Spontaneous Activity in Education - Maria Montessori (best free ebook reader for android TXT) 📗
- Author: Maria Montessori
- Performer: -
Book online «Spontaneous Activity in Education - Maria Montessori (best free ebook reader for android TXT) 📗». Author Maria Montessori
Miss Dufresne describes the initial disorder of her first attempt as follows: "I must confess that the first four weeks were disheartening; the children could not settle to a task for more than a few moments; they showed no perseverance, no initiative; at times they followed one another like a flock of lambs; when one child took up an object, all the others wanted to imitate him, sometimes they rolled on the floor and overturned the chairs."
From an experiment with rich children here in Rome, we get the following laconic description: "The greatest difficulty was the question of discipline. The children showed a complete lack of attraction to their work, and seemed disinclined to begin upon it."
These persons, who were all working independently, are all agreed later in their accounts of the initiation of order: the phenomenon is identical; at a given moment, a child begins to show an intense interest in one of the exercises. It is by no means necessary that it should be that exercise pertaining to the object determined as the first series; it may be any other object that fixes the attention of the child so deeply; the important factor is not the external object, but the internal action of the soul, responding to a stimulus, and arrested by it.
Now when a child once shows this deep interest in any one of the objects we present to him as something answering to his psychical needs, he goes on to show a like interest in all the objects, and begins to develop activities as by a natural phenomenon. When once the initiation has taken place, it leads to progression which goes on steadily, and develops of its own accord. Moreover, the phenomenon is not that of the slow and gradual progression that might be produced by a measured and systematic external action; rather it has the "explosive" character of unsuspected facts that establish themselves suddenly, and make us think of the crises of physiological life, so characteristic in the period of growth. Thus it is from one day to another that the baby cuts a tooth, from one day to another that he utters his first word, from one day to another that he takes his first step; and when the first tooth has been cut, the whole set of teeth will come; when the first word has been uttered, language will be developed; when the first step has been taken, the power of walking has been established once for all.
Similar crises occur in the first achievement of psychic order, which is the beginning of progressive evolution in the inner life.
I quote the following sentences from Miss George's description of the advent of discipline:
"In a few days that nebulous mass of whirling particles—the disorderly children—began to take definite form. The children seemed to begin to find their own way; in many of the objects they had at first despised as silly playthings, they began to discover a novel interest, and, as a result of this new interest, they began to act as independent individuals." Miss George's subsequent expression is: "They became extremely individual." "Thus it came to pass that an object of absorbing interest to one child had not the slightest attraction for another; the children were strongly differentiated in their manifestations of attention...." "The battle is only definitively won, when the child discovers some particular object which spontaneously excites great interest in him. Sometimes this enthusiasm awakens unexpectedly, or with curious rapidity."
"On one occasion I had tried a child with nearly all the objects of the series without exciting the smallest spark of interest; then I casually showed him the two tablets of red and blue colors, and called his attention to the difference of tint. He seized them at once with a kind of thirstiness, and learned five different colors in a single lesson; during the following days he took nearly all the objects of the series which he had at first despised, and little by little mastered them all.
"A child who at first had very little power of concentrating his attention, found an outlet from this state of chaos by means of one of the most complex objects of the material, the so-called length-rods; he played with these continually for a whole week and learned to count and make simple additions. He then began to turn to the cylinders and the insets, the simpler objects, and showed interest in every part of the system.
"Directly the children find their objects interesting, their disorderliness disappears at once; their mental restlessness is at an end, and they amuse themselves with the blocks, the colors, etc."
It is very interesting to follow Miss George again in her description of the special qualities that develop after such a phenomenon. She illustrates the birth of individuality by a pretty anecdote:
"There were two sisters, one of three years old, the other of five. The child of three could hardly be said to exist as an individual, so minutely did she imitate her elder sister; for example, the elder child had a blue pencil and the little one was not happy till she too had a blue pencil; when the elder sister ate bread and butter, whatever the little one had of a different kind, she would touch nothing but bread and butter, and so on. This child took no interest in anything in the school, but merely followed her sister, imitating everything she did. One day the little one became interested in the pink cubes, built up the tower with the liveliest interest, repeated the exercise several times, and completely forgot her sister. The older girl was so astonished at this, that she called her little sister and said to her: 'How is it that while I am filling in a circle you are building the tower?' From that day the younger child became a personality; she began to develop independently, and was no longer merely the shadow or reflection of her sister."
