Transcription
"The School of the Future"
I could wish that this were a silent meeting. The inspiration and purpose that have brought you here are above the triviality of words.
In honoring Helen Keller and her teacher you declare your faith that in every child born into the world there are latent capacities for the development of an individual that shall be an honor to the human race, to attest your belief that every teacher worthy of that exalted name is able and willing to share in building the school of the future --- the school of freedom.
This vast assemblage bears eloquent testimony to the profound interest men and women everywhere are taking in the education of the child --- the most vital problem of our day. This great Exposition (Pan-American) that has brought together the finest works of all the nations of the earth has set aside this day, not to honor any individual, but to celebrate an achievement in education. Here is no dazzling personage, no startling circumstance. A young woman, deaf and blind from infancy, has, through the kind of education that is the right of every child, won her way out of darkness and silence, has found speech and brought a message of cheer to the world. Men and women have listened and rejoiced, have learned to love the brave woman. They love her partly for her sweetness and courage, for the lesson she has taught (sic) What she has accomplished without sight or hearing suggests the reserve forces that lie dormant in every human being.
A wonderful revolution is awakening the minds of men to new visions. A force stronger than tradition is driving us to new points of view. A new sense of life with all the intensity of a new-born conception is compelling all of us to do our part in blazing the way for a new civilization. Mankind is learning to know itself. A social consciousness is emerging out of a chaos of unorganized effort. Humanity is seeing itself as a family. We are realizing as never before that no member of the human household can be educated healthy and happy while any member of the great family is unhealthy, ignorant and miserable. In the schools, in the mines and factories, in every department of life a thousand organizations, a million acts of individuals and states attest the presence and growing power of this new community of the spirit. No part of the social organism has felt the quickening influence of this life more than our educational system. A vast number of thinking men and women are awake to the conviction that there is something wrong with education that obviously does not educate.
Helen Keller is the living example of the new education. She is perhaps the first pupil of the School of the Future. As Dr. Montessori has said in her preface to "The Montessori Method." "If only one of the senses sufficed to make of Helen Keller a woman of exceptional culture and a writer, who better than she proves the potency of this method of education? If Helen Keller attained through exquisite natural gifts to an elevated conception of the world, who better than she proves that in the inmost self of man lies the spirit ready to reveal itself?"
When I went to Helen Keller twenty-eight years ago, and saw her standing in the door of her home in Tuscumbia, Alabama, with her hands reaching out like antennae, I sensed within the imprisoning walls of flesh a child's eager mind. A nightingale was shut up in that little heart, one could almost feel its wings beating against the bars of deafness and blindness. If I had not known that the mind --- the nightingale --- was there waiting to be released, my task would indeed have been, humanly speaking, impossible. But in the light of that knowledge, that certainty, the first step was possible and easy, The insurmountable obstacle may be the easiest way in disguise; for in this case it prevented me from using paralyzing methods of the schools.
My own education, even in the accepted sense of the word, had been very limited. At the age of fourteen I entered the Institution for the Blind in Massachusetts. My sight was deficient from childhood. I could not attend the public schools for this reason.
The system creates in the child-mind the concept that high grades are more important than knowledge, and he goes from school and college into his life-work believing always that the score is more important than the game, that success is more important than achievement.
Every normal child begins as an eager, active little creature, always doing something, always trying to get something he wants. Even before he can utter a word, he succeeds in making his desires known by means of cries, grimaces and kicks.
As his wants increase his exertions increase also. He invents and devises ways and means to get the things he desires. He is the star performer in his little world. He is the horse, the coachman, the policemen, the robber, the chauffeur, and even the smell that follows the automobile. He will be anything that requires initiative(sic), action. The one thing he does not voluntary (sic) choose to be is the grown up personage that sits in the car and does nothing.
Our educational system spoils this fine enthusiasm. We impose the role of passenger upon the child, having no opportunities to exercise his inborn creative faculties. He becomes mischievoius (sic) and difficult to manage. He is compelled to defy his teachers in order to save his soul.
The school attempts to do everything for the child that he should do for himself. The alluring joy of creation is not for him. He is deluged with accomplished facts. We teach him things before he has any curiosity about them. We compel him to accept a ready-made world that he neither enjoys or understands. The game we expect him to play is all ours. He does not like it --- why should he?
We try to model our children after the pattern we have in our own minds. We read and talk a great deal of evolution, individuality, natural tendencies, but we seem unable to fit these ideas into our methods of education. We continue to impose our will upon the child, we deny him any right to a will and nature of his own.
To that wonderful woman, Dr. Marie Montessori, belongs the honor and everlasting gratitude of mankind for having systematized these ideas of education and recorded them in her book, a book that is at once a thrilling human document, a scientific text book, a prophecy and a torch unto all those whose work it is to teach little children. Dr. Montessori learned, as I learned, and as every teacher must learn, that only through freedom can individuals develop self control, self dependence, will power and initiative. There is no education except self discipline. There is no effective discipline except self discipline. All that parents and teachers can do for the child is to surround him with right conditions. He will do the rest, and the things he will do for himself are the only things that really count in education.
I am convinced that restraint arises from ignorance. Every teacher worthy of the name obtains results through the spontaneous response of the child, whose desires and idiocyncracies (sic) are given wise and sympathetic direction. The new education will permit the child to grow in the environment in which he lives. Real impressions and observations will take the place of book learning. If we get no further than this we shall have prepared the way for the child's deliverance.
Our battle for the freedom of the child is a part of the age-long battle of mankind upward from serfdom to freedom. A battle that began in dim and dateless past and will continue as long as new hopes and new visions arise in human minds.
I am aware that the freedom of the child can not be obtained without a hard struggle. But when we have seen the light we shall be encouraged in our task by the knowledge that brave men and women everywhere are struggling for human liberation from institutions, traditions and dogmas.
The hope of the future lies in the right education of the child. He must be given a new outlook on life. We must awaken in his soul the will toward emancipation. Let us begin now and apply all that we know, and progressively all that we shall learn to awaken and develop in his soul the will to be free.
In the school of the future the child must grow naturally and freely, according to his own tendencies.
This is the lesson that Helen Keller's education has for the world.
