Chapter 21: Reading The Montessori Method Together - Chapter by Chapter

In this podcast series, we read The Montessori Method by Dr. Maria Montessori—chapter by chapter—using the original English translation commissioned while she was still alive.

When I was starting my own Montessori school, I turned directly to Dr. Montessori’s writings because they were available in the public domain and, quite frankly, free. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was reading the 1912 English translation by Anne E. George, created with Dr. Montessori’s knowledge and approval. Later, I learned that many Montessorians in the U.S. encountered her work through later translations—especially the 1967 version—which helped spark a massive resurgence of Montessori education in America.

Both versions matter.
But they are not the same.

In the original translation, Dr. Montessori’s full voice comes through—her scientific rigor, her philosophical depth, and her spiritual understanding of the child. Some of that texture feels softened or missing in later editions. As Montessori education has grown, I’ve also noticed that the method is sometimes diluted or reshaped in ways that feel far removed from what Dr. Montessori originally envisioned.

This podcast is an experiment—and an adventure.

Each episode features a chapter-by-chapter reading of The Montessori Method, along with reflections and annotations that connect Dr. Montessori’s words to modern classrooms, families, and educational realities. I pause to offer context, raise questions, and explore how her ideas still challenge and inspire us today.

This is not a lecture or a final word. It’s a conversation.

If you have thoughts to add, questions to ask, or if you think I’ve gotten something wrong, I invite you to reach out and message me. I’m on a journey too—learning, re-learning, and listening carefully to Dr. Montessori’s voice alongside you.

Whether you’re a Montessori guide, school leader, parent, or simply curious about the foundations of this work, you’re welcome here.

Let’s begin—chapter by chapter.

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Chapters

00:09 – Introduction

01:30 – Chapter 21: General Review of Discipline
03:28 – Discipline in the Classroom
11:20 – Discipline and Work
13:38 – Muscular and Psycho-Muscular Coordination
16:52 – The Nature of Goodness
21:30 – Self-Development
24:26 – Learning and Repetition
29:17 – Adult Interference
33:55 – Refining Senses and Intellectual Gymnastics
38:28 – Formation of Will and Obedience
48:21 – Development of Obedience
53:15 – Conclusion


#Montessori #MariaMontessori #MontessoriMethod #SchoolRefection   #1912Translation #HolisticEducation #PracticalLife #EarlyChildhoodEducation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to this chapter by chapter reading of the Montessori Method by Dr. Maria Montessori. When I was starting my Montessori school, I turned directly to Dr. Montessori's original writings, partly out of conviction and partly because they were available in the public domain and free. What I didn't realize at the time was I was reading the original English translation commissioned while Dr. Montessori was still alive, translated in 1912 by Anne E. George. Later I discovered that many of us have encountered Montessori through later translations, especially the 1967 version, which helped spread the method widely in the US. And for which I'm personally grateful. But returning to the original text, I found something more: Dr. Manessori's full voice, her depth, her vision, and her spiritual and philosophical foundations. In this podcast, I'm reading the original translation chapter by chapter, adding reflections to help connect her words to today's classrooms and families. This is an experiment, an adventure, and a shared journey of learning. Let's begin. Today we are doing chapter 21. Can you believe it? We are near the end. This is actually a long chapter. So my name is Melissa Rohan. I am the founder and president of Waterfront Academy. And if you're just joining us for the first time, we've been reading chapter by chapter, starting from chapter one. And now we're on chapter 21. After this, we have one additional chapter. And then, while that might seem like we're done, bonus, we are going to do the preface and the introduction for this book. Now, this book, just so you know, is the 1912 translation. This is the one done by Anne E. George, just two years, three years, two years, two or three years. Let's see, 1909, 1912, there you go. Three years uh from when Dr. Montessori wrote the book initially. This uh translation was her uh her way of getting this book into the American audience. This chapter, chapter 21, is kind of interesting because this wasn't in the original book, uh, the Italian translation. She came back specifically for the American audience and talked about again discipline. This was such a mind shift, and there was it was very contentious. And um, and so she wrote it again based off of additional three additional years of experience in the children's house. And so this is uh pretty remarkable, I think, and I'm gonna go ahead and get started. So this is a longer chapter, so be prepared. Cozy up. Chapter 21. General Review of Discipline. The accumulated experience we have had since the publication of the Italian version has repeatedly proved to us that in our classes of little children, numbering forty and even fifty, the discipline is much better than in ordinary schools. For this reason, I have thought an analysis of the discipline obtained by our method, which is based upon liberty, would interest my American readers. Whoever visits a well kept school, such as, for instance, the one in Rome directed by my pupil Anna Macaroni, is struck by the discipline of the children. There are forty little beings, from three to seven years old, each one intent on his own work. One is going through one of the exercises for the senses, one is doing an arithmetical exercise, one is handling the letters, one is drawing, one is fastening and unfastening