CHAPTER XVII

Description of the Method and Didactic Material Used

FIRST PERIOD: EXERCISE TENDING TO DEVELOP THE MUSCULAR MECHANISM NECESSARY IN HOLDING AND USING THE INSTRUMENT IN WRITING

Design Preparatory to Writing.—Didactic Material. Small wooden tables; metal insets, outline drawings, coloured pencils. I have among my materials two little wooden tables, the tops of which form an inclined plane sloping toward a narrow cornice, which prevents objects placed upon the table from slipping off. The top of each table is just large enough to hold four of the square frames, into which the metal plane geometric insets are fitted, and is so painted as to represent three of these brown frames, each containing a square centre of the same dark blue as the centres of the metal insets.

The metal insets are in dimension and form a reproduction of the series of plane geometric insets in wood already described.

Exercises. Placed side by side upon the teacher's desk, or upon one of the little tables belonging to the children, these two little tables may have the appearance of being one long table containing eight figures. The child may select one or more figures, taking at the same time the frame of the inset. The analogy between these metal insets and the plane geometric insets of wood is complete. But in this case, the child can freely use the pieces, where before, he arranged them in the wooden frame. He first takes the metal frame, places it upon a sheet of white paper, and with a coloured pencil draws around the contour of the empty centre. Then, he takes away the frame, and upon the paper there remains a geometric figure.

This is the first time that the child has reproduced through design, a geometric figure. Until now, he has only placed the geometric insets above the figures delineated on the three series of cards. He now places upon the figure, which he himself has drawn, the metal inset, just as he placed the wooden inset upon the cards. His next act is to follow the contour of this inset with a pencil of a different colour. Lifting the metal piece, he sees the figure reproduced upon the paper, in two colours.

Here, for the first time is born the abstract concept of the geometric figure, for, from two metal pieces so different in form as the frame and the inset, there has resulted the same design, which is a line expressing a determined figure. This fact strikes the attention of the child. He often marvels to find the same figure reproduced by means of two pieces so different, and looks for a long time with evident pleasure at the duplicate design—almost as if it were actually produced by the objects which serve to guide his hand.

Besides all this, the child learns to trace lines determining figures. There will come a day in which, with still greater surprise and pleasure, he will trace graphic signs determining words.

After this, he begins the work which directly prepares for the formation of the muscular mechanism relative to the holding and manipulation of the instrument of writing. With a coloured pencil of his own selection, held as the pen is held in writing, he fills in the figure which he has outlined. We teach him not to pass outside the contour, and in doing so we attract his attention to this contour, and thus fix the idea that a line may determine a figure.

The exercise of filling in one figure alone, causes the child to perform repeatedly the movement of manipulation which would be necessary to fill ten copy-book pages with vertical strokes. And yet, the child feels no weariness, because, although he makes exactly the muscular co-ordination which is necessary to the work, he does so freely and in any way that he wishes, while his eyes are fixed upon a large and brightly coloured figure. At first, the children fill pages and pages of paper with these big squares, triangles, ovals, trapezoids; colouring them red, orange, green, blue, light blue, and pink.

Gradually they limit themselves to the use of the dark blue and brown, both in drawing the figure and in filling it in, thus reproducing the appearance of the metal piece itself. Many of the children, quite of their own accord, make a little orange-coloured circle in the centre of the figure, in this way representing the little brass button by which the metal piece is to be held. They take great pleasure in feeling that they have reproduced exactly, like true artists, the objects which they see before them on the little shelf.

Observing the successive drawings of a child, there is revealed to us a duplicate form of progression:

First. Little by little, the lines tend less and less to go outside the enclosing line until, at last, they are perfectly contained within it, and both the centre and the frame are filled in with close and uniform strokes.

Second. The strokes with which the child fills in the figures, from being at first short and confused, become gradually longer, and more nearly parallel, until in many cases the figures are filled in by means of perfectly regular up and down strokes, extending from one side of the figure to the other. In such a case, it is evident that the child is master of the pencil. The muscular mechanism, necessary to the management of the instrument of writing, is established. We may, therefore, by examining such designs, arrive at a clear idea of the maturity of the child in the matter of holding the pencil or pen in hand. To vary these exercises, we use the outline drawings already described. Through these designs, the manipulation of the pencil is perfected, for they oblige the child to make lines of various lengths, and make him more and more secure in his use of the pencil.

If we could count the lines made by a child in the filling in of these figures, and could transform them into the signs used in writing, they would fill many, many copy-books! Indeed, the security which our children attain is likened to that of children in our ordinary third elementary grade. When for the first time they take a pen or a pencil in hand, they know how to manage it almost as well as a person who has written for a long time.

I do not believe that any means can be found which will so successfully and, in so short a space of time, establish this mastery. And with it all, the child is happy and diverted. My old method for the deficients, that of following with a small stick the contours of raised letters, was, when compared with this, barren and miserable!

Even when the children know how to write they continue these exercises, which furnish an unlimited progression, since the designs may be varied and complicated. The children follow in each design essentially the same movements, and acquire a varied collection of pictures which grow more and more perfect, and of which they are very proud. For I not only provoke, but perfect, the writing through the exercises which we call preparatory. The control of the pen is rendered more and more secure, not by repeated exercises in the writing, but by means of these filled-in designs. In this way, my children perfect themselves in writing, without actually writing.

SECOND PERIOD: EXERCISES TENDING TO ESTABLISH THE VISUAL-MUSCULAR IMAGE OF THE ALPHABETICAL SIGNS, AND TO ESTABLISH THE MUSCULAR MEMORY OF THE MOVEMENTS NECESSARY TO WRITING

Didactic Material. Cards upon which the single letters of the alphabet are mounted in sandpaper; larger cards containing groups of the same letters.

The cards upon which the sandpaper letters are mounted are adapted in size and shape to each letter. The vowels are in light-coloured sandpaper and are mounted upon dark cards, the consonants and the groups of letters are in black sandpaper mounted upon white cards. The grouping is so arranged as to call attention to contrasted, or analogous forms.

The letters are cut in clear script form, the shaded parts being made broader. We have chosen to reproduce the vertical script in use in the elementary schools.

Exercises. In teaching the letters of the alphabet, we begin with the vowels and proceed to the consonants, pronouncing the sound, not the name. In the case of the consonants, we immediately unite the sound with one of the vowel sounds, repeating the syllable according to the usual phonetic method.

The teaching proceeds according to the three periods already illustrated.

First. Association of the visual and muscular-tactile sensation with the letter sound.

The directress presents to the child two of the cards upon which vowels are mounted (or two of the consonants, as the case may be). Let us suppose that we present the letters i and o, saying, "This is i! This is o!" As soon as we have given the sound of a letter, we have the child trace it, taking care to show him how to trace it, and if necessary guiding the index finger of his right hand over the sandpaper letter in the sense of writing.

"Knowing how to trace" will consist in knowing the direction in which a given graphic sign must be followed.

The child learns quickly, and his finger, already expert in the tactile exercise, is led, by the slight roughness of the fine sandpaper, over the exact track of the letter. He may then repeat indefinitely the movements necessary to produce the letters of the alphabet, without the fear of the mistakes of which a child writing with a pencil for the first time is so conscious. If he deviates, the smoothness of the card immediately warns him of his error.

The children, as soon as they have become at all expert in this tracing of the letters, take great pleasure in repeating it with closed eyes, letting the sandpaper lead them in following the form which they do not see. Thus the perception will be established by the direct muscular-tactile sensation of the letter. In other words, it is no longer the visual image of the letter, but the tactile sensation, which guides the hand of the child in these movements, which thus become fixed in the muscular memory.

There develop, contemporaneously, three sensations when the directress shows the letter to the child and has him trace it; the visual sensation, the tactile sensation, and the muscular sensation. In this way the image of the graphic sign is fixed in a much shorter space of time than when it was, according to ordinary methods, acquired only through the visual image. It will be found that the muscular memory is in the young child the most tenacious and, at the same time, the most ready. Indeed, he sometimes recognises the letters by touching them, when he cannot do so by looking at them. These images are, besides all this, contemporaneously associated with the alphabetical sound.

Second. Perception. The child should know how to compare and to recognise the figures, when he hears the sounds corresponding to them.

The directress asks the child, for example, "Give me o!—Give me i!" If the child does not recognise the letters by looking at them, she invites him to trace them, but if he still does not recognise them, the lesson is ended, and may be resumed another day. I have already spoken of the necessity of not revealing the error, and of not insisting in the teaching when the child does not respond readily.

Third. Language. Allowing the letters to lie for some instants upon the table, the directress asks the child, "What is this?" and he should respond, o, i.

In teaching the consonants, the directress pronounces only the sound, and as soon as she has done so unites with it a vowel, pronouncing the syllable thus formed and alternating this little exercise by the use of different vowels. She must always be careful to emphasize the sound of the consonant, repeating it by itself, as, for example, m, m, m, ma, me, mi, m, m. When the child repeats the sound he isolates it, and then accompanies it with the vowel.

It is not necessary to teach all the vowels before passing to the consonants, and as soon as the child knows one consonant he may begin to compose words. Questions of this sort, however, are left to the judgment of the educator.

I do not find it practical to follow a special rule in the teaching of the consonants. Often the curiosity of the child concerning a letter leads us to teach that desired consonant; a name pronounced may awaken in him a desire to know what consonants are necessary to compose it, and this will, or willingness, of the pupil is a much more efficacious means than any rule concerning the progression of the letters.

