Chapter III: Part 3

All of Antonio’s most interesting world of little things revolved about a circle of persistent activity. The earth in the garden moved with its life of roots and bulbs, the very small ant creatures crept about from sunrise to sunset with their sand burdens, the gray branches of the olive opened to show their hidden treasures of leaves; the birds built; Luigi, the old farmer beyond the garden, continually loaded and unloaded his creaking yellow cart. Antonio absorbed this life energy with as much hunger as he ate his soup and figs.

“I will, also, _do_ all day,” he decided, ready to try the adventure.

“I will make a little garden,” he chose one morning.

The spade was too huge for baby fingers, the frost-hardened ground demanded force in digging. Some hyacinth stalks, just pushing their odorous, purple way up through the mold, were broken by Antonio’s eager effort. Still, the little boy persisted, endeavoring to accomplish the task that his imagination pictured—a little round flower-bed of his own, made by his hands, and in which flowers of all colors might raise their heads overnight. Now he smelled them; now he could feel their velvet-soft petals.

“Stop! Come here, naughty Antonio. You cannot make a garden; you are too small. And you dirty your clean apron.”

Antonio dropped the spade as the words of his _madre_ shrilled through the air. He sat down in a discouraged heap on the edge of the path. Always, his _madre_ could persist in tasks, but he was continually interfered with. Why?

But with the buoyancy of childhood, the little man suddenly jumped up. A rattle of tin bells and a strident shriek of protesting, ungreased wheels were the prelude to Luigi’s approach. In his cart of oranges and lemons, with bunches of poppy and wheat stuck in the chinks, Luigi rode down the lane. His smiling face was as russet and wrinkled as an old nut, bits of miracle-hiding clod stuck to his blue smock. As he passed, he tossed an orange to Antonio.

“I will be a farmer. How fine to earn money for my family, as Luigi does,” little Antonio decided. He ran to the house and, pulling out his little cart, loaded it with some of the vegetables that stood in baskets in the kitchen. He trundled it up and down, calling his wares as he had heard Luigi. At first his _madre_ laughed. Then, watching him, her smile furrowed itself into a frown.

“Why play that you are Luigi, who is only a farmer?” she expostulated. “Be a great general. Here are your toy soldiers.” She pulled his little cart away from Antonio and pushed into his arms a box of gaudy tin soldiers.

“Drill them; command them,” the _madre_ urged Antonio.

Antonio watched, sadly, the demolition of the little cart which stood for playing into breadwinning. His soldiers were painted manikins, not very steady on their legs and only slightly interesting. He tried to stand them in rows and they all tumbled down. He changed them for his ball, and his _madre_ suggested that a picture book would be a better plaything for the house, taking the ball away from him. When he was absorbed in the book, she tore him from it for a walk with her in the streets.

So it always happened with Antonio. No one allowed him to _persist_ in an occupation, no one allowed him to _choose_ what he should do, and each day’s activities were _decided for him_.

From a strong-willed baby whose impulses were all good, Antonio drifted into weak-willed little boyhood. It was as if he were daily followed by a spirit of indecision.

“Shall I concentrate on this play?” Antonio would ask himself, and in reply the spirit which had risen from his babyhood influences whispered in his ear, “No.”

Then came his manhood, and he asked himself the same question.

“Why persist? It is easier to shift, continually, from one occupation to another, not doing anything long, or well.

“Why trouble to choose? My mother made decisions for me when I was a little boy; the public school teachers chose my studies for me; now that I am a man, let other men think for me. I have no power to control my will.”

How simple a solution of the life question! The fingers of Antonio that had itched in babyhood to make the earth bloom and to earn bread closed quiescently about a dagger handed him by a man who said, “Come with me; do as I decide for you.” The crime Antonio did was not his fault, nor the fault of his accomplice. It was the fault of his _madre_.

Dr. Montessori tells the story of the child whose will is misdirected in babyhood. He is the child whom his mother and the public school system mold into a lump of putty by thinking for him.

The greatest problem of to-day in child-training is, how shall we help our little ones to strength of will? Civilization is being sapped by our weaklings. Home-training, the public schools do not develop character. Dr. Montessori tells us that this is because parents and teachers do not know what will, fundamentally, is.

Dr. Montessori says, “To will is to be _able_. The little child who persistently struggles to pile block upon block until a miniature tower or castle rises under his fingers, _persisting until he completes_ the labor, is taking his first step toward will-training.

“Family life, trade life are built up on this persistency. Whether it shows itself in loving, or giving or working, constancy makes the social will. Every motor activity is an act of will, and constancy in _right_ activities makes character.”

Other great teachers have said the study of mathematics and the dead languages, the military discipline of the army, mortification of the flesh, make character. To train a child’s will we feel we must crucify it upon the cross of our desires. A child must obey us, we say, follow our caprices and chisel himself into a likeness to us, because we wish him to be like us. Why should children be little men and women? Are we so sure of our own perfection that we have a right to force our personality upon that of our children?

