MONTESSORI METHOD 



3921 



MONTESSORI METHOD 



EXERCISES IN GEOMETRIC INSETS 



or to call his companions to <fome and admire. 

 It is a joy which they feel in their own self- 

 development, and which gives a characteristic 

 expression of calm and brightness to their 

 faces; for their life is one of continual expan- 

 sion, and of joyous unfolding and exercise of 

 their increasing powers. 



It may be objected, "But would not the 

 senses 'also develop without special apparatus 

 by practical use in the environment?" Assur- 

 edly, but not with the same facility, or to the 

 same degree of refinement. Above all, not with 

 the same certainty. If the child's surroundings, 

 for instance, be lacking in color, as is so often 

 the case in our drab cities of dull gray and lim- 

 ted sunlight, his color sense will be deprived 

 of the stimuli which it needs for its develop- 

 ment. For the refinement of a sense, too, it is 

 necessary that it have practice in making fine 

 discriminations. The child, for instance, who dis- 

 tinguishes between two cylinders differing very 

 slightly in size, performs an exercise in visual 

 discrimination with which he would rarely meet 

 in his ordinary surroundings. The child wishes 

 to touch and handle objects, and goes in search 

 of experiences of this kind, but if his environ- 

 ment is unsuitable, or he is impeded by adults, 

 he is unable to satisfy this need. In fact, it is 

 often rebellion against this unconscious suppres- 

 sion of their expanding life which accounts in 

 great part for the so-called "naughtiness" of 

 children of this age. 



The apparatus therefore provides the chil- 

 dren with an organized and orderly means of 

 finding those experiences in handling objects 

 and refining their senses, of which they have 

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need. The child who has the advantage of it 

 might be compared to the student at a univer- 

 sity, who finds there all the material for his 

 study already collected and arranged for his 

 assimilation; contrast such a one with the stu- 

 dent who undertakes research in a new field, 

 and must search for his material among the 

 ancient records and in the books of scattered 

 libraries. The provision of the apparatus ren- 

 ders the path of the child's development direct, 

 instead of haphazard and tortuous. And in this 

 way much time and vital energy is conserved, 

 reinvigorating the child's life, and animating 

 his activities in further conquests. "Prepare ye 

 the way of the Lord, and make his paths 

 straight." 



Relation of Senses to Environment. Another 

 important aspect of this material for training 

 the senses is the relation which it bears to the 

 child's external environment. It will be noted 

 that it represents in a concrete and isolated 

 form the various qualities of color, dimension, 

 shape, and so on, of the objects which surround 

 the child in his environment. The colors, for 

 instance, which figure in his surroundings in 

 every imaginable combination with qualities of 

 texture, form, dimension and the like, are each 

 represented in the color tablets, in isolation 

 from others, and confined to a single object of 

 which they are the one characteristic. Forms 

 are separated in the same way. The shapes 

 which surround the -child everywhere the rec- 

 tangle of the door, the circle of his plate, the 

 ellipse of the table are all represented in his 

 geometric insets. Similarly other qualities, such 

 as high and low, long and short, thick and thin, 



