Fantasy and imagination

"If, then, the true basis of the imagination is reality, and its perception is related to exactness of observation, it is necessary to prepare children to perceive the things in their environment exactly, in order to secure for them the material required by the imagination.

Further, the exercise of the intelligence, reasoning within sharply defined limits, and distinguishing one thing from another, prepares a cement for imaginative constructions; because these are the more beautiful the more closely they are united to a form, and the more logical they are in the association of individual images.

The fancy which exaggerates and invents coarsely does not put the child on the right road."
Spontaneous Activity in Education p 254, Chap IX

Montessori recognised that children's ability to imagine things that were not actually present demonstrated a special mental ability of high order. She saw that it was the foundation of intelligence itself and that it was responsible for the curiosity that underlay all scientific exploration of the environment.

"Imagination is the real substance of our intelligence. All theory and all progress comes from the mind's capacity to reconstruct something." (The Child, Society and the World p.48, Chap III).

She saw that there would be no progress without imagination and that it was something that helped the child to constantly enlarge the picture that he held of his limited individual world.

The more that she worked with children, the more convinced she became that this power of the imagination needed to be founded upon reality. Children, she felt, were constrained by their own lack of experience in the outside world.

By introducing concepts and images that had no basis in true reality the child could be misled into illusions and these illusions had nothing to ground them. Instead of extending understanding and learning possibilities fantasies could inhibit the child's natural development.

She did not come to this conclusion purely from a theoretical perspective but after closely observing hundreds of children under her care.

Again and again she saw that children were drawn to work purposefully, toactivities that were meaningful to them, and that it was this contact with reality that had a transformative effect on their behaviour.

Early on in her work she provided children with all the traditional toys and fairy tales. It was her subsequent observations of the children's own choices of activity that made her question whether such things were actually serving their developmental needs. "If I were against fairy tales, it was not because of a capricious idea, but because of certain facts, facts observed many times.

These facts come from the children themselves and not from my own reasoning." (The Child, Society and the World p.45, Chap III).

When given free choice the children themselves turned away from pretend games and fairy tales to work in the real world. It was their own power of imagination, expressed as natural curiosity, that then led them to explore all the possibilities around the materials and activities that they were involved with.

Quotations

"Though the school contained some really wonderful toys, the children never chose them. This surprised me so much that I myself intervened, to show them how to use such toys, teaching them how to handle the doll's crockery, lighting the fire in the tiny doll's kitchen, setting a pretty doll beside it. The children showed interest for a time, but then went away, and they never made such toys the objects of their spontaneous choice. And so I understood that in a child's life play is perhaps something inferior, to which he has recourse for want of something better..."
The Secret of Childhood p.123 (original translation), Chap 19

"When a fugitive mind fails to find something upon which it may work, it becomes absorbed with images and symbols. Children who are afflicted with this disorder move restlessly about. They are lively, irrepressible, but without purpose. They start something only to leave it unfinished since their energies are directed toward many different objects without being able to settle upon any of them."
Ibid p.155, Chap 23

"Adults, even though they punish or patiently tolerate the errant and unruly actions of these disordered children, actually favor and encourage their fantasies, interpreting them as the creative tendencies of a child's mind. Froebel invented many of his games to encourage the development of a child's imagination along these lines."
Ibid p.155, Chap 23

"A child's imagination can give a symbolic meaning to any object whatever, but this creates fantastic images within his mind ... Children are given toys with which they can play, but which create illusions and afford no real and productive contact with reality."
Ibid p.156, Chap 23

"Toys furnish a child with an environment that has no particular goal and, as a consequence, they cannot provide it with any real mental concentration, but only illusions."
Ibid p.156, Chap 23

"In the surroundings which we provide for them we see these children immediately attach themselves to some task. Their excited fantasies and restless movements disappear and they calmly face reality and begin to perfect themselves through their work. They become normal children. Their aimless actions become directed."
Ibid p.156, Chap 23

"A 'fugue' is a kind of flight, a taking refuge. A flight into play or into a world of fancy often conceals an energy that has been divided. It represents a subconscious defence of the ego which flees from suffering or danger and hides itself behind a mask."
Ibid p. 157, Chap 23

