How it began, Why it works

by Helen Wheatley

Maria Montessori began her work with children by simply observing how they learned best and went on to base her teaching methods on her observations.

In this way she avoided a search for patterns of child development that would conform to adults' ideals of what they wished children to be, and paradoxically discovered that, given the right environment and stimulation, a child could develop behaviour and achievements beyond all expectations.

She found that children are better learners in the years up to the age of six than they will ever be again and that they can learn almost anything provided special techniques are used.

There must be a wide variety of activities available, with each piece of equipment serving a useful purpose; for example, children are encouraged to use real dough to make cookies they can eat, instead of play dough. Each activity must be attractively presented, spotlessly clean and in perfect repair, and should be at the right size for small hands to use. The idea that worn or scruffy equipment is "good enough for children" runs contrary to everything that Montessori believed in.

In a Montessori classroom children are encouraged to choose every activity they wish to work with, and to complete it in their own time; Montessori found that once children are accustomed to making their own choices, they are naturally attracted to what will best serve their educational needs. If children work without interruption they can develop great powers of concentration - one has only to observe a baby playing with sand to see the concentration span of a child who is really absorbed in its work.

A child in a Montessori school will be given the opportunity to learn the simple practical tasks busy parents cannot always teach; at the age of two and a half or three it is important to provide familiar activities which give a link with home. The child may be able to choose between sweeping the floor, learning to tie a bow or polish his or her own shoes, as well as being offered the more conventional nursery school activities like painting, cutting and pasting and water play. Children who learn to care for themselves and their environment develop the greatest confidence as, perhaps for the first time in their lives, they find an adult who will show them how to do the things they really want to learn.

Montessori records in her writing the great delight shown by a group of children who were taught to blow their own noses. How often to adults, with an impatient sigh, grab a paper tissue, and without even 'Excuse me' roughly wipe a child's nose, disposing of the tissue with a gesture of disgust? The child does not necessarily know the disgust is for a task the adult does not enjoy, rather than for the child itself. Any adult would feel humiliated, and Montessori teachers believe that children's feelings are even more sensitive.

Many visitors to Montessori schools comment on the calm, relaxed way children go about their business. This inner harmony springs from self respect gained from learning to take care of their own needs, and from the concentration they have acquired from being allowed to work without interruption at a chosen task.

These children are ready for the next stage in their education - the laying of the foundations for academic learning by developing and refining their senses with special materials which enhance their perceptions and increase concentration. This sensorial equipment is also attractive and fun to use.

Reading and number work are also taught with specially designed materials which enable the child to grasp the basics without stress or strain at an early age. What makes this possible is the special combination of circumstances in the Montessori environment:

• The child's freedom to choose which develops in the child of three or four a capacity for self-discipline.

• The Montessori apparatus, most of which contains an inbuilt factor which allows a child to discover and correct his or her own mistakes without asking a teacher. Problem solving becomes the child's responsibility and challenges are welcomed.

Montessorians try to teach with kindness, using the positive incentives of pride in achievement, craftsmanship for a job well done. They avoid any approach which uses carrot or stick, punishment or prize, blackmail or bribery. Maria Montessori discovered that children are well aware of the value of their achievements, and can see through lavish praise, particularly when a mistake is obvious. Like any intelligent people children wish to learn from their mistakes, to do it better next time, and so need objective assessment of what went wrong.

Because punishment usually humiliates, and most often causes a child to stop trying rather than to try to improve, it does not feature in a Montessori nursery. A child needs constructive help with errors and sympathetic assistance if there is an accident. Punishment rarely takes him further. When a grown-up spills a cup of coffee people are solicitous and helpful; if a child spills milk he is accused of carelessness, in spite of the fact that he has had less practice with drinks. In Montessori classrooms adults are sympathetic because they realise such mistakes are unintentional, and they respond by showing the child how to clear up the spilled milk, so he knows what to do next time.

A child who is bored is a disruptive child; Montessori teachers are trained to recognise that it is their responsibility to provide the child with an environment that is safe, orderly and stimulating. Dr Montessori directed that the classroom should contain all possibilities for the children to do right and none to do wrong so children can be free to explore the environment and learn by handling, experimenting and doing. One of her early observations was that children learn best when hand and mind work together and 'learning by doing' is now a recognised mainstream educational concept; like many of Montessori's ideas it has gradually found its way into accepted wisdom and is now taken for granted.

Maria Montessori was the first person to use child-sized furniture in classrooms. Her first school, the Casa dei Bambini or 'House for Children' was designed so that all the educational materials would be accessible to the children. In Montessori classrooms today, children take their own work from low shelves and cupboards; brooms, brushes, jugsand basins are of a size which children find easy to use and they become responsible for maintaining the environment spontaneously, noticing and picking up even tiny pieces of litter, caring for plants, doing their washing up and sometimes preparing their own food. Order is one of the most important features of such an environment; each person, child or teacher, is responsible for returning anything he or she has used to its correct place. This helps to develop a sense of personal responsibility as well as making sure that all children can find exactly what they need.

What Montessori recognised here was the pre-school child's strong sense of, and need for, order. Young children feel secure in an orderly environment and if uncertainty is removed their confidence builds into a positive attitude towards school which can last through life. As they grow they are taught how to love in the wider world by lessons in anything from passing scissors safely to evading suspect approaches from strangers. In a dangerous world children should not be taught to obey adults automatically; before they must know that sometimes it is safer to disobey or use initiative.

Many parents worry about discipline unnecessarily early; Montessori's research showed that children under three are not capable of true obedience because they do not yet have the ability to sublimate their own wishes to those of another person. They can obey only when an instruction is one they wish to obey; few refuse to eat their ice cream but many refuse vegetables. A child of between three and six can obey sometimes but not always. He needs practice and if lapses are treated with sympathy rather than anger they will gradually disappear. The wilfully disobedient child is often the one who has had inappropriate demands for obedience forced on him at an early age. However, too little control can be as bad as too much.

Montessori teachers are trained to be consistent but not to ask for behaviour which is beyond the child capability. No child is allowed to behave dangerously, but the teacher exercises control by focusing on the problem, not the child. If a child is jumping on a chair seat, the teacher would probably remove the chair without comment and lead the child to a place where he or she could jump in safety - the problem is solved practically and simply with the minimum attention on the unacceptable behaviour, which might have reinforced it, or on the child personally.

Montessori did much of her work in the period between the wars when many dedicated themselves to building a world where war would not be possible again. Her particular cause was to help children to learn to live together in harmony and was dedicated to the idea that although adult behaviour cannot be changed by mere teaching, her way of nurturing children and helping them to develop could be a positive force for good which would last into adult life.

Now, 94 years after the founding of the first Montessori school, the approach is spreading rapidly, as parents seek a middle way between old fashioned rigid teaching methods and undue permissiveness. If its popularity continues to increase as it has done during the past decade, our children may be better placed to build the safe, peaceful world Maria Montessori envisaged.