This article has been adapted from the original, which was published in The Call of Education, Vol. 11, no. IV, December, 1925.
Anticipating some of the questions which will certainly be put
to me, I shall give some recommendations regarding mistakes which I have
observed during my visits to Montessori schools. These mistakes,
apparently slight and of a psychological rather than a technical nature,
are small matters; but they are those that impede the full and
harmonious development that every teacher would like to achieve in her
class and precisely because they appear to be insignificant, they are
the most difficult to discover and eliminate.
Environment
The teacher must not content herself with merely providing her
school with an attractive environment; she must continuously think about
this environment, because a large part of the result depends on it. The
teacher, therefore, must:
a) keep the didactic developmental material in perfect order.
If this is not the case, the children will not take an interest in it
and if they do not, the material becomes useless, as the entire
Montessori method is based on the spontaneous activity of the child
which is aroused precisely by the interest the child takes in the
material.
b) make sure that every object used by the children has a place
of its own that is easily accessible to them. Thus, the black and
coloured pencils, the paper, the pen, the ink, etc., must be placed in
such a way that the children can take them in an orderly fashion without
the help of the teacher. The order in which the objects are kept
teaches order to the children.
The teacher, therefore, should occupy herself with the
environment rather than with the child and allow the former to teach the
latter. For example, if for each broom there is a support preventing it
from touching the floor and being damaged, the child will learn right
away to put it like that; if there is a special hook for every used
dishcloth, so that the wet ones are hung in the proper place, the child
will become interested in this order and learn it.
Exercises of Practical Life
There should be exercises of practical life for all the
children progressing according to age from simple to difficult to
complex. Every teacher must study to decide which exercises of practical
life are interesting and possible in her environment and make a list of
them; because whereas the other material is already determined, the
exercises of practical life are not. These vary according to the
environment but always remain a very important part of the work for they
substitute the formal gymnastics of the other educational methods. So
they must be interesting and sufficiently challenging.
The exercises of practical life should be done when they are
necessary, regardless of the time, and not according to a fixed
schedule. For example, the children should wash their hands when they
are dirty, sweep the floor when there is something to sweep, etc. Many
will object that, if allowed, the children will do nothing but exercises
of practical life and drawing. This is not true and if it does happen,
it is only because the teacher has not been able to present her material
in an interesting way or because the exercises she has given to the
children are either too easy or too difficult. The teacher should not
correct this by forbidding the exercises or by allowing them only during
a certain time of the day, but she must allow the children to complete
those tasks that they are attracted to also during the whole day, if
they wish to do so; she must merely make the other work so interesting
that the children do not want to dedicate themselves exclusively to one
thing. Still, the teacher should not panic if the children throw
themselves wholeheartedly into a certain task: that is what we call an
explosion and this continuous dedication to a specific exercise, if
concentrated and thus spontaneous, always leads to excellent results.
The teacher should know very well how to present the exercise of
practical life to the children: remembering that she must teach it with
absolute clarity in every detail, but then leave the child free to
master it; she should not correct the child even if he does it wrong.
What is important is that he does it by himself, without a word, without
the help, without a look from the teacher.
She must give her lesson, plant the seed and then disappear; observing and waiting, but not touching.
Intervention of the teacher
Many teachers interfere in order to restrain, advise or praise
the children when they should not, and instead refrain from intervening
when it is necessary. The teacher should never intervene in an action
when the impulse prompting it is good, neither with her approval nor
with her help nor with a lesson or correction. She can destroy the good
impulse of the children by intervening; or at least her intervention
will cause the real "ego" of the child to withdraw within himself as a
snail into its shell. I shall give some examples to illustrate this
fact:
a) A child runs to meet a person and embraces him
affectionately but awkwardly. If the teacher chooses that instant to
correct the child and teach him how to greet someone, he will feel hurt
or at least embarrassed and, until he has forgotten this nasty
experience, he will not want to greet someone anymore and may never be
able to do so with ease. If the teacher realises instead that she has
not taught the child how to do it well, she will prepare an amusing and
lively lesson on the various ways of greeting people and a few days
later teach this lesson to the child. He will not feel offended,
learning with pleasure how to greet a person politely without losing his
affectionate enthusiasm.