the pieces of cloth on one of their little wooden frames. Still another is dusty. Some are seated at the tables, some on rugs on the floor. There are muffled sounds of objects lightly moved about, chip children tiptoeing. Once in a while comes a cry of joy only partly repressed Teacher, teacher an eager call look, see what I've done. But as a rule, there is entire absorption in the work in hand. The teacher moves quietly about, goes to a ch any child who calls her supervising operations in such a way that anyone who needs her finds her at his elbow, and whoever does not need her is not reminded of her existence. Sometimes hours go by without a word. They seem little men, as they were called by some visitors to the children's house, or, as another suggested, judges in deliberation. In the midst of such intense interest in work, it never happens that quarrels arise over the possession of an object. If one accomplishes something especially fine, his achievement is a source of admiration and joy to others. No heart suffers from another's wealth. But the triumph of the triumph of fun is a delight to all. Very often he uh imitators. They all seem happy and satisfied to do what they can, without feeling jealous of the deeds of others. The little fellow of three works peaceably beside the boy of seven, just as he is satisfied with his own height, does not envy the older boy's stature. Everything is growing in the most profound peace. If the teacher wishes the whole assembly to do something, for instance, leave the work, which interests them so much, all she needs to do is to speak a word in a low tone or make a gesture, and they are all attention. They look toward her with eagerness, anxious to know how to obey. Many visitors have seen the writ the teacher write orders on the blackboard, which they obeyed joyously by the children. Not only the teacher, but anyone who asks the pupil to do something is astonished to see them obey in the minutest detail and with obliging cheerfulness. Often a visitor wishes to hear how a child now painting can sing. The child leaves his painting to be obliging, but the instant his courteous action is completed, he returns to his interrupted work. Sometimes the smaller children finish their work before they obey. A very surprising result of this discipline came to our notice during the examinations of the teacher who had followed my course of lectures. These examinations were practical, and accordingly groups of children were put at the disposition of the teacher being examined, who, according to the subject drawn by a lot, took the children through a given exercise. While the children were waiting their turn, they were allowed to do just as they pleased. They worked incessantly, returned to their undertakings as soon as the interruption caused by the examination was over. Every once in a while one of them came to show us a drawing made during the interval. Miss George of Chicago was present many times when this happened, and Madame Puhols, who founded the first children's house in Paris, was astonished at the patience, the perseverance, and the inexhaustible amiability of the children. One might think that such children had been severely repressed were it not for their lack of intimidation timidity, for their bright eyes, for their happy, free aspect, for their cordiality to look at their work, for the way in which they take visitors about and explain matters to them. These things make us feel at that they that we are in the presence of the masters of the house, and the fur with which they throw their arms around their teacher's knees, with which they pull her down to kiss her face shows that their little hearts are free to expand as they will. Anyone who has watched them setting the table must have passed from one surprise to another. Little four year old waiters take the knives and forks and spoons and distribute them to the different places. They carry trays holding as many as five water glasses, and finally they go from table to table carrying big terines full of hot sea. The first picture Montessori's children at dinner. The tables are set in the grounds of the school of the Franciscan nuns in Rome. The second picture school at Terrytown, New York. The two girls at the left are constructing the big stair and the tower. The boy in the center has constructed the long stair and is placing the figures beside the corresponding rods. The children to the right is tracing sandpaper letters. Not a mistake is made, not a glass is broken, not a drop of soup is spilled. All during the meal unobtrusive little waiters watch the table and assidiously. Not a child empties his soup plate without being offered more. If he is ready for the next course a waiter briskly carries off his soup plate, not a child is forced to ask for more soup or to announce that he has finished. Remembering the usual condition of four year old children who cry, who break whatever they touch, who need to be waited on, everyone is deeply moved by the sight I have just described, which evidently results from the development of energies latent in the depths of the human soul. I have often seen the spectators at this banquet of little ones moved to tears, but such discipline could never be obtained by commands, by sermonizing, in short, through any of the disciplinary devices universally known. Not only were the actions of those children set in an orderly condition, but their very lives were deepened and enlarged. In fact, such discipline is on the same plane with school exercises extraordinary for the age of the children, and it certainly does not depend upon the teacher but upon a sort of miracle occurring in the inner life of each child. If we try to think of parallels in the life of adults, we are reminded of the phenomenon of conversion, of the superhuman heightened, of the strength of martyrs and apostles, of the constancy of missionaries, of the obedience of monks. Nothing else in the world except such things is on a spiritual height equal to the discipline of the children. To obtain such