III My Contribution to Experimental Science
The organization of psychical life begins with the characteristic phenomenon of attention.—My experimental work with little children from three to six years old has been, in fact, a practical contribution to research which has for its aim the discovery of the treatment required by the soul of the child, a treatment analogous to that which hygiene prescribes for its body.
I think, therefore, that it is essential to record the fundamental fact which led me to define my method.
I was making my first essays in applying the principles and part of the material I had used for many years previously in the education of deficient children, to the normal children of the San Lorenzo quarter in Rome, when I happened to notice a little girl of about three years old deeply absorbed in a set of solid insets, removing the wooden cylinders from their respective holes and replacing them. The expression on the child’s face was one of such concentrated attention that it seemed to me an extraordinary manifestation; up to this time none of the children had ever shown such fixity of interest in an object; and my belief in the characteristic instability of attention in young children, who flit incessantly from one thing to another, made me peculiarly alive to the phenomenon.
I watched the child intently without disturbing her at first, and began to count how many times she repeated the exercise; then, seeing that she was continuing for a long time, I picked up the little armchair in which she was seated, and placed chair and child upon the table; the little creature hastily caught up her case of insets, laid it across the arms of her chair, and gathering the cylinders into her lap, set to work again. Then I called upon all the children to sing; they sang, but the little girl continued undisturbed, repeating her exercise even after the short song had come to an end. I counted forty-four repetitions; when at last she ceased, it was quite independently of any surrounding stimuli which might have distracted her, and she looked round with a satisfied air, almost as if awaking from a refreshing nap.
I think my never-to-be-forgotten impression was that experienced by one who has made a discovery.
This phenomenon gradually became common among the children: it may therefore be recorded as a constant reaction occurring in connection with certain external conditions, which may be determined. And each time that such a polarisation of attention took place, the child began to be completely transformed, to become calmer, more intelligent, and more expansive; it showed extraordinary spiritual qualities, recalling the phenomena of a higher consciousness, such as those of conversion.
It was as if in a saturated solution, a point of crystallization had formed, round which the whole chaotic and fluctuating mass united, producing a crystal of wonderful forms. Thus, when the phenomenon of the polarisation of attention had taken place, all that was disorderly and fluctuating in the consciousness of the child seemed to be organizing itself into a spiritual creation, the surprising characteristics of which are reproduced in every individual.
It made one think of the life of man which may remain diffused among a multiplicity of things, in an inferior state of chaos, until some special thing attracts it intensely and fixes it; and then man is revealed unto himself, he feels that he has begun to live.
This spiritual phenomenon which may co-involve the entire consciousness of the adult, is therefore only one of the constant elements of the phenomena of “internal formation.” It occurs as the normal beginning of the inner life of children, and accompanies its development in such a manner as to become accessible to research, as an experimental fact.
It was thus that the soul of the child gave its revelations, and under their guidance a method exemplifying spiritual liberty was evolved.
The story of this initiatory episode soon spread throughout the world, and at first it seemed like the story of a miracle. Then by degrees, as experiments were made among the most diverse races, the simple and evident principles of this spiritual “treatment” were manifested.
Psychical development is organized by the aid of external stimuli, which may be determined experimentally.—The contribution I have made to the education of young children tends, in fact, to specify by means of the revelations due to experiment, the form of liberty in internal development.
It would not be possible to conceive liberty of development, if by its very nature the child were not capable of a spontaneous organic development, if the tendency to develop his energies (expansion of latent powers), the conquest of the means necessary to a harmonious innate development, did not already exist. In order to expand, the child, left at liberty to exercise his activities, ought to find in his surroundings something organized in direct relation to his internal organization which is developing itself by natural laws, just as the free insect finds in the form and qualities of flowers a direct correspondence between form and sustenance. The insect is undoubtedly free when, seeking the nectar which nourishes it, it is in reality helping the reproduction of the plant. There is nothing more marvelous in nature than the correspondence between the organs of these two orders of beings destined to such a providential cooperation.
The secret of the free development of the child consists, therefore, in organizing for him the means necessary for his internal nourishment, means corresponding to a primitive impulse of the child, comparable to that which makes the new-born infant capable of sucking milk from the breast, which by its external form and elaborated sustenance, corresponds perfectly to the requirements of the infant.
It is in the satisfaction of this primitive impulse, this internal hunger, that the child’s personality begins to organize itself and reveal its characteristics; just as the new-born infant, in nourishing itself, organizes its body and its natural movements.
We must not therefore set ourselves the educational problem of seeking means whereby to organize the internal personality of the child and develop his characteristics; the sole problem is that of offering the child the necessary nourishment.