Dr. Montessori gives us a new rule for developing character in children. She says:

“_Seek the child’s first longings_ if you would train his will. Give him the foundation of will by helping him to concentrate on something he instinctively craves to be busy about and so lay the foundation stones of his character.”

The little child’s first impulses to be active are good. He wants to be about his father’s business by taking part in the activities of the home. We make our children weak-willed by our own capriciousness in interfering with their attempts to be active. We dress them, we feed them, we wait on them, we drive them to play, we lead them; we put them in kindergartens where they flit from one occupation to another without an opportunity to concentrate on one; we put them in schools where their days are cut up into little bundles of study, tied with the iron chains of Schedule that make prisoners of children; we continually decide for our little ones and kill their characters with the sword of misdirected kindness.

Some children are born with the color of painters in their souls, and we punish them for soiling _our_ pictures and mussing _our_ tapestries and trampling upon _our_ gardens. May we not look beyond their impotent acts to the spirit-longing that prompted them and put into their hands the best in the way of color: paints, crayons, books, flowers that will satisfy their desires and give them an opportunity to concentrate on the activity they instinctively crave. So they gain will power.

Other children are born with a vision of the builder in their eyes, and we thwart them when they try to use the furnishings of the home in a process of reconstruction. May we not equip our little architects with materials for building, call their attention to the classic in architecture and art, give them a chance to build their own characters?

Most children are born little cosmopolites—small world citizens who explore with the greatest interest the strange, new environment in which they find themselves. These are the children whom our present system of coercion in home and school hurts most. We crush their wills by not giving them an opportunity to follow their instinctive interests in babyhood. The innate impulses of such children are good. They must explore and produce around themselves. They must be helped to wise choice and right decisions. So they grow to willed man and womanhood.

Is this following of personal impulse, as shown in Montessori-trained children, productive of better concentration than we find in our public schools to-day?

Part of the Montessori didactic material for teaching numbers consists of a cardboard case into which cards bearing big black figures may be slipped, giving the child an opportunity to work out number combinations. A little lad of five discovered one morning, when I was observing at the Via Giusti Montessori school in Rome, that he could slip into his case cards in regular succession that would count to one hundred by fives. He spread out his cards upon the sunny floor, provided himself with the polished counting sticks for verifying each operation; then kneeling in front of his counting frame, he went to work, alone, concentrated.

It was visiting day at the School. Tourists, teachers, students lined the room to the number of forty or fifty, leaving the children scant space to work, and as the little boy’s numerical adventure began, they crowded closer to watch him. An American public school child would have grown restive and self-conscious, but this little Montessori lad might have been alone in the Sahara, so quiet, so unheeding of anything but his own occupation was he. The number cards are large, and it took a good many to reach one hundred. The little fellow spread them out in the center of the floor, then carried the row under the chairs of the visitors, not seeming to notice the presence of the grown-ups.

The morning grew gold with noon, and the other children, quietly putting away their materials, spread the low tables for the midday meal. Little white bowls, snowy napkins, carefully laid spoons—then the steaming chicken broth. Still the little counter did not move. He had reached seventy-five, after verifying every number he had registered in the case. One of the wee waitresses for the day carried his red and green luncheon basket and set it down on the floor in front of him; he did not heed it.

“Why doesn’t somebody stop that child’s counting and _make_ him eat his lunch,” expostulated a nervous American school teacher, watching. “Children should be made to do certain things at certain times,” she explained.

Just then the boy slowly and with great pains fitted a figure one and two ciphers into the counting case. Like a little conqueror he stood up, folded his arms, and looked at the perfect result of two hours’ willed, concentrated work. A smile broke the baby face into dimples, and running out into the garden, he began to play like a little colt. He was not tired. He was not hungry. He was only joyful at this conquest of his will.

Montessori will-training proves itself in results.

The practical life and gymnastic exercises of the method have a peculiar value in relation to the strengthening of the child will. Once a child has learned to inhibit his scattering muscular disorder in such co-ordinations as are involved in dressing and undressing, feeding himself, bathing, taking part in the everyday work of the home as far as possible; in walking, running, marching, skipping, dancing to music, and the other rhythmic and gymnastic exercises involved in the Montessori system, he has fixed a permanent habit of muscular control which establishes, also, mental control. To be able to place dishes and silver in an orderly way on a table, to carry and balance a tray containing several filled cups or glasses, to be responsible for a certain drawer or cupboard shelf or case in which are contained play materials is to be able to control mind as well as body.

The muscular education of Montessori that has a direct bearing upon the direction and development of the child’s will is included in the primary activities of everyday life, in walking, greeting, rising, and handling objects gracefully; in the proper care of the person, in taking part in the management of the household, in gardening, in such handwork as clay modeling and drawing and in all properly co-ordinated gymnastic and rhythmic movements. This new and direct will-training is possible in any home.

