 CHAPTER VI. HOW LESSONS SHOULD BE GIVEN. Let all thy words be counted. Dante, Inferno, Cantotin. Given the fact that, through the regime of liberty, the pupils can manifest their natural tendencies in the school, and that with this in view we have prepared the environment and the materials, the objects with which the child is to work, the teacher must not limit her action to observation, but must proceed to experiment. In this method the lesson corresponds to an experiment. The more fully the teacher is acquainted with the methods of experimental psychology, the better will she understand how to give the lesson. Indeed, a special technique is necessary if the method is to be properly applied. The teacher must at least have attended the training classes in the children's houses in order to acquire a knowledge of the fundamental principles of the method and to understand their application. The most difficult portion of this training is that which refers to the method for discipline. In the first days of the school the children do not learn the idea of collective order. This idea follows and comes as a result of those disciplinary exercises through which the child learns to discern between good and evil. This being the case, it is evident that at the outset the teacher cannot give collective lessons. Such lessons, indeed, will always be very rare, since the children, being free, are not obliged to remain in their places quiet and ready to listen to the teacher, or to watch what she is doing. The collective lessons, in fact, are of very secondary importance and have almost been abolished by us. Characteristics of the individual lessons Conciseness, simplicity, objectivity The lessons, then, are individual, and brevity must be one of their chief characteristics. Dante gives excellent advice to teachers when he says, Let thy words be counted. The more carefully we cut away useless words, the more perfect will become the lesson. And in preparing the lessons which she is to give the teacher must pay special attention to this point, counting and weighing the value of the words which she is to speak. Another characteristic of the quality of the lesson in the children's houses is its simplicity. It must be stripped of all that is not absolute truth. That the teacher must not lose herself in vain words is included in the first quality of conciseness. This second, then, is closely related to the first. That is, the carefully chosen words must be the most simple it is possible to find, and must refer to the truth. The third quality of the lesson is its objectivity. The lesson must be presented in such a way that the personality of the teacher shall disappear. The teacher shall remain in evidence only the object to which she wishes to call the attention of the child. This brief and simple lesson must be considered by the teacher as an explanation of the object and of the use which the child can make of it. In the giving of such lessons the fundamental guide must be the method of observation, in which is included and understood the liberty of the child. So the teacher shall observe whether the child interests himself in the object, how he is interested in it, for how long, etc., even noticing the expression of his face. And she must take great care not to offend the principles of liberty, for if she provokes the child to make an unnatural effort she will no longer know what is the spontaneous activity of the child. If therefore the lesson rigorously prepared in this brevity, simplicity, and truth is not understood by the child, is not accepted by him as an explanation of the object, the teacher must be warned of two things. First, not to insist by repeating the lesson, and second, not to make the child feel that he has made a mistake or that he is not understood, because in doing so she will cause him to make an effort to understand, and will thus alter the natural state which must be used by her in making her psychological observation. A few examples may serve to illustrate this point. Let us suppose, for example, that the teacher wishes to teach a child the two colors, red and blue. She desires to attract the attention of the child to the object. She says therefore, look at this. Then in order to teach the colors, she says, showing him the red, this is red, raising her voice a little and pronouncing the word red, slowly and clearly, then showing him the other color, this is blue. In order to make sure that the child is understood, she says to him, give me the red, give me the blue. Let us suppose that the child in following this last direction makes a mistake. The teacher does not repeat and does not insist. She smiles, gives the child a friendly caress, and takes away the colors. Teachers ordinarily are greatly surprised at such simplicity. They often say, but everybody knows how to do that. Indeed, this again is little like the egg of Christopher Columbus, but the truth is that not everyone knows how to do this simple thing, to give a lesson with such simplicity. To measure one's own activity, to make it conform to these standards of clearness, brevity and truth, is practically a very difficult matter. Especially is this true of teachers prepared by the old time methods who have learned to labor to deluge the child with useless and often false words. For example, a teacher who had taught in the public schools often reverted to collectivity. Now in giving a collective lesson, much importance is necessarily given to the simple thing, which is to be taught. And it is necessary to oblige all the children to follow the teacher's explanation, when perhaps not all of them are disposed to give their attention to the particular lesson in hand. The teacher has perhaps commenced her lesson in this way. Children, see if you can guess what I have in my hand. She knows that the children cannot guess, and she therefore attracts their attention by means of a falsehood. Then she probably says, children, look out at the sky. Have you ever looked at it before? Have you ever noticed it at night, when it is all shining with stars? No. Look at my apron. Do you know what color it is? Doesn't it seem to you the same color as the sky? Very well then. Look at this color I have in my hand. It is the same color as the sky and my apron. It is blue. Now look around you a little and see if you can find something in the room which is blue. And do you know what color cherries are? And the color of the burning coals in the fireplace? Et cetera, et cetera. Now in the mind of the child after he has made the useless effort of trying to guess, there revolves a confused mass of ideas. The sky, the apron, the cherries, et cetera. It will be difficult for him to extract from all this confusion the idea which it was the scope of the lesson to make clear to him, namely the recognition of the two colors blue and red. Such a work of selection is almost impossible for the mind of a child who is not yet able to follow a long discourse. I remember being present at an arithmetic lesson where the children were being taught that two and three make five. To this end the teacher made use of a counting board having colored beads strung on its thin wires. We arranged, for example, two beads on the top line, then on a lower line three, and at the bottom five beads. I do not remember very clearly the development of this lesson, but I do know that the teacher found it necessary to place beside the two beads on the upper wire a little cardboard dancer with a blue skirt which he christened on the spot the name of one of the children in the class saying, this is Mariatina, and then beside the other three beads she placed a little dancer dressed in a different color which she called Jejina. I do not know exactly how the teacher arrived at the demonstration of the sum, but certainly she talked for a long time with these little dancers, moving them about, etc. If I remember the dancers more clearly than I do the arithmetic process, how must it have been with the children? If by such a method they were able to learn that two and three make five, they must have made a tremendous mental effort, and the teacher must have found it necessary to talk with the little dancers for a long time. In another lesson, a teacher wished to demonstrate to the children the difference between noise and sound. She began by telling a long story to the children. Then suddenly someone in league with her knocked noisily at the door. The teacher stopped and cried out, What is it? What's happened? What is the matter? Children, do you know what this person at the door has done? I can no longer go on with my story. I cannot remember it any more. I will have to leave it unfinished. Do you know what has happened? Did you hear? Have you understood? That was a noise. That is a noise. Oh, I would much rather play with this little baby, taking up a mandolin, which she had dressed up in a table cover. Yes, dear baby, I had rather play with you. Do you see this baby that I am holding in my arms? Several children replied, It isn't a baby. Others said, It's a mandolin. The teacher went on, No, no, it is a baby, really a baby. I love this little baby. Do you want me to show you that it is a baby? Very, very quiet then. It seems to me that the baby is crying, or perhaps it is talking, or perhaps it is going to say Papa or Mama. Putting her hand under the cover, she touched the strings of the mandolin. There, did you hear the baby cry? Did you hear it call out? The children cried out, It's a mandolin. You touched the strings. You made it play. The teacher then replied, Be quiet, be quiet, children. Listen to what I am going to do. Then she uncovered the mandolin and began to play on it, saying, This is sound. To suppose that the child from such a lesson as this shall come to understand the difference between noise and sound is ridiculous. The child will probably get the impression that the teacher wished to play a joke, and that she is rather foolish because she lost the threat of her discourse when she was interrupted by noise, and because she mistook a mandolin for a baby. Certainly it is the figure of the teacher herself that is impressed upon the child's mind through such a lesson and not the object for which the lesson was given. To obtain a simple lesson from a teacher who has been prepared according to the ordinary methods is a very difficult task. I remember that after having explained the material fully and in detail, I called upon one of my teachers to teach, by means of the geometric insets, the difference between a square and a triangle. The task of the teacher was simply to fit a square and a triangle of wood into the empty spaces made to receive them. She should then have shown the child how to follow with his finger the contours of the wooden pieces and of the frames into which they fit, saying, Meanwhile, this is a square, this is a triangle. The teacher whom I had called upon began by having the child touch the square, saying, This is a line, another, another, and another. There are four lines. Count them with your little finger and tell me how many there are. And the corners. Count the corners. Fuel them with your little finger. See there are four corners too. Look at this piece well, yet is a square. I corrected the teacher telling her that in this way she was not teaching the child to recognize a form, but was giving him an idea of sides, of angles, of number, and that this was a very different thing from that which she was to teach in this lesson. But she said, trying to justify herself, it is the same thing. It is not, however, the same thing. It is the geometric analysis and the mathematics of the thing. It would be possible to have an idea of the form of the quadrilateral without knowing how to count to four, and therefore without appreciating the number of sides and angles. The sides and the angles are abstractions which in themselves do not exist. That which does exist is this piece of wood of a determined form. The elaborate explanations of the teacher not only confuse the child's mind, but bridged over the distance that lies between the concrete and the abstract, between the form of an object and the mathematics of the form. Let us suppose, I