29 8 THE MONTESSORI SYSTEM 



herself has recently started a class for older children. Her energies have naturally been 

 devoted in the main to establishing her fundamental principle, and recruiting teachers 

 to carry out her ideas in that part of the educational sphere where their success has al- 

 ready been so remarkable. In the light of what has been proved with children from 3 to 

 7, she claims that " the old-time teacher, who wore herself out in maintaining the dis- 

 cipline of immobility, and who wasted her breath in loud and continual discourse," 

 must pass away. " For this teacher we have substituted the didactic material, which 

 contains within itself the control of errors and which makes auto-education possible to 

 each child. The teacher has thus become a director of the spontaneous work of the 

 children. She is now a passive force, a silent presence.'' What this change means is 

 indicated as follows by Mr. Holmes: " The function of discipline, in a school of the 

 conventional type, is to shut down and sit upon the safety valve of ' naughtiness ' 

 which the children's spontaneous energies, when wantonly repressed, instinctively try' 

 to use. In a school in which the energies of the children are constantly and happily 

 employed, that safety-valve has never to be used, and the need for repressive discipline 

 ceases to be felt. In a Montessori school each child is given the maximum of freedom 

 that is compatible with his not hurting or incommoding others; and so long as he is 

 busily and suitably employed, he is not likely to hurt or incommode others, or make 

 himself a nuisance to the school as a whole. . . . The first impulse of the ordinary 

 teacher is to tell a child how to do something which he has never attempted before. The 

 second is to rush to the child's aid when, having been allowed to try his hand at some- 

 thing new, he is confronted by some difficulty and is in doubt as to his next step. The 

 third is to correct his mistakes for him, instead of leaving him to correct them by him- 

 self. The Montessori teacher must keep all these impulses under complete control. 

 When a child in a Montessori school is going to make his first attempt at a given prob- 

 lem, he is left to his own devices." 



The Montessori system is undoubtedly a distinct step forward, on Froebelian lines, 

 in the history of educational method. Dr. Montessori, in Mr. Holmes's words^ has 

 " rediscovered " Froebel's master principle; and by giving practical effect in a highly 

 original way to some of the most solid conclusions of modern experimental psychology 

 she has shown that, properly handled, the normal child will respond to an impulse to- 

 wards growth from within, with a readiness commonly unsuspected. What has still 

 to be discovered is to what extent the Montessori system requires exceptional capacity 

 in the teacher, and how far the teaching profession is capable of supplying (or being 

 content to supply) the " passive force " and " silent presence " which the system postu- 

 lates. It is worth noting that Mr. Holmes, who inspected five schools where the Mon- 

 tessori system was supposed to be employed, found that in one of them the work was 

 anything but satisfactory: " the Direttrice had got hold of some details of Dr. Montes- 

 sori's method without having any sympathy with or understanding of her principle, and 

 the results were so comically bad that a frank abandonment of the whole system was 

 obviously the only remedy for the more glaring defects of the school." Unfortunately 

 the suggested new type of teacher does not as yet grow on every bush. 



According to Mr. Holmes, a Montessori infant school is somewhat costly both to 

 build and to run. " Instead of 9 square feet per child, at least 15 ought to be allowed if 

 the children are to have the freedom of movement which the system demands, for the 

 amount of floor-space ought to be as large as the space which is covered with chairs and 

 tables. The apparatus is costly and demands much storage room; and the cupboards 

 should be so arranged that the children can have easy access to them. The staff ought 

 to be large and a majority thoroughly trained. A teacher of great ability and wide ex- 

 perience tells me that under the Montessori system no teacher can do justice to more 

 than about 20 children." He adds however, that compensation would, he thinks, be 

 found in the schools for older children if the system were also introduced there: " my 

 experience has convinced me that where children are trained to educate themselves the 

 number of children per teacher may be steadily increased as we ascend the school." 



(HUGH CHISHOLM.) 



