The visitor to a Montessori school in Rome is faced by an anomaly.

Piccola, the emotional, eager little Italian girl of five years, who is more difficult to control at home than even the average American child, is seen to be a self-controlled, useful member of a child republic. Piccola’s first work of the morning is to find her own pink apron that hangs on a peg on the wall, and button herself into it with patient perseverance. If the younger children have difficulty putting on their aprons, Piccola will patiently help them. Her next activity is, also, along lines of helpfulness. She looks about the wide spaces of the big room, where low white tables and chairs, growing ivy plants, and plain gray wall make a beautiful color scheme, to determine if there is anything she,—wee Piccola,—may do to help this beauty. Ah, Piccola sees a speck of dust in one corner of the white stone floor. Darting to the outer room, where the children remove and hang their wraps and wash their hands before school, Piccola seizes a red broom that is just the right length for her chubby arms to handle easily and a shining little tin dustpan. Hastening back, she brushes up the dust. Then she waters the ivy with a small green watering pot, fetches a white basin and a little white scrubbing brush, and slops gayly in an energetic attempt to wash off the tables. Last, she takes some of the soft green and gray rugs that the children use for working on when they sit on the floor, and beats them in the garden with much energy.

The other children have come, now, and having selected their materials from the white cupboards that line the wall, are busily at work. Piccola, too, is busy, piling pink blocks in orderly fashion, one upon the other. Her active mind is busy, though, along another line as well; she watches the other little ones furtively to see if there is anything which she can do to help them. Bruno drops his color spools; Piccola runs to help him gather them up in his apron. Little Brother tumbles down in a trip from his table to the material cupboard; Piccola helps him to balance himself again on his fat legs, and, winding two tender little brown arms about him, she steers him in safety on his way.

The hour for the midday luncheon comes. Piccola daintily helps to spread the white luncheon cloths, to lay the spoons in regular order at each child’s place, to sort and place the bright baskets in which the children have brought their sandwiches and fruit. Not until all the others are served does Piccola slip into her own empty place and partake of her own luncheon.

Piccola’s mother marvels at the change that has been wrought in Piccola by a few months in the Montessori House of the Children. She reports her observations to the Montessori directress who has Piccola’s education in charge.

“Piccola dusts the home now, without my bidding.

“She picks up her dolls and her toys when she has finished playing with them.

“She helps me lay the table for the noon meal.

“How did you teach these things to my wayward little Piccola, Signorina?”

It is the query of the American mother who finds her little one who has spent a day in a good Montessori school more helpful in the home than before.

She also asks herself:

“How may I teach helpfulness to my child?”

Dr. Montessori has discovered for us the marvel that to bring helpfulness to a very little child is not so much a matter of teaching as of fostering. She shows us the instinct to help which manifests itself in the very little child which we must detect, watch, and foster until we form a habit of usefulness in children. After all, to be useful to oneself and to others is the greatest value of education for life. Dr. Montessori puts this education for utility on a very high plane.

The mother who carefully observes and analyzes all the acts of the child of two and a half or three years of age will discover that the baby has a great desire to be busy, continually, and in imitation of his mother’s busy-ness about the home. He handles with the greatest eagerness and interest his shoes, his father’s neckties, his mother’s brush and comb, the family silver, the kitchen utensils, the door latches and knobs, the window fastenings. He is more interested in the tools of grown-up housekeeping than he is in his toys. Why is this?

A baby of twenty months spent an entire morning collecting all the shoes he could find in his mother’s room and carrying them about from one room to another. He climbed up in a chair and pulled a button hook off a dressing table. His mother substituted his dolls, his rubber toys, a ball for these, but the baby refused them. Finally his mother snatched away the huge boot of his father’s, which he was lovingly tugging about from room to room and slapped his hands because he cried at giving it up. The little man cried again, and struggled against the brutal force of his mother, who held him tightly in her lap and changed his shoes for going out in the afternoon. Again his hands were slapped.

The baby had not been in the least naughty. He wanted to learn how to button his own shoes and his mother couldn’t understand this longing which he had to express in action, having no words with which to explain himself.

