some general remarks about the montessori apparatus in the american home

the first thing to do, if you can manage it, is to secure a set of the montessori apparatus. it is the result of the ripest thought, ingenuity, and practical experience of a gifted specialist who has concentrated all her forces on the invention of the different devices of her apparatus. but there are various supplementary statements to be made which modify this simple advice.

one is, that the arrival in your home of the box containing the montessori apparatus means just as much for the mental welfare of your children as the arrival in the kitchen of a box of miscellaneous groceries means for their physical health. the presence on the pantry shelf of a bag of the best flour ever made will not satisfy your children’s hunger unless you add brains and good judgment to it, and make edible, digestible bread for them. there is nothing magical or miraculous about the montessori apparatus. it is as yet the best raw material produced for satisfying the intellectual hunger of normal children from three to six, but it will have practically no effect on them if its use is not regulated by[92] the most attentive care, supplemented by a keen and never-ceasing objective scrutiny of the children who are to use it. this is one reason why mothers find it harder to educate their children by the montessori system (as by all other systems) than teachers do, for they have an age-long mental habit of clasping their little ones so close in their arms that, figuratively speaking, they never get a fair, square look at them.

this study of the children is an essential part of all education which dr. montessori is among the first pointedly and definitely to emphasize. the necessity for close observation of conditions before any attempt is made to modify them is an intellectual habit which is the direct result of the methods of positive sciences, in the study of which she received her intellectual training. just as the astronomer looks fixedly at the stars, and the biologist at the protoplasm before he tries to generalize about their ways of life and action, so we must learn honestly and whole-heartedly to try to see what sort of children mary and bob and billy are, as well as to love them with all our might. this should not be, as it is apt to be, a study limited to their moral characteristics, to seeing that mary’s fault is vanity and bob’s is indifference, but should be directed with the most passionate attention to their intellectual traits as well, to the way in which they naturally learn or don’t learn, to the doors which are open, and those which are shut, to their intellectual interest. for[93] children of three and four have a life which it is no exaggeration to call genuinely intellectual, and their constant presence under the eyes of their parents gives us a chance to know this, which helps to make up for our lack of educational theory and experience in which almost any teacher outstrips us.

there are no two plants, in all the infinity of vegetable life, which are exactly alike. there are not, so geologists tell us, even two stones precisely the same. to lump children (even two or three children closely related) in a mass, with generalizations about what will appeal to them, is a mental habit that experience constantly and luridly proves to be the extremest folly. this does not mean individualism run wild. there are some general broad principles which hold true of all plants, and which we will do well to learn from an experienced gardener. all plants prosper better out-of-doors than in a cellar, and all children have activity for the law of their nature. but lilies-of-the-valley shrivel up in the amount of sunshine which supplies just the right conditions for nasturtiums, and your particular three-year-old may need a much quieter (or more boisterous) activity than his four-year-old sister. neither of them may be, at first, in the least attracted by the problem of the geometric insets, or by the idea of matching colors. they may not have reached that stage, or they may have gone beyond it. you will need all your ingenuity and your good judgment to find out where they are, intellectually, and what they[94] are intellectually. the montessori rule is never to try to force or even to coax a child to use any part of the apparatus. the problem involved is explained to him clearly, and if he feels no spontaneous desire to solve it, no effort is made to induce him to undertake it. some other bit of apparatus is what, for the moment, he needs, and one only wastes time in trying to persuade him to feel an interest which he is, for the time, incapable of.

if you doubt this, and most of us feel a lingering suspicion that we know better than the child what he wants, look back over your own school-life and confess to yourself how utterly has vanished from your mind the information forced upon you in courses which did not arouse your interest. my own private example of that is a course on “government.” i was an ordinarily intelligent and conscientious child, and i attended faithfully all the interminable dreary recitations of that subject, even filling a note-book with selections from the teacher’s remarks, and, at the end of the course, passing a fairly creditable examination. the only proof i have of all this is the record of the examination and the presence, among my relics of the past, of the note-book in my handwriting; for, among all the souvenirs of my school-life, there is not one faintest trace of any knowledge about the way in which people are governed. i cannot even remember that i ever did know anything about it. my mind is a perfect, absolute blank on the subject, although i can remember the look of the[95] schoolroom in which i sat to hear the lectures on it, i can see the face of the teacher as plainly as though she still stood before me, i can recall the pictures on the wall, the very graining of the wood on my desk. there is only no more recollection of the subject than if the lectures had been delivered in hindustani. the long hours i spent in that classroom are as wholly wasted and lost out of my all-too-short life as though i had been thrust into a dark closet for those three hours a week. even the amount of “discipline” i received, namely the capacity to sit still and endure almost intolerable ennui, would have been exactly as great in one case as in the other, and would have cost the state far less.

