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
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
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
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Holmes resigned from the Board of Education in 1911. He went to Italy to study Montessori’s methods. He wrote a report on them for the Board in 1912.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
IAssessment. IILeave. IIIWhich.