only right, it is 
 necessary to encourage and sympathise with the 
 
 ^ This is not exactly Spencer's view of punishment. 
 
 2 It is not improbable that this statement is universally true when 
 interpreted in its literal sense and with reference to immediate 
 physiological effects only. With regard to its indirect effects, 
 pain may be a most necessary element in the normal development 
 of an organism, because it may be necessary to suppress that which 
 is undesirable in itself, or which though not undesirable yet excludes 
 a more desirable growth. 
 
SPONTANEITY 107 
 
 manifestations of all those among the spontaneous 
 tendencies which are valuable for civilisation. It 
 is right and necessary to increase in that way the 
 pleasure which the child experiences from the spon- 
 taneous exercise of its natural tendencies. To do so 
 is only to carry on the normal processes of nature. 
 The loving delight of the mother in the simple acts of 
 the child is part of the natural stimulus without 
 which the child will not reach its full development. 
 The higher tendencies of the child have not in them- 
 selves that force which ensures their own develop- 
 ment ; they require encouragement from the environ- 
 ment. If he be placed in a non-social environment, 
 these higher tendencies will die for want of the stimulus 
 which such an environment supplies. This has been 
 proved in several authenticated instances of children 
 of civilised parents who have grown up without 
 a social environment, and the results are of great 
 interest historicalh/ as well as physiologically, and, 
 as will be presently seen, they have a direct bearing 
 on the theory of spontaneous education, as advocated 
 by Dr. Montessori. 
 
 7. The Influence of Environment. 
 
 Before the close of the eighteenth century, when 
 Itard, by his attempts to educate the Wild Boy of 
 Aveyron, laid the foundations on which Seguin and 
 Montessori built, there had been, since 1544, at least 
 ten recorded instances of wild children found in 
 Europe, of whom two were girls. It does not appear 
 
io8 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 that it was found possible to educate any of these 
 children. All that could be done was to tame them. 
 Like the higher animals, they could understand a 
 little of human speech, but could never speak them- 
 selves. We are not likely to have another European 
 " Wild Boy," but within quite recent times the story 
 of Romulus and Remus has been several times repeated 
 in the North-west Provinces of India, where many little 
 children were, and some still are, carried off by wolves. 
 Most, no doubt, are devoured, but some, who must 
 have been brought up by their foster-parents, have been 
 found living with the wolves in their dens. Of these 
 children several have been captured alive, usually after 
 a terrible struggle ; and of them, some were brought 
 to Mission Stations. None of them ever learned to 
 speak, or to take a human interest in life, nor, so far 
 as the writer can ascertain, did any of them ever learn 
 to work ; in fact, considered as human beings, they 
 never became even semi-normal. The best description 
 the writer has found of any of these children is in 
 Jungle Life in India, by the late Professor Valentine 
 Ball, F.R.S., pp. 459 et seq. When employed in the 
 Geological Survey of India, he saw an account of a 
 wolf-child captured in 1872, and brought to the 
 Sikandra C.M.S. Missionary Orphanage near Agra. 
 Two years later, being in the neighbourhood he took 
 the opportunity of visiting the Orphanage, on 3rd 
 August 1874, in order to see it. It had died, but 
 he found another wolf-child there, a lad of about 
 fifteen years, named Sanichar, who was captured by 
 some natives in a cave, with a wolf, at Balundshaher, 
 
SPONTANEITY 109 
 
 and sent on the 4th Feb. 1867 to the same Orphanage. 
 For a considerable time he could not be tamed, or 
 taught to walk erect ; he persisted in eating like a 
 carnivorous animal, and tore his clothing to shreds. 
 (These peculiarities seem to have been common to all 
 the wolf-boys.) He was kindly treated, and became 
 docile and obedient. He learned to make sounds, and 
 to express freely his anger or joy, but never uttered a 
 word of speech. He sat on the ground, behaving just 
 like a monkey. Of him Professor Ball gives the 
 following account : — 
 
 " He presented an appearance not uncommonly seen 
 in ordinary idiots. His forehead was low, his manner 
 restless and fidgety. From time to time he grinned 
 in a manner that was more simian than human, the 
 effect of which was intensified by a nervous twitching 
 of the lower jaw ... he depends much more on the 
 sense of smell than on that of taste for the identification 
 of objects [in this he resembled animals rather than 
 savages]. . . . Without constant supervision it is 
 impossible to keep him to any" work. He will, for 
 instance, carry a basket while watched, but immedi- 
 ately drops it when left alone." His arms were extra- 
 ordinarily short, only 19^ inches, due no doubt, as 
 Professor Ball says, to his having gone on all fours, as 
 all the wolf-boys are reported to have done when 
 captured. For several months after capture he had 
 been unable to maintain an upright position, and when 
 at length he came to walk upright, it is said to have 
 been with a very curious action, "like one wading 
 through thick grass, and at the same time moving 
 
no THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 with a series of jerks. His head also was continually 
 in motion, turning rapidly from side to side, and his 
 eyes glaring, as though he expected an attack from 
 some unseen enemy." These peculiarities seem to 
 have continued till his death in 1896.^ 
 
 Some of the peculiarities observed by Professor Ball 
 are well seen in the illustration opposite. ^ It is very un- 
 fortunate that no scientific examination seems to have 
 been made of these Indian cases. Extremely interest- 
 ing results might possibly have been obtained from ob- 
 servations by a trained psychologist whose knowledge 
 of phj/siology was at least sufficient to indicate to him 
 the directions in which to experiment ; and especially 
 from post-mortem examination of the nervous system, 
 and even of the bones and muscles. 
 
 We cannot be sure whether the disastrous results of 
 putting these young children in a wolf -environment 
 were due to direct discouragement of the human 
 elements in their spontaneities, or merely to want of 
 encouragement for them. The foster-parents may have 
 been angry when the child attempted to make human 
 sounds, or they may have simply ignored them. 
 Whichever be the true explanation, these children 
 
 ^ Regarding the other wolf-boy, who had died after about four 
 months' captivity, Mr. Erhardt, the missionary in charge, told Pro- 
 fessor Ball that he behaved like a wild animal, and would never 
 remain with the other boys, but hid away in any dark corner. 
 During the whole time he was in the Orphanage he uttered no sound 
 save a melancholy whine like that made by young cubs. A strange 
 bond of sympathy attached the two boys together, and the elder 
 one first taught the younger to drink out of a cup. 
 
 2 Reproduced from a photograph obtained through the courtesy 
 of Mr. J. Bark3r Wells. 
 
SPONTANEITY in 
 
 afford a striking illustration of the fact that even the 
 strongest of all the higher spontaneous tendencies of 
 the child will not develop at all unless it meets with a\ y^ 
 sufficiently favourable environment at the right timer 
 The spontaneous impulse to talk did not develop into 
 
 Fig. I. — SANICHAR, THE WOLF-MAN. 
 
 speech in the unfavourable environment of these foster- 
 children of the wolves ; and when, about seven years of 
 age (and sometimes earlier), they were put in an 
 environment favourable for speech development, it 
 was too late. The age is one at which it is easy for 
 normal children to pick up a new language conver- 
 
112 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 sationally. In them the region of the brain which 
 deals with speech is still exceedingly plastic. The early 
 spontaneity which prompted them to use the organs of 
 speech was caught at the right time and rendered per- 
 manent. But with the foster-children of the wolves, 
 these regions of the brain had ceased to be sufficiently 
 plastic at that early age, and neither the plasticity nor 
 the spontaneity was ever restored. 
 
 Of the two factors on which the child's mental and 
 moral character depends, its own spontaneity and the 
 nature of the environment, the latter is from one point 
 of view the more important because it alone is under 
 our control. The other factor, the nature of the child, 
 is given to us at birth ; the environment provides the 
 mental and moral food by which the spontaneous ten- 
 dencies of the child must be nourished and developed, 
 or arrested, as the case may be. Bat we must not press 
 the analogy between the food of the mind and that of 
 the body too far, because the selective influence of 
 the mental environment has no parallel in the physical 
 feeding of the body. The organism itself takes care 
 that the nourishment shall be sent in the same pro- 
 portions to the different parts of the body — we can do 
 little or nothing to develop this or that organ by 
 selecting this or that food ; if we starve some one ele- 
 ment in the body, e.g. the bones, by giving insufficient 
 lime, the whole body suffers. This is in striking contrast 
 to the way in which the various spontaneities respond 
 to the encouragement or discouragement of the en- 
 vironment. Even the wolf-children illustrate this, 
 although at first sight it might be thought that all the 
 
SPONTANEITY 113 
 
 spontaneities had been starved together. But though 
 this was true of the higher spontaneities, the lower 
 spontaneities of self-defence and self-preservation were 
 developed to an extraordinary extent. It was not 
 until years of a civilised environment had discouraged 
 these lower spontaneities that the wolf-man became the 
 listless thing in the picture. Nevertheless there are 
 many who consider that the environment is a very 
 minor factor. They will admit some influence — that a 
 favourable environment will allow the natural character 
 to attain its full effective strength, while an un- 
 favourable one may weaken it somewhat, yet they hold 
 that what is called "character" will be practically 
 unaffected. Yet even to the untrained eye, a mere 
 inspection of the figure shows how overpowering 
 may be the influence of an unfavourable environment. 
 It is all a matter of degree, and although an exception- 
 ally strong character may appear almost uninfluenced 
 by minor modifications in the environment, this should 
 not prevent our recognising that environment is always 
 a great, and sometimes the paramount, factor in 
 determining character. At all events as the entire 
 difference between one method of education and 
 another is a difference in environment, a study of any 
 new method is really a study of the environment pro- 
 vided by the method. And in the Montessori method 
 the " didactic material," as it is called, though an 
 important element in the environment, is probably far 
 from being as important as the human element, 
 especially in regard to moral training. In reading 
 Dr. Montessori's book it is easy to miss this point, 
 8 
 
114 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 not only because she lays so much stress on the 
 spontaneity of the child, but also because it is only 
 through incidental glimpses that we become aware 
 that her own personality is a paramount factor in 
 the pupil's environment, a fact of which she herself is 
 apparently unconscious. 
 
 Following the logical order of exposition, it would 
 now seem appropriate to consider the principle of 
 liberty on which, with the conceptions of spontaneity. 
 Dr. Montessori claims to base her methods, and then 
 to describe her apparatus and technique, beginning 
 with the simplest stages — those in which the training 
 of the pupil is most nearly on the perceptual level — 
 and then to work up, in regular gradation, to the intel- 
 lectual level. But we shall obtain a better general 
 perspective view of the Montessori conception if we 
 pass at once to the method of teaching writing and 
 reading, in which the higher as well as the lower 
 activities must be taught. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE TEACHING OF WRITING AND READING 
 
 I. Writing as a Means of Expression 
 
 Writing is not a mere mechanical art. It should 
 be taught as a means of self-expression as well as a 
 means of communicating with others. 
 
 An illustration may make this clearer. Suppose 
 that a child, who knew no German, were taught to 
 write in German characters, he could then copy 
 any German work ; and if he had also been taught the 
 pronunciation, he could write German sentences from 
 dictation, or he could learn by heart the sequence of 
 German words in a poem and write it down from 
 memory. In all these exercises he might acquire the 
 greatest facility. In one sense such a child would 
 have learned to write. But writing for him would be 
 but a mechanical art ; what he wrote would have 
 no meaning for him. Such writing could never 
 become, in the full sense, a means of self-expression. 
 It might, indeed, express moods or feelings — even a 
 careless observer would see that it varied with fatigue, 
 with discontent, and so on. But it could never 
 express thought. It would not be wholly mechanical, 
 
 "5 
 
 y 
 
ii6 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 —no organic activity ever is, — but it would be as 
 nearly mechanical as a human activity can be. 
 
 The perfection of writing is twofold. Because it is 
 used to transfer thought to others, it should be clear 
 and legible. In regard to this the child of the last 
 paragraph might excel. But he knows nothing of its 
 higher functions. As a means of self-expression, its 
 perfection consists in its spontaneously following the 
 thought which it expresses. The fingers must indeed 
 be directed by the nerves, and some portion of nervous 
 energy must be spent on this ; but it should not require 
 an effort of attention, because the attention given to 
 it must detract from the attention given to the thought 
 it expresses. Thus, paradoxical though it may sound, 
 the more mechanically perfect is the apparatus by 
 which the physical movements of writing are per- 
 formed, the less mechanical is the process of self-ex- 
 pression in writing. We may illustrate — the actions 
 of speech have with most of us become so mechanically 
 perfect that speech has become a spontaneous expres- 
 sion of thought. The thought and its utterance often 
 seem to be simultaneous — we become conscious of the 
 thought only when we hear ourselves expressing it. 
 With the orator or the practised advocate, this seems 
 not to be uncommon. 
 
 Dr. Montessori rightly lays great stress on this 
 expressive aspect of writing. She gets the pupil over 
 the mechanical difficulties of writing without his 
 knowing that he is learning to write, and there she 
 leaves him till, in a little while, he discovers for himself 
 that he can write words or sentences, not by copying 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 117 
 
 them, or writing them from dictation, but because he 
 has an inner impulse to express himself in that way. 
 This sudden discovery by the pupil that he possesses 
 a new power is a great intellectual stimulus to him. 
 Thus writing becomes a pleasure instead of a task. 
 
 Perhaps the best analogy to this method of pre- 
 liminary preparation is to be found in the modern 
 mode of teaching to swim. Instead of putting the 
 learner into the water, so that he has to learn the 
 management of arms and legs, of breath and body, 
 all at the same time, he is swung up in the proper 
 position in a gymnasium, and first taught one move- 
 ment, then another, and so on until it becomes easy 
 for him to combine them all. Not until he has become 
 expert in this, is he put into the water. The result 
 is that he begins to swim quite easily, and without 
 that terror of the water which so often prevents young 
 people from learning to swim at all.^ 
 
 Observe, too, that the process is much quicker, 
 as well as much pleasanter. Because the separate 
 movements can be practised separately, it is possible 
 to devote the whole attention to one movement until 
 it becomes almost automatic, and it is well known that 
 this is the condition of quick learning and of good 
 learning. This idea, that a combined movement was 
 best learned by practising the separate movements 
 
 ^ This method of teaching a muscular activity by teaching separ- 
 ately the different components of the activity is often employed, e.g. 
 in technical schools, in army drill, in gymnastic training, etc. Itard 
 seems to have been the first to apply the principle from the physio- 
 logical standpoint. 
 
ii8 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 of which it was composed, lay at the root of some of 
 the earlier methods of teaching to write. The pupil 
 was taught to copy straight strokes, hooks and 
 circles, one after the other, before he made letters. 
 The idea was that when he had learned to do each of 
 these easily and well, he could then readily combine 
 them into letters. That is quite true, but the method 
 
 "gives no relief to the pupil, because the physiological 
 processes involved in cop3/ing straight lines or hooks, 
 are just about as complicated as those in copying a 
 complete letter. The attention has always to be 
 divided between the eye and the hand, just as in copying 
 a complete letter, and the same set of nerves has to 
 direct the same set of muscles whether the stroke is a 
 straight line or a hook or a circle. It follows that the 
 geometrical analysis of the shapes of the letters has 
 no analogy to the physiological analysis of the mus- 
 cular actions in swimming, since it is in the latter case 
 alone that the complicated sets of actions involved are 
 broken up into their separate muscular components. 
 
 In writing, therefore, the difficulty is somewhat 
 different from that in swimming. No matter what 
 letters we form, we employ just the same groups of 
 muscles, and we are bound to educate them all at the 
 same time ; we have no opportunity of educating them 
 separately. Happily, however, this comes far more 
 naturally to us than the simultaneous education of 
 
 . quite separate parts of the body such as the legs and 
 the arms. For the legs and arms are moved by nerve 
 centres situated in different parts of the brain, and it 
 is found to be much harder to co-ordinate movements 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 119 
 
 which spring from different nerve centres than those 
 which spring from the same nerve centre. In the 
 ordinary method of learning to write the great difficulty 
 is not so much in accustoming the fingers to make 
 the movements of writing, as in the process by which 
 we direct them to make those movements. It is the 
 copying which is so difficult. To direct the movements 
 of the hand by the will alone is one thing ; it is com- 
 paratively easy to move the fingers or the pencil now 
 in this direction, now in that, just as we desire ; yet it 
 is a long time before even this can be done with facility. 
 But to copy a design presents far greater difficulties. 
 First the eye has to study the design, so as to estimate 
 the directions and distances along which the muscles of 
 the hand must move the pencil. Then the eye is trans- 
 ferred to the pencil, so that the hand may be directed 
 in accord with directions given by the eye, and this 
 implies that the form of the outline must be remembered 
 while the hand is drawing the copy. It is very difficult 
 for the adult whose visual memory is trained — and 
 who has learned to co-ordinate the hand and eye so 
 well that he feels no difficulty in copying any outline 
 more or less successfully — to realise what a strain 
 these complicated processes put on the immature 
 organism of the child. Indeed it is difficult for him 
 to realise that there is any complication about it. 
 It was just here that Dr. Montessori's study of deficient 
 children was of such service to her. The processes 
 of development which appear simultaneous in normal 
 children must be passed through separately and very 
 slowly in idiots or deficient children, so that the 
 
I20 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 observer has the separate existence and function of 
 each stage of nervous development forced on his 
 attention. For instance, Seguin had to spend a whole 
 year in teaching an idiot to control the volitional move- 
 ments of his hand before he could pass to the second 
 stage, that of controlling the movements of the hand 
 through the eye. The great advantage of the Mon- 
 tessori technique for teaching handwriting is that it 
 practically avoids the need of teaching the co-ordina- 
 tion of hand and eye as a part of teaching writing. 
 Children taught by her method could write nearly as 
 well with their eyes shut as open. For instead of 
 relying on the eye to direct the hand, she relies on what 
 is called the motor memory. The fingers are trained to 
 remember the movements needed to form the letters. 
 
 2. The Motor Memory 
 
 Physiologists and psychologists have for many years 
 been well aware of the existence and importance of the 
 motor memory. But although it is always in evidence, 
 if we choose to look for it, few, even among professed 
 educationists, have realised its great importance, and 
 fewer still are aware how accurate it is. One of the 
 best known of English educationists i recently wrote 
 that " possibly if a person were to ' touch ' given objects 
 for so many minutes each day, day after day and 
 month after month, he might at last be able to draw a 
 mouth or write an m." If any one desires to test this 
 statement let him get a friend to cut out a letter, 
 
 ^ Miss Mason, in a, letter to The Times, 3rd December 191 2, 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 121 
 
 say about 2^ inches high, from some alphabet he does 
 not know. Let it be then placed on a table in a dark 
 room, so that he can feel its shape with his finger. If 
 he goes over it carefully several times with the finger for 
 one or two minutes, he will find, on returning to the 
 lighted room, that he can trace the shape quite ea^ly 
 with his finger. With some, no doubt, the time re- 
 quired may be longer, with others shorter, but it is 
 very unlikely that any one will fail to get good results. 
 The writer made an interesting quantitative experiment. 
 A friend cut out an angle in thick blotting-paper, the 
 legs being about 3 and 3J inches long, and laid it on a 
 table in a darkened room. After feeling it for less than 
 a minute and a half the writer returned, ran his finger 
 up the edge of a piece of paper and then drew it off at 
 what he felt to be the slant of the test angle. Watching 
 where the finger went, a pencil line was roughly drawn, 
 to mark its course. Then the finger was put to do its 
 work again, but it constantly deviated somewhat from 
 the original line and always by the same amount. It 
 was evident that the first line had been badly drawn, 
 and the necessary correction was made. The writer 
 then measured the angle with the protractor which had 
 been used to lay off the original angle. He reported 
 it as 40°, and was told that this was the magnitude 
 of the original angle. Next morning, at breakfast, it 
 occurred to him to test his motor memory. He ran 
 the finger up the edge of an envelope and then at an 
 angle as before. A mark was then made and tested 
 by repeated movements as before. The provisional 
 mark was found to give an angle slightly greater than 
 
122 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 the angle at which the finger naturally passed, but 
 so little as to be not worth altering. The pro- 
 tractor gave it as 40^°, or half a degree too great. 
 (Trying to copy the angle by the eye in the ordinary 
 way gave a much worse result.) 
 
 Another interesting point was that the legs of the 
 angle were cut of unequal length, and in the dark the 
 difference in length was estimated as half an inch. 
 Looking at the legs of the angle itself, it was estimated 
 as fully three-quarters of an inch. Measurement 
 showed it to be one-sixteenth over the half inch.^ 
 
 ^ It would seem that there is an optical delusion here — that the 
 fact that the legs form an angle interferes with the visual estimation 
 of the difference of length. There are many such delusions, the 
 following being one of the most effective : — Draw two vertical lines 
 of equal length. At the ends of one place two arrow-heads, i.e. 
 place a V upside down at the upper end and a V right way up at the 
 lower end, so as to get a figure pointed at both ends. Reverse the 
 process on the other, placing the V upright at its upper end and 
 another V upside down at its lower end, thus getting a figure open 
 at both ends. Take care that the straight parts of the lines are 
 not altered in length. The double arrow looks the shorter. The 
 lines may be placed side by side or in any position. If placed 
 so as to form a cross, it is better to put the double arrow horizontally 
 and the open-ended line vertically. (We have a natural tendency 
 to exaggerate distances in a direction parallel to the length of the 
 face as compared with those across the face. This is well seen by 
 looking at a mountain range when lying down ; the mountains 
 appear only a fraction of their height. Probably the explanation is 
 to be found in the importance of being able to judge of the distances of 
 objects — even when a man is standing on a hillock, there is hardly any 
 vertical separation between an object five miles off and one double 
 as far. Thus we learn to pay greater attention to the signification 
 of the difference in position of the images of two points on the 
 retina when these are in one direction than in the other.) 
 
 Teachers who practise their pupils on estimating distances or 
 angles by the eye, should be aware of these possibilities. 
 
. TEACHING WRITING AND READING 123 
 
 3. The Motor Memory in Writing 
 
 The degree of accuracy of the motor memory must no 
 doubt vary considerably in different individuals, and 
 the above results are probably quite exceptional in 
 their accuracy. But it is quite certain that the motor 
 memory, especially of the hand, is a fundamental 
 characteristic of the human organism, and one which 
 has often been utilised both in drawing and in writ- 
 ing, so that the Montessori application to handwriting 
 is not, as it turns out, a new^ one. At the time 
 of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, one of the officers in charge 
 of the Indian Reservations in Canada described the 
 method by which the Indians in his charge copied the 
 pictures of the Queen which hie showed them. They ran 
 the points of their knives many times round the outline 
 of the head, so that on their return to their Lodges they 
 might carve it out in wood. In far earlier times the 
 method was known as the best means of teaching hand- 
 writing. Quint ilian thus recommends its use : "As 
 soon as the child shall have begun to trace the forms of 
 the letters, it will not be improper that they should be 
 cut for him, as exactly as possible, on a board, that his 
 style 1 may be taken along them as along grooves, for 
 he will then make no mistakes, as on wax (since he will 
 be kept in by the edge on each side, and will be unable 
 to stray beyond the boundary) ; and by following 
 these sure traces rapidly and frequently, he will form 
 his hand, and not require the assistance of a person to 
 guide his hand with his own placed over it." ^ 
 
 ^ The iron pencil used for writing on waxen tablets. 
 
 ^Institutes of Oyatqry, Bk. i. chap. i. sect. 27 (written cir. a.d. 90). 
 
124 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 The Montessori method of teaching writing is prac- 
 tically a revival of the old Roman method, and it is 
 a remarkable coincidence that its re-discovery should 
 have been made by a Roman lady in teaching Roman 
 children, in entire ignorance of the fact that it had been 
 advocated in Rome nearly two thousand years earlier, 
 by the greatest of ancient writers on education. 
 
 It is interesting, too, to observe that, unlike the 
 invention of the method of teaching to swim, already 
 described. Dr. Montessori arrived at it inductively, not 
 deductively. There are no doubt hundreds of physio- 
 logists alive to-day. Dr. Montessori among them, who 
 might have deduced it from their knowledge of the 
 nervous system, but none did. This is recorded, not as 
 a criticism directed against Dr. Montessori, or any of 
 the physiologists who failed to follow up their know- 
 ledge to its practical application, but rather because it 
 is well that we should realise how extraordinarily 
 difficult it is to act up to the Greek maxim, " Follow 
 the argument, wherever it leads." We have so little 
 real independence of thought, we are so much the 
 creatures of our customary thought, that it is rare 
 indeed that we find any one who can fruitfully receive 
 even a direct suggestion from the environment. It was 
 because Dr. Montessori's mind was of this fruitful 
 character that she was led, by a simple observation, to 
 bring us back to the method practised in ancient Rome. 
 It happened thus : she observed that an idiot girl 
 who was possessed of normal strength and motor power 
 in her hands, could not learn even the first step of 
 darning, namely, passing the needle first under, then 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 125 
 
 over, the transverse threads. She thereupon set the 
 girl to weave the Froebel mats, in which a strip of paper 
 is similarly threaded under and over transverse strips 
 of paper. When she had become skilled in this, it 
 was found that she was quite able to learn darning. 
 
 Now there can be no doubt that what lay at the 
 bottom of this was the well-known fact that idiots, 
 like young children, cannot perform tasks requiring 
 fine adjustments of muscles, because their nervous 
 systems are not sufficiently organised to interpret the 
 fine sensory impulses or to convey the fine motor 
 impulses of the nerves required for fine movements. 
 This matter is frequently overlooked even in many 
 Kindergartens where it should be well known. Of 
 course, it is true that because every part of the child 
 is smaller than the corresponding part of the man, 
 it cannot make such large movements as an adult 
 can make — that would be a physical impossibility. 
 But the contrast between the nervous system of the 
 man and the nervous system of the child is all the 
 other way. The trained adult can deal in very fine and 
 finely divided nervous impulses ; the child cannot. 
 Even in adult life we cannot interpret or control 
 finely divided nervous impulses of a new kind until 
 we have had practice in them. Witness the process 
 of learning to ride a bicycle. The learner's early 
 attempts always fail because he compensates too 
 much when he goes over to one side. So even in 
 steering a boat or a motor car, he who takes the 
 helm or the steering-wheel for the first time always 
 steers too much. In the little child, however, it is 
 
126 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 not merely that too much nervous energy is put into 
 the movement ; there is the added difficulty of inter- 
 preting the sensory impulses and of proportioning the 
 nervous impulses properly among the separate nerves 
 by which the different muscles are set in action — for 
 there is no movement which does not require the 
 co-operation of many different muscles, each with its 
 due amount of tension. In the adult this is not felt 
 as a difficulty, because his nervous system is far better, 
 developed than that of the child. 
 
 The inference from this is evident. To teach the 
 child a new art, you must begin with movements 
 ^ which, for the child, are on a large scale. Thus he is 
 better able to divide the nervous impulses along the 
 different paths in just the proportions required to 
 bring the muscles into harmonious action. When 
 that is accomplished, he is somewhat in the position 
 of the adult put for the first time to steer a motor car 
 — he can do the required movements easily enough, 
 but he does them on too large a scale. The next step 
 is to reduce the scale, and that is easily attained with 
 practice, because, for the most part, it means to 
 reduce the intensity and duration of stimuli whose 
 co-ordinations have been already acquired, rather 
 than to acquire new co-ordinations of movements. 
 
 It is thus that we explain the fact that the idiot 
 child could not learn to darn until she had learned to 
 weave Froebel mats. No doubt there is a little added 
 difficulty in using a needle instead of a paper strip, 
 even independently of the size — the sharp point of the 
 needle is annoying because it sticks in the wool, while 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 127 
 
 the paper strip is much more passive. But these are 
 accidental difficulties only — the essential matter is 
 that at first the work must be begun on a large scale. 
 While her practical work with children shows that 
 Dr. Montessori was fully alive to the importance of 
 commencing with large movements, it was fortunate 
 that this particular case presented itself to her under 
 a somewhat different aspect — " I saw," she writes, 
 " that the necessary movements of the hand in sewing 
 had been prepared without having the child sew. I 
 thought I might in this way prepare for writing, and 
 the idea interested me tremendously. I marvelled at 
 its simplicity, and was annoyed that I had not thought 
 before of the method. . . ." '^he then took the 
 matter up at once ; she had a writing alphabet manu- 
 factured, the letters being 8 centimetres high, with 
 the larger ones in proportion ; and the deficient 
 children, who had already learned by touch to remember 
 the shapes of geometrical figures — triangles, squares, 
 circles, etc. — were now put to learn the letters of the 
 alphabet by touching them all the way round, first 
 with the index finger, and then, when skilled in that, 
 with the index and middle finger, and finally with a 
 stick held like a penci?.-^ As the child's fingers, when 
 
 ^ So far as regards this use of the stick, it will be seen that there 
 is no essential difference in principle between this method and that 
 of the copy-book in which some of the letters are dotted so that 
 the pen may trace over the dotted lines, but in practice there is 
 a great advantage in using the larger letters to guide the finger or 
 the stick — partly because they are larger and therefore much 
 better suited for the untrained muscles, and partly because the 
 pupil can trace them over as often as he likes, while in the copy- 
 books there are only a few letters outlined for him to trace over. 
 
128 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 guided only by the eyes, were liable to slip off the 
 pattern letter, she desired to substitute a furrow for 
 the wooden letters. So it was that, after all these 
 trials, she hit at last on the very method used in ancient 
 Rome. 
 
 On account of the expense, Dr. Montessori had to 
 abandon the idea of using grooved letters, and she 
 substituted for them letters cut out of sandpaper 
 and pasted on cardboard, the feel of which enabled 
 the pupil to control the movement of the fingers without* 
 requiring any guidance by the eye. But when made 
 in quantity, the grooved letters are comparatively 
 cheap, and they control the movements of the finger 
 as well as of the little piece of stick in exactly the 
 right way. It will, however, be found advisable to 
 commence with getting the pupil to move his finger 
 along the groove. It is a smoother and easier motion 
 than the other, especially when the pupil is blind- 
 folded. 
 
 Whatever method be employed, there is one very 
 necessary precaution. The pupil must be taught to 
 move the finger or stick forward along the letter from 
 its beginning to its end. Unless the letter itself 
 supplies a control which makes it awkward for the 
 finger to move along it in the wrong direction, the 
 teacher must watch this very carefully at first, and not 
 leave the child to touch the letter by himself until he 
 has learned to make the motion in the direction in 
 which it is made in actual writing. But when once 
 the direction has been learned, the pupil will scarcely 
 ever follow the wrong direction. 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 129 
 
 4. How to " touch " Objects 
 
 There is another precaution. Before letting the 
 pupil feel round an object so as to discover and re- 
 member its shape, he should be taught to feel with 
 a very gentle touch. Even apart from learning to 
 write, it is a great advantage to have a gentle touch 
 — it means muscular control of a very important 
 kind. Clumsy hands and fingers which cannot mode- 
 rate their force are very bad servants to any one — 
 they have sins of commission — they cannot help break- 
 ing things — and of omission — they cannot make the 
 fine movements which require skill. But beside this 
 there is a purely pedagogical advantage in touching 
 with an even gentle pressure when learning the shape of 
 objects. For when we touch along a surface, there are^ 
 two distinct sensations. We are conscious not only of 
 the sensation of touch derived from the nerves at the. 
 finger, we are also conscious of the way we are moving 
 the finger. This impression is, as we saw, derived 
 from quite a different set of sensory nerves — the set 
 whose special business it is to tell us how the various 
 parts of our body are m.oving and what their momentary '. 
 positions are. Put your hand behind your back and 
 move it about ; these are the nerves which enable you 
 to tell without hesitation where it is and in what 
 direction it is moving. It is from these sensations' 
 that the blind man gets his idea of space, and it is', 
 from them that the pupil is to get his motor memory 
 of the shapes of the letters. It is therefore of great 
 importance that the attention should be concentrated 
 9 
 
I30 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 on these sensations, and not on those of touch proper. 
 But this requires that the sense of pressure at the 
 finger tips shall not be sufficiently strong to divert 
 the pupil's attention to itself. (If any one doubts the 
 distracting effect of such efforts let him make the 
 simple experiment of pressing his finger very hard 
 against the table when he is engaged in some difficult 
 problem.) 
 
 It is sometimes difficult to teach children to touch 
 gently. As we shall see later, Dr. Montessori used the 
 various grades of sandpaper, and of woven material, 
 and practised the children until they were able to sort 
 them out blindfold. 
 
 This preliminary training in gently feeling over a 
 surface should be given by itself, and not in con- 
 junction with the recognition of shape by touch, be- 
 cause in it we desire that the whole attention should be 
 concentrated on acquiring the power to touch gently. 
 
 Were we to teach it as a part of teaching the shape of 
 objects touched over, we should require the attention 
 to be divided between two objects, with the result that 
 more time would be required, and even then the objects 
 in view would be less perfectly attained. 
 
 When the Montessori curriculum is being followed, 
 the children do not pass at once from simple touching 
 to learning the shapes of the letters, they learn to 
 " touch " many different geometric figures first. When 
 the method is applied to the teaching of writing in 
 schools which do not follow the Montessori practice, 
 it will generally be with older children who have already 
 learned to read, and they may begin with touching 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 131 
 
 round the letters at once, no preliminary training 
 being necessary for this. 
 
 While the pupil is learning the letters, he should also 
 acquire some degree of skill in the manipulation of a 
 pen, so that he will be able to make smooth strokes of 
 even curvature when he begins to write. This is easily 
 done. The pupil takes a piece of coloured chalk, or a 
 pencil, and tries to cover the area of a square with it. 
 At first the lines he draws are very irregular — some will 
 pass beyond the bounding lines, others will not reach 
 them. Soon the lines become more regular, and after 
 a time the pupil can fill the square up with remarkably 
 even and vertical lines. Then other figures are given 
 to, or drawn by, the pupil, figures in which the lines are 
 not all the same length — a triangle or an oval would do 
 — and still greater facility is acquired, till in a com- 
 paratively short time the pupil can manipulate the 
 pencil easily. 
 
 'There are great advantages in this plan. The lines 
 are drawn quickly and easily, not slowly and pain- 
 fully, as in the copy-book method ; there is hardly any 
 strain on the eye, because instead of having to watch 
 minutely the correspondence of the movement of the 
 pencil with the remembered copy of the letter, as 
 already described, the eye is only called on to give 
 the signal to the hand when the pencil has reached the 
 end of its stroke ; and the practice gives just what is 
 required, namely, facility in rapid movement of the 
 pencil.. 
 
 In the Montessori schools, as described by Dr. Mon- 
 tessori, it would seem that the final object is limited to 
 
132 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 filling up the figures with vertical lines. This seems an 
 unnecessary limitation. It would be well to get the 
 children to fill up, with circular lines, the space between 
 two concentric circles of different radii. (And, perhaps, 
 between two concentric ovals also.) 
 
 As to the size of the figure to be covered with the 
 chalk, it may be determined by the size of the letters 
 which the pupil begins to write, because the shading 
 of the figure should give practice in lines at least as 
 long as the longest strokes the pupil will require. On 
 the Montessori principles, however, the proper way to 
 determine the size of the earlier figures to be shaded in 
 is to give the little one a piece of chalk or pencil, and 
 let him draw any lines he likes, entirely at his own 
 free will. Then the first figures given him to fill in 
 should require lines of about the length which the early 
 attempts show to be easily and naturally drawn by the 
 pupil. 
 
