Part 6

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.