NEW ZEALAND LADY AND DR MONTESSORI.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10767, 13 May 1913, Page 4

NEW ZEALAND LADY AND DR MONTESSORI.

MRS JAMES ALLEN'S IMPRESSIONS OF ROME.

A TRIP TO THE EAST END. [From Ocr C'omiKsroxnicNT.] LONDON, April A. At least, two experiences that do not. ordinarily fall to tho lot of a Crib met Minister's wife in England on a .strictly official visit have come the way of Mrs James Allen, wife of"-New Zealand's Minister of Finance, Defence and Edu-cation—-one an opportunity of mooting Dr Maria Montessori, probably the foremost figure .in to-days education, iind making tho acquaintance of her system at first hand in Homo; tho other an unusually comprehensive ramble through the inglorious East End of London. . So has the Monies son idea and ideal taken the educational world by storm that Dr Montcssori might be assumed to be an unusual and magnetic personality. "Thero is something about her," Mrs Allen told tho : writer this week, "difficult to define that attracts one at once and impresses the rarity of her character 011 even a visitor —she certainly took possession of my heart." Conversation was not very simple, as Dr Montessori speaks no English and Mr and Mrs Allen no Italian, but the schools and Dr Montessori's own house, where she receives poor pupils and helps them along, overflow, Mrs Allen says, with interpreters. The doctor seemed greatly touched that the New Zealanders should have left their ship and gone all that way to see her, and herself took them round.

"There were individual chairs and desks as we have in New Zealand," Mrs Allen said, " and it was a most stimulating sight to watch the regime, for the pupils really educate themselves unconsciously, the ' teacher' merely being directress and there if she should be wanted. The ideal of it all is to help children to help themselves." Under this system the hitherto good notion that one teacher should not be required to superintend more than about twelve children becomes quite out of date, for one directress can easily take charge of a whole Montessori school. The rooms are large and light and bright, the walls showing numbers of cheery pictures, and the little pupils are allowed to expand like plants—naturally. " One amazing sight was a soup luncheon Avith the table actually set by mites of five, boys and girls, who laid the cloth and then went out and brought in large bowls of soup and ladled them into plates,". Mrs Allen said.

A little group of babies set tables to accommodate perhaps a couple of dozen other babies, doing the work with much solemnity and impressiveness, laying knives, spoons, table-nap-kins, etc., tor each. , The entire proceeding was superintended by the little dots, who tucked their napkins into their collars, pulled in their chairs and set to the business of feeding as if there were no other babies in the world who would splutter and cry and upset things, but with, instead, the same intense- absorption children give their play. Students from all parts of.the world flock to Rome, and a large party of Australian and American disciples were at the feet of Dr Montessori when the New Zealanders were there. An immense contrast must have been to travel from the beautiful cultivated simplicity of Dr Montessori's pioneering to the complicated social problems presented by tho East End of London, but that, too, Mrs Allen found full of interest.

"1 was surprised at the children," she confessed. ~ " They look bright and well in spite of bad food, housing and ventilation, but I thought them far too thin." Tho mothers and fathers wero another question, however, and the awful notion that there is nothing better ahead of the jolly little East Enders than to become like their soddened and unfit parenfe seems to have impressed itself depressing on this as on every other intelligent New Zealander. " The parents do really seem hopeless cases, a good many of them," Mrs Allen thinks, ' 1 but what a pity some of those fine girls and boys can't emigrate and be given a chance on their own in.,-New Zealand."

Trinity Almshouses—interesting, picturesque old buildings designed by Sir Christopher Wren in otherwise dreary Mile End Road and allotted pensioners of the Mercantile Marine Service, were visited, the Bethnal Green Museum (" where there are very modern and not very interesting exhibits, but where the groups of East End children admiring things atoned "); Stepney, a district that can shew a-s appalling a record of poverty as any in London's poorest quarters; Watney; historic Wapping; Limehouse and Poplar, down near the Docks, all were visited, the journey, including an uncommon experience for a woman, a walk through China Town in Poplar. This last shows itself most at night, and was quite tame when the New Zealanders visited it by day. The Chinese residents live in the' ordinary dreary cottages the neighbourhood provides, but the long signs in Chinese and the Chinese papers were worth seeing. Mrs Allen is specially interested in the East End, as her two sons put in work there in student davs.

The Minister of Defence, Mrs and Miss -Allen sail for home via Canada in a fortnight's time.