Iqra Montessori Teacher Training DHA

IMI proudly announces the "Summer Camp For Junior Kids"
age between 2 to 10.
Quranic Verses / Virtuous all religions
Rhymes / Manners
Phonetic (English Basic Level)
Alphabets
Play Time
Cartoons & Movies
Multimedia
Air Condition Class Room
Classes starts from 15th June to 15th July at 11:00 Am to 4:00 Pm.
IQRA MONTESSORI
65C, 11th Commercial Street, Behind Nadra Office, DHA Phase II Extension, Karachi.
Ph # 02135898203 , 0334-0034590

IMI proudly announces the "Summer Camp For Junior Kids"
age between 2 to 10.
Quranic Verses / Virtuous all religions
Rhymes / Manners
Phonetic (English Basic Level)
Alphabets
Play Time
Cartoons & Movies
Multimedia
Air Condition Class Room
Classes starts from 15th June to 15th July at 11:00 Am to 4:00 Pm.
IQRA MONTESSORI
65C, 11th Commercial Street, Behind Nadra Office, DHA Phase II Extension, Karachi.
Ph # 02135898203 , 0334-0034590

Articles

Dr. Maria Montessori, the world-famous Educator, stated in a Press Conference:

'My life has been spent in the research of truth. I have scrutinized human nature at its origins, both in the East and in the West, through the study of the children and, though it is forty years now since I began my work, childhood seems to be an inexhaustible source of revelations and - let me say it - of hope. I have seen that as far as the child is concerned, all humanity is one. All children talk, no matter what their race or the circumstances of their family, more or less at the same age; they all walk, change their teeth etc. at certain determined periods of their life. In other areas too, especially in the psychic field, they are just as similar, just as susceptible. Children are the constructors of men, whom they build, taking from the environment language, religious customs and the peculiarities, not only of the race, not only of the nation, but even of the special district in which they develop.

Childhood constructs from what it finds. If this is poor, the construction is also poor. As far as civilization is concerned, the child is at the stage of the food-gatherers. In order to build himself, he has to take, by chance, whatever he finds in the environment. The child is the forgotten citizen.

And yet, if Statesmen and Educationists once came to realize the terrific force that there is in childhood for good or for evil, I feel that they would give this priority above everything else. All problems of humanity depend on Man himself and, if Man is disregarded in his construction, the problems will never be solved. No child is a Bolshevik or Fascist or a Democrat; they all become what circumstances of the environment make them.

In our days, in spite of the terrible lessons of two world wars, the times ahead loom as dark with threat as they never did in the past. I feel strongly that another tack has to be tried, besides the economical and the ideological ones. It is the study of Man. Not the adult man (...) Man must be cultivated from the beginning of his life when the great powers of nature are at work. Then there is (...) hope of a better construction, of a better understanding (...).

The strength of the ideas in the adult, even if this construction is unconscious, is due to the child and not to the adult. There are societies that promote peace; societies that promote a better understanding between the (...) races, Committees of Nations seeking to establish a charter acceptable to all and the adult is always the same. No matter how many treaties are signed, agreements reached, this disharmony bursts out here and there and threatens the world with new catastrophes. I know, of course, there is the economic problem which has to be solved, both of the world as one unit as well as of your own country [India, ed.] which is just beginning to stand on its own feet. I know also of the UNESCO that is trying to re-establish the basis and is seeking the material means for installing a democratic type of education all over the world, but the ideological differences remain - differences of customs and so many other differences impossible to eliminate. I do not say that one should cease efforts which are all aiming at the same thing, but I feel that something else ought to be tried; that, instead of trying to eliminate differences, one should give greater attention to cultivate what is common. As I said previously, it is the child in its subconscious period who constructs the personalities that, once set, are very difficult to change, but if a scientific study of Man were made so as to take advantage of these forces, perhaps harmony could be reached more easily than by using only the means previously mentioned.

