The mind of the child (translated) E-Book

Maria Montessori

• Herausgeber: ALEMAR S.A.S.
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

- This edition is unique;
- The translation is completely original and was carried out for the Ale. Mar. SAS;
- All rights reserved.

"The child is endowed with unknown powers, which can lead to a bright future." In the first years of life, our mind is able to absorb, create, learn in a profound and completely different way than we will do in adulthood. It is on the basis of this pivotal principle of her method that Maria Montessori delves into the mystery of a crucial period in the formation of our identity, at the stage that defines the characters and unsuspected possibilities of future life. With this work, published for the first time in India, where the method met with immediate success - "We are members of the same family", Mahatma Gandhi said of Maria Montessori -, the foundations are laid for an education that must never be constriction and oppression but an aid to life and the development of all the immense potential with which the child is endowed.

Leseprobe

 

Contents

PREFACE

I - THE CHILD IN THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WORLD

II - EDUCATION FOR LIFE

III - THE PERIODS OF GROWTH

IV - A NEW ORIENTATION

V - THE MIRACLE OF CREATION

VI - EMBRYOLOGY: BEHAVIOUR

VII - THE SPIRITUAL EMBRYO

VIII - THE CONQUEST OF INDEPENDENCE

IX - CARE TO BE TAKEN EARLY IN LIFE

X - ON LANGUAGE

XI - THE APPEAL OF LANGUAGE

XII - OBSTACLES AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES

XIII - TOTAL MOVEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

XIV - INTELLIGENCE AND THE HAND

XV - DEVELOPMENT AND IMITATION

XVI - FROM THE UNCONSCIOUS CREATOR TO THE CONSCIOUS WORKER

XVII - FURTHER ELABORATION THROUGH CULTURE AND IMAGINATION

XVIII - CHARACTER AND ITS DEFECTS IN CHILDREN

XIX - SOCIAL CONTRIBUTION OF THE CHILD: NORMALISATION

XX - CHARACTER BUILDING IS AN ACHIEVEMENT

XXI - THE SUBLIMATION OF THE INSTINCT OF POSSESSION

XXII - SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

XXIII - SOCIETY FOR COHESION

XXIV - ERROR AND ITS CONTROL

XXV - THE THREE DEGREES OF OBEDIENCE

XXVI - THE MONTESSORI TEACHER AND DISCIPLINE

XXVII - PREPARATION OF THE MONTESSORI TEACHER

XXVIII - THE SOURCE OF LOVE - THE CHILD

Maria Montessori

The mind of the child

PREFACE

This volume is based on the lectures given by Dr Maria Montessori during the first preparatory course she held in Ahmedabab after her internment in India, which lasted until the end of the world war.

In this book she deals with the child's mental energies, which enable him to build and consolidate in the space of a few years, alone, without teachers, without any of the usual educational aids, even if left almost to himself and often hindered, all the characteristics of the human personality. This achievement of a being, physically weak, born with great possibilities, but practically without even one of the factors of mental life being developed in him yet, of a being who can be called 'zero', but who, in the space of six years, already surpasses all other living beings, is truly one of the greatest mysteries of life.

In this volume, Dr. Montessori not only casts the light of her penetrating insight, which stems from a thorough observation and a just assessment of the phenomena of this first and most decisive period of human life, but also indicates the responsibilities of adult humanity towards the child. The author realistically sets out the now universally accepted need for 'education from birth'. It is clear that such an education cannot be achieved unless education itself becomes an 'aid to life' and transcends the narrow limits of teaching and the direct transmission of knowledge or ideas from one mind to another. One of the best-known principles of the Montessori Method is the 'preparation of the environment'; in that period of life, long before the child goes to school, the preparation of the environment offers the key to an 'education from birth' and to the true 'cultivation' of the human individual from his or her first entry into life.

This is a thesis based on scientific grounds but also validated by the experiences of those who have aided the manifestation of the infant nature throughout the world and can testify to the mental and spiritual grandeur of these manifestations, in singular contrast to the vision offered by humanity, which, abandoned during the formative period, becomes the greatest threat to its very survival.

Mario M. Montessori

Karachi, May 1949

I - THE CHILD IN THERECONSTRUCTION OF THE WORLD

This book is a link in the development of our thinking and work in defence of the great forces of childhood.

Today, as the world is divided, and plans for a future reconstruction are being considered, education is universally regarded as one of the most effective means to this reconstruction because there is no doubt that psychologically mankind is below the level that civilisation preaches it has reached.

I too think that mankind is far from the degree of preparedness necessary for that evolution to which it so ardently aspires: the building of a peaceful and united society, and the elimination of wars. Men are not yet able to control and direct the events of which they rather become the victims.

Although education is recognised as one of the means to uplift mankind, it is still only considered as education of the mind based on old concepts, without thinking of drawing a renewing and constructive force from it.

That philosophy and religion should make an immense contribution to renewal I do not doubt. But how many philosophers are there in today's ultra-civilised world, and how many have been before and will be in the future? Noble ideas and high sentiments have always existed and have always been transmitted through education, but the wars have never ceased. And if education were always to be conceived according to the old patterns of knowledge transmission, there would be nothing left to hope for the future of the world. What does the transmission of knowledge matter if the general education of man himself is neglected? There exists, ignored, a psychic entity, a social personality, immense in its multitude of individuals, a power in the world that must be taken into consideration; if help and salvation can come, it will only come to us from the child; for the child is the builder of man.