all of us must have some such recollection of our school-life to set beside the vivifying, exciting, never to be forgotten hours when we first really grasped a new abstract idea, or learned some bit of scientific information thrillingly in touch with our own understandable lives; and we need no other proof of the truth of the maxim, stated by all educators, but stated and constantly acted upon by dr. montessori, that the prerequisite of all education is the interest of the student. there is no question here to be discussed as to whether he learns more or less quickly, more or less well, according as he is interested or not. the statement is made flatly by the italian educator that he does not, he cannot learn at all, anything, if he is not interested. there is no use trying to call in the old war-horse of “mental discipline” and say[96] that it is well to force him to learn whether he has an interest in the subject or not, because the fact is that he cannot learn without feeling interest; and the appearance of learning, the filled note-books, the attended recitations, the passed examinations, we all know in our hearts to be but the vainest of illusions and to represent only the most hopelessly wasted hours of our youth.

dr. montessori, with her usual bold, startlingly consistent acceptance as a practical guide to conduct of a fact which her reason tells her to be true, acts on this principle with her characteristic whole-souled fervor. if the children are not interested, it is the business of the educator to furnish something which will interest them (as well as instruct them) rather than to try to force their interest to center itself on some occupation which the educator has thought beforehand would turn the trick.[b] when we capture and try to tame a little wild creature of unknown habits (and is not this a description of each little new child?) our first effort is to find some food which will agree with him, and experimentation is always our first resort. we offer him all sorts of things[97] to eat, and observe which he selects. it is true that we do make some broad generalizations from the results of our experiences with other animals, and we do not try to feed a little creature who looks like a woodchuck on honey and water, nor a new variety of moth on lettuce-leaves. but even if the unknown animal looks ever so close a cousin of the woodchuck family, we do not try to force the lettuce-leaves down his throat if, after a due examination of them, he shows plainly that he does not care for them. we cast about to see what else may be the food he needs; and though we may feel very impatient with the need for making all the troublesome experiments with diet, we never feel really justified in blaming the little creature for having preferences for turnip-tops, nor do we have a half-acknowledged conviction that, perhaps, if we had starved him to eat lettuce-leaves, it might have been better for him. we are only too thankful to hit upon the right food before our little captive dies of hunger.

something of all this is supposed to go through the mind of the montessori mother as she refrains from arguing with her little son about the advisability of his being interested in one, rather than another, of the montessori contrivances; and these considerations are meant to explain to her the prompt acquiescence of the montessori teacher in the child’s intellectual “whims.” she is not foolishly indulging him to make herself less trouble, or to please him. she is only trying to find out what his natural interest[98] is, so that she may pounce upon it and utilize it for teaching him without his knowing it. she is only taking advantage of her knowledge of the fact that water runs down-hill and not up, and that you may keep it level by great efforts on your part, and even force it to climb, but that you can only expect it to work for you when you let it follow the course marked out for it by the laws of physics. in other words, she sees that her business is to make use of every scrap of the children’s interest, rather than to waste her time and theirs trying to force it into channels where it cannot run; to carry her waterwheel where the water falls over the cliff, and not to struggle to turn the river back towards the watershed. and anyone who thinks that a montessori teacher has “an easy time because she is almost never really teaching,” underestimates grotesquely the amount of alert, keen ingenuity and capacity for making fine distinctions, required for this new feat of educational engineering.

on the other hand, the advanced modern educators who cry jealously that there is nothing new in all this, that it is the principle underlying their own systems of education, need only to ask themselves why their practice is so different from that of the italian doctor, why a teacher who can force, coerce, coax, or persuade all the members of a class of thirty children to “acquire” practically the same amount of information about a given fixed number of topics within a given fixed period of time, is called a “good”[99] teacher? they will answer inevitably that chaos and anarchy in the educational world would result from any course of study less fixed than that in their schools. and an impartial observer, both of our schools and of history, might reply that chaos and anarchy have been prophesied every time a more liberal form of government, giving more freedom to the individual, has been suggested, anywhere in the world.

in any case, the montessori mother, with the newly acquired apparatus spread out before her, needs to gird herself up for an intellectual enterprise where she will need not only all the strength of her brain, but every atom of ingenuity and mental flexibility which she can bring to bear on her problem. she will do well, of course, to fortify herself in the first place by a careful perusal of dr. montessori’s own description of the apparatus and its use, or by reading any other good manual which she can find. the booklet sent out with the apparatus gives some very useful detailed instructions which it is not necessary to repeat here, since it comes into the hands of everyone who secures the apparatus. one of the main things for the montessori mother to remember is that the teachers in the casa dei bambini are trained to make whatever explanations are necessary, as brief as possible, given in as few words as they can manage, and with good long periods of silence in between.

much of the apparatus is so ingeniously devised that any normally inventive child needs but to have[100] it set before him to divine its correct use. the buttoning-frames, and the solid and plane geometric insets need not a single word of explanation, even to start the child upon the exercise. but the various rods and blocks, used for the long and broad stair and the tower, are so much like ordinary building-blocks that, the first time they are presented, the child needs a clear presentation of how to handle them. this can be made an object-lesson conducted in perfect silence; although later, when the child begins to use the sandpaper numbers with them as he learns the series of numbers up to ten, he needs, of course, to be guided in this exercise.