A more subtle but quite as important phase of control of the will through _doing_ is seen in connection with the child’s use of the didactic apparatus, especially the solid and geometric insets, the tower, and the broad and long stair. In the use of each of these there lies for the child a very important quality of self-correction. A broad cylinder will not fit into a narrow hole; the plain rectangular inset cannot be made to slip into the outline of the board intended for a square; a misplaced block or rod spoils the sequence of form and number in the tower or the stairs. After being shown the perfect way of carrying on each of these exercises, the child experiments with them alone. He discovers that the material admits of two possibilities: error and success. The success possibility is the greater, however; it is easier to drop a solid inset into an opening that fits than to endeavor to crush it into a hole that is too small. So, by persistent and repeated experiment, the child attains a habit of correcting his own mistakes. This habit he carries over into the other willed activities of his life.

The Montessori method presents three steps in the home development of the child’s will. First, we must give our children as wide and free an opportunity as possible to be active, especially with their hands, along those lines which will lead to muscular control. Second, we must not interfere with a little child’s concentrated occupation through play. Last, whatever task we set for him to do, we must outline a right way in which it should be accomplished and encourage him to correct his own errors in it.

A mother said to me recently, “I keep the children in bibs still, although I suppose they have outgrown them. We can’t have our meals delayed while we wait for three active youngsters to fold napkins.”

Dr. Montessori would have patiently and painstakingly instituted the napkin habit, realizing that in even so simple and homely an operation as folding a square of linen neatly lie undreamed possibilities of strengthening a child’s will.

ANDREA’S LILY

_The Nature-Training of the Method_

“If you put it to sleep in the good brown earth, Andrea, if you tend it and wait with patience,” explained the Signorina, “you will see a wonder.”

Andrea turned the brown lump over and over in his hand. He rubbed it on the sleeve of his apron. He held it up to the light. It had no appearance of wonder; it was cold, it did not shine, it would not reflect the light. Did the Signorina, after all, _know_, Andrea wondered, as his big, wistful eyes looked out from the warm cheerfulness of the schoolroom to the chill, wind-swept spaces of the Convent garden. Memories of great banks of gold daisies, roses so heavy with crimson petals that they bent as low as the little green winding paths, winds sweet with perfume of the grape filled Andrea’s imagination. These had made the garden of the Children’s House yesterday. But how different it was to-day! Could the dead bulb which was his, now, to tend, to watch, to believe in, make for itself life and bloom?

Andrea, the matter-of-fact little man of four, was skeptical.

“Of what use is it to plant?” he queried.

“Try it! I will help you dig a hole,” Bruno, the helpful, volunteered.

“We will not let any child take it out of its bed; we will protect it for you, Andrea,” assured Piccola, flashing eyes full of the fire of anticipated battle.

“Cover it carefully with earth, and only be patient,” reiterated the Signorina. “Believe me. It will make for you a surprise.”

It was a momentous morning that marked Andrea’s planting. His fat fingers, holding the trowel, trembled. Like a circle of small acolytes, Bruno, Little Brother, Piccola, and the rest, white aprons fluttering in the wind, watched the sacrifice. Covered out of vision in its winter grave, the bulb disappeared and the children, now almost as skeptical as Andrea of its possible germ of life, ran back to their work in the schoolroom. All, save Andrea.

His baby hands, like two warm, brown leaves, fluttered over the earth prison of his bulb. Kneeling down on the frosty path, he bent low, listening, as if he hoped that he might perhaps hear the groping of new roots. It was all very cold, and perfectly still about the place where he had buried his little dead hope, but Andrea whispered to it:

“I will wait,” he promised.

The bleak Roman winter spent its chill days. Flurries of snow shrouded the garden and the wide doors of the Convent, open so many days of the year, were closed. Andrea did not forget his bulb, though. Every day he ran out to the place where he had buried it, eagerly watching for the slim green fingers he had been told would push their way through the frosty earth. As the weeks drifted by, and while the garden was still bare, a strange thing happened to the soul of little Andrea. The patience that was necessary for keeping alive his hope in the brown bulb began to show itself in other ways.

“Andrea no longer frowns when the little brother of Bruno takes away his letters,” the Signorina exclaimed. “Instead, he goes to the cabinet and fetches a buttoning frame, offering it to the little one instead of the letters for which he is not ready.”

In other ways Andrea proved his patience. A bit of drawing that he had finished, hastily, a month before and with crooked lines, now held him concentrated for an hour, and was completed with exquisite neatness and exact contour of line. At the midday meal of the children Andrea did not, as formerly, beg to be served first, nor did he open his little green basket of luncheon before the other children. It was as if the slow-growing bulb which was working its sure way up through the bare ground to the sun had its counterpart in the unfolding root of patience it had planted in the heart of a little child.

After a little, the winter melted into a spring of yellow lilies and long sunny noons and laughter at all the gray street corners. Andrea came earlier than the other little ones to the Children’s House each morning, that he might spend a half hour with his little green watering pot in the garden. He met Bruno and Piccola with an air of assurance that set him apart from them. He held his head very high in those days because of realized hope which he had made his own.

“Andrea is our little gardener,” the children said to each other, watching his triumph.

