Importance_of_Sensorial_Education

The term ‘intellect’ as explained by Oxford Dictionary means; ‘The faculty of using the mind to think logically and understanding things.” The dictionary explains ‘intelligence’ as; ‘the ability to gain or apply knowledge and skills. The obvious question that comes to our mind is, that, how does one gain knowledge and develop a logical bent of mind' Our mind and its faculties are nothing but all of our experiences and our reflex and associative activities in response to our experiences. The intellect depends upon these very reflex and associative or reproductive activities. Every person’s experiences are different in quality and quantity and that’s why every brain is unique. This is an idea explored by Lynn Lawrence (2010). Our brains are constantly working in collecting new experiences, relating them to past ones, categorizing and discriminating them, relating to our past reflexes etc. and then, deciding on our current reflexes or reactions. But where does all this start' Where does this experience and reflex bank come from' How and when does it form' According to Dr. Maria Montessori, “It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was.” (www.dailymontessori.com). Hence we can say that our intellect was basically built in the childhood. The quality and quantity of experiences of the world around him shape the child’s intellect and thus that of the man he is to be. One would wonder as to how would a seemingly helpless child form the basis of adult intellect' How does he experience the world around him and how does he decide upon a reflex or reaction to these experiences. Dr. Montessori discovered that children have been well equipped by nature to develop intellect. They are endowed with senses to experience the world around them, sensitive periods to refine their senses, an absorbent mind and above all an inner drive ‘horme’. The first six years of the child’s life are of rapid physical and mental growth. The minute a baby is born he starts to experience the world around him. The five senses of touch, sight, smell, taste and hearing make him aware of all the activities around him. He seems motionless but still he is absorbing the world with his senses. These senses are the contact points between him and his environment. These experiences with the environment are stored as impressions in the child’s mind. For the first three years the child is forming numerous impressions unconsciously. In the next three years the child form impressions consciously as he is physically mobile. But, having experiences and carrying their impressions is not enough they need to make sense to the child and guide him in his work. All these impressions are scrambled in the child’s mind. In order to develop powers to reason and make judgments these impressions need to be discriminated and categorized i.e. a child needs sensorial education. Montessori’s Sensorial Materials precisely do that; educate the child. Dr. Montessori emphasizes on sensorial education. According to her, “There is nothing in the intellect which was not first in some way in the senses.” (Montessori, M. 1972, p. 60). Aristotle too has said, “All knowledge comes through senses”. (www.wikipedia.org) The sensorial materials and associated activities work in tandem with the child’s natural pattern of growth and development. According to Dr. Maria Montessori, the children have six sensitive periods namely; sensitivity to order, learning through five senses, sensitivity to small objects, sensitivity to coordination of movement, sensitivity to language and sensitivity to social aspect of life. Along with these sensitivities they have a pre-determined psychic patter of development. This pattern describes that the children have power of immense concentration and love for work. Through their work they develop will, intelligence and imagination. They strive to be physically and emotionally independent and contribute to their environment. The Sensorial materials have all the qualities to help the child refine his sense perceptions and educate his senses. They adhere to the psychic patterns by allowing the child to have activities with definite purpose. They have built in control of error i.e they are auto corrective and hence encourage development of will, intelligence and imagination. They are auto-educative and hence encourage independence in child. The auto-corrective and auto-educative qualities of the material work in tandem with the child’s love for repetition and his ability to concentrate. Dr. Maria Montessori discovered that children have immense spontaneous concentration and love for repetition. According to her, “ Though periods of concentration that made the children oblivious to the outer world were not frequent, I noted a strange behaviour that was common to all and nearly constant in all their actions. This was what I later called “repetition of the exercise.” (Montessori, M. 1972, p. 120). This repetition is not similar to mugging up or by hearting by the adults. Every time a child repeats an activity he is absorbing different attribute of the material. He is discriminating, categorizing and arranging the experiences in an orderly manner. When the child works with the knobbed cylinders and repeats the exercise several times he develops a visual discrimination of dimension. The auto-corrective aspect of the block of knobbed cylinders is that the cylinders fit in their respective sockets only. While working with the cylinders the child initially tries to fit any cylinder in any socket. But with repetitions he gains visual and muscular perception and discrimination of dimensions and weight. These in turn guide him to eventually place the cylinders in correct sockets. He is able to gauge the depth of the socket and logically match the cylinder, which fits in it. Thus we see that repetition develops intellect. The old saying ‘Practice makes the man perfect.’ Holds true. The Sensorial Materials help the child to concentrate by isolating the exposure to only one sense. The sense of touch, though, is common in most of the activities as Dr. Maria Montessori says, “The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.” (Montessori, M. 1995, p. 27). The sensorial materials and the activities associated with them have a definite purpose. The have a clear and definite purpose and at the same time indirectly prepare the child for more advanced activity. Sensorial training helps the child awaken and refine all his senses. To develop his sense of sight, visual discrimination and visual perception it trains the child in two aspects; perception dimension and perception of colour. The child works with the knobbed cylinders, pink tower, broad stairs, long rods and knob less cylinders to develop visual perception of decrease in dimension. The material maintains ‘tenness’ in them. They prepare the child for future mathematical learning. These exercises also indirectly introduce unit of measurement. While working with these material the child also develops a muscular perception of dimension versus weight, which prepares the child to work with the baric tablets. There is association of the visual perceptions with language and as such the child is able to form abstractions of the dimensions. The child’s eye hand coordination too develops with these activities. The activities to develop perception of colours, help the child, to associate language with visual perceptions and gives him a creative bent of mind. He is able to appreciate art and culture. The language association helps the child to form abstractions. E.g. having worked with all the three colour boxes, the child is able to picture (abstraction) the colour when described as ‘not as dark as’ or ‘lighter than’. The association of language also helps the child indirectly in understanding literature, where moods are described in shades of colour. Tactile training is very important, as according to Dr. Maria Montessori, “The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.”
