Pedagogical Anthropology

by Maria Montessori

To live constantly warm, protected either by clothes or by artificial heat, so that the organism remains always at a constant temperature, is not favourable to growth, because it deprives the organism of the physiological exercise of adapting itself to variations in external temperature, an exercise which stimulates useful functions. By perspiring in summer, we cleanse our system of poisonous secretions, and by shivering in winter we give tone to our striped muscles and to our internal organs, as is proved by our gain in appetite. Anyone who wishes to be kept on ice in summer and to transform his apartment into a hot-house in winter, robs himself of these advantages and enfeebles his system.

The apparent comfort is not in this case a real physiological enjoyment but a weakness of habit that is accompanied by a loss of physiological energy. What makes us robust is a rational exercise of all our energies. Thermal gymnastics is consequently useful. It consists in exposing a healthy, resistant organism to changes in temperature, trusting to our physiological resources for the means of defense. Thus, for example, a child who is well fed and well protected from the cold for many hours of the day in the well-heated family apartment, can go out with bare legs into the snow; and doing so will make him more robust. In the same way, the ancient Romans exposed themselves in their hot baths to the steadily increasing temperature of the calidarium, up to the point of 60 degrees (140 Fahrenheit), and then still perspiring flung themselves into a cold plunge. And it is a familiar fact that afterward they held lavish banquets in these same baths. Such exercise which in classic times gave vigour to the race that made itself master of the world may be summed up as follows: "Thermic gymnastics" of organisms "well nourished and strong."

Our own boatmen also throw themselves into the river in midwinter, half nude, and half nude they ply their long poles. They expose themselves to the cold, in the same way that they might raise a weight of many pounds with their robust arms, for gymnastic exercise.

But all this differs radically from living continually in a cold temperature. It is a very different thing from the life of a child of the lower classes, who goes bare-foot in winter, clad in a few scant rags, half frozen in his wretched tenement, and unable to obtain sufficient nourishment to develop the needed heat-units. He is already deficient in bodily heat because of malnutrition, and the effects of cold are cumulative. In this case it is not a question of thermic exercise but of a permanent deprivation of heat, in individuals who are already suffering from an insufficient development of heat-units. Consequently the organism is enfeebled—it grows under unfavorable conditions—and the result is a permanent diminution of development. Whoever grows up, exposed to cold after this fashion, has, in the average case, a lower stature than those who grow up in the midst of warmth, or in the practice of that healthful exercise which constitutes the ideal: thermic gymnastics.

The contradictory ideas that are held as to the efficacy of heat in regard to growth, are due to a large extent to a prejudice which amounts to this: heat is effective in promoting the evolution of life as a whole, and consequently the development of that part of life that is centred in the organs of reproduction; from which comes the wellnigh antiquated theory that artificial heat should be banished from the schools, as one of the factors leading to immorality! It is true that warmth accelerates the development of puberty; but who is there in this twentieth century who can still conceive the idea that it is a moral act to silence the forces of nature? Good nourishment also leads to a more precocious puberty; and the same is true of the repeated psychic stimulus produced by various forms of intellectual enjoyment, by conversation, and by social intercourse with individuals of the opposite sex. Accordingly, if it were a moral act to retard the development of puberty and to produce a general impoverishment of sexual life, the moral measures to be taken in education would be cold, malnutrition, and the isolation of the sexes in the schools, which, as a matter of fact, form the stumbling-block of environment in our colleges. But it is well known that all this leads on the contrary to moral and physical degeneration! As has already been said, the normal physiological development stands in counterdistinction to immoral habits; consequently, whatever is an aid to physiological development is in its very nature moral.

In warm climates the first manifestations of puberty occur precociously in man as well as in woman; and with them come all the transformations that are associated with puberty, among others the rapid increase of stature. In cold climates, on the contrary, such manifestations are more tardy. The women of Lapland are latest of all to develop. With them, menstruation begins only at eighteen, and they are incapable of conceiving under the age of twenty, while the period of the menopause (involution of sexual life) is correspondingly early; in other words, the entire period of sexual life is shortened. Furthermore, the fertility of the women of Lapland is low; they cannot conceive more than three children. But if these same women leave Lapland and make their home in civilised countries, as for example in Sweden, they have a more precocious sexual life, as well as longer and more fertile, and altogether quite similar to that of the Swedish women.[25]

Cabanis[26] notes that even in cold climates, when young girls spend much of their time in the vicinity of stoves, menstruation begins at about the same age as in women who live on the banks of the Ganges—as is the case with the daughters of wealthy Russians, whose development is quite precocious. In Arabia, in Egypt, and in Abyssinia the women are frequently mothers at the age of ten, menstruation having begun at the eighth year. It is even said that Mahomed married Radeejah when she was only five and that he took her to his bed at the age of eight. The religious laws of India permit the marriage of girls when they are eight years old.

Consequently it is true that heat has an influence upon the development of the organism independently of other influences; in fact, heat acts both in the form of climate, that is, in a natural state, and also in an artificially warmed environment. It is also one of the causes of the different degrees of growth in stature through the successive seasons (see below).

In conclusion: it is enjoined upon us, as a hygienic necessity, to heat the schools in winter, especially the schools for the poorer classes; it means more than increased vigour, it may even mean giving life to some who otherwise would pine away from deprivation of heat-units, a condition most unfavourable to organisms in the course of evolution.