Pedagogical Anthropology, Maria Montessori [online e book reader TXT] 📗
- Author: Maria Montessori
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More than that, the proposed system is the one true one, a hygiene that pays more attention to the man himself than to his environment; striving to perfect him in his physiological functions, or to correct any tendency to abnormal and pathological deviations.
It follows that, in pedagogic anthropology, the direction taken by the naturalistic study of man is predominantly physiological.
In the same manner as the other two kindred branches of anthropology, this branch which has joined forces with pedagogy has severed connection with the original parent stock of general anthropology, and abandoned its dogmatisms and to a large extent its phraseology.
Criminal anthropology, for example, shows great daring and scant accuracy in its affirmations and its researches; and to a large extent it has acquired a nomenclature of its own; and medical anthropology lays down laws that general anthropology never took into consideration, and neglects to bestow particular attention upon the head, which formed the object of fundamental research in general anthropology.
In the same way, pedagogic anthropology has had to emancipate itself from the general science from which it has sprung, in order to proceed unhampered along the practical line of research, which consists essentially in a study of the pupil and the compilation of biographic charts, from which a fund of material will result, destined to enrich the scientific content of this branch of learning.
But since the study of the pupil must not be morphological alone, but psychological as well, it is necessary for anthropology to invoke the aid of experimental psychology, in order to achieve its purpose. Now it is essential to psychology, no less than to pedagogic anthropology, to study the reactions of the physiological and psychical personality of the child in the environment which we call school. Consequently it is reserved for the teacher to make a large contribution to these two parallel sciences, which are coming to assume the highest social importance.
It follows further that pedagogic anthropology differs from the other two allied branches in its practical applications; the progress of criminal and medical anthropology requires, as a matter of fact, only the labors of medical specialists; in the case of pedagogic anthropology there is equally a need of medical specialists, to whom the diagnosis and the treatment of abnormal pupils must be entrusted, as well as the hygiene of their development; but in addition to these, the teachers also are summoned to a vast task of observation, which, by its continuity, will supplement and complete the periodic observations of the physician.
Furthermore, the teacher will acquire under the guidance of anthropology certain practical rules in the art of educating the child; and it is this especially that makes the anthropological and psychological training of the modern teacher so necessary.
The school constitutes an immense field for research; it is a "pedagogical clinic," which, in view of its importance, can be compared to no other gathering of subjects for study. Thanks to the system of compulsory education, it gathers to itself every living human being of both sexes and of every social caste, normal and abnormal; and it retains them there, throughout a most important period of their growth. This is the field, therefore, in which the culture of the human race can really and practically be undertaken; and the joint labour of physician and teacher will sow the seed of a future human hygiene, adapted to achieve perfection in man, both as a species and as a social unit.
[1] From a work by E. Morselli: Cesare Lombroso and Scientific Philosophy.
[2] Musolino was a brigand, and Luccheni an anarchist and regicide.
[3] From a study by Prof. E. Troilo, Enrico Morselli as a Philosopher. In the volume by Morselli, Milan: Vallardi, 1906.
CHAPTER ICERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY
In order to understand the practical researches that must be conducted for anthropological purposes, it is necessary to have an adequate preparation in the science of biology. The interpretation of the data that have to be gathered according to technical procedure, demands a training; and this training will form our subject in the theoretic part of the present volume. The limits, however, not only of the book itself, but of pedagogic anthropology as well, preclude anything more than a simple general outline; but this can be supplemented by those other branches of study which are either collateral to it or constitute its necessary basis (i.e., general biology, human anatomy and physiology, hygiene of environment, general anthropology, etc.).
The Material Substratum of LifeThe Synthetic Concept of the Individual in Biology
According to the materialistic theories of life, of which Haeckel is the most noted supporter, life was derived from a form of matter, protoplasm, which not only has a special chemical composition, but possesses further the property of a constant molecular movement of scission and redintegration; vital metabolism or interchange of matter, by which the molecules are constantly renewed at the expense of the environment.
It was Huxley who defined protoplasm as the physical basis of life; and, as a matter of fact, life does not exist without protoplasm.
