 CHAPTER 2 HISTORY OF METHODS If we are to develop a system of scientific pedagogy, we must then proceed along lines very different from those which have been followed up to the present time. The transformation of the school must be contemporaneous with the preparation of the teacher. For if we make of the teacher an observer familiar with the experimental methods, then we must make it possible for her to observe and to experiment in the school. The fundamental principle of scientific pedagogy must be, indeed, the liberty of the pupil. Such liberty as shall permit a development of individual, spontaneous manifestations of the child's nature. If a new and scientific pedagogy is to arise from the study of the individual, such study must occupy itself with the observation of free children. In vain should we await a practical renewing of pedagogical methods from methodical examinations of pupils made under the guidance offered today by pedagogy, anthropology and experimental psychology. Every branch of experimental science has grown out of the application of a method peculiar to itself. Bacteriology owes its scientific content to the method of isolation and culture of microbes. Criminal, medical and pedagogical anthropology owe their progress to the application of anthropological methods to individuals of various classes, such as criminals, the insane, the sick of the clinic's scholars. So experimental psychology needs, as its starting point, an exact definition of the technique to be used in making the experiment. To put it broadly, it is important to define the method, the technique, and from its application to await the definite result, which must be gathered entirely from actual experience. One of the characteristics of experimental sciences is to proceed to the making of an experiment without preconceptions of any sort as to the final result of the experiment itself. For example, should we wish to make scientific observations concerning the development of the head as related to varying degrees of intelligence, one of the conditions of such an experiment would be to ignore, in the taking of the measurements, which were the most intelligent and which the most backward among the scholars examined. And this, because the preconceived idea that the most intelligent should have the head more fully developed, will inevitably alter the results of the research. He who experiments must, while doing so, divest himself of every preconception. It is clear then that if we wish to make use of a method of experimental psychology, the first thing necessary is to renounce all former creeds and to proceed by means of the method in the search for truth. We must not start, for example, from any dogmatic ideas which we may happen to have held upon the subject of child psychology. Instead, we must proceed by a method which shall tend to make possible to the child complete liberty. This we must do if we are to draw from the observation of his spontaneous manifestations, conclusions which shall lead to the establishment of a truly scientific child psychology. It may be that such a method holds for us great surprises, unexpected possibilities. Child psychology and pedagogy must establish their content by successive conquests arrived at through the method of experimentation. Our problem then is this, to establish the method peculiar to experimental pedagogy. It cannot be that used in other experimental sciences. It is true that scientific pedagogy is rounded out by hygiene, anthropology and psychology, and adopts in part the technical method characteristic of all three, although limiting itself to a special study of the individual to be educated. But in pedagogy, this study of the individual, though it must accompany the very different work of education, is a limited and secondary part of the science as a whole. This present study deals in part with the method used in experimental pedagogy, and is the result of my experiences during two years in the children's houses. I offer only a beginning of the method which I have applied to children between the ages of three and six, but I believe that these tentative experiments, because of the surprising results which they have given, will be the means of inspiring a continuation of the work thus undertaken. Indeed, although our educational system, which experience has demonstrated to be excellent, is not yet entirely completed, it nevertheless constitutes a system well enough established to be practical in all institutions where young children are cared for and in the first elementary classes. Perhaps I am not exact when I say that the present work springs from two years of experience. I do not believe that these later attempts of mine could alone have rendered possible all that I set forth in this book. The origin of the educational system in use in the children's houses is much more remote, and if this experience with normal children seems indeed rather brief, it should be remembered that it sprang from preceding pedagogical experiences with abnormal children, and that considered in this way it represents a long and thoughtful endeavor. About 15 years ago, being assistant doctor at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Rome, I had occasion to frequent the insane asylums to study the sick and to select subjects for the clinics. In this way, I became interested in the idiot children who were at that time housed in the general insane asylums. In those days, thyroid organotherapy was in full development, and this drew the attention of physicians to deficient children. I myself, having completed my regular hospital services, had already turned my attention to the study of children's diseases. It was thus that, being interested in the idiot children, I became conversant with the special method of education devised for these unhappy little ones by Edouard Seguin, and was led to study thoroughly the idea, then beginning to be prevalent among the physicians of the efficacy of pedagogical treatment for various morbid forms of disease, such as deafness, paralysis, idiocy, rickets, etc. The fact that pedagogy must join with medicine in the treatment of disease was the practical outcome of the thought of the time. And because of this tendency, the method of treating disease by gymnastics became widely popular. I, however, deferred from my colleagues in that I felt that mental deficiency presented chiefly a pedagogical rather than mainly a medical problem. Much was said in the medical congresses of the medical pedagogic method for the treatment and education of the feeble-minded, and I expressed my deferring opinion in an address on moral education at the pedagogical Congress of Turin in 1898. I believed that I touched a chord already vibrant because the idea, making its way among the physicians and elementary teachers, spread in a flash as presenting a question of lively interest to the school. In fact, I was called upon by my master, Guido Baccelli, the great minister of education, to deliver to the teachers of Rome a course of lectures on the education of feeble-minded children. This course soon developed into the state orthophrenic school, which I directed for more than two years. In this school, we had an all-day class of children composed of those who, in the elementary schools, were considered hopelessly deficient. Later on, through the help of a philanthropic organization, there was founded a medical pedagogic institute, where, besides the children from the public schools, we brought together all of the idiot children from the insane asylums in Rome. I spent these two years with the help of my colleagues in preparing the teachers of Rome for a special method of observation and education of feeble-minded children. Not only did I train teachers, but what was much more important, after I had been in London and Paris for the purpose of studying, in a practical way, the education of the physicians, I gave myself over completely to the actual teaching of the children, directing at the same time the work of the other teachers in our institute. I was more than an elementary teacher, for I was present or directly taught the children, from eight in the morning to seven in the evening, without interruption. These two years of practice are my first and indeed my true degree in pedagogy. From the very beginning of my work with deficient children, 1898 to 1900, I felt that the methods which I used, heading them nothing peculiarly limited to the instruction of idiots. I believe that they contained educational principles more rational than those in use, so much more so indeed, that through their means, an inferior mentality would be able to grow and develop. This feeling, so deep as to be in the nature of an intuition, became my controlling idea after I had left the school for deficients. And little by little, I became convinced that similar methods applied to normal children would develop or set free their personality in a marvelous and surprising way. It was then that I began a genuine and thorough study of what is known as remedial pedagogy. And then, wishing to undertake the study of normal pedagogy and of the principles upon which it is based, I registered as a student of philosophy at a university. A great faith animated me. And although I did not know that I should ever be able to test the truth of my idea, I gave up every other occupation to deepen and broaden its conception. It was almost as if I prepared myself for an unknown mission. The methods for the education of deficients had their origin at a time of the French Revolution, in the work of a physician whose achievements occupy a prominent place in the history of medicine, as he was the founder of that branch of medical science, which today is known as Oceatria, Diseases of the Year. He was the first to attempt a methodical education of the sense of hearing. He made these experiments in the Institute for Deaf Mutes, founded in Paris by Pereir, and actually succeeded in making the semi-daft here clearly. Later on, having in charge for eight years the idiot boy known as the wild boy of Averron, he extended to the treatment of all the senses those educational methods which had already given such excellent results in the treatment of the sense of hearing. A student of Pinel, Ita, was the first educator to practice the observation of the pupil in the way in which the sick are observed in the hospitals, especially those suffering from diseases of the nervous system. The pedagogic writings of Ita are most interesting and minute descriptions of educational efforts and experiences, and anyone reading them today must admit that they were practically the first attempts at experimental psychology. But the merit of having completed a genuine educational system for deficient children was due to Edouard Seguin, first a teacher and then a physician. He took the experiences of Ita as his starting point, applying these methods, modifying and completing them during a period of ten years experience with children taken from the insane asylums and placed in a little school in Hupigal in Paris. This method was described for the first time in a volume of more than 600 pages published in Paris in 1846 with the title traitement moral, hygiennes, and education des idéaux. Later, Seguin emigrated to the United States of America, where he founded many institutions for deficients, and where, after another 20 years of experience, he published the second edition of his method under a very different title. It is seen in its treatment by the physiological method. This volume was published in New York in 1866 and in it Seguin had carefully defined his method of education, calling it the physiological method. He no longer referred in the title to a method for the education of idiots, as if the method were special to them, but spoke now of idiocy treated by a physiological method. If we consider that pedagogy always had psychology as its base, and that Wundt defines a physiological psychology, the coincidence of these ideas must strike us and lead us to suspect in the physiological method some connection with physiological psychology. While I was assistant at the psychiatric clinic, I had read Edouard Seguin's French book with great interest. But the English book, which was published in New York 20 years later, although it was quoted in the works about special education by Bourneville, was not to be found in any library. I made a vain quest for it, going from house to house of nearly all the English physicians who were known to be specially interested in deficient children, or who were superintendents of special schools. The fact that this book was unknown in England, although it had been published in the English language, made me think that the Seguin system had never been understood. In fact, although Seguin was constantly quoted in all the publications dealing with institutions for deficients, the educational applications described were quite different from the applications of Seguin's system. Almost everywhere, the methods applied to deficients are more or less the same as those in use for normal children. In Germany especially, a friend who had gone there in order to help me in my researches noticed that although special materials existed here and there in the pedagogical museums of the schools for deficients, these materials were rarely used. Indeed, the German educators hold the principle that it is well to adapt to the teaching of backward children the same method used for normal ones, but these methods are much more objective in Germany than with us. At the Bissette, where I spent some time, I saw that it was the didactic apparatus of Seguin far more than his method which was being used, although the French text was in the hands of the educators. The teaching there was purely mechanical, each teacher following the rules according to the letter. I