A Montessori Mother

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

In the face of this melancholy sight, I was comforted by the teacher’s hopeful assurance that the child had made some advance since the beginning of the school, and showed some signs that intellectual activity was awakening naturally under the well-nigh irresistible stimulus of the Montessori apparatus.

One exception to the general truth that the children in a Montessori school do not take concerted action is in the “lesson of silence.” This is often mentioned in accounts of the Casa dei Bambini, but it is so important that it may perhaps be here described again. It originated as a lesson for one of the senses, hearing, but though it undoubtedly is an excellent exercise for the ears it has a moral effect which is more important. It is certainly to visitors one of the most impressive of all the impressive sights to be seen in the Children’s Home.

One may be moving about between the groups of busy children, or sitting watching their lively animation or listening to the cheerful hum of their voices, when one feels a curious change in the atmosphere like the hush which falls on a forest when the sun suddenly goes behind a cloud. If it is the first time one has seen this “lesson,” the effect is startling. A quick glance around shows that the children have stopped playing as well as talking, and are sitting motionless at their tables, their eyes on the blackboard where in large letters is written “Silenzio” (Silence). Even the little ones who cannot read, follow the example of the older ones, and not only sit motionless, but look fixedly at the magic word. The Directress is visible now, standing by the blackboard in an attitude and with an expression of tranquillity which is as calming to see as the meditative impassivity of a Buddhist priest. The silence becomes more and more intense. To untrained ears it seems absolute, but an occasional faint gesture or warning smile from the Directress shows that a little hand has moved almost but not quite inaudibly, or a chair has creaked.

At first the children smile in answer, but soon, under the hypnotic peace of the hush which lasts minute after minute, even this silent interchange of loving admonition and response ceases. It is now evident from the children’s trance-like immobility that they no longer need to make an effort to be motionless. They sit quiet, rapt in a vague, brooding reverie, their busy brains lulled into repose, their very souls looking out from their wide, vacant eyes. This expression of utter peace, which I never before saw on a child’s face except in sleep, has in it something profoundly touching. In that matter-of-fact, modern schoolroom, as solemnly as in shadowy cathedral aisles, falls for an instant a veil of contemplation, between the human soul and the external realities of the world.

And then a real veil of twilight falls to intensify the effect. The Directress goes quietly about from window to window, closing the shutters. In the ensuing twilight, the children bow their heads on their clasped hands in the attitude of prayer. The Directress steps through the door into the next room and a slow voice, faint and clear, comes floating back, calling a child’s name.

“El...e...na!”

A child lifts her head, opens her eyes, rises as silently as a little spirit, and with a glowing face of exaltation, tiptoes out of the room, flinging herself joyously into the waiting arms.

The summons comes again, “Vit...to...ri...o!”

A little boy lifts his head from his desk, showing a face of sweet, sober content at being called, and goes silently across the big room, taking his place by the side of the Directress. And so it goes until perhaps fifteen children are clustered happily about the teacher. Then, as informally and naturally as it began, the “game” is over. The teacher comes back into the room with her usual quiet, firm step; light pours in at the windows; the mystic word is erased from the blackboard. The visitor is astonished to see that only six or seven minutes have passed since the beginning of this new experience. The children smile at each other, and begin to play again, perhaps a little more quietly than before, perhaps more gently, certainly with the shining eyes of devout believers who have blessedly lost themselves in an instant of rapt and self-forgetting devotion.

And, in a sense, they too have been to church. This modern scientific Roman woman-doctor, who probably never heard of William Penn, has rediscovered the mystic joys of his sect, and has appropriated to her system one of the most beneficial elements of the Quaker Meeting.