Free to Grow
Edmond Holmes, a former inspector of schools, reported back to the Board of Education on a pioneering system being developed in Italy.
1912
King George V 1910-1936
From the British Library, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
One of the ‘Globe Kittens,’ subjects of a series of photos taken in Canada in 1902, apparently reading. “Strictly speaking,” Holmes explained, “the teacher does not train or teach the children; but she gives them endless opportunities and ample facilities for training and teaching themselves.” That required teachers to let their pupils select topics of interest, wrestle with problems undisturbed and judge their own work. Holmes was far ahead of his time: indeed, in his anxiety lest schools be used by the State to control citizens and his criticism of “the prevalent tendency to pay undue regard to outward and visible ‘results’,” he may be felt to be ahead of our own. See also On Top of the World.
Introduction
Edmond Holmes resigned from the Board of Education in 1911, after his trenchant critique of fellow Elementary school inspectors leaked out. He took the opportunity to visit Maria Montessori’s pioneering schools in Italy, and prepared a paper for the Board (his experience was still highly valued there) in which he urged them to lose no time in adopting her methods.
abridged
The master-principle of the Montessori system is that of self-education. She realises that the business of growing must be done by the growing child, and cannot be delegated by him to his teacher or anyone else. And she infers from this that the teacher, instead of doing everything or nearly everything for the child, should do as little as possible, should stand aside, so to speak, and efface herself, giving the child such guidance and stimulus as he may need, and providing him with suitable materials, but leaving him free to exercise his own faculties, and relieving him from the pressure of vexatious interference and arbitrary constraint.
In other words, she has broken away from the ‘orthodox’ system of education, in which a dogmatic attitude on the part of the teacher is met by mechanical obedience on the part of the child; and she proposes to substitute for it a regime of freedom for the child, in which his love of rational activity, his desire to do things for himself, his joy in overcoming difficulties, shall be met and ministered to by judicious and sympathetic guidance on the part of his teacher.
abridged
Abridged from a pamphlet for the Board of Education entitled ‘The Montessori System of Education’ (1912) by E. G. A. Holmes. Additional background from ‘What Is and What Might Be’ (1911), also by Holmes.