When the child pronounces the sounds of the consonants, he experiences an evident pleasure. It is a great novelty for him, this series of sounds, so varied and yet so distinct, presenting such enigmatic signs as the letters of the alphabet. There is mystery about all this, which provokes most decided interest. One day I was on the terrace while the children were having their free games; I had with me a little boy of two years and a half left with me, for a moment, by his mother. Scattered about upon a number of chairs, were the alphabets which we use in the school. These had become mixed, and I was putting the letters back into their respective compartments. Having finished my work, I placed the boxes upon two of the little chairs near me. The little boy watched me. Finally, he drew near to the box, and took one of the letters in his hand. It chanced to be an f. At that moment the children, who were running in single file, passed us, and, seeing the letter, called out in chorus the corresponding sound and passed on. The child paid no attention to them, but put back the f and took up an r. The children running by again, looked at him laughing, and then began to cry out "r, r, r! r, r, r!" Little by little the baby understood that, when he took a letter in hand, the children, who were passing, cried out a sound. This amused him so much that I wished to observe how long he would persist in this game without becoming tired. He kept it up for three-quarters of an hour! The children had become interested in the child, and grouped themselves about him, pronouncing the sounds in chorus, and laughing at his pleased surprise. At last, after he had several times held up f, and had received from his public the same sound, he took the letter again, showing it to me, and saying, "f, f, f!" He had learned this from out the great confusion of sounds which he had heard; the long letter which had first arrested the attention of the running children, had made a great impression upon him.

It is not necessary to show how the separate pronunciation of the alphabetical sounds reveals the condition of the child's speech. Defects, which are almost all related to the incomplete development of the language itself, manifest themselves, and the directress may take note of them one by one. In this way she will be possessed of a record of the child's progress, which will help her in her individual teaching, and will reveal much concerning the development of the language in this particular child.

In the matter of correcting linguistic defects, we will find it helpful to follow the physiological rules relating to the child's development, and to modify the difficulties in the presentation of our lesson. When, however, the child's speech is sufficiently developed, and when he pronounces all the sounds, it does not matter which of the letters we select in our lessons.

Many of the defects which have become permanent in adults are due to functional errors in the development of the language during the period of infancy. If, for the attention which we pay to the correction of linguistic defects in children in the upper grades, we would substitute a direction of the development of the language while the child is still young, our results would be much more practical and valuable. In fact, many of the defects in pronunciation arise from the use of a dialect, and these it is almost impossible to correct after the period of childhood. They may, however, be most easily removed through the use of educational methods especially adapted to the perfecting of the language in little children.

We do not speak here of actual linguistic defects related to anatomical or physiological weaknesses, or to pathological facts which alter the function of the nervous system. I speak at present only of those irregularities which are due to a repetition of incorrect sounds, or to the imitation of imperfect pronunciation. Such defects may show themselves in the pronunciation of any one of the consonant sounds, and I can conceive of no more practical means for a methodical correction of speech defects than this exercise in pronunciation, which is a necessary part in learning the graphic language through my method. But such important questions deserve a chapter to themselves.

Turning directly to the method used in teaching writing, I may call attention to the fact that it is contained in the two periods already described. Such exercises have made it possible for the child to learn, and to fix, the muscular mechanism necessary to the proper holding of the pen, and to the making of the graphic signs. If he has exercised himself for a sufficiently long time in these exercises, he will be potentially ready to write all the letters of the alphabet and all of the simple syllables, without ever having taken chalk or pencil in his hand.

We have, in addition to this, begun the teaching of reading at the same time that we have been teaching writing. When we present a letter to the child and enunciate its sound, he fixes the image of this letter by means of the visual sense, and also by means of the muscular-tactile sense. He associates the sound with its relative sign; that is, he relates the sound to the graphic sign. But when he sees and recognises, he reads; and when he traces, he writes. Thus his mind receives as one, two acts, which, later on, as he develops, will separate, coming to constitute the two diverse processes of reading and writing. By teaching these two acts contemporaneously, or, better, by their fusion, we place the child before a new form of language without determining which of the acts constituting it should be most prevalent.

We do not trouble ourselves as to whether the child in the development of this process, first learns to read or to write, or if the one or the other will be the easier. We must rid ourselves of all preconceptions, and must await from experience the answer to these questions. We may expect that individual differences will show themselves in the prevalence of one or the other act in the development of different children. This makes possible the most interesting psychological study of the individual, and should broaden the work of this method, which is based upon the free expansion of individuality.

THIRD PERIOD: EXERCISES FOR THE COMPOSITION OF WORDS

Didactic Material. This consists chiefly of alphabets. The letters of the alphabet used here are identical in form and dimension with the sandpaper ones already described, but these are cut out of cardboard and are not mounted. In this way each letter represents an object which can be easily handled by the child and placed wherever he wishes it. There are several examples of each letter, and I have designed cases in which the alphabets may be kept. These cases or boxes are very shallow, and are divided and subdivided into many compartments, in each one of which I have placed a group of four copies of the same letter. The compartments are not equal in size, but are measured according to the dimensions of the letters themselves. At the bottom of each compartment is glued a letter which is not to be taken out. This letter is made of black cardboard and relieves the child of the fatigue of hunting about for the right compartment when he is replacing the letters in the case after he has used them. The vowels are cut from blue cardboard, and the consonants from red.

In addition to these alphabets we have a set of the capital letters mounted in sandpaper upon cardboard, and another, in which they are cut from cardboard. The numbers are treated in the same way.

(A) TRAINING THE SENSE OF TOUCH. Learning the difference between rough and smooth by running fingers alternately over sandpaper and smooth cardboard; distinguishing different shapes by fitting geometric insets into place; distinguishing textures.   (B) LEARNING TO WRITE AND READ BY TOUCH. The child at the left is tracing sandpaper letters and learning to know them by touch. The boy and girl are making words out of cardboard letters.

Exercises. As soon as the child knows some of the vowels and the consonants we place before him the big box containing all the vowels and the consonants which he knows. The directress pronounces very clearly a word; for example, "mama," brings out the sound of the m very distinctly, repeating the sounds a number of times. Almost always the little one with an impulsive movement seizes an m and places it upon the table. The directress repeats "ma—ma." The child selects the a and places it near the m. He then composes the other syllable very easily. But the reading of the word which he has composed is not so easy. Indeed, he generally succeeds in reading it only after a certain effort. In this case I help the child, urging him to read, and reading the word with him once or twice, always pronouncing very distinctly, mama, mama. But once he has understood the mechanism of the game, the child goes forward by himself, and becomes intensely interested. We may pronounce any word, taking care only that the child understands separately the letters of which it is composed. He composes the new word, placing, one after the other, the signs corresponding to the sounds.

(A) CHILDREN TOUCHING LETTERS. The child on the left has acquired lightness and delicacy of touch by very thorough preparatory exercises. The one on the right has not had so much training.   (B) MAKING WORDS WITH CARDBOARD SCRIPT.

It is most interesting indeed to watch the child at this work. Intensely attentive, he sits watching the box, moving his lips almost imperceptibly, and taking one by one the necessary letters, rarely committing an error in spelling. The movement of the lips reveals the fact that he repeats to himself an infinite number of times the words whose sounds he is translating into signs. Although the child is able to compose any word which is clearly pronounced, we generally dictate to him only those words which are well-known, since we wish his composition to result in an idea. When these familiar words are used, he spontaneously rereads many times the word he has composed, repeating its sounds in a thoughtful, contemplative way.

The importance of these exercises is very complex. The child analyses, perfects, fixes his own spoken language,—placing an object in correspondence to every sound which he utters. The composition of the word furnishes him with substantial proof of the necessity for clear and forceful enunciation.

The exercise, thus followed, associates the sound which is heard with the graphic sign which represents it, and lays a most solid foundation for accurate and perfect spelling.

In addition to this, the composition of the words is in itself an exercise of intelligence. The word which is pronounced presents to the child a problem which he must solve, and he will do so by remembering the signs, selecting them from among others, and arranging them in the proper order. He will have the proof of the exact solution of his problem when he rereads the word—this word which he has composed, and which represents for all those who know how to read it, an idea.

When the child hears others read the word he has composed, he wears an expression of satisfaction and pride, and is possessed by a species of joyous wonder. He is impressed by this correspondence, carried on between himself and others by means of symbols. The written language represents for him the highest attainment reached by his own intelligence, and is at the same time, the reward of a great achievement.

When the pupil has finished the composition and the reading of the word we have him, according to the habits of order which we try to establish in connection with all our work, "put away" all the letters, each one in its own compartment. In composition, pure and simple, therefore, the child unites the two exercises of comparison and of selection of the graphic signs; the first, when from the entire box of letters before him he takes those necessary; the second, when he seeks the compartment in which each letter must be replaced. There are, then, three exercises united in this one effort, all three uniting to fix the image of the graphic sign corresponding to the sounds of the word. The work of learning is in this case facilitated in three ways, and the ideas are acquired in a third of the time which would have been necessary with the old methods. We shall soon see that the child, on hearing the word, or on thinking of a word which he already knows, will see, with his mind's eye, all the letters, necessary to compose the word, arrange themselves. He will reproduce this vision with a facility most surprising to us. One day a little boy four years old, running alone about the terrace, was heard to repeat many times, "To make Zaira, I must have z-a-i-r-a." Another time, Professor Di Donato, in a visit to the "Children's House," pronounced his own name for a four-year-old child. The child was composing the name, using small letters and making it all one word, and had begun, thus—diton. The professor at once pronounced the word more distinctly; di do nato, whereupon the child, without scattering the letters, picked up the syllable to and placed it to one side, putting do in the empty space. He then placed an a after the n, and, taking up the to which he had put aside, completed the word with it. This made it evident that the child, when the word was pronounced more clearly, understood that the syllable to did not belong at that place in the word, realised that it belonged at the end of the word, and therefore placed it aside until he should need it. This was most surprising in a child of four years, and amazed all of those present. It can be explained by the clear and, at the same time, complex vision of the signs which the child must have, if he is to form a word which he hears spoken. This extraordinary act was largely due to the orderly mentality which the child had acquired through repeated spontaneous exercises tending to develop his intelligence.

These three periods contain the entire method for the acquisition of written language. The significance of such a method is clear. The psycho-physiological acts which unite to establish reading and writing are prepared separately and carefully. The muscular movements peculiar to the making of the signs or letters are prepared apart, and the same is true of the manipulation of the instrument of writing. The composition of the words, also, is reduced to a psychic mechanism of association between images heard and seen. There comes a moment in which the child, without thinking of it, fills in the geometric figures with an up and down stroke, which is free and regular; a moment in which he touches the letters with closed eyes, and in which he reproduces their form, moving his finger through the air; a moment in which the composition of words has become a psychic impulse, which makes the child, even when alone, repeat to himself "To make Zaira I must have z-a-i-r-a."

