We also, in this method, would have to follow the ordinary schools in planning an alternation of mental and physical activities, were it not that the mental life shown by our children brings the whole of their musculature into constant use. This has nothing to do with the learning of particular skills. It differs completely from some modern educational trends in which the child learns to write nicely so as to become a clerk, or others are set to pick-and-shovel work to make them better laborers. Professional training of this kind does not serve the true purposes of movement in education, as we understand it. The concept we have in mind is quite different. It is a question of the child coordinating those movements which play a necessary part in his mental life, so as to enrich the practical and executive sides of it.
Without this companionship of movement the brain develops on its own account, as if estranged from the results of its work. Movements not directed by the mind occur haphazardly, and do harm. But movement is so essential to the life of any individual in touch with his surroundings and forming relationships with other people, that it must be developed on this plane.
Its place is to serve the whole man and his life in relation to the outside world.[42]
Today’s principles and ideas are too much set on self-perfection and self-realization. Directly we understand the true purposes of movement, this self-centeredness is bound to disappear. We are obliged to extend the concept to include all realizable potentialities. In short we must ever cling firmly to what may be called the “philosophy of movement.” Movement is that which distinguishes the living from the nonliving. Yet living things never move at random. They go toward goals, and their lives follow natural laws. Let us (to make this quite clear to ourselves) try to imagine what it would be like if everything became quite motionless. If, within the plants, all movement ceased, there would be no more flowers and fruit. The percentage of poisonous gases in the air would increase disastrously. If all motion stopped, if the birds stayed still on the trees and all insects fell to the ground, if beasts of prey no longer roamed the wilds and fish no longer swam in the waters, what a frightful place this world of ours would become!
Immobility is impossible. The world would become chaotic if all movement stopped, or even if living things moved about aimlessly, without the guidance of that useful end which all creatures have assigned to them. Every living being has its own characteristic movements, and its own pre-established goals, and in creation there is a harmonious balance between all these different activities, which are coordinated to achieve some purpose.
Work is inseparable from movement. The life of man, and of the great human society, is bound up with movement. If everyone stopped working for a single month, mankind would perish. So movement has a social side also; it is not just a matter of hygiene. If all human capacity for movement went into the “taking of exercise,” mankind’s total energy would be consumed and nothing produced. The very existence of the social order depends on movement directed to constructive ends. The individual in the womb of social life performs his actions for ends, which are both individual and social. When we speak of “behaviour,” the behaviour of men and animals, we are thinking of purposive movements of this kind. Such behaviour is the core of their activities, and it is not limited to actions, which serve only a personal need; for example, cleanliness, or work about the house. But the doing of it may serve far distant ends whereby it acts for the benefit of others. But for this, man’s work would count for nothing more than a gymnastic exercise. Dancing is the most individual of all movements but even dancing would be pointless without an audience; in other words without some social or transcendental aim. To have a vision of the cosmic plan, in which every form of life depends on directed movements, which have effects beyond their conscious aim, is to understand the child’s work and be able to guide it better.
Montessori, Maria. The Absorbent Mind: From the original paper archives by M. Montessori, in partnership with AMI - ASSOCIATION MONTESSORI INTERNATIONALE (The Montessori Series Book 1) . Montessori-Pierson Publishing House. Kindle Edition.
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