found, however, wherever I went, in London as well as in Paris, a desire for fresh counsel and for new experiences. Since far too often, Seguin's claim that with his methods the education of idiots was actually possible had proved only a delusion. After the study of the methods in use throughout Europe, I concluded my experiments upon the deficients of Rome and taught them throughout two years. I followed Seguin's book and also derived much help from the remarkable experiments of Ita. Guided by the work of these two men, I had manufactured a great variety of didactic material. These materials, which I have never seen complete in any institution, became in the hands of those who knew how to apply them a most remarkable and efficient means. But unless rightly presented, they failed to attract the attention of the deficients. I felt that I understood the discouragement of those working with feeble-minded children and can see why they had, in so many cases, abandoned the method, the prejudice that the educator must place himself on a level with the one to be educated, sinks the teacher of deficients into a species of apathy. He accepts the fact that he is educating an inferior personality, and for that very reason he does not succeed. Even so, those who teach little children too often have the idea that they are educating babies and seek to place themselves on the child's level by approaching him with games and often with foolish stories. Instead of all this, we must know how to call to the man which lies dormant within the soul of the child. I felt this intuitively and believed that not the didactic material, but my voice which called to them, awakened the children, and encouraged them to use a didactic material and through it to educate themselves. I was guided in my work by the deep respect which I felt for their misfortune, and by the love which these unhappy children know how much will awaken in those who are near them. Segon too expressed himself in the same way on the subject. Reading his patient attempts, I understand clearly that the first didactic material used by him was spiritual. Indeed, at the close of the French volume, the author giving a resume of his work concludes by saying rather sadly that all he has established will be lost or be useless if the teachers are not prepared for their work. He holds rather original views concerning the preparation of teachers of deficience. He would have them good to look upon, pleasant voice, careful in every detail of their personal appearance, doing everything possible to make themselves attractive. They must, he says, render themselves attractive in voice and manner, since it is their task to awaken souls which are frail and wary, and to lead them forth to lay hold upon the beauty and strength of life. This belief that we must act upon the spirit served as a sort of secret key, opening to me the long series of didactic experiments so wonderfully analyzed by Edouard Segon. Experiments which, properly understood, are really most efficacious in the education of idiots. I myself obtain most surprising results through their application, but I must confess that, while my efforts show themselves in the intellectual progress of my pupils, a peculiar form of exhaustion prostrated me. It was as if I gave to them some vital force from within me. Those things which we call encouragement, comfort, love, respect are drawn from the soul of men, and the more freely we give of them, the more do we renew and reinvigorate the life about us. Without such inspiration, the most perfect external stimulus may pass unobserved. Thus the blind soul, before the glory of the sun, exclaimed, This it is the dense fog. Thus prepared, I was able to proceed to new experiments on my own account. This is not the place for a report of these experiments, and I will only note that at this time I attempted an original method for the teaching of reading and writing, a part of the education of the child, which was most imperfectly treated in the works of both Itar and Sega. I succeeded in teaching a number of the idiots from the asylum, both to read and to write so well that I was able to present them at the public school for an examination together with normal children. And they passed the examination successfully. These results seemed almost miraculous to those who saw them. To me, however, the boys from the asylums had been able to compete with the normal children only because they had been taught in a different way. They had been helped in their psychic development, and the normal children had instead been suffocated, held back. I found myself thinking that if someday the special education which had developed these idiot children in such a marvelous fashion could be applied to the development of normal children, the miracle of which my friends talked would no longer be possible. The abyss between the inferior mentality of the idiot and that of the normal brain can never be bridged if the normal child has reached his full development. While everyone was admiring the progress of my idiots, I was searching for the reasons which could keep the happy, healthy children of the common schools on so low a plane that they could be equaled in tests of intelligence by my unfortunate pupils. One day a directorist in the Institute for Deficients asked me to read one of the prophecies of Ezekiel, which had made a profound impression upon her, as it seemed to prophesy the education of deficients. The hand of the Lord was upon me and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by them round about, and behold, there were very many in the open valley and low they were very dry. And he said unto me, son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again he said unto me, prophesy upon these bones and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones, behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live, and ye shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied, and I was commended, and as I prophesied there was a noise, and behold, a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld low, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above, but there was no breath in them. Then said he unto me, prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, thus saith the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these lane that they may live. So I prophesied, as he commended me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, and exceeding great army. Then he said unto me, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, our bones are dried, and our hope is lost. We are cut off for our parts. In fact, the words I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live, seem to me to refer to the direct individual work of the master, who encourages, calls to, and helps his pupil, preparing him for education. And the remainder, I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, recall the fundamental phrase which sums up Sagan's whole method, to lead the child, as it were, by the hand, from the education of the muscular system, to that of the nervous system, and of the senses. It was thus that Sagan taught the idiots how to walk, how to maintain their equilibrium in the most difficult movements of the body, such as going upstairs, jumping, et cetera. And finally, to feel, beginning the education of the muscular sensations by touching, and reading the difference of temperature, and ending with the education of the particular senses. But if the training goes no further than this, we have only led these children to adapt themselves to a low order of life, almost a vegetable existence. Call to the spirit, says the prophecy, and the spirit shall enter into them, and they shall have life. Sagan, indeed, led the idiot from the vegetative to the intellectual life, from the education of the senses to general notions, from general notions to abstract thought, from abstract thought to morality. But when this wonderful work is accomplished, and by means of a minute physiological analysis, and of a gradual progression in method, the idiot has become a man. He is still an inferior in the midst of his fellow man, an individual who will never be able fully to adapt himself to the social environment. Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost. We are cut off for our parts. This gives us another reason why the tedious method of Sagan was so often abandoned. The tremendous difficulty of the means did not justify the end. Everyone felt this, and many said, there's still so much to be done for normal children. Having through actual experience justified my faith in Sagan's method, I withdrew from active work among deficients, and began a more thorough study of the works of Ita and Sagan. I felt the need of meditation. I did a thing which I had not done before, and which perhaps few students have been willing to do. I translated into Italian and copied out with my own hand the writings of these men from beginning to end, making for myself books as the old men addicts used to do before the diffusion of printing. I chose to do this by hand, in order that I might have time to weigh the sense of each word, and to read, in truth, the spirit of the author. I had just finished copying the 600 pages of Sagan's French volume, when I received from New York a copy of the English book published in 1866. This old volume had been found among the books discarded from the private library of a New York physician. I translated it with the help of an English friend. This volume did not add much in the way of new pedagogical experiments, but dealt with the philosophy of the experiences described in the first volume. The man who had studied abnormal children for 30 years expressed the idea that the physiological method, which has as its base the individual study of the pupil, in which forms its educative methods upon the analysis of physiological and psychological phenomena, must come also to be applied to normal children. This step, he believed, would show the way to a complete human regeneration. The voice of Sagan seemed to be like the voice of the forerunner crying in the wilderness, and my thoughts were filled with the immensity and importance of a work which should be able to reform the school and education. At this time, I was registered at the university as a student of philosophy, and followed the courses in experimental psychology, which had only recently been established in Italian universities, namely at Turin, Rome, and Naples. At the same time, I made researches in pedagogic anthropology in the elementary schools, studying this way the methods in organization used for the education of normal children. This work led to the teaching of pedagogic anthropology in the University of Rome. I had long wished to experiment with the methods for deficients in a first elementary class of normal children, but I had never thought of making use of the homes or institutions where very young children were cared for. It was pure chance that brought this new idea to my mind. It was near the end of the year 1906, and I had just returned from Milan, where I had been one of a committee at the International Exhibition for the Assignment of Prizes in the Subjects of Scientific Pedagogy and Experimental Psychology. A great opportunity came to me, for I was invited by Eduardo Talamu, the Director General of the Roman Association for Good Building, to undertake the organization of infant schools in its model tenements. It was Sr. Talamu's happy idea, together, together, together in a large room, all the little ones between the ages of three and seven, belonging to the families living in the tenement. The play and work of these children was to be carried on under the guidance of a teacher who should have her own apartment in the tenement house. It was intended that every house should have its school, and as the Association for Good Building already owned more than 400 tenements in Rome, the work seemed to offer tremendous possibilities of development. The first school was to be established in January 1907, in a large tenement house in the quarter of San Lorenzo. In the same quarter, the Association already owned 58 buildings, and according to Sr. Talamu's plans, we should soon be able to open 16 of these schools within the house. This new kind of school was christened by Senora Olga Lodi, a mutual friend of Sr. Talamu and myself, under the fortunate title of Casa dei Bambini, or the Children's House. Under this name, the first of our schools was opened on the 6th of January 1907, at 58 Via dei Marzi. It was confided to the care of Candida Nuccitelli, and was under my guidance and direction. From the very first, I perceived in all its immensity the social and pedagogical importance of such institutions, and while at that time my visions of a triumphant future seemed exaggerate, today many are beginning to understand that what I saw before was indeed the truth. On the 7th of April of the same year, 1907, a second Children's House was opened in the quarter of San Lorenzo, and on the 18th of October 1908, another was inaugurated by the Humanitarian Society in Milan, in the quarter inhabited by workingmen. The workshops of the same society undertook the manufacture of the materials which we used. On the 4th of November following, a third Children's House was opened in Rome, this time not in the people's quarter, but in a modern building for the middle classes, situated in Via Famagosta, in the part of the city known as the Prati di Castello. And in January 1909, Italian Switzerland began to transform its orphaned silence and children's homes in which the frebble system had been used into Children's Houses, adopting our methods and materials. The Children's House has a twofold importance, the social importance which assumes through its peculiarity of being a school within the house, and its purely pedagogic