said to the teacher, that an architect shows you a dome, the form of which interests you. He can follow one of two methods in showing you his work. He can call attention to the beauty of the line, the harmony of the proportions, and may then take you inside the building and up into the cupola itself, in order that you may appreciate the relative proportion of the parts, in such a way that your impression of the cupola as a whole shall be founded on general knowledge of its parts. Or he can have you count the windows, the wide or narrow cornices, and can in fact make you a design showing the construction. He can illustrate for you the static laws and write out the algebraic formulae necessary in the calculation of such laws. In the first place you will be able to retain in your mind the form of the cupola. In the second you will have understood nothing, and will come away with the impression that the architect fancied himself speaking to a fellow engineer, instead of to a traveler whose object was to become familiar with the beautiful things around him. Very much the same thing happens if we, instead of saying to the child, this is a square, and by simply having him touch the contour, establish materially the idea of the form, proceed rather to a geometrical analysis of the contour. Indeed we should feel that we are making the child precocious if we taught him the geometric forms in the plane, presenting at the same time the mathematical concept. But we do not believe that the child is too immature to appreciate the simple form. On the contrary, it is no effort for a child to look at a square window or table, he sees all these forms about him in his daily life. To call his attention to a determined form is to clarify the impression he has already received of it, and to fix the idea of it. It is very much as if, while we are looking absentmindedly at the shore of a lake, an artist should suddenly say to us, how beautiful the curve is that the shore makes there under the shade of that cliff. At his words, the view which we have been observing almost unconsciously is impressed upon our minds, as if it had been illuminated by a sudden ray of sunshine, and we experienced the joy of having crystallized an impression which we had before only imperfectly felt. And such is our duty toward the child. To give a ray of light and to go on our way. I may liken the effects of these first lessons to the impressions of one who walks quietly happily through a wood, alone and thoughtful, letting his inner life unfold freely. Suddenly the chime of a distant bell recalls him to himself, and in that awakening he feels more strongly than before the peace and beauty of which he has been but dimly conscious. To stimulate life, leaving it then free to develop, to unfold, herein lies the first task of the educator. In such a delicate task a great art must suggest the moment and limit the intervention in order that we shall arouse no perturbation, cause no deviation, but rather that we shall help the soul which is coming into the fullness of life, and which shall live from its own forces. This art must accompany the scientific method. When the teacher shall have touched, in this way, soul for soul, each one of her pupils, awakening and inspiring the life within them as if she were an invisible spirit, she will then possess each soul, and a sign, a single word from her, shall suffice, for each one will feel her in a living and vital way, will recognize her, and will listen to her. There will come a day when the directoress herself shall be filled with wonder to see that all the children obey her with gentleness and affection, not only ready, but intent at a sign from her. They will look toward her who has made them live, and will hope and desire to receive from her new life. Experience has revealed all this, and it is something which forms the chief source of wonder for those who visit the children's houses. Collective discipline is obtained as if by magic force. Fifty or sixty children from two and a half years to six years of age, altogether, and at a single time know how to hold their peace so perfectly that the absolute silence seems that of a desert. And if the teacher, speaking in a low voice, says to the children, Rise, pass several times around the room on the tips of your toes and then come back to your place in silence, altogether as a single person the children rise and follow the order with the least possible noise. The teacher with that one voice has spoken to each one, and each child hopes from her intervention to receive some light and inner happiness, and feeling so, he goes forth intent and obedient like an anxious explorer, following the order in his own way. In this matter of discipline we have, again, something of the egg of Christopher Columbus. A concertmaster must prepare his scholars one by one in order to draw from their collective work great and beautiful harmony, and each artist must perfect himself as an individual before he can be ready to follow the voiceless commands of the master's baton. How different is the method which we follow in the public schools? It is as if a concertmaster taught the same monotonous and sometimes discordant rhythm contemporaneously to the most diverse instruments and voices. Thus we find that the most disciplined members of society are the men who are best trained, who have most thoroughly perfected themselves. But this is the training, or the perfection, acquired through contact with other people. The perfection of the collectivity cannot be that material and brutal solidarity which comes from mechanical organization alone. In regard to infant psychology we are more richly endowed with prejudices than with actual knowledge bearing upon the subject. We have, until the present day, wished to dominate the child through force, by the imposition of external laws, instead of making an interior conquest of the child in order to direct him as a human soul. In this way the children have lived beside us without being able to make us know them. But if we cut away the artificiality with which we have enrapt them, and the violence through which we have foolishly thought to discipline them, they will reveal themselves to us in all the truth of child nature. Their gentleness is so absolute, so sweet, that we recognize in it the infancy of that humanity which can remain oppressed by every form of yoke, by every injustice. And the child's love of knowledge is such that it surpasses every other love, and makes us think that in very truth humanity must carry within it that passion which pushes the minds of men to the successive conquest of thought, making easier from century to century the yokes of every form of slavery. End of CHAPTER VI. The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori, translated by Anne E. George. CHAPTER VII. EXERCISES OF PRACTICAL LIFE. Proposed winter schedule of hours in the children's houses. OPENING AT NINE O'CLOCK TO CLOSING AT FOUR O'CLOCK. NINE TO TEN. ENTRANCE. GREETING. INSPECTION AS TO PERSONAL CLINLINESS. EXERCISES OF PRACTICAL LIFE. TENDING ONE ANOTHER TO TAKE OFF AND PUT ON THE APRINCE. GOING OVER THE ROOM TO SEE THAT EVERYTHING IS DUSTED AND IN ORDER. LANGUAGE. CONVERSATION PERIOD. CHILDREN GIVEN ACCOUNT OF THE EVENTS OF THE DAY BEFORE. RELIGIOUS EXERCISES. TEN TO ELEVEN. INTELLCTUAL EXERCISES. OBJECTIVE LESSENS INTERRUPTED BY SHORT REST PERIODS. NOMIN CLATURE. SENSE EXERCISES. ELEVEN TO ELEVEN THIRTY. SIMPLE GEMINASTICS. Ordinary movements done gracefully, normal position of the body, walking, marching in line, salutations, movements for attention, placing of objects gracefully. ELEVEN THIRTY TO TWELVE. LUNCHIN SHORT PRAYER. TWELVE TO ONE. FREE GAMES. ONE TO TWO. DIRECTED GAMES. IF POSSIBLE, IN THE OPEN AIR. During this period the older children in turn go through with the exercises of practical life, cleaning the room, dusting, putting the material in order, general inspection for cleanliness, conversation. TWO TO THREE. MANUAL WORK. CLAIM MODELING, DESIGN, and so forth. THREE TO FOUR. COLLECTIVE GEMINASTICS AND SONGS. IF POSSIBLE, IN THE OPEN AIR. EXERCISES TO DEVELOP FOR THOUGHT. VISITING AND CARING FOR THE PLANTS AND ANIMALS. As soon as a school is established, the question of schedule arises. This must be considered from two points of view, the length of the school day and the distribution of study and of the activities of life. I shall begin by affirming that in the children's houses, as in the school for deficients, the hours may be very long, occupying the entire day. For poor children, and especially for the children's houses, annexed to working men's tenements, I should advise that the school day should be from nine in the morning to five in the evening in winter and from eight to six in summer. These long hours are necessary if we are to follow a directed line of action which shall be helpful to the growth of the child. It goes without saying that in the case of little children, such a long school day should be interrupted by at least an hour's rest in bed. And here lies the great practical difficulty. At present, we must allow our little ones to sleep in their seats in a wretched position. But I foresee a time, not distant, when we shall be able to have a quiet, darkened room where the children may sleep in low swung hammocks. I should like still better to have this nap taken in the open air. In the children's houses in Rome, we send the little ones to their own apartments for the nap, as this can be done without their having to go out into the streets. It must be observed that these long hours include not only the nap, but the luncheon. This must be considered in such schools as the children's houses, whose aim is to help and to direct the growth of children in such an important fashion of development as that from three to six years of age. The children's house is a garden of child culture, and we most certainly do not keep the children for so many hours in school with the idea of making students of them. The first step, which we must take in our method, is to call to the pupil. We call now to his attention, now to his interior life, now to the life he leads with others. Making a comparison which must not be taken in a literal sense, it is necessary to proceed as in experimental psychology or anthropology when one makes an experiment. That is, after having prepared the instrument, to which in this case the environment may correspond, we prepare the subject. Considering the method as a whole, we must begin our work by preparing the child for the forms of social life, and we must attract his attention to these forms. In the schedule which we outlined when we established the first children's house, but which we have never followed entirely, a sign that a schedule in which the material is distributed in arbitrary fashion is not adapted to the regime of liberty. We begin the day with a series of exercises of practical life, and I must confess that these exercises were the only part of the program which proved thoroughly stationary. These exercises were such a success that they formed the beginning of the day in all the children's houses. First, cleanliness, order, poise, conversation. As soon as the children arrive at school, we make an inspection for cleanliness. If possible, this should be carried on in the presence of the mothers, but their attention should not be called to it directly. We examine the hands, the nails, the neck, the ears, the face, the teeth, and care is given to the tidiness of the hair. If any of the garments are torn or soiled or ripped, if the buttons are lacking, or if the shoes are not clean, we call the attention of the child to this. In this way, the children become accustomed to observing themselves and taking interest in their own appearance. The children in our children's houses are given a bath in turn, but this of course cannot be done daily. In the class, however, the teacher by using a little wash stand with small pitchers and basins teaches the children to take a partial bath. For example, they learn how to wash their hands and clean their nails. Indeed, sometimes we teach them how to take a foot bath. They are shown especially how to wash their ears