contribución del método montessori

8/18/2019 Contribución Del Método Montessori

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Montessori Education: Abiding Contributions and Contemporary ChallengesAuthor(s): David ElkindSource: Young Children, Vol. 38, No. 2 (January 1983), pp. 3-10Published by: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42721000Accessed: 14-03-2016 23:27 UTC

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Abiding facets of Montessori education

Some of Montessori's contributions

seem to have a continuing significance that holds true, and will hold true for young children at any time and at any place. These contributions are attitudinal as much as factual and conceptual. Indeed it is the attitudinal contributions that I wish to stress, because her contributions in methodology and materials are well known, such as child-sized chairs and ta- bles; size-graded blocks, bars, and cylin- ders; and the strategy of introducing per- ceptual discriminations prior to giving children verbal labels. These attitudinal contributions must be viewed in context of the historical circum- stances in which she lived and worked to

be appreciated. At the turn of the century we were just coming out of a period in which the abuse of children in factories

and in mines was beginning to be recti- fied. Troubled children were beginning to be dealt with as mentally ill rather than as degenerate or possessed by the devil, and retarded children were being recognized as such and were given the special education that they deserved. In short, Montes- sori came of age in a time of child welfare reform and of new recognition of the needs, capacities, and rights of children.

This new spirit of enlightenment with respect to children was present in all of Montessori's work. First of all there was

her attitude of repsect for children. Respect is a complex emotion with equal measures of love and fear. Montessori cared for chil-

dren, not in a romantic way, but rather in a realistic way. She loved their ability to grow, their curiosity, their energy, and their spirit of adventure. But she also feared that these very positive attributes would be stunted by adults eager to force children in the direction of more limited

growth and spontaneity. Montessori's respect for children thus grew out of her love for their many positive qualities and her fear that these would not be recognized,

appreciated, and allowed to develop. A second, closely related, attitude was

that young children are essentially self- didactic. Young children, in her view, were entirely capable of learning important concepts from their own spontaneous activities. From her standpoint, it was un- necessary to force children to learn, or to employ rewards and punishments. Chil- dren who were given materials appropriate to their level of development and de- signed so that they could get immediate feedback from their actions learned a great deal on their own with pleasure and en- joyment.

A less well-known attitude, but one

which, in my opinion, is of equal impor- tance, is that teachers are self-didactic too. Children, of course, are the teacher's learning materials. And, just as the child learns through interaction with materials, the teacher learns through interaction with children. The reciprocity does not end there. With the Montessori materials the child discovers that she or he has made

an incorrect arrangement by the fact that the result does not look right or because other pieces will not fit. The teacher learns in the same way. When she or he makes a misstep, the children provide clues in their demeanor or in their behavior that

something is amiss. The teacher learns through observing children, much as the children learn through observing materials.

I emphasize this interaction between the modes of child learning and the modes of teacher learning because it highlights still another Montessori attitude. This at-

titude is the belief that the modes of learning we engage in as children will determine the modes of learning we engage in as adults. Children who learn as a result of their own activities and without the use of external

rewards and punishments are likely, as adults, to learn in the same way. The adult who experienced a Montessori education will tend to be an independent, self- starting, and spontaneous learner.

In contrast, children who are trained by

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the use of rewards and punishments, who do not learn from their own activities but

rather from materials prepared by others, will acquire quite different patterns of learning that they too will carry with them into adulthood. As adults, such individu- als will not learn from their own experience but only from information provided by others. And they will not learn spontaneously, but only when rewards or punishments are administered for such learning. From a Montessori perspective, the modes of learning acquired in childhood reach far beyond the confines of the classroom.

These attitudes and many others were

gradually translated into an educational system that we know today as Montessori education. As I suggested earlier, many of these attitudes, like the materials that have derived from them, have become part of the conventional wisdom of early childhood education. Nontheless, Mon- tessori education today is still distinct from other forms of early childhood education in some ways. I want now to look at those aspects of Montessori education that may have been appropriate at the time Montessori was writing, but which do not seem so appropriate now.

Some facets of Montessori education reconsidered

There are several aspects of Montessori education that probably should be reconsidered in the light of contemporary knowledge of child development. One of these issues is the matter of work and play, another is the exploratory versus the systematic use of learning materials, and the last issue has to do with reading instruction.