It is by this means that the child develops an organized and complex activity which, while it responds to a primitive impulse, exercises the intelligence and develops qualities we consider lofty, and which we supposed were foreign to the nature of the young child, such as patience and perseverance in work, and in the moral order, obedience, gentleness, affection, politeness, serenity; qualities we are accustomed to divide into different categories, and as to which, hitherto, we have cherished the illusion that it was our task to develop them gradually by our direct interposition, although in practise we have never known by what means to do so successfully.
In order that the phenomenon should come to pass it is necessary that the spontaneous development of the child should be accorded perfect liberty; that is to say, that its calm and peaceful expansion should not be disturbed by the intervention of an untimely and disturbing influence; just as the body of the new-born infant should be left in peace to assimilate its nourishment and grow properly.
In such an attitude ought we to await the miracles of the inner life, its expansions and also its unforeseen and surprising explosions; just as the intelligent mother, only giving her baby nourishment and rest, contemplates it, seeing it grow, and awaits the manifestations of nature: the first tooth, the first word, and finally the action by which the baby will one day rise to his feet and walk.
But to ensure the psychical phenomena of growth, we must prepare the “environment” in a definite manner, and from this environment offer the child the external means directly necessary for him.
This is the positive fact which my experiment has rendered concrete. Hitherto the liberty of the child has been vaguely discussed; no clearly defined limit has been established between liberty and abandonment. We were told: “Liberty has its limits,” “Liberty must be properly understood.” But a special method indicating “how liberty should be interpreted, and what is the intuitive quid which ought to co-exist with it,” had not been determined.
The establishment of such a method should open up a new path to all education.
It is therefore necessary that the environment should contain the means of auto-education. These means cannot be “taken at random”; they represent the result of an experimental study which cannot be undertaken by all, because a scientific preparation is necessary for such delicate work; besides, like all experimental study, it is laborious, prolonged, and exact. Many years of research are required, before the means really necessary for psychical development can be set forth. Those educationalists who leave the great question of the liberty of the pupil to the good sense or to the preparation of the master are very far from solving the problem of liberty. The greatest scientist, or the person most fitted by nature to teach, could never of himself discover such, because, to preparation and natural gifts, the further factor of time must be added—the long period of preparatory experiment. Therefore a science which has already provided the means for self-education must exist beforehand. To-day, he who speaks of liberty in the schools ought at the same time to exhibit objects—approximating to a scientific apparatus—which will make such liberty possible.
The scientific instrument must be constructed upon a basis of exactitude. Just as the lenses of the physicist are constructed in accordance with the laws of the refraction of light, so the pedagogic instrument should be based on the psychical manifestations of the child.
Such an instrument may be compared to a systematized “mental test.” It is not, however, established upon a basis of external measurement, for the purpose of estimating the amount of instantaneous psychical reaction which it produces; it is, on the contrary, a stimulus which is itself determined by the psychical reactions it is capable of producing and maintaining permanently. It is the psychical reaction, therefore, that in this case determines and establishes the systematic “mental test.” The psychical reaction which constitutes the sole basis of comparison in the determination of the tests, is a polarization of the attention, and the repetition of the actions related to it. When a stimulus corresponds in this manner to the “reflex personality,” it serves, not to measure but to maintain a lively reaction; it is therefore a stimulus to the “internal formation.” Indeed, upon such activity, awakened and maintained, the accompanying organism initiates its internal elaborations in relation to the stimuli.
This does not penetrate into the ancient ambit of pedagogy as a science that measures the personality, as the experimental psychology introduced in schools has hitherto done, but as a science that transforms the personality, and is therefore capable of taking its stand as a true and real pedagogy. Whereas the ancient pedagogy in all its various interpretations started from the conception of a “receptive personality”—one, that is to say, which was to receive instructions and to be passively formed, this scientific departure starts from the conception of an active personality—reflex and associative—developing itself by a series of reactions induced by systematic stimuli which have been determined by experiment. This new pedagogy accordingly belongs to the series of modern sciences, and not to antique speculations, although it is not directly based on the purely metric studies of “positive psychology.” But the “method,” which informs it—namely, experiment, observation, evidence or proof, the recognition of new phenomena, their reproduction and utilization, undoubtedly place it among the experimental sciences.
External stimuli may be determined in quality and quantity.—Nothing can be more interesting than such experiments. By their means external stimuli may be determined with the greatest precision, both as regards quality and quantity. For instance, very small objects of various geometric forms will only attract the fugitive attention of a child of three years old; but by increasing the dimensions gradually, we arrive at the limit of size when these objects will fix the attention; then such objects excite an activity which becomes permanent, and the resulting exercise becomes a factor of development. The experiment is repeated with a number of children, and thus the dimensions of a series of objects are established.