The child is endowed with unknown powers, which can lead to a bright future. If one really wants to aim for reconstruction, the development of human potential must be the aim of education.

In modern times, the psychic life of the newborn has aroused great interest, and some psychologists have made infant development the subject of their observation from the first three hours after birth. Others, after careful study, have come to the conclusion that the first two years of life are the most important in human development.

The greatness of the human personality begins with the birth of man. This singularly mystical statement leads to a conclusion that might seem strange: education should begin at birth. But practically speaking, how can one educate a child as soon as it is born or in its first or second year of life? How to impart lessons to a little creature who does not understand our words or even know how to move? Perhaps we only refer to hygiene when we speak of educating young children? Certainly not.

During this period, education must be understood as aiding the development of the innate psychic powers in the human individual; that is to say, the common and well-known form of teaching that has the medium of speech could not be used.

Unused wealth

Recent observations have amply demonstrated that the little ones are endowed with a special psychic nature of their own, and this points us in a new direction for education; one that affects humanity itself and has never yet been taken into account. The true constructive, vital and dynamic energy of children remained ignored for millennia; just as men first trod the earth and later cultivated its surface, without knowing or caring for the immense riches that lie hidden in its depths, so modern man advances in civilisation without knowing the treasures that lie hidden in the psychic world of the child.

Since the earliest beginnings of mankind, man has continued to repress and annihilate these energies, the existence of which only today has begun to be perceived. Thus, for example, Carrel writes: 'The time of early childhood is undoubtedly the richest. It must be utilised in every possible and imaginable way through education. The loss of this period is irreparable. Instead of neglecting the first years of life, it is our duty to cultivate them with the greatest care'.1

Humanity is beginning to realise the importance of this untapped wealth; something far more precious than gold: man's very spirit.

The first two years of life open up a new horizon; they reveal laws of psychic construction, hitherto unknown. The child itself has given us the gift of this revelation; it has introduced us to a type of psychology that is completely different from that of the adult. Here is the new way! It is not the teacher who applies psychology to children, but it is the children themselves who reveal their psychology to the scholar.

All this may appear obscure, but it will immediately become clear if we delve into the details: the child has a mind capable of absorbing knowledge and the power to educate itself; a superficial observation is enough to prove this. The child speaks the language of his parents; now, learning a language is a great intellectual achievement; no one has taught the child, yet he will know how to use the names of things, verbs, adjectives to perfection.

Following the development of language in children is a study of immense interest and all those who have dedicated themselves to it agree that the use of words and names, of the first elements of language, falls at a certain period of life as if a precise rule of time superintended this manifestation of infant activity. The child seems to faithfully follow a strict programme imposed by nature, and with such punctual exactitude that no school, however skilfully directed, would stand comparison. Always following this programme, the child learns the irregularities and syntactic constructions of language with impeccable diligence.

The Vital Years

Within every child there is, so to speak, a vigilant teacher who knows how to get the same results from every child, no matter where he or she is. The only language that man learns perfectly is undoubtedly that acquired in the first period of childhood, when no one can teach the child; not only that, but if later on the child, having grown up, has to learn a new language, no master's help will be worthwhile in getting him to speak the new language as exactly as he speaks the language acquired in early childhood. There is therefore a psychic force that aids the child's development. And this is not only with regard to language; at the age of two, he will be able to recognise all the people and things in his environment. If one reflects on this fact, it becomes increasingly clear that the construction work done by the child is impressive and that everything we possess was built by the child, by the child that we ourselves were in the first two years of life. It is not only a matter, for the child, of recognising what is around us or of understanding and adapting to our environment, but also, at a time when no one can be his teacher, of forming the complex of what will be our intelligence and the outline of our religious feeling, of our particular national and social sentiments. It is as if nature has safeguarded each child from the influence of human intelligence in order to give precedence to the inner teacher who inspires it; the possibility of building a complete psychic construction, before human intelligence can come into contact with the spirit and influence it.

At the age of three, the child has already laid the foundations of the human personality and needs the special help of school education. His achievements are such that one can say that the child, who enters school at the age of three, is already a man because of the achievements he has made. Psychologists say that, if we compare our ability as adults to that of the child, it would take us sixty years of hard work to achieve what the child has achieved in his first three years; and they express themselves with precisely the same words that I have used: 'at three years of age the child is already a man', even though this singular faculty of the child to absorb from the environment has not yet been completely exhausted in this early period.

In our first schools, children came at the age of three; no one could teach them, because they were not receptive; but they offered us astonishing revelations of the greatness of the human mind. Ours is a 'Children's Home' rather than a real school; that is, an environment specially prepared for the child, where he or she assimilates whatever culture the environment provides without the need for teaching. The children in our first schools belonged to the humblest classes of the people and their parents were illiterate. Yet those children knew how to read and write by the age of five, and no one had directly taught them. If visitors to the school asked, "Who taught you to write?", the astonished children often replied, "Taught? No one taught me".

It then seemed a miracle that children of four and a half years old could write, and that they had come this far without being taught.