Now this child, it is true, has never written, but he has mastered all the acts necessary to writing. The child who, when taking dictation, not only knows how to compose the word, but instantly embraces in his thought its composition as a whole, will be able to write, since he knows how to make, with his eyes closed, the movements necessary to produce these letters, and since he manages almost unconsciously the instrument of writing.

More than this, the freedom with which the child has acquired this mechanical dexterity makes it possible for the impulse or spirit to act at any time through the medium of his mechanical ability. He should, sooner or later, come into his full power by way of a spontaneous explosion into writing. This is, indeed, the marvellous reaction which has come from my experiment with normal children. In one of the "Children's Houses," directed by Signorina Bettini, I had been especially careful in the way in which writing was taught, and we have had from this school most beautiful specimens of writing, and for this reason, perhaps I cannot do better than to describe the development of the work in this school.

One beautiful December day when the sun shone and the air was like spring, I went up on the roof with the children. They were playing freely about, and a number of them were gathered about me. I was sitting near a chimney, and said to a little five-year-old boy who sat beside me, "Draw me a picture of this chimney," giving him as I spoke a piece of chalk. He got down obediently and made a rough sketch of the chimney on the tiles which formed the floor of this roof terrace. As is my custom with little children, I encouraged him, praising his work. The child looked at me, smiled, remained for a moment as if on the point of bursting into some joyous act, and then cried out, "I can write! I can write!" and kneeling down again he wrote on the pavement the word "hand." Then, full of enthusiasm, he wrote also "chimney," "roof." As he wrote, he continued to cry out, "I can write! I know how to write!" His cries of joy brought the other children, who formed a circle about him, looking down at his work in stupefied amazement. Two or three of them said to me, trembling with excitement, "Give me the chalk. I can write too." And indeed they began to write various words: mama, hand, John, chimney, Ada.

Not one of them had ever taken chalk or any other instrument in hand for the purpose of writing. It was the first time that they had ever written, and they traced an entire word, as a child, when speaking for the first time, speaks the entire word.

The first word spoken by a baby causes the mother ineffable joy. The child has chosen perhaps the word "mother," seeming to render thus a tribute to maternity. The first word written by my little ones aroused within themselves an indescribable emotion of joy. Not being able to adjust in their minds the connection between the preparation and the act, they were possessed by the illusion that, having now grown to the proper size, they knew how to write. In other words, writing seemed to them only one among the many gifts of nature.

They believe that, as they grow bigger and stronger, there will come some beautiful day when they shall know how to write. And, indeed, this is what it is in reality. The child who speaks, first prepares himself unconsciously, perfecting the psycho-muscular mechanism which leads to the articulation of the word. In the case of writing, the child does almost the same thing, but the direct pedagogical help and the possibility of preparing the movements for writing in an almost material way, causes the ability to write to develop much more rapidly and more perfectly than the ability to speak correctly.

In spite of the ease with which this is accomplished, the preparation is not partial, but complete. The child possesses all the movements necessary for writing. And written language develops not gradually, but in an explosive way; that is, the child can write any word. Such was our first experience in the development of the written language in our children. Those first days we were a prey to deep emotions. It seemed as if we walked in a dream, and as if we assisted at some miraculous achievement.

The child who wrote a word for the first time was full of excited joy. He might be compared to the hen who has just laid an egg. Indeed, no one could escape from the noisy manifestations of the little one. He would call everyone to see, and if there were some who did not go, he ran to take hold of their clothes forcing them to come and see. We all had to go and stand about the written word to admire the marvel, and to unite our exclamations of surprise with the joyous cries of the fortunate author. Usually, this first word was written on the floor, and, then, the child knelt down before it in order to be nearer to his work and to contemplate it more closely.

After the first word, the children, with a species of frenzied joy, continued to write everywhere. I saw children crowding about one another at the blackboard, and behind the little ones who were standing on the floor another line would form consisting of children mounted upon chairs, so that they might write above the heads of the little ones. In a fury at being thwarted, other children, in order to find a little place where they might write, overturned the chairs upon which their companions were mounted. Others ran toward the window shutters or the door, covering them with writing. In these first days we walked upon a carpet of written signs. Daily accounts showed us that the same thing was going on at home, and some of the mothers, in order to save their pavements, and even the crust of their loaves upon which they found words written, made their children presents of paper and pencil. One of these children brought to me one day a little note-book entirely filled with writing, and the mother told me that the child had written all day long and all evening, and had gone to sleep in his bed with the paper and pencil in his hand.

This impulsive activity which we could not, in those first days control, made me think upon the wisdom of Nature, who develops the spoken language little by little, letting it go hand in hand with the gradual formation of ideas. Think of what the result would have been had Nature acted imprudently as I had done! Suppose Nature had first allowed the human being to gather, by means of the senses, a rich and varied material, and to acquire a store of ideas, and had then completely prepared in him the means for articulate language, saying finally to the child, mute until that hour, "Go—Speak!" The result would have been a species of sudden madness, under the influence of which the child, feeling no restraints, would have burst into an exhausting torrent of the most strange and difficult words.

I believe, however, that there exists between the two extremes a happy medium which is the true and practical way. We should lead the child more gradually to the conquest of written language, yet we should still have it come as a spontaneous fact, and his work should from the first be almost perfect.

Experience has shown us how to control this phenomenon, and how to lead the child more calmly to this new power. The fact that the children see their companions writing, leads them, through imitation, to write as soon as they can. In this way, when the child writes he does not have the entire alphabet at his disposal, and the number of words which he can write is limited. He is not even capable of making all of the words possible through a combination of the letters which he does know. He still has the great joy of the first written word, but this is no longer the source of an overwhelming surprise, since he sees just such wonderful things happening each day, and knows that sooner or later the same gift will come to all. This tends to create a calm and ordered environment, still full of beautiful and wonderful surprises.

Making a visit to the "Children's House," even during the opening weeks, one makes fresh discoveries. Here, for instance, are two little children, who, though they fairly radiate pride and joy, are writing tranquilly. Yet, these children, until yesterday, had never thought of writing!

The directress tells me that one of them began to write yesterday morning at eleven o'clock, the other, at three in the afternoon. We have come to accept the phenomenon with calmness, and tacitly recognise it as a natural form of the child's development.

The wisdom of the teacher shall decide when it is necessary to encourage a child to write. This can only be when he is already perfect in the three periods of the preparatory exercise, and yet does not write of his own accord. There is danger that in retarding the act of writing, the child may plunge finally into a tumultuous effort, due to the fact that he knows the entire alphabet and has no natural check.

The signs by which the teacher may almost precisely diagnose the child's maturity in this respect are: the regularity of the parallel lines which fill in the geometric figures; the recognition with closed eyes of the sandpaper letters; the security and readiness shown in the composition of words. Before intervening by means of a direct invitation to write, it is best to wait at least a week in the hope that the child may write spontaneously. When he has begun to write spontaneously the teacher may intervene to guide the progress of the writing. The first help which she may give is that of ruling the blackboard, so that the child may be led to maintain regularity and proper dimensions in his writing.

The second, is that of inducing the child, whose writing is not firm, to repeat the tracing of the sandpaper letters. She should do this instead of directly correcting his actual writing, for the child does not perfect himself by repeating the act of writing, but by repeating the acts preparatory to writing. I remember a little beginner who, wishing to make his blackboard writing perfect, brought all of the sandpaper letters with him, and before writing touched two or three times all of the letters needed in the words he wished to write. If a letter did not seem to him to be perfect he erased it and retouched the letter upon the card before rewriting.

Our children, even after they have been writing for a year, continue to repeat the three preparatory exercises. They thus learn both to write, and to perfect their writing, without really going through the actual act. With our children, actual writing is a test; it springs from an inner impulse, and from the pleasure of explaining a superior activity; it is not an exercise. As the soul of the mystic perfects itself through prayer, even so in our little ones, that highest expression of civilisation, written language, is acquired and improved through exercises which are akin to, but which are not, writing.

There is educational value in this idea of preparing oneself before trying, and of perfecting oneself before going on. To go forward correcting his own mistakes, boldly attempting things which he does imperfectly, and of which he is as yet unworthy dulls the sensitiveness of the child's spirit toward his own errors. My method of writing contains an educative concept; teaching the child that prudence which makes him avoid errors, that dignity which makes him look ahead, and which guides him to perfection, and that humility which unites him closely to those sources of good through which alone he can make a spiritual conquest, putting far from him the illusion that the immediate success is ample justification for continuing in the way he has chosen.

The fact that all the children, those who are just beginning the three exercises and those who have been writing for months, daily repeat the same exercise, unites them and makes it easy for them to meet upon an apparently equal plane. Here there are no distinctions of beginners, and experts. All of the children fill in the figures with coloured pencils, touch the sandpaper letters and compose words with the movable alphabets; the little ones beside the big ones who help them. He who prepares himself, and he who perfects himself, both follow the same path. It is the same way in life, for, deeper than any social distinction, there lies an equality, a common meeting point, where all men are brothers, or, as in the spiritual life, aspirants and saints again and again pass through the same experiences.

Writing is very quickly learned, because we begin to teach it only to those children who show a desire for it by spontaneous attention to the lesson given by the directress to other children, or by watching the exercises in which the others are occupied. Some individuals learn without ever having received any lessons, solely through listening to the lessons given to others.

In general, all children of four are intensely interested in writing, and some of our children have begun to write at the age of three and a half. We find the children particularly enthusiastic about tracing the sandpaper letters.

During the first period of my experiments, when the children were shown the alphabet for the first time, I one day asked Signorina Bettini to bring out to the terrace where the children were at play, all of the various letters which she herself had made. As soon as the children saw them they gathered about us, their fingers outstretched in their eagerness to touch the letters. Those who secured cards were unable to touch them properly because of the other children, who crowded about trying to reach the cards in our laps. I remember with what an impulsive movement the possessors of the cards held them on high like banners, and began to march, followed by all the other children who clapped their hands and cried out joyously. The procession passed before us, and all, big and little, laughed merrily, while the mothers, attracted by the noise, leaned from the windows to watch the sight.