It is the same with colors and with every kind of quality. In order that a quality should be felt to such a degree as to fix the attention, a certain extension and a certain intensity of the stimulus are necessary, which may be determined by the degree of psychical reaction shown by the child; as, for instance, the minimum chromatic extension sufficient to attract the attention to the colored tablets, etc. Quality, therefore, is determined by a psychical experiment demonstrating the activity it produces in a child, who will continue the exercise with the same object for a long time, thus elaborating a phenomenon of internal development, of self-formation.
Among the characteristics of the objects, one must be pointed out, which demands the highest degree of activity in the intelligence: they contain in themselves control of error.
To make the process one of self-education, it is not enough that the stimulus should call forth activity, it must also direct it. The child should not only persist for a long time in an exercise; he must persist without making mistakes. All the physical or intrinsic qualities of the objects should be determined, not only by the immediate reaction of attention they provoke in the child, but also by their possession of this fundamental characteristic, the control of error, that is to say the power of evoking the effective collaboration of the highest activities (comparison, judgment). For instance, one of the first objects which attract the attention of the child of three years old, the solid insets (a series of cylinders of various dimensions to be placed in or taken out of a block with corresponding holes) contains the most mechanical control, because if a single mistake be made in placing the cylinders, one of these must be left out at the end of the exercise. Hence a mistake is an obstacle only to be overcome by correction, for without it the exercise cannot be completed. On the other hand, the correction is so easy that the child makes it himself. The little problem suddenly presenting itself to the child, almost like the unexpected object of a jack-in-the-box, has “interested” him.
It is, however, noteworthy that the “problem” thus presented is not in itself the stimulus to interest; it is not that which incites to the repetition of the act—to the progress of the child. What interests the child is the sensation, not only of placing the objects but of acquiring a new power of perception, enabling him to recognize the difference of dimension in the cylinders, a difference which he did not at first notice. The problem presents itself solely in connection with the error, it does not accompany the normal process of development. An interest stimulated merely by curiosity, by a “problem,” would not be that formative interest which wells up from the needs of life itself, and therefore directs the building up of the spiritual personality. If it were only the problem which should lead the soul to find itself, order might be dissipated by it, as by any other external cause which tends to seduce life into false paths. I lay, perhaps, excessive stress upon this point, in answer to very important objections and observations that have been made to me.
Indeed in the second series of objects designed to educate the eye to appreciate dimensions, the control of error is not mechanical, but psychological; the child himself, whose eye has been educated to recognize differences of dimension, will see the error, provided the objects be of a certain size and attractively colored. It is for this reason that the next objects contain, so to say, the control of error in their own size and in their bright colors. A control of error of a totally different kind, and of a much higher order, is that offered by the material of the arithmetical frame, in which the control will consist in the comparison of the child’s own work with that of a model, a comparison which denotes a remarkably intelligent effort of will on the part of the child, and places him thenceforth in the true conditions of conscious auto-education. But, however slight the control of error may be, and in spite of the fact that this diverges more and more from an external mechanism, to rely upon the internal activities which are gradually developing, it always depends, like all the qualities of the objects, upon the fundamental reaction of the child, who accords it prolonged attention, and repeats the exercises.
On the other hand, the experimental criterion is different, in determining the quantity of the objects. When the instruments have been constructed with great precision, they provoke a spontaneous exercise so coordinated and so harmonious with the facts of internal development, that at a certain point a new psychical picture, a species of higher plane in the complex development, is revealed.
The child turns away spontaneously from the material, not with any signs of fatigue, but rather as if impelled by fresh energies, and his mind is capable of abstractions. At this stage of development, the child turns his attention to the external world, and observes it with an order which is the order formed in his mind during the period of the preceding development; he begins spontaneously to make a series of careful and logical comparisons which represent a veritable spontaneous acquisition of “knowledge.” This is the period henceforth to be known as the period of “discoveries,” discoveries which evoke enthusiasm and joy in the child.
This more elevated level of development is extremely fruitful in its last ascent It is essential that the child’s attention should not be directed to the objects when the delicate phenomenon of abstraction begins. For instance, the teacher who invites the child to continue his operations with the material at such a moment, will retard his spontaneous development and place an obstacle in his way. If the enthusiasm which leads the child to rise to greater heights and experience so many intellectual emotions be extinguished, a path of progress has been closed. Now the same error may be committed by an excessive quantity of the educative material; this may dissipate the attention, render the exercises with the objects mechanical, and cause the child to pass by his psychological moment of ascent without perceiving it and seizing it. Moreover, such objects are then futile, and, by their futility, “the child may lose his soul.”