 5. The Intellectual Element in Writing 
 
 At the same time that the pupil is learning the shapes 
 of the letters, he is taught their names, not the alpha- 
 betical names, but the sound values. Dr. Montessori's 
 technique was as follows : 
 
 In order to emphasize the contrast between vowels 
 and consonants, the vowels were cut out of yellow 
 sandpaper mounted on dark cards, and the consonants 
 of black emery paper mounted on light cards. The 
 vowels were taught first, and according to the method 
 of Seguin, two at a time, so that the contrast between 
 the forms might impress the details the more firmly on 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 133 
 
 the mind. Suppose the two letters be i and 0. The 
 teacher says, " This is i," getting the pupil to touch it 
 round with the finger, as already explained. Then, 
 similarly, " This is 0." The child may then repeat the 
 touching as often as he likes, and when he has finished, 
 the second stage is entered on. Here the teacher says, 
 " Give me ^V' or " Give me 0," or " Which is ^ ? " etc. 
 If the child does not know which is which by looking at 
 them, she invites him to touch them round. If he still 
 does not know, the lesson is ended for the day. The'^ 
 
 ERROR IS NOT REVEALED TO THE CHILD. The IcSSOn is 
 
 merely repeated another day. Dr. Montessori regards 
 this as absolutely essential if the teaching is to have the 
 best results. It is to be remembered that these are 
 very young children, and have always been taught in 
 this way during their school life. It does not follow 
 that a similar rule should be followed in teaching the 
 letters to children who have been heretofore taught in 
 the ordinary way, and corrected whenever they make 
 a mistake. In fact, it would seem rational to conclude 
 that in such a case a child might readily draw the 
 inference that he was right, and proceed to imprint the 
 wrong answer on his mind. With children always 
 taught on Dr. Montessori's principles, this does not seem 
 to occur. With them the lesson, given as she gives it, 
 seems to dissolve out of the mind, and to leave no 
 residue to interfere with the subsequent lesson. But 
 although the experience of some kindergartens where 
 the method has been adopted has shown that the 
 same thing occurs with children of five, previously 
 taught in the ordinary way, yet in such cases it must 
 
134 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 only be adopted tentatively, and with due regard for 
 the risk of confusing the pupil (see also p. 155). 
 
 If the child picks out the letters correctly, the lesson 
 proceeds to the third stage. The teacher says, " What 
 is this ? " and the child should answer 'W " or " 0," as 
 the case may be. 
 
 These three stages are called The three periods of 
 Seguin, and the method is always applied in teaching 
 nomenclature, e.g. the meaning of rough is taught with 
 that of smooth, and in the three separate stages as 
 here described. 
 
 In teaching the consonants, the sound value is first 
 given by itself, and then it is joined with different 
 vowels, and the process of the three periods is repeated. 
 
 As the pupil is now supposed to have acquired com- 
 mand over the pencil, and knows how to trace the 
 shape of the letters, he could write any word if he knew 
 how it was spelled ; he could, for instance, write a 
 " copy." But, as we have seen, it would be altogether 
 contrary to the Montessori principles to allow this. The 
 pupil must not write till writing has for him an inner 
 meaning — till it becomes a means of self-expression. 
 Hence the next step is not to write, but to compose 
 words with the letters ready made. In the Montessori 
 apparatus, a box is provided with four complete 
 alphabets in the script or writing form in which the 
 pupil has learned them. The letters are all sorted, so 
 as to be easily found. As soon as the pupil knows 
 some of the letters, the Italian teacher pronounces a 
 word VERY distinctly a number of times. Next, she 
 lays stress on the separate sounds. For example, 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 135 
 
 after repeating " ma ma " two or three times, she 
 should bring out very distinctly the m sound in the 
 first syllable, not now laying stress on the vowel; 
 Then the child will generally pick out an m and place 
 it on the table ; next she should repeat the syllable, 
 laying the stress on the vowel this time. The child will 
 pick out an a. Then she repeats the word, so as to 
 call attention to the fact that there are two syllables, 
 and the child will repeat the syllables and thus compose 
 the word " mama." 
 
 But it is one thing to compose, another to read what 
 he has composed, and Dr. Montessori tells us that, as 
 it generally seems to require some effort on the child's 
 part, she helps him, urging him to " read, and reading 
 the word with him once or twice " — a departure from 
 the extreme form of the Montessori principle, which is 
 worth noting in connection with some criticisms to 
 be referred to later. But once the game has been 
 started in that way, the child pursues it with great 
 interest. The Italian teacher has only to pronounce 
 any suitable word and the child will compose it. In 
 English the teacher would have to begin with care- 
 fully selected words, just as is usually done in teaching 
 to read by the phonetic method. 
 
 During this process the child's close attention is 
 shown as well by his attitude as by the persistence 
 with which, time after time, he repeats to himself 
 the words he is composing, as is shown by the move- 
 ments of his lips, especially when the word stands 
 for an object with which he is familiar. The full 
 meaning of his new power is only revealed to him when 
 
136 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 other children read the word he has made. It is the 
 revelation of a new means of communication, and his 
 wonder is mixed with pride at his own achievement. 
 
 The pupil has now advanced a stage further. In 
 addition to manipulating the pencil easily, and being 
 able to trace the^shapes of the letters, he can also 
 compose words.|J^ Thus he is fully prepared in the 
 mechanical part of writing : he can write any of the 
 words he can compose. In a phonetic language like 
 Italian, composing presents no difficulty, and so the 
 writing of words and even of sentences comes to the 
 children spontaneously. In English, which is not a 
 sufficiently phonetic language, we cannot expect 
 the sensationally brilliant results of the Italian 
 schools, where little children of four and five years 
 of age " explode " into writing anything that comes 
 into their minds. To get such spontaneous writ- 
 ing from such young Enghsh children we should 
 have to wait until they could spell the words they 
 sought to express, and that might be undesirable on 
 other grounds. Before considering this question, or 
 the several points which the English teacher should 
 keep in view, when using the guiding letters as an 
 adjunct to the ordinary school methods, it will be well 
 to summarise the results of the method at its best as 
 it is described by Dr. Montessori herself — and it may 
 be added that the description is accepted and confirmed 
 by independent witnesses. It relates, of course, to 
 children who have already acquired all the manual 
 dexterities necessary to writing, and who have been 
 taught the Italian spelling by the phonetic method. 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 137 
 
 On a bright winter's day when she and some of her 
 children were on the roof, she happened to ask one 
 of them to draw the chimney, putting in his hand a 
 piece of chalk. Well pleased, he set to work, drawing 
 with chalk on the tiles while she watched and praised ; 
 suddenly the child paused, thought a while, and then 
 burst out, " I can write ! " and forthwith wrote upon 
 the tiles the word "hand," and immediately after 
 " chimney " and " roof," exclaiming again and again, 
 " I can write, I can write ! " This brought up other 
 children, who, looking on, were amazed at what their 
 comrade had done, and soon others divined that 
 they too possessed this power ; and begging for chalk, 
 they also began to write. 
 
 Thus, at the very first attempt, complete words were 
 spontaneously written, without any idea of copying 
 some other writing. As Dr. Montessori observes, it 
 seemed to the children, not that they had been taught 
 to write, but that they had grown up into writing ; 
 and to those who were not yet able to write, it seemed 
 a thing that they were not yet old enough to do, just 
 as a child knows that the elder ones can see over a 
 wall which quite shuts out his own view. All the 
 necessary movements and the ability to direct them 
 had been made familiar and easy by the preparatory 
 exercises, so that when the idea of writing once took 
 possession of the child's mind the actual writing 
 followed as if by miracle, and both teachers and children 
 were filled with surprise and joy, the children excited 
 beyond measure and not to be satisfied till the others 
 had shared their joy and wonder. Indeed this alone 
 
138 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 did not satisfy ; they must be writing everywhere and 
 all day long ; nothing in the school afforded sufficient 
 space for all the would-be scribes, and the mothers at 
 home found even the bread written upon ; and just as 
 children refuse to be separated from a beloved toy, 
 so one child went to sleep pencil in hand at night. 
 
 On this Dr. Montessori remarks that the actual 
 writing had been too long delayed, causing a tumultu- 
 ous ebullition of writing not entirely healthy or well 
 ordered ; she contrasts it with wise Nature's course in 
 bringing a child very gradually to the use of language^ 
 since he begins to speak while his vocabulary is 
 extremely small and the things he wants to express 
 are few and simple, so that there is no sudden plunge 
 into new expression ; and she recommends that children 
 be encouraged to write as soon as they are able (a) to fill 
 in the outline figures with lines that are evenly 
 spaced and parallel ; (b) to name some of the letters 
 by merely touching them round (i.e. without looking 
 at them) ; ^ and (c) to compose words by putting 
 the letters together. When a child is thus prepared, 
 the mere fact of seeing his companions writing will 
 probably be enough ; most of the children write 
 spontaneously when they have reached that stage. 
 Children who do not write spontaneously within, say, 
 about a week, should be directly encouraged to write 
 — taught, as we should say. 
 
 When he has begun to write, the child's progress 
 should be guided by ruling lines on the blackboard to 
 
 ^ This is evidently what is intended, though the word some is 
 not given in the directions in The Montessori Method, p. 291. 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 139 
 
 keep the writing straight and the letters of even height, 
 and by getting him to continue touching the letters, 
 especially any that are not firm. Children sometimes 
 do this of their own accord, bringing them up to the 
 blackboard, and " touching " those that are wanted 
 for their words before writing them. One child, for 
 instance, if dissatisfied with any of his written letters, 
 rubbed out what he had written, touched over again 
 the sandpaper letter, and re- wrote it. Even for a 
 year these preparatory exercises are recurred to by 
 the children, who thus improve their writing without 
 degrading their new faculty from its place as a form of 
 expression, the highest form in the ascent of civilisation. 
 
 A month's work, playing with the preparatory 
 exercises, usually brings a child of five to writing a 
 complete word, younger children may require six 
 weeks or seven. There was one child who could write 
 after twenty days, using all the letters. Four year old 
 children who have learned under her for less than 
 three months are usually writing from dictation and 
 ready for pen and ink writing in a notebook, and at 
 the end of six months are equal in writing to the third 
 class in the elementar^^ schools. 
 
 Mr. E. G. A. Holmes, who was sent to Rome by the 
 English Education Office to inspect the Montessori 
 Schools, quite confirms this account of Dr. Montessori's 
 results. Speaking of the application of the method to 
 " ignorant and neglected children of the ages of six 
 and seven " he says : 
 
 " Signer a Galli-Saccenta, the able and diligent 
 directress of the Girl's School of St. Angelo in Pescheria, 
 
I40 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 — a school in a poor and slummy neighbourhood, — 
 having studied the Montessori system for two years, 
 and convinced herself of its soundness, determined to 
 introduce it, with a few minor modifications, into the 
 lowest class of her school. That class, which in an 
 English school of 15 years ago would have been known 
 as Standard 0, is composed of girls of six or seven 
 who were entirely ignorant when admitted. When I 
 visited the school on 20th March, the system had been 
 in force barely two months ; but it had already worked 
 wonders. It was found that, for these older children, 
 three weeks of sense-training were sufficient. When 
 that period of preparation was over, writing, reading, 
 and arithmetic were ' taught ' (if I may use that word) 
 by the methods which have been already described. 
 How far the girls had got in five weeks, the reader will 
 judge for himself, when I tell him that one girl of seven, 
 who had been a hopeless ignoramus when admitted, 
 wrote in my presence, to her teacher's dictation, the 
 following sentences, which, at the teacher's request, I 
 selected — and wrote them in an excellent roundhand 
 and without a single mistake : ' I/aqua e liquida ; il 
 niarmo e solido ; il gas e aeriforme.' ' La Rita e 
 occupata ad aggomitolare una matasso di filo di 
 cotone ' " {Educational Pamphlets, No. 24, p. 24). 
 
 This instance might lead the reader to think that the 
 children naturally write phrases as soon as they begin 
 to write. That may be so with older children. With 
 younger ones, the writing of phrases is, as we shall 
 presently see, quite a different stage from the writing 
 of words. 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 141 
 
 6. The Teaching of Reading 
 
 The first part of the teaching of reading has been / 
 described already, that in which the child is taught to ^ 
 compose a word, and having composed it, to read 
 it. Before describing the later stages, it is well to 
 observe the contrast between the child's attitude 
 towards reading and writing, especially in view of the 
 general custom of teaching reading before writing. 
 
 The different stages of writing have come about 
 spontaneously. The child has delighted in fingering 
 the letters, and in using the coloured pencil ; he needed 
 no urging. 
 
 Not so with reading. The child has no spontaneous 
 tendency even to read the words he has himself com- 
 posed — he generally succeeds only after an e-Qort, and 
 on the direct suggestion of the teacher, who " urges him 
 to read, reading the w^ord with him once or twice 
 herself." Still more difficult is it to read words which 
 others have written. Here again Dr. Montessori seems 
 to violate her own principle of spontaneity ; in fact she 
 teaches, to read, just as any other good teacher might 
 — very carefully, no doubt, and like every good teacher, 
 with a great respect for the child's own activity, but 
 none the less it is teaching, and based on the directed 
 rather than on the spontaneous activity of the child) 
 
 It would appear that as soon as may be after the 
 child has learned to write separate words, Dr. Montessori 
 sits beside him with a number of cards, each containing 
 some familiar word, e.g. the name of a well-known 
 object, preferably a toy, which is, if possible, placed 
 
142 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 with the card before the child, so as to suggest the word 
 to him. Even then the pupil is generally silent a long 
 time ; he reads the component sounds as slowly as he 
 would have written them. But this does not usually 
 enable him to recognise the word, because for that the 
 accent is required as well as the sequence of sounds. 
 Recognition usually — but not always — comes when the 
 component sounds are said one after the other so quickly 
 that they are fused into one compound sound. Here 
 as always Dr. Montessori shows herself as a true teacher. 
 She does not now say the word, she waits while the 
 child translates the written symbols into sounds, and, 
 when the sounds are correctly reproduced, she limits 
 herself to saying, " Faster, faster," till the meaning of 
 the word bursts on the pupil's consciousness. " Then 
 he looks upon it as if he recognised a friend, and 
 assumes that air of satisfaction which so often radiates 
 our little ones." 
 
 There are many teachers to whom it would feel 
 unnatural to give the child sufficient time to discover 
 the word for himself. Knowing the word so well them- 
 selves, it will seem to them that the mental work in- 
 volved in passing from saying the sounds to recognising 
 the word is so exceedingly slight that it is certainly not 
 worth the time the child is spending at it, and they will 
 say the word for him. Even teachers who are thor- 
 oughly convinced that the pupil must do his own mental 
 work for himself may take that view. They would do 
 well to consider the following example from school 
 life. For one hour in the day, all the girls in a certain 
 school had to speak in French only. During this 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 143 
 
 period one girl was heard to shout at another : " Vous 
 vendez poisson chose," which being interpreted, is, 
 " You sell fish thing." What did she mean ? Though 
 the writer has told it many times, the only persons 
 who translated it into the vernacular without serious 
 difficulty were two German ladies who were more 
 accustomed to translate sounds into English in a 
 tentative way than we are. Somewhat similar diffi- 
 culties arise with us when asked to pronounce a word 
 which is spelled for us, as in the well-known example, 
 bee-ay-see, kay-ay-see, aich-ee. In the translation of 
 the French sentence the meaning will quickly dawn 
 on those w^ho have not yet seen it if they treat the 
 central pair of words as one word, and put the accent 
 on the first syllable. 
 
 We have seen that Dr. Montessori did not, in this 
 matter of teaching to read, adhere to her own principles, 
 and it is very interesting to observe the result. Italian 
 being a phonetic language, the children so taught were 
 able; at five years old, to read fairy tales aloud quite 
 well, to the delight of their teachers, who were only too 
 pleased that they should practise such reading. But 
 Dr. Montessori was not ; she doubted whether the 
 children's interest was a mental interest in the ideas, or 
 what we may call a mechanical interest in the mere 
 ability to read the sounds. An illustration may make 
 this clearer. Some years ago Mr. David Salmon wrote 
 {Salmon s Art of Teaching, 1900), " The best reading I 
 ever heard was in a school where Robinson's Phonic 
 Method was employed. [Robinson used a kind of 
 compound phonetic alphabet.] Children of seven 
 
144 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 could read fluently the leading articles in a newspaper 
 just published," although, as Mr. Salmon says, they 
 could not have any idea of the meaning of what they 
 read. No doubt it is possible that in the hands of a 
 skilful teacher the acquirement of such power in reading 
 without understanding might be no harm, but as, in 
 other hands, it is open to the most serious objection, it 
 is instructive to see how a great teacher dealt with it. 
 Dr. Montessori did not believe that the children could 
 understand the fairy tales their admirers had presented 
 to the school. She desired to test their understanding 
 of w^hat they read, and asked a teacher to tell one of 
 the stories to the children while she observed how far 
 they showed interest in it. To this end she forbade 
 the teacher to ask a question, or to give an injunction 
 in order to recall the attention of those who did not 
 listen. The result was that the children, not caring 
 to listen to what they did not understand, and being 
 quite free to attend or not, just as they pleased, soon 
 ceased to attend and returned to their own occupations. 
 
 Next she gave the book to a little boy, sat down beside 
 him in friendly fashion, and asked him quite simply, 
 as for her own information, if he had understood what 
 he read. He answered " No," while his face seemed to 
 ask the reason of her question. To him it had not 
 occurred that the printed words could convey thoughts 
 to the reader. 1 
 
 It is a remarkable justification of the doctrine that 
 
 * To discover this idea was, she tells us, to be for her children 
 " one of the most beautiful conquests of the future, a new source 
 of surprise and joy." 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 145 
 
 education is best founded on the direct spontaneous 
 activities of the child, that in regard to reading, where 
 Dr. Montessori herself violated her own principles, the 
 result was unintelligent learning — cram, in fact. 
 
 Dr. Montessori now took the direction of the children 
 into her own hands, in order to revert again to her 
 fundamental principle. She stopped the reading of 
 the books and waited for some spontaneous mani- 
 festation from the children themselves. " Later on, 
 during a ' free conversation period,' four children arose 
 at the same time and, with expressions of joy on their 
 faces, ran to the blackboard and wrote phrases." (One 
 phrase was, " Oh ! how glad we are our garden has begun 
 to bloom," and the others were seen to be similar.) 
 
 Thereupon Dr. Montessori understood that, since 
 they were able to write phrases, the time had come 
 when they might proceed to the reading of phrases. 
 She took the hint given by the children, and wrote on 
 the blackboard " Do you love me ? " The children read 
 it silently as if thinking, and then shouted " Yes, yes." 
 She next wrote " make the silence and watch me," 
 referring to the game of being silent (Chap. VII.). The 
 children not unnaturally shouted this out, but almost 
 at once perceived their mistake. More sentences were 
 written and read, and thus the peculiar function of 
 writing was discovered by the pupils. They realised 
 that they possessed a new means of conveying thought, 
 and it had for them an intense interest. We may see 
 the same thing when boy-scouts learn to signal. Two 
 boys will play at sending the simplest of messages with 
 delight ; the feeling that you possess a new power 
 
146 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 is the source of an emotion peculiar to itself ; a very 
 pure emotion, one altogether free from jealousy or 
 envy, and indeed more, for it is an emotion the 
 children desire to share with another. 
 
 A little later the character of the game was changed. 
 The teachers wrote a number of sentences directing the 
 children to do certain acts in a certain sequence. 
 Among the examples which Dr. Montessori gives are 
 the following : " Very politely ask eight of your 
 companions to leave their chairs, and to form in double 
 file in the centre of the room, then have them march 
 forward and back on tiptoe, making no noise." " Ask 
 three of your oldest companions who sing nicely, if 
 they will please come into the centre of the room. 
 Arrange them in a nice row, and sing with them a 
 song that you have selected," etc. etc. In the game 
 these slips are put in a basket ; each child who can read 
 takes a card to his seat and reads it silently once or 
 twice. When they understand the directions, they 
 return the cards to the teacher and set about carrying 
 out the directions. Then the children commence their 
 various tasks, each absorbed in what he had to do ; 
 as to the children who cannot read, they may easily 
 be included in the tasks set on the cards, just as in the 
 examples quoted. 
 
 Then, writes Dr. Montessori of the first time she 
 played this game, " A great activity, a movement of a 
 new sort, was born in the room. ... It seemed as if 
 some magic force had gone forth from me, stimulating 
 an activity hitherto unknown. This magic was graphic 
 language, the greatest conquest of civilisation." And 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 147 
 
 as she left that day the children gathered round her 
 saying, " Thank you ! Thank you ! Thank you for 
 the lesson ! " 
 
 It is interesting to observe that the children read 
 the first sentences to themselves silently though they 
 shouted the answers. This was the spontaneous action 
 of the children, and Dr. Montessori rightly concludes 
 that reading, "if it is to teach the child to receive an 
 idea, should be mental, not vocal." To read aloud with 
 due expression and emphasis is an art but slowly learned. 
 For to read aloud properly requires that we first under- 
 stand the meaning. If, then, the adult prefers to read 
 a piece mentally before he reads it vocally, does it not 
 seem altogether unjustifiable to teach the child to read 
 aloud the first time that he tries to get the sense of the 
 passage ? To do so is to make him carry on a double 
 process, one which even the adult separates into two 
 distinct processes, at least if he would do it as perfectly 
 as he can. The result is that the child's attention is 
 distracted betw^een the two processes and each is badly_ 
 done. Indeed, when the child is taught to read aloud] 
 in the first instance, instead of reading silently to him- / 
 self, it is doubtful whether he is learning to get ideas   
 from written language at all — he may gather the mean- • 
 ing from the sounds he hears himself making instead of 
 from the seen words. This is a very serious defect in 
 the ordinary method of learning to " read." 
 
 It is an interesting example of the fact that class 
 teaching has its real and valuable place even in an 
 atmosphere of perfect freedom, that we should find it 
 used with such success by such an apostle of individu- 
 
148 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 ality as Dr. Montessori herself, and there is no doubt 
 that the class teacher could readily utilise much of what 
 is most valuable in the foregoing. Many variations 
 will suggest themselves. The writing of phrases on 
 the blackboard need not be done by the teacher alone. 
 Volunteers from the class might be called up to write 
 any question on the blackboard, which the class reads 
 and answers either viva voce or by written slips 
 which might be read out by another of the class. All 
 work of this kind has educational value far beyond 
 the mere mechanical learning to read and write. It 
 teaches the children to think about what they read, 
 whereas any method which, like that referred to by 
 Mr. Salmon, permits the children to read merely for 
 the sake of reading the sounds correctly, is a direct 
 encouragement to them to read, not only without 
 understanding, but without even trying to understand. 
 Taught thus, they become satisfied with the mere 
 sound, they feel no further want. Being praised and 
 encouraged because of their " good reading," mere 
 parrot-reading though it be, it is no wonder that 
 parrot-reading becomes to them an end in itself — that 
 their spirit does not expand, seeking for some meaning 
 to which they themselves respond, thus making it 
 part of their own inner life of thought, and not a mere 
 external accomplishment. 
 
 Of especial value is the game of writing long 
 sentences containing directions to do several acts in 
 a given sequence (p. 146). Children who can re- 
 member such messages without having to refer back 
 to the paper slips not only educate their general 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 149 
 
 power of mental concentration, but acquire a habit of 
 the utmost importance in after life. Who does not 
 know how exceedingly difficult it is to ensure that a 
 message shall be properly delivered or a direction, 
 properly carried out ? It is impossible to over- 
 estimate the value and efficiency of such training in 
 promoting general intelligence. 
 
 It will be observed — and it is indeed a necessary 
 corollary from the Montessori method — that, in it, 
 (jreading is first taught from the script form, and that 
 the reading of printed words comes later. This may 
 be considered undesirable, or indeed impossible, in 
 schools in which reading from printed books is insisted 
 on before writing is permitted. But that need not 
 prevent the teacher who places a high value on the 
 self-activity and self-expression of his pupils from 
 adopting or adapting methods similar to those adopted 
 by the most consistent exponent of the doctrine of 
 education by self-activity and self-expression that 
 the world has yet produced. For example, it would be 
 easy for the teacher of reading to write appropriate 
 sentences on the blackboard, as already suggested, 
 only using printed letters instead of script ones. 
 Matters of this kind must, however, be left to the 
 individual teacher. All that can be done here is to 
 endeavour to explain the principles upon which all 
 non-mechanical teaching of reading and writing must 
 be based. To the native genius of the teacher belongs 
 the task of applying those principles so as to conform 
 to the limitations imposed by the curriculum, or, it may 
 be, by his own views on the best method of education. 
 
ISO THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 Although Dr. Montessori's technique in teaching 
 the pupil to read is not novel, yet there are few teachers 
 who realise as thoroughly as she does the immense 
 importance of using the reading lesson, and indeed 
 every lesson, as a lesson in articulation, including accent 
 and pronunciation. We are apt to think that children 
 learn to talk naturally. But if we observe ourselves, 
 and those aroimd us, both young and old, we shall 
 see that we fall, most of us, far below the standard 
 which can be and ought to be attained. Not only 
 are there many positive defects of speech, there are 
 also many negative defects, such as indistinct pro- 
 nunciation. It is easy to prevent these defects by 
 proper care when children are acquiring their vocabu- 
 lary. But when once they have been engrafted by 
 years of practice, it is often almost impossible to 
 eradicate them. 
 
 It is therefore no small or unimportant part of the 
 Montessori method that, developing every element 
 of spoken and written language in detail as the child's 
 powers develop, it trains him to use a well-spoken and 
 well-written language as the natural and spontaneous 
 expression of vivid and distinct impressions. 
 
 Besides this, as Dr. Montessori points out, the 
 phonetic exercises through which she leads the child 
 to read (and through which the child advances eagerly, 
 as there is associated with each step the pleasure of a 
 new discovery and of a new power) are just the very 
 exercises by which those who endeavour to remedy 
 defects of utterance or of speech in older pupils, try 
 painfully to correct what need never have beccme a 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 151 
 
 habit, if, while speech was developing, the right move- 
 ments had been prepared and the right sounds dictated. 
 And though this involves a much better knowledge 
 of the nature and mechanism of speech than is required 
 from the ordinary teacher, yet care in early distinctness 
 of articulation would do much to improve speech. 
 
 Nor is the importance of a clear pronunciation con- 
 fined to the practical matter of clear speech. While 
 no doubt there are exceptions, it may nevertheless 
 be stated as a general rule that there is an intimate 
 connection between clear articulation and clear thought. 
 This belief, first formulated by practical teachers, is 
 in entire accord with the teaching of psychology, so 
 far as our knowledge extends. It was very clearly 
 stated by a great teacher, Thring of Uppingham, who 
 laid down that, if boys were to be taught to think 
 clearly, they must be taught to pronounce distinctly, 
 especially the last words and syllables of each sentence. 
 Certainly the converse is true ; the natural result of 
 indistinct thinking is indistinct speech. If we have 
 received through the senses some fleeting, half -under- 
 stood impression, — a faint sound just heard for a 
 moment, a brief glimpse of some vanishing light or 
 trace of colour, — we naturally, almost inevitably, use 
 a broken phrase, a half-uttered word, to describe our 
 impression, the impression itself being undefined. 
 When a boy mumbles his lesson, we may be pretty 
 sure that his knowledge of it has not been brought 
 into clear consciousness — unwilling to pull together 
 his lurking memory and halting expression, he hopes 
 by mumbling half an answer, to get his teacher to 
 
152 THE MONTESSORl METHOD 
 
 supply the remainder or to take it as said. And, 
 conversely, if he makes his words clear and distinct, 
 it compels him to fix his attention on the words he 
 uses, and thus, indirectly, on the ideas they convey. 
 Certainly, in so far clear speaking calls for and is an 
 aid to clear ideas. 
 
 7. Application of the Method in Ordinary Schools 
 
 The teacher who follows the full Montessori Method will 
 find in the foregoing all the instruction that is required, 
 so far as book instruction can suffice, but it can never 
 adequately replace personal instruction or experience. 
 
 The Kindergarten teacher or the ordinary school 
 teacher, whose unit in teaching is a group of pupils, not 
 an individual, can readily incorporate the training of 
 the motor memory as part of his or her educational 
 process. If the principles already explained are under- 
 stood, it should not be difficult to adapt them to ordi- 
 nary class teaching, with little if any increase in the 
 individual attention and supervision which is always 
 necessary with the younger children, especially when 
 commencing a new subject. A resume of some of the 
 precautions invoh^ed in the preceding explanations 
 may, however, be useful. 
 
 In the first place, the importance of beginning with 
 large movements must be fully recognised in the 
 school practice. Beyond doubt, some part of Dr. 
 Montessori's success in teaching writing is due to the 
 fact that, like many other m^odern teachers, she gets 
 her pupils to begin with very large letters — hers are 
 about 2f inches high. The true rule with little children 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 153 
 
 is to begin with large movements in every activity 
 and pass very gradually from them to smaller ones. 
 
 Another matter of great importance is to observe 
 carefully that the pupils " touch " the letters properly 
 — that is, lightly and evenly all round, and that they 
 move the hand or stick in the proper direction. Mis- 
 takes in direction are perhaps more frequently made in 
 " touching " /than an^/ other letter, but care is required 
 in all. This difficulty — a very serious one in class 
 teaching — is readily avoided by using letters with a 
 control to prevent the wrong direction being followed. 
 
 The next point to remember is the importance of not 
 letting the child begin to write, or, at all events, not 
 letting him continue writing, until the motor memory 
 for the forms of the letters has been so well trained by 
 practice in touching over the standard letters that the 
 pupil begins his writing not only easily but tolerably 
 well ; and, as Dr. Montessori points out, this practice 
 in touching the letters or in moving a dummy pen or 
 stick in a groove should be continued for a long time, 
 even while the child is so far advanced as to practise 
 writing with a pen, because the object is not merely 
 to write, but to write a good hand. The importance 
 of beginning with good writing can hardly be over- 
 estimated, not only because of the great difficulty of 
 getting rid of bad habits unconsciously acquired, but 
 also for the general reason given on the next page. 
 This is especially a case in which excellence in the 
 art is to be acquired by practising the motor prepara- 
 tion separately, so that the attention can be entirely 
 directed to it, rather than by letting the desire for 
 
154 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 expression set the motor impulses in operation without 
 such precautions as ensure that they are being ac- 
 curately adjusted. 
 
 Dr. Montessori lays great stress on the importance 
 of not allowing the child to write with badly formed 
 letters ; if he has any tendency to do so, he must be 
 brought back to the exercises for touching the letters. 
 "To go forward correcting his own mistakes, boldly 
 attempting things which he does imperfectly, and of 
 which he is as yet unworthy, dulls the sensitiveness 
 of the child towards his own errors." There can be no 
 doubt of Dr. Montessori's wisdom in this — nor of the 
 unwisdom of allowing school children in more advanced 
 schools to practise scribbling notes of lecture-lessons 
 to the ruin of their handwriting. Writing quickly is 
 a desirable accomphshment, but it should be carefully 
 practised as an end in itself, i.e. when the attention 
 is directed to the writing alone, with the object of 
 securing that it is good as well as quick. Secondary 
 schools are great offenders in this respect. To allow 
 the pupil to begin writing as rapidly as possible when 
 his attention is directed, not to the writing itself, but 
 to what the teacher is saying, is almost certain to 
 destroy that careful formation of the letters which 
 has been insisted on in the earlier years. University 
 examiners are well used to the extraordinarily bad 
 handwriting of the secondary school pupils— bad in 
 every way ; for, not having devoted their attention to 
 rapidity in writing, they commonly write neither rapidly 
 nor legibly. 
 
 It might appear at first sight that it is inconsistent 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 155 
 
 to object to dulling the sensitiveness of the child to 
 his errors, and at the same time to refuse to reveal his 
 error to the child when, being asked for an i he 
 gives an 0, as on p. 133. Such a criticism would be 
 unfounded. It is one thing to lead the child to be 
 sensitive to his own errors, so that he may grow to 
 have an inner desire for his own perfection ; it is 
 quite another thing to lead him to be sensitive towards 
 other people's estimate of him, so that he desires less 
 to do well than to be thought to have done well. No 
 doubt it is possible to err in either direction, and in a 
 matter like this teachers and parents must judge 
 for themselves. But at least let them weigh the 
 reasons which, as the writer believes, actuated Dr. 
 Montessori in not allowing the teacher to correct the 
 child in a mistake such as that on p. 133. Doubtless 
 she would guard the pupil against (a) such a fear of 
 reproof as would tend to prevent his confidently 
 showing the teacher the spontaneous workings of his 
 own mind, (h) such a diversion of his attitude towards 
 the lesson as is involved in giving his attention to the 
 teacher's estimate of his knowledge, instead of giving 
 it spontaneously to the idea itself (for it is that which 
 he ought to learn, and therefore ought to attend to), 
 and (c) emotional feelings, whether of depression at 
 being told he is wrong, or of an undue effort to please 
 by remembering the lesson, or of undue excitement at 
 having pleased or displeased the teacher. 
 
 It is proper here to refer to another precaution. It is 
 dangerous to force a child who is naturally left-handed 
 to write with the right hand, Evidence has been 
 
156 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 accumulated which establishes the fact that this is a 
 fertile cause of stammering. In one case a left-handed 
 pupil, having begun to stammer while at school, was 
 removed, and having dropped back into left-hand 
 writing at home, the stammer ceased. After a time 
 the parents desired to send her to school again. For- 
 tunately the family doctor knew the stammer might 
 be due to the writing, and as the rule of the school 
 required that she should write with the right hand, he 
 advised the parents to let this be tried at home before 
 sending her back to school. This was done and the 
 stammer recommenced. 
 
 Of course this instance is not given as proving a 
 connection, — a single instance could never establish 
 such a fact, — it is merely cited as a striking example. 
 But the statistical evidence which has now been 
 accumulated would be amply sufficient to establish 
 some connection even were it not a priori very probable. 
 The immediate cause of stammering is well known. It 
 is that the nerve impulses to the various muscles which 
 move the organs concerned in speech do not succeed 
 each other in proper sequence. For instance, if the 
 impulse to expel the breath through the vocal organs 
 just follows instead of just precedes the impulse to the 
 lips to close in order to make the sound of p, then a 
 stutter results, and if the action is prolonged, we get 
 the worst form of convulsive stammer. But this 
 improper sequence is just what we might expect might 
 result from trying to set up a new nerve centre for 
 speech — it might interfere with the existing nerve 
 centre. Now we know that the speech centre is one 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 157 
 
 side or the other of the brain, according as the right hand 
 or the left hand is most used, and that, especially in 
 children, a second speech centre may be set up on the 
 unused side of the brain, if by any chance the original 
 centre is destroyed. Hence we should naturally expect 
 that if we made a left-handed boy employ his right hand, 
 especially for matters connected with speech, the result 
 might be to set up a second and imperfectly organised 
 speech centre on the other side of the brain pari passu 
 with the use of the right hand. If both worked well 
 and in harmony, no harm would be done, it might be 
 an advantage, especially in case one speech centre 
 happened to become diseased in after life. For such a 
 patient would suffer little or no inconvenience ; he 
 would naturally use the other centre, and perhaps be 
 quite unaware of the difference. But where but one 
 speech centre is used, its destruction is most serious, 
 for in adult life the brain has lost so much of its plas- 
 ticity that it seems doubtful whether the second speech 
 centre has ever been established after middle age, and 
 certainly there is no recorded instance of its having 
 attained to any degree of flexibility. 
 