importance gained through its methods for the education of very young children, of which I now made a trial. As I have said, Signor Talamo's invitation gave me a wonderful opportunity for applying the methods used with deficients to normal children, not of the elementary school age, but of the age usual in infant asylums. If a parallel between the deficient and the normal child is possible, this will be during the period of early infancy, when the child who has not the force to develop, and he who is not yet developed, are in some ways alike. The very young child has not yet acquired a secure coordination of muscular movements, and therefore walks imperfectly, and is not able to perform the ordinary acts of life, such as fastening and unfastening its garments. The sense organs, such as the power of accommodation of the eye, are not yet completely developed. The language is primordial and shows those defects common to the speech of the very young child. The difficulty of fixing the attention, the general instability, etc., are characteristics which the normal infant and the deficient child have in common. Prayer also in his psychological study of children has turned aside to illustrate the parallel between pathological linguistic defects and those of normal children in the process of developing. Methods which made growth possible to the mental personality of the idiot, ought therefore to aid the development of young children, and should be so adapted as to constitute a hygienic education of the entire personality of a normal human being. Many defects which become permanent, such as speech defects, the child acquires through being neglected during the most important period of his age, the period between three and six, at which time he forms and establishes his principal functions. Here lies the significance of my pedagogical experiment in the children's houses. It represents the results of a series of trials made by me in the education of young children with methods already used with deficience. My work has not been in any way an application, pure and simple, of the methods of Sagan to young children, as anyone who will consult the works of the author will readily see. But it is nonetheless true that, underlying these two years of trial, there is a basis of experiment which goes back to the days of the French Revolution, and which represents the earnest work of the lives of Itar and Sagan. As for me, thirty years after the publication of Sagan's second book, I took up again the ideas and I may even say the work of this great man, with the same freshness of spirit with which he received the inheritance of the work and ideas of his master Itar. For ten years, I not only made practical experiments according to their methods, but through reverent meditation absorbed the works of these noble and consecrated men who have left to humanity most vital proof of their obscure heroism. Thus my ten years of work may in a sense be considered as a summing up of the forty years of work done by Itar and Sagan. Viewed in this light, fifty years of active work proceeded and prepared for this apparently brief trial of only two years, and I feel that I am not wrong in saying that these experiments represent the successive work of three physicians, who, from Itar to me, show in a greater or less degree the first steps along the path of psychiatry. As definite factors in the civilization of the people, the children's houses deserve a separate volume. They have, in fact, solved so many of the social and pedagogic problems in ways which have seemed to be utopian, that they are a part of that modern transformation of the home, which must most surely be realized before many years have passed. In this way, they touch directly the most important side of the social question, that which deals with the intimate or home life of the people. It is enough here to reproduce the inaugural discourse delivered by me on the occasion of the opening of the second children's house in Rome, and to present the rules and regulations which I arranged in accordance with the wishes of Signor Talamo. It will be noticed that the club to which I refer, and the dispensary, which is also an outpatient's institution for medical and surgical treatment, all such institutions being free to the inhabitants, have already been established. In the modern tenement, Casa Moderna, in the Prati di Castello, opened November 4, 1908, through the philanthropy of Signor Talamo, they are also planning to annex a communal kitchen. End of Chapter 2, History of Methods. It may be that the life lived by the very poor is a thing which some of you here today have never actually looked upon in all its degradation. You may have only felt the misery of deep human poverty through the medium of some great book, or some gifted actor may have made your soul vibrate with its horror. Let us suppose that in some such moment a voice should cry to you, Go look upon these homes of misery and blackest poverty, for there have sprung up amid the terror and the suffering oases of happiness, of cleanliness, of peace. The poor are to have an ideal house which shall be their own. In quarters where poverty and vice ruled, a work of moral redemption is going on. The soul of the people is being set free from the torpor of vice, from the shadows of ignorance. The little children too have a house of their own. The new generation goes forward to meet the new era, the time when misery shall no longer be deplored but destroyed. They go to meet the time when the dark dens of vice and wretchedness shall have become things of the past, and when no trace of them shall be found among the living. What a change of emotions we should experience. And how we should hasten here as the wise men guided by a dream and a star hastened to Bethlehem. I have spoken thus in order that you may understand the great significance, the real beauty, of this humble room, which seems like a bit of the house itself set apart by a mother's hand for the use and happiness of the children of the quarter. This is the second children's house, which has been established within the ill-favored quarter of San Lorenzo. The quarter of San Lorenzo is celebrated, for every newspaper in the city is filled with almost daily accounts of its wretched happenings, yet there are many who are not familiar with the origin of this portion of our city. It was never intended to build up here a tenement district for the people, and indeed, San Lorenzo is not the people's quarter, it is the quarter of the poor. It is the quarter where lives the underpaid, often unemployed working man, a common type in a city which has no factory industries. It is the home of him who undergoes the period of surveillance to which he is condemned after his prison sentences ended. They are all here, mingled, huddled together. The district of San Lorenzo sprang into being between 1884 and 1888 at the time of the Great Building Fever. No standards, either social or hygienic, guided these new constructions. The Amon Building was simply to cover with walls square foot after square foot of ground. The more space covered, the greater the gain of the interested banks and companies. All this with a complete disregard of the disastrous future which they were preparing. It was natural that no one should concern himself with the stability of the building he was creating, since in no case would the property remain in the possession of him who built it. When the storm burst in the shape of the inevitable building panic of 1888 to 1890, these unfortunate houses remained for a long time untenented. Then, little by little, the need of dwelling places began to make itself felt, and these great houses began to fill. Now, those speculators who had been so unfortunate as to remain possessors of these buildings could not and did not wish to add fresh capital to that already lost, so the houses constructed in the first place in utter disregard of all laws of hygiene and rendered still worse by having been used as temporary habitations came to be occupied by the poorest class in the city. The apartments not being prepared for the working class were too large, consisting of five, six or seven rooms. These were rented at a price which, while exceedingly low in relation to the size, was yet too high for any one family of very poor people. This led to the evil of subletting. The tenant who has taken a six room apartment at eight dollars a month sublets rooms at one dollar and a half or two dollars a month to those who can pay so much, and a corner of the room or a corridor to a poorer tenant, thus making an income of fifteen dollars or more over and above the cost of his own rent. This means that the problem of existence is in great part solved for him, and that in every case he adds to his income through usury. The one who holds the lease traffics in the misery of his fellow tenants, lending small sums at a rate which generally corresponds to twenty cents a week for the loan of two dollars, equivalent to an annual rate of five hundred percent. Thus we have in the evil of subletting the most cruel form of usury, that which only the poor know how to practice upon the poor. To this we must add the evils of crowded living, promiscuousness, immorality, crime. Every little while the newspapers uncover for us one of these interiors. A large family, growing boys and girls, sleep in one room, while one corner of the room is occupied by an outsider, a woman who receives the nightly visits of men. This is seen by the girls and the boys. Evil passions are kindled that lead to the crime and bloodshed which unveil for a brief instant before our eyes, in some lurid paragraph, this little detail of the mass of misery. Whoever enters for the first time one of these apartments is astonished and horrified, for the spectacle of genuine misery is not at all like the garish scene he has imagined. We enter here a world of shadows, and that which strikes us first is the darkness which, even though it be midday, makes it impossible to distinguish any of the details of the room. When the eye is grown accustomed to the gloom we perceive within the outlines of a bed upon which lies huddled a figure, someone ill and suffering. If we have come to bring money from some society for mutual aid, a candle must be lighted before the sum can be counted in the receipt signed. Oh, when we talk of social problems how often we speak vaguely, drawing upon our fancy for details instead of preparing ourselves to judge intelligently through a personal investigation of facts and conditions. We discuss earnestly the question of home study for school children, when for many of them home means a straw pallet thrown down in the corner of some dark hovel. We wish to establish circulating libraries that the poor may read at home. We plan to send among these people books which shall form their domestic literature, books through whose influence they shall come to higher standards of living. We hope through the printed page to educate these poor people in matters of hygiene, the morality of culture, and in this we show ourselves profoundly ignorant of their most crying needs, for many of them have no light by which to read. There lies before the social crusader of the present day, a problem more profound than that of the intellectual elevation of the poor, the problem, indeed, of life. In speaking of the children born in these places, even the conventional expressions must be changed, for they do not first see the light of day. They come into a world of gloom. They grow among the poisonous shadows which envelop overcrowded humanity. These children cannot be other than filthy in body, since the water supply in an apartment originally intended to be occupied by three or four persons, when distributed among twenty or thirty, is scarcely enough for drinking purposes. We Italians have elevated our word casa to the almost sacred significance of the English word home, the enclosed temple of domestic affection accessible only to dear ones. Far removed from this conception is the condition of the many who have no casa, but only ghastly walls within which the most intimate acts of life are exposed upon the pillory. Here there can be no privacy, no modesty, no gentleness. Here there's often not even light, nor air, nor water. It seems a cruel mockery to introduce here our idea of the home as essential to the education of the masses, and as furnishing along with the family the only solid basis for the social structure. In doing this we would be not practical reformers, but visionary poets. Conditions such as I have described to make it more decorous, more hygienic, for these people to take refuge in the street and to let their children live there. But how often these streets are the scene of bloodshed, of quarrel, of sites so vile as to be almost inconceivable. The papers tell us of women pursued and killed by drunken husbands, of young girls with the fear of worse than death, stoned by low men. Again we see untellable things, a wretched woman thrown by the drunken men who have preyed upon her, forth into the gutter. There, one day has come, the children of the neighborhood crowd about her like scavengers about their dead prey, shouting and laughing at the sight of this wreck of womanhood, kicking her bruised and filthy body as it lies in the mud of the gutter. Such spectacles of extreme brutality are possible here at the very gate of a cosmopolitan city, the mother of civilization and queen of the fine arts, because of a new fact which was unknown to past centuries, namely the isolation of the masses of the poor. In the Middle Ages leprosy was isolated, the Catholics isolated the Hebrews in the ghetto, but poverty was never considered a peril and an infamy so great that it must be isolated. The homes of the poor were scattered among those of the rich and the contrast between