And “The human hand allows the minds to reveal itself.” (www.dailymontessori.com). The sensorial material train the child in all faculty of tactile sense viz; sense of touch, sense of form, sense of weight and sense of temperature. The material for sense of touch, make the child aware of different textures in the environment. In the familiarization exercises not only does the child gain tactile perception but also visual perception of textures. His sense of touch is further refined as the child is blindfolded while working with the matching exercises of the tactile materials viz; touch boards, touch tablets and fabrics. This allows the child to isolate his sense of touch. There is association of language in these activities, which develop the vocabulary and literary abstractions of the child. Next, the child awakens and refines his sense of touch of forms. The child works with stereognostic materials and develops muscular perception of various forms (shapes). This helps the child understand things in his environment better. The exercises with the geometric forms and solids and constructive triangles prepare the child understand future geometrical operations. While working with geometrical shapes and cards and geometrical solids and cards the child’s ability to abstract enhances as he works with both concrete and representational forms of the geometric shapes. The exercises of binomial and trinomial cubes not only prepare the child for future algebra learning, but they also enhance his perception of dimension and chromatic perception. Further, the baric tablets help the child to discriminate slightest discriminations in weight by enhancing his sense of touch. Similarly working with the thermic bottles and thermic tablets helps the child awaken and refine his sense of temperature. Tactile sense of temperature helps the child to understand the attributes of different things and fabrics in his environment. It also helps the child safeguard himself from mishaps. The sensorial exercises, to train the olfactory sense, make the child aware of various scents in the environment. The exercise helps the child increase concentration as he is blindfolded to isolate his olfactory sense. It also increases his ability to make judgement. The various scents help him understand different cultures better. Working with the Tasting solutions the child is made aware of different tastes in food. He refines his sense of taste by doing the matching exercise. The child learns to appreciate the fact that there are different foods in different cultures with different tastes. The association of language helps the child to express himself better and increases his ability to make judgement. The exercises with sound boxes and bells refine the child’s auditory sense. The bells initially train the child to discriminate and match the sounds but it indirectly trains the child to appreciate music. The sound boxes help the child to concentrate and increase his ability to make judgement. The sensorial materials are made from aesthetically appealing natural material, as such increase the child’s sense of beauty and make him akin to nature. They help the child in his social development, as they are usually limited in quantity in a classroom. The child learns to be patient. He acquires grace and courtesy. His observation powers sharpen while waiting for the material as he observes other children working with the material. The Materials help the child in self-construction as they cater to his biological, social and psychic needs. The child has innate love for work and repetition and orderliness. The child strives self-reliance and independence. The materials cater to these needs as; they have a definite purpose, they demand activity from child and repetition from the child. The material is auto corrective, which encourages self-reliance and independence. The purpose and aim of Sensorial work is for the child to acquire clear, conscious, information and to be able to then make classifications in his environment. Through work with the sensorial materials, the child is given the keys to classifying the things around him, which leads to the child making his own experiences in his environment. Through the classification, the child is also offered the first steps in organizing his intelligence, which then leads to his adapting to his environment. The sensorial training equips the child with power to reason and make judgement and hence he is equipped with intellect and intelligence enabling him and the directress to acquire further knowledge as Dr. Maria Montessori says, “To teach a child whose senses have been educated is quite a different thing from teaching one who has not had this help.” (Montessori, M. 1995, p. 183)