The Absorbent Mind (Rediscovered Books). Maria Montessori Montessori
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to him, he must have learned to do so, because at birth he was unable to do any of these things. Who has taught him then? Not the teachers, because, as we saw, during this period the child is excluded from school. It has never even entered their minds that there must be a very elaborate procedure to enable the new-born individual who had no intelligence, no co-ordinated movement, no will, and no memory, to understand what we say.
An unconscious recognition was also given to the second period, because in many countries at 12 years of age children generally leave the elementary school and enter high school. Why have they chosen the period from 6 to 12 and why do they consider it the proper period in which to give the basic and elementary items of culture? As this happens in every country of the world, it means that it was not done by chance. It means that there must be a psychic basis common to all children that made this possible. It had been recognized by reasoning based upon experience. It has been found that during this period, the child can submit to the mental work necessary in schools. He understands what a teacher says and he has enough patience to listen and to learn. During this whole period, he is constant in his work, as well as strong in health. It is because of these characteristics that this period is considered as the most profitable for imparting culture. After the 12th year of age, usually there is the beginning of a higher sort of school. By this official education has recognized that at that year a new type of psychology begins in the human individual. That this type has two divisions has also been felt. It is shown by the fact that they have divided high schools into two parts.
We have in our country an inferior and a superior high school. The inferior high school lasts three years and the superior sometimes two and sometimes three. Here we have a period which is not as smooth and calm as the preceding one. Psychologists say that it is a period of such psychic transformation that it may be compared to the first period from to 6. Usually during this period the character is not steady, there is indiscipline and some sort of rebellion. Physical health also is not as strong and secure as during the second period. But the school pays no heed to this. A certain syllabus has been elaborated and children are forced to follow it, whether they like it or not. In this period also the children have to sit and listen to the teachers, have to obey implicitly and spend their time memorizing things.
Then comes the university. The university also does not differ essentially from the types of school that precede it, except perhaps by the intensity of study. Here also the professors come, they talk and students listen. When I was young, men did not shave, they had beards. And it was curious to see in the lecture halls all these men fully bearded, some of them with pointed beards, some with square ones; some had long beards and some had them short, while the most different varieties of moustaches were displayed. Yet all these men mature and more than mature were as little children. They had to sit and listen; they had to submit to the jibes of the professors; they had to depend for their cigarettes, for their street-car fares on the liberality of their fathers who scolded them if they failed in the examinations. They were adult men! These men, whose intelligence, whose experience was going to direct the world, whose instrument of work was to be the intelligence and to whom were allotted the highest professions, were the future doctors, engineers, lawyers. And what good is a degree today? Is one’s life assured on receiving one’s degree? Who goes to a doctor who has only just received it? And if somebody wants to build a beautiful house, does he go and ask the services of a newly fledged engineer. Or if I have a law suit on my hands, am I going to employ a newly accredited lawyer? No. And why? For the simple reason that all these years of study, all these years of listening, do not form ‘man’; only practical work and practice do that. Thus we find that young doctors have to serve in hospitals, and lawyers have to practice in the office of an established lawyer. The same plan has to be followed for the engineer. This apprenticeship lasts for years and years, before they can have a practice of their own. And in order to be able to find a place to practice, they must have an opportunity and protection. There have been very strange cases resulting from this in many countries. A typical one took place in New York. There was a procession exclusively of intellectuals; hundreds of them who had been unable to find any sort of employment. They bore a banner with this information: “We are without work; we are starving. What are we to do?” Such is the situation, even today. There is no planning. Education is without control, but some sort of acknowledgment is given to the fact that during growth there are different types at different periods of life. There are different mental types and to each mental type has been allotted a different phase of education, elementary, high school and university.
The Period of Creation
When I was young, the children from 2 to 6 years were not taken into consideration at all. Now there are pre-school institutions of different kinds. There is the creche for small children and the so-called Montessori school, nursery and kindergarten schools for children from 3 to 6. But today, as then, the most important part of education is considered to be university education, because from the university come the people who have best cultivated that part of man’s mind which we call intelligence. Now that the psychologists have come to study life, there is a tendency to go to the other extreme, and there are other people besides me who say that the most important part of life is not the university, but the first period the period that extends from to 6 years, because it is during this first period that intelligence, the great instrument of man, is formed; and not only intelligence, but the whole of the psychic faculties are constructed during this period. This has made a great impression upon all who have had any sensibility towards psychic life. Today many meditate upon the small child; upon the new-born, and the one year old, who create the personality of man; and they feel the same emotion, the same deep impression as those who in olden times used to meditate upon death. What is it that takes place when death comes? This is what attracted meditation and sentimentality in the past. Today a similar meditation is being carried out upon man who has just entered the world. This is a Man, this is the being who has been created with the highest and loftiest intelligence. Why is he to have such a long and painful infancy? No animal has a period of infancy so painful and so long. This is what attracts the attention of the thinkers. “What is it that takes place during this period?” they ask themselves.
Certainly it is a period of creation because before nothing existed, and then, a year or so after birth, the child knows everything. It is not as if a child were born with a little bit of intelligence, with a little bit of memory, with a little bit of will which after a while grows. There is nothing! Individuality starts from zero! It is not as though there were a little voice that later developed, as is the case, for instance, for the kitten, who at birth is able to mew even if imperfectly, or for the bird or the calf. Man is absolutely mute. The only means of expression he has is that of crying. In the case of the human being, it is not a question of development. It is a question of creation that starts from zero. If you do not exist, you cannot hope to grow. That is the tremendous step the child takes, the step that goes from nothing to something. We are not capable of it. Our mind is not capable of it.
A type of mind different from ours, endowed with different powers is necessary to accomplish this. And it is not a small creation that the child achieves. It is the creation of all. He creates not only the language, but the organs that make it possible for us to speak. Every physical movement he creates, every side of our intelligence. He creates all that the human mind, the human individual is endowed with. It is a tremendous achievement!
This is not done with a conscious mind. We are conscious; we have a will and if we want to learn something, we go about it. There is no consciousness in the small child, no will. For both consciousness and will have to be created. The child’s mind is not the type of mind we adults possess. If we call our type of mind the conscious type, that of the child is an unconscious mind. Now an unconscious mind does not mean an inferior mind. An unconscious mind can be full of intelligence. One will find this type of intelligence in every being and every insect has it. It is not a conscious intelligence even though sometimes it looks as if it were endowed with reason. It is of an unconscious type and while he is endowed with it the child performs his wonderful achievements. The child of one year has already seen all things that are in his environment and is capable of recognizing them.
How has he been able to take in this environment? This is due to one of the special characteristics that we have discovered in the child: a power of such intense sensitivity that the things which surround