The press began to speak of 'spontaneous acquisition of culture'; psychologists wondered whether these children were not different from others and we ourselves were puzzled for a long time. Only after repeated experiments did we reach the certainty that all children indiscriminately have this ability to 'absorb' culture. If this is the case,' we said to ourselves then, 'if culture can be acquired effortlessly, let us enable the child to 'absorb' other elements of culture. We then saw the child 'absorb' more than just reading and writing: botany, zoology, mathematics, geography, and with equal ease, spontaneously, effortlessly.

We thus discover that education is not what the teacher gives, but is a natural process that takes place spontaneously in the human individual; that it is not acquired by listening to words, but by virtue of experiences in the environment. The task of the teacher is not to speak, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a specially prepared environment.

My experiences in different countries lasted more than forty years, and as the children grew older, I was asked by their parents to continue the education of the older children. We thus discovered that individual activity is the faculty that alone stimulates and produces development, and that this applies to pre-school children as well as to children in primary and advanced schools.

The New Man rises

Before our eyes a new image appeared; it was not that of a school or an education. It was Man rising, Man revealing his true character in his free development; Man demonstrating his greatness when no mental oppression came to limit his inner workings and burden his soul.

I therefore argue that any educational reform must be based on the development of the human personality. Man himself should become the centre of education, and it must be borne in mind that man does not develop at university, but begins his mental development from birth and carries it out with the greatest intensity in the first three years of life; this period more than any other must be given vigilant care. If we act according to this imperative, the child, instead of imposing a burden on us, will reveal itself to us as the greatest and most comforting wonder of nature. We will then find ourselves before the child no longer considered a being without strength, almost an empty vessel to be filled with our wisdom; but his dignity will arise before our eyes to the extent that we will see him as the builder of our intelligence, as the being who, guided by an inner master, works tirelessly in joy and happiness, according to a precise programme, on the construction of that wonder of nature that is Man. We, teachers, can only help the work already accomplished as servants help the master. We will then become witnesses to the development of the human soul; to the rise of the New Man, who will not be a victim of events, but, thanks to his clarity of vision, will be able to direct and shape the future of human society.

II - EDUCATION FOR LIFE

School and social life

It is necessary to have from the outset an idea of what we mean by education for life from birth, and it is necessary to go into the details of the problem. Recently, the leader of a people, Gandhi, enunciated the need not only to extend education to the entire life course, but also to make the 'defence of life' the centre of education. And it is the first time that such a statement has been made by a political and spiritual 'leader'. Science, on the other hand, has not only already expressed this need, but since the beginning of our century has shown that the idea of extending education to the whole of life has a chance of being implemented with certainty of success. However, this concept of education has not yet entered the field of action of any ministry of education.

Education today is rich in methods, social aims and purposes, but it can no less be said that it does not take life itself into consideration. Of the many official methods of education in different countries, none aim to assist the individual from birth and protect his or her development. Today, education, as it is conceived, disregards both biological and social life. Everyone who enters education comes to be isolated from society. Students are expected to follow the rules laid down by the institution of which they are pupils and to conform to the programmes recommended by the ministries of education. It can be said that even in the more recent past, the social and physical conditions of students were not taken into consideration as a fact that could affect the school in itself. Thus, if the student was undernourished, or if he had sight or hearing defects that diminished his chances of learning, he was certainly graded lower. Physical defects were considered, in later times, but only from the point of view of physical hygiene, while no one considered, even today, that the student's mind can be threatened and suffer harm from defective and unsuitable educational methods. The direction of the New Education in which Claparède was interested, considers rather the quantity of disciplines included in the programmes, aiming to reduce them to avoid mental fatigue. But it does not touch the problem of how pupils could enrich themselves with culture without fatigue. In most official state-run schools, what matters is that the syllabus is carried out. If the spirit of young university students is struck by social deficiencies and political issues that stir up passionate truths, the watchword is that the young person should not concern himself with politics, but that he should stick to his studies until he has completed them. It thus happens that the young man, having left university, will have such a limited and sacrificed intelligence that he will not be able to identify and evaluate the problems of the era in which he lives.

School mechanisms are as alien to contemporary social life as it seems to be excluded, with its problems, from the field of education. The world of education is a kind of island where individuals, detached from the world, prepare themselves for life by remaining alienated from it. It may happen, for example, that a university student is afflicted with tuberculosis and dies of it; is it not a sad thing that the university, the school where he lives, ignores him ill, while suddenly appearing, with an official representation, at his funeral?2 There are extremely nervous individuals, who when they enter the world will be useless to themselves and a cause of grief to family and friends. However, the school authority is not obliged to concern itself with special cases of psychology, and such absenteeism has full justification in the regulations that assign the school the task of dealing only with studies and examinations. Those who pass them will receive a diploma or a degree. This is, for our times, the end of the school. Scholars of social problems point out that those dismissed from schools and universities are not prepared for life, not only that, but in most cases they are even diminished in their possibilities. Statistics reveal a staggering increase of the insane, of criminals, of individuals considered 'strange'. Sociologists invoke schools as a remedy to so much evil; but the school is a world unto itself, a world closed to social problems; it is not obliged to consider them and get to know them. It is a social institution of too old a tradition for its regulations to be altered ex officio; only a force acting from outside will be able to modify and renew and remedy the deficiencies that accompany education in all grades, just as they unfortunately accompany the lives of those who go to school.

