The Montessori Method Part 25

SECOND PERIOD: EXERCISES TENDING TO ESTABLISH THE VISUAL-MUSCULAR IMAGE OF THE ALPHABETICAL SIGNS, AND TO ESTABLISH THE MUSCULAR MEMORY OF THE MOVEMENTS NECESSARY TO WRITING

_Didactic Material._ Cards upon which the single letters of the alphabet are mounted in sandpaper; larger cards containing groups of the same letters.

The cards upon which the sandpaper letters are mounted are adapted in size and shape to each letter. The vowels are in light-coloured sandpaper and are mounted upon dark cards, the consonants and the groups of letters are in black sandpaper mounted upon white cards. The grouping is so arranged as to call attention to contrasted, or a.n.a.logous forms.

The letters are cut in clear script form, the shaded parts being made broader. We have chosen to reproduce the vertical script in use in the elementary schools.

_Exercises._ In teaching the letters of the alphabet, we begin with the _vowels_ and proceed to the consonants, p.r.o.nouncing the _sound_, not the name. In the case of the consonants, we immediately unite the sound with one of the vowel sounds, repeating the syllable according to the usual phonetic method.

The teaching proceeds according to the three periods already ill.u.s.trated.

_First._ a.s.sociation of the visual and muscular-tactile sensation with the letter sound.

The directress presents to the child two of the cards upon which vowels are mounted (or two of the consonants, as the case may be). Let us suppose that we present the letters i and o, saying, "This is i! This is o!" As soon as we have given the sound of a letter, we have the child trace it, taking care to show him _how_ to trace it, and if necessary guiding the index finger of his right hand over the sandpaper letter _in the sense of writing_.

"_Knowing how to trace_" will consist in _knowing the direction_ in which a given graphic sign must be followed.

The child learns quickly, and his finger, already expert in the tactile exercise, _is led_, by the slight roughness of the fine sandpaper, over the exact track of the letter. _He may then repeat indefinitely_ the movements necessary to produce the letters of the alphabet, without the fear of the mistakes of which a child writing with a pencil for the first time is so conscious. If he deviates, the smoothness of the card immediately warns him of his error.

The children, as soon as they have become at all expert in this tracing of the letters, take great pleasure in repeating it _with closed eyes_, letting the sandpaper lead them in following the form which they do not see. Thus the perception will be established by the direct muscular-tactile sensation of the letter. In other words, it is no longer the visual image of the letter, but the _tactile sensation_, which guides the hand of the child in these movements, which thus become fixed in the muscular memory.

There develop, contemporaneously, three sensations when the directress _shows the letter_ to the child and has him trace it; the visual sensation, the tactile sensation, and the muscular sensation. In this way the _image of the graphic sign_ is fixed _in a much shorter s.p.a.ce of time_ than when it was, according to ordinary methods, acquired only through the visual image. It will be found that the _muscular memory_ is in the young child the most tenacious and, at the same time, the most ready. Indeed, he sometimes recognises the letters by touching them, when he cannot do so by looking at them. These images are, besides all this, contemporaneously a.s.sociated with the alphabetical sound.

_Second._ Perception. _The child should know how to compare and to recognise the figures, when he hears the sounds corresponding to them._

The directress asks the child, for example, "Give me o!--Give me i!" If the child does not recognise the letters by looking at them, she invites him to trace them, but if he still does not recognise them, the lesson is ended, and may be resumed another day. I have already spoken of the necessity of _not revealing_ the error, and of not insisting in the teaching when the child does not respond readily.

_Third._ Language. _Allowing the letters to lie for some instants upon the table, the directress asks the child, "What is this?" and he should respond, o, i._

In teaching the consonants, the directress p.r.o.nounces only the _sound_, and as soon as she has done so unites with it a vowel, p.r.o.nouncing the syllable thus formed and alternating this little exercise by the use of different vowels. She must always be careful to emphasize the sound of the consonant, repeating it by itself, as, for example, _m_, _m_, _m_, _ma_, _me_, _mi_, _m_, _m_. When the child _repeats_ the sound he isolates it, and then accompanies it with the vowel.