discipline, it is quite useless to count on reprimands or spoken exhortations. Such means might perhaps at the beginning have an appearance of effects. But very soon, the instant that real discipline appears, all of this falls miserably to the earth, an illusion confronted with reality. Night gives way to day. The first dawning of real discipline comes through work. At a given moment it happens that a child becomes keenly interested in a piece of work, showing it by the expression of his face, by his intense attention, by his perseverance in the same exercise. That child has set foot upon the road leading to discipline. Whatever be his undertaking, an exercise for the senses, an exercise in buttoning up or lacing together or washing dishes, it is all one and the same. On our side we can have some influences upon the permanent permanence of the phenomenon, by means of lessons of silence. The perfect immobility, the attention alert, to catch the sound of the names whispered from a distance, then the carefully coordinated movements executed so as not to strike against chair or table, so as barely to touch the floor with the feet. All this is a most effacious preparation for the task of setting in order the whole personality, the motor force of the physical. Once the habit of work is formed, we must supervise it with scrupulous accuracy, graduating the exercises experience as taught us. In our effort to establish discipline, we must rigorously apply the principles of the method. It is not to be obtained by words, no man learned self discipline through hearing another man speak. The phenomena of discipline needs as preparation a series of complete actions, such as are presupposed in the genuine application of a really educative method. Discipline is reached always by indirect means. The end is obtained not by attacking the mistake or fighting it, but by developing activity in spontaneous work. This work cannot be arbitrarily offered, and it is precisely here that our method enters. It must be work which the human being instinctively desires to do, work towards which the latent tendency of life naturally turn, or towards which the individual step by step ascends. Such is the work which is set the personality in order and opens wide before it infinite possibilities of growth. Take, for instance, the lack of control shown by a baby. It is fundamentally a lack of muscular discipline. The child is in constant state of disorderly movement. He throws himself down, he makes queer gestures, he cries. What underlies all this is a latent tendency to seek that coordination of movement which will be established later. The baby is a man not yet sure of the movements of the various muscles of the body, not yet master of the organs of speech, he will eventually establish these various movements, but for the present he is abandoned to a period of experimentation full of mistakes, and of fatiguing efforts towards a desirable end latent to his instinct, but not clear in his consciousness, to say to the baby, stand still as I do, bring no light into his darkness. Commands cannot aid in the process of bringing order into the complex psychomuscular system of an individual in process of evolution. We are confused at this point by the example of the adult who through a wicked impulse prefers disorder and who may, granted that he can obey a sharp admonishment which turns his will in another direction, towards that order which he recognizes in which it is within his capacity to achieve. In the case of the little child, it is a question of aiding the natural evolution of voluntary action. Hence it is necessary to teach all the coordinated movements, analyzing analyzing them as much as possible and developing them bit by bit. Thus, for instance, it is necessary to teach the child the various degrees of immobility leading to silence, the movements connected with rising from a chair and sitting down, with walking, with tiptoeing, with following a line drawn on the floor, keeping an upright equilibrium. The child is taught to move objects about to set them down more or less carefully, and finally the complex movements connected with dressing and undressing himself. Analyzed on the lacing and buttoning frames at school. And for even each of these exercises, the different parts of the movement must be analyzed. Perfect immobility and the success of perfection perfectioning of action is what takes place in the customary command. Be quiet, be still. It is not astonishing, but very natural that the child by means of such exercises should acquire self discipline, so far as regards the lack of muscular discipline natural to his age. In short, he responds to nature because he is in action, but these actions being directed toward an end, have no longer the appearance of disorder but of work. This is discipline which represents an end to be attained by means of a number of conquests. The child disciplined in this way is no longer the child he was at first, who knows how to be good passively, but he is he is an individual who has made himself better, who has overcome the usual limits of his age, who has made a great step forward, who has conquered his future in his present. He has therefore enlarged his dominion. He will not need to have someone always at hand to tell him vainly, confusing two opposing conceptions. Be quiet, be good. The goodness he has conquered cannot be summed up by inertia. His goodness is now all made up of action. As a matter of fact, good people are those who advance toward the good, good which is made up of their own self development and of external acts of order and usefulness. In our efforts with the child, external acts are the means which the stimulate internal development, which stimulate internal development, and they again appear and appear as its manifestations, the two elements being inextricably intertwined. Work develops the child spiritually, but the child with a fuller spiritual development works better, and his improved work delights him. Hence he continues to develop spiritually. Discipline