The average time that elapses between the first trial of the preparatory exercises and the first written word is, for children of four years, from a month to a month and a half. With children of five years, the period is much shorter, being about a month. But one of our pupils learned to use in writing all the letters of the alphabet in twenty days. Children of four years, after they have been in school for two months and a half, can write any word from dictation, and can pass to writing with ink in a note-book. Our little ones are generally experts after three months' time, and those who have written for six months may be compared to the children in the third elementary. Indeed, writing is one of the easiest and most delightful of all the conquests made by the child.

If adults learned as easily as children under six years of age, it would be an easy matter to do away with illiteracy. We would probably find two grave hinderances to the attainment of such a brilliant success: the torpor of the muscular sense, and those permanent defects of spoken language, which would be sure to translate themselves into the written language. I have not made experiments along this line, but I believe that one school year would be sufficient to lead an illiterate person, not only to write, but to express his thoughts in written language.

So much for the time necessary for learning. As to the execution, our children write well from the moment in which they begin. The form of the letters, beautifully rounded and flowing, is surprising in its similarity to the form of the sandpaper models. The beauty of our writing is rarely equalled by any scholars in the elementary schools, who have not had special exercises in penmanship. I have made a close study of penmanship, and I know how difficult it would be to teach pupils of twelve or thirteen years to write an entire word without lifting the pen, except for the few letters which require this. The up and down strokes with which they have filled their copy-book make flowing writing almost impossible to them.

Our little pupils, on the other hand, spontaneously, and with a marvellous security, write entire words without lifting the pen, maintaining perfectly the slant of the letters, and making the distance between each letter equal. This has caused more than one visitor to exclaim, "If I had not seen it I should never have believed it." Indeed, penmanship is a superior form of teaching and is necessary to correct defects already acquired and fixed. It is a long work, for the child, seeing the model, must follow the movements necessary to reproduce it, while there is no direct correspondence between the visual sensation and the movements which he must make. Too often, penmanship is taught at an age when all the defects have become established, and when the physiological period in which the muscular memory is ready, has been passed.

We directly prepare the child, not only for writing, but also for penmanship, paying great attention to the beauty of form (having the children touch the letters in script form) and to the flowing quality of the letters. (The exercises in filling-in prepare for this.)

READING

Didactic Material. The Didactic Material for the lessons in reading consists in slips of paper or cards upon which are written in clear, large script, words and phrases. In addition to these cards we have a great variety of toys.

Experience has taught me to distinguish clearly between writing and reading, and has shown me that the two acts are not absolutely contemporaneous. Contrary to the usually accepted idea, writing precedes reading. I do not consider as reading the test which the child makes when he verifies the word that he has written. He is translating signs into sounds, as he first translated sounds into signs. In this verification he already knows the word and has repeated it to himself while writing it. What I understand by reading is the interpretation of an idea from the written signs. The child who has not heard the word pronounced, and who recognises it when he sees it composed upon the table with the cardboard letters, and who can tell what it means; this child reads. The word which he reads has the same relation to written language that the word which he hears bears to articulate language. Both serve to receive the language transmitted to us by others. So, until the child reads a transmission of ideas from the written word, he does not read.

We may say, if we like, that writing as described is a fact in which the psycho-motor mechanism prevails, while in reading, there enters a work which is purely intellectual. But it is evident how our method for writing prepares for reading, making the difficulties almost imperceptible. Indeed, writing prepares the child to interpret mechanically the union of the letter sounds of which the written word is composed. When a child in our school knows how to write, he knows how to read the sounds of which the word is composed. It should be noticed, however, that when the child composes the words with the movable alphabet, or when he writes, he has time to think about the signs which he must select to form the word. The writing of a word requires a great deal more time than that necessary for reading the same word.

The child who knows how to write, when placed before a word which he must interpret by reading, is silent for a long time, and generally reads the component sounds with the same slowness with which he would have written them. But the sense of the word becomes evident only when it is pronounced clearly and with the phonetic accent. Now, in order to place the phonetic accent the child must recognise the word; that is, he must recognise the idea which the word represents. The intervention of a superior work of the intellect is necessary if he is to read. Because of all this, I proceed in the following way with the exercises in reading, and, as will be evident, I do away entirely with the old-time primer.

I prepare a number of little cards made from ordinary writing-paper. On each of these I write in large clear script some well-known word, one which has already been pronounced many times by the children, and which represents an object actually present or well known to them. If the word refers to an object which is before them, I place this object under the eyes of the child, in order to facilitate his interpretation of the word. I will say, in this connection, the objects used in these writing games are for the most part toys of which we have a great many in the "Children's Houses." Among these toys, are the furnishings of a doll's house, balls, dolls, trees, flocks of sheep, or various animals, tin soldiers, railways, and an infinite variety of simple figures.

If writing serves to correct, or better, to direct and perfect the mechanism of the articulate language of the child, reading serves to help the development of ideas, and relates them to the development of the language. Indeed, writing aids the physiological language and reading aids the social language.

We begin, then, as I have indicated, with the nomenclature, that is, with the reading of names of objects which are well known or present.

There is no question of beginning with words that are easy or difficult, for the child already knows how to read any word; that is, he knows how to read the sounds which compose it. I allow the little one to translate the written word slowly into sounds, and if the interpretation is exact, I limit myself to saying, "Faster." The child reads more quickly the second time, but still often without understanding. I then repeat, "Faster, faster." He reads faster each time, repeating the same accumulation of sounds, and finally the word bursts upon his consciousness. Then he looks upon it as if he recognised a friend, and assumes that air of satisfaction which so often radiates our little ones. This completes the exercise for reading. It is a lesson which goes very rapidly, since it is only presented to a child who is already prepared through writing. Truly, we have buried the tedious and stupid A B C primer side by side with the useless copy-books!

When the child has read the word, he places the explanatory card under the object whose name it bears, and the exercise is finished.

One of our most interesting discoveries was made in the effort to devise a game through which the children might, without effort, learn to read words. We spread out upon one of the large tables a great variety of toys. Each one of them had a corresponding card upon which the name of the toy was written. We folded these little cards and mixed them up in a basket, and the children who knew how to read were allowed to take turns in drawing these cards from the basket. Each child had to carry his card back to his desk, unfold it quietly, and read it mentally, not showing it to those about him. He then had to fold it up again, so that the secret which it contained should remain unknown. Taking the folded card in his hand, he went to the table. He had then to pronounce clearly the name of a toy and present the card to the directress in order that she might verify the word he had spoken. The little card thus became current coin with which he might acquire the toy he had named. For, if he pronounced the word clearly and indicated the correct object, the directress allowed him to take the toy, and to play with it as long as he wished.

When each child had had a turn, the directress called the first child and let him draw a card from another basket. This card he read as soon as he had drawn it. It contained the name of one of his companions who did not yet know how to read, and for that reason could not have a toy. The child who had read the name then offered to his little friend the toy with which he had been playing. We taught the children to present these toys in a gracious and polite way, accompanying the act with a bow. In this way we did away with every idea of class distinction, and inspired the sentiment of kindness toward those who did not possess the same blessings as ourselves. This reading game proceeded in a marvellous way. The contentment of these poor children in possessing even for a little while such beautiful toys can be easily imagined.

But what was my amazement, when the children, having learned to understand the written cards, refused to take the toys! They explained that they did not wish to waste time in playing, and, with a species of insatiable desire, preferred to draw out and read the cards one after another!

I watched them, seeking to understand the secret of these souls, of whose greatness I had been so ignorant! As I stood in meditation among the eager children, the discovery that it was knowledge they loved, and not the silly game, filled me with wonder and made me think of the greatness of the human soul!

We therefore put away the toys, and set about making hundreds of written slips, containing names of children, cities, and objects; and also of colours and qualities known through the sense exercises. We placed these slips in open boxes, which we left where the children could make free use of them. I expected that childish inconstancy would at least show itself in a tendency to pass from one box to another; but no, each child finished emptying the box under his hand before passing to another, being verily insatiable in the desire to read.

Coming into the school one day, I found that the directress had allowed the children to take the tables and chairs out upon the terrace, and was having school in the open air. A number of little ones were playing in the sun, while others were seated in a circle about the tables containing the sandpaper letters and the movable alphabet.

A little apart sat the directress, holding upon her lap a long narrow box full of written slips, and all along the edge of her box were little hands, fishing for the beloved cards. "You may not believe me," said the directress, "but it is more than an hour since we began this, and they are not satisfied yet!" We tried the experiment of bringing balls, and dolls to the children, but without result; such futilities had no power beside the joys of knowledge.

Seeing these surprising results, I had already thought of testing the children with print, and had suggested that the directress print the word under the written word upon a number of slips. But the children forestalled us! There was in the hall a calendar upon which many of the words were printed in clear type, while others were done in Gothic characters. In their mania for reading the children began to look at this calendar, and, to my inexpressible amazement, read not only the print, but the Gothic script.

There therefore remained nothing but the presentation of a book, and I did not feel that any of those available were suited to our method.

The mothers soon had proofs of the progress of their children; finding in the pockets of some of them little slips of paper upon which were written rough notes of marketing done; bread, salt, etc. Our children were making lists of the marketing they did for their mothers! Other mothers told us that their children no longer ran through the streets, but stopped to read the signs over the shops.

A four-year-old boy, educated in a private house by the same method, surprised us in the following way. The child's father was a Deputy, and received many letters. He knew that his son had for two months been taught by means of exercises apt to facilitate the learning of reading and writing, but he had paid slight attention to it, and, indeed, put little faith in the method. One day, as he sat reading, with the boy playing near, a servant entered, and placed upon the table a large number of letters that had just arrived. The little boy turned his attention to these, and holding up each letter read aloud the address. To his father this seemed a veritable miracle.