The pre-school age

What happens to the child from birth to the age of six or seven? The school proper does not care about this, so that this age is called preschool, as if to say outside the field of official education. And what could the school do for infants? Where institutions for pre-school age children have sprung up, they are rarely dependent on the central school authority or the ministry of education. They are usually controlled by municipalities or private institutions, which often pursue charitable purposes. Interest in the protection of the mental life of the little ones, as a social problem, does not exist; society states, moreover, that the little ones belong to the family and not to the state.

The new importance given to the early years of life has not suggested any particular measures; it is only intended to change the life of the family, in the sense that the education of the mother is now considered necessary. But the family is not part of the school, it is part of society. The result is that the human personality, or the nurturing of the human personality, is split: on the one hand the family, which is part of society, but which lives isolated and neglected or ignored by society: on the other hand the school, which is also secluded from society, and then the university. There is no unitary conception, no social concern for life, but fragments that ignore each other and refer successively or alternately to the school, the family and the university conceived as a school, which affects the last part of the educational period. Even the new sciences, which reveal the evil of this isolation, such as social psychology and sociology, are isolated from school. There is therefore no real system that aids the development of life. The concept of education understood in this sense is not new, as I have already said, to science, but in the social field it has not yet been realised. And this is the step that civilisation will soon have to take: the way is marked out, critics have revealed the errors of the present conditions, others have clarified the remedy to be brought to the various stages of life, today everything is ready for construction. The contributions of science can be compared to the stones already squared, destined for this construction; it is necessary to find those who will take the stones and superimpose them to erect the new edifice necessary for civilisation.

The task of education and society

The concept of an education that takes life as the centre of its function alters all previous educational ideas. Education is no longer to be based on a set programme, but on knowledge of human life. In the light of this conviction, the education of the newborn child suddenly acquires great importance. It is true that the infant can do nothing, that nothing can be taught to it in the ordinary sense of the word, and that it can only be the object of observation and study designed to bring out its vital needs; but we have made such observations in order to find out what the laws of life are, for if we wish to help it, the first condition is knowledge of the laws that govern it; and not only knowledge, for if we had only this, we would remain in the field of psychology and would not enter the field of education.

But this knowledge of the child's psychic development must be widely disseminated: then only education will be able to acquire new authority and say to society: 'These are the laws of life; you cannot ignore them and you must act in accordance with them; for they point to human rights that are extensive and common to all mankind.

If society deems it necessary to provide compulsory education, this means that education must be given in a practical manner, and when it is admitted that education must begin at birth, it is necessary for society to be familiar with the laws of child development. Education instead of being ignored by society must acquire authority over it, and the social mechanism will have to adapt to the needs inherent in the new conception: that life must be protected. Everyone is called upon to co-operate, fathers and mothers must assume their responsibility; but when the family does not have sufficient possibilities, society is obliged not only to impart education, but also to provide the necessary means to bring up children. If education means caring for the individual, if society recognises means necessary for the child's development that the family cannot provide, it is up to society to provide, it is up to the state not to abandon the child.

Education will thus undertake to impose itself with authority on the society from which it had remained secluded. While it is clear that society must exercise beneficial control over the human individual, and while it is true that education is to be regarded as an aid to life, this control must never be coercion and oppression, but must provide physical and psychic help. That is to say, the first step society will have to take is to devote wider means to education.

The needs of the child during the growing years have been studied, and the results of these studies have been made known to society; society must now conscientiously assume responsibility for education, while education for its part will extend to society the goods acquired in its progress. Education thus conceived no longer concerns only the child and the parents, but the state and international finance; it becomes a stimulus to every member of the social body, a stimulus to the greatest of society's renewals. Is there anything more immobile, stagnant and indifferent than education today? When a country has to economise, education is undoubtedly the first casualty. If you ask a statesman what his views are on education, he will answer that education is not his business, that he has entrusted the education of his children to his wife so that she in turn would entrust it to the school. Well: in the future, it will become absolutely impossible for a statesman to formulate such an answer and show such indifference.

The man-made child

Let us consider the reports of several psychologists who have studied the child from the first year of life. What can be deduced from them? That the growth of the individual, instead of being left to chance, must be scientifically directed with better care; which will lead to a better development of the individual. The idea in which everyone agrees is that the better cared for and assisted individual is bound to grow stronger, more mentally balanced and with a more energetic character. In other words, the concluding concept is that in addition to physical hygiene, the child must be protected by mental hygiene. Science has made further discoveries around the first period of life: far greater energies have been manifested in the child than is generally imagined. At his birth, psychically speaking, the child is nothing; and not only psychically, since at his birth he is incapable of coordinated movements and the almost immobility of his limbs does not allow him to do anything; nor can he speak, although he sees what is going on around him. After a given period of time, the child speaks, walks, and goes from one achievement to another until he builds man in all his greatness and intelligence. And here a truth comes into view; the child is not an empty being, who owes us everything he knows and with which we have filled him. No, the child is the constructor of man, and there is no man who has not been formed by the child he once was. The great constructive energies of the child, of which we have already spoken many times, and which have attracted the attention of scientists, have hitherto remained hidden under a complex of ideas formed around motherhood; it was said: the mother formed the child, she teaches it to speak, to walk, etc. Now all this is not the mother's work at all, but the child's achievement. What the mother creates is the infant, but it is the infant that produces the man. If the mother dies, the infant still grows and completes the construction of man. An Indian child brought to America and entrusted to the care of Americans will learn English, not Indian. It is not from the mother, therefore, that knowledge of language comes, but it is the child that appropriates language as it appropriates the habits and customs of the people among whom it lives. There is therefore nothing hereditary in these acquisitions, and the child, absorbing from his surroundings, shapes the future man from himself.