It is not necessary to teach all the vowels before pa.s.sing to the consonants, and as soon as the child knows one consonant he may begin to compose words. Questions of this sort, however, are left to the judgment of the educator.

I do not find it practical _to follow a special rule_ in the teaching of the consonants. Often the curiosity of the child concerning a letter leads us to teach that desired consonant; a name p.r.o.nounced may awaken in him a desire to know what consonants are necessary to compose it, and this _will_, or _willingness_, of the pupil is a much more _efficacious_ means than any rule concerning the _progression_ of the letters.

When the child p.r.o.nounces _the sounds_ of the consonants, he experiences an evident pleasure. It is a great novelty for him, this series of sounds, so varied and yet so distinct, _presenting_ such enigmatic signs as the letters of the alphabet. There is mystery about all this, which provokes most decided interest. One day I was on the terrace while the children were having their free games; I had with me a little boy of two years and a half left with me, for a moment, by his mother. Scattered about upon a number of chairs, were the alphabets which we use in the school. These had become mixed, and I was putting the letters back into their respective compartments. Having finished my work, I placed the boxes upon two of the little chairs near me. The little boy watched me.

Finally, he drew near to the box, and took one of the letters in his hand. It chanced to be an f. At that moment the children, who were running in single file, pa.s.sed us, and, seeing the letter, called out in chorus the corresponding sound and pa.s.sed on. The child paid no attention to them, but put back the f and took up an r. The children running by again, looked at him laughing, and then began to cry out "r, r, r! r, r, r!" Little by little the baby understood that, when he took a letter in hand, the children, who were pa.s.sing, cried out a sound.

This amused him so much that I wished to observe how long he would persist in this game without becoming tired. He kept it up for _three-quarters of an hour_! The children had become interested in the child, and grouped themselves about him, p.r.o.nouncing the sounds in chorus, and laughing at his pleased surprise. At last, after he had several times held up f, and had received from his public the same sound, he took the letter again, showing it to me, and saying, "f, f, f!" He had learned this from out the great confusion of sounds which he had heard; the long letter which had first arrested the attention of the running children, had made a great impression upon him.

It is not necessary to show how the separate p.r.o.nunciation of the alphabetical sounds _reveals_ the condition of the child's speech.

Defects, which are almost all related to the _incomplete_ development of the language itself, manifest themselves, and the directress may take note of them one by one. In this way she will be possessed of a record of the child's progress, which will help her in her individual teaching, and will reveal much concerning the development of the language in this particular child.

In the matter of _correcting linguistic defects_, we will find it helpful to follow the physiological rules relating to the child's development, and to modify the difficulties in the presentation of our lesson. When, however, the child's speech is sufficiently developed, and when he _p.r.o.nounces all the sounds_, it does not matter which of the letters we select in our lessons.

Many of the defects which have become permanent in adults are due to _functional errors in the development_ of the language during the period of infancy. If, for the attention which we pay to the correction of linguistic defects in children in the upper grades, we would subst.i.tute _a direction of the development of the language_ while the child is still young, our results would be much more practical and valuable. In fact, many of the defects in p.r.o.nunciation arise from the use of a _dialect_, and these it is almost impossible to correct after the period of childhood. They may, however, be most easily removed through the use of educational methods especially adapted to the perfecting of the language in little children.

We do not speak here of actual linguistic _defects_ related to anatomical or physiological weaknesses, or to pathological facts which alter the function of the nervous system. I speak at present only of those irregularities which are due to a repet.i.tion of incorrect sounds, or to the imitation of imperfect p.r.o.nunciation. Such defects may show themselves in the p.r.o.nunciation of any one of the consonant sounds, and I can conceive of no more practical means for a methodical correction of speech defects than this exercise in p.r.o.nunciation, which is a necessary part in learning the graphic language through my method. But such important questions deserve a chapter to themselves.

