Monthly Letter from the Principal

Transcription

1 A Montessori Point: All Built-In Monthly Letter from the Principal A Musing by Bob Ruud May 2014 Montessori Education is nothing if not integrated. The arc of psychological development stems from budding consciousness and intent, on into sensing how the self is distinct from but still essentially part of the other, through finding out what things are out there, and accomplishing this finding out through naming (okay, more learning the pre-named names ), all taken in by an amazingly absorbent mind, and all characterized by a call for help: Help me to do it myself! And then on into a leap into the intellectual, the abstract, the burgeoning ability to realize, and being drawn to connections, all taken in by an amazingly reasonable and reasoning and yet so, so social mind, and all characterized by a call for help: Help me think for myself! And onward yet, into weaving deep and broad understanding and introspection into the complicated and (potentially ) supportive social network, all taken in by a mind that is more capable than ever of figuring things out, and more sensitive some would say hypersensitive to the relation of self to other, and all characterized by a call.not for help exactly. Hmmm. It s more a subtle beckoning for subtle guidance, and subdued attention, a call often disguised as rejection and need for anonymity, but which is really a low-profile call for appropriate support, from just the right distance, not stated as, but possibly translated as: I know you re there, and I want you there, but no closer than that for now. The call is really: Watch me do it myself! One of the things that makes Montessori Education distinct from other approaches is this comprehensive theory of psychological growth in children, and for its revealing the changing but also constant needs of children in attaining their optimum development. The intimacy of theory and practice ideally builds in the means by which the adult, the Montessori Educator, can best provide the most needed kind of help to bring about the child s self-sufficiency. It also means, and it is claimed, that the materials that the children use in school have a certain feature that allows them to be used independently. There is the proverbial control of error built into many of the materials which is foundational for the child s competence and exactitude in work: correct answers, you might say, in many cases. (You may hear some Montessori Educators say: The process is more important than the product. I take issue with that: I think the process and the product are equally important, as should be obvious observing the demeanor of a child when they have worked hard on something and didn t get the right answer, and when they worked hard on something and did get the right answer. Right answers are good for children, and they confirm to the child that they followed the process through to a worthwhile end.) But I must tell the truth: Not all of the Montessori materials have built-in mechanisms for control of error, for allowing absolutely independent work, work that is completely free of the need for the teacher to check, work that allows for the possibility of an incorrect answer to appear as if it is correct. It s one of the things that teachers work on a lot. When a Montessori Educator says she is preparing

2 materials, that is one of the things she has in mind: Integrate, that is, build in, a feature that will allow the child, after she has received the presentation, to work in a truly independent way, integrating some way in which the child may arrive at a state of completion that is in complete harmony with the cosmic order of things. Material like the set illustrated below, a Montessori material that only exists in the Montessori environment if it is made by the teacher (there are other closely related Montessori materials which are part of the standard set of Montessori materials made or purchased as part of a teacher s Montessori training). Prerequisites for this work include the ability to read simple words, and a basic working vocabulary in the language of the material and the presentation (you can make and present this material in other languages; there may be some minor modifications in the design). Also, mastery of the basic parts of speech. This prepared set consists of three label cards: Adjective Synonym Antonym A small set (3 or so) of Adjective cards (look at these cards as forming a row of adjectives; they do not correspond as in columns to the cards above): nice hard A corresponding set of Synonym cards: large A corresponding set of Antonym cards: friendly difficult small mean easy Rather than write out the presentation in narrative, I ll write out the exact words the teacher and child might say in this presentation in the elementary setting. I hope that this will give you a sense of the manner and physical layout of the presentation as well as the content, in other words a more integrated, built-in thing: Teacher: Do you remember the work you have done with the Grammar Boxes? Child: Yes. Teacher: Can you name some of the Parts of Speech that you have worked with in the Grammar Boxes? Child: Noun, Verb, Adjective. Teacher: Right. And do you remember what an Adjective does? Child: It describes a noun. Teacher: Right. And today we are going to do something special with Adjectives, with those words that describe a noun. I have a card here with the word Adjective on it. I m going to set it here. And I have two other word cards here that are important to this lesson. These words may be new to you. The first one is Synonym. Have you heard that word before? No? Let s practice saying it a few times: Synonym Synonym Synonym. Synonym comes from Latin. Syn is related to our word same, and the nym part of the word is related to our word name. But in English today it really has the meaning of another word meaning the same thing. And here is another word that might be new to you: Antonym. This word was coined, as we say of a word that was invented,