and eyes with great care. They are taught to brush their teeth and rinse their mouths carefully. In all of this, we call their attention to the different parts of the body, which they are washing, and to the different means which we use in order to cleanse them. Clear water for the eyes, soap and water for the hands, the brush for the teeth and so forth. We teach the big ones to help the little ones and so encourage the younger children to learn quickly to take care of themselves. After this care of their persons, we put on the little aprons. The children are able to put these on themselves or with the help of each other. Then we begin our visit about the schoolroom. We notice if all of the various materials are in order and if they are clean. The teacher shows the children how to clean out the little corners where dust has accumulated and shows them how to use the various objects necessary in cleaning a room, dust cloths, dust brushes, little brooms and so forth. All of this, when the children are allowed to do it by themselves, is very quickly accomplished. Then the children go each to his own place. The teacher explains to them that the normal position is for each child to be seated in his own place in silence with his feet together on the floor, his hands resting on the table and his head erect. In this way she teaches them poise and equilibrium. Then she has them rise on their feet in order to sing the hymn, teaching them that in rising and sitting down it is not necessary to be noisy. In this way the children learn to move about the furniture with poise and with care. After this we have a series of exercises in which the children learn to move gracefully, to go and come, to salute each other, to lift objects carefully, to receive various objects from each other politely. The teacher calls attention with little exclamations to a child who is clean, a room which is well ordered, a class seated quietly, a graceful movement and so forth. From such a starting point we proceed to the free teaching. That is the teacher will no longer make comments to the children directing them how to move from their seats and so on. She will limit herself to correcting the disordered movements. After the director has talked in this way about the attitude of the children and the arrangement of the room, she invites the children to talk with her. She questions them concerning what they have done the day before, regulating her inquiries in such a way that the children need not report the intimate happenings of the family but their individual behavior, their games, attitude to parents and so on. She will ask if they have been able to go up the stairs without getting them muddy, if they have spoken politely to their friends who passed, if they have helped their mothers, if they have shown in their family what they have learned at school, if they have played in the street and so on. The conversations are longer on Monday after the vacation and on that day the children are invited to tell what they have done with the family. If they have gone away from home, whether they have eaten things not usual for children to eat and if this is the case we urge them not to eat these things and try to teach them that they are bad for them. Such conversations as these encourage the unfolding or development of language and are of great educational value since the directors can prevent the children from recounting happenings in the house or in the neighborhood and can select instead topics which are adapted to pleasant conversation and in this way can teach the children those things which it is desirable to talk about. That is things with which we occupy ourselves in life, public events or things which have happened in the different houses, perhaps to the children themselves as baptism, birthday parties, any of which may serve for occasional conversation. Things of this sort will encourage children to describe themselves. After this morning talk we pass to the various lessons. End of chapter seven. Chapter eight of the Montessori method. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mahabeli. The Montessori method by Maria Montessori translated by Anne E. George. Chapter eight, Reflection, The Child's Diet. In connection with the exercises of practical life, it may be fitting to consider the matter of reflection. In order to protect the child's development, especially in neighborhoods where standards of child hygiene are not yet prevalent in the home, it would be well if a large part of the child's diet could be entrusted to the school. It is well known today that the diet must be adapted to the physical nature of the child. And as the medicine of children is not the medicine of adults in reduced doses, so the diet must not be that of the adult in lesser quantitative proportions. For this reason I should prefer that even in the children's houses which are situated in tenements and from which little ones being at home can go up to eat with the family, school reflection should be instituted. Moreover, even in the case of rich children, school reflection would always be advisable and total scientific course in cooking which I'll have introduced into the wealthier families the habit of specializing in children's food. The diet of little children must be rich in fats and sugar. The first for reserve matter and the second for plastic tissue. In fact, sugars are stimulant to tissues in the process of formation. As the form of preparation, it is well that the elementary substances should always be minced because the child is not yet the capacity for completely masticating the food. And his stomach is still incapable of fulfilling the function of mincing food matter. Consequently, soups, purees, and meatballs should constitute the ordinary form of dish for the child's table. The nitrogenous diet for a child from two or three years of age ought to be constituted chiefly of milk and eggs but after the second year, broths are also to be recommended. After three years and a half, meat can be given or in the case of poor children, vegetables. Fruits are also to be recommended for children. Perhaps a detailed summary on child diet may be useful, especially for mothers. Method of preparing broth for little children. Age three to six, after that, the child may use the common broth of the family. The quantity of meat should correspond to one gram for every cubic centimeter of broth and should be put in cold water. No aromatic herbs should be used, the only wholesome condiment being salt. The meat should be left to boil for two hours. Instead of removing the grease from the broth, it is well to add butter to it or in the case of the poor, a spoonful of olive oil. But substitutes for butter, such as margarine, et cetera, should never be used. The broth must be prepared fresh. It would be well therefore to put the meat on the fire two hours before the meal because as soon as broth is cool, there begins to take place a separation of chemical substances, which are injurious to the child and may easily cause diarrhea. Soups. A very simple soup and one to be highly recommended for children is bread boiled in salt water or in broth and abundantly seasoned with oil. This is the classic soup of poor children and an excellent means of nutrition. Very like this is the soup which consists of little cubes of bread toasted in butter and allowed to soak in the broth which is itself fat with butter. Soups of grated bread also belong in this class. Pastine. Those very fine forms of vermicelli used in soups. Especially the glutinous pastine which are of the same nature are undoubtedly superior to the others for digestibility but are accessible only to the privileged social classes. The poor should know how much more wholesome is a broth made from remnants of stale bread than soups of course spaghetti, often dried and seasoned with meat juice. Such soups are most indigestible for little children. Excellent soups are those consisting of purees of vegetables, beans, peas, lentils. Today one may find in the shops dried vegetables especially adapted for this sort of soups. Boiled in salt water, the vegetables are peeled, put to cool and pass through a sieve or simply compressed if they are already peeled. Butter is then added and the paste is stirred slowly into the boiling water, care being taken that it dissolves and leaves no lumps. Vegetable soups can also be seasoned with pork. Instead of broth, sugared milk may be the base of vegetable purees. I strongly recommend for children a soup of rice boiled in broth or milk. Also cornmeal broth provided it be seasoned with abundant butter but not with cheese. The porridge form polenta, really cornmeal mush, is to be highly recommended on account of the long cooking. The poorer classes who have no meat broth can feed their children equally well with soups of boiled bread and porridge seasoned with oil. Milk and eggs. These are foods which not only contain nitrogenous substances in an eminently digestible form but they have the so-called enzymes which facilitate assimilation into the tissues and hence in a particular way favor the growth of the child. And the answer so much the better this last most important condition if they are fresh and intact, keeping in themselves one may say the life of the animals which produced them. Milk fresh from the cow and the egg while it is still warm are assimilable to the highest degree. Cooking on the other hand makes the milk and eggs lose their special conditions of assimilability and reduces the nutritive power in them to the simple power of any nitrogenous substance. Today, consequently, there are being founded special dairies for children where the milk produced is sterile. The rigorous cleanliness of the surroundings in which the milk producing animals live, the sterilization of the udder before milking, of the hands of the milker and of the vessels which are to contain the milk, the hermetic sealing of these last and the refrigerating bath immediately after the milking if the milk is to be carried far otherwise it is well to drink it warm, procure a milk free from bacteria which therefore has no need of being sterilized by boiling and which preserves intact its natural nutritive powers. As much may be said of eggs, the best way of feeding them to a child is to take them still warm from the hen and have them eat them just as they are and then adjust them in the open air. But where this is not practicable, eggs must be chosen fresh and barely heated in water. That is to say, prepared alakok. All other forms of preparation, milk soup, omelettes and so forth, due to be sure make of milk and eggs and excellent food, more to be recommended than others, but they take away the specific properties of assimilation which characterize them. Meat. All meats are not adapted to children and even their preparation must differ according to the age of the child. Thus, for example, children from three to five years of age ought to eat only more or less finely ground meats, whereas the age of five children are capable of grinding meat completely by amastication. At that time, it is well to teach the child accurately how to masticate because he has a tendency to swallow food quickly which may produce indigestion and diarrhea. This is another reason why school refaction in the children's houses would be a very serviceable as well as convenient institution as the whole diet of the child can then be rationally cared for in connection with the educative system of the houses. The meats most adapted to children are so-called white meats. That is, in the first place, chicken, then veal. Also, the light flesh of fish, soul, pike, cod. After the age of four, filet of beef may also be introduced into the diet but never heavy and fat meats like that of the pig, the capon, the eel, the tani, et cetera, which are to be absolutely excluded along with mollusk and crustaceans, oysters, lobsters, from the child's diet. Croquettes made of finely ground meat, grated bread, milk, and beaten eggs, and fried in butter are the most wholesome preparation. Another excellent preparation is to mold into balls the grated meat with sweet fruit preserve and eggs beaten up with sugar. At the