"MONTESSORI"

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 128, 1 June 1935, Page 13

"MONTESSORI"

A FAMOUS METHOD

LETTING THE YOUNG LEARN

AN EXPLANATION

(By P.H.W.N.)

To a great many people m this country the woid "Montesson" carues but the vaguest connotations, "Isn't that the system," someone will say, 'wheie children are allowed to do just as they please'" and someone else will chip in with a few sapient remarks about complexes, repressions, and inhibitions Those who know what the Montesson method really is, and how tremendously important an innovation the work of its founder was, will not be surprised to learn that the books of Dr. Montessori have been translated into no less than hfteen languages, and that a map marking the places whore the method is in use leaves vacant only Alaska, Siberia, and the conservative and lather inaccessible country of Tibet. Even the Congo has surrendered to the advance of this revolution m education, and in more than one country legislators have halted the ponderous wheels of the Parhamencary machine long enough to insert one or two small statutes, to allow of the official adoption of the system The Czechs, Ihe Orientals, and evon the inhabitants of Madagascar ha\e welcomed the advance guards, and in New Zealand there are more than one school with certificated Montesson teachers The method originated quite simply Dr. Montesson, the first woman to obtain a degree in medicine from the University of Rome, was a specialist in medical psychology Early in her career she undertook the education of some defective children, and was so successful that when they mingled in a public examination with normal children the examiners did not even notice their deficiency This did not make Dr. Montesson particularly •proud. On the contrary it brought home to her with startling force how lamentable mu-4t be the state of normal children, if they could do no better than her defectives. NORMAL CHILDREN NEGLECtED. It was this that sent her to the study of the normal child, until then quite a neglected individual So bad were the conditions that she found , that she abandoned her own profession, and started the movement which bears her name, and of which she is still the very active head, a movement which is very much more than a mere scheme for the scientific packing of a child with knowledge. Dr. Montesson, unlike mpst educational reformers, possessed special medical and scientific knowledge, allied to a very deepisympathy^for children and insight into ■ their natures She realised that the child is a worker who by means of the materials with which he is provided *s at work, every minute of the day, building the man of the future. She saw, too, and this was one of the most important of her discoveries, that the unfortunate child is made to keep still far too much. He is kept rigid on his school bench, forbidden to talk to his neighbour on what,should be, the most interesting subject in the world, the matter he is learning at the moment, strait-]ackec-ed in fact in the bonds of an obsolfte disciphnarianism, which cannot benefit his-character very j much, and certainly damages his intellect t6 a really serious degree. For jtt is,only activity that can successfully accomplish this work of building the'•man from the child. Only activity/can produce the co-operation of hand and eye and brain that the perfect education requires. The ordinary educational system in this country has clumsy and occasional substitutes for this controlled activity, substitutes, such as carpentry, that irritate children by their infrequency and only emphasise the evil they 'do not cure / RELEASE FROM ADULT BONDAGE. To the Dottoressa's enlightened medical consciousness the condition of the average child seemed more p like a slave's than anything else. For under our system the child is too much regardedl as the property of the adjlt The parent asserts himself or herself over the unfortunate infant at home, the teacher at school. Education taken as a whole is much more a succession of "don't's" than of "do's" The wellknown remark, "Go and see what little' Willie's doing arid tell him not to" is typical of the ordinary attitude to the child. As an article from the headquarters of the society puts it-— "These adults, far from realising that they are oppressors, actually believe that they are superior "persons sacrificing themselves for the gopd of another, a little being who is unconscious of these benefits, who is ungrateful for this sacrifice, who is 'lazy,' 'naughty,' 'a liar,' and full of 'caprice.' They believe it their duty to persecute, repress, and correct, convinced that their task is to form from this paralytic and idiotic being, the new-born t child, that dynamic and intelligent individual, the full-grown man. The world suffers relatively little harm at the hands of the workman who m toad conditions produces bad results, but how immensely more serious is the harm done by the child, if he cannot perform his task under the best conditions! For bad work by the child produces an inferior man, and the sum of inferior men produces a mean humanity, falling short of its normal average" Struck by this thought, Dr. Montesson devoted her life to removing the obstacles which she found in the way of the free development of the child She invented materials not to teach the child, but to provide him with an opportunity to teach himself. The fascinating Montessori material, the blocks and boards, the cubes, squares, and triangles by which mathematical problems of astonishing abstruseness are easily demonstrated to and solved by infants of seven and eight, would tempt even adults with their gay appearance and intriguing variety to go back to school, and probably learn far better the things once half-learnt, and now wholly forgotten. Montessontrained children do not forget in a hurry,; for their muscles have learnt with their brains. They know mathematics, as they know all their subjects, with their whole bodies, in a far more living way than do the unhappy products of a cut-and-dried curriculum. AMAZING RESULTS. Even Dr. Montessori ' herself was amazed at the results of her system, the system of allowing thejchild to teach itself, without restriction. of silence of stillness or of time. For the liberated children were not noisy,:they were not capricious, and they, concentrated on their work, this fascinating work, for ho}jrs at a time. That children are eager to learn, every parent knows. What child does, not long to go to school? That so many children rapidly lose that; desire to learn is a heavy indictment- of our educational system. Dr. Montessori :r has removed the reproach that schools kill the desire for learning. The more general adoption of her methods is not'-prevented on the score of experise-Montessori schools are 20 percent, cheaper to build than the normal type. It Is prevented solely and simply by a lack of know-ledge-of what Montessori methods can do, by ignorance.! of their tremendous importance in,the. life of children, by a lack of realisatidn-'Of the inadequacy and semi-failure of .our .-.-present methods, and; lastly by "the apathy naturally displayed towards matters