If a scientific study were made of the child, I feel certain that it would be possible to construct a type of humanity in which the differences would be much smaller. I refer not only to small children but to children during all the periods of growth. At different ages the child constructs different items of the human personality. Anthropological studies show that for the body there are set periods at which this or that part achieves completion, which, once set, remains unaltered. Psychically speaking the same thing is true (...).

In my new effort to illustrate the contribution of a better humanity or society, I have asked the Association Montessori International to organize a Congress in San Remo, Italy. The congress will take place from the 7-14 November* on the theme 'Man's Formation in World Reconstruction' and I aim to invite all those interested in peace to take part in it. I feel the urgency that all forces should be united and used to avert from humanity the repetition of these catastrophes which become ever more terrible.

To this reconstruction of Man, of Humanity, vitally based on Childhood, I invite your cooperation, and I should be very grateful if you would send this communique to the Press of your country and cooperate with me in this effort.'

*The 8th International Montessori Congress did not take place on the date mentioned, but was held from 22-29 August, 1949. The title of the Congress was La Formazione dell'Uomo nella Ricostruzione Mondiale [Man's Formation in World Reconstruction].

The Child in a State of Chaos

Let us consider the three- or four-year-old child, as yet unaffected by the factors which will create in him internal discipline. Three characteristics exist side by side, and can be easily recognized by the help of a simple description.

The voluntary movements are disordered. I do not mean the intention of the movements, but the movements themselves: fundamental co-ordination is lacking. This symptom, which would have more significance for a medical specialist in nervous diseases than for a philosopher, is of great importance. The physician observes the smallest details concerning the voluntary movements of a patient who is seriously ill; for example, of a paralytic in the first stages of creeping paralysis. The physician knows that these details have so fundamental an importance, that on them he bases his diagnosis, much more than on mental aberration or disordered behavior, which are also among the symptoms of this disease. The small child who is clumsy in his movements will show many other obvious characteristics, such as disorderly actions, uncontrolled behavior, screaming and contortions, but all these are of minor significance. An education which delicately co-ordinates the finer movements will by itself obliterate all the disorder of the voluntary movements. Rather than try to correct the thousand external manifestations of one deviation from the right path, it will be enough for the teacher to offer an interesting means of developing skill in the finer movements: placing a small light cube in the centre of a square, and so on.
Another characteristic which always accompanies the above is the difficulty or incapacity shown by a child in fixing his attention on real things. His mind prefers to wander in the realms of fantasy. Playing with stones or dead leaves, he talks of preparing delicious banquets, of spreading magnificent tables, of sending out invitations, and his imagination will probably run riot more wildly as he grows older. The mind exhausts itself, divorcing itself constantly more from its normal function, and becoming a useless instrument of the spirit, which needs it for the purpose of developing the inner life. Many people, unfortunately, believe that this force which disintegrates the personality is just the force that develops spiritual life. They maintain that the inner life is by itself creative - outside there is nothing, or only shadows, pebbles and dead leaves.
The inner life builds itself up, on the contrary, on the fundamental basis of a unified personality - well orientated in the external world. The wandering mind, which divorces itself from reality, departs its normal function: departs, that is to say, from health. In that world of fantasy towards which it tends, there is no control of error, nothing which will co-ordinate thought. Attention to real things, with its future applications, becomes impossible. It is a fine distinction, but that life of the imagination, falsely so called, is an atrophy of the very organs whose functions are essential to the spiritual life. The teacher who seeks to attract the attention of the child to something real - making reality accessible and attractive - the teacher who succeeds in interesting the child, say, in laying a real table, serving a real meal - the voice of that teacher will recall, like the sound of a trumpet, the mind which had wandered far from the path of its own welfare. And the co-ordination of the fine movements, together with the recall of the wandering attention to reality, will be the only remedy needed. We need not correct one by one the more or less obvious aspects of the one fundamental deviation. As soon as the power is acquired of fixing the mind on real things, the mind will be restored to health and will function normally.