age of five, the child may be given breast of roast foal and occasionally veal cutlet or filet of beef. Boiled meat must never be given to the child because meat is deprived of many stimulating and even nutritive properties by boiling and rendered less digestible. Nerve-feeling substances. Besides meat, a child who has reached the age of four may be given fried brains and sweetbreads to be combined, for example, with chicken croquettes. Milk foods. All cheeses are to be excluded from the child's diet. The only milk product suitable to children from three to six years of age is fresh butter. Custard. Custard is also to be recommended provided it be freshly prepared, that is immediately before being eaten and with very fresh milk and eggs. If such conditions cannot be rigorously fulfilled, it is preferable to do without custard, which is not a necessity. Bread. From what we have said about soups, it may be inferred that bread is an excellent food for the child. It should be well-selected. The crumb is not very digestible, but it can be utilized. When it is dry, to make a bread broth. But if one is to give the child simply a piece of bread to eat, it is well to offer him the crust, the end of the loaf. Breadsticks are excellent for those who can afford them. Bread contains many nitrogenous substances and is very rich in starches, but is lacking in fats and as the fundamental substances of diet are, as is well known, three in number, namely, proteins, nitrogenous substances, starches and fats, bread is not a complete food. It is necessary, therefore, to offer the child buttered bread, which constitutes a complete food and may be considered as a sufficient and complete breakfast. Green vegetables. Children must never eat raw vegetables, such as salads and greens, but only cooked ones. Indeed, they are not to be highly recommended either cooked or raw, with the exception of spinach, which may enter with moderation into the diet of children. Potatoes prepared in a puree with much butter form, however, an excellent complement of nutrition for children. Fruits. Among fruits, there are excellent foods for children. They, too, like milk and eggs, if freshly gathered, retain a living quality, which aids assimilation. As this condition, however, is not easily attainable in cities, it is necessary to consider also the diet of fruits, which are not perfectly fresh and which, therefore, should be prepared and cooked in various ways. All fruits are not to be advised for children. The chief properties to be considered are the degree of ripeness, the tenderness and sweetness of the pulp and its acidity. Peaches, apricots, grapes, currants, oranges and mandarins in their natural state can be given to little children with great advantage. Other fruits such as pears, apples, plums should be cooked or prepared in syrup. Figs, pineapples, dates, melons, cherries, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts and chestnuts are excluded for various reasons from the diet of early childhood. The preparation of fruit must consist in removing from it all in the adjustable parts, such as the peel and also such parts as a child inadvertently may absorb to his detriment, as, for example, the seed. Children of four or five should be taught early how carefully the seeds must be thrown away and how the fruits are peeled. Afterwards, the child, so educated, may be promoted to the honor of receiving a fine fruit intact and he will know how to eat it properly. The culinary preparation of fruits consists essentially in two processes, cooking and seasoning with sugar. Besides simple cooking, fruits may be prepared as marmalades and jellies, which are excellent but are naturally within the reach of the wealthier classes only. While jellies and marmalades may be allowed, candied fruits, on the other hand, marron glacé and the like, are absolutely excluded from the child's diet. Seasonings, an important phase of the hygiene of child diet concerns seasonings, with a view to their rigorous limitation, as I have already indicated sugar and some fat substances along with kitchen salt, sodium chloride should constitute the principal part of the seasonings. To these may be added organic acids, acetic acid, citric acid, that is vinegar and lemon juice. This latter can be advantageously used on fish, on croquettes, on spinach, etc. Other condiments suitable to little children are some aromatic vegetables like garlic and roux, which disinfect the intestines and the lungs, and also have a direct anthalmythic action. Spices, on the other hand, such as pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, and especially mustard, are to be absolutely abolished. Drinks The growing organism of the child is very rich in water, and hence needs a constant supply of moisture. Among the beverages, the best, and indeed the only one to be unreservedly advised, is pure fresh spring water. To rich children, might be allowed the so-called table waters, which are slightly alkaline, such as those of San Gimini, Aquaclaudia, etc., mixed with syrups, as, for example, syrup of black cherry. It is now a matter of general knowledge that all fermented beverages and those exciting to the nervous system are injurious to children. Hence, all alcoholic and cafeic beverages are absolutely eliminated from child diet. Not only liquors between and beer ought to be unknown to the child's taste, and coffee and tea should be inaccessible to childhood. The deleterious action of alcohol on the child's organism needs no illustration, but in a matter of such vital importance insistent repetition is never superfluous. Alcohol is a poison especially fatal to organisms in the process of formation. Not only does it arrest their total development, wents infantilism, idiocy, but also predisposes the child to nervous melodies, epilepsy meningitis, and to melodies of the digestive organs and metabolism, sources of the liver, dyspepsia, anemia. If the children's houses were to succeed in enlightening the people on such truths, they would be accomplishing a very lofty hygienic work for the new generations. Instead of coffee, children may be given roasted and boiled barley, malt, and especially chocolate, which is an excellent child food, particularly when mixed with milk. Distribution of the meals Another chapter of Child Diet concerns the distribution of the meals. Here, one principle must dominate and must be diffused among mothers, namely that the children shall be kept to rigorous meal hours in order that they may enjoy good health and have excellent digestion. It is true that there prevails among the people, and it is one of the forms of maternal ignorance most fatal to children, the prejudice that children in order to grow well must be eating almost continuously without regularity, nibbling almost habitually a crust of bread. On the contrary, the child in view of the special delicacy of his digestive system has more need of regular meals than the adult has. It seems to me that the children's houses with very prolonged programs are, for this reason, suitable places for child culture as they can direct the child's diet. Outside of their regular meal hours, children should not eat. In a children's house, with a long program, there ought to be two meals, a hearty one about noon and a light one about four in the afternoon. At the hearty meal, there should be soup, a meat dish, and bread, and the case of rich children, also fruits are custard and butter on the bread. At the four o'clock meal, there should be prepared the light lunch, which from a simple piece of bread can range to buttered bread and to bread accompanied by fruit marmalade, chocolate, honey, custard, etc. Crisp crackers, biscuits, and cooked fruits, etc., may also be usefully employed. Very suitably, the lunch might consist of bread soaked in milk or an egg à la coque with breadsticks, or else of a simple cup of milk in which is dissolved a spoonful of melon's food. I recommend melon's food very highly. Not only in infancy, but also much later, on account of its properties of digestibility and nutrition and on account of its flavor, which is so pleasing to children. Melon's food is a powder prepared from barley and wheat, and containing in a concentrated and pure state the nutrients have substances proper to those cereals. The powder is slowly dissolved in hot water in the bottom of the same cup, which is to be used for drinking the mixture, and very fresh milk is then poured on top. The child would take the other two meals in his own home, that is, the morning breakfast and the supper, which latter must be very light for children so that shortly after they may be ready to go to bed. On these meals, it would be well to give advice to mothers, urging them to help complete the hygienic work of the children's houses to the profit of their children. The morning breakfast for the rich might be milk and chocolate, or milk and extract of malt, with crackers or butter, with toasted bread spread with butter or honey, for the poor a cup of fresh milk with bread. For the evening meal, a soup is to be advised. Children should eat soups twice a day, and an egg, ala caucar, a cup of milk, or rice soup with a base of milk, and buttered bread with cooked fruits, etc. As for the elementary rations to be calculated, I refer the reader to the special tree teases on hygiene, although practically such calculations are of no great utility. In the children's houses, especially in the case of the poor, I should make extensive use of vegetable soups and I should have cultivated in the garden plots vegetables which can be used in the diet, in order to have them plucked in their freshness, cooked and enjoyed. I should try, possibly, to do the same for the fruits and by the raising of animals to have fresh eggs and pure milk. The milking of the goats could be done directly by the larger children, after they had scrupulously washed their hands. Another important educative application, which school reflection in the children's houses has to offer, and which concerns practical life, consists in the preparing of the table, arranging the table linen, learning its nomenclature, etc. Later, I shall show how this exercise can gradually increase in difficulty and constitute a most important didactic instrument. It is sufficient to intimate here that it is very important to teach the children to eat with cleanliness, both with respect to themselves and with respect to their surroundings, not to sold the napkins, etc. and to use the table implements, which, at least for little ones, are limited to the spoon and for the larger children extended to the fork and knife. GYMNASTICS The generally accepted idea of gymnastics is, I consider, very inadequate. In the common schools we are accustomed to describe as gymnastics a species of collective muscular discipline, which has its aim that children shall learn to follow definite ordered movements given in the form of commands. The guiding spirit in such gymnastics is coercion, and I feel that such exercises repress spontaneous movements and impose others in their place. I do not know what the physiological authority for the selection of these imposed movements is. Similar movements are used in medical gymnastics in order to restore a normal movement to a torporate muscle, or to give back a normal movement to a paralyzed muscle. A number of chest movements, which are given in the school, are advised, for example, in medicine for those who suffer from intestinal torpedoity. But truly I do not well understand what office such exercises can fulfill when they are followed by squadrons of normal children. In addition to these formal gymnastics, we have those which are carried on in a gymnasium, and which are very like the first steps in the training of an acrobat. However, this is not the place for criticism of the gymnastics used in our common schools. Certainly in our case, we are not considering such gymnastics. Indeed, many who hear me speak of gymnastics for infant schools very plainly show disapprobation, and they will disapprove more heartily when they hear me speak of a gymnasium for little children. Indeed, if the gymnastic exercises and the gymnasium were those of the