Spontaneous Activity in Education. Maria Montessori Montessori
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pump, and sets it in motion again. In anger there is a kind of tetanic contraction of all the capillaries, causing extreme pallor, and the expulsion of an extra quantity of bile from the liver. Pleasure causes dilatation of the blood-vessels; the circulation, and consequently all the functions of secretion and assimilation are facilitated; the face is suffused with color, the gastric juice and the saliva are perceptible as that healthy appetite and that watering of the mouth which invite us to supply fresh nourishment to the body; all the tissues work actively to expel their toxins, and to assimilate fresh nourishment; the enlarged lungs store up large quantities of oxygen, which burn up all refuse, leaving no trace of poisonous germs. It is an injection of health.
In Italy, where after the abolition of the death penalty the punishment of solitary confinement was substituted, we have a proof even more eloquent of the influence of the spirit upon the functions of the body. With our modern measures of hygiene in prisons, the prison cell cannot be called a place of torture for the body: it is merely a place where all spiritual sustenance is withheld. It consists of a cell with perfectly bare gray walls, opening only into a narrow strip of ground enclosed by high walls, where the criminal may walk in the fresh air, because the open country is all around him, though it is hidden from his sight. What is lacking here for the body? It is provided with food, and a shelter from the weather, it has a bed and a place where it can take in fresh stores of pure oxygen; the body can rest, nay more, it can do nothing but rest. The conditions seem almost ideal for any one who does not wish to do anything, and desires simply to vegetate. But no sound from without, no human voice ever reaches the ear of the being here incarcerated; he will never again see a color or a form. No news from the outer world ever reaches him. Alone in dense spiritual darkness, he will spend the interminable hours, days, seasons, and years. Now, experience has shown that these wretched persons cannot live. They go mad and die. Not only their minds but their bodies perish after a few years. What causes death? If such a man were a plant, he would lack nothing, but he requires other nourishment. Emptiness of the soul is mortal even to the vilest criminal, for this is a law of human nature. His flesh, his viscera, his bones perish when deprived of spiritual food, just as an oak-tree would perish without the nitrates of the earth and the oxygen of the air. This slow death substituted for violent death was, indeed, denounced as very great cruelty. To die of hunger in nine days like Count Ugolino is a more cruel fate than to be burnt to death in half an hour like Giordano Bruno; but to die of starvation of the spirit in a term of years is the most cruel of all the punishments hitherto devised for the castigation of man.
If a robust and brutal criminal can perish from starvation of the soul, what will be the fate of the infant if we take no account of his spiritual needs? His body is fragile, his bones are in process of growth, his muscles, overloaded with sugar, cannot yet elaborate their powers; they can only elaborate themselves; the delicate structure of his organism requires, it is true, nutriment and oxygen; but if its functions are to be satisfactorily performed, it requires joy. It is a joyous spirit which causes "the bones of man to exult."
II
A SURVEY OF MODERN EDUCATION
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The precepts which govern moral education and instruction.—Although the adult relegates the child to an existence among toys, and inexorably denies him those exercises which would promote his internal development, he claims that the child should imitate him in the moral sphere. The adult says to the child: "Do as I do." The child is to become a man, not by training and development, but by imitation. It is as if a father were to say in the morning to his little one: "Look at me, see how tall I am; when I return this evening, I shall expect you to have grown a foot."
Education is greatly simplified by this method. If a tale of some heroic deed is read to the child, and he is told to "become a hero"; if some moral action is narrated and is concluded with the recommendation, "be thou virtuous"; if some instance of remarkable character is noted together with the exhortation, "you too must acquire a strong character," the child has been put in the way of becoming a great man!
If children show themselves discontented and restless, they are told that they want for nothing, that they are fortunate to have a father and a mother, and to conclude, they are exhorted thus: "Children, be happy—a child should always be joyous"; and behold! the mysterious yearnings of the child are supposed to be satisfied!
Adults are quite content when they have acted thus. They straighten out the character and the morals of their children as they formerly straightened their legs by bandaging them.
True, rebellious children occasionally demonstrate the futility of such teachings. In these cases a good instructor chooses appropriate stories showing the baseness of such ingratitude, the dangers of disobedience, the ugliness of bad temper, to accentuate the defects of the pupil. It would be just as edifying to discourse to a blind man on the dangers of blindness, and to a cripple on the difficulties of walking. The same thing happens in material matters; a music-master says to a beginner: "Hold your fingers properly; if you do not, you will never be able to play." A mother will say to a son condemned to sit bent double all day on school benches, and obliged by the usages of society to study continually: "Hold yourself gracefully, do not be so awkward in company, you make me feel ashamed of you."
If the child were one day to exclaim: "But it is you who prevent me from developing will and character; when I seem naughty, it is because I am trying to save myself; how can I help being awkward when I am sacrificed?" To many this would be a revelation; to many others merely a "want of respect."
There is a method by which the child may be brought to achieve the results which the adult has laid down as desirable; it is a very simple method. The child must be made to do whatever the adult wishes; the adult will then be able to lead him to the heights of goodness, self-sacrifice and strength, and the moral child will be created. To dominate the child, to bring him into subjection, to make him obedient—this is the basis of education. If this can be done by any means whatever, even by violence, all the rest will follow; and remember, it is all for the good of the child. The child could not be molded by any other means. It is the first and principal step in what is called "educating the will of the child," one which will henceforth enable the adult to speak of himself as Virgil speaks of God.
After this first step the adult will examine himself to see what are the things he finds most difficult, and these he will exact from the child in time, that the child may accustom himself to the necessary difficulties of man's life. But very often the adult also imposes conditions which he himself has not the fortitude to accept even partially … as, for instance, the task of listening motionless for three or four hours every day, during a course of years, to a dull, wearisome lecturer.
It is the teacher who forms the child's mind. How he teaches.—The same conception governs the school: it is the teacher who must form the pupil; the development of the child's intelligence and culture are in his hands. He has a truly formidable task and a tremendous responsibility. The problems that present themselves to him are innumerable and acute; they form as it were a hedge of thorns separating him from his pupils. What must first of all be devised, to win the attention of his pupils, so that he may be able to introduce into their minds all that seems to him necessary? How is he to offer them an idea in such a manner that they will retain it in their memories? To this end, it is essential that he should have a knowledge of psychology, the precise manner in which physical phenomena are produced, the laws governing memory, the psychical mechanism by means of which ideas are formed, the laws governing the association of ideas, by means of which very gradually ideas proceed to the most sublime activities, impelling the child to reason. It is he who, knowing all these things, must build up and enrich the mind. And this is no easy matter, because, in addition to this difficult work, there is always the difficulty of difficulties, that of inducing the child to lend himself to all this endeavor, and to second the master,