These interesting facts concerning the spontaneous development of qualities which hitherto were non-existent in the individual, and which exploded after the fundamental phenomenon—of intense and prolonged interest in a task—had manifested itself, have been confirmed by repeated experiments in a great variety of places made by persons who had had no sort of communication one with another.
Thus, for instance, Miss Dufresne speaks of a little girl of four years old, who seemed quite incapable of carrying a glass of water even only half full, without spilling it; so much so that she turned away from such a task, knowing she could not accomplish it. One day she became absorbed in work with one or other of the objects, and after this, she began to carry glasses of water with the greatest ease; and as some of her companions were now painting with water-colors, it became her great delight to carry water to them all without spilling a single drop.
Another most significant fact is related by Miss Barton, an Australian teacher. Among her pupils was a little girl who had not yet developed articulate speech, and only gave utterance to inarticulate sounds; her parents had had her examined by a doctor to find out if she were normal; the doctor declared the child to be perfectly normal, and considered that though she had not as yet developed speech, she would do so in time. This child became interested in the solid insets, and amused herself for a long time taking the cylinders out of the cavities and putting them back in their places; and after repeating the work with intense interest, she ran to the teacher, saying: "Come and see!"
A phenomenon of constant occurrence when the children begin to be interested in the work and to develop themselves is the lively joy which seems to possess them. Certain psychologists would say, it is the "sentimental note" corresponding to the intellectual acquisition; a physiologist, making an exact comparison, might affirm that joy is the indication of internal growth, just as an increase in weight is the indication of bodily growth.
The children themselves seem to have the "sensation" of their spiritual growth, a consciousness of the acquisitions they are making by thus amplifying their own personalities; they demonstrate with joyous effusion the higher process which is beginning within them. "All the children," says Miss George, "show that pride we ourselves experience when we have really produced something novel. They skip round me, and throw their arms about my neck, when they have learned to do some simple thing, saying: 'I did it all alone, you did not think I could have done that; I did it better to-day than yesterday,'"
It is after these manifestations that a true discipline is established, the most obvious results of which are closely related to what we will call "respect for the work of others and consideration for the rights of others." Henceforward a child no longer attempts to take away another's work; even if he covet it, he waits patiently until the object is free; and very often a child becomes interested in watching a companion at work on some object he would like to use himself. Afterwards, when discipline has been established by these internal processes, it will happen all at once that a child will work quite independently of the others, almost as if to develop his own personality; but no "moral isolation" results from such work; on the contrary, there is a mutual respect and affection between the children, a sentiment which unites instead of separating; and hence is born that complex discipline which, moreover, contains within itself the sentiment that must accompany the order of a community.
Miss Dufresne says: "After the Christmas holidays, when school began again, there was a great change in the class. It seemed that discipline was establishing itself, without any effort on my part. The children appeared to be too much absorbed in their work to indulge in any of the disorderly actions which had marked their conduct in the beginning. They went spontaneously to the cupboards to choose the objects which had bored them formerly. They took the geometrical insets, the graduated cylinders, and began to touch the outlines of the wooden forms with their fingers; the younger children showed a preference for the buttoning and lacing frames; they took one after the other without any signs of fatigue, and seemed delighted with the new objects. An atmosphere of industry pervaded the schoolroom. The children who had hitherto chosen objects on the impulse of the moment, henceforth manifested a desire for some sort of rule, a personal and internal rule; they concentrated their efforts on their task, working accurately and methodically, and showing real satisfaction in surmounting difficulties. This precision in work produced an immediate effect on their characters. They became capable of controlling their nerves."
The instance which struck Miss Dufresne most was that of a little boy of four and a half, who at first had seemed very nervous and excitable and had disturbed the whole class: "The imagination of this child had been developed in an extraordinary manner, so that when an object was given to him, he took no notice of the actual form
Comments (0)