is therefore not a fact, but a path, a path in following which the child grasps the abstract conception of goodness with an extric exactitude there we go, with an exactitude which is fairly scientific. But beyond everything else, he savors the supreme delight of that spiritual order which is attained indirectly through the conquest directed towards determinate ends. In that long preparation the child experiences joys, spiritual awakenings, and pleasures which form his inner treasure house. The treasure house in which he is steadily storing up the sweetness and strength which will be the source of righteousness. In short, the child has not only learned to move about and to perform useful acts, he has acquired a special grace of action which makes his gestures more correct and attractive, and which beautifies his hands and indeed his entire body now so balanced and so sure of itself, a grace which refines the the expression of his face and of his serenely brilliant eyes, and which shows us that the flame of spiritual life has been lighted lighted in another human being. It is obviously true that coordinated actions develop spontaneously little by little that is chosen and carried out in the exercises by the child himself must call for less effort than the disorderly actions performed by the child who is left to his own devices. True rest for muscles intended by nature for action is an orderly action, just as true rest for the lungs is the normal rhythm of respiration taken in pure air. To take action away from the muscles is to force them away from their natural motor impulse, and hence, besides tiring them, means forcing them into a state of degeneration, just as the lungs forced into immobility would die instantly and the whole organism with them. It is therefore necessary to keep clearly in mind the fact that the rest for whatever naturally acts lies in some specified form of action corresponding to its nature. Act in obedience to the hidden prospects of nature that is rest, and in this special case since man is meant to be an intelligent creature, the more intelligent his acts are, the more he finds repose in them. When a child acts only in a disorderly, disconnected manner, his nervous force is under a great strain, while on the other hand, his nervous energy is positively increased and multiplied by intelligent actions which give him real satisfaction and a feeling of pride when he has overcome himself, that he finds himself in a world beyond the frontiers formerly set up as insurmountable, surrounded by the silent respect of the one who has guided him without making his presence felt. This multiplication of nervous energy represents a process which can be physiologically analyzed and which comes from the development of the organs by rational exercise, from better circulation of the blood, from the quickening activity of all the tissues, all factors favorable to the development of the body and guaranteeing physical health. The spirit aids the body in its growth, the heart, the nervous, the nerves, and the muscles are all helpful in their evolution by the activity of the spirit, since the upward path for soul and body is one and the same. By analogy, it can be said of the intellectual development of the child that the mind of infancy, although characteristically disorderly, is also a means searching for its end, which goes through exhausting experiments, left as it frequently is to its own resources and too often really persecuted. Once in our public park in Rome, the Pincian Gardens, I saw a baby of about a year and a half, a beautiful smiling child who was working away trying to fill a little pail by shoveling gravel into it. Beside him was a smartly dressed nurse, evidently very fond of him, the sort of nurse who had Who would consider that she gave the child the most affectionate and intelligent care. It was time to go home, and the nurse was patiently exhorting the baby to leave his work and to and let her put him into the baby carriage. Seeing that her extortions made no impression on the little fellow's firmness, she herself filled the pail with credible and slipped the pail and the baby into the carriage with a fixed conviction that she had given him what he wanted. It was struck by the loud cries of the child and by the expression of protest against violence and injustice, which wrote itself in on his little face. What an accumulation of rum, weed, dim nascent intelligence. The little boy did not wish to have the pale full of credible. He wished to go through the motions necessary to fill it. The thought is finding a need of his vigorous organism. The child's unconscious aim was his own self-development. The external effect of the pale full of little stones. The vivid attractions of the external world were only empty apparitions. The need of his life was a reality. And as a matter of fact, if he had filled his pale, he probably would have emptied it out again in order to keep unfilling it up until his inner self was satisfied. It was the feeling of working towards the satisfaction, which a few moments before had made his face so rosy and smiling. Spiritual joy, exercise and sunshine, with the three rays of light ministering to his splendid life. This commonplace, commonplace episode in all the life of the child, is a detail of what happens to all children, even the best and the most cherished. They are not understood. Lovingly helps him to do this whereas the child as a rule has for his unconscious design or his own development. Hence, he despises everything already attained and earns for them, which is still to be sought for. For instance, he prefers the action of dressing himself to the state of being dressed, even funnyly dressed. He prefers the act of washing himself to the satisfaction of being clean. He prefers to make a little house for himself rather than immediately to own it. His own self-development is his true and humblest his only pleasure. The self-development of the little baby up to the end of his first year consists to a large degree in taking in