The Montessori Method Part 28

Finally it is the simple word, dissyllabic in most cases, which attracts the child's attention.

But for the motor centres also the same thing may be repeated; the child utters at the beginning simple or double sounds, as for example _bl_, _gl_, _ch_, an expression which the mother greets with joy; then distinctly syllabic sounds begin to manifest themselves in the child: _ga_, _ba_; and, finally, the dissyllabic word, usually l.a.b.i.al: _mama_.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

We say that the spoken language begins with the child when the word p.r.o.nounced by him signifies an _idea_; when for example, seeing his mother and recognising her he says "_mamma_;" and seeing a dog says, "_tette_;" and wishing to eat says: "_pappa_."

Thus we consider _language begun_ when it is established in relation to perception; while the language itself is still, in its psycho-motor mechanism, perfectly rudimentary.

That is, when above the diastaltic arc where the mechanical formation of the language is still unconscious, the recognition of the word takes place, that is, the word is perceived and a.s.sociated with the object which it represents, language is considered to have begun.

On this level, _later_, language continues the process of perfecting in proportion as the hearing perceives better the component sounds of the words and the psycho-motor channels become more permeable to articulation.

This is the first stage of spoken language, which has its own beginning and its own development, leading, through the perceptions, to the _perfecting_ of the primordial mechanism of the language itself; and at this stage precisely is established what we call _articulate language_, which will later be the means which the adult will have at his disposal to express his own thoughts, and which the adult will have great difficulty in perfecting or correcting when it has once been established: in fact a high stage of culture sometimes accompanies an imperfect articulate language which prevents the aesthetic expression of one's thought.

The development of articulate language takes place in the period between the age of two and the age of seven: the age of _perceptions_ in which the attention of the child is spontaneously turned towards external objects, and the memory is particularly tenacious. It is the age also of _motility_ in which all the psycho-motor channels are becoming permeable and the muscular mechanisms establish themselves. In this period of life by the mysterious bond between the auditory channel and the motor channel of the spoken language it would seem that the auditory perceptions have the direct power of _provoking_ the complicated movements of articulate speech which develop instinctively after such stimuli as if awaking from the slumber of heredity. It is well known that it is only at this age that it is possible to acquire all the characteristic modulations of a language which it would be vain to attempt to establish later. The mother tongue alone is well p.r.o.nounced because it was established in the period of childhood; and the adult who learns to speak a new language must bring to it the imperfections characteristic of the foreigner's speech: only children who under the age of seven years learn several languages at the same time can receive and reproduce all the characteristic mannerisms of accent and p.r.o.nunciation.

Thus also the _defects_ acquired in childhood such as dialectic defects or those established by bad habits, become indelible in the adult.

What develops later, the _superior_ language, the _dictorium_, no longer has its origin in the mechanism of language but in the intellectual development which makes use of the mechanical language. As the articulate language develops by the exercise of its mechanism and is enriched by perception, the _dictorium_ develops with syntax and is enriched by _intellectual culture_. Going back to the scheme of language we see that above the arc which defines the lower language, is established the _dictorium_, _D_,--from which now come the motor impulses of speech--which is established as _spoken language_ fit to manifest the ideation of the intelligent man; this language will be enriched little by little by intellectual culture and perfected by the grammatical study of syntax.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Hitherto, as a result of a preconception, it has been believed that written language should enter only into the development of the _dictorium_, as the suitable means for the acquisition of culture and of permitting grammatical a.n.a.lysis and construction of the language. Since "spoken words have wings" it has been admitted that intellectual culture could only proceed by the aid of a language which was stable, objective, and capable of being a.n.a.lysed, such as the graphic language.

But why, when we acknowledge the graphic language as a precious, nay indispensable, instrument of intellectual education, for the reason that it _fixes the ideas_ of men and permits of their a.n.a.lysis and of their a.s.similation in books, where they remain indelibly written as an ineffaceable memory of words which are therefore always present and by which we can a.n.a.lyse the syntactical structure of the language, why shall we not acknowledge that it is _useful_ in the more humble task of _fixing_ the _words_ which represent perception and of a.n.a.lysing their component sounds?

Compelled by a pedagogical prejudice we are unable to separate the idea of a graphic language from that of a function which heretofore we have made it exclusively perform; and it seems to us that by teaching such a language to children still in the age of simple perceptions and of motility we are committing a serious psychological and pedagogical error.

But let us rid ourselves of this prejudice and consider the graphic language in itself, reconstructing its psycho-physiological mechanism.

It is far more simple than the psycho-physiological mechanism of the articulate language, and is far more directly accessible to education.