Turning directly to the method used in teaching writing, I may call attention to the fact that it is contained in the two periods already described. Such exercises have made it possible for the child to learn, and to fix, the muscular mechanism necessary to the proper holding of the pen, and to the making of the graphic signs. If he has exercised himself for a sufficiently long time in these exercises, he will be _potentially_ ready to write all the letters of the alphabet and all of the simple syllables, without ever having taken chalk or pencil in his hand.

We have, in addition to this, begun the teaching of _reading_ at the same time that we have been teaching _writing_. When we present a letter to the child and enunciate its sound, he fixes the image of this letter by means of the visual sense, and also by means of the muscular-tactile sense. He a.s.sociates the sound with its relative sign; that is, he relates the sound to the graphic sign. But _when he sees and recognises, he reads; and when he traces, he writes_. Thus his mind receives as one, two acts, which, later on, as he develops, will separate, coming to const.i.tute the two diverse processes of _reading and writing_. By teaching these two acts contemporaneously, or, better, by their _fusion_, we place the child _before a new form of language_ without determining which of the acts const.i.tuting it should be most prevalent.

We do not trouble ourselves as to whether the child in the development of this process, first learns to read or to write, or if the one or the other will be the easier. We must rid ourselves of all preconceptions, and must _await from experience_ the answer to these questions. We may expect that individual differences will show themselves in the prevalence of one or the other act in the development of different children. This makes possible the most interesting psychological study of the individual, and should broaden the work of this method, which is based upon the free expansion of individuality.

THIRD PERIOD: EXERCISES FOR THE COMPOSITION OF WORDS

_Didactic Material._ This consists chiefly of alphabets. The letters of the alphabet used here are identical in form and dimension with the sandpaper ones already described, but these are cut out of cardboard and are not mounted. In this way each letter represents an object which can be easily handled by the child and placed wherever he wishes it. There are several examples of each letter, and I have designed cases in which the alphabets may be kept. These cases or boxes are very shallow, and are divided and subdivided into many compartments, in each one of which I have placed a group of four copies of the same letter. The compartments are not equal in size, but are measured according to the dimensions of the letters themselves. At the bottom of each compartment is glued a letter which is not to be taken out. This letter is made of black cardboard and relieves the child of the fatigue of hunting about for the right compartment when he is replacing the letters in the case after he has used them. The vowels are cut from blue cardboard, and the consonants from red.

In addition to these alphabets we have a set of the capital letters mounted in sandpaper upon cardboard, and another, in which they are cut from cardboard. The numbers are treated in the same way.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (A) TRAINING THE SENSE OF TOUCH. Learning the difference between rough and smooth by running fingers alternately over sandpaper and smooth cardboard; distinguishing different shapes by fitting geometric insets into place; distinguishing textures. (B) LEARNING TO WRITE AND READ BY TOUCH. The child at the left is tracing sandpaper letters and learning to know them by touch. The boy and girl are making words out of cardboard letters.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: (A) CHILDREN TOUCHING LETTERS. The child on the left has acquired lightness and delicacy of touch by very thorough preparatory exercises. The one on the right has not had so much training. (B) MAKING WORDS WITH CARDBOARD SCRIPT.]

_Exercises._ As soon as the child knows some of the vowels and the consonants we place before him the big box containing all the vowels and the consonants which he knows. The directress p.r.o.nounces very clearly a word; for example, "mama," brings out the sound of the m very distinctly, repeating the sounds a number of times. Almost always the little one with an impulsive movement seizes an m and places it upon the table. The directress repeats "ma--ma." The child selects the a and places it near the m. He then composes the other syllable very easily.

But the reading of the word which he has composed is not so easy.

Indeed, he generally succeeds in reading it only after a _certain effort_. In this case I help the child, urging him to read, and reading the word with him once or twice, always p.r.o.nouncing very distinctly, _mama, mama_. But once he has understood the mechanism of the game, the child goes forward by himself, and becomes intensely interested. We may p.r.o.nounce any word, taking care only that the child understands separately the letters of which it is composed. He composes the new word, placing, one after the other, the signs corresponding to the sounds.