As to the average time required for learning to read and write, experience would seem to show that, starting from the moment in which the child writes, the passage from such an inferior stage of the graphic language to the superior state of reading averages a fortnight. Security in reading is, however, arrived at much more slowly than perfection in writing. In the greater majority of cases the child who writes beautifully, still reads rather poorly.

Not all children of the same age are at the same point in this matter of reading and writing. We not only do not force a child, but we do not even invite him, or in any way attempt to coax him to do that which he does not wish to do. So it sometimes happens that certain children, not having spontaneously presented themselves for these lessons, are left in peace, and do not know how to read or write.

If the old-time method, which tyrannized over the will of the child and destroyed his spontaneity, does not believe in making a knowledge of written language obligatory before the age of six, much less do we!

I am not ready to decide, without a wider experience, whether the period when the spoken language is fully developed is, in every case, the proper time for beginning to develop the written language.

In any case, almost all of the normal children treated with our method begin to write at four years, and at five know how to read and write, at least as well as children who have finished the first elementary. They could enter the second elementary a year in advance of the time when they are admitted to first.

Games for the Reading of Phrases. As soon as my friends saw that the children could read print, they made me gifts of beautifully illustrated books. Looking through these books of simple fairy lore, I felt sure that the children would not be able to understand them. The teachers, feeling entirely satisfied as to the ability of their pupils, tried to show me I was wrong, having different children read to me, and saying that they read much more perfectly than the children who had finished the second elementary.

I did not, however, allow myself to be deceived, and made two trials. I first had the teacher tell one of the stories to the children while I observed to what extent they were spontaneously interested in it. The attention of the children wandered after a few words. I had forbidden the teacher to recall to order those who did not listen, and thus, little by little, a hum arose in the schoolroom, due to the fact that each child, not caring to listen had returned to his usual occupation.

It was evident that the children, who seemed to read these books with such pleasure, did not take pleasure in the sense, but enjoyed the mechanical ability they had acquired, which consisted in translating the graphic signs into the sounds of a word they recognised. And, indeed, the children did not display the same constancy in the reading of books which they showed toward the written slips, since in the books they met with so many unfamiliar words.

My second test, was to have one of the children read the book to me. I did not interrupt with any of those explanatory remarks by means of which a teacher tries to help the child follow the thread of the story he is reading, saying for example: "Stop a minute. Do you understand? What have you read? You told me how the little boy went to drive in a big carriage, didn't you? Pay attention to what the book says, etc."

I gave the book to a little boy, sat down beside him in a friendly fashion, and when he had read I asked him simply and seriously as one would speak to a friend, "Did you understand what you were reading?" He replied: "No." But the expression of his face seemed to ask an explanation of my demand. In fact, the idea that through the reading of a series of words the complex thoughts of others might be communicated to us, was to be for my children one of the beautiful conquests of the future, a new source of surprise and joy.

The book has recourse to logical language, not to the mechanism of the language. Before the child can understand and enjoy a book, the logical language must be established in him. Between knowing how to read the words, and how to read the sense, of a book there lies the same distance that exists between knowing how to pronounce a word and how to make a speech. I, therefore, stopped the reading from books and waited.

One day, during a free conversation period, four children arose at the same time and with expressions of joy on their faces ran to the blackboard and wrote phrases upon the order of the following:

"Oh, how glad we are that our garden has begun to bloom." It was a great surprise for me, and I was deeply moved. These children had arrived spontaneously at the art of composition, just as they had spontaneously written their first word.

The mechanical preparation was the same, and the phenomenon developed logically. Logical articulate language had, when the time was ripe, provoked the corresponding explosion in written language.

I understood that the time had come when we might proceed to the reading of phrases. I had recourse to the means used by the children; that is, I wrote upon the blackboard, "Do you love me?" The children read it slowly aloud, were silent for a moment as if thinking, then cried out, "Yes! Yes!" I continued to write; "Then make the silence, and watch me." They read this aloud, almost shouting, but had barely finished when a solemn silence began to establish itself, interrupted only by the sounds of the chairs as the children took positions in which they could sit quietly. Thus began between me and them a communication by means of written language, a thing which interested the children intensely. Little by little, they discovered the great quality of writing—that it transmits thought. Whenever I began to write, they fairly trembled in their eagerness to understand what was my meaning without hearing me speak a word.

Indeed, graphic language does not need spoken words. It can only be understood in all its greatness when it is completely isolated from spoken language.

This introduction to reading was followed by the following game, which is greatly enjoyed by the children. Upon a number of cards I wrote long sentences describing certain actions which the children were to carry out; for example, "Close the window blinds; open the front door; then wait a moment, and arrange things as they were at first." "Very politely ask eight of your companions to leave their chairs, and to form in double file in the centre of the room, then have them march forward and back on tiptoe, making no noise." "Ask three of your oldest companions who sing nicely, if they will please come into the centre of the room. Arrange them in a nice row, and sing with them a song that you have selected," etc., etc. As soon as I finished writing, the children seized the cards, and taking them to their seats read them spontaneously with great intensity of attention, and all amid the most complete silence.

I asked then, "Do you understand?" "Yes! Yes!" "Then do what the card tells you," said I, and was delighted to see the children rapidly and accurately follow the chosen action. A great activity, a movement of a new sort, was born in the room. There were those who closed the blinds, and then reopened them; others who made their companions run on tiptoe, or sing; others wrote upon the blackboard, or took certain objects from the cupboards. Surprise and curiosity produced a general silence, and the lesson developed amid the most intense interest. It seemed as if some magic force had gone forth from me stimulating an activity hitherto unknown. This magic was graphic language, the greatest conquest of civilisation.

And how deeply the children understood the importance of it! When I went out, they gathered about me with expressions of gratitude and affection, saying, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for the lesson!"

This has become one of the favourite games: We first establish profound silence, then present a basket containing folded slips, upon each one of which is written a long phrase describing an action. All those children who know how to read may draw a slip, and read it mentally once or twice until they are certain they understand it. They then give the slip back to the directress and set about carrying out the action. Since many of these actions call for the help of the other children who do not know how to read, and since many of them call for the handling and use of the materials, a general activity develops amid marvellous order, while the silence is only interrupted by the sound of little feet running lightly, and by the voices of the children who sing. This is an unexpected revelation of the perfection of spontaneous discipline.

Experience has shown us that composition must precede logical reading, as writing preceded the reading of the word. It has also shown that reading, if it is to teach the child to receive an idea, should be mental and not vocal.

Reading aloud implies the exercise of two mechanical forms of the language—articulate and graphic—and is, therefore, a complex task. Who does not know that a grown person who is to read a paper in public prepares for this by making himself master of the content? Reading aloud is one of the most difficult intellectual actions. The child, therefore, who begins to read by interpreting thought should read mentally. The written language must isolate itself from the articulate, when it rises to the interpretation of logical thought. Indeed, it represents the language which transmits thought at a distance, while the senses and the muscular mechanism are silent. It is a spiritualised language, which puts into communication all men who know how to read.

Education having reached such a point in the "Children's Houses," the entire elementary school must, as a logical consequence, be changed. How to reform the lower grades in the elementary schools, eventually carrying them on according to our methods, is a great question which cannot be discussed here. I can only say that the first elementary would be completely done away with by our infant education, which includes it.

The elementary classes in the future should begin with children such as ours who know how to read and write; children who know how to take care of themselves; how to dress and undress, and to wash themselves; children who are familiar with the rules of good conduct and courtesy, and who are thoroughly disciplined in the highest sense of the term, having developed, and become masters of themselves, through liberty; children who possess, besides a perfect mastery of the articulate language, the ability to read written language in an elementary way, and who begin to enter upon the conquest of logical language.

These children pronounce clearly, write in a firm hand, and are full of grace in their movements. They are the earnest of a humanity grown in the cult of beauty—the infancy of an all-conquering humanity, since they are intelligent and patient observers of their environment, and possess in the form of intellectual liberty the power of spontaneous reasoning.

For such children, we should found an elementary school worthy to receive them and to guide them further along the path of life and of civilisation, a school loyal to the same educational principles of respect for the freedom of the child and for his spontaneous manifestations—principles which shall form the personality of these little men.

Example of writing done with pen, by a child five years. One-fourth reduction.

Translation: "We would like to wish a joyous Easter to the civil engineer Edoardo Talamo and the Princess Maria. We will ask them to bring their pretty children here. Leave it to me: I will write for all. April 7, 1909."

CHAPTER XVIII

Language in Childhood

Graphic language, comprising dictation and reading, contains articulate language in its complete mechanism (auditory channels, central channels, motor channels), and, in the manner of development called forth by my method, is based essentially on articulate language.

Graphic language, therefore, may be considered from two points of view:

(a) That of the conquest of a new language of eminent social importance which adds itself to the articulate language of natural man; and this is the cultural significance which is commonly given to graphic language, which is therefore taught in the schools without any consideration of its relation to spoken language, but solely with the intention of offering to the social being a necessary instrument in his relations with his fellows.

(b) That of the relation between graphic and articulate language and, in this relation, of an eventual possibility of utilising the written language to perfect the spoken: a new consideration upon which I wish to insist and which gives to graphic language a physiological importance.

Moreover, as spoken language is at the same time a natural function of man and an instrument which he utilises for social ends, so written language may be considered in itself, in its formation, as an organic ensemble of new mechanisms which are established in the nervous system, and as an instrument which may be utilised for social ends.

In short, it is a question of giving to written language not only a physiological importance, but also a period of development independent of the high functions which it is destined to perform later.

It seems to me that graphic language bristles with difficulties in its beginning, not only because it has heretofore been taught by irrational methods, but because we have tried to make it perform, as soon as it has been acquired, the high function of teaching the written language which has been fixed by centuries of perfecting in a civilised people.

Think how irrational have been the methods we have used! We have analysed the graphic signs rather than the physiological acts necessary to produce the alphabetical signs; and this without considering that any graphic sign is difficult to achieve, because the visual representation of the signs have no hereditary connection with the motor representations necessary for producing them; as, for example, the auditory representations of the word have with the motor mechanism of the articulate language. It is, therefore, always a difficult thing to provoke a stimulative motor action unless we have already established the movement before the visual representation of the sign is made. It is a difficult thing to arouse an activity that shall produce a motion unless that motion shall have been previously established by practice and by the power of habit.

