Maria Montessori on the Spiritual Foundation For Teaching (and Parenting)

From The Secret of Childhood, 1936, pp 115-123

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The teacher [and wherever teacher is mentioned here, consider also that it implies parent] must not imagine that he can prepare himself for this office merely by study, by becoming a man of culture. He must before all else cultivate in himself certain aptitudes of a moral order.

The crucial point of the whole question is the manner in which he considers the child, and this cannot depend on external factors as though it demanded merely a theoretical knowledge of child nature or of modes of teaching and correction.

Here what we wish to emphasize is the fact that the teacher must prepare himself inwardly. He must examine himself methodically in order to discover certain definite defects that may become obstacles in bis treatment of the child. To discover defects that have become part and parcel of his consciousness requires help and instruction just as we need another to observe and tell us what lies at the back of our eye.

In this sense the teacher needs to be “initiated” into his or her inner preparation. He is too preoccupied with bad tendencies in the child, how to correct his undesirable actions, or the danger to his soul left by the residues of original sin.

Instead he should begin by seeking out his own defects, and such tendencies in himself as are not good. First let him remove the beam that is in his own eye, then shall he see more clearly to remove the mote that is in the child’s. This inner preparation is something specific; it is not the same as a general seeking for perfection as in the case of members of religious communities. It is not necessary to become “perfect,” free from every weakness, in order to become a teacher. Indeed it is possible for those continually concerned with the perfection of their inner life to remain unconscious of the defects that prevent them from understanding the child. That is why it is necessary to learn, to be guided, to be trained to become teachers of little children.

We have in ourselves tendencies that are not good and which flourish like weeds in a field. (Original sin.) These tendencies are many; they fall into seven groups, known of old as the Seven Deadly Sins.

All deadly sin tends to separate us from the child; for the child, compared to us, is not only purer but has mysterious qualities, which we adults as a rule cannot perceive, but in which we must believe with faith; for Jesus spoke of them so clearly and insistently that all the Evangelists recorded His words: “Unless ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

That which the teacher must seek is to be able to see the child as Jesus saw him. It is with this endeavour, thus defined and delimited, that we wish to deal. The true teacher is the man who rids himself of the inner obstacles which make the child incomprehensible to him; he is not simply the man who is ever striving to become better. Our instruction to teachers consists in showing them what inner dispositions they need to correct, just as a doctor might point out the particular and definite disease that is weakening or threatening a physical organ.

Here, then, is some positive help.

The sin that arises within us and prevents us from understanding the child is Anger.

But since no deadly sin acts alone, but always in combination or company with another (just as Adam at once joined Eve when sin made its first appearance), so Anger summons and combines with a sin of more noble appearance and hence more diabolical, Pride.

The evil tendencies which we have classified as the Seven Deadly Sins, may be corrected in two ways. One is interior: the individual once he is clearly aware of his defects seeks of his own will, with every effort, to fight against them and rid himself of them, by the help of the Grace of God.

The other is a social corrective and is found in the external environment. It can be defind as a resistance opposed by external forms to the outer manifestations of our evil tendencies, thus impeding their development.

This counteractive effort of external forms has much influence. It is, one might say, the chief reminder of the existence in ourselves of moral defect, and in many cases it is this external reminder that leads us to reflect upon ourselves, and thence to work vigorously and earnestly for our inward purification.

Let us consider the Seven Deadly Sins. Our Pride is mitigated by other people’s opinion of us; our Avarice by the circumstances in which we live; Anger by the reaction of the strong; Sloth by the necessity of working for a living; Lust by the customs of society; Greed by the limited possibilities of obtaining more than we need; Envy by the necessity of conserving an appearance of dignity. But these external factors are a continual and very salutary warning.

The social check, in short, forms a good foundation for the support of our moral equilibrium. We do not, however, feel the same purity when our actions are moulded by the resistance of society as when they are performed in obedience to God. On the contrary, while the necessity of a voluntary correction of recognised errors meets in our soul with docile acceptance, we adapt ourselves less easily to the humiliating situation of accepting the control of others. We even feel more humiliated by such enforced compliance than by the error itself. When it is necessary to hold ourselves in check, when we cannot do otherwise, an instinct prompts us to uphold our worldly dignity by making it appear that we chose the inevitable ourselves. The little deceit of saying “I don’t like it” of something beyond our reach is one of the commonest moral pretences.

We meet the resistance by a small fiction, but this means that we are offering battle, not entering upon a way of perfection.

The result is that, as in all warfare, organisation soon becomes plainly desirable; individual tendencies find refuge in collective tendencies.

Persons with the same defect are led instinctively to seek its triumph through union. They build, as it were, fortifications against the hosts that oppose their capital vices.

No one for instance will dare to say that an equitable distribution of wealth would displease the rich because they are grasping and slothful. But it will be said that such a distribution of wealth is beneficial to all and is a necessity of social progress, and then we shall find even many rich men declaring that they are resigned to it for the common good. We have an instinctive tendency to mask our sins by protestations of lofty and necessary duties, just as in the war a strip of ground dug with trenches or filled with death-dealing devices was camouflaged as a flowery meadow.