It is most interesting indeed to watch the child at this work. Intensely attentive, he sits watching the box, moving his lips almost imperceptibly, and taking one by one the necessary letters, rarely committing an error in spelling. The movement of the lips reveals the fact that he _repeats to himself an infinite number of times_ the words whose sounds he is translating into signs. Although the child is able to compose any word which is clearly p.r.o.nounced, we generally dictate to him only those words which are well-known, since we wish his composition to result in an idea. When these familiar words are used, he spontaneously rereads many times the word he has composed, repeating its sounds in a thoughtful, contemplative way.

The importance of these exercises is very complex. The child a.n.a.lyses, perfects, fixes his own spoken language,--placing an object in correspondence to every sound which he utters. The composition of the word furnishes him with substantial proof of the necessity for clear and forceful enunciation.

The exercise, thus followed, a.s.sociates the sound which is heard with the graphic sign which represents it, and lays a most solid foundation for accurate and perfect spelling.

In addition to this, the composition of the words is in itself an exercise of intelligence. The word which is p.r.o.nounced presents to the child a problem which he must solve, and he will do so by remembering the signs, selecting them from among others, and arranging them in the proper order. He will have the _proof_ of the exact solution of his problem when he _rereads_ the word--this word which he has composed, and which represents for all those who know how to read it, _an idea_.

When the child hears others read the word he has composed, he wears an expression of satisfaction and pride, and is possessed by a species of joyous wonder. He is impressed by this correspondence, carried on between himself and others by means of symbols. The written language represents for him the highest attainment reached by his own intelligence, and is at the same time, the reward of a great achievement.

When the pupil has finished the composition and the reading of the word we have him, according to the habits of order which we try to establish in connection with all our work, "_put away_" all the letters, each one in its own compartment. In composition, pure and simple, therefore, the child unites the two exercises of comparison and of selection of the graphic signs; the first, when from the entire box of letters before him he takes those necessary; the second, when he seeks the compartment in which each letter must be replaced. There are, then, three exercises united in this one effort, all three uniting to _fix the image of the graphic sign_ corresponding to the sounds of the word. The work of learning is in this case facilitated in three ways, and the ideas are acquired in a third of the time which would have been necessary with the old methods. We shall soon see that the child, on hearing the word, or on thinking of a word which he already knows, _will see_, with his mind's eye, all the letters, necessary to compose the word, arrange themselves. He will reproduce this vision with a facility most surprising to us. One day a little boy four years old, running alone about the terrace, was heard to repeat many times, "To make Zaira, I must have z-a-i-r-a." Another time, Professor Di Donato, in a visit to the "Children's House," p.r.o.nounced his own name for a four-year-old child. The child was composing the name, using small letters and making it all one word, and had begun, thus--_diton_. The professor at once p.r.o.nounced the word more distinctly; di _do_ nato, whereupon the child, without scattering the letters, picked up the syllable _to_ and placed it to one side, putting _do_ in the empty s.p.a.ce. He then placed an _a_ after the _n_, and, taking up the _to_ which he had put aside, completed the word with it. This made it evident that the child, when the word was p.r.o.nounced more clearly, understood that the syllable _to_ did not belong at that place in the word, realised that it belonged at the end of the word, and therefore placed it aside until he should need it. This was most surprising in a child of four years, and amazed all of those present. It can be explained by the clear and, at the same time, complex vision of the signs which the child must have, if he is to form a word which he hears spoken. This extraordinary act was largely due to the orderly mentality which the child had acquired through repeated spontaneous exercises tending to develop his intelligence.

These three periods contain the entire method for the acquisition of written language. The significance of such a method is clear. The psycho-physiological acts which unite to establish reading and writing are prepared separately and carefully. The muscular movements peculiar to the making of the signs or letters are prepared apart, and the same is true of the manipulation of the instrument of writing. The composition of the words, also, is reduced to a psychic mechanism of a.s.sociation between images heard and seen. There comes a moment in which the child, without thinking of it, fills in the geometric figures with an up and down stroke, which is free and regular; a moment in which he touches the letters with closed eyes, and in which he reproduces their form, moving his finger through the air; a moment in which the composition of words has become a psychic impulse, which makes the child, even when alone, repeat to himself "To make Zaira I must have z-a-i-r-a."

