HOME AND EDUCATION
Hunt, Caroline L. & Follette, Belle Case La
HOME AND EDUCATION The home it the real teal of government, and the Wise Men of all nations bring their gifts to the cradle. Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT "A Montessori...
...Her originality, humor and sympathy give a spicy touch to her writing, which in no way lessens our serious consideration of her really profound and earnest discussion of the Montessori principles...
...The Boston Transcript says: "The sequence of the story is finely preserved, and even as in life Mrs...
...America has had a few books of this kind as memorials to Mary Lyon, Maria Mitchell, Frances E. Willard, Alice Freeman Palmer, but never has there been a 'Life' that appeals more universally than this of Mrs...
...We no longer send our children for their outdoor exercise bidding them walk along the street holding someone's hand...
...C. L. The Life of Ellen H. Richards, By Caroline L. Hunt, Whit-comb & Barrows, Boston...
...The scientific application of the principle of self-education will not discard what our schools are already doing to that end, but it will eliminate much that is radically wrong in our stereotyped system;—for one thing the forced attention to subjects that do not interest and so destroy the desire for school...
...The author, as the title of her book suggests, has especially emphasized the adaptation of the principle to the American home...
...There is not a preachy sentence in the book but every page carries the message of purpose and usefulness...
...that the prime cause of "cold" or "chill" is not really exposure to cold but to the over-heated and confined air of rooms, factories and meeting places.—Leonard Hill in Popular Science Monthly...
...It is a book which should be widely read and from which much pleasure and profit is sure to be derived...
...Then, as has happened before in the progress of education, the training of the deficient revealed the best way to develop the normal young of the human race...
...He must do it, himself, or it is never done...
...MONTESSORI, who approached the educational problems from the standpoint of the scientist and investigator rather than teacher, has made a demonstration that is to revolutionize our ideas of child training and our methods of education...
...A Montessori Mother...
...Ellen H. Richards...
...Thus far Montessori has made a demonstration only with children from three to six...
...With this thought in mind, I feel I cannot urge too strongly upon every person interested in the development of children, or even more broadly,—of humanity, to get this book, not from the library, but to keep at hand for reference and discussion...
...And we have a "supervisor" in our public playgrounds only to see that children are rightly started in their use of different games, not at all to play every game with them...
...The great question of discipline solves itself...
...The freedom accorded them is absolute, the only rule being that they must not annoy others...
...It occurred again and again until it became a certainty...
...It is a singular record of severe and often disheartening obstacles overcome by patient purpose and ceaseless effort, inspired and supported by a breadth of thought and outlook which was distinctly in advance of the period in which she was working...
...And this is from the Journal of Education: "The life and letters of noted men have been frequent contributions to literature, but all too rare have been their companion pieces, the life of women...
...The idea is as old as mankind...
...Herein is the marked contrast to the kindergarten as frequently conducted in America, in which the child is dependent on the teacher for inspiration and stimulation often resulting in over-stimulation and fatigue or, if he does not respond to the teacher's leadership, in listlessness and boredom...
...Who can question the outcome...
...Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT "A Montessori Mother" THOSE WHO have read much about Montessori without gaining a clear conception of her philosophy of education, should read A Montessori Mother, by Dorothy Can-field Fisher...
...All the children are happily absorbed in some profitable undertaking...
...But Montessori regards this as only an incident of the better control and use of all the faculties, mental and physical...
...which absorbs the richest part of their lives without making them productive or creative...
...Richards strengthened and uplifted all those with whom she came in contact, so even now she 'being dead yet speaketh.' " The American Library Association Booklist makes this comment: "Of interest not only to friends and co-workers, but to all who enjoy the recital of courageous and continuous work in the service of humanity along very practical lines...
...Her interest in this unfortunate class of children led her to give up her practice as a physician to become director of an institute for the feeble minded...
...The story has the warmth, the dramatic interest, the power of Mrs...
...From "A Montessori Mother...
...This is but an imperfect outline of the author's interpretation of the Montessori philosophy of education, which she gathered from careful, personal observation of the school and from close association with Montessori, herself...
...Richards' spirit and personality...
...Price $1.50: postpaid, $1.62...
...As a young medical student she made children's diseases a specialty, and she became attached as assistant doctor to the Phychiatric Clinic at Rome...
...We admit the validity of this theory in physical life...
...Richards' friends who might have been selected to do the work, is evidence of her special qualification...
...What would I not give to have had at the beginning of my children's upbringing such a guide to the fundamental principle underlying their best growth and development...
...but by no means taking his hand in hers and leading him constantly along a fixed path, which she or her pedagogical superiors have laid out beforehand, and into which every childish foot must be either coaxed or coerced...