Thus, for example, the analysis of writing into little straight lines and curves has brought us to present to the child a sign without significance, which therefore does not interest him, and whose representation is incapable of determining a spontaneous motor impulse. The artificial act constituted, therefore, an effort of the will which resulted for the child in rapid exhaustion exhibited in the form of boredom and suffering. To this effort was added the effort of constituting synchronously the muscular associations co-ordinating the movements necessary to the holding and manipulating the instrument of writing.

All sorts of depressing feelings accompanied such efforts and conduced to the production of imperfect and erroneous signs which the teachers had to correct, discouraging the child still more with the constant criticism of the error and of the imperfection of the signs traced. Thus, while the child was urged to make an effort, the teacher depressed rather than revived his psychical forces.

Although such a mistaken course was followed, the graphic language, so painfully learned, was nevertheless to be immediately utilised for social ends; and, still imperfect and immature, was made to do service in the syntactical construction of the language, and in the ideal expression of the superior psychic centres. One must remember that in nature the spoken language is formed gradually; and it is already established in words when the superior psychic centres use these words in what Kussmaul calls dictorium, in the syntactical grammatical formation of language which is necessary to the expression of complex ideas; that is, in the language of the logical mind.

In short the mechanism of language is a necessary antecedent of the higher psychic activities which are to utilise it.

There are, therefore, two periods in the development of language: a lower one which prepares the nervous channel and the central mechanisms which are to put the sensory channels in relation with the motor channels; and a higher one determined by the higher psychic activities which are exteriorized by means of the preformed mechanisms of language.

Thus for example in the scheme which Kussmaul gives on the mechanism of articulate language we must first of all distinguish a sort of cerebral diastaltic arc (representing the pure mechanism of the word), which is established in the first formation of the spoken language. Let E be the ear, and T the motor organs of speech, taken as a whole and here represented by the tongue, A the auditory centre of speech, and M the motor centre. The channels EA and MT are peripheral channels, the former centripetal and the latter centrifugal, and the channel AM is the inter-central channel of association.

The centre A in which reside the auditive images of words may be again subdivided into three, as in the following scheme, viz.: Sound (So), syllables (Sy), and words (W).

That partial centres for sounds and syllables can really be formed, the pathology of language seems to establish, for in some forms of centro-sensory dysphasia, the patients can pronounce only sounds, or at most sounds and syllables.

Small children, too, are, at the beginning, particularly sensitive to simple sounds of language, with which indeed, and especially with s, their mothers caress them and attract their attention; while later the child is sensitive to syllables, with which also the mother caresses him, saying: "ba, ba, punf, tuf!"

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

But for the motor centres also the same thing may be repeated; the child utters at the beginning simple or double sounds, as for example bl, gl, ch, an expression which the mother greets with joy; then distinctly syllabic sounds begin to manifest themselves in the child: ga, ba; and, finally, the dissyllabic word, usually labial: mama.

We say that the spoken language begins with the child when the word pronounced by him signifies an idea; when for example, seeing his mother and recognising her he says "mamma;" and seeing a dog says, "tettè;" and wishing to eat says: "pappa."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But why, when we acknowledge the graphic language as a precious, nay indispensable, instrument of intellectual education, for the reason that it fixes the ideas of men and permits of their analysis and of their assimilation in books, where they remain indelibly written as an ineffaceable memory of words which are therefore always present and by which we can analyse the syntactical structure of the language, why shall we not acknowledge that it is useful in the more humble task of fixing the words which represent perception and of analysing their component sounds?

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

But let us rid ourselves of this prejudice and consider the graphic language in itself, reconstructing its psycho-physiological mechanism. It is far more simple than the psycho-physiological mechanism of the articulate language, and is far more directly accessible to education.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To this end the analysis of speech is necessary. As when we wish to perfect the language we first start children at composition and then pass to grammatical study; and when we wish to perfect the style we first teach to write grammatically and then come to the analysis of style—so when we wish to perfect the speech it is first necessary that the speech exist, and then it is proper to proceed to its analysis. When, therefore, the child speaks, but before the completion of the development of speech which renders it fixed in mechanisms already established, the speech should be analysed with a view to perfecting it.

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

The analysis of the transient is impossible.

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

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

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

The peripheric channels are indicated by heavy lines; the central channels of association by dotted lines; and those referring to association in relation to the development of the heard speech by light lines.

E ear; So auditory centre of sounds; Sy auditory centre of syllables; W auditory centre of word; M motor centre of the articulate speech; T external organs of articulate speech (tongue); H external organs of writing (hand); MC motor centre of writing; VC visual centre of graphic signs; V organ of vision.

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

The triangle VC, MC, So represents the association of three sensations in relation with the analysis of speech.

When the letter is presented to the child and he is made to touch and see it, while it is being named, the centripetal channels ESo; H, MC, So; V, VC, So are acting and when the child is made to name the letter, alone or accompanied by a vowel, the external stimulus acts in V and passes through the channels V, VC, So, M, T; and V, CV, So, Sy, M, T.

When these channels of association have been established by presenting visual stimuli in the graphic sign, the corresponding movements of articulate language can be provoked and studied one by one in their defects; while, by maintaining the visual stimulus of the graphic sign which provokes articulation and accompanying it by the auditory stimulus of the corresponding sound uttered by the teacher, their articulation can be perfected; this articulation is by innate conditions connected with the heard speech; that is, in the course of the pronunciation provoked by the visual stimulus, and during the repetition of the relative movements of the organs of language, the auditory stimulus which is introduced into the exercise contributes to the perfecting of the pronunciation of the isolated or syllabic sounds composing the spoken word.

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

DEFECTS OF LANGUAGE DUE TO LACK OF EDUCATION

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

The normal defects of child language are due to the fact that the complicated muscular agencies of the organs of articulate language do not yet function well and are consequently incapable of reproducing the sound which was the sensory stimulus of a certain innate movement. The association of the movements necessary to the articulation of the spoken words is established little by little. The result is a language made of words with sounds which are imperfect and often lacking (whence incomplete words). Such defects are grouped under the name blæsitas and are especially due to the fact that the child is not yet capable of directing the movements of his tongue. They comprise chiefly: sigmatism or imperfect pronunciation of s; rhotacism or imperfect pronunciation of r; lambdacism or imperfect pronunciation of l; gammacism or imperfect pronunciation, of g; iotacism, defective pronunciation of the gutturals; mogilalia, imperfect pronunciation of the labials, and according to some authors, as Preyer, mogilalia is made to include also the suppression of the first sound of a word.

Some defects of pronunciation which concern the utterance of the vowel sound as well as that of the consonant are due to the fact that the child reproduces perfectly sounds imperfectly heard.

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

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

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

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

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

(a) Exercises of Silence, which prepare the nervous channels of language to receive new stimuli perfectly;

(b) Lessons which consist first of the distinct pronunciation by the teacher of few words (especially of nouns which must be associated with a concrete idea); by this means clear and perfect auditory stimuli of language are started, stimuli which are repeated by the teacher when the child has conceived the idea of the object represented by the word (recognition of the object); finally of the provocation of articulate language on the part of the child who must repeat that word alone aloud, pronouncing its separate sounds;

(c) Exercises in Graphic Language, which analyse the sounds of speech and cause them to be repeated separately in several ways: that is, when the child learns the separate letters of the alphabet and when he composes or writes words, repeating their sounds which he translates separately into composed or written speech;

(d) Gymnastic Exercises, which comprise, as we have seen, both respiratory exercises and those of articulation.

I believe that in the schools of the future the conception will disappear which is beginning to-day of "correcting in the elementary schools" the defects of language; and will be replaced by the more rational one of avoiding them by caring for the development of language in the "Children's Houses"; that is, in the very age in which language is being established in the child.

CHAPTER XIX

Teaching of Numeration; Introduction to Arithmetic

Children of three years already know how to count as far as two or three when they enter our schools. They therefore very easily learn numeration, which consists in counting objects. A dozen different ways may serve toward this end, and daily life presents many opportunities; when the mother says, for instance, "There are two buttons missing from your apron," or "We need three more plates at table."

One of the first means used by me, is that of counting with money. I obtain new money, and if it were possible I should have good reproductions made in cardboard. I have seen such money used in a school for deficients in London.

The making of change is a form of numeration so attractive as to hold the attention of the child. I present the one, two, and four centime pieces and the children, in this way learn to count to ten.

No form of instruction is more practical than that tending to make children familiar with the coins in common use, and no exercise is more useful than that of making change. It is so closely related to daily life that it interests all children intensely.

Having taught numeration in this empiric mode, I pass to more methodical exercises, having as didactic material one of the sets of blocks already used in the education of the senses; namely, the series of ten rods heretofore used for the teaching of length. The shortest of these rods corresponds to a decimetre, the longest to a metre, while the intervening rods are divided into sections a decimetre in length. The sections are painted alternately red and blue.

Some day, when a child has arranged the rods, placing them in order of length, we have him count the red and blue signs, beginning with the smallest piece; that is, one; one, two; one, two, three, etc., always going back to one in the counting of each rod, and starting from the side A. We then have him name the single rods from the shortest to the longest, according to the total number of the sections which each contains, touching the rods at the sides B, on which side the stair ascends. This results in the same numeration as when we counted the longest rod—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Wishing to know the number of rods, we count them from the side A and the same numeration results; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. This correspondence of the three sides of the triangle causes the child to verify his knowledge and as the exercise interests him he repeats it many times.

We now unite to the exercises in numeration the earlier, sensory exercises in which the child recognised the long and short rods. Having mixed the rods upon a carpet, the directress selects one, and showing it to the child, has him count the sections; for example, 5. She then asks him to give her the one next in length. He selects it by his eye, and the directress has him verify his choice by placing the two pieces side by side and by counting their sections. Such exercises may be repeated in great variety and through them the child learns to assign a particular name to each one of the pieces in the long stair. We may now call them piece number one; piece number two, etc., and finally, for brevity, may speak of them in the lessons as one, two, three, etc.

