The Montessori Elementary Material / The Advanced Montessori Method

Interpretations

Reading with the object of interpretation is conducted as in the first experiments of the "Children's House," with cards. From the graduated series we have prepared the child selects a card. He reads it mentally and then executes the action indicated on the card. Our later experiments became very interesting when they were based upon a more rigorous method. When we gave a card describing two actions to a child of five years, he would execute only one of the actions. Take the following for example:

Our first series of readings accordingly is entirely "tested" or experimental. It is made up of simple sentences something like those analyzed in the lessons on grammar (Verb to Pronoun).

The children carry out the indicated action after they have read mentally, but they put what amounts to artistic expression into their interpretations, which are never executed listlessly. For them it becomes a real "interpretation." They often "study" the action, trying it over and over again, as though rehearsing for a play. Their aptitude for this is something remarkable. Furthermore the words have, for the most part, already been studied in the grammatical exercises, so that the meaning of each word is becoming more and more clear. This helps in the interpretation. For example, the sentence The little girl stood with lowered head does not mean simply "she lowered her head." If the child has understood he will stand for some time with lowered head in an attitude more or less expressive according to the vividness of his feeling of the situation. In the sentence She threw herself on her knees before him there will not be a simple act of kneeling, but something more dramatic. The child will assume the kneeling posture with some indication of emotion. The children take no end of interest in each other's interpretations.

In a second series of readings we have two coordinated clauses, the children executing two consecutive actions instead of one.

In the third series, there are sentences with one or more coordinate clauses.

The children by no means restrict themselves to acting out these little scenes and poses. In a second stage they read aloud all these slips which they have interpreted, and in view of the preparation they have had, their reading shows considerable power of expression. They tend to read the slips over and over again, many times, and not infrequently commit them to memory. To take advantage of this new activity we got together a number of poems, making up a little book of children's verse. The pupils read them both mentally and aloud, ultimately committing them to memory and reciting them. Here are some specimens of our Italian collection:

A corresponding book of English verse might include something like the following:

After this preparation the children are able to "understand" what they read. All their difficulties in grasping the sentences and their most complicated constructions have been overcome. They have an insight into the grammatical form of language; and the construction of a sentence, as well as the meaning of the words in it, interests them. There has been created within them a fund of suppressed energy which will very soon break forth into intense activity. In fact, in our school, after these exercises the passion for reading began to show itself. The children wanted "reading, reading, more reading." We got together hastily a few books but never enough to satisfy the eagerness of the children. We found a surprising lack of reading for little children in Italian. The American system of opening special rooms in public libraries for the use of little readers seems to me an excellent thing.

But to take full advantage of this awakened enthusiasm for reading and to cultivate at the same time the art of reading aloud we must not neglect another element in reading: audition.

Audition

When the child has advanced to some extent in the exercises of interpretation, the teacher may begin reading aloud. This should be done as artistically as possible. We recommend for the training of teachers not only a considerable artistic education in general but special attention to the art of reading. One of the differences between the traditional teacher of the past and the teachers we should like to create is that the former used to speak of an "art of teaching," which consisted of various devices to make the child learn, in spite of itself, what the teacher wanted to teach. Our teachers, rather, should be cultivators of the fine arts. For in our method art is considered a means to life. It is beauty in all its forms which helps the inner man to grow. We have repeatedly emphasized that both in the environment at school and in the materials used, everything should be carefully considered in its artistic bearings, to provide ample room for development for all the phenomena of attention and persistence in work which are the secret keys of self-education. The Montessori teacher should be a cultivator of music, drawing and elocution, responsive to the harmony of things; she must, that is, have sufficient "good taste" to be able to lay out the school plant and keep it in condition; and sufficient delicacy of manner—the product of a sensitive nature—to be alive to all the manifestations of the child spirit.

In the matter of reading aloud the teacher has an important task to accomplish. We found the drawing hour best adapted for this work. It was our experience that it is easier to gain a hearing when the children are busy with something which does not require great concentration and which is not sustained by any particular inspiration. During the drawing lesson, in the placid silence which comes from work, and while the children are intent on their designs, the teacher may begin her reading aloud. It sometimes happens that the substance of what she reads will be sufficient to engage the interest of the whole school. But this is not always an easy task. It is more often the musical quality of the teacher's execution which will attract the little ones with a sense for art and bring them to that motionless attention which is the evidence of eager enjoyment. Possibly a really perfect reader might be able so to hold the whole group of children with some absorbing selection.

The readings we used were numerous and of great variety: fairy tales, short stories, anecdotes, novels, historical episodes. Specifically there were the tales of Andersen, some of the short stories of Capuana, the Cuore of De Amicis, episodes of the life of Jesus, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Betrothed (I promessi sposi of Manzoni), Fabiola, stories from the Italian wars for independence (Nineteenth Century), Itard's Education of the Young Savage of Aveyron.

