The Montessori Method. Maria Montessori Montessori
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miracle. A Montessori directress does no common “teaching,” but she is called upon for very skillful and very tiring effort. She must watch, assist, inspire, suggest, guide, explain, correct, inhibit. She is supposed, in addition, to contribute by her work to the upbuilding of a new science of pedagogy; but her educational efforts—and education is not an investigative and experimental effort, but a practical and constructive one—are enough to exhaust all her time, strength, and ingenuity. It will do no harm—except perhaps to the material itself—to have the Montessori material at hand in the home, but it must be used under proper guidance if it is to be educationally effective. And besides, it must not be forgotten that the material is by no means the most important feature of the Montessori programme. The best use of the Montessori system in the home will come through the reading of this book. If parents shall learn from Dr. Montessori something of the value of child life, of its need for activity, of its characteristic modes of expression, and of its possibilities, and shall apply this knowledge wisely, the work of the great Italian educator will be successful enough.
This Introduction cannot close without some discussion, however limited, of the important problems suggested by the Montessori method of teaching children to write and to read. We have in American schools admirable methods for the teaching of reading; by the Aldine method, for instance, children of fair ability read without difficulty ten or more readers in the first school year, and advance rapidly toward independent power. Our instruction in writing, however, has never been particularly noteworthy. We have been trying recently to teach children to write a flowing hand by the “arm movement,” without much formation of separate letters by the fingers, and our results seem to prove that the effort with children before the age of ten is not worth while. Sensible school officers are content to let children in the first four grades write largely by drawing the letters, and there has been, a fairly general conviction that writing is not in any case especially important before the age of eight or nine. In view of Dr. Montessori’s success in teaching children of four and five to write with ease and skill, must we not revise our estimate of the value of writing and our procedure in teaching it? What changes may we profitably introduce in our teaching of reading?
Here again our theory and our practice have suffered from the headstrong advocacy of general principles. Because by clumsy methods children used to be kept at the task of learning the school arts to the undoubted detriment of their minds and bodies, certain writers have advocated the total exclusion of reading and writing from the early grades. Many parents refuse to send their children to school until they are eight, preferring to let them “run wild.” This attitude is well justified by school conditions in some places; but where the schools are good, it ignores not only the obvious advantages of school life quite aside from instruction in written language, but also the almost complete absence of strain afforded by modern methods. Now that the Montessori system adds a new and promising method to our resources, it is the more unreasonable: for as a fact normal children are eager to read and write at six, and have plenty of use for these accomplishments.
This does not mean, however, that reading and writing are so important for young children that they should be unduly emphasised. If we can teach them without strain, let us do so, and the more effectively the better; but let us remember, as Dr. Montessori does, that reading and writing should form but a subordinate part of the experience of a child and should minister in general to his other needs. With the best of methods the value of reading and writing before six is questionable. Our conscious life is bookish enough as it is, and it would seem on general grounds a safer policy to defer written language until the age of normal interest in it, and even then not to devote to it more time than an easy and gradual mastery demands.
Of the technical advantages of the Montessori scheme for writing there can be little doubt. The child gains ready control over his pencil through exercises which have their own simple but absorbing interest; and if he does not learn to write with an “arm movement,” we may be quite content with his ability to draw a legible and handsome script. Then he learns the letters—their forms, their names, and how to make them—through exercises which have the very important technical characteristic of involving a thorough sensory analysis of the material to be mastered. Meumann has taught us of late the great value in all memory work of complete impression through prolonged and intensive analytical study. In the teaching of spelling, for instance, it is comparatively useless to devise schemes for remembering unless the original impressions are made strong and elaborate; and it is only by careful, varied, and detailed sense impression that such material as the alphabet can be thus impressed. So effective is the Montessori scheme for impressing the letters—especially because of its novel use of the sense of touch—that the children learn how to make the whole alphabet before the abstract and formal character of the material leads to any diminution of interest or enthusiasm. Their initial curiosity over the characters they see their elders use is enough to carry them through.
In Italian the next step is easy. The letters once learned, it is a simple matter to combine them into words, for Italian spelling is so nearly phonetic that it presents very little difficulty to any one who knows how to pronounce. It is at just this point that the teaching of English reading by the Montessori method will find its greatest obstacle. Indeed, it is the unphonetic character of English spelling that has largely influenced us to give up the alphabet method of teaching children to read. Other reasons, to be sure, have also induced us to teach by the word and the sentence method; but this one has been and will continue to be the deciding factor. We have found it more effective to teach children whole words, sentences, or rhymes by sight, adding to sense impressions the interest aroused by a wide range of associations, and then analysing the words thus acquired into their phonetic elements to give the children independent power in the acquisition of new words. Our marked success with this method makes it by no means certain that it is “in the characteristic process of natural development” for children to build up written words from their elements—sounds and syllables. It would seem, on the contrary, as James concluded, that the mind works quite as naturally in the opposite direction—grasping wholes first, especially such as have a practical interest, and then working down to their formal elements. In the teaching of spelling, of course, the wholes (words) are already known at sight—that is, the pupil recognises them easily in reading—and the process aims at impressing upon the child’s mind the exact order of their constituent elements. It is because reading and spelling are in English such completely separate processes that we can teach a child to read admirably without making him a “good speller” and are forced to bring him to the latter glorious state by new endeavours. We gain by this separation both in reading and in spelling, as experience and comparative tests—popular superstition to the contrary notwithstanding—have conclusively proved. The mastery of the alphabet by the Montessori method will be of great assistance in teaching our children to write, but of only incidental assistance in teaching them to read and to spell.
Once more, then, this Introduction attempts to suggest a compromise. In the school arts the programme used to such good effect in the Italian schools and the programme which has been so well worked out in English and American schools may be profitably combined. We can learn much about writing and reading from Dr. Montessori—especially from the freedom her children have in the process of learning to write and in the use of their newly acquired power, as well as from her device for teaching them to read connected prose. We can use her materials for sense training and lead as she does to easy mastery of the alphabetic symbols. Our own schemes for teaching reading we can retain, and doubtless the phonetic analysis they involve we shall find easier and more effective because of our adoption of the Montessori scheme for teaching the letters. The exact adjustment of the two methods is of course a task for teachers in practice and for educational leaders.
To all educators this book should prove most interesting. Not many of them will expect that the Montessori method will regenerate humanity. Not many will wish to see it—or any method—produce a generation of prodigies such as those who have been heralded recently in America. Not many will approve the very early acquisition by children of the arts of reading and writing. But all who are fair-minded will admit the genius that shines from the pages which follow, and the remarkable suggestiveness of Dr. Montessori’s labors. It is the task of the professional student of education to-day to submit all systems to careful comparative study, and since Dr. Montessori’s inventive power has sought its tests in practical experience rather than in