Tim Seldin & Paul Epstein Ph.D. An Education for Life

The Montessori Way
Dr. Maria Montessori carried a
large vision for the purpose of
education — the establishment
of universal and lasting peace.
Although she witnessed two world
wars and the unleashing of nuclear
power, Montessori evolved a living
philosophy of education, child-study
methods, age-appropriate curricula
and instruction, and programs for
adult teacher education. In 1940, she
wrote:
“Man masters almost everything but
himself. He knows almost everything but
himself. He avails himself of the most hidden
treasures but does not use the
immense riches and powers that lie within
himself.
This points to the great and urgent task of
education! No mobilization is as complete
as that which can be realized by the
school. In the past, military service was
limited to men of a certain age group.
Now more and more people are drawn
into the service of war — even women
and children.
But if the school takes upon itself the task
of mobilizing the young for the achievement
of that perfect development that
brings forward man as he can and is destined
to be: conscious of the society he
will become part of; master, not slave, of
the infinite means that civilization puts
at his disposal; equally developed in his
moral and social powers as in his physical
and intellectual ones; aware of his
task, which requires the collaboration
and unanimous effort of the whole of
mankind—nobody will be overlooked.
Nobody will be rejected; nobody exempted!
The whole of mankind will be
enrolled in this service, which is a service
for peace. Thus, education will become a
true and invincible armament for peace!
All human beings will grow to be ‘knights
of peace’ during that period in their life
when what is formed can never again be
shed or destroyed, because this is the period
of formation when the cornerstones of
the human personality are definitely
fixed.”*
Here, in closing, we would like to
compare the Montessori Way to an
American political system determined
to substitute practices of adult accountability
for experiences of childhood. We
believe that the national focus on children’s
test scores as a measure of
teacher performance has too narrowly
defined the purpose of education and
the scope of learning experiences.
We argue, along with many others,
that the current political determination
to install educational accountability will
not work. Despite considerable financial
investment, training of teachers,
matching instruction to national, state,
and local curricular standards, and
teaching children how to test, children
nationally have show little test score
improvement. Sadly, accountability has
brought fear into the learning environment
by imposing sanctions on schools
that do not meet targeted test scores.
Sanctions include removing principals
and teachers from schools that do not
perform.
In making this comparison, the
Montessori Way finds new relevancy
and importance to children and their
families. The Montessori Way continues
almost one hundred years after Montessori’s
initial insights in her first
school in Rome. Montessori schools
today seek to help children become
independent and self-disciplined by
assisting them with a full development
of their unique individual potentials.
Montessori teachers do this through
child study and by fashioning classroom
and outdoor environments in which
children find engaging activities that
help them develop habits of lifelong
learning — for example, concentration,
investigation, collaboration, problem
solving, and communication.
*Retrieved August 5, 2003, from the Association Montessori Internationale’s website http://www.montessori-ami.org/ami.htm
THE MONTESSORI WAY
The Montessori Way, with its focus
on children’s unique capabilities,
stands in marked contrast to the
directions of national education
efforts. More than two decades ago
(in 1981), the United States Department
of Education established the
National Commission on Excellence
in Education. Its purpose was to study
the quality of education in the United
States and make recommendations
for improvements.
The Commission’s findings were
published in 1983. Their report, titled
“A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for
Educational Reforms,” alarmed the
nation and set a course of action that
continues to dictate educational policy
twenty years later. Although the
opening paragraphs of “A Nation at
Risk” have been repeatedly reprinted,
it is worth reading them again. The
emotional language stands in marked
contrast to the convictions we call the
Montessori Way:
“Our nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged
preeminence in commerce, industry,
science, and technological innovation
is being overtaken by competitors
throughout the world. This report is
concerned with only one of the many
causes and dimensions of the problem,
but it is the one that undergirds
American prosperity, security, and civility.
We report to the American people
that while we can take justifiable pride
in what our schools and colleges have
historically accomplished and contributed
to the United States and the
well-being of its people, the educational
foundations of our society are presently
being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity
that threatens our very future as a
nation and a people. What was unimaginable
a generation ago has begun to
occur — others are matching and surpassing
our educational attainments.
If an unfriendly foreign power had
attempted to impose on America the
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