nutrition, but afterward, it consists in aiding the orderly establishment of the psycho sociological functions of his organism. A similar error is that which we repeat so frequently when we fancy that the desire of the student is to possess a piece of information. We aid him to grasp intel intellectually this detached piece of knowledge and preventing by this means of self-development. We make him wretched. It is generally believed in schools that the way to attain satisfaction is to learn something. But by leaving the children to our schools in liberty, we have been able with great clearness to follow them in their natural method of spontaneous self-development. To have learned something is for the child only a point of departure. When he has learned the meaning of an exercise, then he begins to enjoy repeating it. And he does repeat it an infinite number of times, with the most evident satisfaction. He enjoys executing that act because it means of it he is developing his psychic activities. There results from the observation of this fact a criticism of what is done today in many schools. Often, for instance, when the pupils are questioned, the teachers say to someone who is eager to answer No, not you, because you know it. And puts her question specially to the pupils who she thinks are uncertain of the answer. Those who do not know are made to speak. Those who do not know to be silent. This happens because of the general habit of considering the act of knowing something as final. And yet how many times it happens to us in ordinary life to repeat the very thing we know best, the thing we care most for, the thing to which some living force is us. We love to sing musical phrases very familiar, hence enjoyed and become a part of the fabric of our lives. We love to repeat stories of things which pleases us, that which please us, which we know very well, even though we are quite aware that we are saying nothing new. No matter how many times we repeat the Lord's prayer, it is always new. No two persons could be more convinced of mutual love than sweethearts, and yet they are the very ones who repeat endlessly that they love each other. But in order to repeat in this matter, there must first exist the idea to be repeated. A mental grasp of the idea is indispensable to the beginning of repetition. The exercise which develops life consists in the repetition, not in the mere grasp of the idea. When a child has attained this stage of repeating an exercise, he is on the way to self-development. And the external sign of this condition is his self-development or discipline, excuse me. This phenomena does not always occur. The same exercises are not repeated by children of all ages. In fact, repetition corresponds to a need. Here, steps in the experimental method of education. It is necessary to offer those exercises which correspond to the need of development felt by an organism. And if the child's age has carried him past a certain need, it is never possible to obtain. It is fullness, a development which missed its proper moment. Hence children grow up often fatally and irrevocably imperfectly developed. Another very interesting observation is that which relates to the length of time needed for the execution of actions. Children who are undertaking something for the first time are extremely slow. Their life is governed in this respect by laws especially different from ours. Little children accomplish slowly and perseveringly. Various complicated operations agreeable to them, such as dressing, undressing, cleaning the room, washing themselves, setting the table, eating, etc. In all this, they are extremely patient, overcoming all the difficulties presented by an organism still in process of formation. But we, on the other hand, noticing that they are tiring themselves out or wasting time in accomplishing something which we would do in a moment and without the least effort, put ourselves in the child's place and do it ourselves. Always with the same erroneous idea that the end to be obtained is the completion of the action. We dress and we wash the child. We snatch out of his hands objects which he loves to handle. We pour the soup into his bowl, we feed him, we set the table for him, and after such services we consider him with the injustice always practiced by those who domineer others over others, even with benevolent intentions. It is to be incapable and inept. We often speak of him as impatient simply because we are not patient enough to allow his action to follow laws of time differing from our own. We call him tyran tyrannical ternicical tyrannical exactly because we employ tyranny towards him. This stain, this false imputation, this culmin of childhood has become an integral part of the theories concerning childhood, in reality so patient and gentle. The child, like every strong creature fighting for the right to live, rebels against whatever offends that occult impulse within him, which is the voice of nature, and which he ought to obey, and he shows by violent actions, by screaming and weeping that he has been overborn and forced away from his mission in life. He shows himself to be a rebel, a revolutionist in inconclast, against those who do not understand him and who, fancying that they are helping him, and are really pushing him backward in the highway of life. Thus even the adult who loves him rivets about his neck, another calmny, confusing his defense of his molested life from with a form of innate naughtiness characteristic of little children. What would become of us if we fell into the midst of a population of jugglers or of lightning change impersonators of the variety ball hall? Variety Hall? Yeah, of the variety hall. Yeah. What should we do if, as we continue to act in our usual way, we saw ourselves assailed by these sleight of hand performers hustled into our clothes, fed so rapidly that we could scarcely swallow, if everything we tried to do snatched from our hands and completed in a twinkling, and we ourselves reduced to impotence and to humiliating inertia. Not knowing how