The Montessori Method and Catholicism

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 6, 11 February 1925, Page 45

The Montessori Method and Catholicism

(Edwin M. Standing, B-. Sc., in tile Irish Bosnry.)

(Continued from last week.)

How comes it then, that a number of those who have taken up her educational work, have become Catholics? It has sometimes been put down to the magnetic influence of i her remarkable personality. But Ido not J think this is so. For it is one of the dis- ( languishing principles of her method that ( the personality of ' the teacher must not be . i allowed to have undue sway. The teacher < mustexcept at certain intervals — as far ns 1 possible efface himself. He should not form 1 the constant focus of the pupils’ attention, - ] as is the case with many teachers ; lie .is rather the almost impersonal agent . that ; brings the child into contact with the mysteries of knowledge, and puts him in touch with the means for his own self-development. If one compares the function and methodof a Catholic priest with that of a Protestant clergyman, at their respective services, one can realise, by analogy, what is meant. The Catholic priest performs bis high office with an almost impersonal self-effacement, whereas the personality of the Protestant or Free Church pastor, with his sermon and extempore prayers, is strikingly prominent by contrast. In fact, what is often called the success of the service largely depends on him. The comparison we have just used, suggests what —apart from any supernatural influences most natural and reasonable explanation of the tendency we have noticed, -Viz., the tendency among a number of those who have gone deeply into the principles of the Montessori method to gravitate towards Catholicism. ’ We may state it briefly thus; There exists a striking parallelism between the method of a Montessori school —-speaking from a purely human point of view—the method of the Catholic Church; though of course we hasten to add— one refers to the natural, the other to the supernatural plane. _ Without going into detail, we might mention the following points of resemblance: , (1) With Regard to the Use Made of External Objects. A Piotestant, especially if he belongs to one of the Puritan sects, on entering a Catholic church is generally astonished—very often appalled—by the number and variety of material objects be sees around him. He cannot believe that this preoccupation with “externals,” with images, candles, rosaries, etc., is accompanied by real spirituality. He believes these things to be wholly unnecessary, .in fact,, distracting and misleading. Very similar, though on a different plane, is the impression made by a Montessori ■ school. on a teacher of . the old school. He - the children “fiddling about” (as,- he ''puts it) with blocks, cards, bells, colors, beads, buttons, etc., and he finds it hard to believe that any real intellectual activity and development is going on.

(2) Freedom of Movement, and Individual if-f. Choice, , • ’■ M :n.*v Except when Mass is being’ celebrated',' the individuals in a Catholic church move aboutfreely; from one part of the building to another, each choosing the particular kind of devotion which answers to his own particular needs, ‘So in a . Montessori schoolroom the children are not all obliged to do the same thing at the same time except during the Silence Gamebut each is left free, in a prepared environment, to choose that occupation, to which he is drawn’ at the'time by -, a certain inner necessity. (3) Through Externals to Something Beyond. It is often scornfully alleged by Protestants that Catholics worship images, in the sense that they bow down to senseless blocks of wood and stone. But, of course, every Catholic knows that these external images and objects are used to assist the mind in passing, as. it -were through them, to something immaterial and spiritual beyond. The writer has often heard schoolmasters scornfully condemn, in an exactly similar way, the use made by Madame Montessori of the cubes, cards, beads, rods, and other objects in her Didactic Material. And this contemptuous criticism is equally unjustified, and-for the same reason. For the chief use of these external objects in the -Montessori Apparatus is to lead the mind of the child through them to something immaterial beyond—to abstract ideas and concepts. As Doctor Montessori herself says: —• . “He (the child) does not stop at the object, and at the external purpose, .but all. serves to lift the mind to higher planes. ... In fact the child acquires qualities which have no direct relation to the material means of development which are offered to him, and one of the most remarkable of these qualities is to feel the detachment from those' means, which instead of attracting the child’s mind in such a way as to hold it bound down to them, strengthens it and helps it to fly higher. ■' The material really serves the mind in, its ascent, like the steps of Jacob’s ladder.” , ■ Another»passage , i (taken* like like foregoing, from an Address >at the Annual Meeting of- the Superiors of Convent Schools held iff London, 1921) brings out-; this . point still more clearly ~ . < v *‘ , “Another form of detachment-is their (i.e., , the children’s) tendency towards abstraction. ; After having counted with’objects for a long time, they like to do mental . calculations: , and. they, - of-their .own accord, propose exl amples in arithmetic ; which .. require a long v work because .of the hug6;’|nAinbprs. . /, i They read words little , cards containing a wpid objeot, oi j a little toy which represents it; but vefj 7 soon they pass' over the toys ask onlj for words, never satiated by the .'.great mini

bers which they accumulate, and never tired of reading them. ; “This has led us to liken these children’s ■ minds to an aeroplane which requires the ground on which to rest for a short distance, rind needs to be furnished with gasoline, but only so that it may arise and fly. These Ascensions, due to work accomplished with ■suclr attention and constancy, remind ns •outlie,’ joy felt by the souls in Dante’s Purgatory, while they are undergoing the suffering necessary for their purification and for their ascent to heaven; and the teacher, a silent and gentle director, but at the same time strong and sure in pointing out the path which leads towards perfection, is like the angel who guards, helps, and comforts.” '{lie port of the 25 th Annual Conference of Catholic Colleges, p. 108 and 110.) • Many educationalists — practice at any rate, if not in theory—are apt to ignore the fact that we are not pure spirits (like the angels), but that we are composed of body as well as soul. If we were pure spirits wo should be able to understand intellectual relationships with the immediate and instantaneous comprehension of the angelic mind. But the human intellect, as St. Thomas reminds us, is in potentia and works, [discursively.” '• “There .are,” he says, “three degrees of the cognitive faculty. There is, first, the act of the corporeal organ, i.e., the sense, which- knows particulars; secondly, the power which is neither the act of a bodily , organ nor conjoined with corporeal matter, and such is the intellect of the angels, the object of which is form as .it exists, without matter and thirdly, there is the human intellect, which stands midway between the other two, which is, the form of a body, although ,not the act of a bodily organ.” . . . “We "must. - therefore admit that our intellect material things by abstracting from phantasms; and;that by material things so considered it becomes in some manner able to understand immaterial things.” (St. Thomas Aqiuuas. Pars Prima, p. 216. Thos. Baker’s edition.) We cannot, at this moment, follow St. Thomas further in this analysis; but enough has been said to - indicate that there is profound ; philosophical justification for a method of education, which not only carefully trains and sharpens * the senses, hut also realises at every turn the close relationship especially in early childhood — the sensible and supersensible forms of knowledge. To sum up, then; there is no cause for .• either Protestants or Catholics to be alarmed, on religious' grounds, at ‘the, introduction of the Montessori method., Indeed one of the most striking qualities of the method is just this, that it is free from any religious tendency. •' It can be used with equal effect by professors of any religion or none at all; but, of course, Catholicism can make better ;’ ; use “of • it than any other, because it has more truth behind it than any other, s' (To be concluded.)