Children's House

“ It is not very long ago that little beds for children were first made; among all the innumerable tasteless, superfluous, and extravagant objects of commerce, let us see what things are intended for the child. No washstands, no sofas, no tables, no brushes. Among all the many houses, there is not one house for him and his like, and only rich and fortunate children have even a room of their own, more or less a place of exile. ”

“ We would most of us rather button on our babies’ aprons, tie their bibs, feed them, than lead them into the physical independence that comes from doing these things themselves. We wish children to be obedient, but instead of establishing principles of good in their minds which they will follow freely, if we only give them a chance, we command, and expect unreasoning obedience to our injustice.
A Children’s House in every home will be a place where the mother is imbued with the spirit of the investigator. She watches her children, asking herself why they act along certain lines. ”

“ So soon as a child-house is built and education seen to begin in earliest babyhood, so soon as we begin to plan a beautiful and delicately adjusted environment for our children, in which line and colour and sound and touch are all made avenues of easy unconscious learning, we shall find that there is no sharp break between "home" and "school." In the baby-garden the baby will learn many things, and never know it. In the kindergarten the little child will learn many things, and never know it. ”

“ It is not astonishing, perhaps, that two children, modern children in particular, and a nursery-maid can fill to overflowing a small London house, but it is astonishing how demoralizing a thing it is. A visiting child to people who have children of their own means nothing, beyond the changing from one room to another of some particular child, or the putting up of an extra bed, or perhaps the joy supreme to some child of sleeping in something that is not a real bed. ”

“ If this method stimulated to action the sleeping mind of a deficient child, might it not save time and energy in the teaching of normal children, she asked herself. At that time, the Good Building Association of Rome was tearing down the squalid, disease-filled houses of the poor of the San Lorenzo Quarter and putting up in their places hygienic model tenements. Dr. Montessori arranged to have the children of each tenement gathered in [11] one room of the basement, where large, free spaces, didactic apparatus, hot meals, and gardens would make it a Children’s House. ”

“ The young folks themselves should take the lead in this matter. A home is not merely a place with four walls where people meet to eat and drink and sleep securely beneath a roof. Nay, boys and girls, a house is reared to be a home—the center where a family may gather into one; to be a serene retreat where the tenderest affections may find rest; where love may have a dwelling place, and the amenities of life gain ample scope; where parents and children may press one another heart to heart ”

“ Oh, there had been fine times in this old house then: family festivals and hospitalities, little girls dancing in and out, Augusta coming and going, gay dresses hanging in his study at night, Christmas shopping and secrets and smothered laughter on the stairs. When a man had lovely children in his house, fragrant and happy, full of pretty fancies and generous impulses, why couldn't he keep them? ”

“ In the growing discontent with our present methods of household service, while we waver between long-held prejudice, old and dear, and the irresistible pressure of new conditions, it is worth while to weigh well the relation between this present method of house-service and our present method of child-culture.
The home is the place in which we rear young children. It is also the place in which we perform certain kinds of labour, mainly cooking, cleaning, and sewing. ”

“ The first step of the housekeeping powers was to choose the least agreeable and least available room in the house for the children’s nursery, and to fit it up with all the old, cracked, rickety furniture a neighboring auction-shop could afford, and then to keep them in it. Now everybody knows that to bring up children to be upright, true, generous, and religious needs so much discipline, so much restraint and correction, and so many rules and regulations, that it is all that the parents can carry out, and all the children can bear. ”

“ So we build for the adult only, and small legs toil painfully up our stairs and fall more painfully down them.
But the moment we begin to address ourselves to the needs of children as a class, the result is different. In the school-house all the seats are for children, except "teacher's chair"; in the kindergarten the tiny chairs and tables are perfectly appropriate; in the playground all the appointments are child-size. "What do you expect!" protests the perplexed parent. "You say yourself, I cannot build my house child-size. Do you expect me to add a child-size house in the back yard? ”

“ Moreover, even if the teacher be secured, we have not at home the material advantages open to us in the specially prepared place for children.
A house or range of apartments for little children could be made perfectly safe,—which is more than the home is. From the pins on the carpet, which baby puts in his mouth, the stairs he falls down, the windows he falls out of and the fire he falls into, to the doors to jam the little fingers and the corners and furniture he bumps himself upon, "the home" is full of danger to the child. Why should a baby be surrounded with these superfluous evils? ”

“ Sometimes a little tired one, wearied from weakness, lies still watching the blue scroll on the ceiling, or trying to make out what all the pink-cheeked and powdered ladies are doing upon the frescoes of the old-fashioned walls.
Each child has its cot to itself, and besides those in the house myriads of children are brought each year, by their mothers, to be seen by the doctors and nurses. ”

“ It is a sublime concept of which, as yet, [Pg 70] few think. And the socialised home of the future, living, provident, kindly; educator and comforter; is the true and worthy home of those human mates who wish to better the species, and to send the race forward triumphant into the eternity of life!
RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE "CHILDREN'S HOUSES" The Roman Association of Good Building hereby establishes within its tenement house number, a "Children's House," in which may be gathered together all children under common school age, belonging to the families of the tenants. ”