Then came a visitor’s morning at the Children’s House of the Via Giusti Convent. The children’s greatest happiness was to welcome these grown-up friends who came to learn of the little ones the truths of life. Among the throng of students, tourists, curiosity seekers, earnest thinkers, a woman whom the children knew entered and slipped into a waiting chair. She had been during the winter a frequent visitor, quiet, sympathetic, with deep, smiling eyes. Then she had not come to the Children’s House for many days.

But they remembered her still. As flowers turn to meet the sun, they twined about her, feeling her soft, strong hands, touching with eager finger tips the dull, clinging garment that draped her. Ah, they drew back, consulting together in little questioning groups.

“She wears now a black dress.”

“Her eyes are full of sorrow,” they said.

“The Signorina tells us that, now, she has no _madre_.”

Andrea, apart from the others, listened, sympathetic, wondering. Sorrow should be replaced by happiness, of this he was quite sure. Was not the most unhappy child in the Children’s House the one most loved, most helped by his Signorina? Had he anything to offer this friend that would give her joy? He ran to her, grasped her hand in his; dragged her from her chair, across the threshold, into a luring little green path dented with many child footprints.

“See!” he exclaimed. “I waited.”

Where Andrea had laid away his hope, a tall, straight stalk of heavily odorous lily bloom pointed skyward. The earth that it had scattered in its bulb-bursting still surrounded the strong, green stalk. It was a chalice of the spring, a symbol of life that is eternal.

“I planted it and I waited,” Andrea repeated. “All the children waited with me.

“It blooms,” he finished, laughing up into the joyful eyes that smiled back, comforted, into his.

Life is a phenomenon in which no force is wasted and out of whose apparent death there continually confronts us the wonder of new life. Some of us are blind to the lessons Nature teaches, but little children may be led to _feel_ nature facts that spell for them faith and hope and sympathy for all time.

Dr. Montessori tells us the place of nature in education. We will put the planting and tending of little gardens, which are the child’s own, above the place which such work has held, formerly, as a part of manual education. We will make gardening a means of leading our little ones to _observe_ the phenomena of life, to be _patient_ in waiting for that life to manifest itself, and to be very sure in the hope that fruition will come.

Does _your_ little Andrea, your child who has come to you with such a divine curiosity about life and so quick a sense to feel it, have a chance to be, himself, a part of the miracle by helping something to grow? To plant a seed, to surround it with all the best conditions for growth, to tend it, to wait for its flowerings—this is Montessori development possible for any child.

Many of us feel that we are bringing our little ones into a nearness with nature when we show them beautiful pictures of flowers, lead them to exquisite gardens in which they must not pick the flowers, or take them to walk in our parks. This is not making nature a force in the life of a child as Dr. Montessori would have us. Children must _touch_ and _feel_ and _act_ to know. The flower that is too beautiful for little fingers to gracefully pick and give to a friend as an offering of love should have no place in our gardens. The grass that is too soft to bear the prints of little feet is not the right kind of grass for an American park.

To plant a bean in a clay pot that stands on a city window sill; to tend the plant that grows from the seed, saying with surety, “Some day there will be beans on this plant,” means more to a child than to be told the life story of an orchid. It is the difference between _thinking_ and _feeling._

A rake, a shovel, a little basket, a cart, a watering pot—these are all Montessori didactic materials that any child in any home may have. A flower pot in a window, a window box, a tiny plot of earth in which to plant, one of these is possible for each of our children, and the flowers and fruits that result from the nurture of child hands mean, for the child, flowers and fruits of the spirit.

The world of every day is full of gardens for our children to plant, and helpless, dumb animals to be fed and cared for by child hands. It has been so easy for us to do these things ourselves that we have not stopped to think what it means in the life of a child to have _helped something to live_.

There is the bare seed, without shape or body or hint of promise. There is the green, groping plant that appears. Then comes the sure blooming that rewards child patience. Some plants are more slow to sprout than others; there is the fruit tree that did not sprout in the child’s life but whose pink blooms he now sees. So it may be that the good hope planted in his own heart while he is still a little fellow may not fructify for a long time, but he will wait, with patience and faith.

Caring for plants and dumb animals has further life application for children. We continually serve our little ones. Because we love them, we do too much for children; we take from their eager hands all works of service for others which would do much to develop the latent sympathy that buds in every child’s heart, only waiting for the slightest stimulus which will make it expand and develop.

Your child needs one plant that is dependent for life upon his care. He needs one pet that demands his daily forethought and vigilance to safeguard its life. As he waters the plant, watching it and providing for it the best conditions of light and freedom; as he feeds his pet, your child feels and is able to image the watchfulness of his father and mother who feed and care for him, who gave _him_ life. He will form a habit of _feeling_ and _helping_, and will grow up loving, sympathetic, and with a reverence for the phenomena of life.

There are also the rewards that nature gives children, coming as marvelous surprises, unexplainable mysteries, beyond the work of hands. The little ones at the Via Giusti Children’s House in Rome may be often seen clustered about a blossom that has unfolded while they were at home and waits to greet them in the morning—so different, so vastly more beautiful than the tiny seed which they sowed. These children would not care for a crude toy, given them as a reward for their labors. The toy can be explained; it is made of wood, or iron; it has no connection with the child’s work for which it is given as a prize.

