The instruments of man’s intelligence
On a summer day long ago, my 14-month-old toddler and I were walking home from the playground. As we passed a parked car, she ran her finger over its tire. I pointed to the spot of dirt left on her finger and told her she should not touch the tire because it was dirty. For the remainder of the walk, she ran her finger over every tire of every car parked along the sidewalk, held up her finger to me and intoned, with the appropriate disapproval in her voice, the word: “dorty!” I couldn’t say then what it was, but I sensed she had learned something important that day and that memory never fully faded away.
A few weeks ago, I heard a Prepared Montessorian instructor talk about how Maria Montessori wrote about our hands being “instruments of man’s intelligence”. And suddenly, the memory from that day came rushing back. I relived the wonder of watching and supporting that tiny little human grow up to become a responsible, joyous, and talented 19-year-old. Beginning with that early recollection and musing upon her subsequent journey—of building Lego towers and bridges, writing thought-provoking essays and stories of adventure, creating beautiful works of art, knitting, and playing the violin—I could see Montessori’s words play out in my daughter’s life.
Reflecting on Montessori’s words, there are at least three ways the hands play an important role in human development: a) as a means of acquiring knowledge, b) as tools for manipulating the world, and c) as unifiers of thought and action into a self.
The hands are instruments for knowledge
In the journey from birth to early adulthood, a child has a crucially important job: to make sense of the world around him and to learn the practical means of acting in it. Central to this endeavor is the development of his mind’s ability to integrate information into an ever-growing, coherent body of knowledge. This integration proceeds both horizontally and vertically: horizontally, by incorporating each new data point into what we already know to form a unified whole, and vertically, by relating sense perception to ever more abstract conceptual knowledge.
Our hands embody that vertical connection. They are our most direct and intimate connection to the physical world we inhabit. Touch provides a powerful input to human cognition.
Close your eyes and visualize the following objects in your mind: a teacup, a tennis ball, a table lamp, a dart, a cushion, a toaster, a power strip, a pail of cold water, a statue. Now imagine running your hands and fingers over each of those objects. Think of the information that could be gained through this tactile exploration. Using our hands we can discern, amongst others, length, weight, shape, texture, temperature, fluidity, viscosity, hardness, motion, and position. Research from MIT and other sources highlight the cognitive role of touch as being increasingly understood in the field of Artificial Intelligence which has hitherto been focused on vision and hearing.
But children do a lot more with their hands than identify objects and shapes through touch. In a child’s gleeful splashing in the bathtub with her hands, she is not exploring the texture of water and she’s not doing work, but she is learning how the world works. The Montessori practical life materials such as the pink tower are designed to spark a child’s learning through manipulation of the physical world. Human learning is a process of discovery, including the identification of causal connections. As a child moves objects around, does things with them and to them, and observes what happens, she starts forming a mental model of the nature of things and of the operation of cause and effect.
The hands both convey sensory information about the world and allow us to intervene in it, as explorers and scientists. They allow us both to perceive what is and to perceive what happens.
Hands are tools for manipulating the world
“Look Gail.” Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tensed against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. “Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That’s the meaning of life.”
“Your strength?”
“Your work.”
- The Fountainhead
We hold as a central educational goal the development of our students’ capacity to act with purpose, to pursue aspirations and values. Not just for them to discover reality, but to learn to reshape it to their needs towards the achievement of their goals. Not just to think, but to value. Not just to know, but to work.
In a child’s development, practicing the pursuit of goals starts at birth. Observe the intense focus and effort of an infant trying to grasp a dangling mobile toy, or his indomitable determination in going from the first unsteady steps to mastering gravity. In time, a child begins to use the knowledge gained through the manipulation of objects to bring purpose and direction to the manipulation itself. To shape the world, to create. And creation is principally done by working with his hands.
Human hands are anatomically unique. The fine motor control, prehensility, flexibility, and dexterity they afford us underpin the dramatic impact humans have in the world. A flawed but plausible theory built around a kernel of truth (more on this later) suggests that opposable thumbs are the evolutionary advantage that has allowed humans to become the pinnacle species on the planet.
The primary way that a child builds independence, self-control, and a sense of his own capability is through hands-on activity. Toddlers love repeatedly doing real-world tasks—using their hands. Washing and cleaning, preparing food, arranging flowers—they experience work as elevating. Working with their hands helps them build self-esteem, develop foundational executive functioning, and gain habits of character that serve them throughout their lives. The focused, purposeful, thoughtful, concentrated activity that we valorize as Montessorians just is focused activity with one’s hands.
Hands unify thought and action into a self
“Education should therefore include the two forms of work, manual and intellectual, for the same person, and thus make it understood by practical experience that these two kinds complete each other and are equally essential to a civilized existence.” – Maria Montessori
To summarize: Our hands keep us in “touch” with reality; through them we gain knowledge of our world. And hands are the primary tools by which we reshape reality in the pursuit of our goals.
In our everyday language we use several terms that illustrate how, inherently, our hands are integral to learning and working: “manual”, “manipulate”, “manifest”, “manuscript”, ‘hands-on-learning”, “first-hand knowledge”, “joining hands with others”, and “lending a helping hand”. Also telling is the fact that several words in our language have connotations simultaneously referring to how we use of our hands as well as expend cognitive effort: “grasp”, “pry”, “weigh”, “probe”, “tossing around” and many others.
Little children learning to eat, dress, or build towers—great surgeons, chefs, musicians, magicians, architects, and software programmers—construction workers operating heavy machinery, tennis players, and rock climbers—everyone uses their hands. And notice that all these activities also require mental effort. They are not mindlessly repeated movements. One does not succeed at these activities without the mind directing the action. Hands, in effect, integrate thought and action.
Revisiting the opposable thumbs theory I alluded to earlier, I’m skeptical that the fundamental biological differentiator of human beings is our opposable thumbs. More fundamental is our ability to engage in conceptual, rational thought. But the kernel of plausibility is that dexterity is intelligence. The delicate fine motor control, hand-eye coordination, and spatial awareness needed to thread a needle or an artist’s ability to portray intricate details using precise brush strokes are manifestations of intelligence.
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them" – Aristotle
If all this is true, what do we make of it? If the hands are the means by which our capacities for thought and action come together, how then should this fact inform our pedagogy? As Matt Bateman writes in this blog post on the subject of practice, “learning by doing” is a critical component of Montessori education. Human progress comes from people who both learn from action and act with knowledge. We want to blast out of existence the notion that “to learn” is to sit in a classroom and study in opposition “to act” where you roll-up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. We want to support the creation of people who learn by doing and who learn to do things.
It is in this light that I interpret Montessori’s words. The hands are so crucial because they are an integrating locus of development that support the growth of the child and help actualize the human potential to “live a life fully lived”.
Murali Valluri is the SVP of Product at Higher Ground pursuing his passion for education and technology, working with an amazing team of entrepreneurs, educators, and technologists to accelerate access to high-quality Montessori education everywhere.