common schools, no one would agree more heartily than I in the disapproval expressed by these critics. We must understand by gymnastics, and in general by muscular education, a series of exercises tending to aid the normal development of physiological movements, such as walking, breathing, speech. To protect this development when the child shows himself backward or abnormal in any way, and to encourage in the children those movements which are useful in the achievement of the most ordinary acts of life, such as dressing, undressing, buttoning their clothes, and lacing their shoes, carrying such objects as balls, cubes, etc. If there exists an age in which it is necessary to protect a child by means of a series of gymnastics exercises, between three and six years is undoubtedly the age. The special gymnastics necessary or better still hygienic in this period of life refer chiefly to walking. A child in a general morphological growth of his body is characterized by having a torso greatly developed in comparison with the lower limbs. In the newborn child, the length of the torso from the top of the head to the curve of the groin is equal to 68% of the normal length of the body. The limbs then arc barely 32% of the stature. During growth, these relative proportions change in a most noticeable way. Thus, for example, in the adult, the torso is fully half of the entire stature, and, according to the individual, corresponds to 51% or 52% of it. This morphological difference between the newborn child and the adult is bridged so slowly during growth that in the first years of the child's life, the torso remains tremendously developed as compared with the limbs. In one year, the height of the torso corresponds to 65% of the total stature, in two years to 63, in three years to 62. At the age when a child enters the infant school, his limbs are still very short as compared with his torso. That is, the length of his limbs barely corresponds to 38% of the stature. Between the years of 6 and 7, the proportion of the torso to the stature is from 57% to 56%. In such a period, therefore, the child not only makes a noticeable growth in height, he measures indeed, at the age of three years, about 0.85 meter, and at six years, 1.05 meter. But changing so greatly the relative proportions between the torso and the limbs, the latter make a most decided growth. This growth is related to the layers of cartilage which still exist at the extremity of the long bones, and is related in general to the still incomplete ossification of the entire skeleton. The tender bones of the limbs must therefore sustain the weight of the torso, which is then disproportionately large. We cannot, if we consider all these things, judge the manner of walking in little children by the standard set for our own equilibrium. If a child is not strong, the erect posture and walking are really sources of fatigue for him, and the long bones of the lower limbs yielding to the weight of the body easily become disformed and usually bowed. This is particularly the case among the badly nourished children of the poor, or among those in whom the skeleton structure, while not actually showing the presence of rickets, still seems to be slow in attaining normal ossification. We are wrong then, if we consider little children, from this physical point of view as little men. They have instead characteristics and proportions that are entirely special to their age. The tendency of the child to stretch out on his back and kick his legs in the air is an expression of the physical needs related to the proportions of his body. The baby loves to walk on all fours just because, like the quadruped animals, his limbs are short in comparison with his body. Instead of this, we divert these natural manifestations by foolish habits which we impose on the child. We hinder him from throwing himself upon the earth, from stretching, etc., and we oblige him to walk with grown people and to keep up with them, and excuse ourselves by saying that we don't want him to become capricious and think he can do as he pleases. It is indeed a fatal error and one which has made bow legs common among little children. It is well to enlighten the mothers on these important particulars of infant hygiene. Now we, with the gymnastics can and indeed should, help the child in his development by making our exercises correspond to the movement which he needs to make, and in this way, save his limbs from fatigue. One very simple means for helping the child in his activity was suggested to be by my observation of the children themselves. The teacher was having the children march, leading them about the courtyard between the walls of the house and the central garden. This garden was protected by a little fence made of strong wires which were stretched in parallel lines and were supported at intervals by wooden palings driven into the ground. Along the fence ran a little ledge on which the children were in the habit of sitting down when they were tired of marching. In addition to this, I always brought out little chairs which I placed against the wall. Every now and then, the little ones of two and one-half and three years would drop out of the marching line, evidently being tired. But instead of sitting down on the ground or in the chairs, they would run to the little fence and catching hold of the upper line of wire they would walk along sideways, resting their feet on the wire which was nearest the ground. That this gave them a great deal of pleasure was evident from the way in which they laughed as, with bright eyes, they watched their larger companions who were marching about. The truth was that these little ones had solved one of my problems in a very practical way. They moved themselves along on the wires, pulling their bodies sideways. In this way, they moved their limbs without throwing upon them the weight of the body. Such an apparatus placed at the gymnasium for little children will enable them to fulfill the need which they feel of throwing themselves on the floor and kicking their legs in the air. For the movements they make on the little fence correspond even more correctly to the same physical needs. Therefore, I advise the manufacturer of this little fence for the use in children's playrooms. It can be constructed of parallel bars supported by upright poles firmly fixed onto the heavy base. The children, while playing upon this little fence, will be able to look out and see with great pleasure what the other children are doing in the room. Other pieces of gymnasium apparatus can be constructed upon the same plan, that is, having as their aim the furnishing of the child with a proper outlet for his individual activities. One of the things invented by Seguin to develop the lower limbs, and especially to strengthen the articulation of the knee in weak children, is the trampolino. This is a kind of sling, having a very wide seat, so wide indeed that the limbs of the child stretched out in front of him are entirely supported by this broad seat. This little chair is hung from strong cords and is left swinging. The wall in front of it is reinforced by a strong smooth board against which the children press their feet and pushing themselves back and forth in the swing. The child seated in this swing exercises his limbs pressing his feet against the board each time that he swings toward the wall. The board against which he swings may be erected at some distance from the wall and may be so low that the child can see over the top of it. As he swings in this chair, he strengthens his limbs through the species of gymnastics limited to the lower limbs, and this he does without resting the weight of his body upon his legs. Other pieces of gymnastic apparatus, less important from the hygienic standpoint but very amusing to the children, may be described briefly. The pendulum, a game which may be played by one child or several, consists of rubber balls hung on a cord. The children seated in their little arm chair strike the ball, sending it from one to another. It is an exercise for the arms and for the spinal column, and is at the same time an exercise in which the eye gauges the distance of bodies in motion. Another game called the cord consists of a line drawn on the earth with chalk, along which the children walk. This helps to order and to direct their free movements in a given direction. A game like this is very pretty indeed after a snowfall, when the little path made by the children shows the regularity of the line they have traced, and encourages a pleasant war among them in which each tries to make his line in the snow the most regular. The little round stair is another game in which a little wooden stairway built on the plan of a spiral is used. This little stair is enclosed on one side by a ballast straight on which the children can rest their hands. The other side is open and circular. This serves to habituate the children to climbing and descending stairs without holding on to the ballast straight, and teaches them to move up and down with movements that are poised and self-controlled. The steps must be very low and very shallow. Going up and down on this little stair, the very smallest children can learn movements which they cannot follow properly in climbing ordinary stairways in their homes. In which the proportions are arranged for adults. Another piece of gymnasium apparatus adapted for the broad jump consists of a low wooden platform painted with various lines by means of which the distance jumped may be gauged. There is a small flight of stairs which may be used in connection with this plane, making it possible to practice and to measure the high jump. I also believe that rope ladders may be so adapted to be suitable for use in schools for little children. Used in pairs, these would, it seems to me, help to perfect a great variety of movements such as kneeling, rising, bending forward, and backward, etc. Movements which the child, without the help of the ladder, could not make without losing his equilibrium. All of these movements are useful in that they help the child to acquire first equilibrium, then that coordination of the muscular movements necessary to him. They are, moreover, helpful in that they increase the chest expansion. Besides all this, such movements as I have described enforce the hand in its most primitive and essential action, prehension, the movement which necessarily proceeds all the finer movement of the hand itself. Such apparatus was successfully used by Sugun to develop the general strength and the movement of prehension in his idiotic children. The gymnasium, therefore, offers the field for the most varied exercises, tending to establish the coordination of the movements common in life, such as walking, throwing objects, going up and down stairs, kneeling, rising, jumping, etc. Free gymnastics By free gymnastics, I mean those which are given without any apparatus. Such gymnastics are divided into two classes, directed and required exercises and free games. In the first class, I recommend the march, the object of which should not be rhythm, but poise only. When the march is introduced, it is well to accompany it with the singing of little songs, because this furnishes a breathing exercise very helpful in strengthening the lungs. Besides the march, many of the games of Frobell, which are accompanied by songs, very similar to those which the children constantly play among themselves may be used. In the free games, we furnish the children with balls, hoops, bean bags, and kites. The trees readily offer themselves to the game of pussy once a corner, and many simple games of tag. Educational gymnastics Under the name of educational gymnastics, we include two series of exercises which really form a part of other schoolwork, as, for instance, the cultivation of the earth, the care of plants and animals, watering and pruning the plants, carrying the grain to the chickens, etc. These activities call for various coordinated movements, as, for example, in hoeing and getting down to plant things and in rising, the trips which the children make and carrying objects to some definite place, and in making a definite practical use of these