But here is a lily, the reward of their work, but unexplainable; the product of a force that is miracle working. Its petals are like wax. With their sensitized little fingers the children touch them; no, they are not wax. No one can tell of what texture these petals are made. The flower has its own perfume, haunting, individual. Andrea did not plant those petals, he did not smell that perfume when he buried his hope. It found its own body.

So with the greatest simplicity, Dr. Montessori brings to children the truths learned from the cultivation of _life_.

THE MIRACLE OF OLGA

_Reading and Writing as Natural for Your Child as Speech_

“I have something strange in my pocket,” Olga exclaimed to the group of little ones who clustered about her, twittering, poised in excitement like a flock of baby birds.

It was just after the luncheon hour in the Children’s House, and the babies filled the sunshiny paths of the garden or loitered in happy groups in the cool stone cloister of the Convent.

“My mother told me the story of Pinocchio, the wooden marionette, who had so many adventures with a cricket for his friend, and also a fairy with blue hair. It is too wonderful a story to have been born in the mind of my mother. She _found_ it. I have it now, with me!”

There was a breathless hush among the little ones. Pairs of blue and hazel eyes fixed every motion of the little brown maid in the bright pink apron. With slow dignity and an effect of great mystery Olga thrust one chubby hand into the depths of her pocket. The fingers fumbled a bit, then pulled out a crumpled, printed page torn from a book. Dropping, cross-legged, to the stone floor of the cloister, Olga unfolded and spread out the page in her lap. The others bent over her with all the curiosity and reverence that would be stimulated by a conjurer.

“Here is the mystery,” Olga announced, indicating the printed words. “I have discovered that _this_ is the hiding place of Pinocchio. I have torn it out of the book that I may carry it, always, in my pocket.”

“Olga will carry Pinocchio in her pocket,” the others exclaimed in hushed whispers, scattering to talk over the matter. “Is it possible that we, too, could find Pinocchio, as Olga has, and carry him in _our_ pockets?”

So it happened that the mothers of the children of the Via Giusti School began to miss pages from their newspapers, their magazines, their books.

“We have very bad, destructive children,” they decided, not stopping to question the reason for their little ones’ sudden interest in written language.

So it happened, also, that the directress of the school, always alert to watch the mind phenomena of her children, noticed that many children in the school had torn bits of printed pages hidden in their apron pockets, in the soles of their shoes, in their caps. In the midst of their most fascinating work, they would stop, take out these scraps of print, smooth them, and trace the letters with baby fingers.

“We have stories with us all the time; Pinocchio is ours,” they said.

“My little discoverers!” the far-seeing directress exclaimed. “They are not wilfully destructive. They are ready, now, to create a new language that will carry them farther than spoken words can. Their longings shall be satisfied.”

One morning the directress gave Olga new materials with which to work. There was a big, white wood box divided into twenty-six compartments, and in each compartment there was a huge letter of the alphabet cut from pink or blue cardboard. The blue letters were consonants; the pink letters were vowels. Seated on a soft green rug on the floor, Olga spent hours taking the letters out of their places, piling them in a colored heap of many fascinating curves and angles, then sorting them and putting each back in a compartment in the box.

Sometimes, as Olga worked, the slim girl directress dropped down on the rug beside her. Picking up one of the cardboard letters, she would say:

“This is A, Olga.”

“This is A,” Olga would repeat.

“Can you show me another A?” the directress would then ask. And Olga would, readily, pick out a similar letter.

“Where is A, Olga?” was the last question in this teaching as Olga selected from the twenty-six letters another A. So the little maid of four years soon knew all the letters by name and sound. And presently she was combining them to make words and short sentences.

As she laid together the letters that made up each word, the words that combined to make sentences, the directress analyzed each word for her, phonetically. Soon, by hearing a word, distinctly pronounced, Olga could select from her box of pink and blue symbols which represented sounds to her now those letters which were necessary to spell the word.

The directress presented to her smooth white cards, on which were mounted large black letters cut from coarse black emery cloth, as rough as sandpaper. These letter cards Olga held in one hand, tracing the outline of the letters with the fingers of her other hand and saturating her senses with the _feeling_ of the letter shapes. Soon, she could name any letter, her eyes closed, by the sense of touch.

At the same time that Olga was learning to _see_ and _feel_ letters, she was being helped to the muscular control involved in writing. Upon a sheet of white paper she laid one of the Montessori geometric insets, a square, and selecting a brightly colored pencil, she drew the outline of the square upon the paper. Then, with the slanting lines used in writing, Olga filled in the outline of the square. At first, the lines were crooked, extending beyond the boundary lines of the square; but as she repeated the exercise, filling in with color other forms, outlined triangles, rectangles, circles, leaves, flowers, trees, and figures of children and animals, her muscles strengthened and she could control her pencil with the utmost precision.

Two months after her first interest in a printed page had shown itself, through no training save these sensory and muscle exercises, Olga made the miracle of graphic art her own. She went to the blackboard and wrote in clear, flowing script: “I read, I write.”

