Chapter Twenty-One

June 1977
When it was time to go back to work, we would drop the baby off at Anne's before school and pick her up when our three hours were finished. It was about as long as she could go without a feed, and she would not take a bottle of expressed milk. Like Geordie, she was not into latex, either for bottles or pacifiers. But she didn't cry much, so there was no need for a plug. Anne kept a nursery school in her house, run on the principles of Maria Montessori. Despite having four kids of her own, only one of whom was in school, and three others – four now, including Sassa, as we quickly called her - her house was orderly, quiet and the children well-behaved. I was very impressed. I loved Maggie, but her house was perpetual mess and chaotic noise; it was happy, the babble of a close family, but still a strain on the nerves, when we were used to such quiet at home. Sas especially would startle when we were there and the kids and dogs and cats ad rabbits and hamsters were flying.

Anne had studied child development in college, with an eye toward being a teacher, but she met Jack Burke, who was from Derry in the North of Ireland, and started having her own kids, and so became a different kind of teacher. She loaned me a small book that she called her bible: 'Teaching Montessori in the home: the Pre-school years.' It gave a brief history of Montessori and her method, as well as a programme for practical life exercises, sensory exercises, preparation for school (reading, writing and maths) and making your own Montessori equipment, for the child aged one and a half to five. It is one of the few books of that period I wanted to own, and Anne found me one of my own.

The surprise to me was how fascinated George was with the method, the exercises and the directions for the materials used. This was one of the reasons I had to have the book. He read it from cover-to-cover about six times before I was able to finish it properly once, and we had many conversations about the method, both philosophical and practical.

Montessori believed in supporting the child's natural development, which could be enhanced or retarded by his environment. Everything for the child had a specific use, and there was nothing that he could not see and touch. The object was to develop the whole personality of the child, with freedom within a framework of organisation. At the heart of George's interest in the method was Montessori's belief in 'making a contribution to the cause of goodness, by removing obstacles which are the source of violence and rebellion,' that so doing made an independent person, with a strong sense of self, able to improvise and use his creativity in working and learning as a healthy, thinking individual.

The book stated: ‘‘To know how to direct the child's natural energies into those creative channels ordained by his Maker is no easy matter, and requires a very special preparation. The basis of this preparation consists in going through a fundamental change of outlook. The teacher needs to acquire a deeper sense of the dignity of the child as a human being; a new appreciation of the significance of his spontaneous activities; a wider and more thorough understanding of his needs; and a quicker reverence for him as the creator of the adult-to-be. How is this to be done? ‘Montessori makes it quite clear that it is not primarily a question of studying psychology, nor of the acquisition of certain items of culture. The first essential is that the teacher should go through an inner, spiritual preparation... " Cultivate certain aptitudes in the moral order." This is the most difficult part of her training, without which all the rest is of no avail. The idea that a moral preparation is necessary before one is fit to be entrusted with the care of children is a principle hitherto chiefly confined to members of religious orders. But according to Montessori such a preparation should be the first step in the training of every teacher whatever her nationality or creed. She must study how to purify her heart and render it burning with charity towards the child. She must "put on humility"; and, above all, learn how to serve. She must learn how to appreciate and gather in all those tiny and delicate manifestations of the opening life in the child's soul. Ability to do this can only be attained through a genuine inner effort towards self-perfection. The first thing, then, the would-be teacher has to acquire is what one might call a "spiritual technique." And to attain it she will have to experience something akin to a religious conversion, for it will involve a "re-evaluation accepted Values.''’
‘Well, we’ve done that,’ George said, ‘ so we’re halfway there.’

Before Sassa could even sit by herself, George had built her several busy boards, according to Montessori’s designs, with buttons and lacing strings and other fastenings, and made blocks and a small hanging table for our ‘school time’. She had her own little shelf in the common room with her toys, which included musical ones – a triangle, a small drum, and a kazoo.
She was a happy, peaceful child, very curious and interested in everything we were doing. By the time she was nine months old, she would scoot about after us, and wanted to do everything. She played in the pots and pans, sorted beans and beads and buttons, and ‘helped’ feed the dog; she could fold her own napkin and her little bed quilt – which began as a game of peek-a-boo. By the time she was a year and a half, she had her own little space in the garden, and planted beans and pumpkins. She could water them with her own little can, and knew how to pour from her own small clay jug. We substituted natural materials for Montessori’s plastic jugs and bottles, and it was never a problem.

Sassa began to set her own little table then too, to sew with cards and a big blunt tapestry needle, and sweep with her own little broom. She loved to sing songs, and could ‘read’ books – telling the familiar stories to herself in short sentences. She was bright and bonny, a joy. According to Montessori’s method, she was a ‘normalised’ child, growing and learning in the way that a natural child should, cheerful, helpful and affectionate. The dreaded twos came along and we never saw a tantrum; Sas was too busy exploring the world and having fun. By the time she was three, she could read, and began to write at four – her own name in big scrawly letters; the school were very impressed with her when we took her up for her kindergarten interview. We told the principal that she had been at Anne’s nursery school and he nodded. ‘Oh yes. Of course.’ We had talked about home schooling, which was available through the local school, but decided against it, since we had no near neighbours for Sas to interact with.