Work and play

In her writings regarding play, Montes- sori followed the work of the then popular Groos (1901a; 1901b) who demonstrated

that in the animal world play among the young anticipated adult forms of interaction. He argued that child play, such as playing house, had the same anticipatory function. From these observations he con-

cluded that the major function of play is to prepare children for adult life.

Montessori took up this conception and translated it into the more simple formula, namely, that play is the child's work.From a Montessori perspective, however,

only those forms of play that had an adaptive, preparatory function were acceptable. Other forms of imaginative play were not admissible because they took children away from adaptive learning and

play activities and were really of very little value. To this day, fantasy activity tends to be discouraged in Montessori schools.

The problem, or so it seems to me, derives from the failure to recognize that play can serve a number of different func- tions. From a Piagetian perspective, for example, play is pure assimilation. That is, when children engage in play they come to realize their personal abilities in the sense that they transform the world to adapt it to their needs. Such play, in mod- eration, is valuable insofar as it helps the child realize herself or himself as an indi-

vidual. Play in adulthood has the same function; it is geared toward individual expression and self-realization.

In the broad sense, then, play is indeed a preparation for adult life, if adult life is seen as including self-expression and self-realization as well as social adaptation. From this standpoint, fantasy play is simply a preparation for adult play and should be part of the child's educational experience. The identification of work with play, of individual realization with social adaptation, is unfortunate because it makes life all one-sided - all social adaptation. In fact, of course, work or social adaptation activities are more successful and rewarding when they are balanced with self-realization activities. This is

true for all types of work, from house- keeping and coal mining to running a big

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While some aspects of the Montessori teaching of reading are valuable , the failure to distinguish between identity and equivalence decoding may cause hardship in some children.

corporation. This view of play, however, is not readi-

ly accepted by Montessori practitioners. What seems to have happened is that a whole group of secondary rationalizations has grown up to support keeping fantasy out of Montessori schools. If these ration-

alizations were to be recognized for what they are - constructions to support a course of action that is not fully believed in - then it may be easier to give them up, or at least to be aware of their defensive nature.

One of the constructions used to defend

the absence of fantasy in Montessori schools is that fantasy is essentially dishonest. Stories about animals who talk, or witches who fly, or ogres who breathe fire are dishonest because they do not exist. By presenting children with such materials we are being dishonest because we are presenting them with a false picture of re-

ality. When they become old enough to appreciate this deception, so this argument runs, they will be angry at the adults who deceived them and will not trust

them again in the future. But another way of looking at fantasy

activity is as an expression of the young child's mode of thinking. Children do not distinguish between animate and in- animate, much less between various forms of animate life. If they can talk, have in- tentions, and so on, so can animals. Likewise, young children have no sense of the limits of what adults can do. If they can fly airplanes, why can't they fly them- selves? And if you can build fires, why can't you breathe fire? In the young child's world almost anything is possible, and fantasy material speaks to this mode of thought.

It still might be argued, however, that

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even if such a mode of thought is present in children, it should not be encouraged by reading fantasy material to children or by allowing them to create their own fan- tasies. But such a stance ignores a very important dynamic of intellectual growth which elsewhere (Elkind 1976) I have called the age dynamism. One of the mech- anisms which encourages cognitive growth is the discovery of previously held ideas that are no longer acceptable. When a child says I used to believe in the tooth fairy, but I know now it was my parents,she or he is taking a certain pride in giving

up childish ideas. It is a prominent sign of growing up. Rather than charging parents

with dishonesty, discovery of the falsity of previously held ideas fills children with the pride of intellectual maturity. When we deprive children of fantasy we also deprive them of an important marker of intellectual development.

In addition to the dishonesty argument against fantasy, there is the waste-of-time argument. Television is the culprit most often invoked in this argument. Much of the fantasy on television is not very good, and much of it is indeed a waste of time.

But is it really fair to denegrate all fantasy because some of it is bad? And is it fair to

hold children responsible for wasting their time when parents permit excessive television watching? To be sure, fantasy can be corrupting if it takes too much of a child's time and is of poor quality, but the same could be said for work. I am not con-

vinced that having four-year-old children do work sheets for hours on end is less

corrupting than watching television. What is at issue, or should be, is not work or play but inappropriate work and inappropriate fantasy.

