Pedagogical Anthropology

by Maria Montessori

From twenty-five to thirty-five the stature remains stable; this is the adult age, the full attainment of maturity; at the age of forty the period of involution insensibly begins, and after fifty in the case of women, and sixty in the case of men, the stature begins insensibly to decrease; a decrease which becomes more marked with the advance of age, corresponding to an anatomical diminution of the soft parts interposed between the bones in the sum of parts that make up the stature; more especially the intervertebral disks; and in connection with this phenomenon the vertebral column tends to become more curved.

According to Quétélet's figures, at the age of eighty the average male stature is 1.61 m. (5 ft. 3-2/5 in.), a stature corresponding to that of the age of sixteen.

Accordingly, the variations in stature throughout the different periods of life are neither a growth nor an evolution, but a parabolic curve, including evolution and involution. This curve represents the true human stature; the measurements taken successively from year to year representing nothing more than transitory episodes in the individual life.

Man, as he really is, we may represent by portraits taken successively from time to time, from his birth until his death; the occasional photograph which it is the custom to have taken represents nothing; following no rule, it seizes a fugitive instant in the life of an individual, who is never a fixed quantity but is constantly in transition during the whole course of his existence. So that the habit of taking a picture annually on a child's birthday is an excellent one if we wish to preserve a true likeness; and this practice is recommended in pedagogic anthropology, when it is desired to preserve the biographic history of the pupil.

It is interesting to study, side by side with the growth of stature and the marked rhythms and periods that constitute its laws, the phenomenon of general mortality in its relation to age.

Lexis gives the following curve of general mortality: the horizontal line marks the years and the vertical line the corresponding number of deaths, while the curved line shows the progress of mortality, and the highest points in the curve indicate the maximum mortality. It is highest of all during the first year and in general during early childhood, and is steadily lowered to a point corresponding to the ages from ten to thirteen, after which it rises again.

Fig. 24.—Curve of general mortality (Lexis).

Let us examine the curve up to this point, since it has a bearing upon our school work. We can prove that the maximum mortality corresponds to the maximum individual growth; in other words, an organism in rapid evolution is exposed to death, its powers of immunity to infective diseases are weakened; it constitutes what in medical parlance is known as a locus minoris resistentiæ.

In that period of calm in growth, which would seem to be a repose preceding the evolution of puberty, mortality is at the lowest; only to rise again rapidly during the period of puberty; while the rise becomes less rapid after the eighteenth year, notwithstanding that after that age mankind in general are exposed, in their struggle for existence, to many causes of death that did not exist during the preceding years. Toward the age of seventy the line of mortality attains another apex, because the age of normal death is reached; after which it drops precipitously because of the lack of survivors.