The Most Popular Books

In general the child will listen to anything that is really interesting. But certainly some surprises will be occasioned by our discovery that the children liked above everything else the readings on Italian history and the Education of the Savage of Aveyron. The phenomenon is sufficiently curious to merit further consideration. The history we used was not one commonly thought adapted to young readers. Quite the contrary: it was Pasquale de Luca's I Liberatori (Makers of Freedom, Bergamo, 1909), written to arouse a feeling of patriotism among the Italian emigrants of Argentina. The special feature of this publication is its contemporary documents reprinted in fac-simile. There are, for instance, telegrams, notices in cipher published on the walls of the towns on the eve of uprisings, commemorative medals, a receipt given by an executioner for whipping publicly an Italian patriot, etc. Patriotic songs are given with the music (these the children learned by heart, following the piano); there are also copious illustrations.

This documented history was so absorbing that the children became entirely possessed by the situations. They started animated discussions on various subjects, arguing and deciding. They were particularly outraged at an edict of the king of Naples which was intended to mislead the public. They raged at unjust persecutions, applauded heroic deeds, and ended by insisting on acting out some of the scenes. They formed little companies of three or four and "acted" the episodes with a most impressive dramatic sense. One little girl was moved to bring to school a collection of all the Italian patriotic songs. It fascinated many of the children, who learned several by heart and sang them in chorus. In a word, the Italian Risorgimento came to live in those little hearts with a freshness it has long since lost in the souls of their elders. Many of the children wrote down their impressions of their own accord, often giving surprisingly original judgments. Finally they began to "take notes." They asked the teacher to give an outline of the principal events, which they took down in their copy-books. This whole experience corrected many of my own ideas on the teaching of history. I had thought of preparing moving-picture films and giving historical representations. But that, naturally, being beyond my resources, I had been compelled to give up the plan. The reading of De Luca's book was a revelation. To teach history to children it is sufficient to give a living documented truth. We need, not more cinematographs, but different school books. Children are much more sensible to the true and beautiful than we. They suggest fact and situation. De Luca, moved by affection for his distant brothers, tried to write a book flaming both with truth and with love, which would awaken them and bring them back to live among us as Italians. Our task is the same. We must be filled with a similarly intense human zeal: we must call back to us the distant souls of the children. They too are brothers living far away in a distant country. We must arouse them, bring them back to us as partners in our own life.

After our readings from Itard's Savage, the parents of the children kept coming to us with inquiries: "What have you been reading to our children? We should like to hear it ourselves." The little ones had told of hearing an extraordinary story about a child who had lived with the animals, beginning little by little to understand, to feel, to live like us. All the psychological details of his study, his attempts at education, seemed to have touched the children deeply. It occurred to us to take the older of such children to a "Children's House" and show them our educational method. They took the greatest interest in it, and some of them are now collaborators in the foundation of other "Children's Houses." Such children are able to follow the development of the child mind with extraordinary sympathy. However, if we reflect that the best teachers for children are children themselves, and that little tots like the company of another child much better than that of an adult, we need not be surprised at the downfall of another prejudice.

We have conceived of children according to a fantastic idea of our own, making of them a sort of human species distinct from that to which adults belong. As a matter of fact, they are our children, more purely human than we ourselves. The beautiful and the true have for them an intense fascination, into which they plunge as into something actually necessary for their existence.

The results here witnessed led us to many a reflection. We succeeded in teaching history and even pedagogy by means of "reading." And, in truth, does not reading embrace everything? Travel stories teach geography; insect stories lead the child into natural science; and so on. The teacher, in short, can use reading to introduce her pupils to the most varied subjects; and the moment they have been thus started, they can go on to any limit guided by the single passion for reading. Our task is to offer the child the instruments of education, to keep pure within him the springs of his intellectual growth, of his life of feeling. The rest follows as a matter of course. As the ancients said: "Necessary education is the three 'r's': reading, writing and arithmetic," for these are things which the child cannot discover by himself. We can only add that "method" must be scientifically determined only at the points where it becomes necessary to assist the "formation of man," that he may develop his activities by strengthening them and not by repressing them, that he may receive essential help without losing any pure freshness of his interior activities. But this does not mean that "a rigorous method must guide the child at all times and in every step that he takes." When he has become strong and is in possession of his tools for discovery, he will be able to uncover many of life's secrets by himself. We tied the child to the materials in his sensory exercises, but we left him free to explore his environment. This must be the method for all his later steps in advance: he must be given the instrument and the strength to use it, and then left free to find things out for himself.