THE NUMBERS AS REPRESENTED BY THE GRAPHIC SIGNS

At this point, if the child already knows how to write, we may present the figures cut in sandpaper and mounted upon cards. In presenting these, the method is the same used in teaching the letters. "This is one." "This is two." "Give me one." "Give me two." "What number is this?" The child traces the number with his finger as he did the letters.

Exercises with Numbers. Association of the graphic sign with the quantity.

I have designed two trays each divided into five little compartments. At the back of each compartment may be placed a card bearing a figure. The figures in the first tray should be 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and in the second, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

The exercise is obvious; it consists in placing within the compartments a number of objects corresponding to the figure indicated upon the card at the back of the compartment. We give the children various objects in order to vary the lesson, but chiefly make use of large wooden pegs so shaped that they will not roll off the desk. We place a number of these before the child whose part is to arrange them in their places, one peg corresponding to the card marked one, etc. When he has finished he takes his tray to the directress that she may verify his work.

The Lesson on Zero. We wait until the child, pointing to the compartment containing the card marked zero, asks, "And what must I put in here?" We then reply, "Nothing; zero is nothing." But often this is not enough. It is necessary to make the child feel what we mean by nothing. To this end we make use of little games which vastly entertain the children. I stand among them, and turning to one of them who has already used this material, I say, "Come, dear, come to me zero times." The child almost always comes to me, and then runs back to his place. "But, my boy, you came one time, and I told you to come zero times." Then he begins to wonder. "But what must I do, then?" "Nothing; zero is nothing." "But how shall I do nothing?" "Don't do anything. You must sit still. You must not come at all, not any times. Zero times. No times at all." I repeat these exercises until the children understand, and they are then, immensely amused at remaining quiet when I call to them to come to me zero times, or to throw me zero kisses. They themselves often cry out, "Zero is nothing! Zero is nothing!"

EXERCISES FOR THE MEMORY OF NUMBERS

When the children recognise the written figure, and when this figure signifies to them the numerical value, I give them the following exercise:

I cut the figures from old calendars and mount them upon slips of paper which are then folded and dropped into a box. The children draw out the slips, carry them still folded, to their seats, where they look at them and refold them, conserving the secret. Then, one by one, or in groups, these children (who are naturally the oldest ones in the class) go to the large table of the directress where groups of various small objects have been placed. Each one selects the quantity of objects corresponding to the number he has drawn. The number, meanwhile, has been left at the child's place, a slip of paper mysteriously folded. The child, therefore, must remember his number not only during the movements which he makes in coming and going, but while he collects his pieces, counting them one by one. The directress may here make interesting individual observations upon the number memory.

When the child has gathered up his objects he arranges them upon his own table, in columns of two, and if the number is uneven, he places the odd piece at the bottom and between the last two objects. The arrangement of the pieces is therefore as follows:—

The crosses represent the objects, while the circle stands for the folded slip containing the figure. Having arranged his objects, the child awaits the verification. The directress comes, opens the slip, reads the number, and counts the pieces.

When we first played this game it often happened that the children took more objects than were called for upon the card, and this was not always because they did not remember the number, but arose from a mania for the having the greatest number of objects. A little of that instinctive greediness, which is common to primitive and uncultured man. The directress seeks to explain to the children that it is useless to have all those things upon the desk, and that the point of the game lies in taking the exact number of objects called for.

Little by little they enter into this idea, but not so easily as one might suppose. It is a real effort of self-denial which holds the child within the set limit, and makes him take, for example, only two of the objects placed at his disposal, while he sees others taking more. I therefore consider this game more an exercise of will power than of numeration. The child who has the zero, should not move from his place when he sees all his companions rising and taking freely of the objects which are inaccessible to him. Many times zero falls to the lot of a child who knows how to count perfectly, and who would experience great pleasure in accumulating and arranging a fine group of objects in the proper order upon his table, and in awaiting with security the teacher's verification.

It is most interesting to study the expressions upon the faces of those who possess zero. The individual differences which result are almost a revelation of the "character" of each one. Some remain impassive, assuming a bold front in order to hide the pain of the disappointment; others show this disappointment by involuntary gestures. Still others cannot hide the smile which is called forth by the singular situation in which they find themselves, and which will make their friends curious. There are little ones who follow every movement of their companions with a look of desire, almost of envy, while others show instant acceptance of the situation. No less interesting are the expressions with which they confess to the holding of the zero, when asked during the verification, "and you, you haven't taken anything?" "I have zero." "It is zero." These are the usual words, but the expressive face, the tone of the voice, show widely varying sentiments. Rare, indeed, are those who seem to give with pleasure the explanation of an extraordinary fact. The greater number either look unhappy or merely resigned.

We therefore give lessons upon the meaning of the game, saying, "It is hard to keep the zero secret. Fold the paper tightly and don't let it slip away. It is the most difficult of all." Indeed, after awhile, the very difficulty of remaining quiet appeals to the children, and when they open the slip marked zero it can be seen that they are content to keep the secret.

ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION FROM ONE TO TWENTY:
MULTIPLICATION AND DIVISION

The didactic material which we use for the teaching of the first arithmetical operations is the same already used for numeration; that is, the rods graduated as to length which, arranged on the scale of the metre, contain the first idea of the decimal system.

The rods, as I have said, have come to be called by the numbers which they represent; one, two, three, etc. They are arranged in order of length, which is also in order of numeration.

The first exercise consists in trying to put the shorter pieces together in such a way as to form tens. The most simple way of doing this is to take successively the shortest rods, from one up, and place them at the end of the corresponding long rods from nine down. This may be accompanied by the commands, "Take one and add it to nine; take two and add it to eight; take three and add it to seven; take four and add it to six." In this way we make four rods equal to ten. There remains the five, but, turning this upon its head (in the long sense), it passes from one end of the ten to the other, and thus makes clear the fact that two times five makes ten.

These exercises are repeated and little by little the child is taught the more technical language; nine plus one equals ten, eight plus two equals ten, seven plus three equals ten, six plus four equals ten, and for the five, which remains, two times five equals ten. At last, if he can write, we teach the signs plus and equals and times. Then this is what we see in the neat note-books of our little ones:

When all this is well learned and has been put upon the paper with great pleasure by the children, we call their attention to the work which is done when the pieces grouped together to form tens are taken apart, and put back in their original positions. From the ten last formed we take away four and six remains; from the next we take away three and seven remains; from the next, two and eight remains; from the last, we take away one and nine remains. Speaking of this properly we say, ten less four equals six; ten less three equals seven; ten less two equals eight; ten less one equals nine.

In regard to the remaining five, it is the half of ten, and by cutting the long rod in two, that is dividing ten by two, we would have five; ten divided by two equals five. The written record of all this reads:

Once the children have mastered this exercise they multiply it spontaneously. Can we make three in two ways? We place the one after the two and then write, in order that we may remember what we have done, 2 + 1 = 3. Can we make two rods equal to number four? 3 + 1 = 4, and 4 - 3 = 1; 4 - 1 = 3. Rod number two in its relation to rod number four is treated as was five in relation to ten; that is, we turn it over and show that it is contained in four exactly two times: 4 ÷ 2 = 2; 2 × 2 = 4. Another problem: let us see with how many rods we can play this same game. We can do it with three and six; and with four and eight; that is,

At this point we find that the cubes with which we played the number memory games are of help:

From this arrangement, one sees at once which are the numbers which can be divided by two—all those which have not an odd cube at the bottom. These are the even numbers, because they can be arranged in pairs, two by two; and the division by two is easy, all that is necessary being to separate the two lines of twos that stand one under the other. Counting the cubes of each file we have the quotient. To recompose the primitive number we need only reassemble the two files thus 2 × 3 = 6. All this is not difficult for children of five years.

The repetition soon becomes monotonous, but the exercises may be most easily changed, taking again the set of long rods, and instead of placing rod number one after nine, place it after ten. In the same way, place two after nine, and three after eight. In this way we make rods of a greater length than ten; lengths which we must learn to name eleven, twelve, thirteen, etc., as far as twenty. The little cubes, too, may be used to fix these higher numbers.

Having learned the operations through ten, we proceed with no difficulty to twenty. The one difficulty lies in the decimal numbers which require certain lessons.

LESSONS ON DECIMALS: ARITHMETICAL CALCULATIONS
BEYOND TEN

The necessary didactic material consists of a number of square cards upon which the figure ten is printed in large type, and of other rectangular cards, half the size of the square, and containing the single numbers from one to nine. We place the numbers in a line; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Then, having no more numbers, we must begin over again and take the 1 again. This 1 is like that section in the set of rods which, in rod number 10, extends beyond nine. Counting along the stair as far as nine, there remains this one section which, as there are no more numbers, we again designate as 1; but this is a higher 1 than the first, and to distinguish it from the first we put near it a zero, a sign which means nothing. Here then is 10. Covering the zero with the separate rectangular number cards in the order of their succession we see formed: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. These numbers are composed by adding to rod number 10, first rod number 1, then 2, then 3, etc., until we finally add rod number 9 to rod number 10, thus obtaining a very long rod, which, when its alternating red and blue sections are counted, gives us nineteen.

The directress may then show to the child the cards, giving the number 16, and he may place rod 6 after rod 10. She then takes away the card bearing 6, and places over the zero the card bearing the figure 8, whereupon the child takes away rod 6 and replaces it with rod 8, thus making 18. Each of these acts may be recorded thus: 10 + 6 = 16; 10 + 8 = 18, etc. We proceed in the same way to subtraction.

When the number itself begins to have a clear meaning to the child, the combinations are made upon one long card, arranging the rectangular cards bearing the nine figures upon the two columns of numbers shown in the figures A and B.

Upon the card A we superimpose upon the zero of the second 10, the rectangular card bearing the 1: and under this the one bearing two, etc. Thus while the one of the ten remains the same the numbers to the right proceed from zero to nine, thus:

In card B the applications are more complex. The cards are superimposed in numerical progression by tens.

Almost all our children count to 100, a number which was given to them in response to the curiosity they showed in regard to learning it.