The thing to be exactly determined is: what is necessary and sufficient as a response to the internal needs of a life in process of development, that is, of upward progression, of ascent? Now in determining the “quantity” we must be guided by the expression and at the same time by the active manifestations of the child. Those children who have long been occupied with these determined objects, showing every sign of absorbed attention, will, all of a sudden, begin to rise gradually and insensibly, like an aeroplane when it completes its short journey upon the ground. Their apparent indifference to the objects is revealed in its true essence by the intense and radiant expression of the face, which is animated by the liveliest joy. The child may seem to be doing nothing, but this will only be for a moment; very soon he will speak, and so will reveal what is happening within him, and then his ebullient activity will carry him along in a series of explorations and discoveries. He is saved.
Now take the case of other children in whom the same primitive phenomenon is taking place, but who are surrounded by too great a profusion of objects. At the moment of maturity they are seen to be caught, obstructed, almost palpably entangled in the toils that bind them to earth. A diminution of the absorbed attention bestowed upon the new objects, instability, and consequently fatigue, manifest themselves in an obvious extinction of internal activity. The child’s bearing deteriorates, he indulges in loud, empty laughter, rude actions, and indolence. He demands “other objects,” and then again other objects, because he has remained imprisoned “in the vicious circle of vanities,” and is no longer sensible to anything but the desire to alleviate his weariness. Like the adult who during a chaotic life commits kindred errors, he becomes undisciplined, feeble, and “in peril of perdition.” If some one does not help him by wresting from him the futile objects, and pointing out his heaven to him, he will hardly have the energy to save himself.
These two extreme types will give an idea of the criteria by which we experimentally determine the quantity of the material necessary for development.
Over-abundance debilitates and retards progress; this has been proved again and again by my collaborators.
If, on the other hand, the material be insufficient, and the primary auto-exercise incapable of leading the child on to that maturity which causes him to ascend, there will be no explosion of that spontaneous phenomenon of abstraction which is the second stage of an auto-education advancing in infinite progression. The same fundamental phenomenon of absorbed and prolonged attention which leads to repetition of the acts, guides us in determining the stimuli suitable to the age of the child. A stimulus which will cause a child of three years old to repeat an act forty times in succession, may only be repeated ten times by a child of six; the object which arouses the interest of a child of three no longer interests a child of six. Nevertheless the child of six is capable of fixing his attention for a much longer period than a child of three, when the stimulus is suited to his activities; if, indeed, a little child of three may achieve as his maximum the repetition of an act forty times in succession, the child of six is capable of repeating two hundred times an act which interests him. If the maximum period of continuous work on the same object may be half an hour for the child of three, it may be over two hours for the child of six.
Hence, to establish systematic tests for a certain purpose, such as that of preparing children to write, without taking their ages into account, is valueless. For example, my system of writing is based upon the direct preparation of the movements which physiologically concur to produce writing: i.e. manipulation of the instrument of writing and the tracing of the letters of the alphabet. The children, filling in the contours of the insets with innumerable parallel strokes in the one case, and touching the sand-paper letters in the other, fix the two muscular mechanisms so perfectly, that the final result is an “explosion” of “spontaneous writing” extraordinarily uniform in all the children—because, as if all molded to a common form, they have fixed the necessary movements by touching the same alphabet, and therefore reproduce its forms faithfully. To bring this about, to establish a real motor-mechanism, it is essential that the exercise should be repeated over and over again. Now the children who take most interest in filling in the figures with parallel strokes, and, above all, in touching the letters, are, at most, between four and five years old. If we offer the same material to a child of six he will not touch the letters often enough, and he will always write imperfectly, in comparison with the child who has begun the exercise at a suitable age. This applies also to all the other details of the system. It is therefore possible to determine experimentally, with, I believe, a precision not hitherto attained, what is the mental attitude of the child at various ages, and hence, if the fitting material for development be offered, what will be the average level of intellectual development according to age.
Here we have an indication of the possibility of determining the means of development so exactly as to establish a true correspondence between internal needs and external stimuli, just as actual as the correspondence which exists between the insect and the flower.
He who has all this material ready to his hand has an easy task in bringing about the natural development of the psychic life of the child. With such objects at his disposal, every teacher may realize the ideal of liberty in the school.
This long, occult experiment—suggested to me, as I have already said, by Itard and Séguin—is, in fact, my initial contribution to education.
All this preparatory work has served for the determination of the method now well known, but it is also the key to its continuation.
The material of development is necessary only as a starting point.—In the organization of the external means of development, there remains a material impress of the internal development, and of that which the soul needs in its progress, during its course, and in its flights. The material part does not contain the impress of the whole soul, any more than the impress of the foot is the impress of the whole body; the aviation-ground is not the sphere of action proper to the aeroplane, but it is the part of terra-firma necessary for flight, and it is also the resting-place, the refuge, the hangar to which the aeroplane must always return. Thus in psychical formation there is a necessary material part from which the spirit rises, and where it should find repose, refuge, and a point of support, Without this it could not grow and rise “freely.”
