Montessori ch 18

Maria Montessori Her Life and Work by E. Mortimer Standing
Chapter 18 - The Montessori Directress

A Montessori teacher needs to undergo religious/spiritul preparation in order to properly understand the child as a dignified person. This is the most difficult and important part of her training. She must learn to analyze and correct her own faults rather than looking for and trying to fix a child's faults. She must cultivate humility and patience and get rid of pride and anger. Adults who act angry or arrogant are received coldly by other adults, but children don't know any better and, instead of reflecting it back, they absorb it all and it affects their self-esteem. She must seek to serve children instead of tyrannizing them as an authority. She should be interested and enthusiastic without being too energetic or too forced and turning the children off; she must move gently, calmly, delicately, naturally. She must be interested in what she's teaching and know how to present it in a fresh, novel way if she hopes to interest her students. (I guess that implies that she'd need to be constantly improving herself as a sort of parallel to CM's model of mother/teacher culture?) She must encourage the child without giving so much praise that he begins to do his work for her instead of for his own growth. She should give enough guidance and direction to get the children working, but she must practice non-intervention (which sounds like CM's masterly inactivity).

The two final chapters are about the similarities and differences between Montessori and Froebel. I might delve into that someday, but I think I'm ready to be done with this book for now and move on to something else. I changed my mind about skipping the chapters about Froebel.

For all practical purposes, I've finished the book, and there never was any mention of books or instilling any kind of ideas to inspire children's minds. I gather that, in Montessori's view, children's 'inner lights' and work to create themselves didn't need the outside influence of other people's ideas. Maybe that would be seen as an intrusion into the child's development?

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