many, beautifully clear to a few, but always a gift to the recipient child. The wise teacher does not interfere, does not teach. The wise teacher truly believes in the child’s ability. He believes the message of Dr. Montessori because as she did, he has watched the child and he has seen that it so. I have been re-reading an old book, How Children Fail, by John Holt. Allow me to quote a wise teacher… “We don’t have to make human beings smart. They are born smart. All we have to do is stop doing the things that make them stupid.”
What are the things that make children stupid? Forgive me, please, but say it I must…sitting at desks, staring at chalkboards and memorizing times tables are among the top ten. Following in the list are prohibiting freedom of movement, prohibiting speech, prohibiting freedom to choose one’s own work and finish that work at one’s leisure in a non-competitive atmosphere of love. And perhaps the greatest insult to the human intellect is that when the work is finally finished, the teacher has the nerve to grade it. Who would dare to judge the work of another? All of this is counterproductive to the development of the human intellect. To add insult to injury, many teachers are now judging behavior as well. Rather than a grade, children are given happy-grams and other such external rewards, for acting human? What is given out for non-human behavior? At its worst non-human behavior brings on a non-human punishment of the physical variety. Other punishments are more subtle and deal more specifically with self-esteem, such as “standing out”. Sometimes a whole class “stands out” for the faults of one or two. Not only do these methods inhibit creativity and breed stupidity, they also perpetuate that sense of powerlessness I mentioned a moment ago.
How does all of this stack up to a Montessori approach? If we don’t teach, what do we do? We offer the world. We bring all the facts of life to the feet of our students in concrete, tangible and realistic clarity. We order and prepare the classroom. We make careful observations (never judgments) of the work of each child we assist when needed and only when needed. We support them in their mission. We are their co-workers. We expose the student to his world and then we wait and watch. What we are privileged to witness is no less than a miracle, the creation of the man within the child. Just as once the infant developed from the germinal seed, observed only by a privileged few scientists. Working with the child, we now observe the development of the man from the child. Would the genetic scientist dare to interfere in the process he studies? Would he attempt to “tech” ©2010 Dustin Kosek. All rights reserved.
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