Pedagogical Anthropology

by Maria Montessori

The child, like every other individual, represents an effect of multifold causes: he is a product of heredity (biological product) and a product of society (social product). The characteristics of his ancestors, their maladies, their vices, their degeneration, live again in the result of the conception which has produced a new individual: and this individual, whether stronger or weaker, must pass through various obstacles in the course of his intrauterine life and his external life. The sufferings and the mistakes of his mother are reflected in him. The maladies which attack him may leave upon him permanent traces. Finally, the social environment receives the child at birth, either as a favoured son or as an unfortunate, and leads him through paths that certainly must influence his complex development.

All of the preceding and theoretic parts of this volume which took up each characteristic for separate consideration, have already explained all that it is necessary to know in order to interpret the characteristics present in a given individual, and the more or less remote causes which contributed to them.

We may now apply our acquired knowledge to individual study, by making investigations into the antecedents of the child and recording his biographic history. It forms a parallel to the clinical history which is recorded in medicine: and it leads to a diagnosis, or at least to a scientific judgment regarding the child.

Although this biographic part is eminently practical, certain principal points of research may be indicated for the purpose of guiding the student. But no one will ever make a successful study of medical pedagogy unless he will follow the practical lessons dedicated to the individual study of the scholar, and make a practice of personal observation. In the Pedagogical School of Rome, we provide subjects, taken from the elementary schools or from the Asylum School of De Sanctis for defective children. And we read their biographical history in regard to their antecedents, and then make an objective examination of them, frequently extending it to an examination of their sensibility and their psychic conditions and enquiring into their standard of scholarship. From these lessons based upon theory, profitable discussions often result; and they certainly are the most profitable lessons in the course.

A biographical history is essentially composed of three parts: the antecedents, which comprises an investigation of the facts antedating the individual in question; the objective examination, which studies the individual personally; and the diaries, i.e., the continued observation of the same individual who has already been studied in regard to himself and his antecedents.

The objective examination and the diaries cannot be considered solely in the light of anthropology, because they chiefly require the aid of psychology. But even anthropology makes an ample and important contribution, first, in the form of an objective morphological examination, the vast importance of which has already been shown; secondly, because it gives us a picture of the biologico-social personality which it is necessary to compare with the reactions of the subject in question, with his psychic manifestations, his degree of culture, etc.; and upon this comparison depends the chief importance of the individual study of the pupil.

Accordingly, in addition to an examination of the individual, anthropology ought to concern itself also with the conditions antedating the individual; therefore, it traces back to the origins (antecedents), while psychology reserves for itself the principal task of following the psychological development of the subject in his school life (diaries); a task in which it will nevertheless go hand in hand with anthropology since the latter must follow at the same time the physio-morphological development of the subject himself.

Accordingly, the gathering of antecedent statistics is the task of anthropology. The antecedent statistics may be called the history of the genesis of the individual; the manner of collecting them is by means of enquiries that are generally made of the child's nearest relations (the mother) or of the teachers who have superintended his previous education. The enquiries are conducted under the guidance of a certain system of which we give the following outline:

We may distinguish biopathological antecedents, which have regard to the organism of the child as a living individual; sociological antecedents, having regard to the social environment in which the child has grown up and which contributes to the formation of his psycho-physical personality; and scholastic antecedents or scholarship, regarding the previous schooling of the child under examination. The biopathological antecedents are certainly of fundamental importance. They are called remote when we refer to the hereditary antecedents of the subject, and near when we have reference to his personal antecedents.