Recognising this great work of the child does not mean that the parents' authority is diminished; when they are persuaded that they are not the builders, but simply the helpers in the construction, the better they will be able to fulfil their duty and help the child with a broader vision. Only if this help is given appropriately will the child achieve a good construction; thus the authority of parents is not based on a dignity in itself, but on the help they give their children, and this is the true and great authority and dignity of parents.

But let us also consider the child in human society from another point of view.

The Marxist idea sketched the figure of the worker as it is modernly acquired by our consciousness: the worker producer of well-being and wealth, essential collaborator in the great work of civilised living, recognised as such by society to the effects of its moral and economic values, morally and economically entitled to be provided with the means and materials necessary to do his work.

Now let us bring this idea into our field. Let us realise that the child is a worker and that the purpose of his work is to produce man. Parents provide, it is true, this worker with the essential means of life and constructive work, but the social problem with regard to children must be considered of far greater importance, because children's work does not produce a material object, but creates humanity itself: not a race, a caste, a social group, but the whole of humanity. When we consider this fact, it is clear that society must take the child into consideration, recognising its rights and providing for its needs. When we take life itself as the object of our attention and study, we can come to touch the secret of humanity and have in our hands the power to govern and help humanity. We too, when we speak of education, preach a revolution, for through it everything we know today will be transformed. I see this as the ultimate revolution: a non-violent revolution, let alone a bloody one, one that excludes even the slightest violence, because when there is a shadow of violence, the child's psychic construction would be mortally wounded.

The construction of human normality must be defended. Haven't all our efforts been aimed at removing obstacles on the path of the child's development and removing the dangers and misunderstandings that surrounded it?

This is education as an aid to life; education from birth, nurturing a revolution free of all violence and uniting everyone for a common purpose and drawing them towards a single centre. Mothers, fathers, statesmen, all converge in respecting and helping this delicate construction, worked out under psychically mysterious conditions, under the guidance of an ulterior master. This is the bright new hope of humanity. Not reconstruction, but aid in the construction that the human soul is called upon to complete, construction understood as the development of all the immense potential with which the child, the son of man, is endowed.

III - THE PERIODS OF GROWTH

According to some psychologists, who followed children and young people from birth to university age, there are several distinct periods in the course of development. This conception, derived from W. Stern, was soon adopted by others, in particular by Ch. Bühler and his followers, while it can be said that from another point of view the Freudian school had developed it considerably. It is a different concept from the one that had previously been followed, according to which the human individual has a very poor content in its early years, which is enriched as it grows; according to which, that is, the individual is something small in the process of development, something small that grows, but always retains the same form. Abandoning this old concept, psychology has now come to recognise that there are different types of psyche and mind in different periods of life.3 These periods are clearly distinct from each other and it is curious to note that they coincide with the different phases of physical development. The changes are of such magnitude, psychically speaking, that certain psychologists, attempting to clarify them, have exaggerated so as to express themselves in this way: 'Development is a succession of births. At a certain period of life, one psychic individuality ceases and another is born. The first of these periods runs from birth to the age of six. In this period, although it has considerably different manifestations, the mental type remains the same. From zero to six years the period has two distinct sub-phases: the first, from zero to three years, reveals a type of mentality to which the adult cannot approach, that is, over which he cannot exert a direct influence, and, in fact, there is no school for these children. Another sub-phase follows: from the age of three to six, in which the mental type is the same, but the child begins to be influential in a particular way. This period is characterised by the great transformations that take place in the individual. To convince oneself of this, one only has to think of the difference between the new-born and the six-year-old child. For the moment we are not interested in how this transformation takes place, but the fact is that at the age of six the individual, according to the common expression, becomes intelligent enough to be admitted to school.

The next period runs from six to twelve years and is a period of growth, but without transformation. It is a period of calm and serenity and, psychically speaking, it is a period of health, strength and secure stability. "This stability, physical and mental," says Ross, writing about children of this age, "is the most outstanding characteristic of advanced childhood. A being from another planet, who did not know the human race, could easily take these little ten-year-old beings for adults of the species, if he had no occasion to see the real adults."4

As for the physical, there are signs that seem to set the limits between these two psychic periods. The transformation that takes place in the body is very visible; I will only mention the fact that the child loses its first set of teeth and the second begins.

The third period runs from twelve to eighteen years and is a period of such transformations that it is reminiscent of the first. This last period can be divided into two sub-phases: one from twelve to fifteen years and the other from fifteen to eighteen. This period is also characterised by transformations of the body, which reaches maturity of development. After the age of eighteen, man can be considered fully developed, and no further remarkable transformation takes place in him. He only grows in age.

