Pedagogical Anthropology, Maria Montessori [online e book reader TXT] 📗

Stature of normal persons

Stature of abnormal persons

Fig. 35.

But we are too far removed from the triumphant civilisation of Greece, to recur to the authority of her example: the principle sanctioned to-day by modern civilisation, that of "respect for human life," forbids the violent elimination of the weak: Mount Taygetus is no longer a possible fate for innocent babes in a social environment the civic spirit of which has abolished the death penalty for criminals. Consequently, since the weak have a right to live, as many of them as naturally survive are destined to become a burden, as parasites, upon the social body of normal citizens; and they furnish a living picture of physiological wretchedness, a spectacle of admonitory misery, inasmuch as it represents an effect of social causes constituting the collective errors of human ethics. Ignorance of the hygiene of generation, maladies due to the vices and the ignorance of men, such as syphilis, other maladies such as tuberculosis, malaria and pellagra, representing so many scourges raging unchecked among the people, are the actual causes that are undermining the social structure, and manifesting themselves visibly through their pernicious fruit: the birth of weaklings. To forget the innocent results of such causes, as we forget the causes themselves, would be to run the risk of plunging precipitously into an abyss of perdition. It is precisely these disastrous effects upon posterity that ought to warn us and shed light upon the errors through which we are passing lightly and unconsciously. Accordingly, to gather in all the weaklings is equivalent to erecting a barrier against the social causes which are enfeebling posterity: since it is impossible to conceive that if the existence of such a danger were once demonstrated, society would rest until every effort had been made to guard against the possibility of its recurrence.

In addition to such motives for human prophylaxis, a more immediate interest should lead us to the pedagogic protection of weak children. The establishment of special schools for defective children, sanatarium-schools for tuberculous children, rural schools for those afflicted with malaria and pellagra, infant asylums for rachitic children, is a work of many-sided utility. They constitute a fundamental and radical purification of the schools for normal children: in fact, so long as intellectual and moral defectives and children suffering from infantilism and rachitis intermingle with healthy pupils, we cannot say that there really exist any schools for normal children, in which pedagogy may be allowed a free progress in the art of developing the best forces in the human race.

Still another useful side to the question is that of putting a stop to the physiological ruin of individual weaklings. Very small would be the cost of schools for defective children, asylums for the rachitic, tonics, quinine, the iodide treatment, school refectories for little children afflicted with hereditary taints and organic disease: very small indeed, in comparison to the disastrous losses that society must one day suffer at the hands of these future criminals and parasites gathered into prisons, insane asylums and hospitals, in comparison to the harm that may be done by one single victim of tuberculosis by spreading the homicidal bacilli around him. It is a principal of humanity as well as of economy to utilise all human forces, even when they are represented by beings who are apparently negligible. To every man, no matter how physiologically wretched, society should stretch a helping hand, to raise him. In North America the following principle has the sanction of social custom: that the task of improving physiological conditions and at the same time of instilling hope and developing inferior mentalities to the highest possible limit constitutes an inevitable human duty.

Accordingly it remains for the science of pedagogy to accomplish the high task of human redemption, which must take its start from those miracles that the twentieth century has already initiated in almost every civilised country: straightening the crippled, giving health to the sick, awakening the intelligence in the weak-minded—much as hearing is restored to the deaf and speech to the mutes—such is the work which modern progress demands of the teacher. Because such straightening of mind and body naturally lies within the province of those who have the opportunity to give succor to the human being still in the course of development; while after a defect has reached its complete development in an individual, no manner of help can ever modify the harm that has resulted from lack of intelligent treatment.

The prevention of the irremediable constitutes a large part of the work which is incumbent upon us as educators.

Summary of Stature

We have been considering stature as the linear index of the whole complex development of the body, taking it in relation to two other factors, the one internal or biological, and the other external or social. These two factors, indeed, unite in forming the character of the individual in his final development; and in each of them education may exert its influence, both in connection with the hygiene of generation and through reforms instituted in the school.

