Montessori Elementary Materials - English Restoration --- ## Chapter 01 - Grammar **THE TRANSITION FROM THE MECHANICAL TO THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE** In the "Children's Houses" we had reached a stage of development where the children could write words and even sentences. They read little slips on which were written different actions which they were to execute, thus demonstrating that they had understood them. The material for the development of writing and reading consisted of two alphabets: a larger one with vowels and consonants in different colors, and a smaller one with all the letters in one color. (In English, to diminish the phonetic difficulties of the language, combinations of vowels and consonants, known as phonograms, are used. The phonograms with few exceptions have constant sounds and little attention is paid to the teaching of the separate values of the different letters: not until the child has built up his rules inductively does he realize the meaning of separate vowel symbols.) However, the actual amount of progress made was not very precisely ascertained. We could be sure only that the children had acquired the mechanical technique of\[4\] writing and reading and were on the way to a greater intellectual development along these lines. Their progress, however extensive it may have been, could be called little more than a foundation for their next step in advance, the elementary school. What beyond all question was accomplished with the little child in the first steps of our method was to establish the psycho-motor mechanism of the written word by a slow process of maturation such as takes place in the natural growth of articulate speech; in other words, by methodically exercising psycho-motor paths. Later on the child's mind is able to make use of the successive operations performed with the written language which has been thus built up by the child as a matter of mechanical execution (writing) and to a certain extent of intelligent interpretation (reading). Normally this is an established fact at the age of five. When the child begins to think and to make use of the written language to express his rudimentary thinking, he is ready for elementary work; and this fitness is a question not of age or other incidental circumstance but of mental maturity. We have said, of course, that the children stayed in the "Children's House" up to the age of seven; nevertheless they learned to write, to count, to read, and even to do a certain amount of simple composition. It is clear, accordingly, that they had gone some distance in the elementary grade as regards both age and educational development. However, what they had actually accomplished beyond the mechanical technique of writing was more or less difficult to estimate. We can now say that our later experiments have not only clarified this situation, but enabled us to take the children much farther along than\[5\] before. This only proves, however, that on beginning elementary grade work we did not depart from the "Children's House" idea; on the contrary we returned to it to give distinct realization to the nebulous hopes with which our first course concluded. Hence the "Children's House" and the lower grades are not two distinct things as is the case with the Fröbel Kindergarten and the ordinary primary school—in fact, they are one and the same thing, the continuation of an identical process. Let us return then to the "Children's House" and consider the child of five and one-half years. To-day in those "Children's Houses" which have kept up with the improvements in our method the child is actually started on his elementary education. From the second alphabet of the "Children's House" we go on to a third alphabet. Here the movable letters are a great deal smaller and are executed in model hand-writing. There are twenty specimens of each letter, whereas formerly there were but four; furthermore, there are three complete alphabets, one white, one black, and one red. There are, therefore, sixty copies of each letter of the alphabet. We include also all the punctuation marks: period, comma, accents (for Italian), apostrophe, interrogation and exclamation points. The letters are made of plain glazed paper. The uses of this alphabet are many; so before we stop to examine them let us look somewhat ahead. Everybody has recognized the naturalness of the exercise, used in the "Children's House," where the children placed a card bearing the name of an object on the object referred to. This was the first lesson in reading. We could see that the child knew how to read as soon as he was able to identify the object indicated on the card. In schools all over\[6\] the world a similar procedure would, I imagine, be considered logical. I suppose that in all the schools where the objective method is used much the same thing is done; and this is found to be not a hindrance but a help to the child in learning the names of objects. As regards the teaching of the noun, accordingly, we have been using methods already in use—the objective method, with practical exercises. But why should we restrict such methods to the noun? Is the noun not just as truly a *part of speech* as the adjective, or the verb? If there is a method by which the knowledge of a noun is made easy, may there not be similar ways of facilitating the learning of all the other parts of speech (article, adjective, verb, pronoun, adverb, interjection, conjunction, and preposition)? When a slip with the interpreted word is placed on the object corresponding to it, the children are actually distinguishing the noun from all the other parts of speech. They are learning intuitively to define it. The first step has thus been taken into the realm of grammar. But if this "reading" has brought the child directly into word *classification*, the transition has not been for him so abrupt as might at first appear. The child has built *all* his words with the movable alphabet, and he has, in addition, *written* them. He has thus traversed a two-fold preparatory exercise involving, first, the analysis of the sounds and, second, the analysis of the words in their meaning. In fact, we have seen that, as the child reads, it is his discovery of the tonic accent that brings him to recognize the word. The child has begun to analyze not only the sounds and accent but also the form of the word.[\[1\]](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42869/pg42869-images.html#Footnote_1_1) \[7\] How absurd it would seem to suggest a study of phonology and morphology in a nursery with four-year-old children as investigators! Yet our children have accomplished this very thing! The analysis was the means of attaining the word. It was what made the child able to write without effort. Why should such a procedure be useful for single words and not so for connected discourse? Proceeding to the classification of words by distinguishing the noun from all other words, we have really advanced into the analysis of connected speech, just as truly as, by having the sand-papered letters "touched" and the word pronounced, we took the first step into the analysis of words. We have only to carry the process farther and perhaps we shall succeed in getting the analysis of whole sentences, just as we succeeded in getting at the composition of words—discovering meanwhile a method which will prove efficacious in leading the child to write his thoughts more perfectly than would seem possible at such a tender age. For some