The curious thing is that official education has recognised these different psychic types. It seems to have had an obscure insight into them. The first period, from birth to the age of six, was clearly recognised as being excluded from compulsory education, while it was noted that at the age of six a transformation takes place whereby the child is mature enough to be admitted to school. It was thus recognised that the child already knows a great deal, which can enable him to attend school. In fact, if children at the age of six could not orient themselves, or walk, or understand when the teacher speaks, they would not be able to take part in collective life. There was, we might say, a practical recognition. But educators have never thought that if the child can go to school, orient himself, understand the ideas transmitted to him, he must have developed mentally, since at his birth he was incapable of anything.

An unconscious recognition has also been given to the second period, because in many countries children generally leave primary school at the age of twelve to enter high school. Why has the period from six to twelve years been deemed suitable for imparting the first and basic notions of culture to children? Since this is the case in all countries of the world, it is undoubtedly not a random inspiration: only a psychic basis common to all children could have made this type of schooling possible, which is undoubtedly the conclusion of reasoning based on experience. It has been experienced that during this period the child can submit to the mental work required by the school: he can understand what the teacher says and has enough patience to listen and learn. Throughout this period he is steady in his work and strong in health: therefore this period is considered the most suitable for receiving culture. After the twelfth year, one begins a higher-order school, which means that official education has recognised that in that year a new type of psychology begins for the human individual. It has also recognised that this type manifests itself through two stages, as is shown by the fact that the higher schools are divided into two parts. We have a lower secondary school and an upper secondary school; the lower lasts almost three years and the upper sometimes four; it does not matter, however, the exact period of years into which the education is divided; it is only interesting to consider the succession of two periods in the secondary school as well. Overall, this period is less easy and calm than the previous one. Psychologists, who have been interested in education during the adolescent period, consider it to be a period of such psychic transformations that they compare it to the first, the period from birth to six years of age; generally at this age the character is not stable and there are manifestations of indiscipline and rebellion. Physical health is not as stable and secure as in the second period. But the school does not worry about this. A certain programme has been drawn up and the boys are expected to follow it, willingly or unwillingly. Even in this period, the youngsters have to sit and listen to the teacher, they have to obey and spend their time memorising the imparted knowledge.

The crowning glory of school life is the university, which does not essentially differ from the types of school that precede it, except perhaps in the intensity of study. Even at university, the professors talk and the students listen. When I was at university and men did not use to shave, it was curious to see these young men in the lecture halls, some with more or less impressive beards and all sporting the most diverse varieties of moustaches. Yet these mature men were treated in the same way as children: they had to sit and listen; submit to their professors; depend for cigarettes and transport on the liberality of fathers ready to scold them when they failed their exams. And they were grown men, whose intelligence and experience would one day run the world, whose working tool was the mind and for whom the highest professions were destined: future doctors, engineers, lawyers. And, we might add, what use is a degree today? Does it secure the life of those who obtain it? Who resorts to a doctor who has just graduated? Who entrusts the construction of a house to a young engineer fresh out of school? Or a lawsuit to a lawyer just authorised to practise his profession? And how to explain this lack of trust? The reason is that these young people have spent years listening to the word of teachers, and listening does not form a man; only practical work and experience lead young people to maturity. That is why we find young doctors who have to practise for a long time in hospitals; young lawyers who have to practise in the offices of an already experienced lawyer; engineers who have to do the same in order to reach the independent practice of their profession and gain their own experience. And let it be added that, in order to find where to practise, it is necessary for graduates to seek support, recommendations and overcome considerable difficulties. This sad fact can be said to occur in every country. A typical case was in New York where a procession of intellectuals was organised, made up of hundreds of individuals who had been unable to find employment. They carried a placard that read: 'We are out of work, we are hungry. What should we do?" The situation has not changed. Education is out of control and does not abandon its inveterate habits. It has only recognised the existence of different types of development in different periods of life during the individual's growth.

The Creative Period

In the years of my youth, children between the ages of two and six were not considered. Now, on the other hand, there are pre-school institutions of various kinds, which take in children from three to six years old. But even today, as in the past, the most important part of education is considered university education, because from university come those who have best cultivated the essentially human faculty called intelligence. But now that psychologists have turned to the study of life itself, a tendency has arisen that can be said to be quite the opposite; many now argue, as I do, that the most important part of life is not that which corresponds to university studies, but rather the first period, which extends from birth to the age of six, because it is precisely in this period that intelligence, the great tool of man, is formed. And not only intelligence, but also the complex of psychic faculties. The new idea has produced a great impression on those who have some sensitivity to psychic life; and many have given themselves over to the study of the infant, the one-year-old child, who creates the personality of man. Intent on this mysterious revelation of life, scholars feel the same emotion as those who in ancient times used to meditate on death. What happens when death comes? This question stimulated meditation and aroused sensitivity in the past, but today it is man, at his first appearance in the world, who becomes the object of intense reflection. In the newborn child, Man is discovered. Why must he have such a long and painful childhood? No animal has such a difficult childhood period. What happens during this period?

