Montessori children

by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

Surrounding her was a child republic that opened its heart to her. Some of the children, in groups, were sorting and grading with quiet skill scores of the silk-wound color spools. Others, alone, were testing their knowledge of dimension and form with the solid and geometric insets. In a corner, a determined baby was trying to button the apron of another baby. All were entertained, yet no one was entertaining them. They were making their own content.

Without warning, the directress turned from the child whom she had been giving a lesson in numbers with the counting case, moved to the front of the room, and wrote upon the blackboard one word, Silence. Then she waited, herself silent and facing the little ones. Joanina, too, waited. She did not understand; she was curious.

The children, recognizing the written word, one by one laid down their work, dropped into positions of quiet repose, their eyes closed. Some laid their heads upon their folded arms. The room became so hushed that such faint sounds as the low ticking of the clock, the hum of a buzzing fly, the gentle rise and fall of breathing, became vibrant. The children’s faces were full of calm joy, their bodies were completely motionless. They had gone away from their small republic of work and play for a space. Who could tell where they were? Each child was feeling himself; for the time being he was listening to the call of his own personality.

Joanina, interested in the game of silence, closed her eyes. She folded her restless fingers. She waited, rapt, immobile as a little chiseled cherub. It was perhaps the first time in her four years’ apprenticeship to Life that she had been given an opportunity to listen to her own heart throbs, feel the grip of her own personality. The experience was satisfying to her. She heard and felt a great many inner voices and mental forces that she had never listened to or obeyed before. She heard the voices of happiness in her new, peaceful environment and love for the other children and joy at the complete freedom that surrounded her. She felt the impulse to do and learn as she had seen the other children doing and learning.

For several minutes, the silence held the children in its spell. Then, out of the stillness the whispered voice of the directress floated. As a singing wind of a far-away forest, a mountain echo, or the low voice of a mother as it first makes itself audible to a new-born babe, came the voice: “Joanina.”

The little girl opened her eyes, meeting the smiling ones of the directress, who made a gesture indicating that Joanina should go to her quietly. Poised on tiptoe, Joanina crossed the room noiselessly, threw herself into the outstretched arms of the directress.

“Mario, Otello,” softly the other children were called until all had, as silently as Joanina, left their places and surrounded the directress. Their eyes shone, their faces glowed as if they had been refreshed by an elixir bath. Yet the Montessori silence game which had brought about this inspiration and refreshing in the life of soul-starved little Joanina might have been a part of her home life.

Your child needs it; you need it.

There is, perhaps, no more significant phase of the Montessori system of education than the calm, quiet habit of self-contemplation aroused by the game of silence. The self-control, the poise, the power of long concentration that one sees in the Montessori children at Rome amazes the world. They are completely lacking in self-consciousness; they ask for help in their work only when it is absolutely necessary; they are sure of themselves.