...Montessori was the first woman to obtain the degree of doctor of medicine from the University of Rome...
...Her life as told by Caroline L. Hunt presents a complete picture of her personality as seen by her friends and as revealed by herself in her diary and letters...
...She spent a year in its preparation...
...In a recent number of Science, H. P. Talbot of the department of chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says of Miss Hunt's book: "Miss Hunt has prepared a most readable and interesting narrative...
...She is said to be working on the older children's problem...
...Her contribution to a great cause was as definite and her influence as dominant...
...It will make individuality, absorbing interest, growth, skill, development of the sense of responsibility, the standards of educational progress...
...Courtesy Henry Holt & Co MARIA MONTESSORI The first woman to obtain the degree of doctor of medicine from the University of Rome Her interest in deficient children led her to give up her practice as a physician to become director of an institute for the feeble-minded...
...For years she worked on the problem of their education...
...It is nature's way, yet Montessori has as truly revolutionized and improved education, as hygiene has revolutionized and improved medicine, as science has revolutionized and improved agriculture...
...They move about freely, converse together, lie down if they wish when tired...
...It is a truth, frequently reiterated in pedagogy...
...The Home Economics Journal for December says: "The book will appeal to lovers of biography as well as to those who had a personal or a professional interest in the subject...
...Then one day a supposedly deficient child, trained by her methods, passed the examinations of a public school with greater ease and higher marks than normal children prepared in the old way...
...I MAINTAIN that the bracing effect of cold is of supreme importance to health and happiness, that we become soft and flabby and less resistant to the attacks of infecting bacteria in the winter not because of the cold but because of our excessive precautions to preserve ourselves from cold...
...The following is from the New York Evening Post: "Nowadays when we find upon the campus of a conservative university in the East lofty buildings dedicated to home economics, it is well to remember how much the movement owes to the initiative of one woman, Mrs...
...An Excellent Gift Book I N SELECTING BOOKS for gifts, The Life of Ellen H. Richards, by Caroline L. Hunt, should have a strong appeal to our readers...
...If we can possibly manage it, we turn them loose with sand pile, jumping rope, hoops, balls and bats and other such stimuli for vigorous body-developing exercise as their natural instincts demand...
...Ellen H. Richards, who was as distinctly the woman of her time as was Mary Lyon or Frances E. Willard...
...Much stress has been placed on the ease with which children taught in the Montessori school learn to read and write...
...At that time deficient children were kept under the same roof as the insane...
...It will attract the young readers who will profit by the message of a life of earnest purpose and remarkable accomplishments...
...AN OBSERVATION of the typical, joyfully busy child of the Montessori school furnishes more than sufficient proof that he enjoys acquiring mental as well as physical agility and strength and that he asks nothing better than a fair, unhindered chance at his undertaking...
...The teacher should be the all-wise observer of the child's natural activity, giving him such occasional quick, light-handed guidance as he may for a moment need, providing for him, in the shape of ingenious apparatus, stimuli for his intellectual life and material which enables him to correct his own mistakes...
...This is strikingly true of her girlhood and young womanhood, when she was a pioneer in her undertakings with respect both to her own education and development and that of her fellow-women...
...for another the unprofitable hours spent in recitation...
...Each child gives himself the severest sort of self-discipline by his interest in his various undertakings...
...You know the sympathy, the understanding, the love Miss Hunt had for this great woman...
...So all along the school years productive and useful labor must be a recognized part of education...
...In the Montessori home school, the little tots of six and seven clean the room and serve the lunch...
...The fact that Miss Hunt was chosen from the large number of Mrs...
...THE CENTRAL IDEA of the Montessori system, on which every and each smallest bit of apparatus, every detail of technique rests solidly, is a full recognition of the fact that no human being can be educated by any one else...
...The Montessori child, analogously, is allowed and encouraged to use an almost endless variety of stimuli to his natural instinct for vigorous mind-developing, intellectual exercise...
...She has done this well...
...With convincing frankness she draws on her personal experience to illustrate our characteristic weakness in dealing with our children...
...By Dorothy Canfield Fisher...
...There is also something radically wrong with our home training, which fails to develop joy in work or repose in leisure, which fosters a constant craving for amusement and does not develop a true sense of responsibility...
...The principles of education she developed for this unfortunate class are pointing a new way for the development and education of normal children...
...Whatever its merits, there is something radically wrong in our system of education which, from kindergarten through the professional course, keeps the young under continuous strain, without keeping them really interested from within...
...Henry Holt & Co., New York...
...But not all in the same undertaking...
Vol. 4 • December 1912 • No. 49