But Schultze and Haeckel carried this doctrine further, to the point of maintaining that a minute particle of protoplasm was all that was needed to constitute life; and that such a particle could be formed naturally, whenever the surrounding conditions were favorable, like any other inorganic chemical substance; and in this way the materialists endeavoured, with great ingenuousness, to maintain the spontaneous origin of life. And when Haeckel thought that he had discovered the moneræ or living cells composed of a single particle of protoplasm, he held that these were the first species to have appeared on earth.
But the further researches of physiologists and the improvements in the technique of the microscope proved that protoplasm does not exist independently in nature; because living cells are always a combination of protoplasm and a nucleus. If the nucleus is extracted from a radiolarium, the latter mortifies, and the protoplasm also dies; if an amœba is severed in such a manner that one part contains nucleus and protoplasm and the other protoplasm alone, it will be found that the latter part mortifies and dies, while the first part continues to live. If an infusorium is divided in such a way that each of the separate sections contains a part of the nucleus and a part of the protoplasm, two living infusoria are developed similar to the original one. Experiments of this kind, to which Verworn has given high authority, serve to prove that life does not exist except in cells divisible into protoplasm and nucleus. Further discoveries confirm this theory, as for instance the presence of a nucleus in hemocytes or red blood corpuscles, which were formerly believed to be instances of anuclear cells; and the discovery of protoplasm in microbes, which had formerly been considered free nuclei.
Now, when we have an independent living cell, it represents an individual, which not only has, as a general feature, this primitive complexity of parts, but also certain special characteristics of form, of reaction to environment, etc., that mark the species to which this particular living creature belongs.
Accordingly, we cannot assert, without committing the error of confining ourselves to a generic detail, that life originates in protoplasm or in a combination divisible into protoplasm and nucleus; we should say that life originates in living individuals; since, aside from abstract speculation, there can be no other material substratum of life.
Such a doctrine is eminently synthetic, and opens the mind to new conceptions regarding the properties that characterise life.
Formerly when life was defined as a form of matter (protoplasm) subject to constant movement (metabolism), only a single general property had been stated; for that matter, even the stars consist of matter and movement; and, according to the modern theory of electrons, atoms are composed of little particles strongly charged with electricity and endowed with perennial motion. Accordingly, these are universal characteristics, and not peculiar to life; and metabolism may be regarded as a variation of such a property, which is provoked by, or at least associated with the phenomenon of life.
The properties which are really characteristic of life have been summed up by Laloy in two essential groups; final causes and limitations of mass, or, to use a term more appropriate to living organisms, limitations of form and size.
The term final causes refers to a series of phenomena that are met with only where there is life, and that tend toward a definite purpose or end. Living organisms take nutriment from their environment, to the end of assimilating it, that is, transforming it from an inert, indifferent substance into a substance that is a living part of themselves.
This phenomenon is undoubtedly one of the most characteristic. But there are still other forms of final cause, such for example as the transformation of the fertilised ovum into the fully developed individual, predetermined in its essential characteristics, such as form, dimensions, colour, activities, etc. There are ova that to all appearances are exactly alike; the human ovum itself is nothing more than a simple cell composed of protoplasm and nucleus, measuring only a tenth of a millimeter (= 1/250 inch); yet all these ovum cells produce living organisms of the utmost diversity; yet so definitely predetermined that, if we know to what species the ovum belongs, we are able to predict how many bones will compose the skeleton of the animal destined to develop from it, and whether this animal will fly or creep upon the ground, or rise to take a place among those who have made themselves the lords of the earth. Furthermore, knowing the phases of development, we may predetermine at what periods the successive transformations that lead step by step to the complete development of the individual will take place.
Another form of final cause is seen in the actions of living creatures, which reveal a self-consciousness; a consciousness that even in its most obscure forms guides them toward a destined end.
Thus, for example, even the infusoria that may be seen through a microscope in a drop of water, chasing hither and thither in great numbers, avoiding collision with one another, or contending over some particle of food, or rushing in a mass toward an unexpected ray of light, give us a keen impression of their possession of consciousness, a dim glimmering of self-will, which is the most elementary form of that phenomenon that manifests itself more and more clearly, from the metazoa upward, through the whole zoologic scale: the final cause of psychic action.
Again, in multicellular organisms there are certain continuous and so-called vital phenomena, which some physiologists attribute to cellular consciousness: for example, the leucocytes
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