Spontaneous Activity in Education

by Maria Montessori

But the factor which affords the most substantial support to the educative organism of the school is the system of prizes and punishments.

Pedagogists make this the main feature of their treatment. All admit more or less the need of some external stimulus to induce school-children to study and behave well, although some are of opinion that it would be well to instil into the child the love of good for its own sake, and that a sense of duty rather than the fear of punishment should deter from evil. This opinion is generally recognized as lofty, but impracticable. To imagine that the child could be stimulated to work merely by a desire to do his duty is a "pedagogic absurdity"; nor is it credible that a child could persevere in the paths of industry and good conduct merely with a view to a distant end, such as the fine social position he might some day win for himself in the world by means of study. Some direct stimulus, some immediate token of approval, is necessary. True, it has been deemed advisable to make punishments less rigorous and the bestowal of prizes less ostentatious, and such modifications have now become general. Indeed, those fustigations and corporal punishments which not very long ago were usual in prisons, lunatic asylums, and schools have been abandoned in schools; the penalties of to-day are slight: bad marks, reproofs, unfavorable reports to the family, suspension of attendance. The ceremonial prize-giving is also a thing of the past, the solemn function at which the scholars mounted the platform as in triumph to receive their prizes from the hands of the noblest and most distinguished persons of the neighborhood, who accompanied the presentation with amiable words of encouragement while the public, consisting mainly of proud and agitated parents, murmured their approval and admiration. All these superfluities have been abolished; the prize, the object, is simply handed to the winner in an ante-room of the school.

The important matter is that the child shall receive the object he has deserved. The medals, too, with which pupils were formerly able to adorn their breasts, are now abolished; the prize is a book, a useful object. A sense of the practical has found its way even into our schools. Perhaps the good children will presently be rewarded by the presentation of a piece of soap, or the material for an apron, in a tête-a-tête between giver and recipient.

But a prize there must needs be.

However, throughout all the discussions of the pedagogists and the evolutions of punishments and prizes, no one has dreamt of asking himself what is the good which is rewarded, and what the evil which is punished, or whether, before urging children on to an undertaking, it would not be well to cast a glance at the undertaking itself, and judge of its value.

At last positive studies on the school question have shed sufficient light to enable us to construct a new base for the old question. Is it well to allure children by a prize, to incite them to exhaust their nervous systems and injure their eyesight? And is it well to check them by means of punishments, when, urged by an overpowering instinct of self-preservation, they seek to avoid these perils? At last we all know that the prize-winners of the elementary schools are the mediocre pupils of the high school; that the prize-winners of the high school are the exhausted students of the academies; and that those who gain prizes throughout their school career are those who are most easily vanquished in the battle of life.

Knowing this, is it well to stimulate on the one hand and to repress on the other, to the end that children may remain in this ruinous condition? Are not the perils of school life already serious enough, without adding stimuli to induce them to throw themselves into these perils with all their energies? A number of deeply interesting comparative studies have been made of late on clever and stupid school-children, those who gain prizes and those who incur punishment. Certain anthropologists, somewhat ingenious in matters of science, have studied the question in such good faith that they have even proposed to inquire whether the more brilliant prize-winners show evidences of morphological superiority, congenital marks of a natural privilege, a brain more highly developed than that of mediocrity. On the contrary, anthropological notes reveal their physical inferiority, i.e. their low stature and their remarkably narrow chest measurements. Their heads are in no way distinguished from those of less clever scholars; many of them wear spectacles.

Thus we get a clearer picture of the life of a child who diligently performs all his tasks with a dread of making mistakes which may become positive anguish; who learns all his lessons, thus of necessity depriving himself of a walk, a saunter, an hour of rest. Obsessed by anxiety to be the first, or even stimulated by illusions of a future more brilliant than that of his companions, exhilarated by the praises and prizes which make him believe himself to be "one of the hopes of his country," and the "solace of his parents," he rushes forward to future impotence, as if dazed by a fairy vision. His careless companions, on the other hand, have well-developed chests, and are the merriest boys in the class.

Other types of clever pupils are those who are helped at home by tutors, or educated mothers who devote themselves to their advancement; while other types of dull pupils, often punished, are poor children who are not made welcome in their homes, but are left to themselves, sometimes in the streets; or who are already working for their bread in the early hours of the morning, before coming to school. In an inquiry I made, the children who were praised and passed without examination were in the category of those who brought a good luncheon with them; the children at the bottom of the class, who incurred punishments, were those who brought no provisions, or only a piece of bread.

It must not be supposed that the above is an exhaustive enumeration of the causes which contribute to the deceptive phenomenon connected with prizes and punishments; but it is obvious that a clearly defined road has been marked out which should lead us to comprehension of the facts.