How simple a solution of the life question! The fingers of Antonio that had itched in babyhood to make the earth bloom and to earn bread closed quiescently about a dagger handed him by a man who said, “Come with me; do as I decide for you.” The crime Antonio did was not his fault, nor the fault of his accomplice. It was the fault of his madre.
Dr. Montessori tells the story of the child whose will is misdirected in babyhood. He is the child whom his mother and the public school system mold into a lump of putty by thinking for him.
The greatest problem of to-day in child-training is, how shall we help our little ones to strength of will? Civilization is being sapped by our weaklings. Home-training, the public schools do not develop character. Dr. Montessori tells us that this is because parents and teachers do not know what will, fundamentally, is.
Dr. Montessori says, “To will is to be able. The little child who persistently struggles to pile block upon block until a miniature tower or castle rises under his fingers, persisting until he completes the labor, is taking his first step toward will-training.
“Family life, trade life are built up on this persistency. Whether it shows itself in loving, or giving or working, constancy makes the social will. Every motor activity is an act of will, and constancy in right activities makes character.”
Other great teachers have said the study of mathematics and the dead languages, the military discipline of the army, mortification of the flesh, make character. To train a child’s will we feel we must crucify it upon the cross of our desires. A child must obey us, we say, follow our caprices and chisel himself into a likeness to us, because we wish him to be like us. Why should children be little men and women? Are we so sure of our own perfection that we have a right to force our personality upon that of our children?
Dr. Montessori gives us a new rule for developing character in children. She says:
“Seek the child’s first longings if you would train his will. Give him the foundation of will by helping him to concentrate on something he instinctively craves to be busy about and so lay the foundation stones of his character.”
The little child’s first impulses to be active are good. He wants to be about his father’s business by taking part in the activities of the home. We make our children weak-willed by our own capriciousness in interfering with their attempts to be active. We dress them, we feed them, we wait on them, we drive them to play, we lead them; we put them in kindergartens where they flit from one occupation to another without an opportunity to concentrate on one; we put them in schools where their days are cut up into little bundles of study, tied with the iron chains of Schedule that make prisoners of children; we continually decide for our little ones and kill their characters with the sword of misdirected kindness.
Some children are born with the color of painters in their souls, and we punish them for soiling our pictures and mussing our tapestries and trampling upon our gardens. May we not look beyond their impotent acts to the spirit-longing that prompted them and put into their hands the best in the way of color: paints, crayons, books, flowers that will satisfy their desires and give them an opportunity to concentrate on the activity they instinctively crave. So they gain will power.