with these rods and blocks especially, care should be taken to observe the montessori rule that apparatus is to be used for its proper purpose only, in order to avoid confusion in the child’s mind. he should never use the color spools, for instance, to build houses with. not that, by any means, he should be coaxed to continue the exercises in color if he feels like building houses; but other material should be given him—a pack of cards, building-blocks, small stones, anything handy, but never apparatus intended for another exercise.

training the “stereognostic sense”—combining motor and tactual images.

copyright 1912, by carl r. byoir

in the exercises for learning the difference between rough and smooth, the child needs at first a little guidance in learning how to draw his finger-tips lightly from left to right over the sandpaper strips; and in the exercises of discrimination between different fabrics, he needs someone to tie the bandage over[101] his eyes and, the first time, to show him how to set to work.

a silent object-lesson, or a word or two, are needed to show him how to separate and distinguish between the pieces of wood of different weights in the baric exercises, and a similar introduction is needed to the cylindrical sound-boxes.

as he progresses both in age and ability, and begins some of the more complicated exercises, he needs a little longer explanation when he begins a new exercise, and a little more supervision to make sure that he has understood the problem. in the later part of the work with plane geometric insets, and in the work with colored crayons, he needs occasional supervision, not to correct the errors he makes, but to see that he keeps the right aim in sight. of course, when he begins work with the alphabet he needs more real “teaching,” since the names of the letters must be told him, and care must be taken that he learns firmly the habit of following their outlines in the right direction, of having them right side up, etc. but throughout one should remember that most “supervision” is meddling, and that one does the child a real injury in correcting a mistake which, with a little more time and experience, he would have been able to correct for himself. it is well to keep in mind, also, that little children, some of them at least, have a peculiarity shared by many of us adults, and that is a nervousness under even silent inspection. i know a landscape painter of real ability who is reduced[102] almost to nervous tears and certainly to paralyzed impotence, by the harmless presence of the group of silent, staring spectators who are apt to gather about a person making a sketch out of doors. even though we may refrain from actually interfering in the child’s fumbling efforts to conquer his own lack of muscular precision, we may wear on him nervously if we give too close an attention to his efforts. the right thing is to show him (if necessary) what he is to try to do, and then if it arouses his interest so that he sets to work upon it, we will do well to busy ourselves somewhat ostentatiously with something else in the room. occasionally a child, even a little child, has acquired already the habit of asking for help rather than struggling with an obstacle himself. the best way to deal with this unfortunate tendency is to provide simpler and simpler exercises until, through making a very slight effort “all himself,” the child learns the joy of self-conquest and re-acquires his natural taste for independence. most of us, with healthy normal children, however, meet with no trouble of this kind. the average child of three, or even younger, set before the solid geometric insets, clears the board for action by the heartiest and most instinctive rejection of any aid, suggestions, or even sympathy. his cry of “let me do it!” as he reaches for the little cylinders with one hand and pushes away his would-be instructor with the other, does one’s heart good.

it is to be seen that dr. montessori’s demand for[103] child-liberty does not mean unbridled and unregulated license for him, even intellectual license; nor does her command to her teachers to let him make his own forward advance mean that they are to do nothing for him. they may, indeed, frequently they must, set him carefully on a road not impossibly hard for him, and head him in the right direction. what they are not to do, is to go along with him, pointing out with a flood of words the features of the landscape, smoothing out all the obstacles, and carrying him up all the hills.

more important than any of the details in the use of the apparatus is the constant firm intellectual grasp on its ultimate purpose. the montessori mother must assimilate, into the very marrow of her bones, the fundamental principle underlying every part of every exercise, the principle which she must never forget an instant in all the detailed complexity of its ingenious practical application. she is to remember constantly that the montessori exercises are neither games to amuse the children (although they do this to perfection), nor ways for the children to acquire information (although this is also accomplished admirably, though not so directly as in the kindergarten work). they are, like all truly educative methods, means to teach the child how to learn. it is of no great importance that he shall remember perfectly the form of a square or a triangle, or even the sacred cube of froebelian infant-schools. it is of the highest importance that he shall acquire the mental[104] habit of observing quickly and accurately the form of any object he looks at or touches, because if he does, he will have, as an adult, a vision which will be that of a veritable superman, compared to the unreliable eyesight on which his parents have had to depend for information. it is of no especial importance that he shall learn quickly to distinguish with his eyes shut that a piece of maple the same size as a piece of pine is the heavier of the two. it is of the utmost importance that he shall learn to take in accurate information about the phenomena of the world, from whichever sense is most convenient, or from all of them at once, correcting and supplementing each other as they so seldom do with us badly trained adults.