objects offer a field for very valuable gymnastic exercises. The scattering of minute objects, such as corn and oats, is valuable, and also the exercise of opening and closing the gates to the garden and to the chicken yard. All of these exercises are the more valuable and that they are carried on in the open air. Among our educational gymnastics, we have exercises to develop coordinated movements of the fingers, and these prepare the children for the exercises of practical life, such as dressing and undressing themselves. The didactic material, which forms the basis of these last-named gymnastics, is very simple, consisting of wooden frames, each mounted with two pieces of cloth or leather to be fastened and non-fastened by means of the bows and buttonholes, hooks and eyes, eyelets and lacings, or automatic fastenings. In our children's houses, we use ten of these frames, so constructed that each one of them illustrates a different process in dressing or undressing. One, mounted with heavy pieces of wool, which are to be fastened by means of large bone buttons corresponds to the children's dresses. Two, mounted with pieces of linen to be fastened with purl buttons corresponds to a child's underwear. Three, leather pieces mounted with shoe buttons. In fastening these leather pieces, the children make use of the button-hook corresponds to a child's shoes. Four, pieces of leather which are laced together by means of eyelets and shoelaces. Five, two pieces of cloth to be laced together. These pieces are boned and therefore correspond to the little bodices worn by the peasants in Italy. Six, two pieces of stuff to be fastened by means of large hooks and eyes. Seven, two pieces of linen to be fastened by means of small hooks and worked eyelets. Eight, two pieces of cloth to be fastened by means of broad-colored ribbon, which is to be tied into bows. Nine, pieces of cloth laced together with round cord on the same order as the fastenings on many of the children's underclothes. Ten, two pieces to be fastened together by means of the modern automatic fasteners. Through the use of such toys, the children can practically analyze the movements necessary in dressing and undressing themselves and can prepare themselves separately for these movements by means of repeated exercises. We succeed in teaching the child to dress himself without his really being aware of it, that is without any direct or arbitrary command we have led him to this mastery. As soon as he knows how to do it, he begins to wish to make a practical application of his ability, and very soon he will be proud of being sufficient unto himself, and will take delight in an ability which makes his body free from the hands of others, and which leads him the sooner to that modesty and activity which develops far too late in those children of today who were deprived in this most practical form of education. The fastening games are very pleasing to the little ones, and often when ten of them are using the frames at the same time seated around the little tables, quiet and serious, they give the impression of a workroom filled with tiny workers. Respiratory gymnastics The purpose of these gymnastics is to regulate the respiratory movements, in other words, to teach the art of breathing. They also help greatly the correct formation of the child's speech habits, the exercises which we use were introduced into school literature by Professor Sala. We have chosen the simple exercises described by him and his treatise, Cura della Balbusi. These include a number of respiratory gymnastic exercises with which are coordinated muscular exercises. I give here an example. Mouth wide open, tongue held flat, hands on hips. Breathe deeply, lift the shoulders rapidly, lowering the diaphragm. Expel breath slowly, lowering shoulders slowly, returning to normal position. The directories should select or devise simple breathing exercises to be accompanied with arm movements, etc. Exercises for the proper use of lips, tongue and teeth. These exercises teach the movements of the lips and tongue in the pronunciation of certain fundamental consonant sounds, reinforcing the muscles and making them ready for these movements. These gymnastics prepare the organs used in the formation of language. In presenting such exercises, we begin with the entire class, but finish by testing the children individually. We ask the child to pronounce aloud and with force, the syllable of a word. When all our intent upon putting the greatest possible force into this, we call each child separately and have him repeat the word. If he pronounces it correctly, we send him to the right, if badly to the left. Those who have difficulty with the word are encouraged to repeat it several times. The teacher takes note of the age of the child and of the particular defects in the movements of the muscles used in articulation. She may then touch the muscles which should be used, tapping for example the curve of the lips, or even taking hold of the child's tongue and placing it against the dental arch or showing him clearly the movements which she herself makes when pronouncing the syllable. She must seek in every way to aid the normal development of the movements necessary to the exact articulation of the word. As for the basis for these gymnastics, we have the children pronounce the words pain, fame, tana, zina, stella, rana, gato. In the pronunciation of pain, the child should repeat with much force pa, pa, pa. Thus exercising the muscles producing orbicular contraction of the lips. In fame, repeating fa, fa, fa. The child exercises the movements of the lower lip against the upper dental arch. In tana, having him repeat ta, ta, ta. We cause him to exercise the movement of the tongue against the upper dental arch. And zina, we provide the contact of the upper and lower dental arches. With stella, we have him repeat the whole word, bringing the teeth together and holding the tongue which has a tendency to protrude close to the upper teeth. In rana, we have him repeat ar, ar, ar. Thus exercising the tongue in the vibratory movements. In gato, we hold the voice upon the guttural gu. End of chapter 9. Chapter 10 of the Montessori Method This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Preston McConkie. The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori. Translated by Anne E. George. Chapter 10 Nature in Education Agricultural Labour Culture of Plants and Animals Itaar, in a remarkable pedagogical treatise de première de Valais-Permont de Géon-Savage de l'Everron expounds in detail the drama of a curious gigantic education which attempted to overcome the psychical darkness of an idiot and at the same time to snatch a man from primitive nature. The savage of the Averron was a child who had grown up in the natural state, criminally abandoned in a forest where his assassins thought they had killed him. He was cured by natural means and had survived for many years free and naked in the wilderness until, captured by hunters, he entered into the civilised life of Paris. Showing by the scars with which his miserable body was furrowed, the story of the struggles with wild beasts and of lacerations caused by falling from heights. The child was and always remained mute. His mentality, diagnosed by Penel as idiotic, remained forever almost inaccessible to intellectual education. To this child are due the first steps of positive pedagogy. Itaar, a physician of deaf mutes and a student of philosophy, undertook his education with methods which he had already partially tried for treating defective hearing. Believing at the beginning that the savage showed characteristics of inferiority, not because he was a degraded organism, but for want of education. He was a follower of the principles of Helvitius, quote, man is nothing without the work of man, unquote. That is, he believed in the omnipotence of education and was opposed to the pedagogical principle which Rousseau had promulgated before the revolution. Tu es bien sortant de main de l'acteur de Chaucer to de gennale dans les mains de l'homme. That is, the work of education is deleterious and spoils the man. The savage, according to the erroneous first impression of Itaar, demonstrated experimentally by his characteristics the truth of the former assertion. When, however, he perceived with the help of Pinel that he had to do with an idiot, his philosophical theories gave place to the most admirable, tentative, experimental pedagogy. Itaar derives the education of the savage into two parts. In the first, he endeavors to lead the child from natural life to social life. And in the second, he attempts the intellectual education of the idiot. The child in his life of frightful abandonment has found one happiness. He had, so to speak, immersed himself in and unified himself with nature. Taking delight in it, Reigns, Snows, Tempests, Boundless Space had been his sources of entertainment, his companions, his love. Civil life is renunciation of all this, but it is an acquisition beneficent to human progress. In Itaar's pages, we find vividly described the moral work which led the savage to civilization, multiplying the needs of the child and surrounding him with loving care. Here is a sample of the admirably patient work of Itaar, as observer of the spontaneous expressions of his pupil. It can most truly give teachers who are to prepare for the experimental model an idea of the patients and the self-abnegation necessary in dealing with a phenomenon which is to be observed. When, for example, he was observed within his room, he was seen to be lounging with oppressive monotony, continually directing his eyes toward the window, with his gaze wandering in the void. If, on such occasions, a sudden storm blew up, if the sun, hidden behind the clouds, peeped out of a sudden, lighting the atmosphere brilliantly, there were loud bursts of laughter and almost convulsive joy. Sometimes, instead of these expressions of joy, there was a sort of frenzied rage. He would twist his arms, put his clench fists upon his eyes, gnashing his teeth and becoming dangerous to those about him. One morning, when the snow fell abundantly while he was still in bed, he uttered a cry of joy upon a waking. Leap from his bed, ran to the window and then to the door, went and came impatiently from one to the other, then ran out undressed as he was into the garden. There, giving vent to his joy with the shrillest of cries, he ran, rolled in the snow, gathered it up in handfuls and swallowed it with incredible avidity. But his sensations at sight of the great spectacles of nature did not always manifest themselves in such a vivid and noisy manner. It is worthy of note that in certain cases they were expressed by a quiet regret and melancholy. Thus it was when the rigor of the weather drove everybody from the garden that the savage of the of our own chose to go there. He would walk around it several times and finally sit down upon the edge of the fountain. I have often stopped for whole hours and with indescribable pleasure to watch him as he sat thus, to see how his face, inexpressive or contracted by grimaces, gradually assumed an expression of sadness and of melancholy reminiscence while his eyes were fixed upon the surface of the water into which from time to time he would throw a few dead leaves. If when there was a full moon, a sheaf of mild beams penetrated into his room, he rarely failed to wake and to take his place at the window. He would remain there for a large part of the night, erect, motionless, with his head thrust forward. His eyes fixed on the countryside lighted by the moon, plunged in a sort of contemplative ecstasy, the immobility and silence of which were only interrupted at long intervals by a breath as deep as a sigh, which died away in a plaintive sound of lamentation." Elsewhere, Itaar relates that the boy did not know the walking-gate, which we use in civilized life, but only the running-gate, and tells how he, Itaar, ran after him at the beginning when he took him out into the streets of Paris rather than violently check the boy's running. The gradual and gentle leading of the savage through all the manifestations of social life, the early