Maria Montessori ch 6

Maria Montessori Her Life and Work by E. Mortimer Standing

Chapter 6

The Montessori method is a "living system." You can't single out any one part of it, any more than you can reduce the Charlotte Mason method to narration or living books. It needs all of the tenets, working together. Montessori's 'prepared environment' needs a 'directress' between it and the students, which also requires liberty and the teacher's non-intervention [I'm not familiar with Montessori, so the terms are a mystery to me.] The most fundamental principle in Montessori is the difference between children and adults [unlike CM, where children are seen as not all that different from adults, except that they lack knowledge and experience.] Montessori saw children as growing and changing, while adults had reached the 'norm of the species,' and were more static. A caterpillar has certain characteristics and a certain diet. Then it stops eating and becomes a chrysalis. Then it reaches its norm and is finally a butterfly. In the same way, children pass through different stages until they finally reach the 'norm,' the butterfly stage. Even their proportions change--they start with large heads and their bodies gradually catch up. Their minds also have different developmental stages:

From birth to six years, they're in the "absorbent mind" stage. They absorb impressions, sense of self, language from the world unconsciously for their first three years, and consciously for the next three years. The unconscious absorbent mind is out of our reach, there's nothing we can do to teach it, it has to do its work on its own. But we can provide the best conditions for it to work, such as a prepared environment. The unconscious absorbing mind creates faculties, such as memory, ego and will, so that, by three years old, the child can consciously manipulate his environment and process information, mostly through his hands. The absorbent mind needs a prepared child-friendly environment where it can move freely and get what it needs independently.

From six to twelve years, children experience a period of 'uniform growth.' They grow at a more steady rate, are more stable, and get sick less often. This is when children grow mentally and collect cultural knowledge. Their ego grows (making them more boastful and competitive), they develop a herd instinct that makes them crave peer acceptance, and they become reasonable and concerned with issues of fairness and conscience. What worked with the absorbent mind doesn't work with humans in this stage of development, but the tendencies of this age can be harnessed and taken advantage of by the teacher. Thus, a Montessori grade school would look nothing like a Montessori kindergarten.

From twelve to eighteen, children are in a period of transformation, first with puberty, then adolescence. This is a delicate time of bodily changes, mental growth, emotional turbulence and self-consciousness. Adults need to be sympathetic, understanding and help build the child's confidence. An inferiority complex at this age could set up social problems that last a lifetime. Montessori envisioned land settlements ('Erde Kinder') where adolescents' entire lives would revolve around social adjustment: a 'prepared environment' just for teens. (I'm not making this up!) As in the other stages, independence and confidence are the goals.

Children would be taught to have faith in God for their inner selves, and faith in themselves and their abilities to succeed in society.

My Thoughts

This smacks of 1970's pop psychology to me. I don't see that the child is taught how to control their own impulses and taught what their duty to others is, as Charlotte Mason emphasized. This is what comes, I suppose, of Montessori picking up her ideas of childhood development from a medical/psychological perspective in insane asylums.

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