The third phenomenon, concomitant with the other two, is a tendency towards imitation, which becomes constantly more prompt and rapid. This sign of profound weakness is an exaggeration of normal traits in children of two years. (The imitation of tiny children is of another kind, and cannot be dealt with here). It indicates a will which has not prepared its instruments, nor found its course, but follows the indications of others. The child has not entered on the way of perfection; like a rudderless ship he is the sport of every wind. Anyone who observes a two-year-old child with a limited range of imitative ideas as its sum total of knowledge will recognize the degenerative form of imitation of which I am speaking, connected with disorder and mental instability, and leading the child downward like the steps of a descending stair.

It is enough that one child in a class should do something rough and noisy - throwing itself on the ground, perhaps, laughing and shouting - and many, or perhaps all, of the children will follow his example and even outdo him. The foolish act multiplies itself in a group of children, perhaps even throughout the class. This sort of gregariousness leads to a collective disorder, the antithesis of social life which is made up of work and good order. Imitativeness propagates and exalts, among the crowd, the defects of one: it is the point of least resistance where degeneration begins.

The more this kind of degeneration takes hold, the more difficult it is for the children to obey one who calls them to better things. But get them once upon the right road, and an end will come to the varied consequences of one original mistake.

The Recall

That teacher may find herself in an anxious pass who, finding herself called upon to direct a whole class of such children, has no equipment but the basic idea of offering the children the means of development and then leaving them free to express themselves. The little inferno which has already begun to evolve in these children will draw into itself everything within reach, and the teacher, if passive, will be overwhelmed by noise and muddle almost inconceivable. The teacher, who, from inexperience and over-rigidity or over-simplicity of principles and ideas, finds herself in such a situation, must remember the powers which lie dormant in these divinely pure and generous little souls. She must call upon them, waking the sleepers with voice and thought. She must help these little creatures, who are wildly rushing along the downward path, to reascend. A vigorous and determined recall is the only true kindness to these little souls.

Do not fear to destroy evil. It is only the good that we must fear to destroy.

As we must call a child by its name before it can answer, so it is necessary to call vigorously to awaken the soul. The teacher must take her materials from the school and her principles from what she has learnt; and then she must face practically, for herself, the question of this recall. Only her own intelligence can solve the problem, which will be different in every individual case. The teacher knows the fundamental symptoms and the obvious remedies - the theory, in fact, of treatment, and then it is she who does the rest. The good doctor, like the good teacher, is an individual, not merely a machine for administering medicine or applying educational methods. Details must be left to the judgment of the teacher who is taking her first steps on the new path, as for instance whether general disorder is best quelled by raising the voice, or whether it is best to whisper to a few of the children so as to rouse the curiosity of others and make them quiet. A chord struck loudly up on the pianoforte will sometimes check disorder like the stroke of a whip.

Apparent Order

An experienced teacher will never get extreme disorder in a class because, before she retires into the background, she will be watchful for a time, directing the children so as to "prepare" them in a negative sense, that is to say, in the direction of checking uncontrolled movements. There is for this a series of preparatory exercises which the teacher must bear in mind, and children whose minds are wandering away from reality should feel the strong help which the teacher should be able to give. Calm, steadfast and patient, her voice should reach the children, commending or exhorting. Some exercises are especially useful, such as rearranging chairs and tables without making a noise; arranging a row of chairs and sitting down upon them; running from end to end of the room on tip-toe. If the teacher is really sure of herself it may be enough to say: "Now let us be quiet", and calm will fall as by enchantment. The simplest exercises of practical life will bring down to the terra firma of real work the little errant spirits thus recalled. Little by little the teacher will offer the didactic material, never, however, leaving it to the children's free choice until they understand the uses of it.

Now we see a quiet class: the children are in direct touch with reality; their occupations have a practical aim, such as dusting a table, removing a stain and so on; they go to the cupboard, take a piece of the material and use it correctly. It appears as if the faculty of free choice improved with exercise. In general the teacher is satisfied, but it appears to her that the material, as determined by the Montessori method, is insufficient, and she finds herself faced by the evident necessity of adding to it: "In a week a child has used all the material again and again". Perhaps the majority of schools do not get beyond this point.