adaptation of the teacher to the pupil, rather than of the pupil to the teacher, the successive attraction to a new life which was to win over the child by its charms, and not be imposed upon him violently so that the pupil should feel it as a burden and a torture, are as many precious educative expressions, which may be generalized and applied to the education of the child. I believe that there exists no document which offers so poignant and so eloquent a contrast between the life of nature and the life of society, and which so graphically shows that society is made up solely of renunciations and restraints. Let it suffice to recall the run, check to a walk, and a loud voice cry, check to the modulations of the ordinary speaking voice. And yet without any violence, leaving to social life the task of charming the child little by little, Itard's education triumphs. It is true that civilized life is made by renunciation of the life of nature. It is almost the snatching of a man from the lap of the earth. It is like snatching the newborn child from its mother's breast, but it is also a new life. In Itard's pages we see the final triumph of love over the love of nature. The savage of the Everon ends up by feeling and preferring the affection of Itard, the caresses, the tears shed over him, to the joys of immersing himself volupturously in the snow and of contemplating the infinite expanse of the sky on a starry night. One day, after an attempt at escape into the country, he returns of his own accord, humble and repentant, to find his good soup and his warm bed. It is true that man has created enjoyment in social life and has brought about a vigorous human love and community life. But nevertheless, he still belongs to nature and especially when he is a child he must need to draw from it the forces necessary to the development of the body and of the spirit. We have intimate communications with nature which have an influence, even a material influence on the growth of the body. For example, a physiologist isolating young guinea pigs from terrestrial magnetism by means of insulators found that they grew up with rickets. In the education of little children, Itara's educative drama is repeated. We must prepare a man who is one among the living creatures and therefore belongs to nature for social life. Because social life, being his own peculiar work, must also correspond to the manifestation of his natural activity. But the advantages which we prepare for him in this social life in a great measure escaped the little child who at the beginning of his life is a predominantly vegetative creature. To soften this transition in education by giving a large part of the educative work to nature itself is as necessary as it is not to snatch the little child suddenly and violently from its mother and to take him to school. And precisely this is done in the children's houses which are situated within the tenements where the parents live where the cry of the child reaches the mother and the mother's voice answers it. Nowadays, under the form of child hygiene this part of education is much cultivated. Children are allowed to grow up in the open air in the public gardens or are left for many hours half naked on the seashore exposed to the rays of the sun. It has been understood through the diffusion of marine and epitome colonies that the best means of invigorating the child is to immerse him in nature. Short and comfortable clothing for the children, sandals for the feet, nudity for the lower extremities are so many liberations from the oppressive shackles of civilization. It is an obvious principle that we should sacrifice to natural liberties in education only as much as is necessary for the acquisition of the greater pleasures which are offered by civilization without useless sacrifices. But in all this progress of modern child education we have not freed ourselves from the prejudice which denies children's spiritual expression and spiritual needs and makes us consider them only as amiable, vegetating bodies to be cared for, kissed, and set in motion. The education which a good mother or a good modern teacher gives today to the child who, for example, is running about in a flower garden, is the counsel not to touch the flowers, not to tread on the grass, as if it were sufficient for the child to satisfy the physiological needs of his body by moving his legs and breathing fresh air. But if for the physical life it is necessary to have the child exposed to the vivifying forces of nature, it is also necessary for his psychical life to place the soul of the child in contact with creation in order that he may lay up for himself treasure from the directly educating forces of living nature. The method for arriving at this end is to set the child at agricultural labor, guiding him to the cultivation of plants and animals and so to the intelligent contemplation of nature. Already in England Mrs. Latter has devised the basis for a method of child education by means of gardening and horticulture. She sees in the contemplation of developing life the basis of religion since the soul of the child may go from the creature to the creator. She sees in it also the point of departure for intellectual education which she limits to drawing from life as a step toward art, to the ideas about plants, insects and seasons which spring from agriculture and to the first notions of household life which spring from the cultivation and the culinary preparation of certain elementary products that children later serve upon the table providing afterward also for the washing of the utensils and the tableware. Mrs. Latter's conception is too one-sided but her institutions which continue to spread in England undoubtedly complete the natural education which up to this time limited to the physical side has already been so efficacious in invigorating the bodies of English children. Moreover her experience offers a positive corroboration of the practicability of agricultural teaching in the case of little children. As for deficients I have seen agriculture applied on a large scale to their education at Paris by the means which the kindly spirit of Bachelet tried to introduce into the elementary schools when he attempted to institute the little educative gardens. In every little garden are sewn different agricultural products demonstrating practically the proper method and the proper time for seeding and for crop gathering and the period of development to the various products. The manner of preparing the soil of enriching it with natural or chemical manures etc. The same is done for ornamental plants and for gardening which is the work yielding the best income for deficients when they are of an age to practice a profession. But this side of education though it contains in the first place an objective method of intellectual culture and in addition a professional preparation is not in my opinion to be taken into serious consideration for child education. The educational conception of this age must be solely that of aiding the psychophysical development of the individual and this being the case agriculture and animal culture containing themselves precious means of moral education which can be analyzed far more than as done by Mrs. Latter who sees in them essentially a method of conducting the child's soul to religious feeling. Indeed in this method which is a progressive ascent several gradations can be distinguished I mentioned here the principal ones. First the child is initiated into observation of the phenomena of life. He stands with respect to the plants and animals in relations analogous to those in which the observing teacher stands toward him. Little by little as interest and observation grow his zealous care for the living creatures grows also and in this way the child can logically be brought to appreciate the care which for the mother and the teacher take of him. Second the child is initiated into foresight by way of auto-education. When he knows that the life of the plants that have been sown depends upon his care in watering them and that of the animals upon his diligence in feeding them without which the little plant dries up and the animals suffer hunger the child becomes vigilant as one who is beginning to feel a mission in life. Moreover a voice quite different from that of his mother and his teacher calling him to his duties is speaking here exhorting him never to forget the task he has undertaken it is the plaintive voice of the needy life which lives by his care. Between the child and the living creatures which he cultivates there is born a mysterious correspondence which induces the child to fulfill certain determinant acts without the intervention of the teacher that is leads him to an auto-education. The rewards which the child creeps also remain between him and nature. One fine day after long patient care in carrying food and straw to the brooding pigeons behold the little ones. Behold a number of chickens peeping about the setting hen which yesterday sat motionless in her brooding place. Behold one day the tender little rabbits in the hutch where formerly dwelt in solitude the pair of big rabbits to which he had not a few times lovingly carried the green vegetables left over in his mother's kitchen. I have not yet been able to institute in Rome the breeding of animals but in the children's houses at Milan there are several animals among them a pair of pretty little white American fowl that live in a diminutive and elegant chalet similar in construction to a Chinese pagoda. In front of it a little piece of ground enclosed by a rampart is reserved for the pair. The little door of the chalet is locked at evening and the children take care of it and turn. With what delight they go in the morning to unlock the door to fetch the water and straw and with what care they watch during the day and at evening lock the door after having made sure the fowl lacked nothing. The teacher informs me that among all the educative exercises this is the most welcome and seems almost the most important of all. Many a time when the children are tranquilly occupied in their tasks each at the work he prefers one, two, or three get up silently and go out to cast a glance at the animals to see if they need care. Often it happens that a child absents himself for a long time and the teacher surprises him watching enchantedly the fish gliding ready and resplendent in the sunlight in the waters of the fountain. One day I received from the teacher in Milan a letter in which she spoke to me with great enthusiasm of a truly wonderful piece of news. The little pigeons were hatched. For the children it was a great festival. They felt themselves to some extent the parents of these little ones and no artificial reward which had flattered their vanity would ever have provoked such a truly fine emotion. Not less great are the joys which vegetable nature provides. In one of the children's houses at Rome where there were no soil that could be cultivated there have been arranged through the efforts of Signora Talamo flower pots all around the large terrace and climbing plants near the walls. The children never forget to water the plants with their little watering pots. One day I found them seated on the ground all in a circle around a splendid red rose which had bloomed in the night silent and calm literally immersed in mute contemplation. Third. The children are initiated into the virtue of patience and into confident expectation which is a form of faith and a philosophy of life. When the children put a seed into the ground and wait until it fructifies and see the first appearance of the shapeless plant and wait for the growth and the transformations into flower and fruit and see how some plants sprout sooner and some later and how the deciduous plants have a rapid life and the fruit trees of slower growth they end by acquiring a peaceful equilibrium of conscience and absorb the first germs of that wisdom which so characterized the tillers of the soil in the time when they still kept their primitive simplicity. Fourth. The children are inspired with the feeling for nature which is maintained by the marbles of creation that creation which