that there is little prospect of an immediate adoption in the united states of montessori ideas of flexibility and unhampered individual growth is apparent to anyone who knows even slightly the hierarchic rigidity of our system of education with its inexorable advance along fixed fore-ordained lines, from the kindergarten through the primary school, on through the high school to the chinese ordeal of the college entrance examination, an event which casts its shadow far down the line of school-grades, embittering the intellectual activities and darkening the life of teachers and pupils (even pupils who have not the faintest chance of going to college) for years before the awful moment arrives.
all really good teachers have always been, as much as they were allowed to be, some variety of what is called in this book “montessori teacher.” but as the state and private systems of education have swollen to more and more unmanageable proportions, and have settled into more and more exact and cog-like relations with each other, teachers have found themselves required to “turn out a more uniform[233] product,” a process which is in its very essence utterly abhorrent to anyone with the soul of an educator.
our state system of education has come to such an exalted degree of uniformity that a child in a third grade in southern california can be transported to a third grade in maine, and find himself in company with children being ground out in precisely the same educational hopper he has left. his temperament, capacity, tastes, surroundings, probable future and aspirations may be what you will, he will find all the children about his age of all temperaments, tastes, capacities, probable futures and aspirations practically everywhere in the united states, being “educated” exactly as he was, in his original graded school, wherever it was. school superintendents hold conferences of self-congratulation over this “standardizing” of american education, and some teachers are so hypnotized by this mental attitude on the part of their official superiors, that they come to take pride in the procrustean quality of their schoolroom where all statures are equalized, and to labor conscientiously to drive thirty or more children slowly and steadily, like a flock of little sheep, with no stragglers and no advance-guard allowed, along the straight road to the next division, where another shepherdess, with the same training, takes them in hand. there is a significant anecdote current in school-circles, of an educator rising to address an educational convention[234] which had been discussing special treatment for mentally slow and deficient children, and solemnly making only this pregnant exclamation, “we have special systems for the deficient child, and the slow child and the stupid child ... but god help the bright child!”
now it is only fair to state that this mechanical exactitude of program and of organization has been in the past of incalculable service in bringing educational order out of the chaos which was the inevitable result of the astoundingly rapid growth in population of our country. our educational system is a monument to the energy, perseverance, and organizing genius of the various educational authorities, city, county, and state superintendents and so on, who have created it. but like all other complicated machines it needs to be controlled by master-minds who do not forget its ultimate purpose in the fascination of its smoothly-running wheels. that there is plenty of the right spirit fermenting among educators is evident. for, even along with the mighty development of this educational machine, has gone a steadily increasing protest on the part of the best teachers and superintendents, against its quite possible misuse.
few people become teachers for the sake of the money to be made in that business; it is a profession which rapidly becomes almost intolerable to anyone who has not a natural taste for it; and, as a consequence of these two factors, it is perhaps, of all the[235] professions, the one which has the largest proportion of members with a natural aptitude for their lifework. with the instinctive right-feeling of human beings engaged in the work for which they were born, a considerable proportion of teachers have protested against the tacit demand upon them by the machine organization of education, to make the children under their care, all alike. they have felt keenly the essential necessity of inculcating initiative and self-dependence in their pupils, and in many cases have been aided and abetted in these heterodox ideas by more or less sympathetic principals and superintendents; but the ugly, hard fact remains, not a whit diminished for all their efforts, that the teacher whose children are not able to “pass” given examinations on given subjects, at the end of a given time, is under suspicion; and the principal whose school is full of such teachers is very apt to give way to a successor, chosen by a board of business-men with a cult for efficiency. to advise teachers under such conditions to “adopt montessori ideas” is to add the grimmest mockery to the difficulties of their position. all that can be hoped for, at present, in that direction, is that the strong emphasis placed by the montessori method on the necessity for individual freedom of mental activity and growth, may prove a valuable reinforcement to those american educators who are already struggling along towards that goal.
this general state of things in the formal education[236] of our country is one of the many reasons why this book is addressed to mothers and not to teachers. the natural development of montessori ideas, the natural results of the introduction of “children’s homes” into the united states, without this already existing fixed educational organization convinced of its own perfection, would be entirely in accord with the general, vague, unconscious socialistic drift of our time. little by little, various enterprises which used to be private and individual, are being carried on by some central, expert organization. this is especially true as regards the life of women. one by one, all the old “home industries” are being taken away from us. our laundry-work, bread-making, sewing, house-furnishing, and the like, are all done in impersonal industrial centers far from the home. the education of children over six has already followed this general direction and is less and less in the hands of the children’s mothers. and now here is the casa dei bambini, ready to take the younger children out of our yearning arms, and sternly forbidding us to protest, as our mothers were forbidden to protest when we, as girls, went away to college, or when trained nurses came in to take the care of their sick children away from them, because the best interests of the coming generation demand this sacrifice.
but as things stand now, we mothers have a little breathing-space in which to accustom ourselves gradually to this inevitable change in our world. at some time in the future, society will certainly recognize[237] this close harmony of the successful casa dei bambini with the rest of the tendencies of our times, and then there will be a need to address a detailed technical book on montessori ideas to teachers, for the training of little children will be in their hands, as is already the training of older children.
and then will be completed the process which has been going on so long, of forcing all women into labor suitable to their varying temperaments. the last one of the so-called “natural,” “domestic” occupations will be taken away from us, and very shame at our enforced idleness will drive us to follow men into doing, each the work for which we are really fitted. those of us who are born teachers and mothers (for the two words ought to mean about the same thing) will train ourselves expertly to care for the children of the world, collected for many hours a day in school-homes of various sorts. those of us who have not this natural capacity for wise and beneficent association with the young (and many who love children dearly are not gifted with wisdom in their treatment) will do other parts of the necessary work of the world.
but that time is still in the future. at present our teachers can no more adopt the utter freedom and the reverence for individual differences, which constitute the essence of the “montessori method,” than a cog in a great machine can, of its own volition, begin to turn backwards. and here is the opportunity for us, the mothers, perhaps among the last[238] of the race who will be allowed the inestimable delight and joy of caring for our own little children, a delight and joy of which society, sooner or later, will consider us unworthy on account of our inexpertness, our carelessness, our absorption in other things, our lack of wise preparation, our lack of abstract good judgment.
our part, during this period of transition, is to seize upon regenerating influences coming from any source, and shape them with care into instruments which will help us in the great task of training little children, a complicated and awful responsibility, our pathetically inadequate training for which is offset somewhat by our passionate desire to do our best.
we can collaborate in our small way with the scientific founder of the montessori method, and can help her to go on with her system (discovered before its completion) by assimilating profoundly her master-idea, and applying it in directions which she has not yet had time finally and carefully to explore, such as its application to the dramatic and ?sthetic instincts of children.
above all, we can apply it to ourselves, to our own tense and troubled lives. we can absorb some of dr. montessori’s reverence for vital processes. indeed, possibly nothing could more benefit our children than a whole-hearted conversion on our part to her great and calm trust in life itself.
the end