_Your_ baby tears picture books and magazines; he leaves great, unbeautiful scrawls upon wall paper, woodwork, and sidewalk. He upsets the ink and breaks the pens in his father’s study. He wishes to handle all the books upon the library shelves. We punish him for these acts because we think them wanton. Dr. Montessori tells us that these child activities indicate an instinctive interest in the _symbols_ of that new art, human speech, which he is making his own in the first years of his life. They tell us that we have made a mistake in not giving children an opportunity to teach themselves to read and write at the same time that they are mastering spoken language. The two interests present themselves simultaneously in our little ones. Children who tear books and scribble upon walls and interfere with the immaculate order of our home secretaries are not little mischief makers. Like Olga, and the other babies in the Children’s House, they are trying to _make their own_ the story that you read them. Even the tools of writing for little children are gilded with the same air of mystery that touches the untranslatable black print.

The wonder teaching of Montessori, by means of which, after two or three months of preliminary exercises, little ones “explode” into reading and writing, may begin at home. Any watchful mother may lay the foundations for this educational marvel.

Have you watched the process by means of which the little Stranger who came to you from the unknown masters the strange speech of the home in which he found himself?

Are you helping or hindering him in his struggles to make language his own?

The beginnings of speech in the baby consist in repetition of syllabic sounds which he hears in his home environment. His vocal cords and tongue educate themselves through pronouncing articulate sounds. First come the labials. Then the little one combines consonants and sounds, saying: “Ma-Ma. Pa-Pa.” The mechanism by means of which the sense of hearing combines with the vocal cords in helping the two-year-old to speak makes it possible for a child to learn several foreign languages in the first five years of his life.

The child is making his own dictionary in babyhood and at a phenomenal rate of speed.

Dr. Montessori says that we may help a child to beautifully phonetic speech and a large vocabulary if we will eliminate all baby talk from our nurseries, and see that the little one hears only good models of speech. Clear-cut, carefully pronounced words, well-planned and euphonious sentences, rhythmic poems and classic stories read to our children, these will train the sense of hearing and lead to a large vocabulary and beautiful pronunciation. Suppose you were learning a foreign language, wouldn’t it discourage you to have your interpreter mispronounce, _baby talk_ French or German or Italian to you? Our babies find themselves in a land more strange to them than any foreign country we have ever visited. We are their interpreters; let us not put stumbling blocks in their road to language.

Then, sometimes at three years, four, or five comes the tearing and scribbling stage. Every mother knows it, but Dr. Montessori helps us to a new recognition of its meaning. It isn’t a development of the old Adam in your child. It’s a guide signal for every mother. It tells you that the intricate human mechanism that makes up the child spirit is ready to learn written language naturally, without undue nerve strain, if only the right stimulus be offered.

It is because we have waited until the instinctive interest in spoken language grows dull and because we have depended upon only one sense, the sense of vision, that teaching a child to read and write has not been the natural, quick process nature means it to be.

If the nursery equipment includes the movable alphabet and the sandpaper letters of the Montessori didactic materials, your little one, instead of tearing letters, may _feel_ them, his sense of touch carrying to his mind a telegraphic message of letter form that is registered permanently on his brain. After handling these large, stiff, pink and blue letters for a month or two, after tracing with his sensitized finger tips the rough black letters mounted on the smooth white cards, they are so indelible a part of his mental life that they _must_ burst forth into writing without previous training. Don’t you remember how your baby by fingering his raised letters on his alphabet-bordered bread-and-milk bowl, by feeling of the raised letters on his alphabet blocks, by building words with the cut-out wooden letters of his letter game, learned without effort on your part how to print? So, by touching the beautiful script letters of Montessori, a child teaches himself to write.

But there is another process involved in the Montessori method of helping very little children to an early mastery of reading and writing. In the public schools a pencil is put into the child’s untrained fingers and we expect him to use it in writing with no preliminary help in handling it. We couldn’t use a needle in fine embroidery if we had not learned, first, how to thread it. We are not able to paint a picture of a landscape until we learn how to use a brush in outlining perspective. So we make a mistake when we expect that to hold a pencil means to be able to write. We must help children to the muscular control of this tool of writing first. Dr. Montessori tells us that drawing precedes writing.

The Montessori didactic materials for developing in children the muscular control necessary for writing include small wooden tables; flat metal forms cut in various shapes, squares, rectangles, circles, and triangles; plenty of white drawing paper, and good colored pencils of the standard colors and brown and black. Laying a form on a piece of paper, the children draw its outline. Removing the form, they _fill in_ the outline, using long, vertical, parallel lines of any color they like, keeping within the contour of the outline. So the child educates his muscles for writing without _actually writing_.

The little ones at Rome soon experiment with combining these forms to make colored borders and flat designs, which they fill in with their colored pencils in very harmonious color combinations. Later, they fill in outlined pictures, using the same free, regular pencil strokes.

