The Montessori Method Part 27

I did not, however, allow myself to be deceived, and made two trials. I first had the teacher tell one of the stories to the children while I observed to what extent they were spontaneously interested in it. The attention of the children wandered after a few words. I had _forbidden_ the teacher to recall to order those who did not listen, and thus, little by little, a hum arose in the schoolroom, due to the fact that each child, not caring to listen had returned to his usual _occupation_.

It was evident that the children, who seemed to read these books with such pleasure, _did not take pleasure in the sense_, but enjoyed the mechanical ability they had acquired, which consisted in translating the graphic signs into the sounds of a word they recognised. And, indeed, the children did not display the same _constancy_ in the reading of books which they showed toward the written slips, since in the books they met with so many unfamiliar words.

My second test, was to have one of the children read the book to me. I did not interrupt with any of those explanatory remarks by means of which a teacher tries to help the child follow the thread of the story he is reading, saying for example: "Stop a minute. Do you understand?

What have you read? You told me how the little boy went to drive in a big carriage, didn't you? Pay attention to what the book says, etc."

I gave the book to a little boy, sat down beside him in a friendly fas.h.i.+on, and when he had read I asked him simply and seriously as one would speak to a friend, "Did you understand what you were reading?" He replied: "No." But the expression of his face seemed to ask an explanation of my demand. In fact, the idea that _through the reading of a series of words the complex thoughts of others might be communicated to us_, was to be for my children one of the beautiful conquests of the future, a new source of surprise and joy.

The _book_ has recourse to _logical language_, not to the mechanism of the language. Before the child can understand and enjoy a book, the _logical language_ must be established in him. Between knowing how to read the _words_, and how to read the _sense_, of a book there lies the same distance that exists between knowing how to p.r.o.nounce a word and how to make a speech. I, therefore, stopped the reading from books and waited.

One day, during a free conversation period, _four_ children arose at the same time and with expressions of joy on their faces ran to the blackboard and wrote phrases upon the order of the following:

"Oh, how glad we are that our garden has begun to bloom." It was a great surprise for me, and I was deeply moved. These children had arrived spontaneously at the art of _composition_, just as they had spontaneously written their first word.

The mechanical preparation was the same, and the phenomenon developed logically. Logical articulate language had, when the time was ripe, provoked the corresponding explosion in written language.

I understood that the time had come when we might proceed to _the reading of phrases_. I had recourse to the means used by the children; that is, I wrote upon the blackboard, "Do you love me?" The children read it slowly aloud, were silent for a moment as if thinking, then cried out, "Yes! Yes!" I continued to write; "Then make the silence, and watch me." They read this aloud, almost shouting, but had barely finished when a solemn silence began to establish itself, interrupted only by the sounds of the chairs as the children took positions in which they could sit quietly. Thus began between me and them a communication by means of written language, a thing which interested the children intensely. Little by little, they _discovered_ the great quality of writing--that it transmits thought. Whenever I began to write, they fairly _trembled_ in their eagerness to understand what was my meaning without hearing me speak a word.

Indeed, _graphic_ language does not need spoken words. It can only be understood in all its greatness when it is completely isolated from spoken language.

This introduction to reading was followed by the following game, which is greatly enjoyed by the children. Upon a number of cards I wrote long sentences describing certain actions which the children were to carry out; for example, "Close the window blinds; open the front door; then wait a moment, and arrange things as they were at first." "Very politely ask eight of your companions to leave their chairs, and to form in double file in the centre of the room, then have them march forward and back on tiptoe, making no noise." "Ask three of your oldest companions who sing nicely, if they will please come into the centre of the room.

Arrange them in a nice row, and sing with them a song that you have selected," etc., etc. As soon as I finished writing, the children seized the cards, and taking them to their seats read them spontaneously with great intensity of attention, and all _amid the most complete silence_.

