Chapter 8

Maria Montessori Her Life and Work by E. Mortimer Standing
Chapter 8 - The Work of the Child

Adults and children view work differently. Adults are glad to let someone else do their work so they can take a break, but children want to do it themselves. A child will enjoy filling a pail with dirt just to empty it and start over. Adults have a goal of changing their environment, accomplishing something productive. But children just enjoy the process. They'll work at a task, only to undo it when they're done and start over. With children, the work going on as they do their tasks is inside them, manifested as inner growth. Adults, who are done growing and changing, work to perfect the world around them, and their eye is on the completed task. Children work to perfect themselves and achieve 'a more advanced state of being.' They don't try to economize or make it easier by carrying more than one thing at a time. They savor each step of the process, even though it looks to us like they're wasting time and motion. Adults look ahead to the end product, but children live in the here and now. They don't look ahead.

Children enjoy their work because, unlike men of modern society, they aren't working to increase someone else's profits and power. Artists, discoverers and geniuses also love working because their work is for themselves. If children were encouraged to do tasks at their own speed in their own way, they might not grow up to dislike work. [I'm sure I oversimplified that concept!]

Adults tend to divide a project (such as building a house) among different people and different tasks. They try to economize and save steps for efficiency. But the child doesn't care about completing the project, so he does it all himself, and he completes each step methodically. Children thrive on repeating the same thing over and over again. Adults are tired after they work, but children's work refreshes and invigorates them. Children's work isn't productive in the practical adult sense. But it's productive at turning children into men and women.

In the same way that adults need specialized places to do their jobs, children need specialized places where they can do their work in peace and on their own timetable. This isn't referring to the 'prepared environment' of child-sized props, but something even beyond that. We should look at nature for our example. If we would stop building bombs and put our time, money and focus into workplaces where children could learn harmony instead of prejudice, then maybe we could have world peace. [I'm sure this leap is developed better in the book, but I'm skimming, and, frankly, it looks like a leap from my perspective. It might look less like wishful thing if I read it more carefully.] Religion would have a major part in this, but the book hasn't really explained its role.

Read the next part of this series, or start at the beginning.