The first step would be to change the wrong assumption that parents and teachers had about children. Montessori felt that adults must always understand their relations with the child. She was of the opinion that the faults in the system of the education of her time were due to the failure on the part of the adults to understand the child. She asserted that the fundamental problem in the education was a social one. She said “It consists in the establishment of a new and better relationship between the two great sections of society – children and adults”, (Her life and work, Chapter 14, p.251). Parents and teachers, she said, must approach children with humility, recognizing their role as a secondary one. They must take a passive attitude towards the child in order to aid in his development. “To stimulate life – leaving it then free to develop, to unfold – herein lies the first task of an educator” (The Montessori Method, Chapter VI, Pg 115).
The very essence of the “New Education”, Montessori proposed was to give children a chance to be calm, peaceful and organized within themselves. Thus she wanted to bring about more peace-loving and calm generation for the future. She felt that ‘child is not an empty vessel to which the adults can pour the knowledge baby which produces the future man has to gain his knowledge in a natural way. It’s very important to free the child from his role of dependency on adults.
She urged the adults should realize the earning capacity of the children. Every child has got a natural power to develop himself. A child uses the environment to perfect himself. He interacts with the environment and absorbs the impressions for his psychic development. A child aims to work for internally not for external things. He works constantly towards the aim to grow and improve himself. He is not interested in the results. Through work a child attains concentration, good work habit, motor skills, and self concept. A child has a natural rhythm for his all doings.
The prevalent education system of her time focused on teaching the children sentences by heart from wall posters and books, which did not bring any interest or fun to the children. But through her experience she found that children would learn to read and write if they wanted to. The “New Education” she formulated laid stress on making the learning pleasurable and fun. She turned the traditional rules of teaching upside down by starting her children with writing.
She felt that the traditional education system is teacher oriented. The teacher lectures, corrects the work and grades it. In that system teacher influences the children and children do the works according to teacher’s instructions. A teacher provides discipline, guides, seta pace for everything. Maria felt that it lacks the role of children in education.
Maria believed that the children knew how to teach themselves. She noted that the child has its own potential for life and much is learned through its observation power and interaction with the environment. It was not the mother who taught the child to talk, walk and speak, but the child learned it by himself. “Education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual and is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the environment.”, (Education for New World, Chapter 1, Pg.2)
Montessori discovered that the child has a creative intelligence that exists in his unconscious mental stage. There are different and destructive periods in the course of child’s development, corresponding to the different phases in the development of human body. These periods are from birth to six years of age. Despite of these differences, the type of the mind is the same. Maria noticed that, at this stage, the children’s mind was endowed with different powers. The child shapes himself for the future by making use of all that he finds around him. Montessori observed that the impressions a child takes from his environment, not only penetrate the mind, but they become incarnated since the child makes his own ‘mental flesh’ in using the things that in his environment. She called this type of mind “The Absorbent Mind”. Montessori through her system of ‘new education’ aimed upon using this ‘real constructive energy’ to create a new world for humanity.
Dr. Montessori found that the children from their personalities through interactions with the environment. She found that, if they are not hindered by any arbitrary discipline, they learn themselves and develop their own personalities. She observed that the children had been given special “creative sensitivities” to help them in their own powers for reacting to life. She identified one of them as the “Sensitive Period”. Montessori observed that these periods are connected with the need for order in the environment, the development of language, use of senses, the development of walking, fascination with minute and detailed objects and a time of intense social interest.
Maria Montessori developed her method of education focusing on the different needs of the child and different sensitive periods. She focused on the children as a whole. Her principles arose out of her close observations of the children themselves and out of the questions she had asked herself about why they behaved as they did. “My method is scientific, both in its substance and in its aim”, (Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook, Pg.36). The idea behind her method of new education was that it grew out of children naturally.
She wants the education to be child centered. Where children are motivated and developed by themselves They will have a total freedom to move and work to complete the’ cycles of activity’ .They should learn for their own happiness. A child should never feel the learning as a punishment for them. In Maria’s system a Child is free to choose the materials, discover, and can set his own pace.
Dr. Montessori proved through her observation that children have a world of their own that has its own rules and adults should not interfere. She gave the world a better understanding of how children learn. They learn best at their own pace and in a happy atmosphere that allows them freedom to control their own activities. This was the core idea of her ‘new education’. She envisioned upon regenerating the humanity through this ‘new education’ which focused on making use of the creative intelligence that exist in the child’s unconscious mental stage.
Bibliography
Montessori, M., Education for a New World, Clio Press, England, 1999.
Hainstock, E.G., The Essential Montessori, Plume, New York, 1997.
Montessori, M. The Montessori Method, Dover Publications, New York, 2002.
Standing, E.M., Maria Montessori, Her Life and Work, Plume, 1998.
Montessori, M., Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook, Sshocker Books, New York, 1998.