Undoubtedly, the infant period is a period of creation; nothing exists at the beginning and about a year after birth the child knows everything. The child is not born with a little intelligence, a little memory, a little will, ready to grow and develop in the next period. The kitten can meow from birth, albeit imperfectly, the bird or the calf also have their own little voice, the same voice that will be, more enlarged, the voice of their species. Man has only one means of expression at birth: weeping. In the case of the human being, therefore, it is not a matter of development, but of creation, which starts from scratch. The marvellous step taken by the child is the one that leads him from nothing to something, and it is difficult for our mind to grasp this wonder.

To take this step requires a different kind of mentality from ours as adults. The child is endowed with other powers, and the creation he brings about is no small thing: it is the creation of everything. He creates not only language, but shapes the organs that enable him to speak. Every physical movement he creates, every element of our intelligence, everything with which the human individual is endowed. Wonderful achievement, which is not produced by a conscious mind. Adults are conscious: if we adults have the will and the desire to learn something we are going to do it, but in the child there is neither consciousness nor will, because consciousness and will must be created.

If we call our adult type of mind conscious, the child's mind should be called unconscious, but an unconscious mind does not mean an inferior mind. An unconscious mind can be rich in intelligence. This type of intelligence is easy to find in every being, even in insects; intelligence that is not conscious even if it sometimes seems endowed with reason. It is of the unconscious type, and the child achieves its wonderful achievements, beginning with knowledge of the environment, because it is endowed with this type of mind. How could the child absorb its environment? Precisely because of one of the special characteristics we have discovered in him: a power of sensitivity so intense that the things around him awaken in him an interest and enthusiasm that seem to penetrate his very life. The child assimilates all these impressions, not with his mind, but with his own life. The acquisition of language is the most obvious example of this. How does it happen that the child learns language? The answer is that he is endowed with hearing and hears the voices of human beings, thus learning to speak. While admitting this fact, we must ask ourselves why, among the millions of different sounds and noises that surround him, he only hears and grasps the voice of man. If it is true that the child hears, and if it is true that he only learns the language of human beings, it is a sign that human language must make a great impression on him. These impressions must be so strong, and cause such intensity of feeling and such profound enthusiasm, that they set in motion invisible fibres in his body, fibres that begin to vibrate to reproduce those sounds. To make a comparison, think of what happens to ourselves when we attend a concert; before long an expression of rapture is on the faces of the listeners, heads and hands begin to move. What set them in motion if not the impressions caused by the music? Something similar must be happening in the child's unconscious mind. The voice produces such impressions in him, that those aroused in us by music are in comparison almost non-existent. In the child we almost see the movements of the tongue vibrating, of the tiny strings trembling and of the cheeks; everything vibrates and tenses, preparing itself in silence to reproduce the sounds that have caused such deep emotion in the unconscious mind. How is it that the child learns language in its exactness, and so exactly and firmly that it becomes part of the psychic personality? This language acquired in infancy is called the mother tongue, and it is clearly distinguished from all other languages he may learn later on, just as false teeth can be distinguished from natural teeth.

How is it that these sounds, at first meaningless, all of a sudden bring understanding and ideas to his mind? The child has not only 'absorbed' the words, he has absorbed precisely 'the sentence, the construction of the sentence'. If we do not understand the sentence construction, we cannot understand the language. When we say for example: "The glass is on the table", the meaning we give to these words results from the order in which we place them. If we said: 'Glass the on is table', it would be difficult to grasp an idea. It is the sequence of words that we understand. The child absorbs the constructions of language.

The absorbing mind

And how does this happen? It is said: 'He remembers things'; but, in order to remember, one must have memory, and the child has none, he must rather construct it. He should have the ability to reason in order to realise that the construction of a sentence is necessary to make it comprehensible. But the child does not have the faculty of reasoning, he must create it.

Our mind, such as it is, would not reach where the child reaches; for an achievement such as that of language, a different form of mind is required; and this form is precisely what the child possesses: a different kind of intelligence from ours.

We could say that we acquire knowledge with our intelligence, while the child absorbs it with its psychic life. Simply by continuing to live, the child learns to speak the language of his race. It is a kind of mental chemistry that operates in him. We are vessels; impressions pour into us, and we remember them and retain them in our minds, but we remain distinct from our impressions, as water remains distinct from the glass. The child, on the other hand, undergoes a transformation: impressions not only penetrate his mind, they form it. They become embodied in him. The child creates his own 'mental flesh', using the things that are in his environment. We have called his type of mind the absorbing mind. It is difficult for us to conceive of the faculties of the infant mind, but undoubtedly his is a privileged form of mind.

Imagine how marvellous it would be if we were able to maintain the prodigious ability of the child who, while joyfully living, jumping and playing, is able to learn a language with all its grammatical complications. How wonderful it would be if all knowledge entered our minds simply by living, requiring no more effort than it costs us to breathe or feed ourselves. At first we would feel nothing in particular, then suddenly the acquired knowledge would reveal itself in our minds like shining stars of knowledge. We would begin to feel that they are there and we would be aware of all the notions that have effortlessly become our heritage.

If I were to tell you that there is a planet where there are no schools, no teachers, no need to study, and where, by living and walking, without any other effort, the inhabitants come to know everything and to fix firmly in their brains the whole of knowledge, would this not seem to you a beautiful fairy tale? Well, this, which sounds so fantastic as to seem the invention of a fertile imagination, is a fact, a reality; for this is the way of learning of the unconscious child. This is the path he follows. He learns everything unconsciously, passing little by little from the unconscious to consciousness, advancing along a path all joy and love.