else to express our confusion, we would defend ourselves with blows and yells from these madmen. And they, having only the best will in all in the world to serve us, would call us haughty, rebellious, and incapable of doing anything. We who know our own Milu would say to those people, Come into our countries and you will see the splendid civilization we have established, you will see our wonderful achievements. These jugglers would admire us indefinite infinitely, hardly able to believe their eyes, as they deserve our work uh observe our world so full of beauty and activity, so well regulated, so peaceful, so kindly, but also much slower than theirs. Something of this sort occurs between children and adults. It is exactly in the repetition of the exercises that the education of the senses consist. Their aim is not that the child should know colours, forms, and the different quantities of objects, but that he refine his senses through an exercise of attention, of comparison, of judgment. These exercises are true intellectual gymnastics. Such gymnastics reasonably directed by means of various devices aid in the formation of the intellect, just as physical exercises fortify the gentle our general health and quicken the growth of the body. The child who trains his various senses separately by means of external stimuli concentrates his attention and develops piece by piece his mental activities just as with the separately prepared movements he trains his muscular activities. These mental gymnastics are not merely psychosensory, but they prepare the way for spontaneous association of ideas, for ratiocination developing out of the definite knowledge, for a harmoniously balanced intellect. They are the power powder trains that bring about these mental explosions which delight the child so intensely when he makes discoveries in the world about him, when he at the same time ponders over and glories in the new things which are revealed to him in this outside world, and in the exquisite emotions of his own growing consciousness, and finally when there spring up within him almost a process of spontaneous ripening like the internal phenomena of growth, the external products of learning, writing, and reading. I happened once to see a two-year-old child, son of a medical colleague of mine, who fairly flee fairly fleeing away from his mother who had brought him to me, threw himself on the litter of things covering his father's desk. The rectangular writing pad, a round cover of the ink well. It was touched to see the intelligent little creature I was touched to see the intelligent little creature trying his best to go through the exercises which our children repeat with such endless pleasure till they have fully committed them to memory. The father and the mother pulled the child away, reproving him and explaining that there was no use trying to keep that child from handling his father's desk furniture. The child is restless and naughty. How often we see all children reproved because though they are not told to, they will take hold of everything. Now it is precisely by means of guiding and developing this natural instinct to take hold of everything and to recognize the relations of geometrical figures that we prepare our little four-year-old men for the joy and triumph they experience later over the phenomenon of spontaneous writing. The children who throws himself on the writing pad, the cover to the inkwell, and such objects always struggling in vain to attain his desire, always hindered and thwarted by people stronger than he, always excited and weeping over the failure of his desperate efforts, is wasting nervous force. His father or his parents are mistaken if they think that such a child ever gets for any real rest, just as they are mistaken when they call Naughty the little man longing for the foundations of his intellectual edifice. The children in our school are the ones who are really at rest, ardently and blessedly free to take out and put back in their right places or grooves the geometric figures offered to their instinct for higher self-development, and they, rejoicing in the most entire spiritual calm, have no notion that their eyes and hands are initiating them into the mysteries of a new language. The majority of our children become calm as they go through such exercises because their nervous system is at rest. Then we say that such children are quiet and good. External discipline so eagerly sought after in ordinary schools is more than achieved. However, as a calm man and as self-disciplined man are not one and the same, so here the fact which manifests itself externally by the calm of the children is in reality the phenomenon merely physical and partial compared to the real self-discipline self-discipline which is being developed in them. Often, and this is another misconception, we think all we need to do to obtain a voluntary action from a child is to order him to do it. We pretend that this phenomenon of a forced voluntary action exists, and we call this pretext the obedience of the child. We find little children specially disobedient, or rather their resistance by the time they are four or five has become so great that we are in despair and are almost tempted to give up trying to make them obey. We force ourselves to praise the little children the virtue of obedience, a virtue which, according to our accepted prejudices, should belong specially to infancy, should be the infantile virtue, yet we fail to learn anything from the fact that we are led to emphasize it so strongly because we can only with the greatest difficulty make children practice it. It is very common mistake. This is trying to obtain by means of prayers or orders or violence what is difficult or impossible to get. Thus, for instance, we ask little children to be obedient, and little children in their turn ask for the moon. We need only reflect that this obedience, which we treat so lightly, occurs later, as a natural tendency in older children, and then as an instinct in the adult to realize that it springs