In order that it may be a true support it ought “to reproduce its forms” and contain them in the part corresponding to the peculiar functions of the material aid. Thus, for instance, in the first period of the psychical life, the material corresponds to the primitive exercises of the senses—it is in quality and quantity determined by the sensory needs given by nature—and permits an exercise of the activities sufficient to mature a superior psychical state of observation and abstraction. Vice versa, nothing corresponds in the material to the subsequent career which the childish spirit accomplishes with such delight and with so much acquisition of knowledge. But we then see the spirit eager for higher kinds of exercise—and now we witness the same primitive phenomenon of attention, which will exercise itself henceforth upon the alphabet and arithmetical material, repeating in a more complex form methodical exercises of the intelligence by linking auditory images with the visible and motor images of the spoken and written word; and in the positive study of quantities, proportions, and number. The same concomitant phenomena of “patience” and “perseverance” then manifest themselves, together with those of vivacity, activity, and joy, characteristic of the spirit when the internal energies have found their keyboard, the gymnasium in which they exercise themselves freely and tranquilly.
And the spirit, organized in this manner under the guidance of an order which corresponds to its natural order, becomes fortified, grows vigorously, and manifests itself in the equilibrium, the serenity, the self-control which produce the wonderful discipline characteristic of the behavior of our children.
The external material, then, should present itself to the psychical requirements of the child as a staircase which helps him to ascend, step by step, and on the steps of this staircase there will of necessity be disposed the means of culture, and of the higher formation. Therefore the psychical exercises require new material, and this, if it is to fulfil its purpose, must contain new and more complex forms of objects capable of fixing the attention, of making the intelligence ripen in the continual exercise of its own energies, and of producing those phenomena of persistence in application and of patience to which will be added elasticity, psychical equilibrium, and the capacity for abstraction and spontaneous creation. Thus, in the subsequent development of the children, we see them applying themselves to those exercises of the memory which seem to us most arid, because a desire has been born in them, not only to retain the images they encounter in the world, but also to “acquire knowledge rapidly” by a determined effort. An example of this is seen in the surprising yet common phenomenon of committing the multiplication table to memory, whereas the memorizing of poems and prose extracts, although this is sometimes a passion, causes us no surprise.
Very interesting again, is the detachment the child shows at a certain point from the aids to arithmetical calculation; at a certain stage of maturity he desires to “reason in the abstract” and make “abstract calculations with numbers,” as if obeying an internal impulse which seeks to liberate the soul from every material bond and at the same time to effect an economy of time. Hereupon we see children of eight years old become eager and precocious calculators.
Children thus launched upon the enterprises of self-education acquire a remarkable “sensibility” as to their own internal needs. Just as the new-born infant whose food is rationally regulated, is silent and tranquil during the two hours of digestion and assimilation, and cries out the moment the hour for a fresh meal has struck, so do these children “ask for help,” ask for “new materials,” new “forms of work,” as soon as they have accomplished their mysterious phenomena of internal maturation, and ask for them determinately, indicating their most immediate need, just as one in physical want would be able to state distinctly whether he were hungry, thirsty, or sleepy. A child, in like manner, asks for reading, or grammatical exercises, or means for observing Nature. His sensibility manifests itself in a lucid and intense desire, to which the teacher has only to respond.
It is evident that some external basis is necessary in the progressive development of such phenomena, and that the teacher, who is to respond to the requests of the child in conscious evolution, cannot do so adequately by haphazard means; he must be guided by conditions previously determined by experience. In other words, those external means already alluded to several times, that staircase, the steps of which lead the soul upwards, must have been already established by experience, just as all the preceding means of the first development of the infant were established.
The construction of the ascending stairway, of the external means of support for the soul in process of evolution, is gradually amplified, like an inverted cone, the apex of which touches the very beginnings of psychical life, resting upon that primitive impulse which attracts the child of two and a half to the sensory stimuli, just as hunger leads the new-born infant to perform the wonderful complex action of sucking. And as these external means multiply, they are complicated more and more by the growing psychical needs of the child, and comprise within themselves the principles of culture.
The highest external organization is not based solely upon psychological necessities, but also upon those factors which take into account the cultural aspect itself. Each subject of study, as, for instance, arithmetic, grammar, geometry, natural science, music, literature, should be presented by means of external objects upon a well-defined systematic plan. The essentially psychological character of the preliminary work must now be supplemented by the collaboration of specialists in each subject, in order to ensure the establishment of that aggregate of means necessary and sufficient to incite to auto-education.
This is the experimental preparatory work, which establishes those means of development, those external impressions, necessary to unfold the inner life, and an exact correspondence to the psychical needs of formation is essential in their construction.