 It is evident that this bears on the question of teaching 
 ambidexterity. Exactly how far the cases are parallel 
 it is impossible to say. It is very probable that no ill- 
 effects whatever might follow from an attempt, con- 
 sciously made towards ambidexterity by the pupil, 
 and with his own goodwill. As we do not know the 
 sequence of cause and effect, we cannot speak dog- 
 matically, but what we do know certainly indicates the 
 need for great watchfulness, and if any tendency to 
 
158 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 interfere with the smooth working of the organs of 
 speech be suspected, the training for ambidexterity 
 ought to be immediately discontinued. It is there- 
 fore incumbent on the teacher to be extremely cautious 
 about teaching a left-handed boy or girl to " touch " 
 the letters with his right hand. 
 
 In those schools in which reading has been taught 
 before writing, the pupil will not require to be taught 
 the names of the letters as he touches them over, for 
 he will know them already. But where the order in 
 which the subjects are to be taught is at the teacher's 
 option, the physiological argument for teaching the 
 letters in the first instance by touch, sight, and sound, 
 all together, as in Dr. Montessori's technique, is 
 overwhelming. 
 
 The teacher who works under an authority whose 
 requirements are fully satisfied by the mere mechanical 
 ability to write, will be under a great temptation to 
 ignore the most important function of writing, namely, 
 that it shall serve as a means of self-expression. Self- 
 expression is the evidence that the child's spirit is 
 active. So far as the child's thought and action is 
 forced to correspond to the thought of the teacher, 
 so far it has a passive element and has not produced 
 its full formative effect on the child's mind. It is 
 only when it becomes a spontaneous manifestation 
 that we know that it has become part and parcel of 
 the child's nature. It is seldom, indeed, that children 
 who have not been unduly repressed fail to exhibit 
 these spontaneous manifestations of their mental life. 
 They have a natural tendency to express themselves 
 
TEACHING WRITING AND READING 159 
 
 in any and all of the ways at their command. Hence 
 if writing has been taught them without a distasteful 
 sense of weary effort, they will in all probability use 
 it as a means of self-expression, just as happened 
 with Dr. Montessori's pupils. Teachers who dis- 
 approve very strongly of allowing pupils ever to write 
 a word with incorrect spelling, and who therefore 
 require that their writing shall be at first confined to 
 copying what the teacher has written on the black- 
 board, will refuse to encourage their pupils to use 
 writing as a means of self-expression in the early 
 stages. In the author's opinion the disadvantages of 
 this plan far outweigh its advantages, as compared 
 with that advocated above, but if it is to be employed, 
 the pupils should give their own phrases for the 
 teacher to write. 
 
 Whatever be the demand of the paramount 
 authority, the teacher ought never to lose sight of 
 self-expression as the true goal of his teaching, and 
 with that end in view he ought to take the greatest 
 pains to secure that the words or sentences with which 
 the children commence their writing relate to things 
 or ideas with which they are thoroughly familiar, and 
 which are among the pleasantest associations of their 
 daily lives. It is one great advantage of the Montessori 
 method that it does away with the need for copy-books, 
 in which, from the nature of things, it is impossible 
 that the headlines shall be in an intimate individual 
 relation to the pupil's spontaneous interests. And 
 even without the Montessori method of separate 
 individual work, the class teacher can appeal to the 
 
i6o THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 spontaneous interest of the class as a whole, which 
 is often just as real an interest as that of the individual 
 children who, under the Montessori method, are working 
 separately, each at his self-appointed task. Class 
 sympathy, under a skilful teacher, often becomes so 
 strong that it creates a really spontaneous interest in 
 each individual of the class. Even in Dr. Montessori's 
 own teaching, where the ideal consciously sought after 
 was that each pupil should follow the spontaneous 
 promptings of his own nature as a separate entity, 
 the result not infrequently showed that what began as 
 individual interest spontaneously transformed itself 
 into class interest. The problem for the class teacher 
 in an ordinary school is just the reverse — it is to make 
 the class interest generate individual interest. 
 
 Moreover, the interest should, as far as possible, be 
 mental interest in the ideas on which the lesson 
 depends, and in their expression through the medium 
 of writing. As we have seen, mere interest in the 
 being able to write or read is not a really educative 
 interest, at least from the intellectual standpoint. 
 
 As the Montessori method of teaching reading 
 depends on the fact that Italian is a phonetic language, 
 it is not equally applicable to English. Teachers who 
 employ the look-and-say method almost exclusively 
 will get little if any direct assistance from studying 
 Dr. Montessori's phonetic method of teaching reading, 
 but the technique of a great teacher is always a matter 
 of interest, and the account in the previous section 
 will repay careful examination even by those who do 
 not employ the phonic method. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 
 
 " The voice of Seguin seemed to be like the voice of the fore- 
 runner crying in the wilderness, and my thoughts were filled with 
 the immensity of a work which should be able to reform the school 
 and education." — Montessori. 
 
 I. Freedom and Obedience 
 
 The biological principle of liberty, which is for 
 Dr. Montessori the fundamental principle of education, 
 was formulated by Seguin in very noble language, 
 which loses nothing of its charm from the quaintness 
 of some of its expressions, turned after the fashion 
 of his mother tongue. But it is the language alone 
 which bears the impress of its origin — the spirit is 
 that of humanity. 
 
 ^ " One of the earliest and most fatal antagonisms 
 taught to a child is the forbidding of using his hands 
 to ascertain the qualities of surrounding objects, of 
 which his sight gives him but an imperfect notion, 
 if it be not aided by the touch' ; and of breaking many 
 things as well, to acquire the proper idea of soHdity.^ 
 
 ^ This seems bad psychology. The idea of " breakableness " is 
 got by breaking things ; that of solidity by handling solid things. 
 II 
 
i62 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 The imbecility of parents in these matters has too 
 often favoured the growth of the evil spirit. The 
 youngest child, when he begins to totter on his arched 
 legs, goes about touching, handling, breaking every- 
 thing. It is our duty to foster and direct that beautiful 
 curiosity, to make it the regular channel for the acquisi- 
 tion of correct perceptions and tactile accuracy ; as for 
 breaking, it must be turned into the desire of preserva- 
 tion and the power of holding with the willj^ nothing 
 is so simple, as the following example will demonstrate : 
 — Once a very excitable child, eighteen months old, 
 touching, breaking, throwing everything he could, 
 seemed really ready, if he had been ouce punished 
 for it, to become possessed by the old intruder ; but 
 it was not our plan. We bought unmatched Sdvres 
 cups and Bohemian glasses, really splendid to look at, 
 and served the child in one of them, after showing 
 him the elegance of the pattern, the richness of the 
 colours, everything which could please and attach him 
 to the object. But he had no sooner drunk than he 
 threw the glass away. Not a word was said, not a 
 piece removed from where it fell ; but the next time 
 he was thirsty we brought him where the fragments 
 lay, and let him feel more thirst before we couJd find 
 another glass equally beautiful. Some more were 
 broken in the same petulant spirit, but, later, he slowly 
 dropped one, when, at the same time, he looked into 
 our eyes to catch signs of anger. But there was none 
 there, nor in the voice ; only the composure and accent 
 of pity for the child who could wilhngly incur such a 
 loss. Since then, baby took good care of his cups and 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 163 
 
 glasses, finer than ours ; he taught his httle fingers 
 how to embrace with security the thin neck of one, the 
 large body, or the diminutive handle of others. In 
 practising these so varied handhngs his mind became 
 saving and his hands a model of accuracy." 
 
 The first thought of many on reading this passage will 
 be the strange and unjustifiable extravagance of letting 
 the child break such exquisite vases. It may be so. 
 Few could afford so expensive a method, and less valu- 
 able glasses might have served the purpose as well. Yet 
 if we think chiefly of this, we measure values less truly 
 than Seguin. To the man who was possessed by a- 
 boundless enthusiasm for developing the soul even of 
 the idiot, it would have seemed a far stranger, a far 
 more unjustifiable extravagance to disfigure the grow- 
 ing soul of the child by introducing the idea of opposi- 
 tion, which itself creates opposition and anger, and 
 thus tends to implant evil impulses. His thought was 
 not of material damage ; it was turned another way. 
 Compared with the soul of the child, all else was to 
 him as nothing. Therein he was the true disciple of 
 Him who said that whoso should cause one of these 
 little ones to stumble, it were better for him that 
 a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he 
 were drowned in the depth of the sea. 
 
 The principle of liberty, as contained in the extract 
 from Seguin, bears chiefly on two points, the one intel- 
 lectual, the other moral. The intellectual point is 
 that the child must be given liberty of action, and, 
 
1 64 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 especially, the liberty of using his hands and thus 
 developing himself ; and the earlier chapters have 
 shown on what deep a foundation this belief rests. 
 The moral point is that to forbid the child to satisfy 
 his activities induces a " fatal antagonism." Though 
 this is not developed in the extract given, it is funda- 
 mental in Seguin's system. By this " antagonism " he 
 meant the dualism of right and wrong in the child's 
 nature. This dualism, he holds, is founded not in 
 our nature but in our sufferings ; to him temper and 
 wickedness are not natural to the child, they are 
 " intruders," due to unwise repression, especially to 
 repression involving a conflict of wills. No doubt to 
 some degree all repression must inv^olve a conflict 
 of wills, but it need not be felt by the child as a 
 conflict in which he has to submit because the adult, 
 being stronger, is able to enforce his will, and deter- 
 mined to. In contrast to such a conception, Seguin's 
 view of authority in education is worth studying : — 
 " Authority is like obedience, a mere function, whose 
 existence is provoked by corresponding incapacities ; 
 it ceases when its object is accomplished, and is no more 
 inherent in the individual who happens to exercise it 
 than his coat is adherent to his cellular tissue." And 
 again, " Our authority over them does not derive 
 from our superiority, but from our desire of elevating 
 them to our standard. Hence we do not make them 
 i feel authority like a pressure, nor obedience like a 
 subjection ; but we give them every opportunity 
 of exercising the first themselves in the limits of their 
 8:ptitude ; as well as of acting under the reflex impulse 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 165 
 
 of the second, whenever their spontaneous impulse 
 is as yet deficient." And again, writing of duties — 
 " Duties being less imperative in an uneducated con- 
 science than rights, we have often to enforce the 
 former to a certain extent by unmitigated authority, 
 as was done for mankind, till the child becomes con- 
 scious of the equivalence of these two terms [duty 
 and right]. The right of one is the duty of others 
 [towards him], the duty of one is the right of others. 
 . . . But soon, for the most extreme cases [of idiots], 
 and always for the more ordinar\^ ones, authority need 
 not present itself in its historical features of absolutism, 
 but assumes more tender forms as soon as it is firmly 
 established." 1 
 
 1 Seguin's view is well illustrated in the following instance ; it is in 
 the words of a daughter of the late Bishop Fitzgerald, a man greatly 
 revered ; — 
 
 " When my sister and brothers were all little, — about 10,7, 6, and 
 5, — a boy cousin had directed and helped the two elder ones to 
 construct, or had made for them, in the garden, a little waterpipe 
 of dandelion stalks joined together, which led a tiny jet of water 
 from a barrel to form a tiny fountain : while they were at lunch, the 
 youngest, in some pet or freak of spite, ran out and trampled upon 
 the works : the two elder, enraged, cavight him and one held while 
 the other switched him with a twig from a tree. To them, so 
 employed, came my father, asked no questions, spoke no reproof, 
 but took the little offender from them, led him to the strawberry 
 beds and gave him strawberries. The two elder, ashamed and very 
 sorry, gathered some strawberries and offered them, but were told 
 they were not wanted." The account, written after a study of 
 Seguin and Montessori, concludes thus : " Until now I always 
 thought my father had been unjust. Now I think he was trans- 
 cendently right." 
 
 Here there was ho anger, no assertion of self ; there was authority, 
 but it was the authority of gentleness and peace ; against it there 
 
1 66 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 Thus the principle of Hberty does not mean for Seguin 
 that children are to be allowed to have their own way 
 in all things. On the contrary, " repression," he says, 
 *' cannot be avoided ; let it be employed in its mildest 
 forms ; . . . the means of repression are what the 
 intelligence and feelings of the teacher make them." 
 In school, at meals, on the playground, how many 
 opportunities, he asks, has not the teacher to oppose 
 anti-social actions, and so to create a sense of moral 
 association, of sociability, and family-like associations. 
 
 Here Seguin is writing of idiots ; but what is true 
 of them is also true of the very young. They, too, 
 are as yet unripe for the higher aspects of morality ; 
 for them, too, the first glimpses of altruism must 
 come fiom the recognition of the elementary claims 
 which others have upon us, those which are fulfilled 
 by avoiding anti-social actions. 
 
 A true disciple of Seguin, Dr. Montessori's view 
 of liberty is in the closest accord with his. Of the 
 mode in which the " fatal antagonism " enters into 
 the child's nature, she gives a vivid picture, one 
 which reminds us forcibly of Hegel's well-known saying 
 about the baby's passionate scream. 
 
 could be no rebellion. And no similar offence was ever repeated. 
 Is it likely that such a result would have followed had harsh measures 
 been employed ? Even in children we may thus awaken something 
 of Kant's noble conception, that " man refuses to violate in his 
 own person the dignity of humanity." Not the low motive of fear 
 withholds from evil those who are so treated ; there is a higher 
 motive ; in virtue of it we would not pain those whom we love ; 
 but that is not all ; — there is the still higher motive, that we feel it 
 an outrage to offend against that which we reverence. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 167 
 
 " The child, like every strong creature fighting for 
 the right to live, rebels against whatever offends that 
 occult impulse within him which is the voice of nature, 
 and which he ought to obey ; and he shows by violent 
 actions, by screaming and weeping, that he has been 
 overborne and forced away from his mission in life 
 [i.e. to develop himself through his own action]. He 
 shows himself to be a rebel, a revolutionist, an icono- 
 clast against those who do not understand him, and 
 who, fancying that they are helping him, are really 
 pushing him backward in the highway of life. Thus 
 even the adult who loves him, rivets about his neck 
 another calumny, confusing his defence of his molested 
 life with a form of innate naughtiness characteristic 
 of little children." This is in accord with the modern 
 view that, as often as not, naughtiness is a safety 
 valve for the escape of nervous energy. The way to 
 banish naughtiness is to give plenty of occupation. 
 But it must be congenial occupation. Satan finds 
 mischief not onty for idle hands, but for hands which 
 are doing forced labour. 
 
 Again, as with Seguin so with her, the anti-social 
 or disagreeable acts of little children must be repressed. 
 Speaking of schools where the teachers had inter- 
 preted the principle of freedom too loosely, she 
 writes : 
 
 " I saw children with their feet on the tables, or 
 with their fingers in their noses, and no intervention 
 was made to correct them. I saw others push their 
 companions, and I saw dawn in the faces of these an 
 expression of violence ; and not the shghtest at ten- 
 
I 
 
 i68 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 tion on the part of the teacher. Then I had to inter- 
 vene, to show with what absolute rigour it is necessary 
 to hinder, and Httle by httle suppress, all those things 
 which we must not do, so that the child may come to 
 discern between good and evil. 
 
 " If discipline is to be lasting, its foundations must 
 be laid in this way, and these first days are the most 
 difficult for the directress. The first idea that the 
 child must acquire in order to be actively dis- 
 ciplined, is that of the difference between good and 
 evil." ^ 
 
 This is the true rule of education. We are, within 
 limits, under an obligation to repress that which is 
 inherently evil or anti-social, but we do offend if we 
 place the child in such circumstances that we must 
 repress those inner activities which are in themselves 
 desirable, being founded on the very nature of the 
 growing organism, and being, in fact, the activities 
 which are necessary to its full development. 
 
 It is in regard to this question of repression that 
 (.he inexperienced Montessori teacher appears to find 
 the greatest of her difficulties. Although, as Dr. 
 Montessori says, it is the first few days that are the 
 most difficult, she gives us no suggestion as to how these 
 undesirable actions are to be repressed. Yet, if the 
 principles be understood, the matter does not really 
 
 ^ This does not mean that the child is to understand the abstract 
 distinction between good and evil, as adults understand it, or think 
 they do. It merely means that the child is to recognise what kind 
 of conduct is permitted to it and what kind is not permitted to it. 
 The distinction at the earliest stage relates altogether to conduct — 
 though that will form a groundwork for moral distinctions later on. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 169 
 
 present any especial difficulty. Whatever hesitation 
 the teacher may have in suggesting to the pupil that 
 he should do this or do that, instead of leaving him to 
 choose his own occupation, she should have none in 
 gently and firmly checking bad conduct. Seguin's 
 suggestions for establishing a moral control over 
 idiots are much to the point. Like a naughty child, 
 an idiot, he says, " is determined to do nothing. We 
 are equally determined to make him do something ; 
 thus matters stand. Will the idiot or we succeed ? 
 If we cannot enforce our first command, the idiot will 
 feel superior to us, and many trials will be in store 
 before the legitimate ascendency can be established. 
 Therefore, the line of demarcation between that which 
 the child can safely refuse to do and that which he may 
 be obliged to perform is of great practical value. We 
 establish that line by showing that it is generally 
 easier to repress than to produce actions, and that the 
 idiot may sooner be refrained in his instinctive mani- 
 festations than forced to produce intelhgent ones : 
 this is the line. Our first orders, therefore, those which 
 must be obeyed, or else the whole treatment is com- 
 promised, must be chosen from the class of things 
 which can be made to be. For instance, we must 
 not order, at first, a child to open his mouth, for what 
 power on earth can make him open it if he will keep 
 it closed against your order ? But, on the other hand, 
 what opposition can he offer to our command not to 
 scratch his face if, at the same time, we hold his 
 hands ? " 
 
 Take a practical application — A young child makes 
 
I70 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 a face at another. It is right to show that you are 
 sorry or displeased — to say that it is not nice behaviour. 
 But it is not right to say, " I forbid you to do that 
 again." If you see children quarrelling, it is right to 
 separate them, using just sufficient force, and using it 
 gently. But for reasons stated earlier (p. 104), it is 
 not right to say to very little children, " If you do 
 that again I shall punish you." If such threats enter 
 at all, they belong to the later stage, when the child is 
 able to guide his present conduct by paying heed to its 
 future results, and he cannot do that in the very early 
 stages of childhood. If reproof or punishment is 
 needed it should be immediate, and, if possible, such 
 as will be perceived by the child as fitting the offence ; 
 the delay in giving a drink to the child who broke the 
 glass is an example. And the manner of such punish- 
 ing should follow that example too. There should be 
 " no sign of anger ; only composure, and the accent 
 of pity for the child who could wilhngly behave 
 thus." 
 
 By degrees, as Seguin says, the child will, under 
 such treatment, insensibly grow to obey any order we 
 give, not because he cannot avoid it, but because he 
 feels he ought to do it, and finally, because he likes to 
 please us in so doing. In a passage of rare beauty, 
 Dr. Montessori puts the same idea. Speaking of the 
 stage in which the education of freedom has done its 
 perfect work, she writes : " This is the period in which 
 the child runs joyously to obey, and leaves, at the most 
 imperceptible request, whatever is interesting him, 
 so that he may quit the solitude of his own life and 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 171 
 
 enter with the act of obedience into the spiritual hfe 
 of another." 
 
 " Our first orders . . . must be chosen from the 
 things which can be made to be." By this Seguin 
 only meant, things which we can control, whether the 
 child wills them or not. But it is equally important 
 to be sure that they are things which the chiild can do, 
 if he wills to do them. Unless we know that he can 
 do them, we ought only to suggest them, or at least 
 if we order, we must not insist. On this point Dr. 
 Montessori quotes an interesting observation by a 
 teacher, one of her own pupils, as to the different 
 stages in learning how to do a thing. First, there are 
 the unsuccessful attempts, when the child fails or 
 perhaps only succeeds imperfectly. Then comes a 
 time when, without quite knowing how it happens, 
 he chances to succeed. At once delighted and sur- 
 prised, he tries it again but fails. After more practice 
 comes the next stage, when he can nearly always do it 
 if he wants to, but makes mistakes when some one else 
 asks him to do it. " The external command does not 
 as yet produce the voluntary act." When he can 
 always do it himself, then the child is [usually] able to 
 obey the command. This, as she says, is every one's 
 experience with children, whether in school or at home ; 
 and though the observation is very far from being 
 universally valid, it is well that the teacher should 
 pay great regard to the existence of these stages in 
 learning, lest she treat the pupil as if he were in a 
 higher stage than he is. It often happens that a child 
 
172 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 is told to do something which, though he has done it 
 before, he cannot readily do at will, and then, when he 
 bungles at it, he is reproved, or told that he is not 
 attending, not trying to do it. But, in truth, the child 
 cannot even try ; the desire to do the act does not pro- 
 duce it, but rather interferes with the doing of it. The 
 act may come of itself, as it were, but when we strongly 
 desire to do it, we set up a concentration of nervous 
 energy which must pass off in some direction, and 
 along some path, be it the right one or not ; and if the 
 desired direction has not, through practice, become 
 easy, it is more than nine chances to one that it 
 passes off in the wrong direction, for there is but one 
 right direction and many more than nine wrong ones. 
 The very strength of the desire prevents its realisation, 
 because the greater the accumulation of energy, the 
 more difficult it is to restrain it from passing off along 
 one of the forbidden paths. Or, to put it from the 
 psychological rather than physiological point of view, 
 too great eagerness defeats itself ; it is when we are 
 eager that we become flurried. So the stammerer, 
 who can speak readily enough when by himself and 
 w^hen nothing depends on it, becomes tongue-tied in 
 the presence of one who expects an immediate answer. 
 So with most of us, there are many things that we can 
 do easily and well of ourselves, and when not under 
 supervision ; we cannot do them rightly if some one is 
 standing over us to watch. He may say nothing, he 
 may do nothing — the mere fact of his presence dis- 
 turbs our volition ; we cannot summon the hidden 
 springs of our action to do our will. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 173 
 
 The ease of an action depends on our familiarity 
 with it. It is not, as many unthinkingly suppose, a 
 property of an action in itself to be easy. No action 
 is easy until the nerves have become accustomed to 
 send the necessary stimuli to the muscles. The 
 teacher and the parent have practised so many and so 
 various actions that even in those things which they 
 may think they do for the first time there is little 
 that is really new. Old and familiar actions are but 
 combined in slightly different sequences. Adults 
 are often slower to learn new actions or new com- 
 binations of actions than are children. The reason 
 is evident — as we grow older our nervous system is 
 less plastic. The boy or girl will learn to ride a 
 bicycle quicker as well as better than the grown 
 man or woman. Thus it often happens that when we 
 ask a child to do some task which is to us quite 
 familiar, we do not realise that to the child it may 
 require that the nervous energy shall pass over new 
 paths. When we order a new pattern of metal vase, 
 the metal worker must make a new mould before he 
 can begin on the vase itself. vSo the child, confronted' 
 with a new task, must make a new path for the dis-' 
 charge of nervous energy. Are we not right to in-- 
 sist that he must be given time ? 
 
 2. Freedom and the School 
 
 Several side issues have cropped up in the dis- 
 cussion ; still, the meaning to be attached to the 
 principle of freedom in the Montessori system has 
 
174 THE MONTESSOni METHOD 
 
 been tolerably well outlined. It appears to include 
 (i) that we are to provide full opportunity for the 
 exercise of the child's motor activities so far as they 
 are not anti-social, and (2) that while we are to repress 
 anti-social activities we are to do so with as little 
 conflict as possible between the child's will and our 
 will. The second condition has, however, been but 
 incompletely stated. For one very important part 
 of education consists in the corrections of the child's 
 mistakes. Here, too, there is to be as little clashing 
 of wills, as little exertion of authority as possible. 
 The child is to develop his own powers through his 
 own experience, as free as possible from the domina- 
 tion of a superior mind. This is not only because 
 we thus avoid the conflict of wills with its antagonisms 
 and emotions, but also because we get the child into 
 the habit of depending on his own mental process 
 rather than on the assistance of the teacher. Hence 
 it is desirable that, so far as is possible, mistakes 
 should be corrected without the direct intervention 
 of the teacher's authority. In the training of the 
 senses and the muscles, this object is very ingeniously 
 attained by using apparatus in which the child cannot 
 help detecting his mistake himself. And in the 
 mental world we have already seen with what extra- 
 ordinary care Dr. Montessori guards against the 
 corrections, by the teachers, even of a definite mistake 
 (see pp. 133 and 155). Better, she holds, that the child 
 should merely forget, without knowing that he has 
 made a mistake, than that he should feel dependent 
 on the teacher. Physical freedom is not enough. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 175 
 
 There must be mental freedom as well. And true 
 mentalj^freedom, she holds, is impossible for those 
 who habitually accept the authority of another. 
 
 Of all the applications of the principle of freedom,, 
 the most far-reaching and the most original is the ' 
 general liberty of the school-room. The door is always 
 open, so that the children can leave when they desire 
 — the chairs and tables are so light that the children 
 can carry them about and choose their own places ; 
 nor need they sit still longer than they desire. This 
 freedom serves^a double purpose. First, it promotes 
 the welfare of the pupil ; next, it helps the teacher to 
 discover the natural tendencies of the child. 
 
 Nothing may seem more natural than that chil- 
 dren at school shall be seated at desks, yet nothing 
 is really more unnatural. The numberless improve- 
 ments which have been made in school chairs and 
 desks — as in adjusting them to the height of the pupils 
 and so designing them, with foot-rests, etc., that 
 the pupils are almost forced to sit in proper attitudes 
 — these things afford striking evidence of the harm 
 done by the compulsory position, whether only in 
 its lowering effect on the general health, or in its more 
 specific ill-effects, such as chest contraction and 
 spinal curvature or weakness. The method which 
 should succeed in banishing these fixed chairs and 
 desks from schools would do an incalculable service 
 to the nation, but there are many difficulties in the 
 way. Not only is there the natural conservatism of 
 
176 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 the educational system, but there is the very practical 
 difficulty of floor space, which, for a given number of 
 children, should be about double as great for the 
 Montessori school. 
 
 I The second advantage of the free school is that it 
 V /serves as a psychological laboratory in which the 
 V teacher can observe the pupils. All educationists 
 are agreed on the importance of founding education 
 on a study of the child. But not all are agreed on 
 the conditions under which the child ought to be 
 studied. Dr. Montessori rightly observes that child 
 study, to be fruitful, should be the study of the child 
 when he is free to manifest himself, and that the child 
 who is under the ordinary discipline of the school- 
 room is not free. It would, for instance, be absurd 
 for the naturalist to study the habits of the fauna 
 of the forest by making a series of careful observa- 
 tions on their representatives in the Zoological Gardens, 
 because, deprived of their liberty, their nature is 
 altered. Perhaps the analogy puts the case rather 
 too strongly, yet it serves to illustrate the point. 
 ^ The essence of child life is bodily activity and move- 
 / ment, especially of the larger muscles ; the essence 
 \ of the school-room is immobility, especially of the 
 \_larger muscles. It results that we are observing, not 
 the free organism of the child in its normal condition, 
 but rather an organism constrained and impeded in 
 regard to the most fundamental of all its activities. 
 
 There is nothing new in this. We all recognise 
 that if we really want to learn what the child's nature 
 is, we must observe the child when freed from artificial 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 177 
 
 restraints. Where Dr. Montessori has advanced is 
 in applying the knowledge to school-room practice 
 far more thoroughly than any of her predecessors or 
 contemporaries. Perhaps there is not very much that 
 is new in the observations she has made. The more 
 important may be classified under the following 
 heads, and it will be seen that they are familiar enough. 
 Some readers may be disappointed ; others, reasoning 
 more justly, will be the better satisfied to accept them.^ 
 
 3, Repetition. The Process, not its Result 
 
 We have seen that the first stage of early education 
 must be through the motor side — that even in what 
 we call sense training there is a motor element. 
 Moreover, the desires of the child are all directed 
 towards doing something ; and it is by action that his 
 senses as well as his muscles are best exercised. Nature 
 has provided that, in the early years, the child shall 
 be intent on the process in itself, far more than on its 
 result. Action for action's sake — that is the motto 
 of ea iy childhood. In this respect there is a contrast 
 of exceeding significance between the adult and the 
 child. Even to the vagabond, labour is most distaste- 
 ful when it has no purpose — it is said that a workhouse 
 master got rid of a pest of tramps by setting them to 
 continue loading and unloading a cart with stones. 
 
 1 \n connection with the Montessori rejection of the current notion 
 of discipHne in the classroom, it is interesting to note that in the 
 ancient Persian schools, that scholar was accounted to be the best 
 who wriggled most and shouted his lessons the loudest. 
 12 
 
178 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 It was the uselessness of the labour which disgusted 
 them most. 
 
 With the Httle child it is exactly the reverse. Give 
 him a pail and a spade and some sand, and as soon as 
 he has filled his pail he will empty it in order to fill it 
 again. ' Whatever the operation may be, he repeats 
 it again and again. Thus Baby Preyer, when fourteen 
 months old, took off and put on the lid of a can 
 seventy-nine times without a single pause. Instance 
 after instance of a like persistence might be given. 
 Even in the mental world, a similar desire for repeti- 
 tion shows itself. Any one who has once told children 
 a story they liked, knows how they love to hear it 
 again. But no significant word may be altered — if 
 you do so, you are corrected at once ; at least so it is 
 with many children. ^ 
 
 1 This characteristic is not confined to children — there are phases 
 of adult life in which it is equally prominent. When a poem has 
 become familiar to us, the change of a word jars, even though neither 
 the accent, the rhyme, nor the meaning be changed. It fails to 
 satisfy us, not because of a change in the idea conveyed by the words 
 — ^it may be infinitesimal, but because of the change in the appeal 
 to our sensuous enjoyment. The beauty of poetry is twofold ; so 
 far as it belongs to the intellectual side, the change might even be 
 pleasing, but on the sensuous side, satisfaction is in exact repetition. 
 And the adult may get even more completely to the level of the child 
 when he is resting the intellectual side — when his play is on the motor 
 side. We may find a parallel to Baby Preyer's seventy-nine removals 
 of the lid in the absorbed way in which the adult throws stone after 
 stone into the water on a summer holiday. One of Dr. Montessori's 
 illustrations has a very kindly humour and is very much to the point. 
 " No two persons could be more convinced of mutual love than 
 sweethearts, and yet they are the very ones who repeat endlessly 
 that they love each other." The illustration is very much to the 
 point as to the enjoyment of the repetition of motor processes ; it is 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 179 
 
 The tendency of the Httle child to repetition, and 
 its significance in education, is a matter on which, in 
 common with all observers of children, Dr. Montessori 
 rightly lays the greatest stress. It is, indeed, of para- 
 mount importance to allow the child to satisfy the 
 demand of his own nature for repetition. Repetition 
 is as necessary for the development of his nervous 
 system as digestion for the growth of his body. 
 
 The reason becomes plain when we remember that 
 the nerve cells grow only through exercise. If a 
 nerve cell were like a muscle, there would be no objec- 
 tion to changes, one kind of exercise would answer 
 as well as another. But as each cell is useful only so 
 far as it is trained to act in co-operation with other 
 cells, they must be trained to act in concert, just as 
 a musical choir is trained, and this can only be done 
 by long continued repetition of the same sequences 
 of action. Thus only do the nerve cells in the one 
 case, as the individuals of the choir in the other, 
 become capable of easy and harmonious action. 
 
 The sets of cylinders, cubes, prisms, etc., which 
 constitute so large a part of the " didactic material " 
 used by Dr. Montessori, have been devised by her as 
 the best way to give opportunity for the very small 
 child to organise his nervous system by repetition. 
 
 also very far from the point. For with the child it results from an 
 inner tendency to perfect the organisation of the nervous system 
 through activity ; with the adult it results from three very powerful 
 tendencies belonging to stages at which the child has not yet arrived. 
 First, there is the tendency to find motor expression for an idea ; 
 second, the social tendency towards sympathy ; and third, the 
 tendency to be attracted by the opposite sex. 
 
i8o THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 It is very likely that they may not be quite as attrac- 
 tive to the little child as the cans and lids used by 
 Baby Preyer, but they have other advantages — they 
 are not so noisy ; and as they are arranged in a regular 
 progression from perceptual to intellectual activities, 
 they give a more systematic training. It is, however, 
 by their continued attraction for the little child that 
 they must he finally judged. This is a doctrine which 
 may meet with a good deal of opposition, because it 
 seems an assertion, in extreme form, of what is com- 
 monly known as soft pedagogy. As here given, it is 
 not really open to this objection, partly because it 
 relates only to very young children, and partly because 
 the stress is to be laid on the word continued. 
 
 In this connection nothing is more important 
 than to let the child exhaust his impulse. 
 
 Time after time has the writer seen those in charge 
 of babies or young children " keep them amused " 
 by giving them one toy after another in quick succes- 
 sion. As soon as any sign of lack of interest appears, 
 the occupation is changed. These good people do not 
 seem to realise that this is exactly the course by 
 which we should train children to be inattentive ; to 
 want change ; to be easily distracted, or, in other 
 words, to be the creatures of their environment ; to 
 be without self-control and incapable of persevering 
 at anything. If we create and foster this tendency 
 in them when they are young, we have only ourselves 
 to blame if we cannot eradicate it when they grow older. 
 
 Not infrequently the motive in providing this 
 continual variety seems to be the pleasure of the 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 
 
 i8i 
 
 adult rather than the benefit of the child. It is very 
 pleasant to ^ see a joyous response on the child's face 
 as the new toy: is given. But when we indulge our- 
 
 FiG. 2. — Boy absorbed in his Work. 
 
 selves thus, the baby becomes to us a toy to be played 
 with, rather than a personality to be developed. If 
 indeed we are followers of Herbert Spencer, we may 
 delude ourselves into the belief that by keeping the 
 child constantly in a state of " pleasurable excite- 
 
I 82 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 ment " we are giving it an ideal environment ; ^ -the 
 word excitement, used by Spencer, is singularly in- 
 appropriate. If we substitute long-continued absorp- 
 tion for pleasurable excitement, we shall not be far 
 wrong. We may readily judge of this by the expres-. 
 sion on the face. Who could doubt that the little 
 boy in Fig. 2 is doing educative work ? — work, too, 
 which will tell in the formation of character as well as 
 in the training of aptitudes. The child's expression 
 gives no indication of excitement, nor of consciously 
 pleasurable feeling ; rather it shows a determined 
 effort, an output of mental energy with real driving 
 force behind it. Thus it is the index of a much 
 more valuable process than the pleasurable absorption 
 shown, e.g., in the faces of children listening to a 
 story, as in Fig. lo. In the one, the child's energies 
 are for the most part constructive ; in the other 
 they are receptive ; and it is constructive work which 
 we value most, — ^in part because of its intrinsic 
 usefulness, and in part because we find it so much 
 harder to cultivate than receptivity. 
 