these was a commonplace in literature up to our own times. When I was a child in school, teachers, for the purpose of moral education, frequently resorted to the illustration of the kind princess who sends help to the poor cottage next door, or of the good children from the great house who carry food to the sick woman in the neighboring attic. Today all this would be as unreal and artificial as a fairy tale. The poor may no longer learn from their more fortunate neighbors' lessons in courtesy and good breeding. They no longer have the hope of help from them in cases of extreme need. We have herded them together far from us, without the walls, leaving them to learn of each other in the abandon of desperation, the cruel lessons of brutality and vice. Anyone in whom the social conscience is awake must see that we have thus created infected regions that threaten with deadly peril the city which, wishing to make all beautiful and shining according to an aesthetic and aristocratic ideal, has thrust without its walls whatever is ugly or diseased. When I passed for the first time through these streets, it was as if I found myself in a city upon which some great disaster had fallen. It seemed to me that the shadow of some recent struggle still oppressed the unhappy people who, with something very like terror in their pale faces, passed me in these silent streets. The very silence seemed to signify the life of a community interrupted, broken, not a carriage, not even the cheerful voice of the ever present street vendor, nor the sound of the hand organ playing in the hope of a few pennies, not even these things, so characteristic of poor quarters, enter here to lighten this sad and heavy silence. Observing these streets with their deep holes, the doorsteps broken and tumbling, we might almost suppose that this disaster had been in the nature of a great inundation which had carried the very earth away, but looking about us at the houses stripped of all decorations, the walls broken and scarred, we are inclined to think that it was perhaps an earthquake which has afflicted this quarter. Then, looking still more closely, we see that in all this thickly settled neighborhood there is not a shop to be found. So poor is the community that it has not been possible to establish even one of those popular bazaars where necessary articles are sold at so low a price as to put them within the reach of anyone. The only shops of any sort are the low wine shops which open their evil-smelling doors to the passerby. As we look upon all this, it is born upon us that the disaster which has placed its weight of suffering upon these people is not a convulsion of nature, but poverty. Poverty with its inseparable companion, vice. This unhappy and dangerous state of things to which our attention is called at intervals by newspaper accounts of violent and immoral crime, stirs the hearts and consciences of many who come to undertake among these people some work of generous benevolence. One might almost say that every form of misery inspires a special remedy and that all have been tried here from the attempt to introduce hygienic principles into each house to the establishment of craches, children's houses, and dispensaries. But what indeed is benevolence? Little more than an expression of sorrow it is pity translated into action. The benefits of such a form of charity cannot be great and through the absence of any continued income and the lack of organization it is restricted to a small number of persons. The great and widespread peril of evil demands, on the other hand, a broad and comprehensive work directed toward the redemption of the entire community. Only such an organization as working for the good of others shall itself grow and prosper through the general prosperity which it has made possible can make a place for itself in this quarter and accomplish a permanent good work. It is to meet this dire necessity that the great and kindly work of the Roman Association of Good Building has been undertaken. The advanced and highly modern way in which this work is being carried on is due to Eduardo Talamo, director general of the Association. His plans, so original, so comprehensive yet so practical, are without counterpart in Italy or elsewhere. This association was incorporated three years ago in Rome. Its plan being to acquire city tenements, remodel them, put them into a productive condition, and administer them as a good father of a family would. The first property acquired comprised a large portion of the quarter of San Lorenzo where today the association possesses fifty-eight houses occupying a ground space of about thirty thousand square meters and containing, independent of the ground floor, sixteen hundred small apartments. Thousands of people will in this way receive the beneficent influence of the protective reforms of the Good Building Association. Following its beneficent program, the association set about transforming these old houses, according to the most modern standards, paying as much attention to questions related to hygiene and morals as to those relating to buildings. The constructional changes would make the property of real and lasting value while the hygienic and moral transformation would, through the improved condition of the inmates, make the rent from these apartments a more definite asset. The association of Good Building therefore decided upon a program which would permit of a gradual attainment of their ideal. It is necessary to proceed slowly because it is not easy to empty a tenement house at a time when houses are scarce, and the humanitarian principles which govern the entire movement make it impossible to proceed more rapidly in this work of regeneration. So it is that the association has up to the present time transformed only three houses in the quarter of San Lorenzo. The plan followed in this transformation is as follows. A. To demolish in every building all portions of the structure not originally constructed with the idea of making homes, but from a purely commercial standpoint of making the rental role larger. In other words, the new management tore down those parts of the building which encumbered the central court, thus doing away with dark, ill ventilated apartments, and giving air and light to the remaining portion of the tenement. Broad airy courts take the place of the inadequate air and light shafts, rendering the remaining apartments more valuable and infinitely more desirable. B. To increase the number of stairways and to divide the room space in a more practical way, the large six or seven room suites are reduced to small apartments of one, two or three rooms and a kitchen. The importance of such changes may be recognized from the economic point of view of the proprietor, as well as from the standpoint of the moral and the material welfare of the tenant. Increasing a number of stairways diminishes that abuse of walls and stairs inevitable where so many persons must pass up and down. The tenants more readily learn to respect the building and acquire habits of cleanliness and order. Not only this, but in reducing the chances of contact among the inhabitants of the house, especially late at night, a great advance has been made in the matter of moral hygiene. The division of the house into small apartments has done much toward this moral regeneration. Each family is thus set apart. Homes are made possible, while the menacing evil of subletting, together with all its disastrous consequences of overcrowding and immorality, is checked in the most radical way. On one side, this arrangement lessens the burden of the individual leaseholders, and on the other increases the income of the proprietor, who now receives those earnings which were the unlawful gain of the system of subletting. When the proprietor who originally rented an apartment of six rooms for a monthly rental of eight dollars, makes such an apartment over into three small, sunny, and airy suites consisting of one room and a kitchen, is evident that he increases his income. The moral importance of this reform as it stands today is tremendous, for it has done away with those evil influences and low opportunities which arise from crowding and from promiscuous contact, and has brought to life among these people for the first time the gentle sentiment of feeling themselves free within their own homes in the intimacy of the family. But the project of the association goes beyond even this. The house which it offers to its tenants is not only sunny and airy, but in perfect order and repair, almost shining, and as if perfumed with purity and freshness. These good things, however, carry with them a responsibility which the tenant must assume if he wishes to enjoy them. He must pay an actual tax of care and goodwill. The tenant who receives a clean house must keep it so, must respect the walls from the big general entrance to the interior of his own little apartment. He who keeps his house in good condition receives the recognition and consideration due such a tenant. Thus all the tenants unite in an ennobling warfare for practical hygiene and end made possible by the simple task of conserving the already perfect conditions. Here indeed is something new. So far only our great national buildings have had a continued maintenance fund. Here, in these houses offered to the people, the maintenance is confided to a hundred or so working men, that is, to all the occupants of the building. This care is almost perfect. The people keep the house in perfect condition without a single spot. The building in which we find ourselves today has been for two years under the sole protection of the tenants and the work of maintenance has been left entirely to them, yet few of our houses can compare in cleanliness and freshness with this home of the poor. The experiment has been tried and the result is remarkable. The people acquire together with the love of home-making that of cleanliness. They come moreover to wish to beautify their homes. The association helps this by placing growing plants and trees in the courts and about the halls. Out of this honest rivalry and matters so productive of good grows a species of pride new to this quarter. This is the pride which the entire body of tenants takes and having the best cared for building and having risen to a higher and more civilized plane for living. They not only live in a house, but they know how to live. They know how to respect the house in which they live. This first impulse has led to other reforms. From the clean home will come personal cleanliness. Dirty furniture cannot be tolerated in a clean house and those persons living in a permanently clean house will come to desire personal cleanliness. One of the most important hygienic reforms of the association is that of the baths. Each remodeled tenement has a place set apart for bathrooms furnished with tubs or shower and having hot and cold water. All the tenants in regular turn may use these baths as, for example, in various tenements the occupants go according to turn to wash their clothes in the fountain of the court. This is a great convenience which invites the people to be clean. These hot and cold baths within the house are a great improvement upon the general public baths. In this way we make possible to these people at one and the same time health and refinement, opening not only to the sun, but to progress those dark habitations once the caves of misery. But in striving to realize its ideal of a semi-gratuitous maintenance of its buildings, the association met with the difficulty in regard to those children under school age, who must often be left alone during the entire day while their parents went out to work. These little ones, not being able to understand the educative motives which taught their parents to respect the house, became ignorant little vandals, defacing the walls and stairs. And here we have another reform the expense of which may be considered as indirectly assumed by the tenants as was the care of the building. This reform may be considered as the most brilliant transformation of attacks which progress and civilization have as yet devised. The children's house is earned by the parents through the care of the building. Its expenses are met by the sum that the association would have otherwise been forced to spend upon repairs. A wonderful climax this of moral benefits received. Within the children's house, which belongs exclusively to those children under school age, working mothers may safely leave their little ones and may proceed with a feeling of great relief and freedom to their own work. But this benefit, like that of the care of the house, is not conferred without attacks of care and of goodwill. The regulations posted on the wall announce it thus. The mothers are obliged to send their children to the children's house clean and to cooperate with the directress in the educational work. Two obligations, namely the physical and moral care of their own children. If the child shows through its conversation that the educational work of the school is being undermined by the attitude taken in his home, he will be sent back to his parents to teach them thus how to take advantage of their good opportunities. Those who give themselves over to low living, to fighting, and to brutality, shall feel upon them the weight of those little lives so needing care. They shall feel that they themselves have once more cast into the darkness of neglect those little creatures who are the dearest part of the family. In other words, the parents must learn to deserve the benefit of having within the house the great advantage of a school for their little ones. Goodwill, a willingness to meet the demands of the association, is enough, for the directress is ready and willing to teach them how. The regulations say that the mother must go at least once a week