Up to a certain point, they might correspond with the so-called didactic or objective material of the old methods. Their significance, however, is profoundly different. The objective material of the old schools was an aid to the teacher, in making his explanations comprehensible to a collective class listening passively to him. The objects were related solely to the things to be explained, and these were chosen at random, that is to say, without any scientific criterion of their relation to the psychical needs of the child.
Here, on the other hand, the means of development are experimentally determined with reference to the psychical evolution of the child; and their aim is not to give mere instruction; they represent the means which induce a spontaneous interpretation of the internal energies.
The external material is then offered, and left freely to the natural individual energies of the children. They choose the objects they prefer; and such preference is dictated by the internal needs of “psychical growth.” Each child occupies himself with each object chosen for as long as he wishes; and this desire corresponds to the needs of the intimate maturation of the spirit, a process which demands persevering and prolonged exercise. No guide, no teacher can divine the intimate need of each pupil, and the time of maturation necessary to each; but only leave the child free, and all this will be revealed to us under the guidance of nature.
Psychical truths.—It is necessary to adopt a scientific point of view in order to interpret the facts that reveal themselves in children when they are developed upon this system, and to divest oneself completely of the old scholastic conception according to which the progress of the child is assessed according to his proficiency in the various subjects of study. Here, almost like the naturalist, it is essential to observe the development of certain phenomena of life. It is true that we prepare special “external conditions”; but the psychical effects are directly bound up with the spontaneous development of the internal activity of the child.
Hence there is no direct correspondence between teacher and child; instruction is certainly not a cause of the effects observed. It is the objects of the method which, as “re-agents,” provoke special psychical reactions; these may be summed up as an awakening, as an organization of the personality. Discipline, as the first result of an order establishing itself within, is the principal phenomenon to be looked for as the “external sign” of an internal process that has been initiated.
During the first days when a new school is opened, we may consider a certain initial disorder as characteristic, especially if the teacher is making her first experiment, and consequently is handicapped by her over-sanguine expectations. The immediate response of the child to the material does not take place; the teacher is perhaps discomfited by the fact that the children do not throw themselves, as she had hoped, upon the objects, choosing them according to their individual taste. If, indeed, the pupils are very poor children, this phenomenon does nearly always happen at once; but if they are well-to-do children, already sated by the variety of their possessions, and by the most costly toys, they are very rarely attracted at first by the stimuli presented to them. This naturally leads to disorder when the mistress makes a kind of chain of that “liberty” she is to respect, and a dogma of the correlation existing between the stimulus and the childish soul. Experienced teachers, on the other hand, understand better that liberty begins when the life that must be developed in the child is initiated, and they possess a tact which greatly facilitates orientation in the initial period.
However, an experience under the most difficult conditions, as between a teacher making her first experiment, and a class of wealthy children, is more instructive, and gives us a clearer picture of the fundamental psychical phenomenon, which may be compared to the order which springs up out of chaos.
I quote, in this connection, various descriptions, some of which already have been published, among them that given by Miss George, of her first school in the United States, and that of Mlle. Dufresne in England.
The initial disorder is eloquently set forth by Miss George: “They (the children) at first snatched the objects out of each other’s hands; if I tried to show an object to any particular pupil, the others dropped what they themselves were holding and gathered aimlessly and noisily round us. When I had finished explaining the nature of an object, all the children snatched at it and quarreled for its possession. The children showed no interest in the material: they passed from one object to another without persevering in the use of any.... One of the children was so incapable of keeping still that he could not remain seated long enough to run his fingers round one of the little circular objects we give the children. In many cases, the movements of the children were quite aimless, they ran round the room without any apparent object. During these movements, they made no attempt to respect the objects about them; indeed, they stumbled against the table, upset the chairs and stepped upon the material; sometimes they began an occupation at one spot, and then ran off in another direction; they took up the objects and cast them aside capriciously.”
Miss Dufresne describes the initial disorder of her first attempt as follows: “I must confess that the first four weeks were disheartening; the children could not settle to a task for more than a few moments; they showed no perseverance, no initiative; at times they followed one another like a flock of lambs; when one child took up an object, all the others wanted to imitate him, sometimes they rolled on the floor and overturned the chairs.”
From an experiment with rich children here in Rome, we get the following laconic description: “The greatest difficulty was the question of discipline. The children showed a complete lack of attraction to their work, and seemed disinclined to begin upon it.”
These persons, who were all working independently, are all agreed later in their accounts of the initiation of order: the phenomenon is identical; at a given moment, a child begins to show an intense interest in one of the exercises. It is by no means necessary that it should be that exercise pertaining to the object determined as the first series; it may be any other object that fixes the attention of the child so deeply; the important factor is not the external object, but the internal action of the soul, responding to a stimulus, and arrested by it.
