Training the “Stereognostic Sense”—Combining Motor and Tactual Images.
Copyright 1912, by Carl R. Byoir
In the exercises for learning the difference between rough and smooth, the child needs at first a little guidance in learning how to draw his finger-tips lightly from left to right over the sandpaper strips; and in the exercises of discrimination between different fabrics, he needs someone to tie the bandage over his eyes and, the first time, to show him how to set to work.
A silent object-lesson, or a word or two, are needed to show him how to separate and distinguish between the pieces of wood of different weights in the baric exercises, and a similar introduction is needed to the cylindrical sound-boxes.
As he progresses both in age and ability, and begins some of the more complicated exercises, he needs a little longer explanation when he begins a new exercise, and a little more supervision to make sure that he has understood the problem. In the later part of the work with plane geometric insets, and in the work with colored crayons, he needs occasional supervision, not to correct the errors he makes, but to see that he keeps the right aim in sight. Of course, when he begins work with the alphabet he needs more real “teaching,” since the names of the letters must be told him, and care must be taken that he learns firmly the habit of following their outlines in the right direction, of having them right side up, etc. But throughout one should remember that most “supervision” is meddling, and that one does the child a real injury in correcting a mistake which, with a little more time and experience, he would have been able to correct for himself. It is well to keep in mind, also, that little children, some of them at least, have a peculiarity shared by many of us adults, and that is a nervousness under even silent inspection. I know a landscape painter of real ability who is reduced almost to nervous tears and certainly to paralyzed impotence, by the harmless presence of the group of silent, staring spectators who are apt to gather about a person making a sketch out of doors. Even though we may refrain from actually interfering in the child’s fumbling efforts to conquer his own lack of muscular precision, we may wear on him nervously if we give too close an attention to his efforts. The right thing is to show him (if necessary) what he is to try to do, and then if it arouses his interest so that he sets to work upon it, we will do well to busy ourselves somewhat ostentatiously with something else in the room. Occasionally a child, even a little child, has acquired already the habit of asking for help rather than struggling with an obstacle himself. The best way to deal with this unfortunate tendency is to provide simpler and simpler exercises until, through making a very slight effort “all himself,” the child learns the joy of self-conquest and re-acquires his natural taste for independence. Most of us, with healthy normal children, however, meet with no trouble of this kind. The average child of three, or even younger, set before the solid geometric insets, clears the board for action by the heartiest and most instinctive rejection of any aid, suggestions, or even sympathy. His cry of “Let me do it!” as he reaches for the little cylinders with one hand and pushes away his would-be instructor with the other, does one’s heart good.
It is to be seen that Dr. Montessori’s demand for child-liberty does not mean unbridled and unregulated license for him, even intellectual license; nor does her command to her teachers to let him make his own forward advance mean that they are to do nothing for him. They may, indeed, frequently they must, set him carefully on a road not impossibly hard for him, and head him in the right direction. What they are not to do, is to go along with him, pointing out with a flood of words the features of the landscape, smoothing out all the obstacles, and carrying him up all the hills.
More important than any of the details in the use of the apparatus is the constant firm intellectual grasp on its ultimate purpose. The Montessori mother must assimilate, into the very marrow of her bones, the fundamental principle underlying every part of every exercise, the principle which she must never forget an instant in all the detailed complexity of its ingenious practical application. She is to remember constantly that the Montessori exercises are neither games to amuse the children (although they do this to perfection), nor ways for the children to acquire information (although this is also accomplished admirably, though not so directly as in the kindergarten work). They are, like all truly educative methods, means to teach the child how to learn. It is of no great importance that he shall remember perfectly the form of a square or a triangle, or even the sacred cube of Froebelian infant-schools. It is of the highest importance that he shall acquire the mental habit of observing quickly and accurately the form of any object he looks at or touches, because if he does, he will have, as an adult, a vision which will be that of a veritable superman, compared to the unreliable eyesight on which his parents have had to depend for information. It is of no especial importance that he shall learn quickly to distinguish with his eyes shut that a piece of maple the same size as a piece of pine is the heavier of the two. It is of the utmost importance that he shall learn to take in accurate information about the phenomena of the world, from whichever sense is most convenient, or from all of them at once, correcting and supplementing each other as they so seldom do with us badly trained adults.