Pedagogical Anthropology

by Maria Montessori

Syphilis.—This disease is ranked among the principal causes of abortion; in other words, the fœtus which results from a syphilitic conception lacks vitality, and often fails to complete the cycle of intrauterine life. But even granting that the fœtus survives and attains its complete development, the child after birth grows tardily, and very often remains an infantile. It is well known that syphilis has been transmitted to new-born infants at the time of birth, in consequence of which these infants may in turn transmit syphilis to their wet-nurses. In such cases they are really sick and need medical treatment from the hour of their birth. Just as in the adult patient, syphilis has several successive stages, an acute primary stage, with plain manifestations of hard ulcers, erythema diffused over the skin of the entire body, glandular infiltrations, etc., and then secondary and tertiary manifestations that eventually become chronic and exhibit almost imperceptible symptoms; so in the case of children, syphilis may be transmitted in various degrees of virulence. In the acute stage the result will be abortion or the child will be still-born, or else the new-born child will plainly exhibit ulcerations and erythema, but at other periods of the disease, the child may bear far less evident signs of its affliction, as for instance a special form of corrosion in the enamel of its teeth; the cervical pleiades or enlargement of certain little lymphatic glands like the beads of a rosary, distinguishable by touch in the posterior region of the neck; certain cranial malformations (prominent nodules on the parietal bones, Parrot's nodes); and in the child's whole personality an under-development in respect to its age. In cases like these the teacher's observations may be of real social value, because the child has shown no symptoms of such a nature as to cause the parents to have recourse to a physician, and it is the child's scholarship (using the word in the broad sense of the way in which the child reacts in the environment of school, the profit he derives from study, etc.) that may reveal an abnormal development to an intelligent teacher.

The first indication is a stature below what is normal at a given age. Such observations ought to be obligatory upon teachers who are in sympathy with the new ideas, for they alone can be the arbiters of the rising generations. It is being said on all sides, to be sure, with optimistic assurance that argues a deficiency of critical insight and common sense, that an adequate education of the mothers ought to enlighten all women in regard to the laws of growth in children and the abnormalities that are remediable. But of what class of mothers are we supposed to be speaking? Certainly not of the great mass of working women and illiterates! certainly not of the women who have been constrained to hard toil from childhood up, and later on condemned to abortion because of such unjust labor, while their spirit is brutalized and their memory loses even the last lingering notion of an alphabet! It will always be easier and more practical, in every way, to enlighten twenty-five thousand teachers regarding these principles than to enlighten many millions of mothers; not to mention that if we wished to enlighten these mothers in a practical way regarding the principles of the hygiene of generation, we should still have to invoke the services of that very class whose assigned task in society is precisely that of educating the masses!

The teacher can and should learn at least how to suspect the presence of hereditary syphilis in his pupils, in order to be able to invoke the aid of the physician, leaving to the latter the completion of the task, namely, the eventual cure. It is well known that iodide of potassium and its substitutes, especially if used at an early stage, can cure syphilitic children and therefore save innocent boys and girls from eventual definite arrest of development and from all the resultant human and social misery.

Another cause that is deleterious to development is

Tuberculosis.—Although it has now been demonstrated that tuberculosis is not hereditary, as an active disease—that is, we cannot inherit in our organism localised colonies of the tuberculosis bacillus, because the bacilli cannot pass through the placenta into the fœtus during the period of gestation—nevertheless a predisposition to infection from the bacillus can be inherited.

A predisposition which consists in a special form of weakened resistance of the tissues, rendering them incapable of immunity, and a skeletal formation which is distinguished by a narrowness of the chest, and a consequent smallness of lungs, which, being unable to take in sufficient air, constitute a locus minoris resistentiæ (locality of less resistance) to localisation of the bacilli. Now, since our environment is highly infected by the bacilli of tuberculosis, we must all necessarily meet with it, we must all have repeatedly received into our mouths and air passages Koch's bacilli, alive and virulent; and yet the strong organism remains immune, while the weak succumbs. Consequently those who are predisposed by heredity are almost fated to become tuberculous, and in this sense the malady presents the appearance of being truly hereditary. But such organic weakness in a child predisposed to tuberculosis is manifested not only by possible attacks of various forms of the disease localised in the glands (scrofula) or the bones, but also by a delayed development of the whole personality.

Now, the environment of school and the educative methods still in vogue in our schools, not only are not adapted to correct such a predisposition, but what is more, the school itself creates this predisposition! In fact, the sitting posture—or rather, that of stooping over the desk, to write—and the prolonged confinement in a closed environment, impede the normal development of the thorax and of all the physical powers in general. Many a work on pedagogic anthropology has already shown that the most studious scholars, the prize-winners, etc., have a wretched chest measure, and a muscular force so low as to threaten ruin to their constitutions.

Consequently, children who are predisposed to tuberculosis ought unquestionably to be removed from our schools and cared for and educated in favourable environments. While we are still impotent in the face of fatalities due to this deplorable disease, we are not ignorant of the means needed to save a predisposed child and transform him into a robust and resistant lad. Such knowledge, to be sure, was applied to mankind only as a second thought; for the first men to apply and then to teach such means of defence were the owners of cattle and the veterinaries. The owners of cattle discovered that if a calf was born of a tuberculous cow, it could be saved and become an excellent head of cattle, if only it was subjected to a very simple procedure; the calf must be removed from its mother and given over to be nursed by another cow in the open country; and it must remain in the open pastures for some time after it its weaned.

By taking similar precautions in the case of children, it has been shown that the son of a tuberculous woman, if entrusted to a wet-nurse in the open country, and brought up on an abundance of nourishing food until his sixth year in the freedom of the fields, can be made as robust as any naturally sound child. From this we get the principle of schools in the open air, or of schools in the woods, or on the sea-shore, for the benefit of weak, anemic children, predisposed to tuberculosis. Such a sojourn constitutes the "School-Sanatorium," the lack of which is so grievously felt by the parents of feeble children, and that might so easily be instituted in our mild and luxuriant peninsula, so rich in hillsides and sea-coast!

Malaria.—One of the chief causes of mortality and of biological pauperism in many regions of Italy is malaria. This scourge rages even to the very gates of Rome. The country folk of these abandoned tracts pine away in misery and at the same time in illiteracy, while their blood is impoverished by disease, and a notable percentage of the children are victims of arrested development.