spontaneously into being, and that it is one of the strongest instincts of humanity. We find that society rests on the foundation of marvelous obedience, and that civilization go forward on a road made by obedience. Human organisms are often found on an abuse of obedience. Associations of criminals have obedience as their keystone. How many times social problems center about the necessity of rousing man from the state of obedience which has led him to be exploited and brutalized? Obedience naturally is sacrifice. We are so accustomed to an infinite infinite an infinity of obedience in the world, to a condition of self-sacrifice, to a readiness of renunciation, that we call matrimony the blessed condition. Although it is made up of obedience and self-sacrifice. The soldier whose lot in life is to obey, if it kills him, is envied by the common people. While we consider anyone who tries to escape from obedience as a malefactor or a madman, besides, how many people have had the deeply spiritual experience of an ardent desire to obey something or some person leading them along the path of life? More than this, a desire to sacrifice something for the sake of this obedience. It is therefore entirely natural that loving the child we should point out to him that obedience is a law of life, and there is nothing surprising in the anxiety felt by nearly everyone who is confronted with this characteristic disobedience of little children. But obedience can only be reached through a complex formation of the psychic personality. To obey, it is necessary not only to wish to obey, but also to know how to. Since when a command to do a certain thing is given, we presuppose a corresponding active and inhibit or inhibitive power of the child. It is plain that obedience must follow the formation of the will and of the mind. To prepare in detail this formation by means of detached exercise, it is therefore indirectly to urge the child towards obedience. The method which is the subject of this book contains in every part an exercise for the willpower. When the child completes coordinated actions directed towards a given end, when he achieves something he sets out to do, when he repeats patiently his exercises, he is training his positive willpower. Similarly, in a very complicated series of exercises, he is establishing through activity his power of inhibition, for instance in the lessons of silence, which calls for a long, continued inhibition of many actions. While the child is waiting to be called and later for a rigorous self-control, when he is called and would like to answer joyously and run to his teacher, but instead is perfectly silent, moves very carefully, taking the greatest pains not to knock against chair or table or make a noise. Other inhibitive exercises are the arithmetical ones when the child, having drawn a number a lot by lot, must take from the great mass of objects before him apparently entirely at his disposition only the quantity corresponding to the number in his hand. Whereas by, as experience has proved, he would like to take the greatest number possible. Furthermore, if he chances to draw the zero, he sits patiently with empty hands. Still another training for the inhibitive willpower is in the lesson of zero. When the child called upon to come up zero times and give zero kisses, stands quiet. immediately, conquering with the visible effort the instinct which would lead him to obey the call. The child at our school dinners who carry the big terrine full of hot soup isolates himself with from every external stimulant which might disturb him, resists his childless impulse to run and jump, does not yield to the temptation to brush away the fly on his face, and is entirely concentrated on the great responsibility of not dropping or tipping the terrine. A little thing of four and a half every time he set the taurine down on the table so that the little guests might help themselves gave a hop and a skip, then took to up the terrine again to carry it to another table, repressing himself to a sober walk. In spite of his desire to play, he never left his task before he had passed soup to the twenty tables, and he never forgot the vigilance necessary to control his actions. Willpower, like all other activities, is invigorated and developed through methodical exercises, and all our exercises for willpower are also mental and practical. To the casual onlooker the child seems to be learning exactitude and grace of action, to be refining his senses, to be learning how to read and write but much more profoundly he is learning how to become his own master, how to be a man of prompt and restitute will. We often hear it said that a child's will should be broken, that the best education for the will of the child is to learn to give it up to the will of adults, leaving out the question the injustices which is at the root of every act of tyranny. This idea irrational is irrational this idea is irrational because the child cannot give up what he does not possess. We prevent him in this way from forming his own willpower. We commit the greatest and most blameworthy mistake. He never has time or opportunity to test himself to estimate his own force and his own limitations because he is always interrupted and subjected to our tyranny and languishes in injustice because he is always being bitterly reproached for not having what adults have perpetually destroyed. There springs up a consequence of this childish timid timidity which is a moral malady acquired by a will which could not develop and which with the usual calumny which with which the tyrant consciously or not covers up his own mistakes we consider as an inherent trait of childhood. The children in our schools are never timid. One of their most fascinating qualities is their frankness with which they treat people with which they go on working in the presence of others and showing their work frankly, calling for sympathy. That moral monstrosity a repressed and timid child who is at his ease nowhere except alone with his playmates or with street urchins