In short, I do not believe that just because the child's desire for fantasy is abused and exploited by television we should reject the desire itself as bad or harmful. In the same way, I do not believe that just because a child's desire for work is exploited and abused by some high- pressure early childhood programs we

should regard the desire to work as harmful. The desire for play and for work are both healthy and important. They need to be realized in appropriate ways and in reasonable amounts. That is what

good early childhood education is all about.

Structure and freedom in the use of materials

A second area in which Montessori education has to be reconsidered is the use of materials. The Montessori materials are

extraordinary in that they are so nicely suited to the intellectual needs of children

at certain age periods. Elsewhere (Elkind 1976) I have suggested that when young children's activities are in the process of formation, they seek stimulus nutriment to further the attainment of those abilities. Stimulus nutriment consists of such

things as size-graded materials upon which children can practice their quan- titative abilities and sets of materials upon which children can practice their devel- oping classification skills.

There is no question then, at least to my mind, of the intrinsic value of the Montes- sori materials for the mental growth of young children. Where I do have ques- tions, however, is in the ways the materials have come to be used. First of all, let me say that I believe, with Montessori, that children should be shown how to use

the materials and not just be allowed to mess around with them. It is important that children use the blocks of the pink tower to build a tower and not as missiles

to be hurled at other children. The value of the blocks is lost if children do not learn

the size relationships that are apparent as a consequence of putting the blocks into a tower.

Accordingly, my disagreement with the way Montessori materials are used is not with their employment at the beginning of instruction. When children are first intro-

duced to the materials it is important that they learn to use them in a structured way.

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On the other hand, once children can build a pink tower with ease, they should be allowed to use the blocks to build new

constructions if they so desire. To my mind, the use of materials in a structured

way should be the prelude to using them in a more free, experimental way.

Again, this conclusion derives from de- velopmental theory. In my discussion of structural development (Elkind 1976) I suggest that the early phase in the con- struction of new abilities (stimulus nutriment seeking) is often expressed in repetitive acitivities, such as those engaged in by children learning the Montessori materials. Once children have mastered

the materials, however, it is also important that they be allowed to express this mastery by using the materials in new ways so as to discover new relationships.

Let me give an example to illustrate what I mean. When a two-year-old first learns to go down a slide, she or he does this in a very structured and repetitive way. After the child has mastered the slide, however, she or he begins to go down sideways, backwards, and so on. At this stage in their learning, children begin to experiment because they have mastered the fundamentals. Their new freedom is

built upon their previously structured activities. But that freedom to explore materials that have been mastered in a repetitive way is important too - it is an expression of mastery.

In effect, what children are doing when they begin to experiment with an acquired skill is to elaborate that skill in the horizontal direction. A child who has learned

to count, for example, will try to count ev- erything that she or he can lay a hand on. This is elaborating the ability in the horizontal direction, on new materials at the same level of difficulty. A child who builds a train or a series of small towers

with the pink tower is doing the same thing; she or he is elaborating the size relationships in new horizontal ways. And to my mind this horizontal elaboration, which follows upon mastery of a skill, is

an important prerequisite to later, vertical integration - to the attainment of higher order abilities.

Accordingly, what I am suggesting - and what I do not think is practiced in tradi-

tional Montessori programs - is that children be allowed to experiment with the materials once they have mastered their appropriate usage. It seems wrong to me that children should only be allowed to build a pink tower with blocks that could be used constructively in many other ways. Structure should always be a preparation for freedom, not an end in itself, and freedom is always the preparation for new structure. A new idea has to be tested in

systematic ways to be verified. I am well aware that the structured use of the Montessori materials grew out of their misuse. And again, I want to emphasize that I entirely agree with their structured use at the beginning of instruction. My point is only that children who have mastered the materials be al-

lowed to use them more freely. This new freedom is an earned freedom, unlike the unearned freedom of throwing materials before they are mastered. This earned freedom is constructive and valuable and should not be confused with the unearned freedom that is not. Earned freedom to ex-

periment with materials should be encouraged in Montessori schools.

Reading instruction The last issue with which I wish to deal

is reading. There is much that I admire in Montessori's approach to reading. In par- ticular, I believe that starting children with meaningful words rather than with books makes very good sense. The first lesson children learn is that words convey meaning. What Montessori helps children do, therefore, is to first acquire a conception of what reading is all about. Learning a number of sight words is an essential early learning skill.

