Pedagogical Anthropology

by Maria Montessori

While we live, we must eat; and while we labour, that is, while we expend the vital forces, it is necessary to repair them. The schools should establish a system of luncheons for the pupils; this is a principle that has already been generally recognised and is already bearing fruit.

There was a time when a good appetite was regarded as a low material instinct; it was also the time when people sang the praises of spirituality, but actually indulged in banquets of Lucullian lavishness. The vice of the palate and the physiological need of nourishment were included under one and the same disdain.

To-day science has shed its light upon the true conception of nutrition and holds it to be the first necessity of life, and consequently the first social problem to be solved.

From this point of view, food is not a vulgar material thing, nor the dinner-table a place of debauchery. Indeed, there is nothing which affords better proof of immateriality than the act of eating. In fact, the necessity of eating is itself a proof that the matter of which our body is composed does not endure but passes like the fleeting moment. And if the substance of our bodies passes in this manner, if life itself is only a continual passing away of matter, what greater symbol of its immateriality and its spirituality is there than the dinner-table?

"... the bread is my flesh and the wine is my blood; do this in remembrance of what life really is."

Something similar to this is being accomplished to-day by science in regard to the sexual relations. We are accustomed to consider the sexual instincts as something contemptible, material and low, praising abstinence, and leaving these instincts wholly out of consideration in the course of education, as though they were something degrading, or even shameful. And undoubtedly our sexual abuses are shameful, and shameful also is the barbaric tolerance of the masses regarding prostitution, seduction, illegitimacy and the abandonment of new-born children. It is criminal abuse that makes us despise sexual relations, just as at one time excesses of the table made us despise nutrition. But the day will come when science will raise to the dignity of a new sexual morality the physiological function which to-day is considered material and shameful—and that comprehends the most sublime of human conceptions. In it are to be found the words which ancient races deposited in their religious tabernacles: creation, eternity, mystery. And in it are also to be found the most sublime conceptions of modern races: the destiny of humanity, the perfectionment of the human species.

Accordingly, we must to-day regard the serving of food in the schools as a necessity of the first order; but it is well, in introducing it into the schools, to surround it with that halo of gladness and of high moral significance that ought to accompany all manifestations of life. The hymn to bread, which is a human creation and a means of preserving the substance of the human body, ought to accompany the meals of our new generations of children. The child develops because the substance of his body passes away, and the meals that he eats symbolise all this: furthermore, they teach him to think of the vast labour accomplished by men who, unknown as individuals, cultivate the earth, reap the grain, grind the flour, and provide for all men and for all children. Where they are and who they are, we do not know; the bread bears neither their name nor their picture. Like an impersonal entity, like a god, humanity provides for all the needs of humanity: and this god is labour. If the child is destined some day to become himself a labourer, who produces and casts his products to humanity without knowing who is to receive his contribution toward providing for humanity, it is well that as he lifts his food to his lips he should realise that he is contracting a debt toward society at large, and that he must give because he takes; he must "forgive debts as his have been forgiven"; and since life is gladness, let him send forth a salutation to the universal producing power: "Our Father, give us our daily bread!"

The Providence of human labour rules over our entire life; it gives us everything that is necessary. The God of the Universe, in whose train come cataclysms, is not more terrible than the god, Humanity, that can give us War and Famine. While we give bread to the child, let us remember that man does not live by bread alone: because bread is only the material of his fleeting substance.

The system of furnishing meals in school constitutes a chapter of School Hygiene that cannot directly concern us. Nevertheless, there are three rules of this hygiene which should be borne in mind: Children should never, in any case, drink wine, alcoholic liquors, tea or coffee—in other words, stimulants, which are poisons to their childish organisms. On the other hand, children need sugar, because sugar has a great formative and plastic power; all young animals have sweetish flesh because their muscles, in the course of development, are extremely rich in sugar. The method of giving sugar to children should be as simple as possible, such, for instance, as is endorsed by the very successful English system of hygiene for children, which recommends freshly cooked fruits, sprinkled with sugar or served with a little syrup. But the substantial nourishment for young children should consist of soup or broth served hot, since heat is as essential as sugar for organisms in the course of evolution.

The English recommend soups made of cereals and gluten, in which it is never necessary to use soup stock, just as it is never necessary to use meat in children's diet.