Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/615

Rh the school, even while he is beginning to find himself, he may take part in the activities of practical life. Besides practise in ordinary courtesy, cleaning the room, setting the table, serving a meal, and washing the dishes, the children learn how to button, lace, hook and clasp various articles of dress by means of a unique apparatus. To the opposite sides of light embroidery frames are attached strips of dress material, linen and leather, which are fastened together at the center. Through constant practise with these materials the child learns to dress himself and trains a variety of useful muscular coordinations. Similar exercises in the activities of ordinary life have for some time been a part of the practise of progressive kindergartens and other modern schools. It may well be that Montessori has suggested several new features in this direction, but we must not suppose that the idea is absolutely novel or that we can follow these devices literally without further consideration. There is always danger that the Montessorians, like the Froebelians, may forget that "the letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive." His more conservative disciples, in their efforts to preserve all the prescriptions of the master, have often forgotten that Froebel's system was adapted to conditions three quarters of a century ago in the simple and peculiar environment of a small German village. Let the Montessorians take warning and elaborate their principles in a practise that will be applicable to the complexities and independence characteristic of the twentieth century in the United States.

(2) The sense training is the feature most stressed by Montessori herself. Even her remarkable achievements in teaching writing seem to have been forced upon her by the parents of her pupils, who insisted upon the acquisition of something useful by their children. Like Myra Kelley's boy of the Ghetto, they believed the children had not time "to fool with their arms and legs." But with Montessori the sense training is the very essence of her work. She sees in it the biologico-psychological foundation of her system. If this position be maintained, Montessori would logically be regarded as a Simon-pure disciple of Seguin. Her apparatus is strikingly like that used for half a century in American schools for defectives. Even the "three periods "of Seguin find a place throughout her method. For example, she proceeds with the pupil in her training for touch:

 (a) "Smooth, rough; smooth, rough." (b) "What is this?" "Smooth." "What is this?" "Rough." (c) "Give me the smooth." "Give me the rough."

Moreover, while such sense exercises are doubtlessly of great value in training defective children, the assumption of their usefulness in the education of normal children seems to be based upon a psychology, which, to say the least, has been rudely shaken. Apparently in this