 4. Let the Child do his own Thinking 
 
 While mothers and nurses are generally ready to let 
 a baby do his own physical exercise, those in charge of 
 
 ^ " As a final test by which to judge any plan of culture, should 
 come the question — Does it create a pleasurable excitement in the 
 pupils ? When we doubt whether a particular arrangement is or 
 is not more in harmony with the foregoing principles than some 
 other, we may safely abide by this criterion." — Education, chap. ii. 
 principle 7. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 183 
 
 children are but seldom ready to let them do their own 
 mental exercise. Almost every one would disapprove 
 if, whenever the baby wanted to get about, the nurse 
 always hfted him instead of letting him creep or toddle. 
 Yet they are quite ready to lift him over his mental 
 difficulties, instead of letting him surmount them him- 
 self. 
 
 The tendency is so general and so difficult to over- 
 come, that it is well to examine its foundations. 
 
 Nature has provided that we shall enjoy watching 
 the processes by which the baby grows, and has thus 
 secured that we not only permit but encourage him to 
 continue them. Suppose, for instance, that he is 
 trying to roll over a cushion on the floor ; we watch 
 the tiny efforts with the greatest interest ; he enjoys 
 it himself, and we enjoy it with him ; we are quite 
 disappointed if the nurse marches in and carries him 
 off in the middle of his efforts. But when a few years' 
 have passed and the stage for grappling with mental 
 problems has come, all is changed. There is no 
 pleasure in watching the look of puzzle on a face ; it 
 irks us not to help when a word or two will end the 
 difficulty ; so, out of mere good nature, it may be, we 
 help him. Or perhaps we may have a better reason — 
 we may feel sure that he must be on the wrong lines of 
 thought — the thing seems so easy that if he were not, 
 the solution would surely have dawned on him earlier — 
 and so we judge that the time for help has come. 
 
 While the last reason is a valid one, there are very 
 few of us who make sufficient allowance for the time 
 the pupil does require for his mental processes. As 
 
1 84 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 has been already pointed out, unless the brain has 
 been organised already for the thinking implied in the 
 problem, the pupil has to do the organising of the brain 
 before he can reach the solution. " Quick as thought," 
 we say ; but thought is only quick when it travels 
 along prepared paths. Travelling is quick when the 
 railway is made ; but, counted from the time we begin 
 to lay the line, it "is long before the first train completes 
 its journey. Unless we recognise a similar difference 
 between the organised brain oi the adult and the 
 unorganised brain of the child, we shall be almost 
 certain to expect the child to think more rapidly than 
 the conditions of the brain permit. For the develop- 
 ment of his real thinking power, only one thing can be 
 worse for the pupil than to expect him to think too 
 rapidly, and that is, to interrupt him in the process of 
 thinking. 
 
 This is no mere arm-chair psychology. Time after 
 time has the writer seen a child told to think, or to 
 remember, and time after time have the seniors been 
 on the point of interrupting the process of thinking, 
 by hints, or by telling the answer, usually in the form 
 of a question, " Don't you see so and so ? " Had they 
 realised the significance of the child's expression of 
 puzzle, they would have seen plainly in it the evidence 
 of mental action, which their premature assistance 
 rendered abortive. Time after time has the writer 
 interrupted the interrupters, and secured for the child 
 the satisfaction of overcoming a difficulty, either quite 
 unaided, or, it may be, with no further hint than an 
 encouragement to go on thinking, and, in some cases, 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 185 
 
 the suggestion of some mode in which the solution is 
 more readily found. ^ 
 
 There are probably very few who, when it is pointed 
 out to them, will not admit that thus habitually to 
 thwart the process of thought in children must have the 
 most serious consequences. We often hear complaints 
 that University students and school pupils in the 
 higher grades cannot or will not think ; that while we 
 can get them to remember, we cannot get them to take 
 the real trouble needed to understand ; that they will 
 not use their brains. What can more surely tend to 
 such a result than to stop them in the middle of using 
 them ? Nature rebels against useless processes ; still 
 more does she rebel against those processes which, 
 having been commenced, are habitually stopped before 
 completion. 
 
 The matter is of such paramount importance, and so 
 many parents and teachers seem unable to realise their 
 mistake, that it is better to labour the point, even at 
 the risk of being tedious. 
 
 Let us ask, then, why we are so apt to interfere with 
 mental processes, in contrast to our encouragement of 
 physical processes. One reason has been given — that 
 it is pleasant to watch a child overcoming a physical 
 obstacle, while the expression of puzzle seems to call 
 for assistance. But there is another — our own im- 
 patience. To watch for some expected yet delayed 
 
 1 This and the next paragraph are taken from one of a course of 
 lectures dehvered in Trinity College, Dublin, in 1903. The form in 
 which they are put refers more to older children than those of the 
 Montessori school, but the substance is true for all. 
 
i86 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 event ; to wait when there is nothing to divert our 
 attention from the delay ; that is the sure way to breed 
 impatience. When the baby is tumbhng about we 
 are watching the process, rather than waiting for its 
 conclusion. Like the audience looking at a play, the 
 mere movement of the child appeals to our sensuous 
 interest. But when the pupil is overcoming his mental 
 difhculty, we cannot see the process, we can only wait 
 for its conclusion. We are no longer the audience 
 looking at the actors ; instead, we are waiting for the 
 curtain to rise. Our impatience arises from our en- 
 forced passivity. If through some accident the curtain 
 were raised, the impatience of the audience would 
 disappear with the interest of watching the process of 
 scene-shifting. 
 
 It is this which makes it so hard for us to give to the 
 child the time he needs. The curtain which conceals 
 those physiological processes which, in the child's brain, 
 bring order out of disorder as the problem is solved — 
 that curtain is never raised for us. If it were, there 
 would be revealed what we must believe to be the most 
 wonderful process of growth in the whole organic world. 
 Absorbed, we should watch it as we might watch the 
 growth of some great work of art. Then we should 
 resent it if, in thoughtless good nature, some one were 
 to interrupt the process by giving the solution, for to us 
 it would seem that the true work of art had been 
 suddenly destroyed and a flimsy imitation put in its 
 place. If such interferences are infrequent, the injury 
 may be but trivial, for the brain of the child has great 
 recuperative power. But if they are habitual, it is 
 
THE PRI:NCIFLE of liberty 187 
 
 beyond doubt that the character of the brain is altered 
 — it ceases to respond to the stimulus of having to solve 
 a problem ; it cannot do what we rightly call hard 
 brain work. The child so treated grows up ready to let 
 others work while he looks on. He may see nice points 
 when they are put to him ; he may be a critic — and 
 more likely to find faults than to find excellences ; but 
 he will not do really solid mental work. 
 
 We have seen in the previous section that, in contrast 
 to the adult who works that he may attain ends, the 
 child works right through processes for the mere satis- 
 faction of it. We see the reason here : to the child, 
 though he does not know it, the process is the only way 
 to attain what is for him the most valuable of all ends, 
 his own self- development. We constanth/ recognise 
 the need of actually working through processes, e.g., 
 when we lament the fact that thousands satisfy their 
 love of games by looking on at a football match instead 
 of by playing football. Yet, under the impression that 
 we are helping him, we too often compel the child to 
 play the part of the spectator while we do the work 
 through which alone the real benefit comes. 
 
 It is this spirit, manifested alike in the school and in 
 the home, which Dr. Montessori has in mind when she 
 condemns " the general habit of considering the act 
 of knowing as something final." Those who tell the 
 child the answer to his problem are acting as though the 
 one thing of importance is that he should know the 
 answer. But the more " trouble " we save the child, 
 whether in things physical or mental, the more injury 
 we do him, and. usually, the less of real happiness and 
 
1 88 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 satisfaction we allow him, for it is fair enough to say, 
 as she does, that his own self- development is his true 
 and almost his only pleasure. The mother, or the nurse, 
 who washes and dresses the child does it " always 
 with the same erroneous idea that the [only] end to be 
 attained is the completion of the action," whereas, 
 until the child can do these things for himself, the 
 important thing is that he shall go through the process. 
 To save time, we do what he might do, and when we 
 are depriving him of the opportunity of exercising his 
 own powers, we complain because he does not quietly 
 acquiesce, but instead, manifests his impatience of 
 being compelled to be inactive. That impatience, of 
 which they so often complain, should afford the greatest 
 dehght to his mother, to his friends. For without it, 
 without the desire to do things himself, the child would 
 never develop. We speak of the " divine discontent " 
 of the man, because it urges him to something higher ; 
 a thousand times more should we speak of the divine 
 impatience of the child, which is so often his only 
 means of protest against the wrongs he suffers at the 
 hands of those who love him. 
 
 It is hard for us to look at the commonest matters 
 from the child's point of view. When we blame him for 
 impatience, because he will not stay quiet while we do 
 something for him, we forget how impatient we get 
 when we are kept idle while another does what we want 
 to do. Whose fingers have not itched when, standing 
 idly by, he has to wait while some one else pokes the 
 fire or turns over the pages of the dictionary to find the 
 word he wants ? Then, good breeding prevents our 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 189 
 
 interference ; we curb our impatience while our friend 
 does what we would do — we should displease him did 
 we take the poker or the dictionary from him and force 
 him to idleness, for it is the idle one who feels impatient. 
 Or, to take another example, it is the one who has 
 asked the riddle who wants to tell the answer, not the 
 one, who, thinking he can solve it, is trying to think on. 
 But when it is a child who is thinking or asking, we 
 forget how we ourselves should feel in the like case ; no 
 consideration of good breeding restrains us ; on the 
 contrary, it seems to us that it is the child who should 
 be passive, who should show his good breeding by being 
 grateful that we have saved him trouble ; it is ours to 
 command, it is his to obey. 
 
 All life entails compromise of duties. Only one 
 aspect of the duties of the adult to the child is dilated on 
 above. Often the reply of the parent, the nurse, the 
 teacher will be — we have not time — we have so many 
 other things we must do, that we cannot let the child 
 have time. It is true — to provide food and clothing 
 for him is the most imperative of all duties towards him 
 — and duties towards others may be more imperative 
 than duties towards the child. Yet in this there hes 
 a danger. Because there is sometimes good reason for 
 ignoring the child's claim to hve his own hfe ; because 
 it is often necessary that he should obey without 
 question, so as to leave us free for prior duties, there- 
 fore we are apt to require the same ready obedience 
 where there is no necessity to enforce it — we are apt to 
 think that the right to claim obedience from the child 
 belongs to us as individuals — that being adults, we 
 
I90 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 are more important than he is, and therefore entitled 
 to more consideration. This is but a form of the crude 
 morahty that might is right ; the higher view is that 
 our claim to his obedience is founded on our obhgation 
 to perform other duties, which, if he did not obey us, 
 we could not fulfil. And there can be little doubt that 
 children will yield the readiest and most unquestioning 
 obedience to those who require it on worthy grounds, 
 and not merely as a tribute to their greater age, greater 
 power, or greater importance. 
 
 5. The Principle of Freedom ; its Physiological 
 Foundation 
 
 Considered as a justification of the Principle of 
 Freedom, it may be fairly urged that much of the fore- 
 going discussion is beside the point. So far as it enforces 
 the truth that it is only through actual process that 
 the nervous system can be educated, all may agree ; 
 but the real question remains untouched — namely, 
 whether the child is best educated by doing what he 
 chooses, or what a wise guardian ordains. 
 
 Again, it may be asked, what does all the talk about 
 Seguin's " antagonisms " really amount to ? Every 
 one knows that if you do not cross a child, there will be 
 no ebullition of temper at the moment ; but the real 
 question is, will the child not grow up self-willed, 
 incapable of giving way to others, of bearing disappoint- 
 ments ? In support of this it may be urged that even 
 the strongest advocates of the doctrine of freedom 
 admit that where it is fully carried out, it will end in 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 191 
 
 disaster. Dr. Montessori herself speaks of the " abso- 
 lute rigour " with which " all those things which we 
 must not do " are to be " suppressed, destroyed." 
 In default, therefore, of some attempt to justify the 
 apparently arbitrary line which separates those spon- 
 taneous activities which are permitted to the child 
 from those which are not permitted, it seems not 
   unreasonable to assert that what a supporter of the 
 so-called Principle of Freedom really means by it is — ^ 
 " Children are to be free to follow such spontaneous ' 
 impulses as I think desirable ; those which I think 
 undesirable are to be suppressed, destroyed." 
 
 The objection is, indeed, obvious, for nowhere does 
 Dr. Montessori supply any psychological or physio- 
 logical justification for suppressing some spontaneities 
 and encouraging others. It is little wonder that cold- 
 blooded, logically-minded readers become impatient 
 when, having found on one page such an enthusiastic 
 sentiment as "we cannot know the consequences of 
 suffocating a spontaneous action at the time when the 
 child is just beginning to be active ; perhaps we suffo- 
 cate life itself. Humanity shows itself in all its intel- 
 lectual splendour during this tender age, as the sun 
 shows itself at the dawn, and the flower in the first 
 unfolding of the petals ; and we must respect religiously, 
 reverently, these first indications of individuality," 
 they find on the next page ; '' it is, of course, understood 
 that here we do not speak of useless or dangerous acts, 
 for these must be suppressed, destroyed." 
 
 Nevertheless there is such a justification, and to 
 those who recognise that the distinction she draws is 
 
192 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 founded on a sound view of the development of the 
 child, the poetic language in which she often writes 
 will rather stimulate than repel. For it shows us 
 something of those qualities of enthusiasm and devotion 
 to which her great influence on children is in part due. 
 For if enthusiasm unguided by knowledge is dangerous, 
 it is equally true that in dealing with little children, 
 knowledge uninspired by a reverent enthusiasm is 
 but little worth. And if " The Montessori Method " 
 is not a mere, and perhaps, we might add, not an 
 adequate exposition of the method from the philo- 
 sophical point of view, we have the more reason for 
 gratitude in that it gives us a revelation of the person- 
 ality of a great teacher, such as we could never gather 
 from a mere scientific exposition. Not by precept, 
 but b}^ example, it teaches us the chief lesson of all, 
 that reverent and devoted love for the child is the 
 most important of all qualities in those who would 
 teach the very young. In this too, as in all else, Dr. 
 Montessori is a true disciple of Seguin. Never, surely, 
 was the spirit of the true teacher more clearly shown, 
 never was his spiritual reward more nobly expressed, 
 than in vSeguin's words, written after many years of 
 strenuous labour : 
 
 * We looked at the rather immovable, or ungovernable, mass 
 called an idiot with the faith that where the appearance displayed 
 nothing but ill-organised matter, there was nothing but ill-circum- 
 stanced animus. In answer to that conviction, when we educated 
 the muscles, contractility responded to our bidding with a spark 
 from volition ; we exercised severally the senses, but -an impression 
 could not be made on their would-be material nature without the 
 impression taking its rank among the accumulated idealities ; we 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 193 
 
 were enlarging the chest, and new voices came out from it, expressing 
 new ideas and feehngs ; we strengthened the hand, and it became 
 the reahser of ideal creations and labour ; we started imitation as a 
 passive exercise, and it soon gave rise to all sorts of spontaneous 
 actions ; we caused pain and pleasure to be felt through the skin 
 or the palate, and the idiot, in answer, tried to please by the exhi- 
 bition of his moral qualities ; in short, we could not touch a fibre of 
 his without receiving back the vibration of his all-souled instrument. 
 
 For one who, by his example, can teach us thus, 
 there are many indeed who are competent to deal 
 with the dry bones of the psychological or physiological 
 principles of education. Nevertheless the work of 
 justification is not unimportant. For however we 
 may disguise the principle of liberty by the use of 
 semi-scientific phrases hke spontaneous development, 
 yet so far as it is to be applied, it amounts to neither 
 more nor less than the assertion that children are to 
 be given their own way, to do w^hat they like. Is there 
 then any especial justification for applying this prin- 
 ciple to the very young ? We know that to apply it 
 indiscriminately, and to older children, results in serious 
 injury to character — in want of self-control, in weak- 
 ness of will, and so on. The seriousness of the objec- 
 tion is admitted. Unless we can show that there are 
 reasons why these ill results are not likely to follow- 
 when the principle is applied to the very young and 
 with the limitations laid down by Seguin and Dr. 
 Montessori, people will be apt to beheve that any- 
 thing especially good in the results attained must 
 be due to something in the personal quahties or 
 practice of those who adopt the method, and that 
 whatever is valuable is attained rather in spite of than 
 13 
 
194 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 in consequence of the principle on which it is supposed 
 to be based. 
 
 There is no difficulty in answering the question asked 
 above. There are reasons why such treatment is 
 peculiarly applicable to the very young. It is well 
 known to physiologists and medical men that the in- 
 fant ig* exceedingly liable to convulsive actions — that 
 is, actions which are caused by sudden or excessive 
 discharges of nervous energy along this path or that, 
 a^ " chance " may determine — in contrast to the 
 discharges of later life, where the brain is organised, 
 and the path of discharge is determined in relation to 
 the rest of the nervous system. These convulsive dis- 
 charges are injurious, because, like all passages of 
 nervous energy, they leave the nerve cells along which 
 they pass in a different condition from that in which 
 they found them — the}^ do, in fact, take their part in 
 organising the nerve cells, and they organise them in 
 undesirable ways. If they are frequent and excessive, 
 they often lead to idiocy. This tendency to imcon- 
 trolled nervous discharges marks a clear distinction 
 between younger and older children. 
 
 When once the fact is clearly realised that it is by 
 the discharge of nervous energy that the brain is 
 organised, it becomes evident that there are serious 
 dangers in interfering with the healthy spontaneous 
 manifestations of the young. For every healthy 
 spontaneous manifestation is due to the discharge, 
 along a normal path, of an accumulation of nervous 
 energy. We may prevent its discharge along that 
 path, but we cannot prevent its being discharged, 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 195 
 
 because it must discharge itself along some path! 
 When the child is old enough to have acquired what 
 we call self-control, there may be little risk in our 
 interfering with his spontaneous action, for he may be 
 able to direct the energy along some desirable path, 
 one which will help to organise the brain in a proper 
 way ; but where the child is too young to have acquired', 
 self-control, and we simply stop the normal channel of' 
 discharge without providing some other outlet, then' 
 the path along which the nervous energy actually 
 discharges itself is a mere matter of chance — we cannot 
 control it, nor can the child. Whether it will do 
 mischief or not no one can tell. At all events, we 
 have no lack of warnings. One may be mentioned 
 here. We have seen, in connection with the cause of 
 stammering, how disastrous may be the result of stop- 
 ping the spontaneous discharge of energy along the 
 nerves to the left hand, when we compel the left- 
 handed child to write with his right hand. 
 
 It will help us to realise something of what is implied 
 in keeping a child still, if we consider the immense 
 part the motor activities pla}^ in his life. They are to 
 the child even more than our thoughts are to us. 
 For the mental world of the very young child is so 
 undeveloped that its motor activities constitute almost 
 the whole of its conscious life, while our conscious 
 life includes a whole world of thought, feeling, and 
 actions ; or, to put it from the physiological point of 
 view, so far as nervous energy is not required for the 
 unconscious operations of the organism, it tends in 
 the very little child to discharge itself almost wholly 
 
196 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 in motor activities, but, with adults, it may discharge 
 itself either in motor or in mental activities. Thus we 
 see that to tell the very little child not to move, is 
 just on a par with telling the adult neither to move 
 nor to think. If he is very tired, the adult may be 
 able to obey. If he is fresh and vigorous, it is a physio- 
 logical impossibility that he should. For to be fresh 
 and vigorous is to have accumulations of nervous 
 energy which must overflow along some path or other. 
 Even in the adult, self-control does not mean that he 
 can stop up all channels of discharge, but only that 
 he can direct the energy along this or that channel at 
 his will. Even the adult usually acquires this control 
 only in regard to the less vigorous of his motor im- 
 pulses or of his thoughts. When we remember how 
 difficult it is for us to stop thinking of what our minds 
 are bent on thinking of, we may get some idea of what 
 it is for the child to stop doing what his muscles are 
 bent on doing. For to tell him not to move those 
 muscles which his nervous energy is just going to set 
 in motion, is on a par with telling the adult not to 
 think of the thing on which his mind is bent. 
 
 We must not, however, overstate the case. Even 
 quite young children may often remain still for con- 
 siderable intervals. They may do it of themselves 
 when shy, when tired or listless, or when cowed 
 through habitual repression, or, again, they may be 
 absorbed in some occupation, the difficulty of which 
 calls for all their attention. Thus all the larger 
 movements and all the uncontrolled movements are 
 inhibited in the boy shown in Figs. 6, 7, and 8 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 197 
 
 (Chap. VII.), because the nervous energy is all directed 
 to the solution of the problem which engages him, 
 and the only apparent movements are the very slight 
 ones required to adjust the positions of the cylinders. 
 
 Even with restless children the skilful teacher may 
 often divert the nervous discharges from the motor 
 channels at her will. When the word of command, 
 or better, of suggestion, is given softly, and with 
 features and form in repose, then the children may 
 find it easy to imitate the teacher's calmness ; all 
 excitement may subside and every movement be 
 stilled. Nor is imitation our only aid. We may tell 
 them to be as silent as mice ; and with them as with 
 us, the idea will help to its own realisation. It is by 
 such means, 1 not by the mere force of their self-con- 
 trol, that we can get children to sit really quiet. If 
 any one doubts this, let him picture the result of a 
 loud and excited order to a class of restless children 
 to " Sit still ! " accompanied by energetic gestures, 
 or by a vigorous threat of what will happen to them 
 if they don't obey. It is not that such commands 
 are never obeyed ; they would be immediately 
 effective if the command were to run away. 
 
 As an analogy has been drawn in an earlier para- 
 graph between stopping thought and stopping move- 
 ment, it is well to observe that the analogy is very 
 far from being complete. For while a thought can 
 only be inhibited by not letting any nerve discharge 
 pass along the corresponding path, the movement 
 of a hmb can be inhibited without withdrawing the 
 1 See the "Games of Silence," Chap. VII. 
 
198 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 stimulus which actuates the moving muscle. For 
 instance, if the forearm is being moved up, we know 
 that a discharge is passing along the nerve to the biceps 
 muscle, and we can stop the upward movement not 
 only by inhibiting the discharge, but by stimulating 
 the opposing muscle, that at the back of the arm, 
 by means of which we move it downward. We have 
 only to adjust the two stimulations so that the upward 
 force due to the one muscle is exactly neutralised 
 by the downward force due to the other. That is 
 what we actually do when we hold the arm tense 
 or rigid. 
 
 This kind of inhibition involves a considerable 
 expenditure of nervous energy, — the point of the 
 Delsartian relaxation of the muscular system is the 
 saving of energy due to the careful avoidance of all 
 such opposing strains. Thus to relax altogether, so as 
 to avoid all expenditure of nervous energ}^ is physio- 
 logical rest, which differs somewhat from Dr. Montes- 
 sori's conception of rest. Hers might perhaps be 
 more appropriately called psychological rest — " True 
 rest for muscles, intended by nature for action, is 
 in orderly action " and, very finely put ; "To act in 
 obedience to the hidden precepts of nature— that is 
 rest." 
 
 It is difficult for the adult to maintain, by force 
 of will, this complete relaxation for a considerable 
 interval ; indeed there are many whose tense features 
 or clenched teeth or fingers indicate that while nomin- 
 ally at rest, they are in reality wasting their energy 
 in the simultaneous stimulation of opposing muscles. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 199 
 
 And what is hard for the adult is all but impossible 
 for the very young. A lively child of three or four 
 has so little self - control that his motor impulses 
 are scarcely at all subject to his volition. If we would 
 have him sit still, w^e must ourselves provide some 
 outlet for his nervous energy, and, as we have seen, 
 the skilful teacher may often succeed in this. But 
 if no such outlet is arranged for him, if he is merely 
 ordered to sit still, he will presently begin to swing 
 the legs or arms, or sway the trunk or head. An 
 active child of six or seven will, however, be able to 
 sit still much longer, not so much because he can exer- 
 cise a voluntary control over his motor impulses, so 
 as to inhibit them completely, as because he can 
 send opposite stimulations to opposing muscles 
 and thus keep tense and rigid, — a mode of adjust- 
 ment which is beyond the volition of the younger 
 child. But even here the want of stillness will be 
 apparent to the close observer. This is because the 
 various impulses to the opposing muscles do not quite 
 neutralise each other ; and, as first one muscle acts 
 too strongly and then the other, we see the twitchings 
 which result from the uneven stimulations of the 
 muscles. After a longer interval one may see many 
 of these tense twitchings — the hands may be clenched, 
 the eyes may be set, and so on. 
 
 Such nervous strains are injurious. It is certain that 
 to get into the habit of sending opposing nervous strains 
 which, though they neutralise each other as to action, 
 yet exhaust the store of nervous energy, must be 
 wasteful, if nothing worse. There is, however, little 
 
200 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 doubt that it is a positive as well as a negative injury. 
 We see in the jerky, irregular, and angular writing of 
 many of our university students the ill-effects of these 
 opposing forces — instead of holding the pen easily 
 in the hand, it is held with tense and jerky fingers. 
 We see it in tense faces, faces in which the muscles 
 are not in repose, but strained. Now, if a muscle be not 
 in repose, it must move the part on which it acts, except 
 the motion be opposed. This opposition usually comes 
 from an opposing muscle, in which case there is a double 
 loss of nervous energy ; or if from, e.g., the pull of 
 stretched skin, there is still a loss, but not so 
 much. 
 
 Beside such injurious actions, there are many others 
 which we should strive to prevent or modify, such as 
 excessive excitement, whether called into being by an 
 unsuitable environment, or arising from a want of 
 balance in the organism. They cannot be enumerated ; 
 to deal wisely with them, determining, as each case 
 arises, how far mere discouragement should be tried, 
 or how far positive suppression, these and the many 
 other difficulties which present themselves must be 
 left to the knowledge, or the sympathy, or, it may be, 
 the prejudice, of those in charge. 
 
 It is evident from the foregoing that there will be a 
 marked distinction between actions which primarily 
 relate to the development of the senses and the muscles, 
 and those which relate to social conduct, and that the 
 principle of freedom is likely to be a far more reliable 
 guide in reference to the former than to the latter. 
 For even in the long course of civilisation the physical 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 201 
 
 organism of man has changed but httle ; in regard 
 to it the spontaneous activities of the child are far 
 more hkely to be desirable than in regard to social 
 relations, which have changed immensely within 
 historical times, and which even now differ greatly in 
 different countries and in different social classes 
 in the same country. Thus there are many actions 
 which are undesirable for the citizen of a civilised state, 
 and which are yet spontaneous in the child. If these 
 be permitted to the child, then, being repeated, they 
 tend to become habitual, thus making it much more 
 difficult to eradicate them afterwards. Hence they 
 stand on an entirely different footing from those motor 
 and sensory activities which are required by all men. 
 But, as every one who is accustomed to deal with 
 children will agree, we must not be content with merely 
 suppressing these undesirable tendencies. It seems, 
 indeed, somewhat of an omission that Dr. Montessori 
 speaks only of the necessity of rigorously " suppressing 
 and destroying " such tendencies. It would be better 
 to hint at transforming them. Our duty is but half 
 done if we do not try to turn them into beneficial 
 activities. Not merely to inhibit anger, or any un- 
 desirable spontaneity, but to divert the nervous energy 
 into some useful or desirable channel, that is what the 
 skilful attendant — parent, nurse, or teacher — always 
 tries to do.^ And with the very young, the outlet must 
 be, in part at least, along a motor channel. 
 
 ^ Seldom, if ever,, has the writer heard of a more striking instance 
 of such skilful treatment than that of two little girls in a tenement 
 house in Dublin, owned by a Social Service Society in Trinity College. 
 
 U 
 
202 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 This is the very method and principle on which Dr. 
 Montessori acts, although she does not state it here. 
 Through sense and muscle training she gives full 
 occupation ; there is but a very small residuum of 
 undesirable action left to be suppressed. 
 
 Looked at from this point of view, the so-called 
 principle of liberty is no fetish ; it does not depend on 
 any theory of the abstract right of the child, nor on 
 any illogical idea that it is the duty of the teacher not 
 to interfere with the individuality of the pupil, or that 
 Nature is endowed with such infallible wisdom that 
 we are to leave everything to her. What is de- 
 scribed as the principle of liberty is found, when ex- 
 amined from the physiological point of view, to be 
 merely this — that as brain matter, or more generally 
 all nervous matter, is organised by action, it should be 
 the object of the educator, be he parent, guardian, or 
 teacher, so to control the organisation of the pupil's 
 brain matter that it shall be as effective as possible. 
 How that object is to be best attained is no doubt a 
 matter for observation, and, if possible, direct experi- 
 ment. But since direct experiment in education is so 
 often impossible, while observation of the results of this 
 
 One of the little inmates fell and hurt himself. The visitor, an 
 undergraduate, herself a great adept with children, was on the 
 point of taking him up and comforting him. But just as the rising 
 pucker on his face gave notice of the coming torrent of tears, two 
 little girls rushed up and cried to leave him to them. They had a 
 toy horse and put it in his arms, telling him it was the horse that 
 was hurt, not he himself, and that he must comfort it. So the 
 pucker passed into a smile, as the little boy comforted the poor 
 horse. Surely never was Christian Science better jiistified, what- 
 ever the stern rnora,list may say I 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 203 
 
 or that method involves a long delay, we must in the 
 present imperfect state of our knowledge rely greatly 
 on somewhat uncertain inferences from our knowledge 
 of the laws of mental and physical growth, and for this 
 purpose we must ransack all our stores — evolution, 
 physiology, psychology, the experience of practical life, 
 all these must be pressed into service. Thus we arrive 
 at the belief that in regard to the development of the 
 sensory and motor system it is important, in the early 
 stages at least, to let the organism develop itself by 
 means of its responses to an environment which en- 
 courages these responses to exhaust themselves in an 
 orderly fashion, rather than one which counteracts 
 them as soon as they are initiated — in which case we 
 should lose control over the paths of their discharge 
 and the resulting organisation of the brain. In regard 
 to mental development, the same rule apphes, though 
 here the environment must be selected with even more 
 care if we are to get the best results, because the in- 
 ward impulses toward mental efficiency are by no means 
 as vigorous as those toward physical well-being. 
 
 But in regard to social or moral development, the 
 organism is not at all so satisfactory a guide, for in the 
 history of the race, the social activities have not behind 
 them the long and steady history of the others. Here 
 we rely on authority for the standards of right and 
 wrong action, of what is desirable and what is undesir- 
 able ; and as the standard adopted necessarily depends 
 to a large extent on the general attitude of the public 
 mind toward the social problems with which it is 
 confronted, the standard itself varies from country to 
 
204 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 country as well as from century to century. Where 
 there is so much instability in the aim, it is little wonder 
 that the method is the subject of interminable dispute, 
 and that we are compelled to rely upon our own 
 opinion, and to enforce it by our own authority. No 
 doubt this is always the case in the last resort, but here 
 there is far less of external principle to guide us than 
 in physical and mental education. But, on the other 
 hand, we have greater stores of personal experience ; 
 and here, too, sympathy counts for far more than in 
 the physical world. In regard, then, to moral educa- 
 tion, Dr. Montessori speaks as an individual, not as the 
 exponent of a principle which transcends individual 
 experience. No doubt much of the delightful spirit 
 manifested by her pupils is due to the harmonious 
 relation between their natural impulses and their 
 physical and mental environment, and in so far it is 
 due to the application of the principle of liberty. 
 But in the more distinctly moral sphere that principle 
 is absolutely discarded. As we have seen (p. 191 and 
 elsewhere). Dr. Montessori does not hesitate to sup- 
 press and destroy with absolute rigour the free impulses 
 of the children towards doing anything that she thinks 
 they ought not to do ; the rigour, indeed, only relates 
 to the result ; her methods of suppressing them are 
 clearly based on loving sympathy and on reverence 
 for the child ; and, as always, the ways of children 
 so treated are charming. 
 
 But are we to conclude that that method is the 
 best which results in the highest type of childish be- 
 haviour — in sweet-tempered, courteous, bright, happy, 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 205 
 
 truthful, fearless, and confiding children ? Can we 
 be sure that here the child is the father of the man ; 
 that such children will develop into men and women 
 with equally fine characters ? If so, the immediate 
 results of Dr. Montessori's own method of training 
 are a sufficient justification of the method — which is, 
 indeed, that of many strong and sympathetic teachers 
 and mothers. Unfortunately this conclusion is not 
 certain ; it is quite possible that to train children to 
 be very good children may not be the way to make 
 them good men and women. Spencer urges this 
 view. " Already," he says, " most people recognise 
 the detrimental results of intellectual precocity ; but 
 there remains to be recognised the fact that moral 
 precocity also has detrimental results. Our higher 
 moral faculties, like our higher intellectual ones, are 
 comparatively complex. By consequence both are 
 comparatively late in their evolution. And with the 
 one as with the other, an early activity produced by 
 stimulation will be at the expense of the future char- 
 acter. Hence the not uncommon anomaly that those 
 who during childhood were models of juvenile goodness, 
 by and by undergo a seemingly inexplicable change 
 for the worse, and end by being not above but below 
 par ; while relatively exemplary men are often the 
 issue of a childhood by no means promising " (Educa- 
 tion, chap. iii.). 
 
 Here it is no question of turning children into prigs 
 or hypocrites — that only happens through influences 
 easily seen to be injurious. The danger now con- 
 templated may arise even when children are brought 
 
2o6 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 up under the finest influences and by worthy and 
 broadminded people. It is rather the question of how 
 far the moral character which belongs to the highest 
 stages of civilisation can be well and truly built upon 
 any other foundation than that of the imperfect 
 characters of the earlier stages of the race history. 
 It is not only to the mental world that the theory of 
 culture epochs applies. We see it also in the moral 
 world. The tendencies which Dr. Montessori would 
 rigorously suppress are survivals from the past. Are 
 we to suppress them in the child, or are we to rely in 
 part on the child growing out of them, after the analogy 
 of our other educational methods ? No one who 
 desired to produce a good business man would endeav- 
 our to suppress in the child all tendencies except those 
 which appeared to lead directly towards the business 
 habits of the adult ; we all recognise that a business 
 man so educated would be but a poor specimen. Yet 
 in morals this is what we are apt to do — we desire to 
 uproot evil in our children as early and as completely 
 as possible. 
 
 The physiological analogy may help to make the 
 point clearer. According to the biogenetic law re- 
 ferred to in the note p. 83, the organs of the human 
 embryo pass through many of the stages which belong 
 to the lower orders of life. If, unaware that this was 
 the regular course of development, we were to watch 
 its growth, we should be horrified to see one pre-human 
 attribute after another making its appearance. For 
 example, the human lungs are developed out of what, 
 in the embryo, promises to become the gills of a fish. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY 207 
 
 Fearful lest our embryo should develop into a mer- 
 maid, we might desire to excise the gills ; but those 
 whose ignorance was less than ours would tell us that 
 by doing so we should deprive the embryo of the 
 very material out of which the human lung must be 
 developed. Does the same principle apply to the 
 growth of the moral nature in the child ? Spencer, 
 with his customary dogmatism, confidently asserts the 
 parallel. It may be wiser merely to put it forward 
 as a suggestion for careful consideration — a serious 
 warning against dangers far more obscure than those 
 of turning children into prigs or hypocrites. In 
 particular, it may help to prevent juvenile delin- 
 quencies being taken too seriously. What appears 
 as an enormity to the anxious parent is no doubt, in 
 many cases, but a passing phase in the child. 
 
