The Ultimate Montessori Blog

(This post is the third and final post,  in a series of posts which tries to explain Dr. Maria Montessori’s interpretations of certain leading concepts. The previous post dealt with her interpretation  of the concept of Adaptation and  Development. The present post provides her interpretations of the concepts of “Heredity” and “the Unconscious”. )

Heredity

By heredity we mean the transmission from parents to their offspring of physical and psychic characteristics. Some children resemble their father, others their mother, but usually the child’s resemblance to one or both of the parents is striking. This applies not only to the colour of the hair of the formation of the bones, but also in many cases to the behaviour.

At the same time, heredity works differently with man and other animals. While a European dog would find himself perfectly at home with other dogs in America, this is not true of human beings, and there is no probablity that the son of a doctor or an engineer.

And if an Italian is brought up by Indians in India, he will not be able to speak Italian. A Florentine dog, on the other hand, will speak the same language as a dog in Manhatten.

The Unconscious

The term unconscious has been used with shades of meaning. In Dr. Montessori’s thoughts it has nothing to do with personal psychology, when we speak of the unconscious we mean that universal intelleigence which directs the whole of creation, the universe and all that is in it from stars to atoms, from the single cells of plants and animals to the complete structure made by the cells. The unconscious directs both the formation and the behaviour of everything that is and through the interplay of all the individual components, animate and inanimate alike, maintains harmony in the universe and makes possible the future.

Since neither plants, animals nor human beings feel his directing intelligence at work, with their unconscious instincts, guiding their behaviour.

There were also ducks living with the chickens. The mother hen used to make enthusiastic noises when food was brought, pretending that she was going to eat it all; the mother duck made similar noises for her brood. One day when it rained, the mother duck made noises of delight, similar to the food noises. So both chickens and ducklings went out. But the chickens did not relish the rain, nor could the hen induce the ducklings to enjoy a dust bath. The unconscious guides the ducklings to water and the chickens to their dust-bath and the subconscious could not interfere with this pattern. They did not, and could not, change their natural behaviour; but they were able to add to it something which would adapt them to their particular conditions. The chickens might have boasted of their versatility: “Look, I can adapt myself to living either in domesticity or in the jungle.”

With other types of animals, however, it turns our differently. Though I have partly tamed lizards, I failed completely with frogs. Nor would any amount of patience and ingenuity influence shellfish or coral insects. The behaviour is guided solely by the unconscious. And when conditions become too adverse they die; a fish could not be taught to live on dry land.

(This post is the second in a series of posts which tries to explain Dr. Maria Montessori’s interpretations of certain leading concepts. The previous post dealt with her interpretation  of the concept of education. The present post provides her interpretations of the concepts of “Adaptation” and “Development”. )

Adaptation

The child adopts himself to society and the world by building a psychosomatic structure which will enable him to enjoy a maximum of happiness in the conditions to which he has become adapted.

Adaptation normally implies a negative element. Western missionaries in India, for example, may announce that they have adapted themselves to Eastern conditions, but have found the process painful. This is equivalent to saying that, in spite of tremendous efforts to appreciate the food, climate, customs and people they encounter, their adaptation has remained partial or negative. Positive adaptation is to find your happiness; spiritually and physically; in the conditions which have become yours.

Development

Development means the process of becoming; the process one goes through after birth in order to reach maturity. It is too psychosomatic, for both body and spirit are involved. This development is directed by an energy which has been called the horme: that is the iresistable drive which is inherent in all organisms (non-living organisms are also impelled by it), which urges them to assume their specific bodies and the appropriate behaviour. For instance, a fertile hen’s egg contains the germinative cell which divides and multiplies, building the structure which eventually becomes a chicken. The various cells have received their own commands as to what they should build - beak, eye, feathers, internal organs - and an inner compulsion obliges them to complete their task. Once this process has begun, nothing except destruction can interfere with it. You can maim a child but - except by killing him, you cannot prevent him from growing.

Why does the egg become a chicken, or the acorn an oak, each reproducing detail by detail the pattern of its species? In the germinative cell there appears to be present some kind of unconscious memory, to which psychologists have given the name mneme. This must be present also in inanimate matter. Solutions of certain chemicals, for instance, will always produce the same type of crystals; the molecules invariably rearrange themselves in their characteristic shape.

(The next post in this series will deal with Dr. Montessori’s interpretation of Heredity and The Unconscious)