The Montessori method of starting reading and writing saves time in most instances. Whether or not, however, it is at four years or five years or five and one-half that the “explosion” into written expression of thought occurs, the process by means of which it is brought about is sure to give the child a firm perceptive basis for reading and writing.

Our ordinary method of teaching reading and writing is a utilization of the sense of sight, alone. In some instances the children in the primary grades of our schools begin writing by a system of tracing letters and words offered them in large script. This is purely a muscular process and rarely absolutely successful, because it involves fine muscular co-ordination for which the child of five or even six years is not ready.

The Montessori sandpaper letters and movable alphabet offer the child a chance to utilize his sense of touch in learning the symbols of thought. Formerly we showed him a word or a letter as a means for gaining so vivid a mental image of that letter that he would be able to recognize it and write it. The method of Montessori sends a telegraphic message by two wires to the child mind, a visual and a tactile impression. The tactile message is peculiarly valuable in strengthening the mental image of the word or letter because of the fact that the child is in a strong sensory motor stage of his mental development. To _touch_ gives him stronger mental images than to _see_. To _feel_ gives him, also, an impulse to imitate and to express. This is why, after touching and naming and differentiating and recognizing blindfold and building words and sentences with letters, the Montessori child spontaneously writes.

Because we are so anxious for immediate educational results with our little ones, the spontaneous reading and writing of the Montessori method has seemed to parents one of its most important developments. If, in our home Montessori experiments, children do not read and write very early, we are disappointed. We wonder if the system has the value we attached to it. We must change this state of mind.

There is the toddler of three who evinces an instinctive longing to read and write. He experiments with pencil and paper; he shows an interest in the home books, newspapers, and periodicals; he asks what the signs in the street cars and on the billboards say. There is also the child, no less promising, but more interested in objects than in symbols, who does not show these manifestations until the age of five and five and a half years.

We must recognize these signs according to the child’s age and take advantage of them. The part of the mother is to watch for the dawning of the interest in reading and writing and to give the child an opportunity to perfect the physical and mental mechanism for it.

Our homes and the educational helps to be bought for children now furnish accessory material for the Montessori process of teaching the graphic art.

The first tracing of the sandpaper letters should be preceded by exercises whose object will be the refining of the tactile sense; dipping the fingers into cold, hot, cool, and lukewarm water; differentiating blindfolded rough, smooth, hard, soft substances; recognizing with the finger tips alone many different materials, paper, iron, wood, velvet, cotton, silk, linen, satin, lace, needlework, and possible combinations of these textiles. These exercises form a most fascinating game for the child, and, through them, he brings to the exercise of tracing the sandpaper letters an exquisitely sensitized touch which results in a clear impression of their form.

As the child uses the movable alphabet upon his play table or builds words and sentences upon a bright rug spread out on the nursery floor, all the activities of the home in which he has a part and all his play life may be used as the basis of his first reading. His favorite toys may be placed about him as he constructs their names and little word stories about them. Large colored pictures of simple design may be laid on the floor as the child combines letters to spell the objects contained in them. The mother may write in large script simple instructions which the child may read and follow:

“Run to me.”

“Bring me your ball.”

“Close the door.”

Innumerable helps are to be procured for the drawing by means of which Montessori establishes the muscular control preliminary to writing. Our art stores and kindergarten supply shops offer beautifully colored crayons and drawing paper at nominal cost. Blocks, the tin utensils of the kitchen, and box covers offer geometric surfaces about which the child may draw, if the drawing board and forms of Montessori are not included in the home equipment. These outlines the child will delight in filling with color, using the diagonal strokes that form a direct preparation for the muscular control involved in writing. Following this coloring of geometric forms is the filling in, similarly, of simple outlined pictures. We find such outlined pictures in large variety in the school and kindergarten supply shops. The toy dealers supply books of really beautiful designs and pictures for coloring. It is also possible to procure sets of cardboard figures, animals, paper dolls, and soldiers which the home child may draw around and color.

One day, after having made his own, through the sense of touch, the form of letters, and after having learned muscular control in _drawing form_, your child will write. How can he help it? You will have established artificial conditions, muscle and sense, similar to the conditions through which he learns to talk.

The baby _hears_ speech, and because heredity perfected his vocal cords for reacting upon mental stimulus of the sound—he _talks_. In the Montessori method, he _feels_ letters, and through the perfecting of the muscles involved in reproducing those letters which he has made his own by feeling—he writes.

CLARA—LITTLE MOTHER

_The Social Development of the Montessori Child_

Clara always saw me before I caught the outline of her cherubic chubby person. She had constituted herself the little four-year-old hostess of the Trionfale Children’s House. Her limpid brown eyes shone with welcome to a friend or stranger. Her lips were overflowing with sweetly liquid words of greeting. Her fat arms reached out, her fat legs were winged with her friendliness.

She was the motherly, hen type of child, never so full of joy as when she was greeting someone or organizing a game or taking care of a child younger than herself. An intensely feminine little person was Clara, who would grow up into a kindly, gracious woman, forceful in her own tactful, woman way if she were surrounded by the right influences in childhood or——

I very curiously watched the social development of the chubby little girl in the bright pink frock.