 Stress has been laid on the importance of sympathy 
 and reverence in the teachers. Of scarce less import- 
 ance is a saving sense of humour. With it, and with 
 wholesome children not too much repressed to reveal 
 their desires, we need not greatly fear. " Mother," 
 said a little girl of whom the writer knew, and who, 
 alas ! was being far too carefully brought up, and for 
 another — but not to her a better — world — " mother, 
 do you think that if I were to be very good and sing 
 with the little angels all the morning, God would let 
 me play with the little devils in the afternoon ? " 
 From that artless request, preferred in all simplicity, 
 the well-meaning mother learned much. And if any, 
 reading it in these pages, are shocked at its seeming 
 irreverence, they, too, have much to learn. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MONTESSORI SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 
 
 I. General Characteristics 
 
 There are striking contrasts between the Montessori 
 concept of a school and that of other educational 
 systems, alike in regard to the teacher, the curriculum, 
 the time-table, and the schoolroom. These differences 
 all spring from the extraordinarily logical way in which 
 Dr. Montessori has applied to the child's physical and 
 intellectual education the principle that education 
 must be based on the child's own spontaneity — that 
 
 yyhe must be allowed to build up his own mind after 
 the pattern that its natural development craves for. 
 In fact, the teacher's duty is almost confined to 
 
 /securing for the child the opportunity of satisfying 
 ^-^ his spontaneous tendency towards well - ordered 
 activities. 
 
 We see then that the method follows the Froebelian 
 analogy, in which the child is likened to a plant, while 
 the teacher is a gardener who merely supplies ideal 
 conditions for the healthy natural growth of the 
 plant — not the Herbartian analogy, in which the 
 gardener would determine the character of the plant — 
 
 V 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 209 
 
 whether, for example, it shall be prolific in flowers or 
 in foliage. For in the Herbartian philosophy it is the 
 especial function of the teacher to control the growth 
 of the pupil's mind — to build it up according to the 
 pattern he himself approves, the very antithesis of 
 the Frcebelian principle of self-development. 
 
 It is to be hoped that no reader will rest satisfied 
 with paragraphs such as the above, which have the 
 inherent faults of the common popular discussions 
 on education. " Natural development," " healthy 
 natural growth," what do such expressions mean ? As 
 they stand, they mean little more than that their 
 author is begging the question. They acquire a real, 
 meaning only when we know in detail what is meant 
 by the expressions. For, logically, the Herbartian 
 is right — in so far as the teacher arranges the environ- 
 ment, he does control the character, of the resulting 
 development. In truth, then, the teacher's responsi- 
 bility, in the one system as in the other, is to provide 
 the most suitable environment. Thus the principles 
 of competing methods must be judged, not by loose 
 general descriptions, but by a close examination of the 
 details by which they are worked out. In the previous 
 chapters there have been several detailed examples 
 of what the principle of. spontanerty and natural 
 development means in the Montessori system. It is 
 only when we take such examples as affording a 
 definition of the meaning of " natural development " 
 that we shall be logically right in saying that in her 
 
2IO THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 system we follow the order of the natural development 
 of the child's mind. 
 
 The reason for introducing this discussion just at 
 this stage is that we shall presently have to regard Dr. 
 Montessori as a thoroughgoing Herbartian — a teacher 
 who consciously endeavours to control the growth of 
 her pupils' minds far more completely than would 
 usually be permitted by parents. It is only in the 
 physical and intellectual worlds that she puts the 
 principle of freedom or non-interference into practice. 
 In the moral world she would dominate not only their 
 behaviour, but their thoughts. She is a social as well 
 as an educational reformer, and she has a very clear 
 idea of the moral character she desires to produce in 
 her children. To attain her end she neglects no means 
 known to those who love little children, and who 
 recognise that character in the very little ones is to 
 be formed by gentle influences which unconsciously 
 create a sense for ethical beauty, rather than by direct 
 instruction in our duties to ourselves and our neigh- 
 bours. To this end she becomes their confidant ; by 
 conversations which appear to be but a part of the 
 routine of the school she enters into their little world 
 as completely as the gentlest of mother confessors. 
 With no feeling of compulsion on their part, she leads 
 them to open their whole souls to her, that she ma}^ 
 mould them as she will. And being herself one of 
 the great company of strong, pure, and devoted women 
 who, imbued with a deeply religious spirit, are possessed 
 by a reverent love of children, she moulds them very 
 beautifully, as all observers tell us. So do all such 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 211 
 
 women — could we but fill our infant schools with them, 
 and let the school hours last from the morning to the 
 evening, as in her school of which we read ; could we 
 but provide that, as in her school, the mothers should 
 look on the teachers as the kindest and wisest friends 
 their children could have, and thus co-operate with 
 them in every way ; then, whatever the intellectual 
 results might be, we should at least have sweet- ^ 
 tempered, sweet-faced, and sweet-voiced children, 
 neither forward nor shy. But whether it is wise to 
 allow such an intimate relation between the average 
 teacher and the average pupil is quite another question, 
 not only because we cannot secure that all teachers /^ 
 shall be worthy of so great a responsibility, but also / 
 because it involves questions of parental responsi- 
 bility. In Dr. Montessori's case the parents gladly 
 gave to her all the authority she desired. 
 
 Little more need be said on this matter, except 
 to give, in section 3 of this chapter, a description 
 of her morning conversations with the children ; for it 
 will be seen that although Dr. Montessori probably 
 regards it as an essential part of her own practice, it 
 is quite separable from the physiological principles 
 which are usually supposed to constitute the essence 
 of the system, and which, indeed, Dr. Montessori at 
 times seems to claim as its sole foundation. 
 
 We may say, then, that except in regard to moral 
 education, the Montessori teacher, having secured 
 that the child is placed in a suitable environment, is 
 rather a helper than a teacher, and she will usually 
 postpone her help far beyond the time when an 
 
212 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 ordinary teacher would assist — the method is in that 
 sense " heuristic " in the extreme, but the problems 
 set are child-problems, such as he can easily solve. 
 
 As to curriculum, there is just that amount of 
 regulation which gently suggests the possibility of 
 several activities to the child, but lets him select for 
 himself among them. 
 
 As to time-table, we shall see that there is a time- 
 table of a very general character, but there is nothing 
 whatever of the cast-iron ligidity of the ordinary 
 school hours. 
 
 These differences imply corresponding differences 
 in the physical arrangements of the schoolroom — the 
 first, and perhaps the most characteristic and far- 
 reaching, is that there are no fixed chairs or desks, 
 but instead, little chairs and tables which the children 
 can easily move about so as to place them wherever 
 they choose. Also, the door of the schoolroom is 
 always open, so that the children can get into the 
 garden whenever they like to. 
 
 As to punishments, it appears that in the great 
 majority of cases the refractory children were found 
 to require medical treatment. Where that was not 
 the case, the punishment used was to seat the 
 offender, caress him, and supply him with toys. Tt 
 appears that he soon tired of this spoon-feeding and 
 desired to be at work with the other children. The 
 change in the behaviour of the children. Dr. 
 Montessori tell us, was surprisingly rapid and 
 lasting. 
 
 Except for some common games, like marching and 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 213 
 
 the games of silence, described later, there are no 
 class lessons except in gymnastics ; each child selects 
 what he is to do, or at least he feels as if he selected it, 
 
 Fig. 3. 
 
 though the real selection is, no doubt, often in the hands 
 of the skilled teacher. 
 
 The apparatus of a Montessori school, as designed 
 gr adapted by the originator, may be roughly divided 
 into hygienic and didactic, according as the primary 
 intention is to develop the body or the mind. 
 
2 14 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 2 . Hygienic Apparatus and Training 
 
 A healthy Httle child is naturally active, and the 
 best way to develop his body is to give full scope to 
 his natural activities. For this purpose very little 
 apparatus is needed, but whatever there is ought to be 
 such as to encourage the exercise of those activities, 
 not to impede them. It is for this reason that, as we 
 have already seen, fixed desks and chairs are not 
 permitted ; instead, there are light chairs and tables 
 which form part of the gymnastic apparatus — to move 
 them about noiselessly is one of the exercises by which 
 the children acquire control over their muscles. Also, 
 because the light articles are very easily overturned, 
 they learn not to push against them as they thread 
 their way through them. 
 
 In considering the kinds of exercises most suitable 
 for very young children, the chief point to bear in mind 
 is that in the earlier years the arms are relatively 
 very strong and the legs relatively very weak, so that 
 there ought to be much more opportunity than is 
 usually provided for exercising the arms. It is hard 
 to realise the extraordinary strength and endurance of 
 the child's arms, but any one who, holding a child's 
 hands in his own, has swung it round so quickly that 
 its feet leave the ground, will get some idea of how 
 much the child enjoys a great strain on the arms.^ 
 But he will never in that way get any idea of how long 
 the strain can be supported, for he will tire long before 
 
 ^ When the feet leave the ground the strain is of necessity greater 
 than the child's weight. 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 215 
 
 the child. An instance within the writer's experience 
 may give some idea. He and some young men were 
 walking over rough ground with a little girl of about 
 live. She demanded to be swung off the ground, and 
 so carried along, one man taking one hand and another 
 the other. Fresh relays of men were required, and 
 the game was carried on for more than half a mile, 
 when the men gave up, and all this time the child 
 clamoured to be swung to and fro. This may be more 
 than most children of the same age would enjoy; but 
 if so, it is only because their arms have not been exer- 
 cised as continuously as those of the child in question, 
 who was accustomed to be pulled about almost as 
 much as she desired. 
 
 It is interesting to observe that the exercises of the 
 arms which the child enjoys are those in which the 
 weight is supported by the arms instead of by the legs — 
 mere exercise of the arms is not enjoyed at all so much. 
 The reason is plain. Such exercise serves a twofold 
 purpose. The great amount of energy expended by 
 the arms serves to increase the circulation and keep 
 the body in good order, and, in addition, the legs are 
 relieved from a strain which they are as yet scarcely 
 adapted to bear — one which often injures them, making 
 the child bow-legged. Those in charge of little children 
 hardly ever provide enough opportunities for exercising 
 the arms — it is only in later years that the boy, wanting 
 to be strong, begins to train the muscles of the arms 
 in order to restore a power which has been lost through 
 early neglect! Dr. Montessori is no exception ; her 
 idea is not to afford the opportunity for spontaneous 
 
2i6 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 exercise of the arms, but to take some of the \Yeight off 
 the legs. There appears to be only one means pro- 
 vided for putting a strain on the arms — a bit of paling 
 which they can climb along from one end to the other. 
 This she introduced from happening to see — as who 
 has not ? — some of the children making this unexpected 
 use of a fence, and with great enjoyment. (Those who 
 live in towns may see the banisters used in the same 
 way.) Being a spontaneous exercise, it was, on her 
 principles, one which she was bound to encourage, 
 and she approves it because it relieves the legs. The 
 instance shows how desirable it is that such matters 
 should not be left to mere chance, — had the fence been 
 a wall, even this degree of adaptation to the child's 
 spontaneous desire for exercise might not have been 
 thought of — physiological observation and deduction 
 are necessary to make sufficient provision for such 
 an activity. 
 
 The Montessori apparatus is as follows : — A couple 
 of parallel bars are suitably supported along the 
 length of the nursery or playroom, one for the feet and 
 one for the hands, and are placed so as to leave room 
 for the children between it and the wall. Thus they 
 are able to enjoy looking a.t what their companions 
 are doing while they are climbing along it, and they 
 will naturally go to it when their legs are getting a 
 little tired.i 
 
 ^ Climbing by the arms is one of the most natural exercises of 
 children in early years, but it is difficult to prevent injury from 
 falls. One arrangement which would get over this is to support 
 a ladder horizontally above the floor, so that the children could pass 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 217 
 
 Dr. Montessori is very wise in giving her children a 
 special course of respiratory gymnastics as part of the 
 school curriculum. If all adults breathed properly, 
 children might learn to breath properly by nature 
 and by mere unconscious imitation ; as it is they do 
 not. Medical men who have studied the subject 
 know well the immense importance of breathing in such 
 a way as to exercise the whole of the lungs. When 
 they see a narrow-chested or a fiat-chested man or 
 woman, they know two things — first, that there is a 
 much stronger probability of consumption and other 
 diseases of the chest, and second, that the defect is 
 not congenital — that though some have naturally less 
 chest capacity than others, there is no chest which 
 cannot be properly developed by exercise in the years 
 preceding adolescence. ^ Dr. Montessori gives one 
 
 along hand over hand from rung to rung with their feet just off the 
 ground. A horizontal bar at a sufficient height would serve the same 
 purpose in a slightly different way. Falls, if they occur, will be 
 harmless here, the height will be so small. When the children 
 climb to considerable heights, mattresses or stretched sheets may be 
 placed below, but this is not always easy to arrange for ; where 
 sand is available it affords an excellent protection, and the children 
 may climb to greater heights. It seems, however, unnecessary to 
 suggest detailed means for climbing, as most of those who are capable 
 of looking after such apparatus will be able to devise what is suited 
 to the special circumstances of their own nursery or school. 
 
 1 It is remarkable how little attention is given to this subject 
 not only in nurseries and schools, but even in books written by 
 medical men. In Dr. Drummond's excellent little book on The 
 Child, the importance of proper breathing is recognised ; but the 
 only suggestions as to how to attain it are, first, that the clothing 
 should leave girls freedom to breathe, and second, that the children 
 should sing and read aloud. There is no suggestion of teaching 
 how to read aloud ; and as few adults read well, most children. 
 
2i8 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 example only of a respiratory exercise, and as it is 
 one in which the mouth is open, a warning is necessary, 
 for it is very important that children should get into 
 the habit of breathing through the nose and with the 
 mouth shut. In connection with these exercises, 
 Dr. Montessori teaches the positions of the organs in 
 speech ; and she tells us that these exercises are to be 
 done in class in the first instance, though the children 
 should be tested individually at the conclusion, and 
 even directs the teacher to take hold of the child's 
 tongue and put it in the proper position against the 
 teeth, if necessary. This seems a somewhat repulsive 
 practice, and, especially when done in class, not at all 
 defensible on hygienic grounds ; infection may be 
 carried from one child to another, even if the teacher's 
 fingers are themselves quite clean. The children, 
 too, might imitate it, which would be a,n unmixed 
 evil. 
 
 The importance to the adult of proper breathing 
 
 imitating bad models, read badly — badly in regard to articulation 
 and breathing, as well as in regard to expression. 
 
 To measure chest capacity, fill a large bottle with water, and 
 invert it over a basin with just enough water to cover its neck. 
 After taking as deep a breath as possible, the child blows into a 
 rubbsr tube which passes into the inverted neck of the bottle, 
 forcing out the water until he can blow no longer. He and his 
 companions are interested to see the air he expels from his lungs 
 rising in the bottle. Its volume may bs taken as the measure of 
 the chest capacity. 
 
 A rougher method is to blow into a bladder or football. 
 
 The provision and periodical us3 of such an apparatus in schools 
 would, in connection with respiratory gymnastics, do more to im- 
 prove the physique of the nation than any other single means. 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 219 
 
 cannot be overestimated. Large chest capacity is 
 by far the most important bodily trait under our 
 control — there is no other to which medical men 
 attach a tithe of its importance. All that is necessary 
 to secure it is a proper habit in breathing. Even if 
 this habit be not acquired in early years, practice at 
 any age, but especially during adolescence, is of the 
 greatest use. 
 
 Beyond these special gymnastic exercises, all those 
 games and occupations in which children delight are 
 to be regarded as included in the curriculum of a 
 Montessori school — marching to music, games with 
 balls, hoops, bean bags, swings, kites, the games of 
 Frcebel, gardening, care of animals, plastic work, and 
 so forth. It would obviously be impossible to go into 
 these matters in detail. Each teacher or parent must 
 decide for himself how far he can use these well-known 
 means. 
 
 3. The Montessori Curriculum and Educational 
 Apparatus 
 
 Before describing the technique of the Montessori 
 teacher at length, it will be convenient to describe 
 the curriculum and the apparatus, called the didactic 
 material, a combination of words which seems to the 
 writer rather too redolent of a mechanical routine. It 
 appears, too, somewhat inconsistent that of those who 
 refuse to adopt the conception of teaching and who 
 therefore substitute directress for teacher (a change 
 not adopted herein), should reintroduce it in the 
 
220 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 adjective applied to the material. For the Montessori 
 idea is that of auto-educsition — it is the child who 
 teaches himself. 
 
 When the children first arrive at the school they are 
 carefully inspected. Hands, nails, neck, ears, face 
 and teeth, all thesfe are examined to see if they are 
 clean ; is the hair tidy ? are the clothes torn or dirty 
 or wanting buttons ? are the shoes clean ? What- 
 ever fault there be, the child's attention is called to 
 it. Thus they become accustomed to the care of 
 their own persons ; and they are carefully taught how 
 to wash the different parts of their bodies, with especial 
 care for the washing of the eyes, ears, and teeth, and the 
 rinsing of the mouth. In the course of this teaching, 
 the reasons why water alone is used for the eyes, 
 soap for the hands, and so on, are clearly explained. 
 The older children are also taught to help the younger. 
 Dr. Montessori thinks it well that the mothers - should 
 be present during the inspection of the children, but 
 as spectators only. 
 
 When this is done the children put on their school 
 aprons, helping each other when necessary, and the 
 inspection of the schoolroom begins — the apparatus 
 is looked over to see if it is clean, the children are shown 
 how to use dusters and brushes, and how to get the 
 dust out of corners, etc. Then the teacher " explains " 
 to them that the " normal position " is for each child 
 to sit in his own chair, with his hands on the table, 
 his feet together on the floor, and his head erect. All 
 that is to be done quickly and quietly. " In this way 
 she teaches them poise and equilibrium." Then she 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 221 
 
 tells 1 them to rise while they sing the hymn. Next 
 comes a series of exercises in which they learn to move 
 quietly, quickly, and gracefully, and without knocking 
 against the furniture; and they "are taught to salute 
 each other, to lift things up and set them down with 
 great care, and to present objects tP each other nicely, 
 and to receive them politely. The teacher meanwhile 
 has her eyes everywhere, with a little word of pubHc 
 approval for whatever is well done (" she calls atten- 
 tion, with little exclamations, to a child who is clean," 
 etc.), and of correction or explanation for what is ill 
 done. 
 
 When the teacher has in this way got the children 
 to observe themselves and to " take an interest in 
 their own appearance " and behaviour, she gets 
 them into conversation with her about how they 
 have behaved in the interval since leaving school. 
 These conversations, as sketched by Dr. Montessori, 
 go into the details of the child's life in the most 
 practical and excellent way — they are questioned not 
 only on their games and their attitude to their parents, 
 but on such matters as whether they were able to go 
 upstairs without leaving mud behind them, whether 
 they were polite to friends who passed in the street, 
 helpful to their family, whether they told about what 
 
 1 The critic whose help I have elsewhere acknowledged observes 
 that tells them is " not Montessori language." That is true, but 
 since this is part of ordinary school drill, conducted in the way 
 any good modern teacher who was suited to deal with little children 
 would conduct it, it seemed well to call attention to this fact by 
 using the ordinary language. " Has them rise " is the language of 
 " The Montessori Method," 
 
222 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 they had learned in school, what they ate, what 
 happened at any little parties they were at, and so on. 
 This is all to be done with great discretion ; the children 
 are not encouraged to report such family matters as 
 ought to be kept private, nor gossip about other 
 families, but only to converse on matters " which it is 
 desirable to talk about." 
 
 It is quite true, as Dr. Montessori says, that such 
 conversations are of great educational value. But 
 while nothing could be of greater value when in the 
 hands of a teacher of the highest personal qualities, it 
 is equally true that, in the hands of an unsuitable 
 or unscrupulous teacher, no practice could be more 
 dangerous. 
 
 The Grades. 
 
 Although the spontaneity of the child is the guiding 
 principle of the curriculum, yet experience seems to 
 have shown that within certain limits the develop- 
 ment of the Italian children's interest in the apparatus 
 used follows certain tolerably well-defined laws, 
 so that something very like a curriculum can be 
 followed. 
 
 It appears that at the beginning of Dr. Montessori's 
 work with normal children, she established a schedule 
 of hours of lessons in which the whole day was mapped 
 out, just as in an ordinary school. Experience, how- 
 ever, showed that a routine of occupations could not 
 be maintained in a school founded on the freedom of 
 the pupils, except as regards the lessons in care of the 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 223 
 
 person and in social behaviour, which are always taken 
 on the pupils' arrival at the school. 
 
 Although it has been judged most convenient 
 to describe the " didactic material " in the sequence 
 which Dr. Montessori's later experience led her to lay 
 down, yet it would be a serious mistake to look on these 
 " grades " as defining hard-and-fast lines between the 
 sequences of the spontaneous activities. Just as the 
 culture epochs are variable, so are these activities ; 
 they wall vary both with the child and the teacher, 
 for it is impossible but that the child will be influenced 
 by what is in the mind of the teacher. Thus the 
 arrangement of the exercises in grades is to be taken 
 only as a general indication of what was found desirable 
 with Italian children. Indeed, even with that restric- 
 tion, care has to be taken in interpreting the divisions 
 indicated by the grades, e.g. the division of the teaching 
 of writing and reading between the fourth and fifth 
 grades. For while all the exercises preparatory to 
 writing are given as part of the fourth-grade work, 
 the spontaneous writing of w^ords and phrases is put 
 under the succeeding grade. Yet, as we have seen, it 
 is unwise to postpone the latter for more than a week 
 or so after the preparatory^ exercises are even partially 
 completed (see p. 138). Above all, the teacher 
 should not regard the grades as being of necessity 
 school years, although the word itself and the fact that 
 there are five grades, one for each of the ages, — two to 
 seven, — to which the curriculum applies, might natu- 
 rally suggest this interpretation. 
 
 The truth is that the teacher must judge by experi- 
 
224 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 ence — experience founded on the observation of the 
 pupils in conditions which favour the spontaneous 
 revelation of their natural activities. Any attempt 
 on the part of one teacher to force the children under 
 her charge to conform to the experience of other 
 teachers with other children would be a serious viola- 
 tion of the fundamental principle on which Dr. 
 Montessori's success has been founded. 
 
 With this reservation the educational apparatus is 
 here described in the order finally given by Dr. 
 Montessori. 
 
 It is also to be remembered that all the grades are 
 being worked through by the children in the same 
 room and at the same time, and that a child may, at 
 his own will, change from one grade to another. Thus 
 the arrangement of the curriculum in grades should be 
 regarded only as indicating the general way in which 
 the activities are likely to develop when the child is 
 taught according to the method of freedom ; they 
 suggest to the teacher the order in which the material 
 should be suggested to the child. For the Montessori 
 conception of the freedom of the child should not be 
 held to mean that he is to receive no guidance from the 
 experience of the teacher. Such an interpretation is 
 at once negatived ; his freedom to choose is of necessity 
 limited by the fact that even the didactic material is 
 not unlimited. What is of importance is that he 
 should have a sufficient choice of suitable material to 
 feel that he chooses freely — that the suggestion of 
 the teacher should not appear to him as a limitation 
 of his freedom (see pp. 234-5). 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 225 
 
 As soon as the child comes to the school, he is given 
 the exercises in quiet and graceful movement already 
 described, especially those of moving the seats in silence. 
 
 Fig. 4 shows how a chair should be put down. 
 
 Fig. 4. — Putting the Chair down quietly. 
 
 Observe that the child is looking at the ends of the 
 legs. The pair of legs near to the child goes down 
 first, but only one at a time. (We see by the shadow 
 that the chair is still tilted, though unluckily the 
 shadow only gives the effect in regard to one of the 
 15 
 
226 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 two legs away from the child.) Then the remaining 
 pair is, put down. Observe, too, the small size of 
 the chair; being so small it makes the children 
 look bigger, an observation which applies to all the 
 illustrations. 
 
 Then he is given a series of exercises in buttoning, 
 tying, lacing, etc. These exercises should be chosen 
 so as to afford practice as nearly as may be in what the 
 children have to do when they dress themselves or their 
 little brothers and sisters. 
 
 Fig. 5 shows the set of frames as supplied by Messrs. 
 Philip & Tacey. It consists of eight wooden frames 
 with which the children can practise : — (i) Buttoning 
 linen ; (2) lacing corsets ; (3) ribbon bow tying ; 
 (4) buttoning corsets ; (5) patent snap fastenings ; 
 (6) buttoning leggings ; (7) lacing leather ; (8) hook 
 and eye fastening. 
 
 The children generally take delight in these exercises, 
 and will sit round a table hard at work upon them 
 for a length of time. Fig. 2 (p. 181) shows how absorb- 
 ing this work may become. Considered physiologically 
 as a means of organising the nervous system, the chief 
 function of this exercise is to teach the co-ordination 
 of the sensory and motor nerves controlling the hand 
 and fingers, and it also gives practice in the simpler 
 correlations of eye and hand. 
 
 The children in this first stage are also given more 
 definite training in visual and tactile experiences. 
 There are three sets of cylinders whose dimensions vary 
 according to a regular scale, and each set fits into 
 corresponding apertures in a stand, like the weights 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 227 
 
 r- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 ■i. 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 ^ 
 
 * 
 
 . 
 
   £1-^ -II 
 
 1 
 
 > r-g 
 
 m.   
 
 •   - - 
 
 
 
 ^ • 
 
 " * 
 
 s 
 
 _ 1 
 
 4 11 
 
 _ 
 
 ,,k..J 
 
 pBBM 
 
 1 
 
 
 ^ - »<, ^,|^ .-«»»^ ,   
 
 1 
 
 
 1 1 
 
 Fig. 5. 
 
228 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 in a chemical balance. These are scattered about 
 on the little table, and the child has to pick out by 
 sight the different sizes, and match them to the holes. 
 When he is a little more accustomed to it, he has to 
 pick them out in order, to pick the smallest from the 
 heap and put it in its place, then the next, and so on. 
 When still more advanced the cylinders are scattered 
 further apart and at a greater distance from the 
 stand, so that he has to remember for a still longer 
 time which he wants next, and has to make a still 
 greater allowance for the effect of greater distance in 
 diminishing the apparent size of objects. When he is 
 able to do this easily, he is ready to move to the 
 next grade ; and if he uses the cylinders in it, they may 
 be scattered on the floor. 
 
 The order of gradation from easier to more difficult 
 in the cylinders depends on the nature of the variations 
 in size. The first and easiest set — shown as the upper 
 one in Fig. 6 — is that in which the cylinders are of 
 equal height but of varying diameters. 
 
 In the second set — shown as the lowest in the figure 
 — the cylinders vary both in diameter and height. 
 
 In the third and most difficult set — the central one 
 in the figure — the cylinders are of equal diameters 
 but varying heights. 
 
 (The fact that in both the British and American 
 illustrated catalogues of the didactic material the 
 order of the cylindrical blocks should be interchanged, 
 affords an excellent example of adult misunderstanding 
 of the nature of the child. It is easier to the adult 
 to describe sets of cylinders in which only one dimension 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 229 
 
 varie^t a time, than those in which both dimensions 
 vary, therefore he regards this as the " natural " 
 
230 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 order of difficulty. No doubt the order in the figure 
 is the simplest from the point of view of definition; 
 but definition implies abstraction, and the child's 
 mind does not work like that of the educated adult. 
 If it did, there would be little need for education.) 
 
 In the Italian schools the height of the cylinders of 
 the first set is 55 mm. (2 '2 in.) high, and the largest is 
 55 mm. diameter, each cylinder being 5 mm. (o"4 in.) 
 wider than the preceding one. 
 
 In the second set the largest cylinder is the same 
 size as in the first, but now the cylinders decrease by 
 5 mm. each way. 
 
 In the third set, all the cylinders are of equal thick- 
 ness, i.e. half that of the largest cyUnders of the other 
 sets, and they decrease in height as in the second set. 
 
 These comprise all the exercises in the first grade. 
 
 It is no small part of the advantage of apparatus 
 designed on the model of the cylinders that the appara- 
 tus itself supplies a " control." For example, if in 
 the first or second set the child should try to fti a 
 cyhnder into a wrong hole, it will either not fit 
 at all, or will fit too loosely. In the first case he 
 at once discovers his mistake ; in the second, if he 
 does not observe that the cylinder fits too loosely, 
 he will of necessity find out the mistake as he tries to 
 fit the remaining cylinders. 
 
 Thus the apparatus itself tells the pupil of his 
 mistake ; no intelligence is needed on his part to find 
 that he is wrong ; intelligence only comes in when he 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 231 
 
 tries to remedy his error. Thus there is no correction 
 by a teacher. 
 
 In the third set of cyHnders the control is not of 
 this mechanical character. The cylinders can be fitted 
 
 in the wrong places just as well as in the right ones. 
 The control here rests with the pupil — it is his eye 
 which tells him that some of the cylinders are mis- 
 placed. This is the reason why this set of cylinders 
 is, to the child, the most difficult of the three. 
 
23 2 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 Figs, y, S, and 9 show a child engaged in putting 
 this set of cyhnders in place. In Fig. 7 everything 
 is going on satisfactorily. In Fig. 8 it is clear that 
 there has been some miscalculation which is being 
 
 remedied in Fig. 9. The features show plainly 
 enough that a problem is being attacked — that real 
 mental work is being done. 
 
 It may happen that after a time the children will 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 233 
 
 play with the cyHnders in their own fashion, instead 
 of putting them into their places, e.g. using them as \ 
 wheels, or as pistons (and similarly for any of the other 
 material). If a child is absorbed in the new play, then ^ 
 
 Fig. 9. 
 
 let it continue. If, however, the interest in it is fitful, 
 intermittent, then do not offer that material next day — 
 see if the child will not choose something else. Nor 
 should the choice be confined to the Montessori 
 material. The Froebelian gifts will often fill a want — 
 
234 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 they are, as we have seen, part of the equipment used 
 by Dr. Montessori. 
 
 In all the grades, and with all the material, the test is 
 the same — if the child's interest in his occupation is a 
 continuing one, if he remains absorbed in it, then it is 
 truly educative, and is forming his character as well 
 as developing his mental power and training his 
 muscular control. ^ 
 
 If, on the other hand, the interest is fitful and waver- 
 ing, then, as we have seen in the last chapter, the 
 material is not as suitable as it should be, and the skill 
 of the teacher will be shown by the success with which 
 she suggests another occupation — the suggestion being 
 implicit rather than explicit. The stress laid by Dr. 
 Montessori on the need for observing the child has its 
 application, nay, its sole application, here. If we 
 were not to aid the children to choose their occupations, 
 if we were not to secure that these occupations were 
 changed when they were no longer effective educa- 
 tionally, why should we observe them at all ? And 
 as this work of direction should not prevent the 
 children from feeling that they are acting from their 
 own inner impulse, the Montessori teacher must study 
 her pupils much more closely than the teacher 
 who puts her faith in training the children to be 
 obedient to commands rather than in letting them 
 develop through their own spontaneities. Because 
 there is an environment, we have seen that, in strict 
 
 ^ This is indeed true even of an undesirable occupation, sudi as 
 pulling insects' legs off; the objection is that, besides hurting the 
 insects, it tends to form character in an undesirable way. 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 235 
 
 logic, the pupil cannot be really free. What is im- 
 portant is, that he shall feel himself free, that he shall 
 not feel himself hampered in his choice. It is therefore 
 the duty of the teachers to secure that the environment 
 shall generate this feeling of freedom, and shall at the 
 same time lead to self-development in the directions 
 we approve. And if the child invents a new occupation 
 of his own for any material, then if it be an absorbing 
 one and not inherently undesirable, by all means let 
 him continue it (see, however, p. 291). 
 
 When the child is familiar with the cylinders, they 
 are used for teaching the meaning of the words thick 
 and thin, long and short, large and small. Dr. Montes- 
 sori lays the greatest stress on the necessity of teach- 
 ing an accurate nomenclature. This is always done 
 in accordance with the three periods of Seguin, as 
 described in pp. 132-4, and without revealing the error 
 to the child if he makes one. The lesson is commenced 
 by showing the thickest and the thinnest, side by side, 
 contrast being always used as effectively as possible. 
 When this has been learned, thicker and thinner are 
 taught, and the child's understanding is tested in the 
 routine way — " give me the thicker," or the thinner, 
 as the case may be. (Observe that only two contrasted 
 qualities are to be taught at the same time — it would 
 be quite a wrong practice to commence with the 
 cylinders which vary in both directions, and say, " This 
 is the shortest and thinnest ; this is the longest and 
 thickest.") 
 
236 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 When the child is taught the meanings of such words, 
 the object is to create a strong association between 
 the object and the word. Hence the word should 
 be repeated very clearly, while the object is shown to 
 the pupil in such a way that the physical quality which 
 appeals to him is, as far as possible, that corresponding 
 to the name — thus, when heavy and light are being 
 taught, the pupil should weigh the objects by the 
 hand. 
 
 Again, no superfluous words should be used ; they 
 would distract the attention of the pupil from the 
 words on which it ought to be fixed. 
 
 This method of teaching the meaning of words is in 
 striking contrast to that of nature. The child natur- 
 ally picks up language in a very gradual and uncertain 
 way. He hears others using words of whose meanings 
 he has no conception. He invents meanings for them, 
 because he often recognises the general effect of a 
 sentence, although he does not know the meanings of 
 the words which compose it. It is with him largely a 
 case of learning by eliminating erroneous meanings, 
 one after another. This is inevitable in regard to 
 abstract words, but it has many disadvantages ; 
 for words are good servants but bad masters, and we 
 are, all of us, very liable to be misled by them. It is 
 therefore of especial importance that, whenever possible, 
 we shall attach clear and definite meanings to the words 
 we use. This will at least give us an ideal of clearness, 
 and thus help to prevent our thoughts being con- 
 trolled by verbal misconceptions. 
 
 In direct contrast to the Herbartian method of the 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 237 
 
 formal steps, the application is not suggested by the 
 teacher. Having explained very clearly the meaning 
 of, e.g., big and little, the teacher leaves it there. 
 She does not apply them to other obj ects ; it would be 
 contrary to Dr. Montessori's conception of the principle 
 of freedom for the teacher to point out that she is big 
 and the child little. When the child's own experience 
 calls for the application, the child will make it 
 spontaneously. To encourage the child to make it 
 before his own experience demands expression in that 
 form would be to interfere unnecessarily with the 
 principle of self-development. 
 