I asked then, "Do you understand?" "Yes! Yes!" "Then do what the card tells you," said I, and was delighted to see the children rapidly and accurately follow the chosen action. A great activity, a movement of a new sort, was born in the room. There were those who closed the blinds, and then reopened them; others who made their companions run on tiptoe, or sing; others wrote upon the blackboard, or took certain objects from the cupboards. Surprise and curiosity produced a general silence, and the lesson developed amid the most intense interest. It seemed as if some magic force had gone forth from me stimulating an activity hitherto unknown. This magic was graphic language, the greatest conquest of civilisation.

And how deeply the children understood the importance of it! When I went out, they gathered about me with expressions of grat.i.tude and affection, saying, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for the lesson!"

This has become one of the favourite games: We first establish _profound silence_, then present a basket containing folded slips, upon each one of which is written a long phrase describing an action. All those children who know how to read may draw a slip, and read it _mentally_ once or twice until they are certain they understand it. They then give the slip back to the directress and set about carrying out the action.

Since many of these actions call for the help of the other children who do not know how to read, and since many of them call for the handling and use of the materials, a general activity develops amid marvellous order, while the silence is only interrupted by the sound of little feet running lightly, and by the voices of the children who sing. This is an unexpected revelation of the perfection of spontaneous discipline.

Experience has shown us that _composition_ must _precede logical_ reading, as writing preceded the reading of the word. It has also shown that reading, if it is to teach the child to _receive an idea_, should be _mental_ and not _vocal_.

Reading aloud implies the exercise of two mechanical forms of the language--articulate and graphic--and is, therefore, a complex task. Who does not know that a grown person who is to read a paper in public prepares for this by making himself master of the content? Reading aloud is one of the most difficult intellectual actions. The child, therefore, who _begins_ to read by interpreting thought _should read mentally_. The written language must isolate itself from the articulate, when it rises to the interpretation of logical thought. Indeed, it represents the language which _transmits thought at a distance_, while the senses and the muscular mechanism are silent. It is a spiritualised language, which puts into communication all men who know how to read.

Education having reached such a point in the "Children's Houses," the entire elementary school must, as a logical consequence, be changed. How to reform the lower grades in the elementary schools, eventually carrying them on according to our methods, is a great question which cannot be discussed here. I can only say that the _first elementary_ would be completely done away with by our infant education, which includes it.

The elementary cla.s.ses in the future should begin with children such as ours who know how to read and write; children who know how to take care of themselves; how to dress and undress, and to wash themselves; children who are familiar with the rules of good conduct and courtesy, and who are thoroughly disciplined in the highest sense of the term, having developed, and become masters of themselves, through liberty; children who possess, besides a perfect mastery of the articulate language, the ability to read written language in an elementary way, and who begin to enter upon the conquest of logical language.

These children p.r.o.nounce clearly, write in a firm hand, and are full of grace in their movements. They are the earnest of a humanity grown in the cult of beauty--the infancy of an all-conquering humanity, since they are intelligent and patient observers of their environment, and possess in the form of intellectual liberty the power of spontaneous reasoning.

For such children, we should found an elementary school worthy to receive them and to guide them further along the path of life and of civilisation, a school loyal to the same educational principles of respect for the freedom of the child and for his spontaneous manifestations--principles which shall form the personality of these little men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Example of writing done with pen, by a child five years.

One-fourth reduction.

Translation: "We would like to wish a joyous Easter to the civil engineer Edoardo Talamo and the Princess Maria. We will ask them to bring their pretty children here. Leave it to me: I will write for all.

April 7, 1909."]

CHAPTER XVIII

LANGUAGE IN CHILDHOOD

Graphic language, comprising dictation and reading, contains articulate language in its complete mechanism (auditory channels, central channels, motor channels), and, in the manner of development called forth by my method, is based essentially on articulate language.

Graphic language, therefore, may be considered from two points of view:

(_a_) That of the conquest of a new language of eminent social importance which adds itself to the articulate language of natural man; and this is the cultural significance which is commonly given to graphic language, which is therefore taught in the schools without any consideration of its relation to spoken language, but solely with the intention of offering to the social being a necessary instrument in his relations with his fellows.

(_b_) That of the relation between graphic and articulate language and, in this relation, of an eventual possibility of utilising the written language to perfect the spoken: a new consideration upon which I wish to insist and which gives to graphic language a _physiological importance_.