Little Roman babies have the most fascinating play fancies, I believe, of any in the world. Given a cart and a faded flower or so, and Otello was transformed in a second’s space into a busy flower vender calling his posies up and down the school yard, offering imaginary bunches and twining imaginary wreaths. A pile of stones left by the architects in a corner of the playground; Mario was suddenly fired with the building zeal of his Roman ancestors. Gathering a group of boys to help him carry and lift the stones, he would construct small models of the immortal walls of the Cæsars and a possible arch of Titus.

Clara played, too, but not so much with _things_, as with _groups_. Her play had the social quality so important in the all-round development of the individual.

She would gather together a group of little ones for a festival procession or a folk dance, apportioning strong partners for the weaker ones and older ones for the babies. She played house daily, but in a different, lavish kind of way. She had, always, eight or ten make-believe children; found room in her house of sticks and stones for the fruit seller, the cheese man, the porter, and a stray musician or two. Her strongest instinct seemed to be a collective one. She wanted to brood. She wanted to be, also, a leader.

The Montessori directress let Clara very much alone, smiling upon and encouraging her play, but not trying to mold her instincts. If Clara industriously swept out her domicile with a stick, the directress did not run to her, offering her a toy broom. When Clara was a little slow about going into the schoolroom when the out-of-door period was ended, the directress did not fret at the little maid. She realized that Clara had merged her own personality in the personalities of the group of children with whom she had been playing. She had been so busy preparing her imaginary family for going to school that she did not heed the call herself.

How would the social instinct so prominent in Clara and in several other of the children find vent inside the four walls of the Children’s House, I wondered? Would the Montessori system, which has for its basic principle auto-education, this system of perfecting the individual through self-direction, give Clara and the others a chance to develop group activities?

For some time the cool, white schoolroom was the scene of individual work and personal endeavor. Otello worked alone with the solid insets; Mario’s fascinated fingers sorted colors. Clara sat on the floor in the sunshine and constructed the tower, but her keen eyes followed almost every movement of the other children. Then, for the school was in its inception and the children were new, came a transition period, when the peace was broken by perfectly normal, healthy brawls. Someone overturned Otello’s cylinders and Otello kicked the offender. Several children wanted the same box of color spools at the same time. The directress kindly interfered and gave the colors to Clara, who had been first upon the scene. Clara motioned the crowd to follow her. Now had come her chance. She organized her group. She selected a red spool and spread out upon a white table its beautiful gradations from deepest crimson to palest rose pink. Then she offered the blue spools to Mario, showing him how to grade the varying shades. It was fascinating, Mario thought, to have Clara for his little teacher. He motioned to several of the other children to join them. Tables were drawn up; brown and golden heads bent close together as the little ones dabbled in the colors, advising, helping, learning from each other.

The directress hovered outside of the group, suggesting but not forcing herself upon the children. They turned to her when they needed her, but their greatest interest lay in the joy and power of working and learning together.

As one watched the phenomenon of this natural unfolding of the social instinct in the method, there were daily examples of its spontaneity. The children, from a collection of units, had been transformed into a small community in which there were groups of workers, some large, some small, but all co-operative. The children carried on the sense exercises and took bold adventures into the fields of reading and writing together. The Montessori directress was always their captain and guide, but the grouping and working with some other child or children was the result of childish initiative.

It developed in this way.

The children learned to _live_ together. They found that the integrity of Clara’s group, of Mario’s, or Otello’s, was preserved only if the individuals in it gave themselves up to the good of the whole. It was pleasanter to move tables and chairs softly, to wait one’s turn, and to avoid jostling one’s neighbor. So kindness and neighborliness and gentleness were learned by the children through their own endeavor.

The children _learned_ together. There were groups of various grades of age and mental ability. Here the children of three and four emptied out an entire box of color spools and, each choosing a color, helped each other grade. There, a trio of energetic babies slopped in their basins, endeavoring to wash each other to a common cleanliness. In a quiet corner an older child taught less advanced children to spell with the movable alphabet or to work out arithmetic calculations with the rods. This group learning was carefully watched and safeguarded by the directress, but she never forced her personality upon the children. The children, left to their own efforts, found a stimulus to a wholesome kind of competition. They tried to outstrip each other in learning, and put forth more effort than if they had been urged by the teacher.

And, best of all, the children were _good_ together.

If one child did anything that interfered with the rights of the others he was kindly but effectually isolated. He was denied nothing save his privilege of being an active, happy member of the child republic. To be allowed to go back to it was his ultimate joy.

The Montessori House of the Children is a place of more unusual development of group activities among little children than we have realized. There is a larger opportunity for making children into little citizens than in almost any other scheme of education.

We have thought that the present practice of the kindergarten, in which group activities are organized and directed by the kindergartner, gives little children the opportunity for the development of the social instinct which they so much need. At a signal, they rise and carry chairs, or march in step, or play a game, but the signal was given by the teacher. She directs the game. We have wandered so far from the leading of the gentle Froebel whose guiding star was the natural impulses of individual children in his garden of little ones.