Nearly all the instincts of babyhood are right instincts, leading to good conduct. The child’s first longing is to be able to fit himself to his environment, and this means that he must learn to handle those objects and do those things which he sees his family doing. The average American child grows up rather helpless and useless when it comes to making social adjustments, because we continually interfere with his first attempts to be useful. We do for him those acts of utility which he should learn himself, very early, while he is still interested in them.

It is undoubtedly less time-taking to put on a small boy’s shoes, button and lace them for him, button his under and outer clothes, to tie his necktie, and put on his rubbers, than to slowly and patiently teach him to dress himself. To bathe a child and brush and comb his hair is simpler than to allow the baby to splash in water and revel in soapsuds, as he must in learning the intricate movements necessary for keeping himself tidy. We wish to preserve, also, the immaculate order of our neat bathrooms.

We like to open and close doors for the toddler; it is our privilege of service, we feel. We prefer to lay the table ourselves, and keep our spotless kitchens free of child finger marks. What about the baby, though, who finds his attempts to make himself useful thwarted at every turn until he forms the habit of being waited on? This is a wrecking habit for childhood; it is, also, a habit that leads to our present extravagantly high cost of adult living. The little child who expects to be continually waited on is going to grow up into a man or woman who will expect to be waited on through life. Service is what doubles the grocer’s, the butcher’s, the landlord’s, the shopkeeper’s bills.

The useful helpfulness of the Montessori-trained child is easily explained.

The Montessori schoolroom is so planned that there is nothing which a child can hurt and a good deal that he can help by his first clumsy, baby attempts to be useful to himself and to others with his hands. The children are free to move about as much as they like, changing the position of the light little chairs and tables, opening and closing the doors that lead into the garden, unrolling and then rolling up again the rugs, putting away the didactic materials in the cupboards after they are through with them, washing the tables and blackboards, caring for plants and animals, and carrying on countless other activities that bring about hand and eye training.

The children learn, also, all the intricate activities involved in the care of their bodies. They wash their faces and hands, brush their hair, clean their finger nails, black their shoes, put on and take off their aprons. The dressing frames that are included in the Montessori didactic materials include all the different fastenings of a child’s clothing; buttoning on red flannel, buttoning on leather, buttoning on drill with tapes, lacing on cloth and on leather, fastening hooks and eyes and snaps, and tying bow knots.

It is quite amazing to see the eagerness with which the Montessori children attack these very universal activities of everyday life. The skill they obtain in them proves the truth of Dr. Montessori’s words:

“We habitually serve children. This is not only an act of servility toward them, but it is dangerous because it tends to suffocate their useful, spontaneous activity. We are inclined to believe that children are like puppets, and we wash them and feed them as if they were dolls. We do not stop to think that the child who does not do, does not know how to do.

“Our duty toward children is, in every case, that of helping them to make a conquest of such useful acts as nature intended man to perform for himself. The mother who feeds her child without making the slightest effort to teach him to hold and use a spoon for himself is not a good mother. She offends the fundamental, human dignity of her son,—she treats him as if he were a doll. Instead, he is a man, confided for a time by nature to her care.”

There are certain phases of the Montessori method which a mother cannot apply in her home because she has not the preliminary training and the necessary teaching skill. There is not a single activity of the Montessori training for personal and community usefulness of the individual as carried out in the Montessori school that may not be practiced in any home. The Montessori schoolroom is a working duplicate of the best conditions which should exist in every home where there is a baby. It is significant that nations have been aroused by the education miracles wrought in the Roman Children’s Houses. What, pray, is the matter with the American children’s houses?

The home is a big workshop for turning out child cosmopolites, small world citizens who will grow up into useful men and women. In the home the child may learn how to care for his body, how to care for pets, plants, and all the things that combine to fill the tool box of everyday living. Here the child may learn that consideration for others which will help him to be kind, quiet, unselfish, and polite. Here, also, he may take a small part in the care of the big human family in preparing food, laying the table, learning household cleanliness and household order. The child instinct to fetch and carry, which shows itself very early in the life of the baby, may be turned into channels of usefulness if the child is taught to happily wait on himself and others.

Much emphasis has been laid upon the didactic apparatus of Montessori which has for its aim the development of the several intellectual processes. Considering these appliances for direct stimulation and perfection of mental activity only, the casual student of Montessori says that the system is barren, that it takes into account none of the emotional activities of the child, that it eliminates educational play from the life of the little one.

