Montessori ch 15

Maria Montessori Her Life and Work by E. Mortimer Standing
Ch 15 - The Fundamental Problem in Education

The author lists some of the suggestions offered by critics for improving education - more teacher pay, more activity, better buildings, etc., but none of those seem to help education get any better. (Oddly enough, he doesn't mention anything about ideas, or knowledge, or books!) Maria Montessori saw the problem as being rooted in the relationship between teacher and child. Relationships based on oppressers and the oppressed can never work, and teachers can't seem to unlearn the concept of lording it over their weaker pupils! Why else do teachers have the attitude that they need to mold students and tell them what to learn? Like all other oppressed classes of people - women, slaves, workers - children needed to be liberated in a revolution. She felt that children had the right to be independent in doing for themselves, to be able to move freely instead of being forced to sit still, to explore without being reprimanded for getting dirty, to have access to a suitable working environment. She wrote about this in her book, The Secret of Childhood.

If parents and teachers had to be subjected to living where everything was too high and too big, and their treasures were flung away because they were deemed dirty or worthless, and they couldn't decide what to do for themselves, they'd understand what abuses children have to deal with. The solution is for adults to learn to see children in a whole new light.

I think Maria made a good point that children are people and that adults should try to see things from their perspective. But Charlotte Mason had already found the perfect balance between the need to view children as people and not to hinder them in body, mind or soul - and yet not overlook their need for guidance and good habits and a sense of their duty to others. Since I already know about her perfect balance, it's hard to read Montessori without reacting to her lack of balance. Seeing children as persons who didn't need someone telling them what to do, and providing an artificial environment where everything is sized for them can't solve all the problems of education. Human nature tends to take the path of least resistance, and Montessori doesn't address that. Charlotte Mason wanted children to strive to be better people; Montessori seems to think they already were perfect and just needed adults to stay out of their way. I think a Montessori perspective might mesh well with a TCS/non-coersive view of parenting, but it doesn't mesh well with a Christian worldview.

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CM's Letter to the Editor regarding Montessori