b) A child tries to wash a small table: not knowing how to do
it, he does it wrong. The teacher uses this opportunity to teach him how
to do it right. The child loses interest; looking about, he scrubs the
table top once or twice and then leaves it. If the teacher had waited,
the child himself might have discovered how to scrub the table and he
would have improved his action. In any case, the teacher should have
chosen another moment to give him a lesson: waiting for an opportunity
when she would not run the risk of destroying a good impulse.
c) A child has recently begun school: he is small and very shy.
So far he has remained motionless, looking about, not interested in
anything. Today, he gets up and very slowly, almost trying to hide
himself, goes to fetch his first piece of material. The teacher sees it,
full of joy she walks up to him and encourages him with a few words.
The child feels caught, mortified and almost just as frightened of the
approval as he would have felt of a reprimand. He blushes, returns
fretfully to his table, puts the material down and stays there without
using it. Perhaps the child will not do anything for a month and remain
seated, looking about, even more unhappy and shy than before.
d) A violent and rude child behaves gently towards another
child. If the teacher, having noticed this, shows him her approval and
encourages him to continue in this way, the child will feel almost
ashamed of his first sign of kindness (which to him may seem weakness)
and will do anything to repress and hide it, becoming more rude than
before. If the teacher instead pretends not to have noticed, the child
will feel a real pleasure in performing these small unnoticed kindnesses
and will develop this quality with the exercise.
The teacher must intervene and reprimand the children whenever
they do something rude or careless that has no good impulse and does not
lead to perfection; for instance, when they:
• pass in front of a person without asking permission;
• drag their chairs instead of carrying them;
• slam the doors;
• throw paper on the floor instead of in the wastepaper basket;
• do not clear the table when they have finished their work.
The teacher should never let one of these actions go unnoticed.
She must immediately say to the child, but in a way that only he can
hear, "When you pass in front of a person, you should ask permission"
or, "The chairs are carried in this way." These things are taught in
collective lessons to small groups, particularly to the young children.
The teacher should intervene before, not after, the disorder
has occurred. She should, therefore, reprimand those acts that are
useless, even if they are not disordered, because these acts are the
ones that lead to disorder. For example, two children are joking
together. If the teacher does not intervene and turn their attention
towards something interesting and intelligent, after a few minutes other
children will join in, creating a great disorder. Or, instead of
washing his hands, a child is playing with the water. If the teacher
does not intervene, the child will start to splash water to the other
children, who in turn will imitate him in this play, creating havoc in
the classroom.
I have observed these things, one here, one there, on different
occasions and with different people. These suggestions have always
brought a great improvement in the classroom. With great wonder some
teachers have told me that they would never have imagined that a thing
so small could have had an effect so great. But as a matter of fact the
small details change a mediocre piece of work into a masterpiece.
_______________________________________________________________
Maria Tecla Artemesia Montessori was born in Italy on August 31 of 1870 and she passed away on May 6 of 1870. She was an Italian educator also known as a good writer and a brilliant pedagogic professional. Her educational method is based on children's independence, their freedom, their respect and their natural, psychological, physical and social development. We think that her educational method is the best way posible to educate children.
This are the most important essential elements from Maria Montessori's education that we think are the better one's:
- Mixed age and sex classrooms.
- Children choice what activities they want to do.
- Students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction.
- Space on classrooms so children can move themselves with freedom.
- A trained Montessori teacher.
- Communication.
- Exploration.
- Manipulation (of the environment)
- Order
- Orientation
- Repetition
| Maria Montessori |
See you on next entry! Good-bye.
Celia and Rebeca.
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