One factor - one only - reveals the fragility of this apparent good order, and threatens the collapse of the whole fabric: the children pass from one thing to another, do each exercise once, and take something else from the cupboard. The journeying to and from the cupboard is perpetual. Not one of the children is finding, on this earth to which he has descended, any interest which will be worthy of awakening the divine and strong nature within him: his personality is not exercising, developing and fortifying itself. In these fleeting contacts, the outer world cannot have upon him the influence which puts the spirit in equilibrium with the world. The child is like a bee, which flits from blossom to blossom, but does not find the flower on which to settle, exhaust the nectar and satisfy itself: he does not settle down to work to that point where he feels awakening within itself the wonderful instinctive activity destined to build up his character and mind.

The teacher feels, at this stage of wandering attention, that her task is difficult; she also, in general, runs from child to child, inspiring them with her own anxious, tiring agitation. Many of the children when her back is turned play with the material, weary of it and put it to foolish uses. While the teacher is occupied with one child, others make mistakes. The moral and intellectual progress, so confidently expected, does not take place.

This apparent discipline is a very fragile thing and the teacher, who feels disorder in the air, is all the time in a state of tension. The great majority of insufficiently trained or experienced teachers end by believing that the "new child", so eagerly expected, of which so much has been said, is only an illusion, an ideal: and that in reality a class held together thus by an effort of nervous energy is tiring for the teacher and unprofitable for the child. It is necessary that the teacher should be able to understand the children's condition: they are going through a transitional period - they stand without the door. The little spirits are knocking, waiting till it shall be opened unto them. In the matter of progress, however, there is little to be observed. This stage of affairs is nearer to chaos than to discipline. All the work of such children will be imperfect; the elementary movements of co-ordination will be without strength or grace, and their actions capricious. In comparison with the first stage, in which they are out of touch with reality, they have scarcely progressed; this is only convalescence after illness.

In this crucial period of development the teacher has to exercise two different functions: first, watchfulness over all the children; and secondly, the giving of individual lessons - that is to say, she must offer the material regularly, showing its exact uses. General watchfulness and individual lessons exactly given are the two means by which the teacher can help infant development. She must take care at this stage never to turn her back on the class while attending to a single child. Her presence must be felt by all those little souls wandering in search of eternal life. The lesson, exact and forceful, given in intimacy to each separate individual, is an offering which the teacher makes to the profundity of the child-spirit. She who thus calls takes on an aspect of grandeur. One day some little spirit awakens; the ego of some child takes possession of some object; attention becomes fixed on the repetition of someone exercise; executive skill perfects itself; the irradiation of the child's countenance indicates that its spirit is being born anew.

Discipline

Free choice is a higher activity: only the child who knows what he needs to exercise and develop his spiritual life can really choose freely. One cannot speak of free choice when every external object calls the child equally, and the child, lacking in directing willpower, follows everything and passes from one thing to another without end. This is one of the most important distinctions which the teacher should be able to make. The child who does not yet obey an internal guide is not the free child entering upon the long and narrow way of perfection. He is still the slave of superficial sensations, which make him the sport of his environment; his spirit is tossed between one object and another, like a ball. The man is born when the soul feels itself; fixes, orientates itself and chooses.

This grand and simple phenomenon appears in every created being; all living things possess the power of choosing in a complicated and many-sided environment that, and only that, which is actually necessary to maintain life. The roots of every plant choose from among the many elements of the soil those which they need; an insect chooses definitely and fixes itself in the flower formed to receive it. In man, however, the same wonderful discernment is not pure instinct, but something which has to be won. Children have, especially in the first years of life, an internal sensibility as to their spiritual needs, which repression and wrong education can cause lo vanish, to be replaced by a kind of slavery of the external senses to every surrounding object. We ourselves have lost that profound and vital sensibility, and we find ourselves before its resurrection in the child as before a mystery revealed. It reveals itself in that delicate act of free choice, which a teacher untrained in observation would trample under foot before she had noticed it, as an elephant might crush a flower-bud springing up in the grass. The child who has fixed his attention on a chosen object, and is concentrating his being upon the repetition of an exercise, is a saved soul, in the sense of spiritual health of which we are speaking. There is no need henceforth to occupy ourselves with him, otherwise than by preparing his environment so that it will supply his needs, and by removing obstacles which might obstruct for him the way of perfection.