rewards with a generosity not measured by the labor of those who help it to evolve the life of its creatures. Even while at the work a sort of correspondence arises between the child's soul and the lives which are developed under his care. The child loves naturally the manifestations of life. Mrs. latter tells us how easily little ones are interested even in earthworms and in the movement of the larvae of insects and manure without feeling that horror which we who have grown up isolated from nature experience towards certain animals. It is well then to develop this feeling of trust and confidence in living creatures which is more over a form of love and of union with the universe. But what most develops a feeling of nature is the cultivation of the living things because they by their natural development give back far more than they receive and show something like infinity and their beauty and variety. When the child has cultivated the iris or the pansy the rose of the hyacinth has placed in the soil a seed or a bulb and periodically watered it or has planted a fruit bearing shrub and the blossomed flower and the ripened fruit offer themselves as a generous gift of nature a rich reward for a small effort it seems almost as if nature were answering with her gifts to the feeling of desire to the vigilant love of the cultivator rather than striking a balance with his material efforts. It will be quite different when the child has together the material fruits of his labor motionless uniform objects which are consumed and dispersed rather than increased and multiplied. The difference between the products of nature and those of industry between divine products and human products it is this that must be born spontaneously in the child's conscience like the determination of a fact. But at the same time as the plant must give its fruit so man must give his labor. Fifth The child follows the natural way of development of the human race. In short such education makes the evolution of the individual harmonized with that of humanity. Man passed from the natural to the artificial state through agriculture when he discovered the secret of intensifying the production of the soil he obtained the reward of a civilization. The same path must be traversed by the child to his destined to become a civilized man. The action of educative nature so understood is very practically accessible because even if the vast stretch of ground and the large courtyard necessary for physical education are lacking it will always be possible to find a few square yards of land that may be cultivated or a little place where pigeons can make their nest things sufficient for spiritual education even a pot of flowers at the window can if necessary fulfill the purpose. In the first children's house in Rome we have a vast courtyard cultivated as a garden where the children are free to run in the open air and besides a long stretch of ground which is planted on one side with trees has a branching path in the middle and on the opposite side has broken ground for the cultivation of plants. This last we have divided into so many portions reserving one for each child. While the smaller children run freely up and down the paths or rest in the shade of the trees the possessors of the earth children from four years of age up are sowing or hoeing watering or examining the surface of the soil watching for the sprouting of plants. It is interesting to note the following fact the little reservations of the children are placed along the wall of the tenement in a spot formerly neglected because it leads to a blind road. The inhabitants of the house therefore had the habit of throwing from those windows every kind of awful and at the beginning our garden was thus contaminated. But little by little without any exhortation on our part solely through the respect born in the people's mind for the children's labor nothing more fell from the windows except the loving glances and smiles of the mothers upon the soil which was the beloved possession of their little children. End of Chapter Chapter 11 of the Montessori Method This is a LibriFox recording. All LibriFox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriFox.org The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori translated by Anne E. George Chapter 11 Manual Labor The Potter's Art and Building Manual labor is distinguished from manual gymnastics by the fact that the object of the ladder is to exercise the hand and the former to accomplish a determinant work being or stimulating a socially useful object. The one perfects the individual the other enriches the world. The two things are however connected because in general only one who has perfected his own hand can produce a useful product. I have thought wise after a short trial to exclude completely Froble's exercises because weaving and sewing on cardboard are ill adapted to the physiological state of the child's visual organs where the powers of the accommodation of the eye have not yet reached complete development. Hence these exercises cause an effort of the organ which may have a fatal influence on the development of the site. The other little exercises of Froble such as the folding of paper are exercises of the hand not work. There is still left plastic work the most rational among all the exercises of Froble which consist in making the child reproduce determinant objects in clay. In consideration however of the system of liberty which I proposed I did not like to make the children copy anything and in giving them clay to fashion in their own manner I did not direct the children to produce useful things nor was I accomplishing an educative result in as much as plastic work as I shall show later serves for the study of the psychic individuality of the child in his spontaneous manifestations but not for his education. I decided therefore to try in the children's houses some very interesting exercises which I had seen accomplished by an artist. Professor Rendon in the School of Educative Art founded by him. This school had its origin along with the society for young people called Gia Venezia Gentile both school and society having the object of educating youth in gentleness towards their surroundings that is in respect for objects buildings monuments a really important part of civil education and one which interested me particularly on account of the children's houses since that institution has as its fundamental aim to teach precisely this respect for the walls for the house for the surroundings. Very suitably Professor Rendon had decided that the society of Gia Venezia Gentile could not be based upon sterile theoretical preachings of the principles of citizenship or upon moral pledges taken by the children but that it must proceed from an artistic education which should lead the youth to appreciate and love and consequently respect objects and especially monuments and historic buildings. Thus the School of Educative Art was inspired by a broad artistic conception including the reproduction of objects which are commonly met in the surroundings the history and prehistory of their production and the illustration of the principal civic monuments which in Rome are in large measure composed of archaeological monuments in order the more directly to accomplish his object Professor Rendon founded his admirable school in an opening in one of the most artistic parts of the walls of Rome namely the wall of Bellisarius overlooking the villa and Berto Primo a wall which has been entirely neglected by the authorities and by no means respected by the citizens and upon which Rendon lavished care decorating it with graceful hanging gardens on the outside and locating within it the School of Art which was to shape the Giavanese Gentile here Rendon has tried very fittingly to rebuild and revive a form of art which was once the glory of Italy and of Florence the Potter's Art that is the art of constructing vases the archaeological historical and artistic importance of the vase is very great and may be compared with the new Mismatic Art in fact the first object of which humanity felt the need was the vase which came into being with the utilization of fire and before the discovery of the production of fire indeed the first food of mankind was cooked in a vase one of the things most important ethnically is judging the civilization of a primitive people is the great of perfection attained in pottery in fact the vase for domestic life and the acts for social life are the first sacred symbols which we find in the prehistoric epic and are the religious symbols connected with the temples of the gods and with the cult of the dead even today religious cults have sacred vases in their sanctus sanctorum people who have progressed in civilization show their feeling for art and their aesthetic feeling also in vases which are multiplied in almost infinite form as we see in egyptian etruscan and greek art the vase then comes into being attains perfection and is multiplied in its uses and its forms in the course of human civilization and the history of the vase follows the history of humanity itself besides the civil and moral importance of the vase we have another and practical one its literal adaptability to every modification of form and its susceptibility to the most diverse ornamentation in this it gives free scope to the individual genius of the artist thus when once the handicraft leading to the construction of vases has been learned and this is the part of the progress in the work learned from the direct and graduated instruction of the teacher anyone can modify it according to the inspiration of his own aesthetic taste and this is the artistic individual part of the work besides this in randon school the use of the potters wheel is taught and also the composition of the mixture for the bath of majolica wear and baking the pieces in the furnace stages of manual labor which contain an industrial culture another work of the school of educative art is the manufacturer of diminutive bricks and their baking in the furnace and the construction of diminutive walls built by the same processes which the masons use in the construction of houses the bricks being joined by means of mortar handled with a trowel after the simple construction of the wall which is very amusing for the children who build it placing brick on brick superimposing row on row the children pass to the construction of real houses first resting on the ground and then really constructing with foundations after a previous excavation of large holes in the ground by means of little hose and shovels these little houses have openings corresponding to windows and doors and are variously ornamented in their facades by little tiles of bright and multicolored majolica the tiles themselves being manufactured by the children thus the children learn to appreciate the objects and constructions which surround them while a real manual and artistic labor gives them profitable exercise such as the manual training which I have adopted in the children's houses after two or three lessons the little pupils are already enthusiastic about the construction of vases and they preserve very carefully their own products in which they take pride with their plastic art they then model little objects eggs or fruits with which they themselves fill the vases one of the first undertakings is the simple vase of red clay filled with eggs of white clay then comes the modeling of the vase with one or more spouts of the narrow-mouthed face of the vase with a handle of that with two or three handles of the tripod of the amphora for children of the age of five or six the work of the potters will be kins but what most delights the children is the work of building a wall with little bricks and seeing a little house the fruit of their own hands rise in the vicinity of the ground in which are growing plants also cultivated by them thus the age of childhood epitomizes the principal primitive labors of humanity when the human race changing from the nomadic to the stable condition demanded of the earth its fruit built itself shelter and devised vases to cook the foods yielded by the fertile earth end of chapter 11