because his willpower has allowed to grow only in the shade disappears in our schools he presents an example of thoughtless barbarism which resembles the artificial compression of the bodies of those children intended for court dwarfs, museum monstrosities or buffoons. Yet this is the treatment under which nearly all children of our time are growing up spiritually. As a matter of fact in all the pedagogical congresses one hears that the great peril of our time is the lack of individual character in the scholars yet these alarmists do not point out that this condition is due to the way in which education is managed, to scholastic slavery, which has for its specialty the repression of willpower and a force of character. The remedy is simply to enfranchise human development. Besides the exercises it offers for developing willpower the other factor in obedience is the capacity to perform the act it becomes necessary to obey. One of the most interesting observations made by my pupil Anna Mataroni at first in the school of Milan and then that in the Via Gusti in Rome relates to the connection between obedience in a child and his knowing how. Obedience appears in the child at a latent instinct as soon as his personality begins to take form. For instance a child begins to try a certain exercise and suddenly sometimes he goes through it perfectly, he is delighted, stares at it and wishes to do it over again. But for some time the exercise is not a success. Then comes a time when he can do it nearly every time as he tries voluntarily but makes mistakes as someone else asks him to do it. The external command does not yet as yet produce the voluntary act when however the exercise always succeeds with absolute certainty then an order from someone else brings about on the child's part orderly adequate action that is the child is able each time to execute the command received that these facts with variation in individual cases are laws of psychology development is apparent from everyone's experience with children in school or at home. One often hears a child say I did do such and such I did do such and such a thing but now I can't a child disappointed by the incompetence of a pupil will say yet that child was doing it all right and now he can't finally there is the period of complete development in which the capacity to perform some operation is permanently acquired. There are therefore three periods a first subconscious one when in the confused mind of the child order produces itself by a mysterious inner impulse from out the mist of disorder producing an external result a completed act which however being outside the field of consciousness cannot be reproduced at will a second conscious period when there is some action on the part of the will which is presented during the process of the development and establishing of the acts and a third period when we will when the will can direct and cause the acts thus answering the command from someone else now obedience follows a similar sequence when in the first period of spiritual disorder the child does not obey it is exactly as if he were psycho uh psychically deaf psychically deaf and out of hearing of commands. In the second period he would like to obey he looks as though he understands the command and would like to respond to it but cannot or at least does not always succeed in doing it is not quick to mind and shows no pleasure when he does. In the third period he obeys at once with enthusiasm and as he becomes more and more perfect in the exercises he is proud that he knows how to obey. This is the period in which he runs joyously to obey and leaves at the most imperceptible request whatever is interesting him so that he may quit the solitude of his own life and enter with the act of obedience into the spiritual existence of another. To this order established in a consciousness formerly chaotic are due all the phenomena of discipline and the mental development which open out like a new creation. From minds thus set in order when night is separated from day come sudden emotions and mental feats which recall the biblical story of creation. The child has in his mind not only what he has laboriously acquired, but the free gifts which flow from spiritual life the first flowers of affection, of gentleness, of spontaneous love for the righteousness which perfume the souls of such children and give promise of the fruits of the Spirit of Saint Paul, the fruit of the spirit of love, joy, peace, long suffering gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness these they are virtuous because they exercise patience in repeating their exercises long suffering in yielding to the commands the desire of others, good and rejoicing in the well being of others without jealousy or rivalry. They live doing good in joyousness of heart and in peace and they are eminently marvelously industrious. But they are not proud of such righteousness because they were not conscious of acquiring it is a moral superiority. They have set their feet in the path leading to righteousness simply because it was the only way to attain true self-development and learning. And they enjoy with simple hearts the fruits of peace that are to be gathered along that path. These are the first outlines of an experiment which shows a form of indirect discipline in which there is substituted for the critical and sermonizing teacher a rational organization of work and a liberty of the child. It involves the conception of life more usual in religious fields than in those in academic pedagogy inasmuch as it has recourse to the spiritual energies of mankind. But it is founded on work and on liberty which are the two paths to all civic progress. That concludes this chapter of the Monsori method. Thank you for listening and for taking part in this journey with me this project is very much an exploration. If you have thoughts to add, questions to ask or if you think I misunderstood or missed something important I generally want to hear from you. 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