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

the mother from the slavery of her mission. The classic cry of the child in swaddling bands was a protest against the suffering which ignorance imposed upon him. To-day the little one, lying tranquilly in his crib, begins to exercise his senses earlier and more easily, a ray of light strikes him and attracts his attention, and with this his education has begun, while formerly the suffering due to indigestion kept him for a much longer time a stranger to the external world.

The same thing may be repeated for every year of childhood. Often what we call naughtiness on the part of the individual child is rebellion against our own mistakes in educating him. The coercive means which we adopt toward children are what destroy their natural tranquility. A healthy child, in his moments of freedom, succeeds in escaping from the toys inflicted upon him by his parents, and in securing some object which arouses the investigating instinct of his mind; a worm, an insect, some pebbles, etc.; he is silent, tranquil and attentive. If the child is not well, or if his mother obliges him to remain seated in a chair, playing with a doll, he becomes restless, cries, or gives way to convulsive outbursts ("bad temper"). The mother believes that educating her child means forcing him to do what is pleasing to her, however far she may be from knowing what the child's real needs are, and unfortunately we must make the same statement regarding the school-teachers! Then, in order to make him yield to coercion, she punishes the child when he rebels and rewards him when he is obedient. By this method we drive a child by force along paths that are not natural to him. In the same way, absolute governments employed public entertainments and the gallows, in order to compel the people to act and think according to the will of their sovereign; indeed, they were considered as indispensable means of good government. To-day we have come to realise that such means are more or less adapted to the successful crushing of a people's spirit, but not to governing them well. The reign of liberty, which leaves men the opportunity to give expression to their own powers and above all to their own thoughts, is doing away with festivals and executions; and it is not until this is accomplished that men can be really well governed.

Something similar is going to take place in the schools. But here, since the children are incapable of understanding what they ought to do for their own best good, science studies them in order to assist their natural needs.

I believe that we must greatly modify our ideas regarding infant psychology, as soon as trained psychologists begin to observe the spontaneous manifestations of children, to the end of encouraging their tendencies.

Having applied scientific methods in the "Children's Houses," we were amazed at the behaviour of those little children; for instance, they showed contempt for toys, while they loved objects on which they could exercise their free powers of reason.

Intellectual exercise is the most pleasing of all to the small child if he is in good health. Indeed, we already know that children break their toys in order to see how they are made inside; this shows that the exercise of their intellect interests them more than playing with an object that is often irrational. But children are not, as is generally believed, naturally destructive; on the contrary, their instinct is to preserve. This is seen in the way in which they save little objects that they have acquired by themselves; and in the "Children's Houses," we have also seen it in the way that they preserve unharmed even the most trivial scrap of paper, although free to tear it up, so long as that scrap of paper helps them to exercise their thoughts.

Here we see the great difference between the healthy, normal child who employs himself in the way that pleases him, and is attentive and tranquil; and another child who, equally healthy and normal, is obliged to do what other people wish him to do, and is restless, and troublesome and cries.

To aid the physical development of the child under the guidance of natural laws is to favour his health and his growth; to aid his natural psychic tendencies is to render him more intelligent.

This principle has been intuitively recognised by all pedagogists, but the practical application of it was not possible, excepting under the guidance of scientific pedagogy, founded upon a direct knowledge of the human individual.

To-day it is possible for us to establish a régime of liberty in our schools, and consequently it is our duty to do so.

Whenever a child exhibits anomalies of character that do not signify rebellion against irrational methods of education, and are not expressions of a struggle for liberty, he represents the unhappy effect of some pathological cause, or of some social error, that has only too fatally accomplished its corruptive task.

This is what the biographic history will reveal!

As a general rule, a bad child should be taken to see a physician, because it is almost certain that he is a sick child.

But the treatment of such maladies is very often mainly pedagogical; curative pedagogy, however, must absolutely abolish punishment.

We now know as a fact absolutely established in sociology that the fear of punishment, of torture and even of death does not avail to diminish crime, nor the imperious manifestation of human passions.

Brigandage is not repressed by cutting off heads, but by civilisation in all its forms of industry, intercommunication, etc.