Moreover, as spoken language is at the same time a _natural function_ of man and an instrument which he utilises for social ends, so written language may be considered in itself, in its _formation_, as an organic _ensemble_ of new mechanisms which are established in the nervous system, and as an instrument which may be utilised for social ends.

In short, it is a question of giving to written language not only a physiological importance, but also a _period of development_ independent of the high functions which it is destined to perform later.

It seems to me that graphic language bristles with difficulties in its beginning, not only because it has heretofore been taught by irrational methods, but because we have tried to make it perform, as soon as it has been acquired, the high function of teaching _the written language_ which has been fixed by centuries of perfecting in a civilised people.

Think how irrational have been the methods we have used! We have a.n.a.lysed the graphic signs rather than the physiological acts necessary to produce the alphabetical signs; and this without considering that _any graphic sign_ is difficult to achieve, because the visual representation of the signs have no hereditary connection with the motor representations necessary for producing them; as, for example, the auditory representations of the word have with the motor mechanism of the articulate language. It is, therefore, always a difficult thing to provoke a stimulative motor action unless we have already established the movement before the visual representation of the sign is made. It is a difficult thing to arouse an activity that shall produce a motion unless that motion shall have been previously established by practice and by the power of habit.

Thus, for example, the a.n.a.lysis of writing into _little straight lines and curves_ has brought us to present to the child a sign without significance, which therefore does not interest him, and whose representation is incapable of determining a spontaneous motor impulse.

The artificial act const.i.tuted, therefore, an _effort_ of the will which resulted for the child in rapid exhaustion exhibited in the form of boredom and suffering. To this effort was added the effort of const.i.tuting _synchronously_ the muscular a.s.sociations co-ordinating the movements necessary to the holding and manipulating the instrument of writing.

All sorts of _depressing_ feelings accompanied such efforts and conduced to the production of imperfect and erroneous signs which the teachers had to correct, discouraging the child still more with the constant criticism of the error and of the imperfection of the signs traced.

Thus, while the child was urged to make an effort, the teacher depressed rather than revived his psychical forces.

Although such a mistaken course was followed, the graphic language, so painfully learned, was nevertheless to be _immediately_ utilised for social ends; and, still imperfect and immature, was made to do service in the _syntactical construction of the language_, and in the ideal expression of the superior psychic centres. One must remember that in nature the spoken language is formed gradually; and it is already established in _words_ when the superior psychic centres use these words in what Kussmaul calls _dictorium_, in the syntactical grammatical formation of language which is necessary to the expression of complex ideas; that is, in the language of the _logical mind_.

In short the mechanism of language is a necessary antecedent of the higher psychic activities which are to _utilise it_.

There are, therefore, two periods in the development of language: a lower one which prepares the nervous channel and the central mechanisms which are to put the sensory channels in relation with the motor channels; and a higher one determined by the higher psychic activities which are _exteriorized_ by means of the preformed mechanisms of language.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Thus for example in the scheme which Kussmaul gives on the mechanism of articulate language we must first of all distinguish a sort of cerebral diastaltic arc (representing the pure mechanism of the word), which is established in the first formation of the spoken language. Let E be the ear, and T the motor organs of speech, taken as a whole and here represented by the tongue, A the auditory centre of speech, and M the motor centre. The channels EA and MT are peripheral channels, the former centripetal and the latter centrifugal, and the channel AM is the inter-central channel of a.s.sociation.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The centre A in which reside the auditive images of words may be again subdivided into three, as in the following scheme, viz.: Sound (So), syllables (Sy), and words (W).

That partial centres for sounds and syllables can really be formed, the pathology of language seems to establish, for in some forms of centro-sensory dysphasia, the patients can p.r.o.nounce only sounds, or at most sounds and syllables.

Small children, too, are, at the beginning, particularly sensitive to simple sounds of language, with which indeed, and especially with _s_, their mothers caress them and attract their attention; while later the child is sensitive to syllables, with which also the mother caresses him, saying: "_ba, ba, punf, tuf!_"

[Ill.u.s.tration]