“ As a further development of the Montessori group activities we see, in imagination, in every community a municipal Children’s House. Here, children of all classes, ages, and degrees of intellectual growth might meet, freely selecting from a large variety of materials for mental and constructive development those which they most need. Also, we see them selecting their own social plane, finding help and inspiration in collective work with other children. ”

“ She leads instead of ruling. She will teach her children physical independence as soon as they can toddle. To know how to dress and undress, to [24] bathe, to look quickly over a room to see if it is in order, to open and close doors and move little chairs, tables, and toys quietly, to care for plants and pets—these are simple physical exercises which help to keep children free and good. She will provide her Children’s House with materials for sense-training. She will lead her children by simple, logical steps into preparation for early mastery of reading and writing. ”

“ In that room every bright and pretty thing should be gathered, and certainly nothing more quickly attracts the attention of children than a choice collection of flowers. To find these all about the house, but especially in the nursery,—their own peculiar domain,—secures a taste for them far more surely than to see them kept exclusively in the green-house, or in rooms set apart for their culture and nothing more. ”

“ Human nature will continue to be human nature, and boys will continue to be boys. Youth will long, and naturally so, for variety and amusement. The house in which parents never unbend in sympathy with their children’s longing for a little brightness and jollity, where work goes on in unretrieved monotony, and home means only a place to sleep and eat in—such a home sends its boys and girls to the city before they are panoplied to meet its temptations ”

“ The Montessori House of the Children is a place of more unusual development of group activities among little children than we have realized. There is a larger opportunity for making children into little citizens than in almost any other scheme of education.
We have thought that the present practice of the kindergarten, in which group activities are organized and directed by the kindergartner, gives little children the opportunity for the development of the social instinct which they so much need. ”

“ They are modeling the seals at the Cliff House (for this chances to be a California kindergarten) , and a couple of two-year-olds, who have strayed into this retreat, not because there was any room for them here, but because there wasn't any room for them anywhere else, are slapping their lumps of clay with all their might, and then rolling it into caterpillars and snakes. This last is not very educational, you say, but "virtue kindles at the touch of joy," and some lasting good must be born out of the rational happiness that surrounds even the youngest babies in the kindergarten. ”

“ The best results with the doll's house are obtained if the children are allowed to furnish it themselves, with the teacher's advice and help, rather than to find it completely equipped and therefore merely a "plaything" of the sort that children have less use for because they can do little with it. An empty house presents exciting possibilities, and perhaps for the first time these little girls look with seeing eyes at the home furnishings, for they have wall paper to select, curtains and rugs to make, and indeed no end of things to do. ”

“ The adequate care of a child's play-life will involve, in addition to the trained intelligence of the parents, provision for space in the house and also outdoors, willingness to subordinate our peace and our pleasure to the child's play at times, a reasonable though not necessarily expensive provision of play materials, attention to the character of the plays and playmates. The home will not lose its harmony and beauty if it is filled with playing children. Its function has to do with their development rather than with the preservation of chairs. ”

“ Children suffer not only from the number of presents they receive, but from that over-crowding of modern rooms that so 178 often makes it necessary to use the school-room and nurseries as an outlet for the overflow of the house. ”

“ As for the furniture, we ought to buy two long tables and some kindergarten chairs. Then we ought to furnish one upstairs room with about four little beds and the rest of the things that go in a bed room. Then we would have a place for any of the children that weren’t feeling very well. There is a nice large yard behind the house where they could play in summer or even in winter when the weather wasn’t too cold. ”

“ The essence of the system is that somewhere in the country, houses are built, or suitable houses rented, in which the children are cared for in small groups. There are from eight to twelve children in one house—that is, such a number as are found in an ordinary large family. Each house is managed by a childless couple of the superior working class, the man being free to go to his work, while the woman devotes her whole time to the children. ”

“ To those who for any reason prefer, or are compelled by circumstances, to pursue the profession of private house-servant, it will, however, be of inestimable advantage to have their children taken out of the dirt and danger, and placed in proper conditions, while the mother follows her profession at home. ”

“ There should likewise be a room about fifteen feet square, for the purpose of teaching the children in classes, which may be formed at one end of the large room: this is absolutely necessary. As the master and mistress should live on the premises, a small house, containing three or four rooms, should be provided for them. The reason for their living on the premises is, that the children should be allowed to bring their dinners with them, as this will keep them out of the streets; and, indeed, of those who do go home to dinner, many will return in a very short time ”

“ A school-house should be made a place of the most pleasurable resort and agreeable associations to children, but certain it is that in no wise can this be the case where the great hickory, thong, leather strap, or bridle-rein meets, as it enters the school-house, the child’s eye as it does the eye of the visitor, reminding one, as it must the other, of entering the presence of the old plantation overseer in waiting for his victim. ”

“ This transformation can be helped by the training of the present, by casting aside the withered foliage which now covers the budding possibilities of life.
The house must once more become a home for the souls of children, not for their bodies alone. For such homes to be formed, that in their turn will mould children, the children must be given back to the home. Instead of the [Pg 164] study preparation at home for the school taking up, as it now does, the best part of a child's life, the school must get the smaller part, the home the larger part. ”