Now this child, it is true, _has never written_, but he has mastered all the acts necessary to writing. The child who, when taking dictation, not only knows how to compose the word, but instantly embraces in his thought its composition as a whole, will be able to write, since he knows how to make, with his eyes closed, the movements necessary to produce these letters, and since he manages almost unconsciously the instrument of writing.

More than this, the freedom with which the child has acquired this mechanical dexterity makes it possible for the impulse or spirit to act at any time through the medium of his mechanical ability. He should, sooner or later, come into his full power by way of a spontaneous explosion into writing. This is, indeed, the marvellous reaction which has come from my experiment with normal children. In one of the "Children's Houses," directed by Signorina Bettini, I had been especially careful in the way in which writing was taught, and we have had from this school most beautiful specimens of writing, and for this reason, perhaps I cannot do better than to describe the development of the work in this school.

One beautiful December day when the sun shone and the air was like spring, I went up on the roof with the children. They were playing freely about, and a number of them were gathered about me. I was sitting near a chimney, and said to a little five-year-old boy who sat beside me, "Draw me a picture of this chimney," giving him as I spoke a piece of chalk. He got down obediently and made a rough sketch of the chimney on the tiles which formed the floor of this roof terrace. As is my custom with little children, I encouraged him, praising his work. The child looked at me, smiled, remained for a moment as if on the point of bursting into some joyous act, and then cried out, "I can write! I can write!" and kneeling down again he wrote on the pavement the word "hand." Then, full of enthusiasm, he wrote also "chimney," "roof." As he wrote, he continued to cry out, "I can write! I know how to write!" His cries of joy brought the other children, who formed a circle about him, looking down at his work in stupefied amazement. Two or three of them said to me, trembling with excitement, "Give me the chalk. I can write too." And indeed they began to write various words: _mama_, _hand_, _John_, _chimney_, _Ada_.

Not one of them had ever taken chalk or any other instrument in hand for the purpose of writing. It was the _first time_ that they had ever written, and they traced an entire word, as a child, when speaking for the first time, speaks the entire word.

The first word spoken by a baby causes the mother ineffable joy. The child has chosen perhaps the word "mother," seeming to render thus a tribute to maternity. The first word written by my little ones aroused within themselves an indescribable emotion of joy. Not being able to adjust in their minds the connection between the preparation and the act, they were possessed by the illusion that, having now grown to the proper size, they knew how to write. In other words, writing seemed to them only one among the many gifts of nature.

They believe that, as they grow bigger and stronger, there will come some beautiful day when they _shall know how to write_. And, indeed, this is what it is in reality. The child who speaks, first prepares himself unconsciously, perfecting the psycho-muscular mechanism which leads to the articulation of the word. In the case of writing, the child does almost the same thing, but the direct pedagogical help and the possibility of preparing the movements for writing in an almost material way, causes the ability to write to develop much more rapidly and more perfectly than the ability to speak correctly.

In spite of the ease with which this is accomplished, the preparation is not partial, but complete. The child possesses _all_ the movements necessary for writing. And written language develops not gradually, but in an explosive way; that is, the child can write _any word_. Such was our first experience in the development of the written language in our children. Those first days we were a prey to deep emotions. It seemed as if we walked in a dream, and as if we a.s.sisted at some miraculous achievement.

The child who wrote a word for the first time was full of excited joy.

He might be compared to the hen who has just laid an egg. Indeed, no one could escape from the noisy manifestations of the little one. He would call everyone to see, and if there were some who did not go, he ran to take hold of their clothes forcing them to come and see. We all had to go and stand about the written word to admire the marvel, and to unite our exclamations of surprise with the joyous cries of the fortunate author. Usually, this first word was written on the floor, and, then, the child knelt down before it in order to be nearer to his work and to contemplate it more closely.