The three periods of the spontaneous developing of the Montessori children into collective activity, as I observed them, have an even more direct bearing upon the home. Left alone, offered the scientific apparatus for mental, moral, and physical growth, the Montessori children make these important social adjustments.
They learn to live together.
They learn together.
They are good together.
A great deal is involved in the development of each of these adjustments. We must study the method of Montessori by means of which success in group activity is made spontaneous.
To say to a child, “You must be polite. You mustn’t be rude. It is ugly to be clumsy. It isn’t nice to be selfish,” was the part of the older decalogue in child-training. To teach a child by careful physical and rhythmic exercise and through simple acts of home helpfulness, so that he is naturally graceful and courteous, is the Montessori way. To provide him with play or educational materials which have greater possibilities of interest if shared—blocks, games, handicraft materials—accomplishes unselfishness. Such community play as is found in imitating the activities of the childhood of the race—digging, cooking, collecting, all kinds of building, trade, plays, weaving, gardening in groups, and camping—is valuable because it helps children to merge their personalities in the interests and life of a group. The center of these child activities is child interest, not adult pressure.
Dr. Montessori makes it possible for little children to learn together, not according to schedule, but in line with child interest.
A mother wrote me at great length and anxiously in regard to what seemed to her a little son’s lack of adaptability to the home use of the Montessori didactic apparatus. The boy had toys, books, colored pencils, blocks; he was endowed with a vital interest in the world about him and an alert mind, but he refused to play alone. He preferred playing in the street with a group of other children, their only play material being pebbles, sand, or bricks, to playing at home with his own beautiful equipment.
“How can I persuade Harold to work alone with the Montessori apparatus?” his mother queried.
It was important for this child and for all children not to work alone. Any child will make greater educational strides if the stimulus of other child minds helps his intellectual growth.