It is before these higher phenomena that the teacher should repress herself, so that the child-spirit may be free to expand and to express itself; it is that the importance of her task lies in not interrupting the child at work. This is the period in which the teacher's moral delicacy, acquired during training, will show itself in her repression of the impulse to help, as of the impulse to admire. She must learn what is not easy - how to serve, or perhaps only to stand by observing. In serving also she must observe, for the dawning phenomenon of concentration in the child is as delicate as a bud just about to open. She will not observe now for the purpose of making her presence felt and of assisting weak spirits with her own strength; she will observe in order to recognize the child who has concentrated his attention in order to behold the glorious rebirth of the spirit.

The child who concentrates is happy within himself, unconscious of his neighbors and of his surroundings. For an instant his spirit is like the spirit of the hermit in the desert, and there is born in him a new consciousness, the consciousness of his own individuality. When the concentration passes, he seems to become aware, as if for the first time, of the world which surrounds him, with unlimited scope for further discoveries; aware also of his companions in whom he shows a loving interest.

He awakens to a love of persons and of things - gentle and affectionate towards all, and ready to admire everything that is beautiful. The spiritual process is evident; he has to detach himself from his world in order to acquire the power of uniting himself to it. We go out of the city to admire it spread out in panorama, and it is from an aero plane - rising, that is to say, above the earth, - that one can best see terrestrial features. Thus also the human spirit, in order to exist and to dwell with its fellows, must retire into solitude and fortify itself, and after that behold with love its fellow creatures. The saint in solitude prepares himself to regard with wisdom and justice those social needs which are hidden from the mass of humanity; the preparation in the desert precedes the great mission of love and peace.

The child simply takes up an attitude of profound isolation, and the result is a strong peaceful character, radiating love on all around. Arising from this attitude are self sacrifice, unremitting work, obedience, and at the same time a joy in living, like a bright spring that sprang up among surrounding rocks, and is destined to help all living creatures around it. The result of concentration is an awakened social sense, and the teacher should be prepared for what follows: to these little newborn hearts she will be a creature beloved. They will "discover" her, just as they have newly discovered the blueness of the sky and the almost imperceptible scent of tiny flowers that nestle in the grass. The needs of these children - rich in enthusiasm and, as it were, explosive in their wonderful progress - might puzzle an inexperienced teacher. In the early stages it was not the children's many disorderly acts which she had to consider, but only the signs of fundamental needs, so now the innumerable signs of moral richness and beauty must not overwhelm her. She must aim always at something simple and central which is like the pivot on which a door revolves - hidden necessarily, but independent of the ornamentation of the door, whether sculptured or rich with gold and precious stones. Her mission aims always at something constant and precise. She begins to feel herself unnecessary because the children's progress is disproportionate to the part she plays in it. Constantly she sees the children becoming more independent in their choice of occupations and in their rich faculty of expression, and their progress seems sometimes almost miraculous. She feels herself a servant only, whose task is the humble one of preparing the environment and effacing herself. She remembers the words of John the Baptist after the Messiah had revealed himself: "He must increase, but I must decrease".

This, however, is the time at which her authority will be most sought by the children. Many devotees of these lovable little souls have an experience, apparently insignificant: a child who has produced something by his intelligent activity - a drawing, a written word, or some such little thing - comes to the teacher and asks her if he has done it well. They never come and ask what they should do, nor how they should do it - indeed they defend themselves against all help; choice and ex*****on are treasured prerogatives of the freed soul. But when the work is done they go and ask for the sanction of her authority. A similar instinct makes them defend energetically their spiritual privacy - their mysterious obedience to the directing voice which each seems to hear within himself - and then submit to exterior authority their actions, as if to make sure that they are really upon the right way. It makes one think of the first steps of the little child with uncertain limbs, who needs to see the grown-up person's arms outstretched and ready to prevent a fall, although the powers which initiate and perfect the act of walking are within the child himself. The teacher should respond with a word of consent, encourage with a smile, as the mother smiles at the child taking his first steps. For perfection, security must develop within the child, from internal sources with which the teacher has nothing to do.

