THE MONTESSORI METHOD - online book

Scientific Methods As Applied To Child Education In "the Children's Houses"

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	CRITICAL CONSIDERATION                19 not ask for an abdominal support, but demands shorter hours and better working conditions, in order that he may be able to lead a healthy life like other men. And when, during this same social epoch, we find that the children in our schoolrooms are working amid un­hygienic conditions, so poorly adapted to normal develop­ment that even the skeleton becomes deformed, our re­sponse to this terrible revelation is an orthopedic bench. It is much as if we offered to the miner the abdominal brace, or arsenic to the underfed workman. Some time ago a woman, believing me to be in sympathy with all scientific innovations concerning the school, showed me with evident satisfaction a corset or trace for pupils. She had invented this and felt that it would com­plete the work of the bench. Surgery has still other means for the treatment of spinal curvature. I might mention orthopedic instru­ments, braces, and a method of periodically suspending the child, by the head or shoulders, in such a fashion that the weight of the body stretches and thus straightens the vertebral column. In the school, the orthopedic instru­ment in the shape of the desk is in great favour; to-day someone proposes the brace — one step farther and it will be suggested that we give the scholars a systematic course in the suspension method! All this is the logical consequence of a material applica­tion of the methods of science to the decadent school. Evidently the rational method of combating spinal curva­ture in the pupils, is to change the form of their work — so that they shall no longer be obliged to remain for so many hours a day in a harmful position. It is a con­quest of liberty which the school needs, not the mechanism of a bench.