to confer with the directress, giving an account of her child, and accepting any helpful advice which the directress may be able to give. The advice thus given will undoubtedly prove most illuminating in regard to the child's health and education, since to each of the children's houses is assigned a physician, as well as a directress. The directress is always at the disposition of the mothers, and her life, as a cultured and educated person, is a constant example to the inhabitants of the house, for she is obliged to live in the tenement, and to be, therefore, a co-habitant with the families of all her little pupils. This is a fact of immense importance. Among these almost savage people, into these houses where at night no one dared to go about, unarmed, there has come not only to teach, but to live the very life they live, a gentle woman of culture, an educator by profession, who dedicates her time and her life to helping those about her. A true missionary, a moral queen among the people, she may, if she be possessed of sufficient tact and heart, reap an unheard of harvest of good from her social work. This house is verily new. It would seem a dream impossible of realisation, but it has been tried. It is true that there have been before this attempts made by generous persons to go and live among the poor to civilise them. But such work is not practical, unless the house of the poor is hygienic, making it possible for people of better standards to live there. Nor can such work succeed in its purpose, unless some common advantage or interest unites all of the tenants in an effort toward better things. This tenement is new because of the pedagogical organisation of the children's house. This is not simply a place where the children are kept, not just an asylum, but a true school for their education, and its methods are inspired by the rational principles of scientific pedagogy. The physical development of the child is followed, each child being studied from the anthropological standpoint. Linguistic exercises, a systematic sense training, and exercises which directly fit the child for the duties of practical life form the basis of the work done. The teaching is decidedly objective and presents an unusual richness of didactic material. It is not possible to speak of all this in detail. Unmust, however, mention that there already exists in connection with the school a bathroom, where the children may be given hot or cold baths, and where they may learn to take a partial bath, hands, face, neck, ears. Wherever possible, the association has provided a piece of ground in which the children may learn to cultivate the vegetables in common use. It is important that I speak here of the pedagogical process attained by the children's house as an institution. Those who are conversant with the chief problems of the school know that today much attention is given to a great principle, one that is ideal and almost beyond realisation, the union of the family and the school in the matter of educational aims. But the family is always something far away from the school, and is almost always regarded as rebelling against its ideals. It is a species of phantom upon which the school can never lay its hands. The home is closed not only to the pedagogical process, but often to social progress. We see here for the first time the possibility of realising the long talk of pedagogical ideal. We have put the school within the house, and this is not all. We have placed it within the house as the property of the collectivity, leaving under the eyes of the parents the whole life of the teacher in the accomplishment of her high mission. The idea of collective ownership of the school is new and very beautiful and profoundly educational. The parents know that the children's house is their property and is maintained by a portion of the rent they pay. The mothers may go at any hour of the day to watch, to admire, or to meditate upon the life there. It is in every way a continual stimulus to reflection and a fount of evident blessing and help to their own children. We may say that the mothers adore the children's house and the directress. How many delicate and thoughtful attentions these good mothers show the teacher of their little ones. They often leave sweets or flowers upon the sill of the school room window as a silent token, reverently, almost religiously given. And when after three years of such an officiate, the mothers send their children to the common schools, they will be excellently prepared to cooperate in the work of education, and will have acquired a sentiment rarely found even among the best classes, namely the idea that they must merit through their own conduct and with their own virtue the possession of an educated son. Another advance made by the children's houses as an institution is related to scientific pedagogy. This branch of pedagogy, here to fore, being based upon the anthropological study of the pupil whom it is to educate, has touched only a few of the positive questions which tend to transform education. Raman is not only a biological but a social product, and the social environment of individuals in the process of education is the home. Scientific pedagogy will seek in vain to better the new generation if it does not succeed in influencing also the environment within which this new generation grows. I believe therefore that in opening the house to the light of new truths and to the progress of civilization we have solved the problem of being able to modify directly the environment of the new generation, and have thus made it possible to apply, in a practical way, the fundamental principles of scientific pedagogy. The children's house marks still another triumph. It is the first step toward the socialization of the house. The inmates find under their own roof the convenience of being able to leave their little ones in a place, not only safe, but where they have every advantage. And let it be remembered that all the mothers in the tenement may enjoy this privilege, going away to their works with easy minds. Until the present time, only one class in society may have this advantage. Rich women were able to go about their various occupations and amusements, leaving their children in the hands of a nurse or governess. Today the women of the people who live in these remodeled houses may say, like the great lady, I have left my son with a governess or the nurse. More than this, they may add, like the princess of the blood, and the house physician watches over them and directs their sane and sturdy growth. These women, like the most advanced class of English and American mothers, possess a biographical chart which, filled for the mother by the directress of the doctor, gives her the most practical knowledge of her child's growth and condition. We are all familiar with the ordinary advantages of the communistic transformation of the general environment. For example, the collective use of railway carriages, of street lights, of the telephone, all these are great advantages. Enormous production of useful articles brought about by industrial progress makes possible to all clean clothes, carpets, curtains, table delicacies, better tableware, et cetera. Making of such benefits generally tends to level social cast. All this we have seen in its reality. But the communizing of persons is new that the collectivity shall benefit from the services of the servant, the nurse, the teacher. This is a modern ideal. We have in the children's houses a demonstration of this ideal, which is unique in Italy or elsewhere. Its significance is most profound, for it corresponds to a need of the times. We can no longer say that the convenience of leaving their children takes away from the mother a natural social duty of first importance, namely that of caring for and educating her tender offspring. No, for today the social and economic evolution calls the working woman to take her place among wage earners and takes away from her by force those duties which would be most dear to her. The mother must, in any event, leave her child and often with the pain of knowing him to be abandoned. The advantages furnished by such institutions are not limited to the labouring classes, but extend also to the general middle class, many of whom work with the brain. Teachers, professors, often obliged to give private lessons after school hours frequently leave their children to the care of some rough and ignorant maid of all work. Indeed, the first announcement of the children's house was followed by a deluge of letters from persons of the better class demanding that these helpful reforms be extended to their dwellings. We are then communising a maternal function, a feminine duty within the house. We may see here in this practical act the solving of many of women's problems which have seemed to many impossible of solution. What then will become of the home, one asks if the woman goes away from it. The home will be transformed and will assume the functions of the woman. I believe that in the future of society other forms of communistic life will come. Take, for example, the infirmary. Woman is a natural nurse for the dear ones of her household. But who does not know how often in these days she is obliged to tear herself unwillingly from the bedside of her sick to go to her work? Competition is great and her absence from her post threatens the tenure of her position from which she draws the means of support. To be able to leave the sick one in a house infirmary to which she may have access any free moments she may have and where she is at liberty to watch during the night would be an evident advantage to be the progress made in the matter of family hygiene in all that relates to isolation and disinfection. Who does not know the difficulties of a poor family when one child is ill of some contagious disease and should be isolated from the others? Often such a family may have no kindred of friends in the city to whom the other children may be sent. Much more distant but not impossible is the communal kitchen where the dinner ordered in the morning is sent to the proper time by means of a dumb waiter to the family dining room. Indeed, this has been successfully tried in America. The reform would be of the greatest advantage to those families of the middle class who must confide their health and the pleasures of the table to the hands of an ignorant servant who ruins the food. At present the only alternative in such cases is to go outside the home to some cafe where a cheap table d'hote may be had. Indeed, the transformation of the house must compensate for the loss in the family of the presence of the woman who has become a social wage earner. In this way the house will become a center drawing into itself all those good things which have hithertube been lacking schools, public baths, hospitals, etc. Thus the tendency will be to change the tenement houses which have been places of vice and peril into centers of education, of refinement, of comfort. This will be helped if, besides the schools for the children, there may grow up also clubs and reading rooms for the inhabitants, especially for the men, who will find there a way to pass the evening pleasantly and decently. The tenement club, as possible and as useful in all social classes as is the children's house, will do much toward closing the gambling houses and saloons for the great moral advantage of the people. And I believe that the Association of Good-Building will before long establish such clubs in its reformed tenements here in the quarter of San Lorenzo, clubs where the tenants may find newspapers and books and where they may hear simple and helpful lectures. We are then very far from the dreaded dissolution of the home and of the family through the fact that women has been forced by changed social and economic conditions to give her time and strength to remunerative work. The home itself assumes the gentle feminine attributes of the domestic housewife. The day may come when the tenant, having given the proprietor of the house a certain sum, shall receive and exchange whatever is necessary to the comfort of life. In other words, the administration shall become the steward of the family. The house, thus considered, tends to assume in its evolution a significance more exalted than even the English word home expresses. It does not consist of walls alone, though these walls be the pure and the shining guardians of that intimacy, which is the sacred symbol of the family. The home shall become more than this. It lives. It has a soul. It may be said to embrace its inmates with the tender, consoling arms of woman. It is the giver of moral life, of blessings. It cares for. It educates. And it feeds the little ones. Within it, the tired workman shall find rest and newness of life. He shall find there the intimate life of the family and its happiness. The new woman, like the butterfly come forth from the chrysalis, shall be liberated from all those attributes which once made her desirable to man only as the source of the material blessings of existence. She shall be, like man, an individual. She shall seek blessing and repose within the house, the house which has been reformed and communized. She shall wish to be loved for herself and not as a giver of comfort and repose. She shall wish a love free from every form of servile labor. The goal of human love is not the egotistical end of assuring its own satisfaction. It is the sublime goal of multiplying the forces of the free spirit, making it almost divine and within such beauty and light, perpetuating this species. This ideal love is made incarnate by Friedrich Nietzsche, in the woman of Zarathustra, who conscientiously wished her son to be better than she. Why do you desire me? She asks the man. Perhaps because of the perils of a solitary life? In that case, go far from me. I