Dissecting the flower to make sure it blooms. Or, unwrapping just a few early green sprouts on the maple tree to make sure the leaf is really coming from that verdant little nubbin. Or opening the tomato seed under a magnifying lens to check in on the tomatoes. None of these are good ideas, if we are respecting the process.
Ok you say, but what about a recipe? How about checking the oven while the cake is baking? Just a few times, perhaps - just to get some assurance we are on track. Annually? Just each spring? Maybe just at the important points when we want to make sure the cake is in line with all the other cakes we read about in that beautiful cookbook of successful cakes? Especially if we want to be conscientious caretakers of the cake we are entrusted with... it would be so nice to get just a measure... to know.
It is hard to appreciate the cake and check on it. Specifically, appreciating would be allowing the process of maturity to take place. Any interfering in the process starts to look much more like tinkering or monitoring. I’ve written about this before in past posts, noting the differences in philosophy between formative observations and summarizing tests.
Looking on with gratitude and wonder - or at least observation and understanding- is the act of appreciating. A monitoring aspect of parenting is so useful when applied to a situation of danger - for setting boundaries and noting what’s safe and where our job is protection. But monitoring children in their test scores often can look, smell, feel and taste a whole lot like tinkering. Control. Needing to know, rather than observing in care and wonder. Sacrificing the flower for dissecting the bud. This kind of monitoring is not useful in the learning process, and we have to take care to know our adult selves before we intervene in a species-successful project of human development.
Child development is something to trust, not to assess. Observe, respect, love, and understand. Notice, yes. Provide care and resources when a child needs, yes. Often, though, adults are intervening before the need is present. It is all too often we look to the test as an indicator of the success of our care for our children, rather than the snapshot it is of how engaged the child was in their experience. This is the real sign of danger.
Yet, here we find ourselves living in a time and place where monitoring & assessing have all been blended up into a recipe that overlaps and often mistakenly includes appreciating, caring and love as the elements of responsible parenting. Most accurately this need for parenting control of our child’s development surely looks like anxiety from us as parents. Where does that leave us adults in supporting children into their maturity, if we are busy trying to first prevent the discomfort of our own anxiety?
Montessori education is grounded in the understanding that human development is an inevitable consequence of being alive. Simply by existing as a child - including adult understanding and appreciation of that child - and making our way through time do we earn the right to expect that stages of development will follow. Notice here how I’ve included a few key elements to define being a child: the experience includes “adult understanding and appreciation”. Unfolding and unveiling will reveal a process over time where every gift that an individual has to offer will bloom into plain view for all to appreciate.
And this comes into full, head-on, oppositional tension with the world of academics and MCA tests that we operate within in the public school system.
Now, it’s difficult - in the moments of utter adult frustration and impatience - when we find ourselves demanding some answers, landmarks and assurances on the path to being “OK“. Specifically, this often happens for me at bedtime. Or when we have to get out of the house to be somewhere on time. Or when I’m concerned that perhaps my child will not be prepared when it’s time for them to meet a real world test of readiness.
And I note that each of these situations has to do with the realm of time and the test of my own belief in the process of whether or not I can trust that all will be well for my child in due time. Time!
I’ve written several times about MCA tests, and talked throughout my career with parents regarding whether or not standard assessments are appropriate for elementary or junior-high aged students.
Great River School hosts parent education evenings to discuss (and present some learning on) what is it that we can do at home as families and parents to create an environment in which the assessing and testing orientation of our culture does not interrupt the developmental process of our kids. We know that a home in which children think of themselves as learners, as problem-solvers, and as capable people are homes that are doing everything necessary to prepare their students to be successful adults. Benchmarks on knowledge and skills are not useful indicators at age 7 or 9 or even 12 for what the child will be capable of as an adult at age 25 or 35 or 40.
Whether or not that child has a mindset and understanding of them self as a learner and capable problem solver is a much more reliable indicator.
So, Families and parents, be well in these winter days of March - And do let us know if you have specific questions that we as a school can answer with resources and experience that we have the joy and honor of sharing with your children at Great River.