Now when a child once shows this deep interest in any one of the objects we present to him as something answering to his psychical needs, he goes on to show a like interest in all the objects, and begins to develop activities as by a natural phenomenon. When once the initiation has taken place, it leads to progression which goes on steadily, and develops of its own accord. Moreover, the phenomenon is not that of the slow and gradual progression that might be produced by a measured and systematic external action; rather it has the “explosive” character of unsuspected facts that establish themselves suddenly, and make us think of the crises of physiological life, so characteristic in the period of growth. Thus it is from one day to another that the baby cuts a tooth, from one day to another that he utters his first word, from one day to another that he takes his first step; and when the first tooth has been cut, the whole set of teeth will come; when the first word has been uttered, language will be developed; when the first step has been taken, the power of walking has been established once for all.
Similar crises occur in the first achievement of psychic order, which is the beginning of progressive evolution in the inner life.
I quote the following sentences from Miss George’s description of the advent of discipline:
“In a few days that nebulous mass of whirling particles—the disorderly children—began to take definite form. The children seemed to begin to find their own way; in many of the objects they had at first despised as silly playthings, they began to discover a novel interest, and, as a result of this new interest, they began to act as independent individuals.” Miss George’s subsequent expression is: “They became extremely individual.” “Thus it came to pass that an object of absorbing interest to one child had not the slightest attraction for another; the children were strongly differentiated in their manifestations of attention....” “The battle is only definitively won, when the child discovers some particular object which spontaneously excites great interest in him. Sometimes this enthusiasm awakens unexpectedly, or with curious rapidity.”
“On one occasion I had tried a child with nearly all the objects of the series without exciting the smallest spark of interest; then I casually showed him the two tablets of red and blue colors, and called his attention to the difference of tint. He seized them at once with a kind of thirstiness, and learned five different colors in a single lesson; during the following days he took nearly all the objects of the series which he had at first despised, and little by little mastered them all.
“A child who at first had very little power of concentrating his attention, found an outlet from this state of chaos by means of one of the most complex objects of the material, the so-called length-rods; he played with these continually for a whole week and learned to count and make simple additions. He then began to turn to the cylinders and the insets, the simpler objects, and showed interest in every part of the system.
“Directly the children find their objects interesting, their disorderliness disappears at once; their mental restlessness is at an end, and they amuse themselves with the blocks, the colors, etc.”
It is very interesting to follow Miss George again in her description of the special qualities that develop after such a phenomenon. She illustrates the birth of individuality by a pretty anecdote:
“There were two sisters, one of three years old, the other of five. The child of three could hardly be said to exist as an individual, so minutely did she imitate her elder sister; for example, the elder child had a blue pencil and the little one was not happy till she too had a blue pencil; when the elder sister ate bread and butter, whatever the little one had of a different kind, she would touch nothing but bread and butter, and so on. This child took no interest in anything in the school, but merely followed her sister, imitating everything she did. One day the little one became interested in the pink cubes, built up the tower with the liveliest interest, repeated the exercise several times, and completely forgot her sister. The older girl was so astonished at this, that she called her little sister and said to her: ‘How is it that while I am filling in a circle you are building the tower?’ From that day the younger child became a personality; she began to develop independently, and was no longer merely the shadow or reflection of her sister.”
These interesting facts concerning the spontaneous development of qualities which hitherto were non-existent in the individual, and which exploded after the fundamental phenomenon—of intense and prolonged interest in a task—had manifested itself, have been confirmed by repeated experiments in a great variety of places made by persons who had had no sort of communication one with another.
Thus, for instance, Miss Dufresne speaks of a little girl of four years old, who seemed quite incapable of carrying a glass of water even only half full, without spilling it; so much so that she turned away from such a task, knowing she could not accomplish it. One day she became absorbed in work with one or other of the objects, and after this, she began to carry glasses of water with the greatest ease; and as some of her companions were now painting with water-colors, it became her great delight to carry water to them all without spilling a single drop.
Another most significant fact is related by Miss Barton, an Australian teacher. Among her pupils was a little girl who had not yet developed articulate speech, and only gave utterance to inarticulate sounds; her parents had had her examined by a doctor to find out if she were normal; the doctor declared the child to be perfectly normal, and considered that though she had not as yet developed speech, she would do so in time. This child became interested in the solid insets, and amused herself for a long time taking the cylinders out of the cavities and putting them back in their places; and after repeating the work with intense interest, she ran to the teacher, saying: “Come and see!”
A phenomenon of constant occurrence when the children begin to be interested in the work and to develop themselves is the lively joy which seems to possess them. Certain psychologists would say, it is the “sentimental note” corresponding to the intellectual acquisition; a physiologist, making an exact comparison, might affirm that joy is the indication of internal growth, just as an increase in weight is the indication of bodily growth.