time, then, we have been actually in the field of grammar. It is a question simply of continuing along the same path. The undertaking may indeed seem hazardous. Never mind! That "awful grammar," that horrible bugaboo, no less terrible than the frightful method, once in use, of learning to read and write, may perhaps become a delightful exercise, a loving guide to lead the child along pleasant pathways to the *discovery* of things he has *actually performed*. Yes, the child will suddenly find himself, one day, in possession of a little composition, a little "work of art," that has issued from\[8\] his own pen! And he will be as happy over it as he was when for the first time words were formed by his tiny hands! How different grammar will seem to the young pupil, if, instead of being the cruel assassin that tears the sentence to pieces so that nothing can be understood, it becomes the amiable and indispensable help to "the construction of connected discourse"! It used to be so easy to say: "The sentence is written! Please leave it alone!" Why put asunder what God has joined? Why take away from a sentence its meaning, the very thing which gave it life? Why make of it a mere mass of senseless words? Why spoil something already perfect just for the annoyance of plunging into an analysis which has no apparent purpose? Indeed, to impose upon people who can already read the task of reducing every word to its primal sounds, would be to demand of them an effort of will so gigantic that only a professional philologist could apply himself to it with the necessary diligence, and then only because he has his own particular interests and aims involved in such work. Yet the four-year-old child, when he passes from those meaningless sounds to the composition of a whole, which corresponds to an idea and represents a useful and wonderful conquest, is just as attentive as the philologist and perhaps even more enthusiastic. He will find the same joy in grammar, if, starting from analyses, it gains progressively in significance, acquiring, step by step, a greater interest, working finally up to a climax, up to the moment, that is, when the finished sentence is before him, its meaning clear and *felt* in its subtlest essences. The child has created something beautiful, full grown and perfect at its birth, not now to be tampered with by anybody! \[9\] The analysis of sounds which, in our method, leads to spontaneous writing, is not, to be sure, adapted to all ages. It is when the child is four or four and a half, that he shows the characteristically childlike passion for such work, which keeps him at it longer than at any other age, and leads him to develop perfection in the mechanical aspect of writing. Similarly the analytical study of parts of speech, the passionate lingering over words, is not for children of all ages. It is the children between five and seven who are the *word-lovers*. It is they who show a predisposition toward such study. Their undeveloped minds can not yet grasp a complete idea with distinctness. They do, however, understand *words*. And they may be entirely carried away by their ecstatic, their tireless interest in the *parts* of speech. It is true that our whole method was born of heresy. The first departure from orthodoxy was in holding that the child can best learn to write between the ages of four and five. We are now constrained to advance another heretical proposition: children should begin the study of grammar between the ages of five and a half and seven and a half, or eight! The idea that analysis must be preceded by construction was a matter of mere prejudice. Only things produced by nature must be analyzed before they can be understood. The violet, for instance, is found perfect in nature. We have to tear off the petals, cut the flower into sections to see how it grew. But in making an artificial violet we do just the opposite. We prepare the stems piece by piece; then we work out the petals, cutting, coloring, and ironing them one by one. The preparation of the stamens, even of the glue with which we put the whole together, is a distinct process. A few simple-minded people,\[10\] with a gift for light manual labor, take unbounded delight in these single operations, these wonderfully varied steps which all converge to the creation of a pretty flower; the beauty of which depends on the amount of patience and skill applied to the work on the individual parts. Analysis, furthermore, is involved quite as much in building as in taking to pieces. The building of a house is an analytical process. The stones are treated one by one from cellar to roof. The person who puts the house together knows it in its minutest details and has a far more accurate idea of its construction than the man who tears it down. This is true, first, because the process of construction lasts much longer than that of demolition: more time is spent on the study of the different parts. But besides this, the builder has a point of view different from that of the man who is destroying. The sensation of seeing a harmonious whole fall into meaningless bits has nothing in common with the alternating impulses of hope, surprise or satisfaction which come to a workman as he sees his edifice slowly assuming its destined form. For these and still other reasons, the child, when interested in words at a certain age, can utilize grammar to good purpose, dwelling analytically upon the various parts of speech according as the processes of his inner spiritual growth determine. In this way he comes to own his language perfectly, and to acquire some appreciation of its qualities and power. Our grammar is not a book. The nouns (names), which the child was to place on the objects they referred to as soon as he understood their meaning, were written on cards. Similarly the words, belonging to all the other parts of speech, are written on cards. These cards are all\[11\] of the same dimensions: oblongs (5 × 3-1/2 cmm.) of different colors: black for the noun; tan for the article; brown for the adjective; red for the verb; pink for the adverb; violet for the preposition; yellow for the conjunction; blue for the interjection. These cards go in special boxes, eight in number. The first box has two compartments simply; the second, however, three; the third, four; and so on down to the eighth, which is divided into nine. One wall in each section is somewhat higher than the others. This is to provide space for a card with a title describing the contents of the section. It bears, that is, the name of the relative part of speech. The title-card, furthermore, is of the same color as that used for the part of speech to which it refers. The teacher is expected to arrange these boxes so as to provide for the study of two or more parts of speech. However, our experiments have enabled us to make the exercises very specific in character; so that the teacher has at her disposal not only a thoroughly prepared material but also something to facilitate her work and to check up the accuracy of it. ### FOOTNOTE: [\[1\]](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42869/pg42869-images.html#FNanchor_1_1) The process of learning to read has been more fully set forth in The Montessori Method; the child at first pronounces the sounds represented by the individual letters (phonograms), without understanding what they mean. As he repeats the word several times he comes to read more rapidly. Eventually he discovers the tonic accent of the word, which is then immediately identified.