So too is early writing. Learning to print letters engages another modality and en- hances the child's discrimination of letter

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forms. It also gives her or him a familiarity with the written word that helps to make it less foreign and strange. And, finally, children find it easier and enjoy it more when they hear or read what they them- selves have written rather than what others have put down. So I really have no quarrel at all with these aspects of Montes- sori reading training.

What has to be remembered, however, is that Montessori was working with the Italian language that is more phonetic than is English - the sound-to-symbol cor- respondences are more regular and there are accent signs to indicate pronuncia- tion of certain vowels. In contrast, English has 26 letters that can be combined in

more than 200 different ways to symbolize some 44 basic phonemes.

Accordingly, in transferring a method used to teach Italian to the teaching of En- glish there are bound to be some disloca- tions. Elsewhere (Elkind 1979) I have dis- tinguished between identity decoding and equivalence decoding. In identity decoding there is a one-to-one correspondence between symbol and sound in the sense that a letter is always sounded in the same way. Sight words usually involve identity decoding as does learning the names of the letters. From a cognitive point of view, identity decoding requires only discrimination and association and is well within

the mental competencies of young children.

As soon as one moves to words wherein the same letter can be sounded in different

ways, however, one moves to equivalence decoding. From a cognitive point of view equivalence decoding requires logical operations that most children do not have well in hand by the age of six or six-and- one-half. These operations, which Piaget calls concrete operations, enable children to logically multiply and add letters and sounds. For example, logical addition allows children to grasp that the class of a's includes the subclass of short a's and

the subclass of long a's, a = a + ā. Like- wise, logical multiplication allows chil-

dren to recognize that vowels associated with other vowels can be sounded differ-

ently than when they appear alone. The letter o, multiplied by the letter w, gives the diphthong ow which is different from both, oroXw = o+ w + ow.

What I think sometimes happens in Montessori teaching of reading, as in much public school teaching, is that this distinction between identity and equivalence decoding is overlooked. Because children can do identity decoding, it is automatically assumed that they can do equivalence decoding. In English, at least, this is not the case. Consequently, some children may be moved into equivalence

decoding before they have attained the requisite cognitive abilities. Some children may be defeated by this experience while others may acquire habits (such as rote learning) that may have to be un- learned later.

So, while some of Montessori reading instruction appears well founded, other parts do not. We should retain the practice of introducing children to meaningful function words such asgo, stop , etc. and to writing their own books before they start on primers. But at the same time, it is well to avoid moving children into equivalence decoding before they give evidence of having attained concrete operations. At- tainment of such operations is manifested spontaneously in the use of comparative terms, bigger , smaller ; in playing games with rules; in the understanding of subor- dinate classes (boys + girls = children); and many other behaviors.

Summary and conclusion

Some aspects of Montessori's program seem to me to have abiding value, and others need to be re-examined in the light of contemporary knowledge. Much of Montessori's program has already been incorporated into the conventional wisdom of early childhood education. Some attitudes of lasting value advocated by

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Montessori still need to be highlighted. These include respect for children, a recognition that they and teachers are both self-didactic, and the belief that modes of learning acquired in childhood are carried over into later life.

Some aspects of Montessori education should be re-examined in the light of contemporary knowledge. The denegra- tion of fantasy in Montessori education may deprive children of an important mechanism of mental growth. Likewise, children who have learned to use Montes-

sori materials in the prescribed way should be allowed to explore them in new and experimental ways. Finally, while some aspects of the Montessori teaching of reading are valuable, the failure to distinguish between identity and equivalence decoding may cause hardship to some children.

This article highlights some of Montes- sori's abiding contributions, but also challenges some established practices in Montessori education. The suggested alterations in educational practice were made out of respect for Montessori's primary

commitment to the best possible experience and education for children. It is because the suggested alterations in classroom practice will be to the benefit of children that I believe they are Montesso- rian in the very best and truest sense of that word. £3 References

Elkind, D. Child Development and Education. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

Elkind, D. Beginning Reading: A Stage Struc- tural Analysis. Childhood Education 55 (1979): 248-252.

Groos, K. The Play of Animals. New York: Ap- pleton, 1901(a).

Groos, K. The Play of Man. New York: Apple- ton, 1901(b).

Kilpatrick, W. H. The Montessori System Exam- ined. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914.

Copyright © 1983, David Elkind. Requests for single reprints and permission to reproduce multiple copies should be addressed to the author, 29 Concord Ave., #701, Cambridge, MA 02138. Single reprints are available from the author at no charge.

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