 All such statements as the above should be examined 
 critically by the teacher. What is the justification 
 for the assertion that such interference is unnecessary ? 
 The justification is only to be found in results. 
 The only final proof of the pudding is in the eating. 
 One of the great services Dr. Montessori has per- 
 formed for education is to show that this waiting 
 attitude of the teacher does not in fact lead to slower 
 development than the hurrying attitude of those who 
 lead the child to make the application at once. When 
 the time comes for the child to make the applications 
 himself, he does so with a fulness of knowledge and 
 experience, and with a sense of achievement and power, 
 altogether lacking in the child who is led by the 
 teacher's hand. Moreover, the child so taught is 
 developing a tendency to rely on himself — to observe 
 for himself, to draw mental inference from the material 
 supplied by his senses. Nor is that the only advantage, 
 perhaps it is not even the chief advantage. For 
 
238 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 the child so treated reveals clearly to the teacher the 
 mental progress he is making. In the other method, 
 the teacher is almost certain to over-estimate the rate 
 of progress of the bright and responsive pupil, and to 
 under-estimate that of the pupil who thinks less rapidly 
 but more surely. The result is doubly disastrous. 
 The child who thinks by sympathy, as it were, who 
 accepts without question what the teacher wants 
 him to see, expects him to see — that is the child who 
 needs to be kept back, to be made go slow. Yet in 
 the ordinary method of teaching, that is the very child 
 who is sure to be taught too fast for real knowledge. 
 On the other hand, the child who does not respond 
 quickly to the suggestion of another mind, the one 
 who gathers up his own experience slowly but surely, 
 he is discouraged. The sound working of his mind is 
 interfered with ; he may be set down as stupid, and 
 may easily be made really stupid, if he is not 
 allowed to finish the processes by which his mind is 
 educating itself. These are very real difficulties. 
 Even the most practised teacher will make mistakes 
 in one direction or the other, and probably in both 
 directions, if he follows the ordinary method. The 
 pupils who naturally hurry on too quickly will be 
 allowed to hurry too much, while others whose minds 
 naturally work more thoroughly will be discouraged, 
 as well as prevented from working slowly and surely. 
 
 The actual degree of interference with the principle 
 of self-development is a matter for experience and 
 judgment. If the child is " defective," still more if 
 he is idiotic, self-development will not be satisfactory 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 239 
 
 or possible ; the child will never rise to the normal 
 standard, he is more passive and must be 
 
 Games of Silence 
 
 Common to all the children of the School, and there- 
 fore belonging to the first as to all the grades, there 
 are games of silence. The teacher begins by offering 
 herself as an example of perfect silence. Sitting in 
 her chair — as the children are themselves sitting, she 
 should sit — she calls attention to the different parts of 
 her body, to show how still they are — " See my feet, 
 can you keep yours quite, quite still ? Do you hear 
 my breath ? ' ' and so on. Then she may rise from her 
 chair and ask them to watch how silently she does it. 
 She walks on tiptoe with scarcely a sound. In en- 
 couraging the children to be silent it will be well that 
 she awaken imitation. She may ask them if they can 
 be as quiet as a little mouse ? or, in winter, " Who can 
 be as silent as the snowflake ? " Then she calls a 
 child to her, and, while the class watches, she asks him 
 to be as silent as she is, and to listen for the little noises 
 he makes even when he thinks he is quite still. Thus 
 they learn that there are degrees of silence, and as the 
 whole class strives to imitate her, she calls attention 
 to this or that little movement of a child here or there, 
 by which the silence is broken. In that way " the 
 attention of the child is called to every part of his 
 body in an anxious effort to attain to immobility." 
 When silence is established, there is heard the ticking 
 of the clock, or the sound of distant voices, or 
 
V 
 
 240 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 steps passing outside. ** The children sit fascinated 
 by the silence, as if by some conquest of their own. 
 * Here/ says the directress, ' here there is no longer 
 anyone ; the children have all gone away.' " 
 
 This silence is a new thing to the children ; they 
 have made it themselves, and they delight in it ; 
 striving to make it absolute, they learn a new self- 
 control, and find a new power. To heighten the effect, 
 Dr. Montessori has the room darkened ; then, telling 
 the children to close their eyes, she goes into a room 
 behind them. " Now listen," she says, " a soft voice 
 is going to call your name." So each child waits 
 in silent expectation for the voice which shall call 
 him, and then, with joy and opened eyes, but still 
 with the utmost quietness, tiptoes across the room to 
 the calling voice. The children take pleasure in the 
 silence itself as well as in being called. They seem to 
 realise that they have won a victory over themselves ; 
 even children of three years have remained immovable 
 in the silence during the long period required for 
 calling forty children from the room.^ " It was 
 then," writes Dr. Montessori, " that I learned that the 
 soul of the child has its own reward, its own peculiar 
 pleasures. It seemed to me that the children came 
 closer to me, more obedient, more gentle and sweet. 
 We had indeed been isolated from the world, and had 
 
 * Observe that it is because the impulse to silence springs from 
 the children themselves that they can remain silent and motionless 
 far longer than they could from the external command, " Be quiet ! " 
 — ^which the Montessori teacher would never use — and with no tend- 
 ency to emotional disorder such as follows the endeavour to control 
 themselves through fear of the teacher's displeasure. 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 241 
 
 passed several minutes during which the communion 
 between us was very close, I wishing for them and 
 calling to them, and they receiving in the perfect silence 
 the voice which was directed personally toward each 
 one of them, crowning each in turn with happiness." ^ 
 
 Later, this " making of the silence " is a prelude for 
 many games, especially those of carrying out written 
 directions, and it forms the fitting preparation to 
 lessons in musical sounds. Dr. Montessori rightly 
 holds that sweet and soft musical notes should be 
 heard and listened to by the children with attention 
 and with pleasure, before they themselves are invited 
 to sing — their own singing should come as an imitation, 
 a response, an expression of the music which has been 
 awakened in them through hearing music. 
 
 The Story is not included in the curriculum given in 
 Dr. Montessori' s book. There is, however, no reason 
 why it should not be included, with this condition, 
 that, if the children are not interested in the story, 
 they must be free to leave the listening circle and do 
 something else. For it would be contrary to the 
 Montessori principle to require the children to attend 
 to the story when they desired to do something else. 
 It is understood that it was because the children with 
 
 1 In connection with this beautiful description, it is interest- 
 ing to observe that as it is through the sense of hearing that 
 human interests and sympathy chiefly manifest themselves, so there 
 is anatomical evidence to show that the ear is the last of the sense 
 organs to develop, as well in the individual as in the evolution of 
 animal life. 
 
 Silence which can be heard has indeed a very special effect on 
 the mind, one which can be obtained in no other way. 
 16 
 
242 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 whom she experimented did not choose to hsten, but 
 went about other occupations, that Dr. Montessori 
 did not include the story. ^ But whatever may be the 
 
 Fig. 10. — The story in the Montessori School at Runton Old Hall. 
 
 explanation of the omission, the Montessori principle 
 requires that other teachers shall not blindly follow 
 
 1 Yet from the account previously given, pp. 143-4, it would seem 
 that in one case at least she attributed the want of interest in the 
 story to the fact that the children did not understand the meaning 
 of the words used in telling the story, thus implying that she 
 believed they would be interested in a story they could understand. 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 243 
 
 her lead, but shall, in the first instance at all events, 
 let the children choose freely for themselves. ^ 
 
 Granted that there are to be stories, are they to be 
 matter-of-fact stories, or are fairy stories permissible ? 
 Here, again, let the children's attitude decide. Pleasur- 
 able absorption, not necessarily pleasurable excitement, 
 that is the true test. There are matters in which it is 
 undesirable to apply the principle of freedom un- 
 reservedly, especially with children. Like the savage 
 who will ruin himself if he is free to choose as much 
 whisky as he desires, so the child may injure himself 
 if he is free to choose mental or bodily stimulants. 
 This is by some believed to have been Dr. Montessori's 
 reason for not including stories in her curriculum. 
 
 With regard to the question of truth, it appears to 
 the writer that no objection can be made against 
 
 ^ It may appear to the reader that while there could be no objec- 
 tion to letting each child choose for himself in the first instance 
 whether he will join the story circle or not, yet that to allow him to 
 leave the circle after the story has been commenced is to encourage 
 him in bad manners. The objection certainly deserves considera- 
 tion. As adults, we have not yet reached the stage in which, like 
 Lord Dundreary in the play, we may stop the bore with the simple 
 interruption, " The conversation is ended." Listen we must till 
 some opportunity arises when we can escape without giving offence. 
 Until, as adults, we shall have attained to such perfection of manners 
 that candour is compatible with courtesy, we must certainly practise 
 children in courtesy before we launch them into the world. It is 
 all a question of the age at which to begin such social training. 
 In the writer's opinion it is desirable to apply the Montessori 
 principle very fully to story-telling in the earlier years of child- 
 hood ; as the children grow a little older, they should be made to 
 feel, almost insensibly, that courtesy requires them to restrain 
 impatience. 
 
244 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 stories of impossible happenings, if it is known that 
 they are " make-beheves." Children usually enjoy 
 a make-believe quite as keenly as a true story. 
 Who doubts the interest of the make-beheve in the 
 game of silence — " Here there is no longer anyone ; 
 the children have all gone away " ? Santa Claus 
 may be enjoyed just as much as a make-believe, as it is 
 when the children are falsely taught that he does 
 really come down the chimney. If they have been 
 accustomed to think of Santa Claus as a real visitant 
 from another world, then no doubt the charm is lost 
 when they are undeceived. Nor is that all. There must 
 be some readjUvStment of attitude towards what they are 
 told, and moral injur}/-, sometimes Serious, may result. ^ 
 Caution is necessary in regard to the type of story. 
 It should not be such as to give rise to fear, whether" 
 repressed or not. Children may like " creepy " 
 
 1 The verger of Christchurch (Hampshire), after taking a party 
 round, asked the youngest member, a Uttle American girl, how much 
 she would remember of all he had told them. She replied, with a 
 defiant air, " I don't believe a word you say," Before leaving, the 
 mother apologised and explained. The little girl, it appeared, had 
 discovered, the previous Christmas, that there was no Santa Claus, 
 and had since refused to believe anything she was told. This is 
 no doubt an extreme case, but the warning should not be neglected. 
 Less in degree, no doubt, but the same in kind, some moral injury 
 is almost sure to follow the discovery that falsehood has been sub- 
 stituted for truth. And the injury is so unnecessary; the known 
 make-believe is enjoyed just as much by little children. A good 
 make-believe is indeed much more than a mere rndike-helieve ; it 
 has in it some of the characteristics of a reality. T4ii$ is true even 
 of adults. We find no satisfaction in altering the terjninstion of 
 a novel — the alteration has not the reality of the original make- 
 believe. 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 245 
 
 stories, but except with phlegmatic children, the liking 
 is generally unhealthy. It is far better to avoid them 
 altogether with young children. No one can tell 
 what harm they may do. If " the thoughts of youth 
 are long, long thoughts," far more are the terrors of 
 childhood long,- long terrors. Even the most loving 
 of mothers may never know the secret fears which keep 
 the child awake at night. With its more rational 
 half the child kfiows its fears are groundless ; it is not 
 much help to be told that they are, and there is always 
 the dread of being laughed at. Often the child, un- 
 accountably pale, may be asked whether anything 
 is troubling it, and the answer is " No," an answer at 
 once true and untrue. In such a case, and with a 
 nervous or overstnmg child, the wise mother will not 
 ask or urge, but will do what can be done to provide 
 healthy mental occupation and quiet sympathy, and, 
 above all, will not try to laugh the child out of its 
 fears nor insist on its "doing what for it are fearsome 
 .things — such as going into dark rooms. Such dread, 
 cowardice, if you will, is natural to man ; it is 
 doubtless a survival from the long ages when the night 
 was full of sudden calamity from unseen foes. There 
 are few indeed who, like Timothy Nevershake, are 
 wholl}/ emancipated from the fear of the unknown ; 
 few who have never felt, with Coleridge — 
 
 i^' " Like one, that on a lonesome road 1 
 
 Doth walk in fear and dread. 
 And having once turned round, walks on 
 And turns no more his head ; 
 Because he knows a frightful fiend 
 Doth ojose behind him tread." 
 
246 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 Let us do nothing to encourage such unreasoning 
 and unwholesome dread. 
 
 The Second Grade 
 
 In the second grade the exercises in movement 
 which have been found specially suitable, are to rise 
 and be seated in silence, and to walk gracefully along 
 a line traced on the floor, while the teacher plays a 
 rhythmic march till the children know it thoroughly ; 
 then they accompany the music with little move- 
 ments of their own, according to the rhythm. 
 
 In this grade the games are not all played on the 
 tables, so that the pupil has now to pick up objects 
 which have been scattered on the floor, and thus to 
 kneel down and rise up while he holds things ; and he 
 also learns to carry heavy objects. 
 
 The special apparatus for exercising the child's 
 sense of form and estimation of sizes is more extensive 
 than in the first grade, and the control is always by the 
 eye, never mechanical. 
 
 f ^ First in order of ease are the cubes, the sides begin- 
 ning at 10 mm. (0*4 in.), and increasing by 10 mm. for 
 each, so that the last is 100 mm. (4 in.) . These are scat- 
 tered about, and the child has to select them in order, 
 beginning with the largest, and to place them one on 
 the other. The most frequent error is to begin with 
 the second cube,^ and in that case the error is only 
 
 1 If it be nearer than the largest, it will appear larger to the 
 untrained eye of the child — in fact, if we did not unconsciously 
 make allowance for distance, the second cube at 9 feet distance 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 247 
 
 found out when the column is finished— the largest 
 cube is seen to be lying about. Interchanges in order 
 are, of course, discovered by the unevenness of the 
 
 The Tower. 
 
 series. Where several children are playing on the 
 floor at the same time, a little carpet may be given to 
 
 would look the same as the largest at lo feet. But the smallest 
 but one would have to be i8 feet away to subtend the same angle 
 as the smallest at 9 feet. 
 
248 
 
 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 each child, so that he puts all his cubes on it, thus 
 avoiding confusion. 
 
 Although classed by Dr. Montessori in the second 
 grade, this exercise is probably at least as well fitted 
 for the first grade as the last set of cylinders. Its 
 objects are to give delicacy of handling — it is not easy 
 to build the tower — and to practise the eye in form- 
 ing accurate estimates of the effect of distance on 
 the apparent sizes of objects. 
 
 Fig. 12.— The Broad Stairs. 
 
 The next in order are the broad stairs. Here the 
 pieces are prisms, all of the same length (double that 
 of the largest cube), and the square ends form the same 
 progression as the cubes, i.e. their sides are from lo mm. 
 to 100 mm. in length. They are scattered about, and 
 the child has to form them into stairs. With the 
 broad stairs the child may commence with any prism 
 and build it up on both sides. (It would be a good 
 exercise also to place them one over the other in an 
 oblong tower, as this would require more delicate 
 handling than the cubes.) 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 249 
 
 The next set consists of ten rods of the same size 
 (30 mm. square) in section, but of different lengths. 
 The shortest rod is one decimetre long and painted red, 
 the next is two decimetres, painted red and blue, and 
 so on, up to the last, which is 10 decimetres long, 
 alternate decimetres being painted in alternate 
 colours. The rods as shown in the figure are arranged 
 as the long stairs ; the dark and light columns do not 
 represent a separation of material, but only the super- 
 
 !^^P^-l 
 
 Fig. 13. — The Long Stairs. 
 
 position of red over red and blue over blue. The 
 long stairs are arranged in a horizontal plane, not 
 in a vertical one, like the broad stairs. 
 
 The long stairs are much more difficult than the 
 broad stairs. The rods have to be turned in the proper 
 direction, — to interchange the ends of the alternate rods 
 would break the vertical colour series, — and the fact 
 that they are coloured in this broken way interferes 
 seriously with the estimation of length, because the 
 eye does not take them in as a whole. Hence the child 
 tends to count them, which is a much higher process 
 
250 
 
 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 than mere comparison of length. (The apparatus is 
 open to criticism — it is devised for a double purpose — 
 to teach arithmetic as well as form, and it is by 
 no means clear that it is the best way of teaching 
 
 arithmetic. Dr. 
 Montessori tells 
 us that it is 
 " only after they 
 have for a long 
 time eliminated 
 every error in 
 constructing the 
 other two sets," 
 that they 
 succeed in 
 arranging the 
 long stairs 
 per f e c tly, 
 which ap- 
 pears to indi- 
 cate that the 
 gradation of 
 the exercises 
 might be 
 improved.) 
 Next in this 
 grade come the exercises for training the sense of touch 
 in its several forms. As touch is more acute when 
 the hands are warm and clean, the general exercises 
 in washing and cleanliness are given as preparatory 
 to those in touch proper. After the hands have been 
 
 Fig. 14. — Material for Tactile Exercises. 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 251 
 
 washed, they are rinsed in tepid water and dried care- 
 fully. Then the child is taught to distinguish between 
 the temperatures of a number of bowls containing water 
 from cold to warm, and to pick out two bowls which 
 are at the same temperature. 
 
 Next, or if more convenient a little earlier, come the 
 purely tactile exercises. The child is taught to touch 
 surfaces very lightly, as described in the previous 
 chapter. In order both to concentrate his attention 
 on the feeling at the finger-tips and to test his recogni- 
 tion of the object touched, he is told to close his eyes 
 while touching. Paper, graded from smooth to the 
 roughest sandpaper, and various woven materials, are 
 used. The children take great delight in touching soft, 
 velvety surfaces, and in recognising what they touch 
 with their eyes shut. They call it " seeing without eyes." 
 
 The apparatus, as supplied by Messrs. Philip & 
 Tacey (Fig. 14) consists of — 
 
 (i) A rectangular wooden board, one half with 
 smooth surface, and the other half covered 
 with sandpaper. 
 
 (2) A rectangular wooden board, with alternate 
 
 strips of sandpaper and plain smooth surface. 
 
 (3) A pohshed wooden cabinet of sevenjdrawers, 
 
 containing pieces of different fabricsMn dupli- 
 cate—Silk, Muslin, Calico, Linen, Cloth, Serge, 
 Velvet— by means of which the child learns 
 by feeling the difference in texture and 
 quality, e.g. coarse, fine, soft, rough, smooth, 
 thick, thin, etc., of the various materials, and 
 also, later, to name them from touch. 
 
252 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 With these come the colour exercises. Dr. 
 Montessori uses eight principal tints, blues, browns, 
 greens, greys, etc., with eight gradations of colour 
 in each, making sixty-four tints in all. They 
 are made of wool or silk wound on spools, , and 
 each spool has wooden projections at the ends so that 
 the material is protected from being soiled. Thus the 
 child can be asked to match any colour from one set 
 with the similar colour from the other set. At first 
 only a :^w vividly contrasted colours are used ; thus 
 a pair of red and a pair of green colours may be put 
 before the child and he may be told to find the match 
 of the red one, and so on. When he becomes more 
 accustomed to the game, more colours are put out at 
 the same time, so as to increase its difficulty. Later he 
 may be asked to arrange the sets of eight-colour 
 gradations in order. When two or three children are 
 playing this together, the teacher may mix up on the 
 table as many sets of gradations as there are children, 
 and let them sort them out, each collecting all the 
 colours of one of the gradations. 
 
 It would be an excellent and useful exercise in 
 the discrimination of colour and form to practise 
 children in finding objects on the floor. 
 
 Colour memory may also be trained. A child is 
 shown a colour, and is allowed to look at it as long as 
 he will, and then after an interval, short at first and 
 then longer, he has to pick it from a group of many, or, 
 perhaps, of all the colours. Colour-training affords a 
 good example of the principle on p. 237. A child 
 coloured the trunk of a tree red ; Dr. Montessori did 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 253 
 
 t'lG. 15.— Colour Spools. 
 
254 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 not point out his error, but "encouraged" him to 
 use the games for the chromatic sense, and at the 
 same time gave him outlines of trees to colour. One 
 day he made the trunk brown but the branches green 
 like the leaves. Later, he made the branches brown. 
 This is a slower process than telling him, but it is 
 surer. Probably, however, it would have been wiser, 
 after he had made the discovery, to have encouraged 
 him to reflect on it. Perhaps if she had done so 
 she might have found that the boy knew all along 
 that the trunk was brown, but thought it looked 
 prettier when painted red. We cannot always con- 
 clude that children's motives are what they appear 
 to the adult mind. 
 
 For convenience of description, all the problems in 
 colour gradation have been given together, but the 
 recognition of gradations in colour belongs to the next 
 stage. 
 
 Dr. Montessori says that " the child must already 
 have acquired a certain grade of education of the 
 attention through preceding exercises if he is to repeat 
 this one with interest," i.e. pairing colours as first 
 described above. This may be true of very young 
 children, but there can be no doubt that many children 
 would enjoy the exercise although they have had 
 none of the previous training. 
 
 Before devising these exercises on colour, Dr. 
 Montessori had tried an instrument invented by Pizzoli 
 for training the colour memory. A disk painted in 
 several colours can be rotated behind an aperture 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 255 
 
 in a screen, so as to bring the colours into view 
 successively. The teacher sets the disk, gets the 
 child to observe the colour very carefully, then turns 
 the disk slowly, and asks the child to say when the 
 colour reappears. " This exercise," says Dr. Mon- 
 tessori, " rendered the child inactive, preventing him 
 from controlling the material. It is not, therefore, 
 an instrument which can promote the education of the 
 senses." 
 
 While there is no doubt that freedom to control 
 the material is in many cases a very important element 
 in maintaining the child's interest in any process, we 
 cannot altogether accept Dr. Montessori's explanation, 
 nor allow that the education of the senses cannot 
 be promoted by occupations in which the material 
 is controlled by the teacher.^ The child is just as 
 effectively prevented from controlling the material 
 when the teacher places two red and two blue spools 
 on the table and, pointing to one of the blue spools, 
 asks the child to pick out the other. In all probability 
 the real reason of the failure of the rotating-disk method 
 was that it presented a very difficult problem to the 
 child. To sort out two pairs of coloured spools when 
 he can look from one to the other as often as he likes, 
 
 1 It may seem trivial to criticise such an incidental statement 
 at length, but the point involved is not a trivial one. On the 
 contrary, it is of the utmost importance that teachers who are to 
 carry out Dr. Montessori's own principles shall be trained to examine 
 very carefully into the reason of each failure of interest on the part 
 of the pupil. Especially is this the case where the attempt is made 
 to apply those principles under the different conditions of another 
 race and country. 
 
256 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 and, no doubt, can see them simultaneously, requires 
 little if any exercise of the child's memory. In con- 
 trast to this, the disk method puts a greater strain on 
 the memory and attention than even the last of the 
 colour exercises in Dr. Montessori's sequence. For. 
 in the disk method not only has the child but one 
 chance of looking at the original colour so as to impress 
 it on his mind, but also he has but one chance of looking 
 at each of the revolving colours to see if it is the right one. 
 Moreover, the fact that he has to concentrate his 
 attention on one colour after another as he rejects it, 
 confuses the memory of the first colour. Thus we see 
 that the mental operations involved are totally different 
 from those in the Montessori method of sorting colours, 
 in which the teacher may begin with as few tints 
 as she likes, while in the disk method he must 
 go through the whole series. Again, the Montessori 
 child may merely glance at the wrong colour, and 
 if that confuses him, he can at once refresh his memory 
 by another look at the right one, and then let his eye 
 rove over the spools until it is caught by the right 
 one. 
 
 The discussion, lengthy though it be, will not 
 have been in vain if it helps to prevent the currency 
 of phrases such as "the child must control the 
 material," which might easily become mere catchwords 
 in the hands of teachers less gifted than Dr. Montessori. 
 It is quite likely that the disk method would greatly 
 interest a class of children who had been prepared 
 for it by the other exercises in colour and colour 
 memory, and in that case it would probably be a very 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 257 
 
 effective means of promoting the education of the 
 colour sense. 
 
 Third Grade 
 
 Here the children further perfect themselves in 
 washing, dressing and undressing themselves, and 
 they learn to dust the tables, and to handle with care 
 various objects. They also complete the sense-training 
 lessons of the second grade, arranging surfaces in the 
 
 Fig. 16.— Tablets of Different Weights. 
 
 order of the roughness, and sorting colours into the 
 graded tints. 
 
 The children are practised in judging of weights. 
 Wooden tablets are used, all exactly the same size, 
 but of three different kinds of wood, so that they weigh 
 about 12, 18, and 24 grammes. At first the child 
 feels the weights with the eyes open ; but after a 
 little practice the eyes are shut, and he tries to judge 
 which of the three weights is placed on his palm. 
 The surfaces of the tablets are smooth and varnished, 
 so that they give no help to the child. (It might be 
 17 
 
258 
 
 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 well to extend the series of weights ; in British 
 measures they are about J oz., | oz., and i oz., which 
 is a very small range.) 
 
 In this grade are also commenced the exercises for 
 the discrimination of sounds — a series of little whistles 
 of different pitch are used for musical sounds, and 
 
 there are small 
 boxes filled with 
 different materi- 
 als which give 
 different noises 
 when shaken. 
 
 One easily 
 gathers from Dr. 
 Montessori's book 
 that she is not 
 satisfied with 
 these methods of 
 ear training. In 
 the first place, 
 they afford but 
 little scope for 
 the child to exer- 
 cise his own activities for himself ; it is, indeed, diffi- 
 cult or impossible to devise any plan by which that 
 object can be obtained, since it is impossible to pro- 
 vide separate rooms for each child. In the second 
 place, the children take no delight in the sounds of the 
 whistles and boxes. She beheves the best results would 
 be obtained from the means used by Itard in 1805, 
 namely, a series of drums and bells of graduated pitch. 
 
 Fig. 17.— Sound Boxes. 
 
r >r 
 
 ► # 
 
26o THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 In this grade the geometrical insets are first used. 
 They consist of a number of wooden or metal figures, 
 fitted with handles, so that they can be inserted into 
 the corresponding apertures. The idea of these insets 
 dates from Itard, and they are regularly employed 
 in some modern schools for manual training. Fig. i8 
 shows the forms of the insets used. 
 
 There is also a series of cards on which the same 
 geometrical forms in the same size as the wooden 
 insets are printed in solid blue. Dr. Montessori added 
 to them two new series of cards, in the first of which 
 the same geometrical forms are depicted by a thick 
 blue contour, and, in the second, the same geometrical 
 forms appear in thin outline. 
 
 The exercises with these insets are assuredly excellent 
 for giving certainty to the child's geometric ideas. 
 At first he is given a few — half a dozen — of the frames 
 containing the apertures, with the corresponding insets 
 mixed together on the table, and the game consists 
 in putting them back in place — somewhat as when 
 older children build up a dissected map. The little 
 children find this difficult. Even to put a rectangular 
 inset into its aperture is not easy — many children 
 are likely to begin by placing it across the aperture 
 instead of along it, and they will even try to fit a 
 triangle into a rectangle, and so on. Because they 
 cannot yet form a mental picture of what will 
 happen, it is almost a case of perceptual skill, like 
 that of Prof. Lloyd Morgan's dog, referred to in 
 Chapter IV. (p. 48)." 
 
 The child's recognition of the shapes is greatly 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 261 
 
 assisted if he is taught to feel round the outhnes of 
 the insets, as described in p. 129, so that he learns the 
 
   
 
 k 
 
 # 
 
 A 
 
 1 
 
 % 
 
 D 
 
 K 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 K 
 
 ^ ) 
 
 r\ 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 A 
 
 w 
 
 # 
 
 • 
 
   
 
 
 
 A 
 
 w 
 
 
 
 
 
 n 
 
 
 
 A 
 
 w 
 
 
 ( i 
 
 . i 1 
 
 1 ! 
 i i 
 
 V\G. 19. — The Three Series of Cards. 
 
 shapes by the motor memory. This should be made a 
 habit with the child, and there are advantages in its 
 
262 
 
 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 being done blindfold, as shown in Fig. 20. (Observe 
 that owing to the small size of the table and chair 
 the child looks bigger than she really is.) 
 
 Fic. 20. — Child feeli 
 
 Inset. 
 
 When practice has given certainty with the insets, 
 the game is changed ; the wooden pieces are now to be 
 exactly placed above the cards ; here the control is 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 263 
 
 exercised by the eye and not mechanically, as with the 
 insets and apertures. 
 
 Lastly, the same exercises are continued with the 
 contour and outline figures, the idea being that the 
 child passes gradually from the idea of the solid wooden 
 figure to their plane representations on the first series 
 of cards, and finally, to their outline representations 
 on the last set, the contours giving an intermediate 
 stage. (How far the contour stage is desirable will 
 probably depend on the age of the child. It would 
 seem perhaps more in accord with Dr. Montessori's 
 own principles to let the child draw the outline, as 
 described below for the metal insets, and thus dis- 
 cover for himself its relation to the plane figure instead 
 of presenting it to him on the last series of cards.) 
 
 Those who are not accustomed to watch the slow 
 way in which children's ideas of space develop, will 
 find it difficult to realise the importance of these exer- 
 cises. Mentally they serve as a preparation for 
 geometry. A preparation only. They do not serve 
 to introduce the intellectual elements in geometry, 
 that in which, e.g., we analyse the concept of a 
 triangle. They give perceptual knowledge, which is 
 needed to give reality to intellectual knowledge — and 
 the lack of this feeling of reality is disastrous to 
 sound intellectual knowledge, as many university 
 examiners know. Physically the careful training in 
 handling, objects involved, e.g. in placing the insets 
 exactly over the outlines on the cards, is very valu- 
 able ; and if Dr. Montessori's directions are followed, 
 that the children are to touch round the outline of 
 
264 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 the inset when it is placed on the card, and to do 
 this without shifting it, the result must be to add 
 greatly to the delicacy of touch which is so striking a 
 feature in the children of four years of age, of whom 
 we read that they handle crockery with so sure and 
 steady a touch that they have no tendency to break it. 
 
 Fourth Grade 
 
 Here the children arrange the meal table — lay it, 
 wait on their comrades, and clear it. " They learn 
 to put a room in order. They are taught the most 
 minute care of their persons," i.e. of the nails, the 
 teeth, etc. They are perfected, through walking on 
 the line to the rhythm of music, in free and graceful 
 motion and balance ; and in the moving of objects, 
 even heavy ones, without noise. These exercises of 
 practical life are continued from the previous grades 
 and extended. For example, . they wash up the 
 crockery used at lunch. All this should be very 
 carefully taught. Thus, in carrying tumblers placed 
 on a tray, the child should be shown how to balance 
 the tray so that it shall have no tendency to over- 
 turn one way or other. Those who are not taught 
 how to handle objects properly often get into bad and 
 jerky ways, and they may never be able to conquer 
 their bad habits. This is why so much crockery is 
 broken. 
 
 The way in which the little children wait at table 
 is a surprise to every visitor. Children of four years 
 old carry tra5^s with five water glasses standing on 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 265 
 
 them, and not a glass is broken ; they carry soup 
 tureens from table to table, not a drop is spilled. 
 "A little thing of four and a half, every time he set 
 the tureen down on a table so that the little guests 
 
 Fig. 21.— Washing Up after Lunch. 
 
 might help themselves, gave a hop and a skip, then 
 took up the tureen again to carry it to another 
 table, repressing himself to a sober walk. In spite 
 of his desire to play he never left his task before 
 he had passed soup to the twenty tables, and he 
 
266 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 never forgot the vigilance necessary to control his 
 actions." 
 
 The exercises directly connected with writing are 
 now commenced. In the Montessori apparatus, metal 
 
 insets and frames, similar in size and shape to the 
 wooden geometrical figures, are provided. The child, 
 already skilled in following round the edges with his 
 finger, now runs round them with a pencil, so as to 
 draw the outline on a piece of card, which he subse- 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 267 
 
 quently fills up with coloured chalk, and he then 
 
 learns to touch the letters, as already described in 
 Chapter V. 
 
268 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 This special use of the metal insets, which Dr. 
 Montessori gives as preparatory to writing, would seem 
 to be rather an introduction to geometry than to 
 handwriting. The child places one of the metal frames 
 on a piece of paper, and then, with a piece of 
 coloured chalk, he draws the outline of the aperture. 
 Having thus traced the aperture, he places the inset 
 upon it and draws with another coloured chalk the 
 outline of the inset. " He often marvels," Dr. 
 Montessori writes, " to find the same figure repro- 
 duced by means of pieces so different, and looks for a 
 long time with evident pleasure at the duplicate 
 design." Even the adult can understand how difiicult 
 is the conception that a concave curve is one and the 
 same thing as a convex curve — to the child it may well 
 come as a new revelation. 
 
 (Judging from the metal insets as provided in the 
 Montessori apparatus, it would certainly appear that 
 in teaching handwriting, it is best to adopt the method 
 described on p. 132, rather than to ask every child 
 to fill up the exact shapes and sizes of the outlines 
 given by these insets. It would also seem as if one 
 set of insets might serve all the purposes of the two 
 sets actually used. Some teachers will also object to 
 colouring vowels differently from consonants (p. 132), 
 as being ^n unnecessary and artificial device. Against 
 the objection it may be urged that some general dis- 
 tinction of form has been naturally made by mankind, 
 e.g. in alphabets where the vowels consist of dots only, 
 and thp.t, as the general distinction has no place in 
 our alphabet, it is desirable to introduce one in the 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 269 
 
 earliest teaching of children. There is no doubt that 
 the distinction is an important one and should be 
 carefully emphasised ; whether it is necessary or de- 
 sirable to use a temporary device of this kind is a 
 matter which each teacher should be in a position 
 to decide for himself.) 
 
 It is in this grade that arithmetic is commenced. 
 It will, however, be more convenient to devote a 
 separate section to it. 
 
 All the sense exercises are said to be repeated in this 
 grade. This must be a matter for the judgment of the 
 teacher. It might be no advantage to repeat, e.g., 
 the putting of the first set of cylinders in their holes 
 again. But there is one valuable sense exercise, 
 described earlier in Dr. Montessori's book, which is 
 not mentioned among the work of the grades, viz. the 
 recognition of shapes of solid objects by touch. The 
 child, blindfolded, is first given simple objects, such as 
 the bricks or cubes of Froebel, which, being held in 
 the hand, are recognised and named. Later, almost 
 any small object is taken up, with eyes shut, and 
 felt over, the children distinguishing between objects 
 so small and so nearly similar as corn, wheat, and rice ; 
 coins are favourites too. The interest is enhanced 
 when other children look on, and here, too, they 
 cry, " I can see with my hands," " Here are my 
 eyes." This is an exercise suited for the earlier 
 grades. 
 
270 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 Dr. Montessori gives in this grade exercises in 
 Design, passing from the geometric figures of the 
 insets to certain outhne figures which, she tells us, the 
 practice of four years has established, and which are 
 to be published as standard drawings. " These have 
 an educational importance, and represent in their 
 content and gradation one of the most carefully studied 
 details of the method." Yet, however valuable these 
 outlines may be, the teacher who would follow them 
 implicitly would be false to the principles which should 
 guide her. Especially in a creative subject like art, 
 where individuals differ so much, and where en- 
 vironment has so great an influence in modifying 
 taste, it is important that everything shall be as 
 spontaneous as possible. (There is not at all the 
 same objection to using manufactured apparatus as 
 " didactic material " ; it is intended to cultivate 
 aptitudes which are fundamental in our physical 
 natures, and therefore of the same character in all 
 children.) 
 