wish the man who has conquered himself, who has made his soul great. I wish the man who has conserved a clean and robust body. I wish the man who desires to unite with me, body and soul, to create a son, a son better, more perfect, stronger than any created here to for. To better the species consciously, cultivating his own health, his own virtue, this should be the goal of man's married life. It is a sublime concept of which, as yet few think. And the socialized home of the future, living, provident, kindly, educator and comforter is the true and worthy home of those human mates who wish to better the species and to send the race forward triumphant into the eternity of life. Rules and regulations of the children's houses. The Roman Association of Good Building hereby establishes within its tenement house number, insert number, a children's house in which may be gathered together all children under common school age belonging to the families of the tenants. The chief aim of the children's house is to offer free of charge to the children of those parents who are obliged to absent themselves for their work, the personal care which the parents are not able to give. In the children's house, attention is given to the education, the health, the physical and moral development of the children. This work is carried on in a way suited to the age of the children. There shall be connected with the children's house, a directorous, a physician and a caretaker. The program and hours of the children's house shall be fixed by the directorous. There may be admitted to the children's house, all the children in the tenement between the ages of three and seven. The parents who wish to avail themselves of the advantages of the children's house pay nothing. They must, however, assume these binding obligations. A. To send their children to the children's house at the appointed time, clean in body and clothing and provided with a suitable apron. B. To show the greatest respect and deference toward the directorous and toward all persons connected with the children's house and to cooperate with the directorous herself in the education of the children. Once a week, at least, the mothers may talk with the directorous, giving her information concerning the home life of the child and receiving helpful advice from her. There shall be expelled from the children's house. A. Those children who present themselves unwashed or in soiled clothing. B. Those who show themselves to be incorrigible. C. Those whose parents fail in respect to the persons connected with the children's house or who destroy through bad conduct the educational work of the institution. End of Chapter 3. Inaugural Address delivered on the occasion of the opening of one of the children's houses. Recording by Walter Holland, Cambridge, Massachusetts, log.waxbanks.net. Chapter 4 of the Montessori Method. This is a Libra Fox recording. All Libra Fox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org. Recorded by Eugene Fairfield. The Montessori Method. By Maria Montessori. Translated by Ann E. George. Chapter 4. Pedagogical Methods Used in the Children's Houses. As soon as I knew that I had at my disposal a class of little children, it was my wish to make of this school a field for scientific experimental pedagogy and child psychology. I started with a view in which one concurs, namely that child psychology does not exist. Indeed, experimental research is in regard to childhood as, for example, those of Pryor and Baldwin have been made upon not more than two or three subjects, children of the investigators. Moreover, the instruments of psychometry must be greatly modified and simplified before they can be used with children who do not lend themselves passively as subjects for experimentation. Child psychology can be established only through the method of external observation. We must remounts all idea of making any record of internal states, which can be revealed only by the introspection of the subject himself. The instruments of psychometric research as applied to pedagogy have, up to the present time, been limited to the asthesiometric phase of the study. My intention was to keep in touch with the researchers of others but to make myself independent of them, proceeding to my work without preconceptions of any kind. I retained as the only essential, the affirmation, or rather, the definition of want, that all methods of experimental psychology may be reduced to one, namely, carefully recorded observation of the subject. Treating of children, another factor must necessarily intervene, the study of development. Here, too, I retained the same general criterion, but without clinging to any dogma about the activity of the child according to age. Anthropological consideration, in regards to the physical development, my first thought was given to the regulating of anthropometric observations and to the selection of the most important observations to be made. I designed an anthropometer provided with a metric scale, varying between 0.50 meter and 1.5 meters. A small stool, 30 centimeters high, could be placed upon the floor of the anthropometer for measurements taken in the sitting position. I now advise making the anthropometer with a platform on either side of the pole bearing the scale so that on one side the total stature can be measured and on the other the height of the body when seated. In the second case, the zero is indicated at 30 centimeters. That is, it corresponds to the seat of the stool which is fixed. The indicators on the vertical post are independent one of the other and this makes it possible to measure two children at the same time. In this way, the inconvenience and waste of time caused by having to move the seat about is obviated and also the trouble of having to calculate the difference in the metric scale. Having thus facilitated the technique of the researchers, I decided to take the measurements of the children's stature seated and standing every month and in order to have these regulated as exactly as possible in the relation to development and also to give greater regularity to the research work of the teacher. I made a rule that the measurements should be taken on the day on which the child completed each month of his age. For this purpose, I designed a register arranged on the following plan. Chart. Column. Days of the month. Column. September. Stature. Subcolumn. Standing. Sitting. New column. October. Stature. Subcolumn. Standing. Sitting. Etc. End of chart. The spaces opposite each number are used to register the name of the child born on that day of the month. Thus the teacher knows which scholars she must measure on the days which are marked on the calendar and she fills in his measurements to correspond with the month in which he was born. In this way a most exact registration can be arrived at without having the teacher feel that she is overburdened or fatigued. With regard to the weight of the child I have arranged that it shall be taken every week on a pair of scales which I have placed in the dressing room where the children are given their bath. According to the day on which the child is born Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. We have him weighed when he is ready to take a bath. Thus the children's baths know small matter when we consider a class of fifty are subdivided into seven days and from three to five children go to the bath every day. Certainly, theoretically, a daily bath would be desirable but in order to manage this a large bath or a number of small ones would be necessary so that a good many children could be bathed at once. Even a weekly bath entails many difficulties and sometimes has to be given up. In any case I have distributed the taking of the weight in the order stated with the intention of thus arranging for and making sure of periodical baths. Incidentally, I may say that I have invented a means of bathing children contemporaneously without having a large bath. In order to manage this I thought of having a long trough with supports at the bottom on which small separate tubs could rest with rather large holes in the bottom. The little tubs are filled from the large trough into which the water runs and then goes into all the little tubs together by the law of the leveling of liquids going through the holes in the bottom. When the water is settled it does not pass and pub the tub and the children will each have their own bath. The emptying of the trough brings with it the simultaneous emptying of the little tubs which being of light metal will be easily moved from the bottom with big tub in order to clean it. It is not difficult to imagine arranging a cork for the hole at the bottom. These are only projects for the future. End footnote. The form here given shows the register of which we use in recording the weight of the children. Every page of the register corresponds to a month. It seems to me that anthropological measurements the taking and recording of which I have just described should be the only ones with which the school mistress need occupy herself. And therefore the only ones which should be taken actually within the school. It is my plan that other measurements should be taken by a physician who either is or is preparing to be a specialist in infant anthropology. In the meantime I take these special measurements myself. Chart. September. Columns. First week pounds. Second week pounds. Third week pounds. Fourth week pounds. Grows. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. The examination made by the physician must necessarily be complex and to facilitate and regulate the taking of these measurements I have designed and had printed biological charts of which I here give an example. Chart. Number. Date. Name and surname. Age. Name of parents. Mother's age. Father's age. Professions. Details of hereditary antecedents. Personal antecedents. Anthropological notes. Standing stature. Weight. Chest measure. Seated stature. Index of stature. Ponderal index. Heads or conference. Distance front to back. Distance across. Sepallic index. Physical constitution. Condition of muscles. Color of skin. Color of hair. Notes. End chart. Note. For the index of stature, Dr. Montessori combines the seated and standing stature. End note. As we'll be seeing, these charts are very simple. I made them so because I wish the doctor and the school mistress to be able to use them freely and independently. By this method, the anthropometrical records are arranged in an orderly way while the simplicity of the mechanism and the clearness of the charts guarantee the making of such observations as I have considered fundamental. Referring to the position's biographical chart, I advise that once a year the following measurements be taken. Circumference of the head. The two greater diameters of the head. The circumference of the chest. Hemicin, cephalic, ponderal, and stature indices. Further information concerning the selection of these measurements may be found in my treatise, Anthropologia pedagogica. The physician is asked to take these measurements during the week, or at least within the month, in which the child completes a year of his age, and if it is possible on the birthday itself. In this way, the task of the physician will also be made easier because of its regularity. We have, at the most, 50 children in each of our schools and the birthdays of these scattered over the 365 days of the year, make it possible for the physician to take his measurements from time to time so that the burden of his work is not heavy. It is the duty of the teacher to inform the doctor of the birthdays of the children. The taking of these anthropological measurements has also an educational side to it, for the pupils, when they leave the children's house, know how to answer with clearness and certainty the following questions. On what day of the week were you born? On what day of the month? When does your birthday come? And with all these, they will have acquired habits of order and, above all, they will have formed the habit of observing themselves. Indeed, I may say here that the children take a great pleasure in being measured. At the first glance of the teacher and at the word stature, the child begins instantly to take off his shoes, laughing and running to place himself upon the platform of the anthropometer, placing himself of his own accord in the normal position so perfectly that the teacher needs only to arrange the indicator and read the result. Aside from the measurements which the physician takes with the ordinary instruments, calipers and metal yard measure, he makes observations upon the children's coloring, condition of their muscles, state of their lymphatic lands, the condition of the blood, etc. He notices any malformations, describes any pathological conditions with care, any tendency of rickets, infant paralysis, defective sight, etc. This objective study of the child will guide the doctor when he finds it advisable to talk with the parents concerning its condition. Following this, when the doctor has found it desirable, he makes a thorough sanitary inspection of the home of the child, prescribing necessary treatment and eventually doing away with such troubles as eczema, inflammation of the ear, feverish conditions, intestinal disturbances, etc. This careful following of the case in hand is greatly assisted by the existence of the dispensary within the house which makes feasible direct treatment and continual observation. I have found that the usual questions ask patients who present themselves at the clinics are not adapted for use in her schools, as the members of the families living in these tenements are for the greater part perfectly normal. I therefore encourage the directress of the school to gather from her conversation with the mother's information of a more practical sort. She informs herself as