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THURSDAY, MAY i^,, 191 8. 



MONTESSORI EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 



The Advanced Montessori Method: Scientific 

 Pedagogy as Applied to the Education of Chil- 

 dren from Seven to Eleven Years. By Maria 

 Montessori. I., Spontaneous Activily in 

 Education. Translated from the Italian bv F. 

 Simmonds and L. Hutchinson. Pp. vii + 357. 

 H., IMie Montessori Elementary Material. 

 Translated from the Italian by A. Living-ston. 

 Pp. xviii + 455. (London: W. Heinemann, 

 1918.) Price Ss. 6d. net and 125. 6d. net re- 

 spectively. 

 \iyHATEVER one may think of the funda- 

 * * mental doctrines of Dr. Montessori, her 

 books are always eminently readable. She has a 

 hne enthusiasm for her subject, and a rare fund 

 of anecdotal or biographical illustrations, which 

 are skilfully chosen for the purpose of carrying- 

 conviction. An uncritical mind is not censorious 

 about matters of proof. An analogy is as good 

 as a demonstration, and the freedom witja which 

 Dr. Montessori relies on analogy reminds one 

 of a famous seventeenth-century educational 

 reformer, Comenius. Of course, her analogies are 

 less crude, but much of her theory and practice 

 rests on an assumed analogy between the mature 

 mind of the adult and the mind of the child. This 

 assumption leads her to the conclusion that since 

 the mature mind does its work in an orderly, 

 logical way, applying to the world around its 

 mechanism of categories which reduces that world 

 i to a formal order, so our first business should be 

 t to establish definite sensory categories in the mind 

 of the child which shall make the perceptual 

 analysis of his environment orderly and accurate. 

 "It is the qualities of the objects, not the objects 

 themselves, which are important"; so we must 

 train the senses in the accurate discrimination of 

 sensory qualities. This is the object of the didactic 

 materials designed for the use of children from 

 three to six years of age. 



Dr. Montessori has little respect for experi- 

 mental psychology ; yet it is worth while noting 

 that Stern's researches showed that children were 

 apparently not natively interested in the qualities 

 of objects until they were past the age of thirteen, 

 and further researches have shown that although 

 children might be trained to observe pictures and 

 the like with special regard to such qualities, when 

 left alone they quickly slip back into what seems 

 to be the natural order of the development of 

 interest — objects as such first of all, then things 

 that are happening, then the spatial and causal 

 relations of objects, and latest of all their qualities. 

 Unfortunately, Dr. Montessori never gives the 

 evidence on which her conclusions are based. A 

 pretty story does not establish a principle. This 

 defect in her books is the more noteworthy because 

 she has presumably had a scientific training and 

 because she explicitly claims that her results are 

 arrived at by exact methods. A chapter headed 

 NO. 2534, VOL. lOl] 



rattier naively "My Contributions to Experiijienlal 

 Science ' ' would surely make any person 

 acquainted with rigorous scientific method smile. 

 As a summary of results for popular consumption, 

 it is not without merit, but one seeks in vain for 

 references to the original memoirs in which the 

 detailed work is carefully described and where 

 the conclusions are adequately discussed. She is 

 so acute a critic of the work of others that we 

 might at least expect her to take as much pains 

 as they have done to make her whole method of 

 investigation and its detailed results accessible to 

 scientific criticism. Popular books are necessary, 

 but they must rest upon a solid basis of carefully 

 recorded fact if they are to stand the test of time. 



Apart from this grave defect in the Montessori 

 literature, judged from the point of view of a 

 scientific pedagogy, there is so much humanity 

 in it that we must do homage to its distinguished 

 author for her service to the cause of humane 

 education. She enjoys flogging a dead horse (or 

 should we say a dying horse?), apparently believ- 

 ing that it is still in vigorous life. She is so wrapt 

 up in her own work that she is unaware of the 

 great changes which the biological conception of 

 education was bringing about in our schools before 

 we had heard her name. But a remarkable busi- 

 ness talent has obtained for her a hearing such as 

 few educational writers in English-sp>eaking coun- 

 tries enjoy. Where one person has heard the 

 name of Dewey, a thousand have heard that of 

 Montessori, and we may rejoice to think of the 

 numbers who will read the chapters in this book 

 on the will and the intelligence. 



It is in the second volume that the application 

 of the Montessori method to the primary school 

 is described. There is much suggestiv« matter 

 in its chapters, though very little that is new, 

 except perhaps the "didactic materials." The 

 author believes that teachers should be supplied 

 with the material necessary to enable the children 

 of themselves to achieve a desired result. This 

 material should have been determined ex- 

 pei imentally, and, once it has been designed, 

 the teacher has only to make himself thor- 

 oughly familiar with its use. So we find the 

 words and sentences for the grammar work are 

 provided. They are carefully graduated and laid 

 out in neat boxes. One is irresistibly reminded 

 of Pestalozzi's ambitious designs. Get the 

 mechanism right and train your teachers in the 

 use of it, . then all will be well. Of course, the 

 mechanism is the result of experimental inquiry, 

 as was Pestalozzi's, but, in spite of the charm 

 with which it is described, wc fear it will share the 

 same fate as Froebil's i^ifts and Pestalozzi's 

 A B C's. 



Rather more than a third of thie volume is 

 given to grammar. Under the stimulus of the 

 apparatus, children of eleven are led to distinguish 

 eight kinds of adverbs and fourteen kinds of con-., 

 junctions, but the apparatus for arithmetic only 

 carries them to a stage which a good Standard HI. 

 child in an English school would find easy. The 

 rest of the book deals with geometry, music, 



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