_Writing_ especially is surprisingly simple. For let us consider _dictated_ writing: we have a perfect parallel with spoken language since a _motor_ action must correspond with _heard_ speech. Here there does not exist, to be sure, the mysterious hereditary relations between the heard speech and the articulate speech; but the movements of writing are far simpler than those necessary to the spoken word, and are performed by large muscles, all external, _upon which we can directly act_, rendering the motor channels permeable, and establishing psycho-muscular mechanisms.

This indeed is what is done by my method, which _prepares the movements directly_; so that the psycho-motor impulse of the heard speech _finds the motor channels already established_, and is manifested in the act of writing, like an explosion.

The real difficulty is in the _interpretation of the graphic signs_; but we must remember that we are in the _age of perceptions_, where the sensations and the memory as well as the primitive a.s.sociations are involved precisely in the characteristic progress of natural development. Moreover our children are already prepared by various exercises of the senses, and by methodical construction of ideas and mental a.s.sociations to perceive the graphic signs; something like a patrimony of perceptive ideas offers material to the language in the process of development. The child who recognises a triangle and calls it a triangle can recognise a letter _s_ and denominate it by the sound _s_. This is obvious.

Let us not talk of premature teaching; ridding ourselves of prejudices, let us appeal to experience which shows that in reality children proceed without effort, nay rather with evident manifestations of pleasure to the recognition of graphic signs presented as objects.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

And with this premise let us consider the relations between the mechanisms of the two languages.

The child of three or four has already long begun his articulate language according to our scheme. But he finds himself in the period in which the _mechanism of articulate language is being perfected_; a period contemporary with that in which he is acquiring a content of language along with the patrimony of perception.

The child has perhaps not heard perfectly in all their component parts the words which he p.r.o.nounces, and, if he has heard them perfectly, they may have been p.r.o.nounced badly, and consequently have left an erroneous auditory perception. It would be well that the child, by exercising the motor channels of articulate language should establish exactly the movements necessary to a perfect articulation, _before_ the age of easy motor adaptations is pa.s.sed, and, by the fixation of erroneous mechanisms, the defects become incorrigible.

To this end the _a.n.a.lysis of speech_ is necessary. As when we wish to perfect the language we first start children at composition and then pa.s.s to grammatical study; and when we wish to perfect the style we first teach to write grammatically and then come to the a.n.a.lysis of style--so when we wish to perfect the _speech_ it is first necessary that the speech _exist_, and then it is proper to proceed to its a.n.a.lysis. When, therefore, the child _speaks_, but before the completion of the development of speech which renders it fixed in mechanisms already established, the speech should be a.n.a.lysed with a view to perfecting it.

Now, as grammar and rhetoric are not possible with the spoken language but demand recourse to the written language which keeps ever before the eye the discourse to be a.n.a.lysed, so it is with speech.

The a.n.a.lysis of the transient is impossible.

The language must be materialised and made stable. Hence the necessity of the written word or the word represented by graphic signs.

In the third stage of my method for writing, that is, composition of speech, is included the _a.n.a.lysis of the word_ not only into signs, but into the component sounds; the signs representing its translation. The child, that is, _divides_ the heard word which he perceives integrally as a _word_, knowing also its meanings, into sounds and syllables.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Let me call attention to the following diagram which represents the interrelation of the two mechanisms for writing and for articulate speech.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The peripheric channels are indicated by heavy lines; the central channels of a.s.sociation by dotted lines; and those referring to a.s.sociation in relation to the development of the heard speech by light lines.

_E_ ear; _So_ auditory centre of sounds; _Sy_ auditory centre of syllables; _W_ auditory centre of word; _M_ motor centre of the articulate speech; _T_ external organs of articulate speech (tongue); _H_ external organs of writing (hand); _MC_ motor centre of writing; _VC_ visual centre of graphic signs; _V_ organ of vision.]

Whereas in the development of spoken language the sound composing the word might be imperfectly perceived, here in the teaching of the graphic sign corresponding to the sound (which teaching consists in presenting to the child a sandpaper letter, naming it _distinctly_ and making the child _see_ it and _touch_ it), not only is the perception of the heard sound _clearly_ fixed--separately and clearly--but this perception is a.s.sociated with two others: the centro-motor perception and the centro-visual perception of the written sign.

The triangle _VC_, _MC_, _So_ represents the a.s.sociation of three sensations in relation with the a.n.a.lysis of speech.

When the letter is presented to the child and he is made to touch and see it, while it is being named, the centripetal channels _ESo_; _H_, _MC_, _So_; _V_, _VC_, _So_ are acting and when the child is made to name the letter, alone or accompanied by a vowel, the external stimulus acts in _V_ and pa.s.ses through the channels _V_, _VC_, _So_, _M_, _T_; and _V_, _CV_, _So_, _Sy_, _M_, _T_.