 Similar remarks apply to water colours and drawing 
 from nature in the next grade, as well as to modelling. 
 All these are extremely valuable. They are educative 
 to the pupil and to the teacher — to the latter because 
 they reveal the pupil. But they are in no sense peculiar 
 to the Montessori school. We can probably show 
 better results in some of our home schools than any- 
 thing which has been done in Rome. Indeed, we are 
 forced to the conclusion that Dr. Montessori herself 
 under-estimates the importance of some of these 
 activities as educative agencies. Speaking of plastic 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 271 
 
 work, in which the Uttle children learn to make vases, 
 and to make and to bake little bricks, with which they 
 build, first walls, then houses ornamented with tiles of 
 bright many-coloured majolica, also made by them- 
 selves ; then eggs and fruit and flowers ; — speaking of 
 this, she says (p. 163) : " Plastic work, as I shall show 
 later, serves for the study of the psychic individuality 
 of the child in his spontaneous manifestations, but not 
 for his education." No attempt is made to justify 
 the last assertion of this sentence. Indeed, it would 
 not be possible to do so unless we regard education 
 as meaning little more than the three R's — a limita- 
 tion which Dr. Montessori herself would emphatically 
 reject. 
 
 Fifth Grade 
 
 The exercises of the preceding grades are continued 
 with more complicated rhythmic exercises, and, in 
 design, water colours, and free drawing from nature. 
 Writing and reading exercises continue, with arith- 
 metic. Though the description of the curriculum 
 may be very short, the period itself is full of occupa- 
 tion and interest. 
 
 4. The Teaching of Arithmetic 
 
 Numeration is first taught by putting the children 
 to count common objects, coins being among the most 
 interesting and useful — the continental coinage, being 
 based on the decimal system, is, of course, more appro- 
 priate than ours. Occasion is taken to apply counting 
 
272 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 as far as possible to daily life — " How many buttons 
 are wanting ? " and so on. 
 
 Having thus taught numeration, Dr. Montessori 
 employs the rods of the long stairs. We have already 
 seen that the mere fact of their being broken in length 
 by difference of colour tends to make the child count 
 when he estimates their length. It appears from her 
 experience and that of some other teachers, that the 
 children do like playing with these rods, putting two 
 together, so as to make up lo, and so on, and then 
 seeing in how many ways they can do it. Thus they 
 learn that 1+9 = 10, 2 +8 = 10, 3 + 7 = 10, 4 +6 = 10, 
 and, by taking the 5 rod twice over, 5 x 2 =10. And as 
 there is no need to stop at 10, longer lengths may 
 be made up — thus 10 + 1=11, 9 + 2 = 11, and so on. 
 Thus, also, the meaning of the signs + , =, and x are 
 taught. 
 
 Subtraction is taught similarly, and division, for 
 io+-5=2. Thus even and odd numbers are taught, 
 and always illustrated by concrete examples from the 
 rods. 
 
 Again, it is found that the children like to count each 
 side of the triangle forming the long stairs and are 
 interested to note that counting the ends of the sticks 
 either along the vertical or along the sloping side gives 
 the same result, 10, as counting the colours along the 
 base. 
 
 Teachers who have been able to arouse the children's 
 interest in arithmetical operations by means of bundles 
 of sticks, coins, bags of beans, or the like, will rightly 
 hesitate before employing the more artificial means of 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 273 
 
 sticks painted in alternate colours. Still less, when 
 they have taught place values by getting children to 
 count numbers of objects into groups of tens and 
 units left over — the number of groups and units being 
 then written in two columns headed " tens " and 
 "units" respectively — will they use Dr. Montessori's 
 method of teaching place values ; — " Counting along 
 [the sloping side of the long] stairs as far as nine, there 
 remains this one section which, as there are no more 
 [written] numbers [than nine], we again designate as i ; 
 but this is a higher i than the first, and to distinguish 
 it from the first, we put near it a zero, a sign which 
 means nothing. Here then is 10." There is further 
 explanation, but to the writer it does not appear 
 to place the matter on a proper basis. If place value 
 be not taught dogmatically in the earliest stage, a 
 valid explg-nation, not a fanciful one, should be given. ^ 
 
 1 As an account of a method by one who is out of sympathy with 
 it is usually unsatisfactory and often unfair, a translation from the 
 Italian edition, very kindly sent by Miss H. E. Barton, is subjoined : 
 
 " Lessons on the Decimal Numbers 
 
 " Arithmetical Calculations beyond 10 
 
 " The necessary didactic material consists of a number of square 
 
 cards on which lo is printed in figures five or six centimetres high 
 
 and of other rectangular cards half the size of the square on which 
 
 are the figures from i to 9. We place in a column the simple 
 
 numbers : i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Then, since there are no more 
 
 numbers, we must begin again — and take the i again. This i is 
 
 like that section in rod 10 which in the system of lengths projects 
 
 beyond the 9 : counting along the stair as far as 9, since there are 
 
 npt more than 9 figures, there is left this last bit— which we again 
 
 begin to mark with a i— but this is a i placed higher up and to 
 
 distinguish it from the other we will put beside it a sign which = 
 
 18 
 
274 
 
 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 But in contrast to this unappreciative criticism of the 
 mathematical aspect of the technique, there can be 
 
 nothing : the zero. This is lo. Covering the zero with the separ- 
 ate rectangular number cards in the order of their succession we 
 form: ii, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. Such numbers are com- 
 posed with the rods by successively adding to the 10 rod the i ; 
 then substituting the 2 ; and then the 3, etc., until adding the 9 to 
 the 10 we get a very long rod : counting the successive blue and red 
 sections we get 19. 
 
 "The directress may then direct the movements of the system 
 of length by showing the cards of 10 and of the figure placed upon 
 the zero — for example, 16: the child adds the 6 rod to the 10 rod. 
 The directress removes the 6 card from the 10 card and puts on top 
 of the zero the rectangle with, for example, 8 : 18 ; and the child 
 takes away the 6 rod and in its place puts the 8 rod. 
 
 " Each of such exercises can then be written down, for example : 
 10+6 = 16; 10+8=18, etc. For subtraction the process is 
 analogous. 
 
 " When the number in itself begins to have a clear meaning for 
 the child the combinations are made on the cards alone — variously 
 arranging the rectangles bearing the nine figures on two columns 
 of numbers which are printed on long cards, as in figures A 
 andB. 
 
 " On card A we place upon the zero 
 of the second 10 the rectangle with i ; 
 below it that with 2, and so on ; and 
 while in the left-hand column the i of 
 the 10 remains, in the right-hand one 
 all the figures from zero to 9 follow one 
 
 another, thus : > 
 
 " In card B the applications are 
 more complex : the number cards are 
 successively replacing one another in order of numerical pro- 
 gression placed upon the zero of each multiple of 10. After the 9 
 it is necessary to go on to the next multiple of 10, and so on to the 
 end, which is given by 100. Nearly all our children count to 100 — 
 a number which was given to them, in response to the curiosity they 
 showed for learning it. 
 
 " I do not think that such teaching needs further illustrations. 
 
 A 
 
 
 B 
 
 10 
 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 
 20 
 
 10 
 10 
 10 
 10 
 
 
 30 
 40 
 50 
 60 
 
 10 
 10 
 
 
 i: 
 
 ID 
 
 
 90 
 
THE SCHOOL AND APPARATUS 275 
 
 nothing but praise for the games by which numeration 
 is taught, especially that for teaching the meaning 
 of zero. For example, two trays are divided each into 
 five little compartments, each compartment being 
 marked with a numeral, i.e. 0, 1,2, 3, 4, in the first, and 
 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, in the second. The game is to put in each 
 compartment the corresponding number of objects- 
 seeds, coins, etc. When done, the child brings the tray 
 to the teacher, and almost invariably asks what is to 
 be put in the zero compartment. The reply is, 
 " Nothing ; zero is nothing." But that seldom makes 
 it plain, and Dr. Montessori calls to a child to come to 
 her zero times. When he comes, " But I said to come 
 zero times, and you came one time." Gradually it 
 dawns on them, and they enjoy the fun of being told 
 to come zero times and yet not to go at all ; or to blow 
 her zero kisses, and yet to blow none. 
 
 There is a game for the memory of numbers. The 
 children each draw from a box a folded slip of paper 
 with a number marked on it. They look at them, 
 read them silently, fold them again, and leave them at 
 their seats. Then they walk to a table where many 
 objects have been arranged, and carry to their place 
 the number of objects on their cards. These objects 
 are then arranged in double columns, with one over if 
 it is odd. When all have completed their task, the 
 teacher walks round, unfolds the slips, and verifies the 
 numbers. 
 
 Each teacher will be able in practice to multiply practical exercises 
 on arithmetical operations, using objects that the children can put 
 together or divide among companions." 
 
it6 the MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 The game gave very interesting results. At first 
 the children often took more than the right number 
 of objects, and this deliberately, not liking to have only 
 a few. They showed ** a little of that greediness 
 which is common to primitive and uncultured man. 
 ... It is a real effort of self-control which holds the 
 child within the set limit, and makes him take, for 
 instance, only two of the objects placed at his dis- 
 posal, when he sees others taking more." The poor 
 child who draws a zero has to remain inactive at his 
 place while his companions are enjoying their active 
 participation in the game. In the manner of bearing 
 the disappointment the child's character is seen — 
 some watch their companions with impatient envy — 
 others try to look pleased, but rarely succeed. It is a 
 test of character, of self-control, as well as a lesson in 
 arithmetic. 
 
 In reviewing the Montessori practice, it. will be 
 observed that one of the most striking features is the 
 care with which the pupils are taught how best to 
 do the various acts of daily life which are usually 
 picked up anyhow. It is difficult to over-estimate 
 the importance of this careful teaching. 
 
C HAPTER VIII 
 
 CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 
 
 Beside the " knowledge,-e«^ " in education there isi ^ 
 the " character-end," rightly esteemed the most im-"^ 
 portant. It is manifested in two alhed quahties — 
 alHed though not necessarily united in the same 
 individual. There is mental character ; in regard 
 to it the end to be aimed at is that our teaching shall 
 foster the power of making a well-directed mental 
 effort. There is also moral character ; in regard to 
 it we must foster the power of making a moral effort. 
 In a mental effort we bring all our energy to bear 
 on the problem before us ; we allow no distracting 
 thoughts to disturb us, however enticing they may be ; 
 we compel ourselves to work. In a moral effort, if we 
 cannot banish the enticing thought, the strong tempta- 
 tion, w^e summon all the power of our will to compel 
 ourselves to do our duty, whatever be the consequences 
 to ourselves. 
 
 It is very easy to select from Dr. Montessori's book 
 not only isolated sentences, but whole paragraphs 
 which appear to show that she places but little value 
 on direct training in effort, in fact that she disapproves 
 
 of it. Thus (p. 226) she gives, as the reason for not 
 
 277 
 
2/8 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 revealing the error when the child makes a mistake, 
 that we might lead him " to make an undue effort to 
 remember . . . and it is our duty to avoid as much 
 as possible all unnatural effort." Again (pp. 237-8), 
 after speaking of the voluntary effort the child makes 
 to understand and imitate the language of those 
 round him, she says it is our duty to lessen this ex- 
 penditure of poorly directed effort, and she likens the 
 child to a traveller through life. " It is our privilege 
 to. lead him to observe the most important and the 
 most beautiful things of life in such a way that he 
 does not lose energy and time in useless things, but 
 shall find pleasure and satisfaction throughout his 
 pilgrimage." 
 
 It is no wonder that those who, in a lax age, 
 value strength of character whether in the mental 
 or the moral world, ask themselves whether this 
 is the way to produce it. Even if we could guide 
 these travellers all the days of their pilgrimage, shield- 
 ing them from all that was painful or disagreeable, 
 who but a weakling would choose to be so nursed ? 
 But we cannot ; soon they must fend for themselves 
 and in a world which is often harsh enough. To put 
 it on the lowest material plane, how will such an 
 education help them then ? Or again, to put it on 
 a higher plane, how will such an education enable 
 them to attain the greatest conquest of all, that of 
 self ? What room is there in it for high ideals ? Does 
 it not make pleasure and satisfaction the ultimate 
 good ? Will it not produce men and women unable 
 to make themselves do what they know they ought to 
 
CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 279 
 
 do, if it should involve discomfort — unable, as Locke 
 puts it, " to deny their desires, to cross their inclina- 
 tions and to follow purely what reason directs, though 
 appetite lean the other way." Can we hope that it 
 will give us what we need most, men and women 
 who can and will choose the harder path ; who, not 
 always desirous of new sensations, will restore some- 
 thing of the simplicity and strength of life, as it 
 was before the nation spent such vast sums on its 
 amusements ? That it will increase the power to over- 
 come difficulties by patient and pertinacious effort ? 
 
 The final answer to these questions can only be 
 given after long experience of the results of the Montes- 
 sori method, when carried out as a whole. But 
 since we cannot wait, and especially since there are 
 many critics who seem to have no doubt whatever 
 that they can answer these questions off-hand, it is 
 well that the matter should be examined as carefully 
 as possible, and in the light of all the material available. 
 
 First let us ask, What is effort ? It implies a 
 conflict of tendencies in the organism. In the very 
 young infant there is no appearance of any such 
 conflict ; the nervous energy always finds an uninter- 
 rupted motor outlet — it never seems to be shunted 
 from one path to another. The resulting movement 
 may indicate that the prime cause is an external 
 stimulus, as when the baby turns to the light, or 
 that it arises from some internal accumulation of 
 energy, as when the baby clenches its hands in sleep, 
 but in each case the discharge appears to exhaust 
 itself alon^ the original path. There is no indication 
 
280 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 that another stimulus arises to compete with the 
 first, or that there is any tendency for the discharge 
 to pass off along a second path. But after a time 
 the baby enters on a new stage — a movement, though 
 commenced, is interrupted. We infer that there is 
 a competing stimulus or a competing path. Since there 
 is no appearance of conscious deliberation, we often 
 say that the little child yields to the strongest stimulus. 
 The idea underlying this somewhat inaccurate expres- 
 sion is that the child is not yet a personality, that it 
 (observe the impersonal pronoun) does not control 
 its actions but passively responds to the stimulus, and 
 we are inclined to take this view even where the 
 stimulus is due to some internal accumulation of 
 energy. This is justifiable on the ground that there 
 is no evidence of a control being exercised by the 
 organism generally. Nevertheless, these interruptions 
 afford the first evidence of the growth of those connec- 
 tions between the different parts of the nervous system 
 through which, at last, the response of one portion 
 of the organism to a stimulus is controlled by the 
 rest of the organism. These connections form the 
 physiological basis of self-control. So long as the 
 response to a stimulus depends only on the part 
 directly stimulated, there can be no self-control. 
 
 As these connections gradually become more fully 
 organised, the nature of the interruptions gradually 
 changes. They depend less on direct stimuli. The 
 baby no longer appears to make a merely passive 
 response ; the mode in which the movement is changed 
 seems to indicate something like choice ; even when 
 
CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 281 
 
 the stimulus is a simple one, applied to only one 
 element in the organism, the response appears to 
 depend on other elements as well. This power of 
 varying the response is what develops later into''^ 
 voluntary self-control, or will. It begins to take its 
 final form as the manifestation of the child's person- 
 ality only when the child acquires the power of forming 
 mental pictures of future situations, pictures which 
 must include the representation of the feelings which 
 those situations will arouse. Before this stage is 
 reached the child's actions belong to the non-moral 
 world. With the power to resist the tendency to one 
 course of action because he judges another to be more 
 desirable, the child enters the moral world. True, his 
 life as a moral being is at first but the smallest fraction 
 of his whole life, and even in those actions which 
 bring him into the region of morality, the moral signifi- 
 cance is of the slightest — we should hardly, at this 
 early stage, speak of them as right or wrong. Never- 
 theless, the germ out of which the distinction will 
 grow has been manifested. Character is now no 
 longer to be regarded as a mere physiological attribute 
 of the organism. We can now speak of it in its aspect 
 as determined by the child's personality as well as by 
 what we are accustomed to look on as his physiological 
 responses to stimuli. 
 
 Even when this stage has been reached, it does not 
 always happen that the personality is consciously 
 involved in the response to a given stimulus. On the 
 contrary, there remain throughout life many actions 
 in regard to which the personality is not a recognisable 
 
282 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 factor — actions in regard to which the organism seems 
 to react to the stimulus according to fixed laws, fixed, 
 that is, in the sense of being independent of the more 
 varying element of the personality. Hence it is 
 convenient to distinguish between what we may call 
 physiological character, that which determines the 
 character of the response so far as it is independent 
 of the conscious personality, and what we may call 
 psychological character, by which we mean the way 
 in which the conscious personality determines the 
 response. 1 Still later, the psychological character 
 itself becomes complex ; we easily recognise this 
 fact through our consciousness of the conflict of 
 motives — and we see that higher and lower motives, 
 as we call them, are intimately related to the higher 
 and lower spontaneities of Chapter IV. 
 
 The distinction between these different aspects of 
 character has played a great part in the history of 
 thought, especially in the sphere of morality. When 
 St. Paul writes that he delights in the law of God after 
 the inward man, but sees another law in his members, 
 warring against the law of his mind, he is setting 
 forth the conflict between what he recognised as the 
 
 ^ This distinction, like all our distinctions between physiological 
 and psychological phenomena, must -be looked on merely as one 
 of convenience in language, not one of objective truth — in fact, 
 it depends rather on our ignorance than on our knowledge. That 
 which we cannot explain in terms of personality, we speak of as 
 physiological ; that which we do not think of in physiological 
 terms, but in terms of personality, we call psychological. With 
 wider knowledge we should probably find this a misleading mode 
 of description, 
 
CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 283 
 
 higher personality and either the lower personality 
 or the flesh, i.e. the physiological character. ^ Re- 
 garded as a conflict between the spirit and the flesh, 
 this . opposition between the higher aspect of the 
 personality and the physiological character has been 
 a predominant factor in determining both the practice 
 and the ideals of Christendom for the whole period 
 of its existence. And the conflict between the higher 
 and the lower aspects of the personality, the latter 
 typified as the world and the devil, has been of little 
 less importance. Nor has the practical influence of 
 the distinction been confined to Christianity — it is 
 fundamental in all systems of morality. Thus the 
 Stoics carried the disregard not only of the physio- 
 logical character, but of the lower elements in the 
 personality, to an extreme — the great lack of their 
 moral code was the want of sympathy for others, and 
 with it, of the desire to alleviate human misery — a 
 lack which was a necessary consequence of their dis- 
 regard of pain and suffering. 
 
 Let us examine, in regard to the antagonisms 
 in the organism itself, the case of a schoolboy who 
 cannot keep his attention on his work. It wanders 
 now to this passing distraction, now to that one. 
 
 , 1 St. Paul, however, does not seem to have regarded it as a con- 
 flict between two elements in his own personality, but between 
 himself, and an external personality dwelling in him. To him, 
 as to much of earlier and later philosophy, personality is one and 
 indivisible. Hence it is that, having said " What I would, that 
 do I not, but what I hate, that do I," he proceeds to argue that 
 if he does that which he would not do, it cannot be he who does 
 it, but sin which dwells in him. 
 
284 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 He makes an effort to attend ; it succeeds for a 
 minute, then his thoughts unconsciously wander off 
 again ; he suddenly awakes to find he is attending 
 to something else, and with another effort of the will 
 he recalls his attention to his work. What is the past 
 history of such a case ? It is a history of constant re- 
 sponses to these trivial stimuli. Such stimuli are always 
 acting on the sense organs ; the natural response in- 
 volves a flow of nervous energy along the stimulated 
 sensory nerves, resulting in a call upon the attention 
 and the final discharge of the energy along the 
 appropriate motor nerves, the effect being, for the 
 most part, merely trivial and unmeaning actions. 
 Unless the organism gets into the habit of disre- 
 garding these stimuli, the . responses will occur re- 
 peatedly ; and with every repetition, it will become 
 easier for the nervous energy to pass along these 
 trivial paths, and more difficult for the rest of the 
 organism to interrupt these discharges. 
 
 It is therefore evident that if we desire to make it 
 easy for the boy to overcome the tendency to yield to 
 momentary distractions, it is necessary that some 
 means should be found to pre\%nt the child's atten- 
 tion being directed now to |tl^, now to that dis- 
 traction. And in the child, before the personality 
 has become an effective force in directing the response 
 to stimuli, there is but one way to secure this — namely, 
 to get him absorbed in something he likes for its own 
 sake ; otherwise he will constantly respond to this and 
 that among the stimuli which jare constantly acting 
 on his sense organs ; in other words, he will be dis- 
 
CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 285 
 
 traded by them. It follows that the best prepara- 
 tion for enabling the boy to resist such distractions 
 without great effort, is to let the child occupy himself 
 so much with what naturally attracts him that he 
 resists distractions through mere choice — the only 
 way in which he can resist them. 
 
 It is to be observed that the principle just laid 
 down is not to be interpreted as meaning merely 
 that the child is "to have his own way." He is 
 indeed to have his way in mental occupations, but 
 only in a carefully selected environment. It is here 
 that the ingenuity of the teacher is needed. Because 
 the child only develops the power of long continued 
 attention by practice in continuing to attend, and 
 because he can only continue to attend to that which 
 continues to engross him, therefore the teacher must 
 seek to provide an environment which fulfils that 
 condition. If it does not do that — if it engrosses the 
 child only by reason of its constant change and 
 variety, then it fails in its function as mental disci- 
 pline ; a conception too hastily rejected by many 
 modern educationists. ^ 
 
 1 As the preceding and following paragraphs raise the whole 
 question of formal education or discipline, it may be well to indicate 
 very briefly the fallacies in the two main lines of argument by 
 which many modern educationists have convinced themselves that 
 the conception is an invalid one. 
 
 The fallacy in the Herbartian argument, as put forward by 
 Prof. Adams in his Herbartian Psychology, is that it begs the question 
 by ignoring the possibility that we can, by practice, improve the 
 power of making new apperception masses suitable to the situation 
 in which we find ourselves. One quotation must here suffice to 
 justify this objection. He tells us (p. 75) that " The best-educated 
 
286 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 Let us examine the educational value of the story 
 from this point of view, that is, as mental discipline, 
 
 human being is he who has the biggest and best arranged appercep- 
 tion masses deaUng with the hfe he is hkely to lead." The advocate 
 of formal discipline would add, " and has the greatest power of 
 arranging properly the new ideas he will receive when he comes 
 to live that life, whatever it be ; and the greatest power of creating 
 new combinations of ideas to deal with a new problem or situation 
 the moment it presents itself to him," and he would claim for 
 mental discipline or gymnastic that it increased these powers, and 
 in that way altered the quality of the mind. 
 
 A different fallacy underlies the contention, so strongly pressed 
 by the American physiological psychologists, that the possibihty 
 of formal education presupposes that " generalised " habits can 
 be acquired, and that a generalised habit is a physiological impossi- 
 bility, because a habit is a specific response to a specific stimulus. 
 There are two ways of escape from the apparent logical dilemma. 
 We may either admit this definition of " habit " and challenge 
 the opponent to show that what is claimed as the result of mental 
 gymnastic is a " habit," or we may claim that the stimulus to 
 hard work and close attention to reasoning is in a sense a specific 
 stimulus, viz., that it is independent of the particular subject 
 studied — a moral stimulus, depending on our feeling that we 
 " ought " to work as hard, and attend as closely to the work, as 
 we can. ' It is indeed just like the habit of resisting temptation — 
 he who refuses to yield to one temptation is better able to resist 
 another temptation. As an instance of a mental habit which 
 functions independently of the particular subject to be studied, 
 we may take the power of resisting at will the distracting stimuli 
 received through the organs of sense. If we admit — as who will 
 not ? — that this is a power which grows with practice, then it is 
 clear that the argument against which this paragraph is directed 
 cannot be valid. 
 
 The truth, as it appears to the writer, is that the advocates 
 of the disciplinary education made two very serious mistakes. 
 In the first place, they paid too little regard to the value of actual 
 knowledge, as apart from discipline ; and, in the second place, 
 they did not recognise that one of the worst forms of mental training 
 is to let a boy sit down before a subject with which his mind cannot 
 
CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 287 
 
 ]iot as instruction merely. It may be argued that 
 as its interest depends on its variety, it must be with- 
 /out value as mental discipline. The answer is plain. 
 In a story, the interest of the moment does not depend 
 merely on the words heard at the moment. Unlike 
 the response to an external distracting stimulus, it 
 requires that the attention be held by much more 
 than the immediate object from which the stimulus 
 arises — by, namely, the relations between the preced- 
 ing incidents and that recounted at the moment. 
 Several ideas must be held in the mind at the same 
 time, — if we were to forget the previous incidents, the 
 interest would flag at once. A good story is educative 
 as mental discipline because it gives practice in holding 
 a number of ideas in the mind simultaneously, while 
 we think out the relations between them.^ 
 
 or does not grapple, so that he either learns it by heart, or does 
 not learn it at all. Thus are explained the very poor average 
 results of the disciplinary education, results so poor that they led 
 theorists to invent arguments of the a priori type to prove that 
 even the very conception of mental discipline must be rejected. 
 These arguments are themselves an object-lesson in the importance 
 of mental discipline, for it seems to need rather rigorous mental 
 discipline to avoid such fallacies as are involved in them, though 
 the writer says it, who should not, 
 
 * A series of very short disconnected anecdotes would not have 
 this educational effect on little children. With older children, the 
 objection would not be so strong, for good anecdotes may throw 
 new light on past experiences, and so help to connect our thoughts. 
 Even with little children they might serve the purpose of pre- 
 venting the responses to the distracting stimuli received through 
 the sense organs. But though useful in this respect, constant 
 engrossment in such mental variety would be injurious as mental 
 discipline for enabling the mind to deal with dif&cult problems. 
 It would intensify the defects of the story. 
 
288 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 Yet the story is useful rather as instruction, and 
 for the hterary or emotional and artistic ideas it gives, 
 than for its mental discipline. As discipline it is 
 too easy. For the most valuable kind of mental work 
 is the hardest — that in which we search through our 
 ideas in order to find connections which are not at 
 first sight evident. This is a very different mental 
 action from that which gives interest to the story, for 
 there we have not to search for the ideas, — they are 
 given to us in the story, and the connections between 
 them are very evident indeed. Listening to a story 
 is not a training for hard mental work. But we may 
 judge that the mental work being done by the child in 
 Fig. 2, p. i8i (and Figs. 7, 8, and 9, pp. 231, 232, 233), 
 is of this character — he is evidently seeking for a diffi- 
 cult connection among his spatial ideas — a connection 
 which he cannot see at once — one which requires him 
 to ponder on his ideas, as he passes in review those 
 which, with effort, he brings into his mind. The 
 real value of mental discipline consists in practice 
 in this kind of effort — in the effort which is needed to 
 discover connections between ideas not previously 
 known to be related to each other. It is in this that 
 the highest mental work consists — what we call ex- 
 planation is really finding and verifying such relations. ^ 
 In the story, it requires hardly an effort to see the con- 
 nections — in the more difficult regions of physics and 
 philosophy only a few minds, and these the very 
 
 ^ More than thirty years ago, Sir J. Larmor made this fruitful 
 observation to the writer, when discussing how far Newton could 
 be said to have " explained " the law of gravitation. 
 
CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 289 
 
 greatest, can discover the connections, though many 
 can see them when they are pointed out. From the 
 physiological point of view, it seems plain that the 
 difference must be of this nature : — to see the con- 
 nections between the ideas in the story, the nervous 
 energy has only to pass along very short and easy 
 paths, connecting nerve cells or groups of cells be- 
 tween which, as we must consider, there is scarcely 
 'any obstacle — indeed the connection is often so easy 
 that by no effort of our own could we prevent its being 
 made. But in the more abstruse relations, the con- 
 nections between the parts of the brain corresponding 
 to the two ideas are opposed by some obstacle which 
 makes it extremely difficult to project the nervous 
 energy from one to the other. It needs a great and 
 long-continued effort of thought — many unsuccessful 
 attempts are made — false connections are imagined 
 and rejected ; the mind seems to feel out in all 
 directions. " Genius is a great capacity for taking 
 pains " — for examining very patiently and yet quickly 
 all the aspects of a problem. Physiologically, 
 it would seem that the nervous energy is projected 
 now in this, now in that direction. Many fruitless 
 attempts are made, but each failure serves to narrow 
 the possible directions of fruitful advance,' until at 
 last the true connection is made, and the new prin- 
 ciple discovered ; sometimes it appears as a sudden 
 revelation ; oftener, as a growing conviction, un- 
 certain until the nervous energy has travelled the 
 same path many times, pausing now at this step, 
 now at that one, seeking here and there and every- 
 19 
 
290 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 where for intermediate stages, lest by any chance a 
 false step has been made. 
 
 It is in these characteristics — expressed, no doubt, 
 in terms which only our ignorance of the physio- 
 logical correlate of mental action can excuse — that, 
 as the writer believes, the value of mental discipline 
 consists. The disciplined mind can project the 
 nervous energy along more resistant and longer paths 
 in the brain, and can make it stop at this and that 
 intermediate stage in the path, to search for mistakes. 
 In contrast with this, undisciplined minds can only 
 see connections along paths of but little resistance, 
 and when once the nervous energy has passed along 
 a path, they cannot make it pause on the way, to 
 examine the validity of each step. In ordinary 
 language, they can only solve simple problems, and 
 that rather by guessing than by ordered processes of 
 thought ; they jump to conclusions, often erroneous ; 
 and they cannot find out their own mistakes for 
 themselves. 
 
 If it be true that the power of forming valid con- 
 nections between apparently remote ideas, and of 
 verifying their validity by close examination, in- 
 creases with practice, then it is essential that education 
 should contain a percentage of difficult subjects, 
 subjects which require the student to think both 
 hard and long, though they must not be subjects he 
 dislikes, for in them persistent effort is so fatiguing 
 that it will not be persisted in. In direct opposition 
 to the opinions of some of its critics, one of the chief 
 justifications of the Montessori education is to be 
 
CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 291 
 
 found in that it provides mental discipline of the 
 best type. No doubt instruction in spatial form may 
 be the immediate object of the occupations with the 
 cylinders, but the mental discipline of persistent effort 
 (as shown in Figs. 2, 7, 8, and 9) is perhaps even 
 more important. ^ 
 
 So far, therefore, as regards mental character, the 
 theoretical argument is all in favour of the Montessori 
 education for the very young. ^ 
 
 But a further question remains — what is its effect 
 on moral character ? Take, as an example, the case 
 
 ^ From this point of view their work is finished when the child 
 turns them into soldiers, and his big brother of five suggests 
 that the holes shall be trenches and the block of wood a fort, as a 
 critic puts it. They have then become a stimulus for the imagina- 
 tion and the result is a play — it is no longer a suitable training 
 in the rational treatment of ideas. If we desire to contmue such 
 training, we should provide other material (see p. 235). We are 
 indeed told by the critic that the whole business is now spiritualised, 
 that it has become a human thing which we can all watch with 
 interest, and he complains that " of this kind of escape from the 
 prison-house of didactic materials there is not a word " in Dr. 
 Montessori's book. But can we not watch with a still higher 
 interest and sympathy the working of the child's mind as he grapples 
 with a problem which it requires all his energies to solve ? For 
 work is a more distinctively human thing than play, and man is a 
 rational as well as an imaginative animal. And, judging from the 
 photographs, the " prison-house " seems to be a pleasant as well 
 as an interesting place. 
 
 2 With regard to older children, and in regard to book work, 
 there is a record, the reference to which the writer cannot re- 
 member, of a school conducted on the same lines, e.g., an arith- 
 metical class of over twenty children was conducted on the indi- 
 vidual principle, each child progressing at his own rate, with such 
 individual help as the teacher could give. The result as described 
 was much bevond that of other schools. 
 
292 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 of a very passionate boy, one who, on the shghtest 
 provocation, hits out with his fist. Such a speedy 
 response is not " natural," it is a growth, and, looking 
 at it from the secular point of view, we have to inquire 
 — so that we may avoid it — what kind of education 
 favours this growth ? Dr. Francis Warner has care- 
 fully described the successive steps of the process as 
 it commences in the young child ; — A sharp word is 
 spoken ; you see a rising pucker on the face ; the 
 mouth gets drawn down ; the circulation of the blood 
 alters, as we see by the flushed face ; the breathing 
 grows irregular ; there is usually a storm of tears as 
 the fists clench ; the muscular movements increase ; 
 the child hits with his fists and stamps, then the 
 tears clear away, the eyelids open, the eyes fix them- 
 selves on the object of resentment, and the feeling 
 of anger attains its full intensity. 
 
 When a long process like this is often repeated, 
 the intermediate steps tend to disappear. It is just 
 like learning to play the piano. At first the child 
 looks at the written note, at its finger, and at the 
 piano, and then carefully puts its finger down and 
 strikes the note. With long practice, only the first 
 and last movements remain — no sooner do the eyes 
 see the written notes than the fingers play them. 
 So the boy who is allowed to practise getting into a 
 passion learns to play upon the instrument of his 
 emotions until the intermediate stages disappear and 
 the blow becomes the direct and instant response to 
 the provocation. 
 
 Thus the sudden storm of passion which overrides 
 
CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 293 
 
 the higher personaHty is a product of practice, just 
 as is piano-playing, and the same thing is true of 
 almost all conduct in which the higher personality 
 has no opportunity of interfering before the response 
 has been made. If, then, we would secure for the 
 developed personality of the boy the fullest oppor- 
 ' tunity to control the lower tendencies, we must give 
 as little opportunity as possible for the child to indulge 
 himself in practising that which we would repress in 
 the boy. For this reason it is important to avoid 
 irritating or opposing the child except when we must, 
 e.g. when he is guilty of offensive actions to others. In 
 such a case it is desirable to interrupt the objectionable 
 process as early as possible, so that it will not be 
 completed, and therefore will not become habitual, 
 and, if possible, the interruption should be by sub- 
 stituting some desirable emotion for the objectionable 
 one, just as the process of crying was interrupted by 
 the little girls in the tenement house, and a desirable 
 emotion substituted (see note, p. 201). 
 
 Although this method of early education will not 
 by itself give the higher personality much practice in 
 overcoming the lower personality or the physiological 
 tendencies of the organism, it will indirectly help to 
 secure its predominance by weakening the lower 
 tendencies. Directly, this predominance is to be 
 secured by affording to the higher elements of the per- 
 sonality plenty of practice in controlling actions which 
 are not too strongly opposed by the lower elements. ^ 
 
 1 Not too strongly opposed ; for though we may profit much from 
 reflection upon occasional failures, — forewarned is forearmed, — it is 
 
294 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 Such practice will tend to effect its object even though 
 the conflicting elements are not consciously opposed. 
 
