Great River School | Montessori Education Week

The following information was the focus of discussion each day of the Montessori Education week celebration at Great River School in 2011. The questions were designed to encourage discussion in Advisories each day. We will update information for the celebration in 2012 later in the fall.

Montessori Approach to Education

“I have studied the child. I have taken what the child has given me and expressed it and that is what is called the Montessori method.”

The Montessori approach offers a broad vision of education as an aid to life. It is designed to help children with their task of inner construction as they grow from childhood to maturity. It succeeds because it draws its principles from the natural development of the child. Its flexibility provides a matrix within which each individual child’s inner directives freely guide the child toward wholesome growth.

Montessori classrooms provide a prepared environment where children are free to respond to their natural tendency to work. The children’s innate passion for learning is encouraged by giving them opportunities to engage in spontaneous, purposeful activities with the guidance of a trained adult. Through their work, the children develop concentration and joyful self-discipline. Within a framework of order, the children progress at their own pace and rhythm, according to their individual capabilities.

Monday , March 1

Sensitive Periods in Development

Young children experience transient periods of sensibility, and are intrinsically motivated or urged to activity by specific sensitivities. A child in a sensitive period is believed to exhibit spontaneous concentration when engaged in an activity that matches a particular sensitivity. For example, children in a sensitive period for order will be drawn to activities that involve ordering. They will be observed choosing such activities and becoming deeply concentrated, sometimes repeating the activity over and over, without external reward or encouragement. Young children are naturally drawn towards those specific aspects of the environment which meet their developmental needs.

“Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, where study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants — doing nothing but live and walk about — came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning; would you not think I was romancing? Well, just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child’s way of learning.”
- The Absorbent Mind :: Dell Publishing, 1984 :: p. 36

“while at this time, [adolescence], the ‘sensitive period’ when there should develop the most noble characteristics that would prepare a man to be social, that is to say, a sense of justice and a sense of personal dignity. It is just because this is the time when the social man is created, but has not yet reached full development, that in this epoch practically every defect in adjustment to social life originates.”

- From Childhood to Adolescence, Kalakshetra Press, p 106

“Only practical work and experience lead the young to maturity.”
- The Absorbent Mind :: Dell Publishing, 1984 :: p. 32

Questions:

1. Young children learn without a teacher due to the sensitive periods during 0-6 years old, what sensitivities do adolescents have for learning?

2. What type of learning environment can be created to help adolescents meet their developmental needs?

3. What type of “practical work and experience” do you think would help you mature?

Tuesday, March 2

Prepared Environment

The Montessori classroom is an environment prepared by the adult for a specific age of student (0-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12, 12-15, 15-18). It contains all the essentials for optimal development but nothing superfluous. Attributes of a prepared environment include order and reality, beauty and simplicity. Everything is appropriately-sized for the age of child/student to enhance the child’s/adolescent’s independent functioning. A trained adult and a large enough group of children of mixed ages make up a vital part of the prepared environment.

“The first aim of the prepared environment is, as far as it is possible, to render the growing child independent of the adult. ”
- The Secret of Childhood :: Fides Publishers, 1966 :: p. 267

“during the difficult time of adolescence it is helpful to leave the accustomed environment of the family in the town and go to quiet surroundings in the country, close to nature. Here, an open-air life, individual care, and a non-toxic diet, must be the first considerations in organizing a ‘center for study and work’ . . . Therefore work on the land is an introduction both to nature and to civilization and gives a limitless field for scientific and historic studies. If the produce can be used commercially this brings in the fundamental mechanism of society, that of production and exchange, on which economic life is based. This means that there is an opportunity to learn both academically and through actual experience what are the elements of social life.”

- From Childhood to Adolescence, Kalakshetra Press, p 106

Questions

1. Would it be helpful to your development and maturity to be away from your parents at a boarding school out in the country? Why or why not?

2. What can GRS do here in the urban setting to create this type of prepared environment for you (adolescents)?

Thursday, March 3

Freedom and Discipline

Discipline is the act of students taking respectful responsibility for their own work. If given a choice and the freedom to work normalized children will exhibit discipline, being respectful to other’s work, engaging in meaningful learning and taking initiative for their own well being. In the adolescent community discipline refers to a culture of conscientiousness. Adolescents will respect each other’s efforts and work and engage in a meaningful way with their environment and work.

Freedom is the ability for a child to have real choice in regards to their work. Given developmentally appropriate activities and a prepared environment a child given the freedom to choose his or her work will do so with discipline and maximum effort. When acting freely, the normalized child will respect the rights of others and his/her need to be a contributing member of the group’s effort.

“With Montessori, however, liberty and discipline are inseparable-like two sides of a single coin” (Standing, 281)

“Freedom is understood, in a very elementary fashion, as the immediate release from oppressive bonds; as a cessation of corrections and of submission to authority. This conception is plainly negative, that is to say, it means only the elimination of coercion. From this comes, often enough, a very simple reaction: a disorderly pouring out of impulses previously controlled by the adult’s will. To let the child do as he likes when he has not yet developed any powers of control is to betray the idea of freedom. The result is children who are disorderly because order had been imposed upon them, lazy because they had previously been forced to work, and disobedient because their obedience had been enforced.”
- The Absorbent Mind :: Holt & Company, 1995 :: p. 204

“Our task is to show the way to discipline. Discipline is born when the child concentrates his attention on some objects that attracts him and provides him not only with a useful exercise but with a control of error.”
- The Absorbent Mind :: Clio Press Limited, 1994 :: p. 240

Questions:

1. How is the balance of freedom and discipline at Great River School?

2. What type of structures should or should not exist to assist students in deep concentrated work?

Friday, March 4

Normalization

If young children are repeatedly able to experience periods of spontaneous concentration on a piece of work freely chosen, they will begin to display the characteristics of normal development: a love of work, an attachment to reality, and a love of silence and working alone. Normalised children are happier children: enthusiastic, generous, and helpful to others. They make constructive work choices and their work reflects their level of development.

Quotations:

“What is to be particularly noted in these child conversions is a psychic cure, a return to what is normal. Actually, the normal child is one who is precociously intelligent, who has learned to overcome himself and to live in peace, and who prefers a disciplined task to futile idleness. When we see a child in this light, we would more properly call his ‘conversion’ a ‘normalization’.
- The Secret of Childhood :: Fides Publishers, 1966 :: p. 148

“As soon as children find something that interests them they lose their instability and learn to concentrate.”
- The Secret of Childhood :: Fides Publishers, 1966 :: p. 145

Questions:

1. When was the last time you were intensely interested in work related to school and were focused and disciplined in the work? If not school, was there something outside of school?

2. Do you agree that a normal state for humans (you) is enjoy a “disciplined task [of personal interest] to futile idleness?”