As a matter of fact, the play instincts of the child are so carefully met by Dr. Montessori that they blossom into usefulness. Dr. Montessori knows more about the spontaneous play of the child from two and a half years to six than we do. She sees that his play instincts are all, at first, a struggling to be like his elders, to do the same utilitarian things that he sees them do, to imitate on a child plane the work of his mother in the home or his father in the industrial world. With this understanding of the possibilities of child play for developing into future usefulness, Dr. Montessori supplies children with those tools of play which turn child play into exercises of helpfulness.

In the Trionfale School at Rome the free play of the children has been especially safeguarded. The toddlers utilize their instinct to fetch and carry objects by loading, trundling, and unloading the specially built, stout little wheelbarrows provided for them. Very soon this play blossoms into the desire to fetch and carry with some more useful object in view. The children begin to show great skill in removing and replacing their materials from the school cupboards and putting them back in an orderly fashion. They attain perfect muscular control in laying the tables for luncheon and serving the food daintily. In one corner of a sunlit room at Trionfale there is a fascinating little salon. Soft rugs of small size, diminutive green wicker easy-chairs, sofa, and round tea table, books of colored pictures and large dolls’ dishes make it possible for the children to “play house” under ideal conditions. They learn through their play a sweet kind of hospitality, and the little school “drawing-room” of Montessori stands for a necessary development of the social instinct in children which is important.

Dr. Montessori suggests to us those playthings and play activities which will lead our children into the art of being helpful and, which is much more vital, will start in them habits of wanting to be helpful. Her scheme of play is possible of adapting to almost any home, and it has for its basis the instinctive longing of every child to be useful through his play.

A playroom should be a place, as Dr. Montessori expresses it, where the children may amuse themselves with games, stories, possibly music, and the furnishing should be done with as much taste as in the sitting-room of the adult members of the family. Small tables, a sofa, and armchairs of child size, one or two casts, copies of masterpieces of art, and vases or bowls in which the children may arrange flowers should be included. There should be many picture books, blocks, dolls, and, if possible, a musical instrument of some kind in the nursery. Dr. Montessori suggests a piano or harp of small dimensions. An important playroom accessory is a low cupboard, with drawers in which the children may keep their completed drawings, paper dolls, scrap pictures, and any precious collection of outside material such as seeds, leaves, twigs, or pebbles which they long to keep and use in their play. Half of this cupboard should consist of shelves for bowls, plates, napkins, doilies, spoons, knives, forks, a tray and tumblers for the children to use in preparing and serving their luncheon or in entertaining their friends. Stout pottery of quaint shapes and exquisite gay coloring may be obtained now. It is much more attractive to the child of three and four years than inadequate, tiny sets of dolls’ dishes. At least the necessary bowl, plate, pitcher, and mug for serving the nursery supper should be supplied and the toddler taught to serve and feed himself at a very early age.

The child should have a little broom and dustpan and scrubbing brush. He should have a low, painted washstand with a basin, soap, and nail-brush. He should be taught how to turn on and off a water tap, filling a small pitcher, pail, or basin, and carrying it, full, without spilling. He should have low hooks for hanging his clothing for outdoor wear. Both small boys and girls should have bright little aprons, not so much for purposes of cleanliness, although this is important, as to inspire them to the feeling that work is dignified and needs to be set apart by a uniform of service.

Dr. Montessori urges that those toys which we buy be selected having in mind helping the child to be an actor in a little drama of home life. A plaything, she feels, should be a work thing, capable of bringing a life activity down to the primitive plane of the child’s thinking.

Our toy shops offer us now a very wide variety of such educational toys from which to choose. We may find large dolls, modeled from life, and wearing clothes similar to children and requiring the same muscular co-ordination in fastening and unfastening. There is large furniture for these dolls, built on good lines and teaching a little girl to make a bed neatly and keep the doll’s bureau drawers in order. There are good-sized washing sets, including tubs, basket, lines, clothespins, ironing board, and sad irons; we find very complete dolls’ houses, sewing materials with dolls’ patterns and small sewing machines, kitchens where the child can pretend to cook, complete sets of cooking utensils, and lifelike toy animals.

These toys Dr. Montessori urges us to use, realizing that the child’s deepest play impulse is to dramatize in the theater of the home playroom the everyday utilitarian occupations of the race.