to the education of the parents, their habits, the wages earned, the money spent for household purposes, etc. And from all this she outlines a history of each family much on the order of those used by the play. This method is, of course, practical only where the directress lives among the families of her scholars. In every case, however, the physician's advice to the mother's concerning the hygienic care of each particular child, as well as his directions concerning hygiene in general, will prove most helpful. The directress should ask us to go between in these matters since she is in the confidence of the mother's and since from her such advice comes naturally. Environment Schoolroom furnishings The method of observation must undoubtedly include the methodical observation of the morphological growth of the pupils. But let me repeat that while this element necessarily enters, it is not upon this particular kind of observation that the method is established. The method of observation is established upon one fundamental base, the liberty of the pupils in their spontaneous manifestations. With this in view, I first turned my attention to the question of environment. And this, of course, included the furnishing of the schoolroom. In considering an ample playground with space for a garden as an important part of the school environment, I am not suggesting anything new. The novelty lies, perhaps, in my idea for the use of this open air space, which is to be in direct communication with the schoolroom so that the children may be free to go and come as they like throughout the entire day. I shall speak of this more fully later on. The principal modification in the matter of school furnishings is the abolition of desks and benches or stationary chairs. I have had tables made with wide, solid, octagonal legs, spreading in such a way that the tables are, at the same time, solidly firm and very light. So light, indeed, the two four-year-old children can easily carry them about. These tables are rectangular and sufficiently large to accommodate two children along the long side. They're being roomed for three if they sit rather close together. There are smaller tables at which one child can work alone. I also designed and had manufactured little chairs. My first plan for these was to have them cane-seeded, but experiences shown the way around these to be so great that I now have chairs made entirely of wood. These are very light and of an attractive shape. In addition to these, I have in each schoolroom a number of comfortable little armchairs, some of wood and some of waker. Another piece of our school furniture consists of a little wash stand, so though that it can be used by even a three-year-old child. It is painted with a waterproof enamel and, besides the broad, upper and lower shelves which hold the little white enamel basins and pitchers, there are small side shelves for the soap dishes, nail brushes, towels, etc. There is also receptacle into which the basins may be emptied. Wherever possible, a small cupboard provides each child with a space where he may keep his own soap, nail brush, tool brush, etc. In each of our schoolrooms, we have provided a series of long, low cupboards, especially designed for the reception of the lidatic materials. The doors of these cupboards open easily, and the care of the materials is confided to the children. The tops of these cases furnish room for potted plants, small aquariums, or for the various toys with which the children are allowed to play freely. We have ample blackboard space, and these boards are so hung as to be easily used by the smallest child. Each blackboard is provided with a small case in which are kept chalk and the white cloths, which we use instead of the ordinary erasers. Above the blackboards are hung attractive pictures, chosen carefully, representing simple scenes in which children would naturally be interested. Among the pictures in our children's house in Rome, we have hung a copy of Raphael's Madonna della Segiola, and this picture we have chosen as the emblem of the children's houses. For indeed, these children's houses represent not only social progress, but universal human progress and are closely related to the elevation of the idea of motherhood, to the progress of woman and to the protection of her offspring. In this beautiful conception, Raphael has not only shown us the Madonna as a divine mother holding in her arms the babe who is greater than she, but by the side of the symbol of all motherhood he has placed the figure of St. John, who represents humanity. So in Raphael's picture we see humanity rendering homage to maternity. Maternity, the sublime fact and the definite triumph of humanity. In addition to this beautiful symbolism, the picture has a great value as being one of the greatest works of art of Italy's greatest artist. And that the days shall come when the children's houses shall be established throughout the world. It is our wish that this picture of Raphael shall have its place in each of the schools, speaking eloquently of the country in which they originated. The children, of course, cannot comprehend the symbolic significance of the Madonna of the chair, but they will see something more beautiful than that which they feel in more ordinary pictures in which they see mother, father and children. And the constant companionship with this picture will awaken in their heart a religious impression. This, then, is the environment which I have selected for the children we wish to educate. I know the first objection, which will present itself to the minds of persons accustomed to the old-time methods of discipline. The children in these schools moving about will overturn the little tables and chairs, producing noise and disorder. But this is a prejudice which has long existed in the minds of those dealing with little children and for which there is no real foundation. Swaddling clothes have, for many centuries, been considered necessary to the newborn babe, walking chairs to the child who was learning to walk. So, in the school, we still believe it necessary to have heavy desks and chairs fastened to the floor. All of these things are based upon the idea that the child should grow in immobility and upon the strange prejudice that, in order to execute any educational movement, we must maintain a special position of the body as we believe that we must assume a special position when we are about to pray. Our little tables and our various types of chairs are all light and easily transported and we permit the child to select the position in which he finds most comfortable. He can make himself comfortable as well as see himself in his own place. And this freedom is not only an external sign of liberty but a means of education. If by an awkward movement, a child upsets chair which falls noisily to the floor, he will have an evident proof of his own incapacity. The same movement had it taken place amid stationary benches would have passed unnoticed by him. Thus the child has some means by which he can correct himself and having done so, he will have before him the actual proof of the power he has gained. The little tables and chairs remain firm and silent each in its own place. It is plainly seen that the child has learned to command his movements. In the old method, the proof of discipline attained lay in effect entirely contrary to this. That is, in the immobility and silence of the child himself. Immobility and silence which hindered the child from learning to move with grace and with discernment and left him so untrained that when he found himself in an environment where the benches and chairs were not nailed to the floor, he was not able to move about without overturning lighter pieces of furniture. In the children's houses, the child will not only learn to move gracefully and properly, but will come to understand the reason for such deportment. The ability to move which he acquires here will be of use to him all his life. While he is still a child, he becomes capable of conducting himself correctly and yet with perfect freedom. The directress of the Casa de Bambini et at Milan instructed under one of the windows a long, narrow shelf upon which he placed the little tables containing the metal geometric forms used in the first lessons in design. But the shelf was too narrow and it often happened that the children in selecting the pieces which they wished to use would allow one of the little tables to fall to the floor, thus upsetting with great noise all the metal pieces which it held. The directress intended to have the shelf changed, but the carpenter was slow in coming. And while waiting for him, she discovered that the children had learned to handle these materials so carefully that in spite of the narrow and sloping shelf, the little tables no longer fell to the floor. The children, by carefully directing their movements, had overcome the effect in this piece of furniture. The simplicity or imperfection of external objects often serves to develop the activity and the dexterity of the pupils. This has been one of the surprises of our method as applied in the children's houses. It seems all very logical. And now that it has been actually tried and put into words, it won no doubt seem to everyone as simple as the egg of Christopher Columbus. CHAPTER V. OF THE MONTASORI 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 Leon Meyer. The Montasori Method by Maria Montasori. Translated by Anne E. George. CHAPTER V. DISCIPLINE The pedagogical method of observation has for its base the liberty of the child. And liberty is activity. Discipline must come through liberty. Here is a great principle which is difficult for the followers of common school methods to understand. How shall one obtain discipline in a class of free children? Certainly in our system we have a concept of discipline very different from that commonly accepted. If discipline is founded upon liberty, the discipline itself must necessarily be active. We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined. We call an individual disciplined when he is master of himself and can therefore regulate his own conduct when it shall be necessary to follow some rule of life. Such a concept of active discipline is not easy to comprehend or to apply, but certainly it contains a great educational principle very different from the old time absolute and undiscussed coercion to immobility. A special technique is necessary to the teacher who is to lead the child along such a path of discipline if she is to make it possible for him to continue in this way all his life advancing indefinitely toward perfect self-mastery. Since the child now learns to move rather than to sit still he prepares himself not for the school but for life for he becomes able through habit and through practice to perform easily and correctly the simple acts of social or community life. The discipline to which the child habituates himself here is in its character not limited to the school environment but extends to society. The liberty of the child should have as its limit the collective interest as its form what we universally consider good breeding. We must therefore check in the child whatever offends or annoys others or whatever tends toward rough or ill-bred acts. But all the rest every manifestation having useful scope whatever it be and under whatever form it expresses itself must not only be permitted but must be observed by the teacher. Here lies the essential point from her scientific preparation the teacher must bring not only the capacity but the desire to observe natural phenomena. In our system she must become a passive much more than an active influence and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer. The activity must lie in the phenomenon. Such principles assuredly have a place in schools for little children who are exhibiting the first psychic manifestations of their lives. We cannot know the consequences of suffocating a spontaneous action at the time when the child is just beginning to be active. Perhaps we suffocate life itself. Humanity shows itself in all its intellectual splendor during this tender age as the sun shows itself at the dawn and the flower in the first unfolding of the petals. And we must respect religiously, reverently these first indications of individuality. If any educational act is to be efficacious it will be only that which tends to help toward the complete unfolding of this life. To be thus helpful it is necessary rigorously to avoid the arrest of spontaneous movements and the imposition of arbitrary tasks. It is of course understood that here we do not speak of useless or dangerous acts for these must be suppressed, destroyed. Actual training and practice are necessary to fit for this method teachers who have not been prepared for scientific observation. And such training is especially necessary to those who have been accustomed to the old domineering methods of the common school. My experiences in training teachers for the work in my schools did much to convince me of the great distance between these methods and those. Even an intelligent teacher who understands the principle finds much difficulty in putting it into practice. She cannot understand that her new task is apparently passive like that of the astronomer who sits immovable before the telescope while the world's world through space. This idea that life acts of itself and that in order to study it to divine its secrets or to direct its activity it is necessary to observe it and to understand it without intervening. This idea I say is very difficult for anyone to assimilate and to put into practice. The teacher has too thoroughly learned to be the one free activity of the school. It has for too long been virtually her duty to suffocate the activity of her pupils. When in the first days in one of the