612 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Montessori adheres to the theory of " formal discipline." The exercises 

 are intended to train general powers and discriminations. She main- 

 tains that : " the aim is not that the child shall know colors, forms and 

 the different qualities of objects, but that he refine his senses through an 

 exercise of attention, of comparison, of judgment ; the exercises are true 

 intellectual exercises." And this underlying theory is clearly to be per- 

 ceived in the nature of the apparatus itself. The primal sense of touch 

 is first exercised, as we have implied above, by passing the finger-tips of 

 the children over various materials and pronouncing their nature as 

 " rough " or " smooth " ; and then by having the children name and select 

 them by this description. Similarly, other general senses are developed 

 ■ — the " thermic," the " baric," the " stereognostic," the " visual," includ- 

 ing color and form, and the " auditory." 



(3) But, despite her own belief and wish, the feature of the Mon- 

 tessori system that has attracted most attention is its apparent success 

 with the formal studies, especially in the facility and enthusiasm with 

 which the children learn to write and in the beauty of their writing. 

 The inventor of the method, of course, declares that this spectacular per- 

 formance is of little account, save as a single link in the chain of sense 

 development. All the tactile, dimensional, form and visual training, she 

 holds, leads naturally to the writing coordinations. She has, however, 

 made a most careful independent analysis of the writing process into its 

 elements, and has invented three exercises by which the approach to the 

 spontaneous development of the graphic language is directly accomp- 

 lished. First, the " muscular mechanism to hold and use the instrument 

 in writing " is developed by the child's filling in the outlines of a geo- 

 metrical form that he has traced upon paper. During this period the 

 child is also engaged in " exercises tending to establish the visual, mus- 

 cular, and auditory image of the alphabetical signs " by means of sand- 

 paper letters mounted on cardboard. The teacher shows the child how 

 to follow the contour of a letter with his finger as if writing it and at the 

 same time pronounce the sound (not the name) of the letter distinctly. 

 Lastly, he is exercised in the composition of words by selecting un- 

 mounted cardboard letters from compartments in a set of boxes re- 

 sembling a compositor's type-cases. " Now the child, it is true, has never 

 written, but he has mastered all the acts necessary to writing." This is 

 the secret of the much lauded "explosion into writing." The art is 

 learned so unconsciously that the children begin it almost spontaneously 

 and are writing before they realize it. This seems to be one decided 

 achievement of Montessorianism, and if it can be applied to other 

 languages not as phonetic as the Italian, it may be regarded as a perman- 

 ent contribution to special method. 



The Montessori methods in the other formal subjects — reading and 

 arithmetic — are not as striking. Beading is generally acquired after 