 It may be objected that such an education tends 
 to minimise the feeling of duty, of moral obligation. 
 But that is the true ideal of all moral education. 
 The perfectly moral being never acts from a sense of 
 moral obligation, just as the motive of the innately 
 law-abiding individual is never that he may escape 
 the clutches of the law. The feeling of moral obliga- 
 tion, of duty, is evidence of moral imperfection ; 
 when that feeling has done its perfect work, it drops 
 out of sight. He who, seeing another lose a shilling, 
 returns it to him as a matter of course is so far on 
 a higher moral plane than he who, strongly tempted 
 to retain it, returns it under the pressure of a feeling 
 of moral obligation. Yet it is the latter whom we 
 praise, because he has fought against temptation 
 and conquered it. And there is reason in this. He 
 who, brought up in harmony with his surroundings, 
 has never been tempted to do wrong, may live, re- 
 spected and respectable, all his life, but we do not 
 feel the same confidence in him as we do in the man 
 who has struggled with himself until the inmost 
 recesses of his own nature have been laid bare to 
 himself, and who has thus overcome what was base 
 or unworthy. Yet for one soul made strong by such 
 bitter conflict, in how many may not the lower elements 
 overcome the higher ? And for children, the time for 
 
 by overcoming temptation, not by yielding to it, that we acquire 
 moral strength ; nor have little children reached the stage at which 
 reflection is fruitful. 
 
CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 295 
 
 such conflicts has not come. When it does come, 
 they will not be the worse equipped to meet them 
 because, in their young lives, the higher elements 
 have been encouraged at the expense of the lower. 
 For them, at least, the prayer must be " Lead us 
 not into temptation." It is in the years of adoles- 
 cence, when the harmony between the outer environ- 
 ment and the inner nature is all upset by the rapid 
 changes within, it is then that the strong soul cries 
 aloud for strength to overcome the temptations into 
 which it is inevitably led. It is for that period of 
 stress that early education should prepare. Little by 
 little we must give strength to the higher personality 
 to overcome the lower. 
 
 The Montessori education, though for the most 
 part it gives this preparation unconsciousty, does give 
 direct opportunity for conscious conflict and moral 
 self-control, and that not only in the moral sphere, 
 where unsocial actions are repressed by external 
 authority, but in the intellectual sphere as well. 
 In the self-restraint of the games of silence, in the 
 self-denial in the game of zero, there is direct moral 
 self-control. And it is interesting to observe that 
 just as mental discipline is obtained, not through 
 exhortation to attend to the didactic material, but 
 through giving occupations which engross the atten- 
 tion, so here the moral control by which the higher 
 personality is enabled to resist the antagonisms of 
 the lower personality or the demands of the physio- 
 logical character, is obtained not through exhortation, 
 or through fear of punishment or hope of reward, but 
 
296 IHE MONTESSORl METHOD 
 
 by giving occupations in which the natural tendency 
 is to secure the victory for the higher personahty. 
 This is the tendency of all modern education. The 
 old custom of impressing on children, by the fear of 
 punishment, that they were not to do this and not 
 to do that, so that in their lives the element of repres- 
 sion was prominent, is being gradually replaced by 
 the happier one of providing such good and inter- 
 esting occupations that the temptations to wrong or 
 undesirable action are reduced as far as possible. 
 There can be no doubt that this is a change in the 
 right direction. It is a change from law to grace, 
 from the method of the Old Testament to that of 
 the New. In the old dispensation, it was sought to 
 secure right action by a code of prohibitions. Of 
 the Ten Commandments, one only — the command- 
 ment to honour parents — is definitely positive, eight 
 of the remaining nine are certainly prohibitions. In 
 the New Testament the change from the negative to 
 the positive is complete. Rightly to love God and 
 one's neighbour, this is the whole of the Law and 
 the Prophets. Not the life of enforced prohibitions, 
 but the life of spontaneous righteousness, that is 
 what we must strive to attain. And this change 
 in the point of view is typical of all progressive 
 thought. 
 
 Yet it must not be forgotten that it was not by 
 this kindly method that nature first raised man in 
 the scale of creation. Not pleasure but adversity 
 was the greatest teacher of mankind. It was not 
 in those happy lands where nature provides with 
 
CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 297 
 
 luxuriant profusion all the necessaries of existence, 
 that man rose from savagery to the highest civilisa- 
 tion. The history of progress is a history of striving, 
 and often of conscious toil in the present for the sake 
 of bare existence in the future. It is indeed very 
 remarkable that those educationists who, like Spencer 
 and Montessori, insist most strongly that the educa- 
 tion of the individual should follow the evolutionary 
 education of the race, are the very ones who also 
 maintain most strongly that education should be 
 intrinsically pleasurable ; that the motive for work 
 should always be the direct one of interest in the 
 work itself, not the indirect one of avoiding future 
 pain or providing future gratification. Thus Dr. 
 Montessori says of the medical student " that if he 
 works in the hope of an inheritance, or of making a 
 desirable marriage, or if, indeed, he is inspired by 
 any material advantage, he will never become a true 
 master or a great doctor, and the world will never 
 make one step forward because of his work. He to 
 whom such stimuli are necessary had far better never 
 become a physician." 
 
 No doubt there is something in this ; to be devoted 
 to work for its own sake is the most fruitful attitude 
 of mind. But it is best to admit at once that state- 
 ments like the above misrepresent the facts ; and 
 by putting the reader into a critical frame of mind 
 they detract from the effect of the passages which 
 follow, which are of rare and exquisite beauty. It 
 is not merely that they are exaggerations ; they are 
 directly contrary to the teaching of life and of evolu- 
 
298 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 tion. The early progress in self-control, as in power 
 of self-denial, by which civilised man rose above 
 his savage origin, was due to this very motive which 
 Dr. Montessori holds so low. This progress had its 
 root in thrift, using the word in its wide sense of 
 prevision, looking ahead, basing present action not on 
 immediate desires, but on future consequences. And 
 Nature's penalties for want of prevision were far 
 more severe than ours- — they included even the exter- 
 mination of the race when brought into competition 
 with other races, more careful of the future. " The 
 jockey," writes Dr. Montessori, " offers a piece of 
 sugar to his horse . . . the coachman beats him ; . . . 
 and yet neither of these runs so superbly as the free 
 horse of the plains." Why ? Because a thousand 
 enemies lie in wait for the " free " horse ; if he does 
 not run superbly he perishes in the inexorable contest 
 of nature.^ 
 
 Happily, however, the objection is rather against 
 Dr. Montessori's theory than her practice. If 
 the upholders of the evolutionary theory of educa- 
 tion had advocated pleasurable interest as the prime 
 factor in the education of the very young only, they 
 would at least have escaped the criticism of incon- 
 sistency. For the struggle through which the greatest 
 progress was made was the struggle of the parent 
 
 ^ And even in the word " superbly " there Hes a fallacy, for 
 it implies excellence ; and the free horse does not excel in all respects 
 — if he gallops more superbly than the race-horse, he does not 
 gallop so fast ; if he walks more superbly than the cart-horse, 
 he could not draw so great a load. 
 
CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 299 
 
 to provide for the young and helpless offspring an 
 environment not only free from suffering and struggle, 
 but directly pleasurable. Thus the teaching of evolu- 
 tion fully justifies the belief in immediate interest 
 rather than effort as the keystone of early education ; 
 and Dr. Montessori's own experience bears this out. 
 She did not originally object to prizes as a spur to 
 effort. It was her children who taught her that 
 prizes were unnecessary ; were a hindrance, not a help. 
 Thus in the games of silence, they forgot her promise 
 of sweets if they remained silent — and she gave up 
 such rewards, having discovered, as she says else- 
 where, that his own self-development is the child's 
 greatest pleasure. There are but few who will not 
 agree that if, without offering immediate material 
 rewards, we can get the children to do as much and 
 as good work as when such rewards are offered, then 
 it is best not to offer them. For one thing, the 
 material rewards in life are usually long delayed — 
 hence what we value is the power to work for a long 
 delayed reward. But the promise of such rewards 
 has but little effect as a motive power until the period 
 of adolescence, when the future begins to loom larger 
 than the present. If indeed we could, by commencing 
 with immediate material rewards in the early years of 
 childhood and, gradually delaying them as the child 
 got older, lead him to work steadily for far-distant 
 rewards, that would be a strong argument for begin- 
 ning with immediate material prizes.^ But the actual 
 
 1 There would still remain the very serious objection that fine 
 natures are not so obtained — the utilitarian, if he be also a psycho- 
 
300 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 effect is just the contrary — we are more likely to 
 create a craving for the pleasure or excitement given 
 by the reward, whether it has been earned or not — 
 a craving from which many ill-effects follow. 
 
 Even the reward of an immediate word of praise, 
 though it is in many respects a most desirable one, 
 is not wholly free from objection. In the Montessori 
 schools, as in all charmingly conducted ones where 
 the whole environment breathes of gentle and loving 
 sympathy, there is a serious risk. Those who are 
 accustomed to such happy surroundings may well 
 shrink and wither under the rough treatment of an 
 unsympathetic world ; the stronger among them 
 may rebel with righteous passion against the inevitable 
 injustices of our imperfect social system ; the more 
 gentle ones, depressed and discouraged, may sink 
 beneath them. Nor is the world's roughness the 
 only danger ; its knavery is another. Against many 
 forms of knavery the mere fact of being a steady 
 worker, and one who looks for little reward save in 
 the work itself, is a great protection ; and there is 
 reason to expect that this will be a characteristic of 
 those who are educated on the Montessori principles. 
 But certainly, if we educate children in a world whose 
 moral level is far above that of the world of life, they 
 must, when they come to the proper age, receive 
 definite teaching about the snares laid for the innocent, 
 and how they are to be avoided. 
 
 legist, knows that to seek directly for happiness is not the best 
 way to obtain it ; and so it is with utility — we are seldom really 
 successful when we make it our direct object. 
 
CHARACTER AND DISCIPLINE 301 
 
 Of all the forms of reward, the least open to objec- 
 tion is that which nature, unaided, supplies — the 
 reward of conscious achievement, of increasing power. 
 In this alone there seems no danger, yet even here, 
 when it is coloured by the desire for social approbation, 
 there is some risk, for self-satisfaction may become 
 inordinate. 
 
 But even the best external methods of encourage- 
 ment or of punishment will never by themselves 
 transmit to the child the most valuable heritage of the 
 race. These must come through personal experiences, 
 through mental and spiritual contact with others 
 who, in their turn, have received them in the same 
 way. It lies with each generation to enrich by its 
 own experience what it has received from those who 
 have gone before, and, so enriched, to transmit it to 
 those who follow. 
 
 The discussion has been rendered necessary because, 
 while every one who has seen the results of the system 
 is extraordinarily impressed with the calm, happy, 
 and interested character of the children, there are 
 many who hold that in this case the child is not the 
 father of the man, and that the effect in later life 
 will be that the children will grow up without moral 
 or mental fibre. Here, as in all things educational, 
 we must preserve a temperate judgment, for the proof 
 of the pudding is in the eating. And since we cannot 
 eat the pudding before it is cooked, all that discussion 
 can be expected to do for a new experiment is to 
 enable us to judge whether it is worth trying ; and 
 if we so decide, to enable us to experiment with a 
 
302 THE MONTESSORI METHOD 
 
 clear knowledge of what we are about to do. To 
 show that the experiment is worth making, nay, that 
 we are bound to make it, and to help in making clear, 
 the principles on which it should be made, is the 
 modest object of this little work. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absorption, the test of good mental 
 
 work, i8o, 182, 233, 234. 
 Acquired characteristics, 68. 
 Actions, not easy in themselves, 173 ; 
 
 three stages in learning, 171. 
 Afferent fibres, 31. 
 Ambidexterity, 157. 
 Anaxagoras, 43 n. 
 Anger, 162, 292. 
 " Antagonisms," 161, 164, 190. 
 Anti-social tendencies, 166, 167, 174, 
 
 191. 
 Ants, 66, 67. 
 Apparatus, the Montessori, hygienic 
 
 and didactic, 214 f. 
 Application, Herbartian, not to be 
 
 suggested by teacher, 237. 
 Arithmetic, 271 f. 
 Arms, strength of, in child, 214 f. 
 Army, as analogue of nervous 
 
 system, 27 f. 
 Art, how to teach an, 46, 126. 
 Articulation, need of teaching, 150. 
 
 and thought, 151. 
 Attention, 61, 95, 180; called to 
 
 different parts of body, 220, 239 ; 
 
 wandering and remedy, 283 f. 
 Authority, justification of, 164, 190. 
 Automatism, 60. 
 Aveyron, wild boy of, 15, 107. 
 
 Baby, characteristics of, 69, 78. 
 
 compared to monkey, 78 n. 
 to savage, 78. 
 
 educative play of, 70. 
 Ball, Prof, v., on wolf children, 108 f. 
 
 Bees, 64-66, 75. 
 
 Berry, on imitation in cats, 94. 
 
 Bicycle riding, 46, 73, 125. 
 
 Biogenetic law, 83 n. 
 
 Birds and imitation, 93. 
 
 Blind, delicacy of touch in, 58. 
 
 Brain, 25 ; developed through hand, 
 
 16, 3^45. 57 f- 
 developed through sense and 
 muscle training, 45 f . 
 ,, of monkeys, 27 n. 
 Breathing, importance of teaching, 
 
 217 f. 
 Broad stairs, 248. 
 Burial rites of domestic pets, 82. 
 
 Carrying objects, 221, 246, 257, 264. 
 
 Cat, 63 ; imitation in, 93, 94. 
 
 Chairs, should be movable, 212 ; how 
 to move, 225. 
 
 Character, 277 f. 
 
 Chest capacity, importance of, 217- 
 219. 
 
 Chicks, instinctive adjustments in, 72 f, 
 educated through spontaneity, 
 92. 
 
 Childhood, terrors of, 245. 
 
 Children, games of, an echo of race 
 history, 79 f . ; medical examina- 
 tions of, 100, 212 ; cannot make 
 fine adjustments, 125 ; and re- 
 petition, 177 ; should exhaust 
 their impulses, 180 ; and do their 
 own thinking, 182 ; should not be 
 kept still, 195 ; but may keep 
 themselves still, 196 ; refractory, 
 
304 
 
 INDEX 
 
 loo, 212 ; older should help 
 
 younger, 220 ; some types of, 238 ; 
 
 and crockery, 264 ; waiting at 
 
 meals, 264 ; may remain quiet 
 
 during considerable intervals, 
 
 196. 
 Chivalry, education of, 12. 
 Choice, first appearance of, 280. 
 Church, education of, 12. 
 Class teaching, 147, 213. 
 
 ,, sympathy, 159. 
 Cleanliness of hand, nails, neck, ears, 
 
 face, teeth, clothes, shoes, 220. 
 Colour, exercises for teaching, 252 ; 
 
 memory, 252 ; psychology of, 255. 
 Colour bhndness, 52. 
 Commands should be such as can be 
 enforced, 169. 
 should be such as child 
 can execute, 171. 
 Concentration, mental, 149. 
 Conceptual level, acquirement of 
 
 skill on, 47. 
 Conflict of human tendencies, 71, 
 161 f., 279. 
 ,, of wills, 164, 174. 
 Control, mechanical by apparatus, 
 
 230. 
 Conversations, Dr. Montessori's, 210, 
 
 221. 
 Copy-books, disadvantages of, 159. 
 Copying, difficulty of, 118. 
 Courtesy, not to be required from the 
 
 very young, 189, 243 n. 
 Crockery, care of, 264. 
 Cubes, 246. 
 Culture epochs, 77 f . ; classification 
 
 of, 84. 
 Curriculum, the Montessori, 208, 212, 
 
 222 
 Cylinders, 226 f., 235, 269, 291 n. 
 
 Darwin, account of monkey trainer, 
 
 93- 
 Deaf-mutes, education of, bv Percira, 
 
 13- 
 Deficients, education of, in Spain, 13. 
 
 Definitions, of real things, unsatis- 
 factory, 87 ; value of, 88. 
 
 Delsartian relaxation, 198. 
 
 Democratic ideal in education, 2. 
 
 Deppe, 47 n. 
 
 Design, 270, 271. 
 
 Desks, 175, 214. 
 
 Didactic material, 8, 13, 179, 219, 
 223, 224, 270. 
 
 Disciplinary education, 285 f. 
 
 Discipline in the school, 167. 
 
 Distance, instinctive perception of, 
 in chick, 72. 
 
 Dog, intelligence in, 48, 49 ; and 
 imitation, 93. 
 
 Doll instinct, 82. 
 
 Draughts, detection of, 53. 
 
 Drawing from nature, 270, 271. 
 
 Drummond, Dr., 217 n. 
 
 Duty, feeling of, 294. 
 
 Ear, and power bf attending to what 
 is significant, 51, 58. 
 
 Education — ancient and modern, 
 10-12 ; Greek, 11 ; of Church, 12 ; 
 problem of, in physiological terms, 
 1 7 ; physiological, 24 f . ; why 
 required by man, 62, 69 ; of man — • 
 animals contrasted, 62 f. ; required 
 by man not merely because of 
 complexity of life, 64 ; not to 
 make adjustments for new com- 
 binations, 68 ; but because of 
 changing environment, 69 ; of 
 insects, impossible, 64 ; through 
 play, 70 ; three aims in, 71 ; implies 
 establishing new paths of nerv- 
 ous discharge, 74 ; depends on 
 spontaneity; 74, 90, 92 f., 100 ; 
 and Uberty, 2, 92 ; of chick, based 
 on its spontaneity, 92 ; in Montes- 
 sori system, of senses, muscles, 
 and intellect chiefly by primary 
 spontaneities, but in conduct by 
 secondary spontaneities, 99 ; old 
 and new, difference between, loi, 
 103 ; civilising tendency of new, 
 
INDEX 
 
 305 
 
 102 ; of the very young must be 
 based on primary spontaneity, 
 104 ; and environment, 112, 113 ; 
 is best founded on the direct 
 spontaneities of the child, 145 ; 
 true rule of, 168. 
 
 Efferent fibres, 30. 
 
 Effort, 102, 141, 277-279. 
 
 Egyptian t3^pe of teacher, 97. 
 
 Environment, influence of, 107 f.; 
 and freedom, 92 ; selective in- 
 fluence of mental, 112 ; import- 
 ance of, 112 f., 209, 285 ; must not 
 determine response, 180 ; excite- 
 ment due to unsuitable, 200, 
 
 243- 
 
 Errors, correction of, 133, 154-5, 
 278. 
 
 Evolution and educational advance, 
 17 ; and the development of the 
 race, 42 ; and human deficiencies, 
 67 ; educational indications of, 
 297. 
 
 Eye, training of, 51, 57, 58 ; cor- 
 relation with hand, 20. 
 
 Examination and spontaneity, 91. 
 
 " Explanation," 288. 
 
 Fairy stories, 243. 
 
 Fatigue, 33-38. 
 
 Fay, Miss, 47 n. 
 
 Fear, of reproof, 155 ; of nervous 
 children, 245. 
 
 Ferrari, Signor, 94, 96. 
 
 Fine movements, difficulty in mak- 
 ing, 125-6. 
 
 FitzGerald, Bishop, 165 n. 
 
 Formal education, 285 f . 
 
 Frames for buttoning, etc., 226. 
 
 Franklin, 43 n. 
 
 Freedom — impossibility of complete, 
 92 ; what it means in Montessori 
 system, 173, 190 f.; more reliable 
 as a guide in physical and mental 
 spheres than in social and moral 
 spheres, 200-64 ; importance of 
 pupil's feeling free, 235. 
 
 Froebel, i, 4, 208 ; games of, 219 ; 
 gifts, 233, 269 ; principle of, must 
 not be applied unreservedly, 243. 
 
 Galli-saccenta, Signora, 139. 
 
 Game, of carrying out written 
 
 directions, 146, 148 ; numerical, 
 
 275 ; of silence, 239, 295. 
 Geometry, preparation for, 260, 263, 
 
 268. 
 Grades, 222 ; first, 225 ; second, 
 
 246 ; third, 257 ; fourth, 264 ; 
 
 fifth, 271. 
 Grafting process in education, 97 f., 
 
 lOI f. 
 Greek physical education, 11, 12. 
 Gymnastics, 11, 214 f. 
 
 Hand, relation of, to brain, 16, 
 39-45 ; evolutionary explanation 
 of, 43 ; and eye, co-ordination of, 
 20 ; and speech, 40, 42. 
 
 Hegel, 77, 166. 
 
 Herbarl, 208, 209, 236. 
 
 Hippocrates, 26 n. 
 
 Hobby horse versus toy motor, 83. 
 
 Holiday of professional man, 83. 
 
 Holmes, Mr. E. G. A., 139. 
 
 Hutchinson, W., 75. 
 
 Idiots, education of, 5, 192 n. ; com- 
 pared with that of normal children, 
 18-21, 119, 166. 
 
 Imitation, 93 f., 197, 239. 
 
 Impatience, of adults with children, 
 reasons of, 183 f. ; of children, 
 often excusable, 188. 
 
 Inattention, training in, 180. 
 
 Inhibition in child, 195 f. ; of 
 thoughts, 197 ; of movements, by 
 stimulus to opposing muscle, 
 198. 
 
 Insects, education of, impossible, 
 64 ; activities of instinctive, 65. 
 
 Insets, 260 ; metal, 268. 
 
 Inspection of children and school- 
 room, 220. 
 
3o6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Instincts, of young animals well 
 adjusted, of children often ill- 
 adjusted, 62 f. ; may govern 
 actions performed only once in a 
 lifetime, 65, 66 ; formation of, 
 68 f . ; some must be repressed, 
 70 ; and spontaneity', 74. 
 
 Interest, educative, 160; danger of 
 fleeting interest, 180, 182. 
 
 Itard, 3n., 15, loi, 107, 117, 258, 
 260. 
 
 Jewish teacher, saying of, 7. 
 
 Kant, 166 n. 
 Kea parrot, 94. 
 Keller, Miss H., 15 n. 
 Kitten, play of, 62. 
 
 Laboratory, psychological, 176. 
 Large movements, importance of, 
 
 127. 
 Left-handedness and stammering, 
 
 156. 
 Letters, mode of teaching, 133. 
 Liberty, principle of, 161 f. ; in 
 
 schoolroom, 175 ; not a fetish, 
 
 202. 
 Licence and liberty, 2. 
 Line, walking on, 264. 
 Liszt, 47 n. 
 Locke, 279 
 Long stairs, 249, 272. 
 
 Make believes, 81, 244. 
 
 Manual deficiency related to mental 
 
 ditto, 39 f . 
 " Mechanical " responses, 89, 116. 
 Medical inspection often reveals 
 
 cause of bad conduct, 100. 
 Mental character, 277 f . ; concentra- 
 tion, 149 ; effort, 278, 279 ; 
 discipline, 285 f., 295. 
 education through hand, 16, 
 
 39 f- 
 Monkey, 27 n., 43, 78, 93 ; and 
 education, 95 f. 
 
 Moral control, establishment of 
 169-70. 
 
 Morgan, Prof. Lloyd, 48, 67 n. 
 
 Mother, in besieged town, 58. 
 
 Motor activities, importance of 
 in child life, 195 ; control de 
 pendent on sensory indications 
 
 32 f-. 56. 
 Motor memory, 120 f. ; for angles 
 
 121 ; in drawing, 123. 
 Movements, physiological analysi: 
 
 of, 118 ; importance of beginning 
 
 with large ones, 125-7, 152 
 
 should be graceful, 221 ; exercise 
 
 in, 264. 
 Muscular control, three stages ii 
 
 acquiring, 171. 
 Muscular and mental training, 46 
 
 59. 
 
 Muscular training, dangers of, 60. 
 
 Montessori method, applied to olde 
 children, 291 n. 
 
 Montessori, her place in education 
 I, 8 ; educational training, 4-7 
 20-22 ; individuality, 22 ; person 
 aUty, 2, 114, 192 ; and Seguin 
 4-6, 15-19, 21, 166 f. ; and Cultur 
 Epoch theory, 78; and evolution 
 297 ; and spontaneity, 18, 21 
 22, 71, 99, 138, 141, 144-5, 147 
 167 f., 191 ; and self-expression 
 116, 158-9 ; as an Herbartian 
 210 ; disapproves of undue efforl 
 277. 
 
 Moral character, 277 f. ; effect c 
 Montessori system on, 291. 
 
 Moral obligation, 294. 
 
 ,, self-control in the Montessoi 
 system, 294 f. 
 
 Naughtiness, often a safety-valve 
 
 167. 
 Nerve paths and disciplinaxy educa 
 
 tion, 289. 
 Nerves and nervous system, 24 f. 
 
 nerve cells, 24, 25 ; must be traine 
 
 to act in concert, 179 ; sensor 
 
INDEX 
 
 307 
 
 and motor, 25 ; neurons, 25 ; 
 nerve centres, 25, 26, 29 ; and 
 voluntary movement, 27 ; nuclei, 
 26 ; fibres, 25 ; crossing of, 26, 
 40 ; currents — -short circuiting of, 
 27 ; sensory or afferent, 30 ; 
 motor or efferent, 31 ; are con- 
 tinuous, 29-31 ; interdependence 
 of motor and sensory nerves, 32 f., 
 56 ; system— analogy with army, 
 28 ; always active, 30, 31, 32, 
 34-38 ; fatigue, 34-38 ; and gym- 
 nastics, 36 ; developed through use, 
 38 ; especially of hand, 39 f. ; 
 also through sense and muscle 
 training, 54 f . ; developed through 
 repetition, 179. 
 
 Nervous breakdown, 35. 
 
 „ energy, danger of inter- 
 fering with spontaneous 
 discharges of, 194. 
 
 New Testament moraUty positive, 
 296. 
 
 Nomenclature, to teach, 132-4, 235 ; 
 not Nature method, 236. 
 
 Numeration, teaching of, 271 ; 
 games for, 275. 
 
 Obedience, 164, 170, 190. 
 Old age and second childhood, 76. 
 Optical delusions, 122. 
 Organisms, pecuUarity of, 88. 
 Original sin, biological significance 
 of, 70. 
 
 Pain, immoral use of, 105. 
 
 Passion, sudden storm of, 292. 
 
 Perceptual level, skill on, 47 ; neces- 
 sary conceptual efficiency, 50. 
 
 Pereira, 13—15. 
 
 Periods of Seguin, 134. 
 
 Persian school, noise in, 177 n. 
 
 Person, care of, should be taught, 
 220, 221, 264. 
 
 Personality, gradual growth of, 280 f .; 
 higher versus lower, 293. 
 
 Pestalozzi, i, 3. 
 
 Pets, 82. 
 
 Physiological foundation of educa- 
 tion, 10 ; statement of problem 
 of education, 17 ; analysis of 
 movements, 118 ; processes in- 
 volved in copying, 118. 
 
 Physiological character, 282, 283, 
 
 Piano playing as a type of acquired 
 habit, 293. 
 
 Pinel, 13. 
 
 Pizzoli's disk, 254-6. 
 
 Plastic work, 270, 271. 
 
 Plato, II. 
 
 Play — of kitten is its education, 62 ; 
 of baby is educative, 70 ; purpose- 
 ful, of children, 77 f. 
 
 Pleasurable excitement, not the test 
 of the best work, 182. 
 
 Poise, 220. 
 
 Preyer, 19 ; his baby, 178. 
 
 Process, not result, 177 f., 187 f. 
 
 Professional man's holiday, 83. 
 
 Prowls, 80 n. 
 
 Psychological laboratory in the 
 schoolroom, 176. 
 
 Psychological character, 282. 
 
 Punishment, 104-106, 212 ; and 
 reward, 106, 170, 295-6 ; and 
 monkey, 96, 97. 
 
 Puzzle instinct, 95. 
 
 Puzzled expression, its significance 
 for the teacher, 183, 185. 
 
 QuintiUan, 123. 
 
 Reading — teaching of letters by 
 Seguin's method of contrast, 
 132-3 ; error not revealed, 133 ; 
 three periods of Seguin, 134 ; 
 composing words, 135 ; reading 
 what he has composed needs 
 effort, 135 ; to read what others 
 have written needs much effort, 
 1 41-3 ; result of violation of 
 principle of spontaneity, 143-5 I 
 games for reading of phrases, 
 145-6 ; earliest reading should be 
 
3o8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 silent, 147 ; parrot reading, 148 ; 
 mental concentration taught in, 
 148-9 ; suggestions for teacher 
 in ordinary schools, 149 ; good 
 reading, almost a lost art, 150 ; 
 in fifth grade, 271. 
 
 Redundancy in baby movements, 73. 
 
 Refractory children, 100, 212. 
 
 Repetition, 135 ; importance of, 
 177 f. ; in adult life, 178 n. 
 
 Repression, 71, 164, 166, 167-8, 201, 
 296. 
 
 Reward, 2 ; and punishment, 106. 
 
 Rhythmic exercises, 264, 271. 
 
 Rights and duties, Seguin on, 165. 
 
 Romulus and Remus, 108, 
 
 Rousseau, 12-14. 
 
 Saint Paul, 282. 
 
 Salmon, Mr. D., account of reading 
 aloud, 143, 148. 
 
 Sanichar, the wolf man, 108. 
 
 Santa Claus, 244. 
 
 Savage of Aveyron, 15. 
 
 Savage compared to baby, 78. 
 
 Schoolmaster, ceremony of inception 
 of, 104. 
 
 Schoolroom, the Montessori, 208, 
 212. 
 
 " Seeing with hands," 269. 
 
 Seguin, 3 n., 4, 5, 6, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 
 20, 21, 39, 100, loi, 107, 119, 120 ; 
 method of contrast, 132-3 ; three 
 periods, 134; on "antagonisms," 
 161-171 ; on sympathy with chil- 
 dren, 4, 21, 192. 
 
 Self-control, gradual growth of, 280. 
 
 Self-expression in writing, 115 f., 
 149. 159. 
 
 Sense training, need of definite, 51 f. ; 
 is brain training, 57. 
 
 Shapes, recognition of, plane, by 
 touch, 260 ; ditto, of solid objects, 
 269. 
 
 Silence, games of, 239, 295. 
 
 Skill and knowledge, 40. 
 
 Skin, repair of, 66 n. 
 
 Soft pedagogy, 180. 
 
 Sounds, discrimination of, 258. 
 
 Spalding, experiments on chicks, 72, 
 
 Sparrow as instance of survival of 
 fittest, 68. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 2, 77, 78, 106, 181, 
 297. 
 
 Spontaneity, 62 f . ; and culture 
 epochs, 76 f . ; definition of, 8^ f . ; 
 and education, 92 f. ; higher and 
 lower, 100 f. ; and environment, 
 107 f. ; in teaching idiots, 21 ; 
 and instinct, 72 f . ; purposeless, of 
 baby, 74, 77 ; purposeful, of 
 children, 77 f. ; and examination, 
 91 ; of birds, the basis of their 
 education, 92, 96 ; of child, very 
 extended, 93 f. ; creation of new, 
 by grafting, 97 f. ; importance of 
 proper selection in grafting, 103 ; 
 direct or primary, indirect or 
 secondary spontaneities, 99 ; 
 higher and lower, 100 ; nature of, 
 transformed by civilisation, 103 ; 
 may disappear unless developed 
 at the right time, m ; and en- 
 vironment, 112 ; Dr. Montessori 
 on, 191 ; principle of, may be 
 safely applied with the very young, 
 193 ; danger in interfering with, 
 stated physiologically, 194 f. ; but 
 some must be suppressed, 70, 100, 
 loi, 167 f., 191, 201. 
 
 Stages in learning actions, 171. 
 
 Stairs, broad, 248 ; long, 249, 272. 
 
 Stammering and left - handedness, 
 156. 
 
 Stamp collecting impulse, 101-2. 
 
 Stimulants, mental, child should not 
 be allowed to indulge in them, 243. 
 
 Stoics, 283. 
 
 Story, the, 241 f. ; as mental dis- 
 cipline, 286. 
 
 Suggestion as an aid to quietness, 
 197. 
 
 Swimming, physiological method of 
 teaching, 117. 
 
INDEX 
 
 3C9 
 
 Tactile exercises, 251. 
 
 Teacher, Montessori, has need for 
 special skill, 234. 
 
 Teaching of activities necessary, 
 276 ; to move quickly, 221 ; 
 poise, 220 ; washing different parts 
 of body, 220, 250 ; older children 
 to help younger, 220 ; to lift, 
 carry, and set down objects, 221, 
 264 ; washing the person, 220, 250 ; 
 crockery, care of, 264. 
 
 Temperature, judging of, 251. 
 
 Ten Commandments, 296, 
 
 Tenement house, little girls in, 
 201 n. 
 
 Tenseness, 198 ; energy wasted in, 
 198 ; injurious, 199. 
 
 Three periods of Seguin, 134. 
 
 Thring, 151., 
 
 Thumb, 43. 
 
 Time must be allowed to child, 142, 
 
 173. 184. 
 Time-table, the Montessori, 222. 
 Touch, advantages of a gentle, 129, 
 
 264 ; exercises for, 250, 251. 
 Tower, the, 247. 
 Toys, mechanical, 82 ; should be 
 
 sparingly supplied, 180. 
 Tribe life, games founded on, 81. 
 Trouble, educational dangers in 
 
 avoiding, 187. 
 
 University students and mental 
 discipline, 185 ; often lack per- 
 ceptual foundation for geometry, 
 263. 
 
 Voluntary control, three stages in 
 growth of, 171 ; easily weakened, 
 172 ; in sitting still, 195 f. 
 
 Vowels, teaching of, 133 ; colouring 
 of, 132, 268. 
 
 Warner, Dr. F., 292. 
 Washing should be taught, and 
 reasons explained, 220, 250. 
 
 Water colours, 270, 271. 
 
 Weights, estimation of, 257. 
 
 Wesley, 71. 
 
 Wild children, 107 f. 
 
 Wills, conflict of , 164, 174. 
 
 Wolf -children, 108 f. 
 
 Words, difficulty of reading, 141 f. 
 
 Work and play, 62, 291 n. 
 
 Writing, a means of expression, 
 1 1 5-7 ; perfection of, 116 ; geo- 
 metrical analysis of letters differs 
 from physiological analysis of 
 actions, 118 ; physiological pro- 
 cesses involved in copying, 118—20 ; 
 motor memory in, 120—3 I begin 
 with large movements, 125-7, 
 152 ; direction must be taught, 
 128 ; how to feel objects, 129-30 ; 
 control of pencil, 131-2 ; intel- 
 lectual element in, 132 ff. ; teach- 
 ing letters, 133-4 J error not 
 revealed, 133, 155 ; the three 
 periods of Seguin, 134 ; composing 
 words as preparation for, 134-6 ; 
 pupil must not write until there is 
 an impulse to express himself, 
 134 ; unless this impulse is delayed 
 too long, 138 ; spontaneous 
 writing, 136-8 ; Mr. Holmes' 
 account, 139-40 ; writing phrases, 
 145—6, 148 ; application of method 
 to ordinary schools, 152 ; im- 
 portance of beginning with good 
 writing, 153-4 ', writing quickly, 
 an art to be speciall}^ taught, 154 ; 
 left-handed pupils and stammering, 
 156-8 ; should not be merely a 
 mechanical art, 158 ; a disadvan- 
 tage of copy-books, 159; the 
 pupil's interest should be mental, 
 160; jerky, due to tenseness, 200; 
 sequence in grades may be mis- 
 leading, 223 ; in fourth and fifth 
 grades, 266, 271. 
 
 Zero game, 275. , 
 
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