children's houses she does not obtain order and silence she looks about her embarrassed as if asking the public to excuse her and calling upon those present to testify her innocence. In vain do we repeat to her that the disorder of the first moment is necessary. And finally when we oblige her to do nothing but watch she asks if she had not better resign since she is no longer a teacher. But when she begins to find it her duty to discern which are the acts to hinder and which are those to observe the teacher of the old school feels a great void within herself and begins to ask if she will not be inferior to her new task. In fact, she who was not prepared finds herself for a long time abashed and impudent whereas the broader the teacher's scientific culture and practice in experimental psychology the sooner will come for her the marvel of unfolding life and her interest in it. Notari in his novel My Millionaire Uncle which is a criticism of modern customs gives with that quality of vividness which is peculiar to him a most eloquent example of the old time methods of discipline. The uncle when a child was guilty of such a number of disorderly acts that he practically upset the whole town and in desperation he was confined in a school. Here Fufu as he was called experiences his first wish to be kind and feels the first moving of his soul when he is near to the pretty little Fufeta and learns that she is hungry and has no luncheon. He glanced around, looked at Fufeta, rose, took his little lunch-basket and without saying a word placed it in her lap. Then he ran away from her and without knowing why he did so hung his head and burst into tears. My uncle did not know how to explain to himself the reason for the sudden outburst. He had seen for the first time two kind eyes full of sad tears and he had felt moved within himself and at the same time a great shame had rushed over him. The shame of eating near to one who had nothing to eat. Not knowing how to express the impulse of his heart nor what to say in asking her to accept the offer of his little basket nor how to invent an excuse to justify his offering it to her he remained the victim of this first deep movement of his little soul. Fufeta, all confused, ran to him quickly. With great gentleness she drew away the arm in which he had hidden his face. Do not cry, Fufu, she said to him softly, almost as if pleading with him. She might have been speaking to her beloved ragdoll. So motherly and intent was her little face and so full of gentle authority her manner. Then the little girl kissed him and my uncle, yielding to the influence which had filled his heart, put his arms around her neck and, still silent and sobbing, kissed her in return. At last, sighing deeply, he wiped from his face and eyes the damp traces of his emotion and smiled again. A strident voice called out from the other end of the courtyard, here, here, you two down there, be quick with you, inside, both of you. It was the teacher, the guardian. She crushed that first gentle stirring and the soul of a rebel, with the same blind brutality that she would have used toward two children engaged in a fight. It was the time for all to go back into the school and everybody had to obey the rule. Thus I saw my teachers act in the first days of my practice school in the children's houses. They almost involuntarily recalled the children to immobility without observing and distinguishing the nature of the movements they repressed. There was, for example, a little girl who gathered her companions about her and then, in the midst of them, began to talk and gesticulate. The teacher at once ran to her, took hold of her arms and told her to be still. But I, observing the child, saw that she was playing at being teacher or mother to the others and teaching them the morning prayer, the invocation to the saints and the sign of the cross. She already showed herself as a director. Another child who continually made disorganized and misdirected movements and who was considered abnormal, one day with an expression of intense attention said about moving the tables. Instantly they were upon him to make him stand still because he had made too much noise. Yet this was one of the first manifestations in this child of movements that were coordinated and directed toward a useful end. And it was, therefore, an action that should have been respected. In fact, after this, the child began to be quiet and happy like the others whenever he had any small objects to move about and to arrange upon his desk. It often happened that while the directorists were placed in the boxes various materials that had been used, a child would draw near, picking up the objects with the evident desire of imitating the teacher. The first impulse was to send the child back to her place with the remark, let it alone, go to your seat. Yet the child expressed by this act a desire to be useful. The time with her was ripe for a lesson in order. One day the children had gathered themselves laughing and talking into a circle about a basin of water containing some floating toys. We had in the school a little boy, barely two and a half years old. He had been left outside the circle alone, and it was easy to see that he was filled with intense curiosity. I watched him from a distance with great interest. He first drew near to the other children and tried to force his way among them, but he was not strong enough to do this, and then he stood looking about him. The expression of thought on his little face was intensely interesting. I wished that I had had a camera so that I might have photographed him. His eye lighted upon a little chair, and evidently he made up his mind to place it behind the group of children and then to climb up on it. He began to move toward the chair, his face illuminated with hope, but at that moment the teacher seized him brutally, or perhaps he would have said gently, in her arms, and lifting him up above the heads of the other children showed him the basin of water, saying, come, poor little one, you shall see too. Undoubtedly the child, seeing the floating toys, did not experience the joy that he was about to feel through conquering the obstacle with his own force. The sight of those objects could be of no advantage to him, while his intelligent efforts would have developed his inner powers. The teacher hindered the child, in this case, from educating himself without giving him any compensating good in return. The little fellow had been about to feel himself a conqueror and he found himself held within two imprisoning arms, impudent. The expression of joy, anxiety, and hope, which had interested me so much, faded from his face and left on it the stupid expression of the child who knows that others will act for him. When the teachers were wary of my observations, they began to allow the children to do whatever they pleased. I saw children with their feet on the tables or with their fingers in their noses and no intervention was made to correct them. I saw others push their companions and I saw dawn in the faces of these an expression of violence and not the slightest attention on the part of the teacher. Then I had to intervene to show with what absolute rigor it is necessary to hinder and little by little suppress all those things which we must not do so that the child may come to discern clearly between good and evil. If discipline is to be lasting, its foundations must be laid in this way and these first days are the most difficult for the directorous. The first idea that the child must acquire in order to be actively disciplined is that of the difference between good and evil. And the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity as often happens in the case of the old time discipline. And all this because our aim is to discipline for activity, for work, for good, not for immobility, not for passivity, not for obedience. A room in which all the children move about usefully, intelligently and voluntarily without committing any rough or rude act would seem to me a classroom very well disciplined indeed. To seat the children in rows, as in the common schools, to assign to each little one a place and to propose that they shall sit thus quietly, observant of the order of the whole class as an assemblage, this can be attained later as the starting place of collective education. For also in life it sometimes happens that we must all remain seated and quiet when, for example, we attend a concert or a lecture. And we know that even to us as grown people this costs no little sacrifice. If we can, when we have established individual discipline, arrange the children, sending each one to his own place and order, trying to make them understand the idea that thus place they look well and that it is a good thing to be thus placed in order, that it is a good and pleasing arrangement in the room, this ordered and tranquil adjustment of theirs, then their remaining in their places quiet and silent is the result of a species of lessen, not an imposition. To make them understand the idea without calling their attention too forcibly to the practice, to have them assimilate a principle of collective order, that is the important thing. If after they have understood this idea, they rise, speak, change to another place, they no longer do this without knowing and without thinking, but they do it because they wish to rise, to speak, et cetera. That is, from that state of repose and order well understood, they depart in order to undertake some voluntary action. And knowing that there are actions which are prohibited, this will give them a new impulse to remember to discriminate between good and evil. The movements of the children from the state of order become always more coordinated and perfect with the passing of the days. In fact, they learn to reflect upon their own acts. Now, with the idea of order understood by the children, the observation of the way in which the children pass from the first disordered movements to those which are spontaneous and ordered, this is the book of the teacher. This is the book which must inspire her actions. It is the only one in which she must read and study if she is to become a real educator. For the child with such exercises makes, to a certain extent, a selection of his own tendencies, which were at first confused in the unconscious disorder of his movements. It is remarkable how clearly individual differences show themselves if we proceed in this way. The child, conscious and free, reveals himself. There are those who remain quietly in their seats, apathetic or drowsy. Others who leave their places to quarrel, to fight, or to overturn the various blocks and toys. And then there were those others who set out to fulfill a definite and determined act, moving a chair to some particular spot and sitting down in it, moving one of the unused tables and arranging upon it the game they wished to play. Our idea of liberty for the child cannot be the simple concept of liberty we use in the observation of plants and insects, et cetera. The child, because of the peculiar characteristics of helplessness with which he is born, and because of his qualities as a social individual, is circumscribed by bonds, which limit his activity. An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of these various obstacles. In other words, his training must be such and shall help him to diminish, in a rational manner, the social bonds which limit his activity. Little by little, as the child grows in such an atmosphere, his spontaneous manifestations will become more clear with the clearness of truth, revealing his nature. For all these reasons, the first form of educational intervention must tend to lead the child toward independence. Independence. No one can be free unless he is independent. Therefore, the first active manifestations of the child's individual liberty must be so guided that through this activity he may arrive at independence. Little children, from the moment in which they are weaned, are making their way toward independence. What is a weaned child? In reality, it is a child that has become independent of the mother's breast. Instead of this one source of nourishment, he will find various kinds of food. For him, the means of existence are multiplied, and he can, to some extent, make a selection of his food, whereas he was at first limited absolutely to one form of nourishment. Nevertheless, he is still dependent since he is not yet able to walk and cannot wash and dress himself, and since he is not yet able to ask for things in a language which is clear and easily understood. He is still, in this period, to a great extent the slave of everyone. By the age of three, however, the child should have been able to render himself to a great extent independent and free. That we have not yet thoroughly assimilated the highest concept of the term independence is due to the fact that the social form in which we live is still servile. In an age of civilization where servants exist, the concept of that form of life, which is independence, cannot take root or develop freely. Even so, in the time of slavery, the concept of liberty was distorted and darkened. Our servants are not our dependents, rather it is we who are dependent upon them. It is not possible to accept universally as a part of our social structure such a deep human error without feeling the general effects of it in the form of moral inferiority. We often believe ourselves to be independent simply because no one commands us and because we command others. But the nobleman who needs to call a servant to his aid is really a dependent through his own inferiority. The paralytic who cannot take off his boots because of a pathological fact and the prince who dare not take them off because of a social fact are in reality reduced to the same condition. Any nation that accepts the idea of