Montessori Ch 5

Maria Montessori Her Life and Work by E. Mortimer Standing

Chapter 5

What distinguished the Montessori method is that her students worked on their own, of their own accord. Maria believed strongly in spontaneous intellectual activity and based her method on it. If students have to be coaxed to work, then their subjects aren't being presented properly. Working is natural and the mind was designed to work. So, all that needed to be done to get students to do the work that came naturally (sorting, comparing) was to remove hindrances. [CM also believed that learning came naturally, and that, with the right kind of lessons, children wouldn't need to be coaxed to do their schoolwork.] Infants, for instance, work hard to make sense of the world they're born into. As humans, we never complete the process of making sense of the information that comes into our lives like random jigsaw puzzle pieces. Sizes of things in relation to one another stumps children, so they willingly work with Montessori cylinders trying to work out the size concept in their minds [but do Montessori children working with cylinders figure it out any sooner than children who naturally mature into that understanding without the benefit of Montessori cylinders?] Time (past, present and future) is vague to children, a mysterious concept.

Children have to learn the difference between what's real, what's imaginary, and what's a dream. To Maria, filling them with stories was confusing. It put adults in the position of perpetuating the confusion between real and imaginary. Parents tell children fantasy stories, and then punish the child for lying. In earliest years, reality is amazing enough to enchant children. They don't need fantasy.

Even with all the confusing mysteries and frustrating complexities of the world, children are always eager and ready to learn about it. They never give up and get tired of learning. Every day, they wake up excited about discovering, experimenting, examining. Even babies are never idle. They're constantly busy exploring and trying things.

My Thoughts

Charlotte Mason also marveled at children's abilities to keep busy learning all the time. See chapter 7 (pg 65) of Home Education, the first book in her series. But rather than devise apparatus to speed the process, she says, "Nature teaches so gently, so gradually, so persistently, that he is never overdone, but goes on gathering little stores of knowledge about whatever comes before him." I suspect that a child's natural environment is the best place for him to figure out concepts, and that a contrived Montessori environment isn't necessary. Perhaps, considered from the perspective of a long life, it isn't really even helpful, since children will learn those concepts with or without special equipment like cylinders. There are better ways to spend money than on tools specifically designed to teach what will be picked up in the course of a normal childhood.

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Read the next part of this series, or start at the beginning.
CM's Letter to the Editor regarding Montessori
About the Pictures in the Book