Human consciousness seems to us a great achievement. To become conscious, to acquire a human mind! But we have to pay for this conquest, for as soon as we become conscious, every new acquisition of knowledge causes us hard work and fatigue.

Movement is another of the child's wonderful achievements. As an infant, he lies quietly for months in his cot. But lo and behold, after some time, he walks, moves about in his environment, does something, enjoys it, is happy. He lives day by day, and learns to move more and more each day; language, with all its complexity, enters his mind, and so does the power to direct his movements according to the needs of his life. But that is not all: many other things he learns with astonishing rapidity. Everything around him he makes his own: habits, customs, religion become firmly fixed in his mind.

The movements that the child achieves are not formed at random, but are determined in the sense in which they are acquired at a particular period of development. When the child begins to move, his mind, capable of absorbing, has already made the environment his own; before he begins to move, unconscious psychic development has already taken place in him, and when he begins his first movements he begins to become conscious. If you observe a three-year-old child, you will see that he is always playing with something. This means that he is processing with his hands and putting into his consciousness what his unconscious mind has previously absorbed. Through this experience of the environment, in the form of play, he examines the things and impressions he has received in his unconscious mind. Through play he becomes conscious and builds Man. The child is directed by a mysterious, marvellously great power, which little by little he embodies; he thus becomes a man through his hands, through his experience: first through play and then through work. Hands are the instrument of human intelligence. By virtue of these experiences, the child takes on a definite and therefore limited form, since awareness is always more limited than unconsciousness and subconsciousness.

He enters life and begins his mysterious work; little by little he assumes the wonderful personality suited to his time and environment. He builds up his mind, until piece by piece he builds up the memory, the faculty of understanding, the faculty of reasoning. Here he is at last in his sixth year. Then, suddenly, we educators discover that this individual understands, that he has the patience to listen to what we say, whereas before we had no means of reaching him. He lived on another plane, different from ours. Our book deals with this early period. The study of child psychology in the first years of life reveals to us such miracles, that anyone who approaches it with understanding cannot fail to be deeply impressed.

Our work as adults is not to teach, but to help the child's mind in the work of its development. It would be marvellous if we could, with our help, with intelligent treatment of the child, with an understanding of the needs of his life, prolong the period during which the mind capable of absorbing operates in him. What a service we would render to mankind if we could help the human individual to absorb cognition without effort, if man could find himself rich in cognition without knowing how he acquired it, almost as if by magic. Is not nature full of magic and miracles?

The discovery that the child is endowed with an absorbing mind has produced a revolution in education. It is now easy to understand why the first period of human development, in which character is formed, is the most important. In no other age of life is there a greater need for intelligent help than in this, and every obstacle that stands in the way then will diminish the child's chances of perfecting his creative work. We therefore help the child no longer because we consider him to be a small and weak being, but because he is endowed with great creative energies, which are of such a fragile nature that they require - if they are not to be harmed and injured - a loving and intelligent defence. We want to bring help to these energies, not to the small child, nor to his weakness. When we realise that these energies belong to an unconscious mind, which must become conscious through work and experience acquired in the environment, when we realise that the child's mind is different from our own, that we cannot reach it through verbal teaching, that we cannot intervene directly in the process of the passage from the unconscious to consciousness, and in that of the construction of the human faculties, then the whole concept of education will change and become that of an aid to the child's life, to the psychic development of man, and not an imposition to hold ideas and facts and words of our own.

This is the new path on which education has set itself: helping the mind in its various developmental processes, seconding its various energies and strengthening its various faculties.

IV - A NEW ORIENTATION

In our time, there is a definite new orientation in biological studies. All research was once conducted on the adult being, and scientists only considered adult specimens when studying animals and plants. The same was true in the study of humanity; only the adult was the object of consideration, whether for the study of morality or sociology. Thus death was the favourite field of attention and meditation by scholars, and it was logical, since the adult being, as it proceeds through life, moves towards death. In the same way, the study of morality was the study of rules and social relations between adults. Today, scientists, taking an opposite direction, seem to be proceeding backwards, as much in the study of human beings as in the study of other types of life. Not only do they consider beings as young, but they go back to the origin of beings. Biology has turned to embryology and the study of cell life. From this orientation towards origins, a new philosophy has arisen that is not idealistic in nature. We could say that it is rather scientific, because it arises from observation and not from the abstract deductions of thinkers. The development of this philosophy goes hand in hand with the progress of discoveries made in laboratories.

When we penetrate into the field of the origins of the individual, which is the field of embryology, things are revealed to us that do not exist in the field of adult life or, if they do exist there, they are of a very different nature; scientific observation reveals a type of life that is completely dissimilar to what mankind was accustomed to considering, and brings the personality of the child into full view.

A very banal consideration will show that the child does not progress towards death like the adult; it progresses towards life, since its purpose is the construction of man in his fullness of strength and life. When the adult appears, the child no longer exists. The whole life of the child is a process towards perfection, towards greater completion. This observation is enough to deduce that the child can find joy in the fulfilment of a task of development and perfection. That of the child is a type of life in which work, the fulfilment of duty, brings joy and happiness, whereas for the adult, work generally represents a rather painful function.