The child, in fact, once secure, will no longer seek the approval of authority for every step. He will begin to accumulate completed work of which the other knows nothing, obeying simply the need to produce in quantity and to perfect his productions. What interests him is to finish his work, neither to have it admired nor to hoard it as his own property; the noble instinct which actuates him is far removed from pride or avarice. Many visitors to our schools will remember how teachers have shown them the children's best work without ever indicating the authors. This apparent oversight of honest, laborious work comes from the teacher's habitual knowledge that it is of no importance to the children. In any other kind of school a teacher would feel guilty if, in showing a good piece of work, she did not introduce the author of it. If she forgot to do so, she might even hear the childish protest: "I did that!" In our schools, on the other hand, the child who did the work is probably by himself in a corner engaged upon another wonderful effort, and his great wish is not to be interrupted.

This is the period in which discipline establishes itself: a form of active peace, of obedience and love, in which work perfects itself and multiplies, just as in springtime the flowers take on color, leading on to the production of sweet and refreshing fruits.

Empowerment Through Education

By Dr Maria Montessori

There is a rather too ready tendency to consider things in an absolute way giving them only one interpretation, thus overlooking a relativity that very largely depends upon ourselves. This condemning of things as either good or bad - without leaving any space for their being in one case good and bad in another - does perhaps at first seem to have no advantages. Yet, it has the superficial advantage that it relieves us completely of responsibility. The quality of things then becomes their inherent quality and is no longer seen in relation to man and the use he makes of them.

It is often in their relation to the child that phenomena, otherwise appearing rather blurred and apt to be misunderstood, are seen in their true light and significance.

Let us, therefore, take an example - the idea of danger - as generally understood when dealing with the child. 'Do not do this'. 'Do not touch that'. 'Do not use it. It is dangerous!' are explanations often heard not only in the nursery but equally so with older children. And what is then considered dangerous? That a young child uses a knife? That he carries a china saucer? That he lights a match? But why should these be dangerous? Who has not seen very young children in a church carry lighted candles, or in a Montessori class or at home cut vegetables or carry very fragile and possibly valuable china? Are these then not dangerous? No, it is not dangerous; it may be dangerous. And this potentiality of a doubtlessly disagreeable quality, or let us say function, is exactly a challenge to man! It depends upon man whether something be dangerous or not. If he is ill-behaved, badly co-ordinated in his movements or unconscious and careless in his mind, almost anything is dangerous in his hands although the same things and ideas are perfectly harmless or even beneficial in many other people's hands.

This then confers a great responsibility upon education because we see that it might be thought much easier to pronounce a sentence upon all things and classify them according to their inherent dangerousness or innocence and then eliminate from the child's environment all that is labelled dangerous. (And this is a trend in education both most ancient and modern, although in the latter case it is often adorned and disguised by a shiny cloak of lofty principles and motives 'to the sole benefit of the child'.) Danger has then become an almost autonomous subject, whilst man ought to be the subject whose development determines the amount of danger in his environment. Besides, we should render the child a most doubtful service by keeping him in a perfectly harmless environment which, at the same time, is devoid of all challenge to his powers of perfectioning and overcoming danger. The day will come when the home and the school, who have collaborated in thus keeping the child out of danger and reality, ...will expose the then young man as a foundling. He will find himself utterly dependent because he could never acquire and conquer independence, surrounded by innumerable dangers of which he was perfectly unaware. He lacks both functional and moral balance. He is a stranger in society because everything is dangerously unknown to him, because he cannot cope with its many problems; he has never had any experience. He himself is potentially a danger to this hostile society because of his lack of experience. And then he surely seeks refuge where safety is most loudly promised. He follows those that will think, decide and act for him and thus keep him away from the dangerous possibility of having to face the consequences of having thought, decided and acted wrongly. But, also, then the moment will come - as before - when he will find himself facing a perfectly strange situation, very far removed indeed from what he might have expected.