The children themselves seem to have the “sensation” of their spiritual growth, a consciousness of the acquisitions they are making by thus amplifying their own personalities; they demonstrate with joyous effusion the higher process which is beginning within them. “All the children,” says Miss George, “show that pride we ourselves experience when we have really produced something novel. They skip round me, and throw their arms about my neck, when they have learned to do some simple thing, saying: ‘I did it all alone, you did not think I could have done that; I did it better to-day than yesterday,’”
It is after these manifestations that a true discipline is established, the most obvious results of which are closely related to what we will call “respect for the work of others and consideration for the rights of others.” Henceforward a child no longer attempts to take away another’s work; even if he covet it, he waits patiently until the object is free; and very often a child becomes interested in watching a companion at work on some object he would like to use himself. Afterwards, when discipline has been established by these internal processes, it will happen all at once that a child will work quite independently of the others, almost as if to develop his own personality; but no “moral isolation” results from such work; on the contrary, there is a mutual respect and affection between the children, a sentiment which unites instead of separating; and hence is born that complex discipline which, moreover, contains within itself the sentiment that must accompany the order of a community.
Miss Dufresne says: “After the Christmas holidays, when school began again, there was a great change in the class. It seemed that discipline was establishing itself, without any effort on my part. The children appeared to be too much absorbed in their work to indulge in any of the disorderly actions which had marked their conduct in the beginning. They went spontaneously to the cupboards to choose the objects which had bored them formerly. They took the geometrical insets, the graduated cylinders, and began to touch the outlines of the wooden forms with their fingers; the younger children showed a preference for the buttoning and lacing frames; they took one after the other without any signs of fatigue, and seemed delighted with the new objects. An atmosphere of industry pervaded the schoolroom. The children who had hitherto chosen objects on the impulse of the moment, henceforth manifested a desire for some sort of rule, a personal and internal rule; they concentrated their efforts on their task, working accurately and methodically, and showing real satisfaction in surmounting difficulties. This precision in work produced an immediate effect on their characters. They became capable of controlling their nerves.”
The instance which struck Miss Dufresne most was that of a little boy of four and a half, who at first had seemed very nervous and excitable and had disturbed the whole class: “The imagination of this child had been developed in an extraordinary manner, so that when an object was given to him, he took no notice of the actual form of the object, but personified it, and further personified himself, talking perpetually, pretending to be some one else, and seeming incapable of fixing his attention upon the objects. While his mind was in this chaotic state he was unable to perform any precise action; he could not, for instance, button a single button.... All at once a miracle seemed to take place within him. I noted the great change in him with astonishment. He took one of the exercises as his favorite task, then went on to choose all the others in succession, and thus calmed his nerves.”
I will choose from various individual studies made by two mistresses of a Children’s House at Rome for well-to-do children, those of two children of very different characters. One of these children came to the school too late, when he was too old, and had already developed in another environment. The other is a little creature of the normal age for entrance to the Children’s Houses. The older child (a boy of five) had already been to a Froebelian Kindergarten, where he was considered very troublesome because of his restlessness. “For the first few days he was a torment to us, because he wanted to work, but could not settle to any occupation. He said of everything: ‘This is a game,’ and ran about the class-room, or annoyed his companions. At last he began to take an interest in drawing.” Although normally drawing comes after the sensory exercises, he was left at liberty to do what he wished; the teachers rightly thought that it would be useless to insist that the child should apply himself to a different task. Indeed, this child, having passed the age when the primary materials answer to the psychical needs of childhood, was for the first time attracted by an exercise of a higher order, that of drawing. “Whereas at first the child had passed from one occupation to another, and had even taken up the letters of the alphabet, but had never settled to work with any one of the objects, now suddenly discipline was established. We do not know exactly at what moment the change took place, but discipline was maintained and perfected, and reached a higher level in proportion to the growing interest of the child in every kind of occupation. Interest having been primarily aroused by drawing, the child spontaneously went on to the rods used in the teaching of length, then to placing the plane geometric insets, and so gradually worked through all the earlier sensory stimuli which the teacher had passed over.” Thus we see that the older child chooses the objects in inverse order, proceeding almost methodically from the most difficult to the elementary.
The other child of three was also quite undisciplined. The teachers were beginning to despair of producing order in this case, when the child began to take an interest in the solid insets and in one of the frames. Thereupon he worked steadily and ceased to disturb his companions.
In our “Children’s Houses” for poor children in Rome, directed by Signorina Maccheroni, it was possible to make more methodical observations, and these were represented by diagrams, in order to demonstrate the course of the phenomena more clearly.
The transverse line A B represents the quiescent state; the phenomena of order (work) are represented above; those of disorder below. When a child has become calm after the first strong attraction to a task, a permanent state of order may be established in him. At this stage the conditions most favorable to work may be studied.