Touch

Listening to Claudia Hammond’s BBC Radio 4 programme “Anatomy of Touch” this morning caused my mind to make connections with what I had read yesterday evening in Cristina de Stefano’s biography of Maria Montessori about the work of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard with the Wild Boy of Aveyron and of his assistant Édouard Séguin‘s education of children with cognitive impairment. 

As well as playing an important role in our emotions, the sense of touch is so significant in the learning process. My earlier post about the importance of teaching handwriting is just one example. The feedback between what the eye sees and what the fingers feel helps to develop the neuro-muscular coordination necessary for the formation of letters. An example of kinaesthetic learning.