When these channels of a.s.sociation have been established by presenting visual stimuli in the graphic sign, the corresponding movements of articulate language can be provoked and studied one by one in their defects; while, by maintaining the visual stimulus of the graphic sign which provokes articulation and accompanying it by the auditory stimulus of the corresponding _sound_ uttered by the teacher, their articulation can be perfected; this articulation is by innate conditions connected with the __heard speech; that is, in the course of the p.r.o.nunciation provoked by the visual stimulus, and during the repet.i.tion of the relative movements of the organs of language, the auditory stimulus which is introduced into the exercise contributes to the perfecting of the p.r.o.nunciation of the isolated or syllabic sounds composing the spoken word.

When later the child writes under dictation, translating into signs the sounds of speech, he a.n.a.lyses the heard speech into its sounds, translating them into graphic movements through channels already rendered permeable by the corresponding muscular sensations.

DEFECTS OF LANGUAGE DUE TO LACK OF EDUCATION

Defects and imperfections of language are in part due to organic causes, consisting in malformations or in pathological alterations of the nervous system; but in part they are connected with functional defects acquired in the period of the formation of language and consist in an erratic p.r.o.nunciation of the component sounds of the spoken word. Such errors are acquired by the child who hears words imperfectly p.r.o.nounced, or _hears bad speech_, The dialectic accent enters into this category; but there also enter vicious habits which make the natural defects of the articulate language of childhood persist in the child, or which provoke in him by imitation the defects of language peculiar to the persons who surrounded him in his childhood.

The normal defects of child language are due to the fact that the complicated muscular agencies of the organs of articulate language do not yet function well and are consequently incapable of reproducing the _sound_ which was the sensory stimulus of a certain innate movement. The a.s.sociation of the movements necessary to the articulation of the spoken words is established little by little. The result is a language made of words with sounds which are imperfect and often lacking (whence incomplete words). Such defects are grouped under the name _blaesitas_ and are especially due to the fact that the child is not yet capable of directing the movements of his tongue. They comprise chiefly: _sigmatism_ or imperfect p.r.o.nunciation of _s_; _rhotacism_ or imperfect p.r.o.nunciation of _r_; _lambdacism_ or imperfect p.r.o.nunciation of _l_; _gammacism_ or imperfect p.r.o.nunciation, of _g_; _iotacism_, defective p.r.o.nunciation of the gutturals; _mogilalia_, imperfect p.r.o.nunciation of the l.a.b.i.als, and according to some authors, as Preyer, mogilalia is made to include also the suppression of the first sound of a word.

Some defects of p.r.o.nunciation which concern the utterance of the vowel sound as well as that of the consonant are due to the fact that the child _reproduces perfectly_ sounds imperfectly heard.

In the first case, then, it is a matter of functional insufficiencies of the peripheral motor organ and hence of the nervous channels, and the cause lies in the individual; whereas in the second case the error is caused by the auditory stimulus and the cause lies outside.

These defects often persist, however attenuated, in the boy and the adult: and produce finally an erroneous language to which will later be added in writing orthographical errors, such for example as dialectic orthographical errors.

If one considers the charm of human speech one is bound to acknowledge the inferiority of one who does not possess a correct spoken language; and an aesthetic conception in education cannot be imagined unless special care be devoted to perfecting articulate language. Although the Greeks had transmitted to Rome the art of educating in language, this practice was not resumed by Humanism which cared more for the aesthetics of the environment and the revival of artistic works than for the perfecting of the man.

To-day we are just beginning to introduce the practice of correcting by pedagogical methods the serious defects of language, such as stammering; but the idea of _linguistic gymnastics_ tending to its perfection has not yet penetrated into our schools as a _universal method_, and as a detail of the great work of the aesthetic perfecting of man.

Some teachers of deaf mutes and intelligent devotees of orthophony are trying nowadays with small practical success to introduce into the elementary schools the correction of the various forms of _blaesitas_, as a result of statistical studies which have demonstrated the wide diffusion of such defects among the pupils. The exercises consist essentially in _silence_ cures which procure calm and repose for the organs of language, and in patient _repet.i.tion_ of the _separate_ vowel and consonant _sounds_; to these exercises is added also respiratory gymnastics. This is not the place to describe in detail the methods of these exercises which are long and patient and quite out of harmony with the teachings of the school. But in my methods are to be found all exercises for the corrections of language:

(_a_) _Exercises of Silence_, which prepare the nervous channels of language to receive new stimuli perfectly;

(_b_) _Lessons_ which consist first of the distinct p.r.o.nunciation by the teacher of _few words_ (especially of _nouns_ which must be a.s.sociated with a concrete idea); by this means clear and perfect _auditory stimuli_ of language are started, stimuli which are _repeated_ by the teacher when the child has conceived the idea of the object represented by the word (recognition of the object); finally of the provocation of articulate language on the part of the child who must repeat _that word alone_ aloud, p.r.o.nouncing its separate sounds;