On the other hand, we see mankind who has almost worked miracles in its efforts and success towards the elimination of dangers by learning their secrets and mastering them. We even see man using former dangers to his own benefit or at his own will. Holland, in olden times, was frequently brought to the edge of complete ruin by floods as the sea swept over these ?Low Countries? below sea level. We see then how man learned to keep the sea at bay by building d***s and artificial ramparts. We see them even battling against the sea, forcing it out and transforming large portions of the seabed into fertile land. Floods can also be artificially brought about as a means of potential defence and this formerly most ferocious enemy can be handled at man's own will, now allowing the waters in, then forcing them out, just as is deemed fit.

There are many examples of what was once a danger which has since been conquered by man who, by developing himself and using his intelligence, has placed himself above them and even learned to use them. Water has become an important roadway. Snow and ice are often means of amusement and entertainment. Poisons are sometimes used as medicine. The dangers of mountaineering are a much sought object of sport.

Why then can we resignedly continue to suffer those dangers that depend almost solely upon man himself? We cannot hope for somebody to keep them away, as we do for our children. Why is man man's own most bitter enemy and most terrible destroyer? No scourge, no flood, no volcanic eruption causes the havoc that man brings to man. Why do the most eminent and gifted, heroic personalities give all their thought and energy to the unravelling of natural mysteries that perhaps will never be completely controlled, whilst utterly poor and futile are the superficial efforts made to avert the outbreak of catastrophes like that which we are witnessing today? Why are labels so readily accepted, labels which have indiscriminately been attached to so many 'effects', declared and accepted as 'causes' such as 'innate human tendencies', 'unavoidable issues', 'economically conditioned unsolvable problems', etc.?

The greatest danger of our present times is man's own unawareness of, or blindness to, his power over conditions that are certainly extremely and almost fatally dangerous but so largely depend upon himself and should, therefore, be more easily understood and mastered than much that has so brilliantly been conquered before.

Man masters almost everything but himself. He knows almost everything but himself. He avails himself of the most hidden treasures but does not use the immense riches and powers that lie within himself.

This points to the great and urgent task of education! No mobilisation is as complete as that which can be realised by the school. In the past, military service was limited to men of a certain age group. Now more and more people are drawn into the service of war - even women and children. But if the school takes upon itself the task of mobilising the young for the achievement of that perfect development that brings forward man as he can and is destined to be: conscious of the society he will become part of; master, not slave, of the infinite means that civilisation puts at his disposal; equally developed in his moral and social powers as in his physical and intellectual ones; aware of his task which requires the collaboration and unanimous effort of the whole of mankind - nobody will be overlooked. Nobody will be rejected; nobody exempted! The whole of mankind will be enrolled in this service, which is a service for peace. Thus, education will become a true and invincible armament for peace! All human beings will grow to be? knights of peace? during that period in their life when what is formed can never again be shed or destroyed because this is the period of formation when the cornerstones of the human personality are definitely fixed.

If our aim is to help the development of life in all its aspects and faculties, but above all that of the moral and social faculties, if all our means are used to this aim, we shall attain the bridging of the tremendous contrast between the development of man's material and spiritual powers.

Great truths concerning man's real nature and mission have already become clear. Many problems have already been solved through the revelation of a child who, when given the help he needed to conquer the degree of independence corresponding to each successive phase of development, had not grown merely in exterior capacities but, above all, in inner consciousness of himself and his surroundings.

Much has yet to be accomplished but the contribution we are already able to give fills us with hope and certainty and with a deep sense of responsibility towards the world of the future which so very largely depends upon the realization and promotion of these truths which are the secret of childhood.