The weaker the external forces that oppose our defects the more time and ease we have to build the screens to camouflage our defences.

By pausing on these reflections, we come to realise that we are more attached to our vices than we think; we come to see how easy it is for the devil to creep in, teaching us to hide subconsciously even from ourselves.

In this we are defending, not our life, but our deadly sins. It is a mask we are only too ready to put on, calling it “necessity,” “duty,” “the common good” and so on; and from all this we find it daily harder to free ourselves.

Now the teacher, or in general anyone, wishing to educate children must purge himself of that state of error that puts him in a position of falsity towards the child. The prevalent defect must be clearly defined; and here we are speaking not of one sin, but of a compost of two mortal sins closely allied — pride and anger.

Anger is truly the essential sin; pride follows to lend it a pleasing camouflage. Pride cloaks the personality of the grown-up in a series of robes which make it look pleasing and even entitled to respect.

Now anger is one of those sins that are held in check by the strong and determined resistance of others. Anger is a manifestation which a man finds it hard to accept from others. Hence it is kept prisoner when confronted by strength. The man who speedily finds himself in the humiliating position of being forced to retreat becomes ashamed of his anger.

We therefore find a real outlet in meeting persons unable to defend themselves or to understand, such as children who believe everything they are told. Children not only soon forget our offences, but feel guilty of all which we accuse them. They are like the holy disciple of St. Francis, who burst into tears thinking himself a hypocrite, because a priest told him so.

We would have the teacher here reflect upon the very serious effect of such conditions on the child’s life. It is only the child’s reason that fails to realise the injustice; his spirit feels it and becomes oppressed or even deformed. Childish reactions then appear, as expressions of an unconscious defence. Timidity, lying, caprice, frequent tears without apparent cause, sleeplessness, every form of exaggerated fear — obscure things like these represent unconscious defensive states in the little child, whose intelligence is not yet able to grasp his real relation to the grown-up.

But anger does not always mean physical violence.

The crude, primitive impulse usually understood by this word may lead to complex manifestations. The man of greater psychological maturity masks and complicates his inner states of sin.

In fact, anger in its simple form comes out only as a reaction to open resistance by the child. But in the presence of more obscure expressions of the child soul, anger and pride fuse together in a complex whole which assumes that precise, quiet, and respectable shape known as tyranny.

Here we have an oppression that is not disputed, placing the tyrannous individual in an impregnable fortress of recognised authority. The adult is in the right simply because he is adult. To question this would be like attacking an established and sacred form of sovereignty. The tyrant in primitive societies used to be considered a delegate of God. But, for the child, the grown-up is God Himself. The thing is beyond dispute. Indeed, the only being who could dispute it would be the child and he remains silent. He adapts himself to everything, believes everything, forgives everything. When cuffed, he does not retaliate, and he willingly asks the angry grown-up to pardon him, forgetting even to ask wherein he has offended.

Yet the child does occasionally act in self-defence, but his defence is hardly ever a direct and intentional reply to the action of the adult. It is either a vital defence of his psychic integrity, or else an unconscious reaction of the oppressed spirit.

Only as the child grows older does he begin to direct his reactions against the tyranny itself; but, then, the adult finds justificatory reasons wherewith to entrench himself stil more firmly behind his camouflage, and succeeds sometimes in convincing even the child that such tyranny is for his good.

“Respect” is on one side only; the weak respecting the strong.

It is thought legitimate for the adult to “offend” the child. He can judge the child, or speak ill of him, and does it openly, even so as to hurt his feelings.

The child’s needs are directed or suppressed by the adult at will. A protest from the child is considered insubordination that it would be dangerous to tolerate.

This is a form of government on a primitive model, when the subjects have only to pay their taxes without question. There have been peoples who believed that every good was secured to them by the beneficence of their sovereign, and in the same way the populace of children thinks that it owes all to the adult. Or rather, it is the adult who believes this. His camouflage of creator is organised. He in his pride believes that he creates in the child all that he is. It is the adult who makes the child intelligent, good, and religious; that is, provides him with the means he will need for communication with his environment, with men, and with God. This is a fatiguing task. The tyrant’s self-abnegation completes his tyranny. Where is the tyrant who ever confessed to sacrificing his subjects?

The preparation our method demands of the teacher is that he should examine himself, and purge himself of his sins of tyranny, he must tear down that ancient complex of pride and anger that unconsciously encrusts his heart; strip himself of pride and anger and become humble; this first of all; then re-clothe himself in charity. These are the mental dispositions he has to acquire. This is the central point of balance without which it is impossible to proceed. This is his “training,” its starting point, and its goal.

We do not mean that he must approve all the child’s acts or refrain from judging him, or that nothing has to be done to develop his intelligence or feelings. Quite the contrary; it must not be forgotten that the aim is to educate, to become a real teacher to the child.

But first comes an act of humility, the rooting-out of a prejudice embedded in our hearts; just as the priest before going up to the altar must recite his Confiteor.

So, and not otherwise.

We do not hold that the child should be denied such help as education can give him, but that there must be a radical change in our own inner state, which prevents us as adults from understanding him.