“These blocks with the geometric insets are among the most valuable stimuli in the Casa dei Bambini. The vision and the touch become, by their use, accustomed to a great variety of shapes. It will be noted, too, that the child apprehends the forms synthetically, as given entities, and is not taught to recognize them by aid of even the simplest geometrical analysis. This is a point on which Dr. Montessori lays particular stress.”
Now it is to be borne in mind that although, for the children, this is only a “game,” as fascinating to them as the picture-puzzle is to their elders, their far-seeing teacher is utilizing it, far cry though it may seem, to begin to teach them to write. And here I realize that I have at last written a phrase for which my bewildered reader has probably been waiting in an astonished impatience. For of all the profound, searching, regenerating effects of the Montessori system, none seems to have made an impression on the public like the fact, almost a by-product of the method, that Montessori children learn to write and read more easily than others. I have heard Dr. Montessori exclaim in wonder many times over the popular insistence on that interesting and important, but by no means central, detail of her work; as though reading and writing were our only functions in life, as though we could get information and education only from the printed page, a prop which is already, in the opinion of many wise people, too largely used in our modern world as a substitute for first-hand, individual observation.
It cannot be denied, however, that the way Montessori children learn to write is very spectacular. The theory underlying it is far too complicated to describe in complete detail in a book of this sort, but for the benefit of the person who desires to run and read at the same time, I will set down a short-cut, unscientific explanation.
The inaccuracy and relative weakness of a little child’s eyesight, compared to his sense of touch, has been already mentioned (page 57). This simple element in child physiology must be borne constantly in mind as one of the determining factors in the Montessori method of teaching writing. The child who is “playing” with the geometric insets soon learns, as we have seen from Miss Tozier’s description, that he can find the shallow recess which is the right shape for the piece of wood which he holds in his hand if he will run the fingers of his other hand around the edge of his piece of wood and then around the different recesses.
Insets Which the Child Learns to Place Both by Sight and by Touch.
Copyright 1912, by Carl R. Byoir
It is hard for an ordinary adult really to conceive of the importance of this movement for a little child. Indeed, so fixed is our usual preference for vision as a means of gaining information, that it gives one a very queer feeling to watch a child, with his eyes wide open, apparently looking intently at the board with its different-shaped recesses, but unable to find the one matching the inset he holds, until he has gone through that eerie, blind-man’s motion with his finger-tips.
Now that motion, very frequently repeated, not only tells him where to fit in his inset, but, like all frequently repeated actions, wears a channel in his brain which tends, whenever he begins the action, to make him complete it in the way he always has done it. It can be seen that, if, instead of a triangle or a square, the child is given a letter of the alphabet and shown how to follow its outlines with his fingers in the direction in which they move when the letter is written, the brain channel and muscular habit resulting are of the utmost importance.
But before he can make any use of this, he needs to learn another muscular habit, quite distinct from (although always associated with) the mastery of the letters of the alphabet, namely, the mastery of the pencil. The exceeding awkwardness naturally felt by the child in holding this new implement for the first time, has nothing to do with his recognition of A or B, although it adds another great difficulty to his reproducing those letters. He must learn how to manage his pencil before he engages upon the much more complicated undertaking of constructing with it certain fixed symbols, just as he must learn how to walk before he can be sent on an errand. The old-fashioned way (still generally in use in Italy, and not wholly abandoned in all parts of our own country) was to force the child to fill innumerable copy-books with monotonous straight lines or “pot-hooks,” a weariness of the spirit and a thorn in the flesh which any one who has suffered from it can describe feelingly. One way adopted by modern educators to avoid this dreary exercise is by frankly running away from the issue and postponing teaching children to write until a much more mature age than formerly, in the hope that general exercises in free-hand drawing will sufficiently supplement the general strengthening and steadying of the muscles which come with more mature development. It is an inaccurate but, perhaps, suggestive comparison to say that this is a little as though young children should not be taught how to walk because it is so hard for them to keep their balance, but made to wait until all their bones are mature.
Dr. Montessori has solved the difficulty by another use of the geometric insets. This time it is the hole left by the removal of one of the insets which is used. Suppose, for instance, that one chooses the triangular inset. It is set down on a piece of paper and the triangle is lifted out, leaving the paper showing through. The child is provided with colored crayons and shown how to trace around the outline of the triangular-shaped piece of paper. The fact that the metal frame stands up a little from the paper prevents his at first wildly unsteady pencil from going outside the triangle. When he has traced around the outline[A] with his blue crayon, he lifts the frame up and there is the most beautiful blue triangle, all the work of his own hands! He usually gazes at this in delighted surprise, and then it is suggested to him to fill in this outline with strokes of his pencil. He is allowed to make these as he chooses, only being cautioned not to pass outside the line. At first the crayon goes “every which way,” and the “drawings” are hardly recognizable because the outline has been so overrun at every point; but gradually the child’s muscular control is improved and finally carried to a very high degree of perfection. Regular, even parallel lines begin to appear and the final result is as even as a Japanese color-wash. It is evident that in the course of this work he makes of his own accord, with the utmost interest animating each stroke, as many lines as would fill hours and hours of enforced drudgery over copy-books. When, after much practice, the muscles have learned almost automatically to control fingers holding a pencil, that particular muscular habit is sufficiently well-learned for the child to begin on another enterprise.