I do not believe that this phase of the teaching needs further illustrations. Each teacher may multiply the practical exercises in the arithmetical operations, using simple objects which the children can readily handle and divide.

CHAPTER XX

Sequence of Exercises

In the practical application of the method it is helpful to know the sequence, or the various series, of exercises which must be presented to the child successively.

In the first edition of my book there was clearly indicated a progression for each exercise; but in the "Children's Houses" we began contemporaneously with the most varied exercises; and it develops that there exist grades in the presentation of the material in its entirety. These grades have, since the first publication of the book, become clearly defined through experience in the "Children's Houses."

SEQUENCE AND GRADES IN THE PRESENTATION OF MATERIAL
AND IN THE EXERCISES

First Grade

As soon as the child comes to the school he may be given the following exercises:

Moving the seats, in silence (practical life).

Lacing, buttoning, hooking, etc.

The cylinders (sense exercises).

Among these the most useful exercise is that of the cylinders (solid insets). The child here begins to fix his attention. He makes his first comparison, his first selection, in which he exercises judgment. Therefore he exercises his intelligence.

Among these exercises with the solid insets, there exists the following progression from easy to difficult:

(a) The cylinders in which the pieces are of the same height and of decreasing diameter.

(b) The cylinders decreasing in all dimensions.

(c) Those decreasing only in height.

Second Grade

Exercises of Practical Life. To rise and be seated in silence. To walk on the line.

Sense Exercises. Material dealing with dimensions. The Long Stair. The prisms, or Big Stair. The cubes. Here the child makes exercises in the recognition of dimensions as he did in the cylinders but under a very different aspect. The objects are much larger. The differences much more evident than they were in the preceding exercises, but here, only the eye of the child recognises the differences and controls the errors. In the preceding exercises, the errors were mechanically revealed to the child by the didactic material itself. The impossibility of placing the objects in order in the block in any other than their respective spaces gives this control. Finally, while in the preceding exercises the child makes much more simple movements (being seated he places little objects in order with his hands), in these new exercises he accomplishes movements which are decidedly more complex and difficult and makes small muscular efforts. He does this by moving from the table to the carpet, rises, kneels, carries heavy objects.

We notice that the child continues to be confused between the two last pieces in the growing scale, being for a long time unconscious of such an error after he has learned to put the other pieces in correct order. Indeed the difference between these pieces being throughout the varying dimensions the same for all, the relative difference diminishes with the increasing size of the pieces themselves. For example, the little cube which has a base of 2 centimetres is double the size, as to base, of the smallest cube which has a base of 1 centimetre, while the largest cube having a base of 10 centimetres, differs by barely 1/10 from the base of the cube next it in the series (the one of 9 centimetres base).

Thus it would seem that, theoretically, in such exercises we should begin with the smallest piece. We can, indeed, do this with the material through which size and length are taught. But we cannot do so with the cubes, which must be arranged as a little "tower." This column of blocks must always have as its base the largest cube.

The children, attracted above all by the tower, begin very early to play with it. Thus we often see very little children playing with the tower, happy in believing that they have constructed it, when they have inadvertently used the next to the largest cube as the base. But when the child, repeating the exercise, corrects himself of his own accord, in a permanent fashion, we may be certain that his eye has become trained to perceive even the slightest differences between the pieces.

In the three systems of blocks through which dimensions are taught that of length has pieces differing from each other by 10 centimetres, while in the other two sets, the pieces differ only 1 centimetre. Theoretically it would seem that the long rods should be the first to attract the attention and to exclude errors. This, however, is not the case. The children are attracted by this set of blocks, but they commit the greatest number of errors in using it, and only after they have for a long time eliminated every error in constructing the other two sets, do they succeed in arranging the Long Stair perfectly. This may then be considered as the most difficult among the series through which dimensions are taught.

Arrived at this point in his education, the child is capable of fixing his attention, with interest, upon the thermic and tactile stimuli.

The progression in the sense development is not, therefore, in actual practice identical with the theoretical progression which psychometry indicates in the study of its subjects. Nor does it follow the progression which physiology and anatomy indicate in the description of the relations of the sense organs.

In fact, the tactile sense is the primitive sense; the organ of touch is the most simple and the most widely diffused. But it is easy to explain how the most simple sensations, the least complex organs, are not the first through which to attract the attention in a didactic presentation of sense stimuli.

Therefore, when the education of the attention has been begun, we may present to the child the rough and smooth surfaces (following certain thermic exercises described elsewhere in the book).

These exercises, if presented at the proper time, interest the children immensely. It is to be remembered that these games are of the greatest importance in the method, because upon them, in union with the exercises for the movement of the hand, which we introduce later, we base the acquisition of writing.

Together with the two series of sense exercises described above, we may begin what we call the "pairing of the colours," that is, the recognition of the identity of two colours. This is the first exercise of the chromatic sense.

Here, also, it is only the eye of the child that intervenes in the judgment, as it was with the exercises in dimension. This first colour exercise is easy, but the child must already have acquired a certain grade of education of the attention through preceding exercises, if he is to repeat this one with interest.

Meanwhile, the child has heard music; has walked on the line, while the directress played a rhythmic march. Little by little he has learned to accompany the music spontaneously with certain movements. This of course necessitates the repetition of the same music. (To acquire the sense of rhythm the repetition of the same exercise is necessary, as in all forms of education dealing with spontaneous activity.)

The exercises in silence are also repeated.

Third Grade

Exercises of Practical Life. The children wash themselves, dress and undress themselves, dust the tables, learn to handle various objects, etc.

Sense Exercises. We now introduce the child to the recognition of gradations of stimuli (tactile gradations, chromatic, etc.), allowing him to exercise himself freely.

We begin to present the stimuli for the sense of hearing (sounds, noises), and also the baric stimuli (the little tablets differing in weight).

Contemporaneously with the gradations we may present the plane geometric insets. Here begins the education of the movement of the hand in following the contours of the insets, an exercise which, together with the other and contemporaneous one of the recognition of tactile stimuli in gradation, prepares for writing.

The series of cards bearing the geometric forms, we give after the child recognises perfectly the same forms in the wooden insets. These cards serve to prepare for the abstract signs of which writing consists. The child learns to recognise a delineated form, and after all the preceding exercises have formed within him an ordered and intelligent personality, they may be considered the bridge by which he passes from the sense exercises to writing, from the preparation, to the actual entrance into instruction.

Fourth Grade

Exercises of Practical Life. The children set and clear the table for luncheon. They learn to put a room in order. They are now taught the most minute care of their persons in the making of the toilet. (How to brush their teeth, to clean their nails, etc.)

They have learned, through the rhythmic exercises on the line, to walk with perfect freedom and balance.

They know how to control and direct their own movements (how to make the silence,—how to move various objects without dropping or breaking them and without making a noise).

Sense Exercises. In this stage we repeat all the sense exercises. In addition we introduce the recognition of musical notes by the help of the series of duplicate bells.

Exercises Related to Writing / Design / The child passes to the plane geometric insets in metal. He has already co-ordinated the movements necessary to follow the contours. Here he no longer follows them with his finger, but with a pencil, leaving the double sign upon a sheet of paper. Then he fills in the figures with coloured pencils, holding the pencil as he will later hold the pen in writing.

Contemporaneously the child is taught to recognise and touch some of the letters of the alphabet made in sandpaper.

Exercises in Arithmetic. At this point, repeating the sense exercises, we present the Long Stair with a different aim from that with which it has been used up to the present time. We have the child count the different pieces, according to the blue and red sections, beginning with the rod consisting of one section and continuing through that composed of ten sections. We continue such exercises and give other more complicated ones.

In Design we pass from the outlines of the geometric insets to such outlined figures as the practice of four years has established and which will be published as models in design.

These have an educational importance, and represent in their content and in their gradations one of the most carefully studied details of the method.

They serve as a means for the continuation of the sense education and help the child to observe his surroundings. They thus add to his intellectual refinement, and, as regards writing, they prepare for the high and low strokes. After such practice it will be easy for the child to make high or low letters, and this will do away with the ruled note-books such as are used in Italy in the various elementary classes.

In the acquiring of the use of written language we go as far as the knowledge of the letters of the alphabet, and of composition with the movable alphabet.

In Arithmetic, as far as a knowledge of the figures. The child places the corresponding figures beside the number of blue and red sections on each rod of the Long Stair.

The children now take the exercise with the wooden pegs.

Also the games which consist in placing under the figures, on the table, a corresponding number of coloured counters. These are arranged in columns of twos, thus making the question of odd and even numbers clear. (This arrangement is taken from Séguin.)

Fifth Grade

We continue the preceding exercises. We begin more complicated rhythmic exercises.

In design we begin:

(a) The use of water colours.

(b) Free drawing from nature (flowers, etc.).

Composition of words and phrases with the movable alphabet.

(a) Spontaneous writing of words and phrases.

(b) Reading from slips prepared by the directress.

We continue the arithmetical operations which we began with the Long Stair.

The children at this stage present most interesting differences of development. They fairly run toward instruction, and order their intellectual growth in a way that is remarkable.

This joyous growth is what we so rejoice in, as we watch in these children, humanity, growing in the spirit according to its own deep laws. And only he who experiments can say how great may be the harvest from the sowing of such seed.

CHAPTER XXI

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 that 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 Maccheroni) 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 our little wooden frames, still another is dusting. Some are seated at the tables, some on rugs on the floor. There are muffled sounds of objects lightly moved about, of 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 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 one is a delight to all. Very often he finds ready 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 and 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 teacher write orders on the blackboard, which were obeyed joyously by the children. Not only the teachers, but anyone who asks the pupils 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 teachers who had followed my course of lectures. These examinations were practical, and, accordingly, groups of children were put at the disposition of the teachers being examined, who, according to the subject drawn by 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, and 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 Pujols, 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 timidity, for their bright eyes, for their happy, free aspect, for the cordiality of their invitations to look at their work, for the way in which they take visitors about and explain matters to them. These things make us feel that we are in the presence of the masters of the house; and the fervour with which they throw their arms around the 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.