And this principle is especially true in the case of children; harshness of methods and severity of punishment will not avail to inculcate, and still less to create, goodness. Man is conquered through kindness and gentleness; among all the beatitudes, that of inheriting the earth (i.e., of winning over their fellowmen) is given to the meek: blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

We know that hypocrisy, adulation and seduction are criminal means by which man seeks to deceive his fellow men to his own profit; but they are based upon gentleness; it would never occur to anyone to seduce and to conquer hypocritically, with the help of violence. Because the weak point in man, that to which he is most susceptible, is gentleness, praise, caresses. We have seen that the psychic stimulus needed to augment human activity, to arouse an apathetic person to action, and even to produce a condition of flourishing growth in a child, is the pleasant stimulus of kindness and caresses. The mother's caress, like the mother's milk, is a means of stimulating the child to a more complete nutrition and vitality. And the entire category of physiological weaklings, such as the defectives, epileptics and criminals, have a proportionately greater need of such stimulus than normal individuals; consequently, how can coercion ever be expected to restore such unbalanced personalities to their proper equilibrium? Those whom we have been in the habit of oppressing with severity and punishment are the very ones most in need of the stimulus of affection. Indeed, it is only the strong man and the hero who can pass unscathed through persecution; the weak are left broken, down-trodden, or slain.

Sursum Corda.—Always strive to uplift, never to depress.

A beautiful theory and a humane idea. But is it practicable, and to what extent? In short, what can be done practically, for instance, in the exceedingly difficult case of juvenile delinquents, in order to correct their evil tendencies and save them from their waywardness, without coercion?

But what are evil tendencies of the mind? With that one phrase we are trying to embrace and ostensibly bind together a quantity of widely different effects.

The study of the individual should suggest to us the particular method of education required by him. Meanwhile, in regard to the question of juvenile delinquents, a wide road leading straight back to first causes, has been opened by the pathological factor. Who, for instance, does not know that the conduct and the sentiments of an individual may become unbalanced through the effects of poison or disease? This takes us at once into the field of nervous or mental pathology: the first symptom of paralytic dementia is not the trembling, or alteration of speech, or interruption of certain reflex actions, or muscular weakness, nor the real and actual delirium. The symptom which first manifests itself as an indication of profound disturbance in the personality of the unfortunate victim of this cruel disease is an almost unheralded alteration of the natural character and conduct. The man who hitherto has been a good husband and father, becomes a profligate, spendthrift and gambler; the man who has hitherto been most scrupulous in his language and in his sexual conduct becomes foul-mouthed and obscene; the man who was a kind and affectionate husband becomes violent and aggressive toward his wife. Anyone wishing to consider these preliminary symptoms of paralytic dementia as evil tendencies of the mind, would strive in vain with appropriate sermons, reproofs and punishments to make the sick man repent and come back to his former state!

Let us pass on to another example. There is no one who is not aware of the effects of alcohol. There are persons who, when in a state of intoxication, commit actions that are worse than reprehensible, even criminal; actions which the individual himself deplores as soon as the poisonous effects have passed away. Kind-hearted persons go so far as to maltreat their own children, even when they are little babies; they commit violent and degrading acts that often make them shed tears of repentance as soon as they become aware of them. Well, if we should try to make such a person understand, while he is still in a state of intoxication, that his actions are improper, it would be wasted effort. It is better to let the matter pass, or else to give him treatment for his alcoholic condition, which is the cause of his misconduct.

And passing on to another class of cases, does not everyone know that when people are afflicted with a diseased liver, their character alters, they become jealous, quarrelsome, hypochondriac, melancholy? It would be useless to tell such persons that they were formerly more tractable and morally superior; they are already sufficiently afflicted without having us, who are in good health, aggravate them with our useless preaching. And analogously, it is well known that when hysteria attacks a woman it may transform her from a virtuous and modest person to an unhappy creature, compelled by her physical condition to forget herself and compromise the unquestioned propriety of her past life; or again, it may change her from a gentle soul to an insupportable fury, or it may actually develop into such pronounced delirium as to necessitate her confinement in an insane asylum. In this case also, it is the malady that demands treatment, since it is the sole cause of the sad manifestations of a change in character.

Now, the pathological cause most frequently associated with criminal manifestations, is undoubtedly epilepsy. Lombroso himself attributed a vast influence to this etiological factor of criminality; and every day this far-sighted intuition of the master is confirmed and made clearer. The epileptic is not always a criminal, nor does the criminal always show the classic convulsive symptoms. There are cases of epilepsy in which the symptoms are attenuated or latent or replaced by different but equivalent symptoms. It is frequently necessary to diagnose an epileptic character from impulsive tendencies and from long protracted nocturnal enuresis in childhood. De Sanctis has lately been able to prove in his hospital practice that there are many children who have unmistakable epilepsy of the classic type, with violent accesses, but without criminal tendencies; at a certain age the convulsions cease, the patient is apparently cured: but he has become a criminal. On the other hand, there are children