In the following table are summed up the different points of view from which we have studied stature in its biological characteristics and in its variations:

Varieties of stature Ethnic varieties and limits of oscillation Stature in different races; extreme limits. Stature of the Italian people; and its geographical distribution. Limits of stature: medium, tall, low. Biological varieties Difference of stature in the sexes. Stature at different ages (growth). Variations in stature Variations due to adaptation Mechanical Transitory or physiological. Permanent, often caused by deformities (Causes: the attitudes required by the work.) Physiological Nutrition. Physical Heat. Light. Electricity. Psychic Psychic stimuli. Pathological variations Infantilism Myxedematous. Dystrophic from alcohol. from syphilis. from tuberculosis. from malaria. from pellagra. Hypotrophic Denutrition. Anangioplastic Rachitis Summary of the Scientific Principles Illustrated in The Course of the Exposition of Our Subject

When an anthropological datum is of such fundamental importance as the stature, its limits of oscillation must be established, and its terminology must be founded upon such limits expressed in figures that have been measured and established by scientists (medium, tall, low).

The stature is the most important datum in pedagogic anthropology, because it represents the linear index of the development of the body, and for us educators is also the index of the child's normal growth.

Biopathological Laws.—In cases of total arrest of development of the personality (infantilism) the first characteristic symptom usually consists in a diminution of stature in relation to age; the morphological evolution, as well as the psychic, fails to progress in proportion to the age of the subject; but it corresponds to the mean bodily proportions belonging to the age which would be normal for the actual stature of the subject.

Weight

The weight is a measure which should be taken in conjunction with the stature; because, while the stature is a linear index of the development of the body, the weight represents a total measure of its mass; and the two taken together give the most complete expression of the bio-physiological development of the organism.

Furthermore the weight permits us to follow the oscillations of development; it provides educators with an index, a level of excellence, or the reverse, of their methods as educators, and of the hygienic conditions of the school or of the pedagogic methods in use.

The fact is, that if a child is ill, or languid, etc., his stature remains unchanged; it may grow more slowly, or be arrested in growth; but it can never diminish. The weight, on the contrary, can be lost and regained in a short time, in response to the most varied conditions of fatigue, of malnutrition, of illness, of mental anxiety. We might even call it the experimental datum of the excellence of the child's development.

Another advantage which the measure of weight has over that of stature is that it may serve as an exponent of health from the very hour of the child's birth; while stature does not exist in the new-born child, and begins to be formed (according to the definition given) only after the first year of its life, that is, when the child has acquired an erect position and the ability to walk steadily.

Variations.—Weight is one of the measures that have been most thoroughly studied, because it is not a fruit of the recently founded science of pedagogic anthropology; but it enters into the practice of pediatricians (specialists in children's diseases) and of obstetricians (specialists in childbirth), while even the general practitioner can offer precious contributions from his experience.

According to Winckel, and practically all pediatricians agree with him, "the weight of a child, if taken regularly, is the best thermometer of its health; it easily expresses in terms of figures what the nursing child cannot express in words."[34]

The new-born child weighs from three to four kilograms; but oscillations in weight from 2,500 to 5,000 grams are considered normal. Some obstetricians have noted weights in new-born children that are enormous, true gigantism, which, however, while possible, are altogether exceptional; nine and even eleven kilograms.

The oscillations in weight of the child at birth, within normal limits, may have been determined by general biological factors, as for example the sex (the female child weighing less than the male), and the race (especially in regard to the stature of the parents): but the factors which influence the weight of the new-born child in a decisive manner are those regarding the hygiene of generation.

1. "The children which have the greater weight are those born of mothers between the ages of twenty-five and thirty." (Mathews Duncan.) Let us recall what we have said regarding stature; at the end of the twenty-fifth year, that is, at the end of the period of growth, man is admirably ripe for the function of reproduction; and we ought further to recall the views cited regarding the mortality of children conceived at this age which is so favourable to parenthood; and finally the note in regard to celebrated men, almost always begotten at this age.

2. "First-born children have in general a weight inferior to that of those born later (1,729 first-born children gave an average of 3,254 grams: while 1,727 born of the second or subsequent conceptions gave an average of 3,412 gr.)" (Ingerslevs). Let us remember that celebrated men are scarcely ever the first-born.

3. "Very short intervals between successive pregnancies interfere with this progression in weight; long intervals on the contrary do not interfere with it" (Wernicke). In other words, too frequent pregnancy is unfavourable to the