"Though his action is imitative, it is a selective and intelligent imitation, through which the child prepares himself to play his part in the world."
The Absorbent Mind p. 154, Chap 17

"Is the child's mental horizon limited to what he sees? No. He has a type of mind that goes beyond the concrete. He has the power of imagination."
Ibid p.160, Chap 17

"The picturing, or conjuring up, of things not physically present depends on a special mental ability of high order."
Ibid p.160, Chap 17

"The child's mind between three and six can not only see by intelligence the relations between things, but it has the higher power still of mentally imagining those things that are not directly visible."
Ibid p.161, Chap 17

"We often forget that imagination is a force for the discovery of truth. The mind is not a passive thing, but a devouring flame, never in repose, always in action."
Ibid p.161, Chap 17

"Fairy tales are very important literature. If I could I would make a collection of all the fairy tales in the world, so that grown-ups could know them better ... They are beautiful little stories for children, but not in place of this concentration on work."
The Child, Society and the World p. 46, Chap III

"We cannot make discoveries unless we can first imagine what we are seeking. We must not think that the imagination works only through fairy tales. All the intellect works like a form of the imagination. Imagination is the real substance of our intelligence. All theory and all progress comes from the mind's capacity to construct something."
Ibid p.48, Chap III

"So the province of fairy tales cannot be abolished in education but why should we not put everything in an attractive interesting form to be a stimulus to the imagination?"
Ibid p.48, Chap III

"All people are human beings with imaginations. Imagination is something great which reflects the light and asks for enlargement."
Ibid p. 48, Chap III

"The creative imagination of science is based upon truth."
Spontaneous Activity in Education p. 241, Chap IX

"When man loses himself in mere speculations, his environment will remain unchanged, but when imagination starts from contact with reality, thought begins to construct works by means of which the external world becomes transformed; almost as if the thought of man had assumed a marvellous power: the power to create."
Ibid p.241, Chap IX

"What is called creation is in reality a composition, a construction raised upon a primitive material of the mind, which must be collected from the environment by means of the senses. This is the general principle summed up by the ancient axiom : Nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensa (There is nothing in the intellect which was not first in the senses)."
Ibid p 245, Chap IX

"Imaginative creation has no mere vague sensory support - but is a construction firmly allied to reality."
Ibid p.248, Chap IX

"An adult resigns himself to his lot; a child creates an illusion. But this is not a proof of imagination, it is a proof of an unsatisfied desire; it is not an activity bound up with gifts of nature; it is a manifestation of conscious, sensitive poverty."
Ibid p.256, Chap IX

"In the void which is ignorance, fantasy easily wanders about, just because it lacks that support which permits of greater attainments."
The California Lectures, San Diego, p 44

"Truth is the basis of every great artistic production of the Imagination."
Ibid p. 47

Study guide

The Secret of Childhood - Chapters 19, 22, 23

The Absorbent Mind - Chapters 16, 17

The Child, Society and the World - Chapter III

Spontaneous Activity in Education - Chapter IX

The California Lectures, 1915 - San Diego

Journal articles

Kahn, David (1998) 'The Fertile Field of Imagination', NAMTA Journal, v18, n2, p27-41, Spring

Kahn, David (1999) 'The Spiritual Challenge of Erdkinder- Part 1: The Passage from Imaginative Vision to Concrete Experience', NAMTA Journal, v24, n2, p109-24, Spring

McKenzie, Ginger Kelley (1995) 'Montessori Language and the Sensitive Period for the Imagination and Culture', Montessori Life, v7, n3, p38-39, Summer

Montessori, Maria (1995) 'Education in Relation to the Imagination of the Little Child', NAMTA Journal, v20, n3, p42-49, Summer

Van Groenou, Meher (1995)'"Tell me a Story": Using Children's Oral Culture in a Preschool Setting', Montessori Life, v7, n3, p249-255, October

Archive resources

Boyd, W (1917) From Locke to Montessori, George Harrap & Co London.

Culverwell, E (1913) The Montessori Principles and Practice, G.Bell & Sons, London.

Kilpatrick, W (1915) Montessori Examined, Constable, London.

Woods, A (1915) 'The Imagination in Childhood', Child Life Vol XVII, No 100, December 15th.