Pedagogical Anthropology

by Maria Montessori

Nature has implanted in the mother not only her milk, the material nourishment of her child, but also that absolutely altruistic love which transforms the soul of a woman, and creates in it moral forces hitherto unknown and unsuspected by the woman herself—just as the sweet and nourishing corpuscles of the milk were unknown to the red corpuscles of her blood. Accordingly, the nature of the human kind protects the species through the mother in two ways, which together form the complete nutrition of man: aliment and love. After a child is weaned, it obtains its aliment from its environment in more varied forms; and it also obtains from its environment a great variety of psychic stimuli, calculated not only to mould its psychic personality, but also to bring its physiological personality to its full development.

I have had most eloquent experience of this in the "Children's Houses" in the San Lorenzo quarter of Rome. This is the poorest quarter in the city, and the children are the sons and daughters of day labourers, who consequently are often out of work; illiteracy is even yet incredibly frequent among the adults, so much so that in a very high percentage of cases at least one of the parents is unable to read. In these "Children's Houses" we receive little children between the ages of three and seven, on a time schedule that varies between summer, from nine to five, and winter, from nine to four.

We have never served food in the school; the little ones, all of whom live in their own homes, with their parents, have a half hour's recess in which to go home to luncheon. Consequently we have not in any way influenced their diet.

The pedagogic methods employed, however, are of such sort as to constitute a gradual series of psychic stimuli perfectly adapted to the needs of childhood; the environment stimulates each pupil individually to his rightful psychic development according to his subjective potentiality. The children are free in all their manifestations and are treated with much cordial affection. I believe that this is the first time that this extremely interesting pedagogic experiment has ever been made: namely, to sow the seed in the consciousness of the child, leaving free opportunity, in the most rigorous sense, for the spontaneous expansion of its personality, in an environment that is calm, and warm with a sentiment of affection and peace.

The results achieved were surprising: we were obliged to remodel our ideas regarding child psychology, because many of the so-called instincts of childhood did not develop at all, while in place of them unforeseen sentiments and intellectual passions made their appearance in the primordial consciousness of these children; true revelations of the sublime greatness of the human soul! The intellectual activity of these little children was like a spring of water gushing from beneath the rocks that had been erroneously piled upon their budding souls; we saw them accomplishing the incredible feat of despising playthings, through their insatiable thirst for knowledge; carefully preserving the most fragile objects of the lesson, the tenderest plants sprouting from the earth—these children that are reputed to be vandals by instinct! In short, they seemed to us to represent the childhood of a human race more highly evolved than our own; and yet they are really the same humanity, marvelously guided and stimulated through its own natural and free development!

But what is still more marvelous is the astonishing fact that all these children are so much improved in their general nutrition as to present a notably different appearance from their former state, and from the condition in which their brothers still remain. Many weakly ones have been organically strengthened; a great many who were lymphatic have been cured; and in general the children have gained flesh and become ruddy to such an extent that they look like the children of wealthy parents living in the country. No one seeing them would believe that these were the offspring of the illiterate lower classes!

Well, let us glance over the notes taken upon these children at the time when they first entered the school; for the great majority, the same note was made: need of tonics. Yet not one of them took medicine, not one of them had a change of diet; the renewed vigour of these children was due solely to the complete satisfaction of their psychic life. And yet they remain in school continually from nine till five through eleven months out of the year! One would say that this was an excessively long schedule; yet what is still more surprising is that during all this period the children are continually busy; and even more remarkable is the report made by many of the mothers to the effect that after their little ones have returned home they continue to busy themselves up to the hour of going to bed; and lastly—and this seems almost incredible—many of the little ones are back again at school by half past eight in the morning, tranquil, smiling, as though blissfully anticipating the enjoyment that awaits them during the long day! We have seen small boys become profoundly observant of their environment, finding a spontaneous delight in new sensations. Their stature, which we measure month by month, shows how vigorous the physiological growth is in every one of them, but particularly in certain ones, whose blood-supply has become excellent.

Such results of our experiments have amazed us as an unexpected revelation of nature, or, to phrase it differently, as a scientific discovery. Yet we might have foreseen some part of all this had we stopped to think how our own physical health depends far more upon happiness and a peaceful conscience than upon that material substance, bread!

Let us learn to know man, sublime in his true reality! let us learn to know him in the tenderest little child; we have shown by experiment that he develops through work, through liberty, and through love; hitherto, in place of these, we have stifled the splendid possibilities of his nature with irrational toys, with the slavery of discipline, with contempt for his spontaneous manifestations. Man lives for the purpose of learning, loving and producing, from his earliest years upward; it is from this that even his bones get their growth and from this that his blood draws its vitality!