3 just about a hundred and fifty years ago, by adding the Greek prefix anti-, which means against, or in opposition to, to the Latin root -onym, making Antonym. Let s practice saying that word: Antonym Antonym Antonym. It has the meaning of another word meaning the opposite. I ll put these two words here, making a row, with the Adjective card: Teacher: Can you point to the word that means a part of speech that describes a noun? Right: Adjective. Can you point to a word that means another word meaning the same thing? Right: Synonym. And can you point to a word meaning another word meaning the opposite? Right: Antonym. Teacher: Here I have a card on which is written an Adjective:. Do you know what means? Think of the million cube from the Wooden Hierarchical Material. It is. And what part of speech is? Right: it s an Adjective, because it describes a noun, just like describes the million cube. We ll put it under the Adjective card, here: Teacher: And here I have several other cards. One of them says nice. Do you know what nice means? Child: Like when somebody says: Oh, I like what you are wearing today. Teacher: Right. The word nice can mean slightly different things. But we are going to use it today in exactly the way you have just described. And it is also a word that describes a noun. Your example is a nice thing to say. We ll put it here in the Adjective column, under. And one more word: hard. This word can mean different things, too. But the way we are going to use it today is like when somebody might say: This is hard work. Have you heard hard used in this way? Can you say what it means? Child: Difficult. Teacher: Right. It is a very common word that means difficult. The set-up now looks like this: nice hard Teacher: Now you have probably observed that very often when we are learning new words, defining them, we use Synonyms and Antonyms to make their meaning clear. For example, if someone asks you, What does mean?, you might say, Large, or It s the opposite of small. So at the end of this lesson, you will have a way, complete with terminology, of defining

4 new words, for yourself, or for teaching the meaning of words to others. I m going to set out six other cards. I don t have room to set them out illustratively here. Suffice to say that you can set them out in no particular order or design, and outside of the space that they will shortly occupy as the rows and columns in the nascent table. So I guess you could say on the table but not in the table! Teacher: Remember that Synonym means another word that means the same thing. Here we have our Adjective. Do you see a word over here that is another word that means the same thing as? Point of Interest here: If the child knows all the vocabulary well already, he or she will just be learning this means of analyzing language in a standard Row-and-Column format. If the child is not completely familiar with the meanings of the words, he or she can still do the work, thanks to the Built-In feature we haven t exposed yet, and learn the new vocabulary in the process. I hope you ll read on.. Child: I think it s large. Teacher: Okay. Why don t you try that. Put large here. Teacher: Remember that Antonym means another word that means the opposite. Do you see a word over here that is another word that means the opposite of? Child: Small? Teacher: Try it. Put it in the Antonym column. Teacher: And now I want to show you something. If I turn over the card with on it, I see that on the backside there is a Secret Code. It says: Synonym of large. Now I ll turn over the card with large on it. It says: Synonym of. Notice that if we put in the Adjective column, large can go in the Synonym column. And if we put large in the Adjective column, we can put in the Synonym column, and that is also correct. And when we turn over the card with the word small on it, we see that it says: Antonym of and large. So, well done. Everything is correct. Teacher: Would you like to continue by yourself? Child: Yes. Teacher: I ll just remind you of the usual practice: try to place all of the cards in their columns and rows before you check the Secret Code. Two obvious extensions of the lesson, depending on the level: 1) to provide more prepared cards; and 2) to show the child how to use a special dictionary to find Adjectives, their Synonyms, and their Antonyms, and make their own Row-and-Column collection in their notebook, possibly making more cards to add to the set. And possibly teaching someone else how to play the game. The materials and the manner of presentation have self-sufficiency built in. The presenter, in everything she says and does, conveys a sense of respect for the child s ability and desire to do their own work for their own development. The presentation must therefore provide the child with the combination of: 1) skill; and 2) direct access to verification information. These are both necessary for truly independent work. The presentation is just a means to cultivate a little interest and a little skill to serve the greater good of independent work. I also hope that this way of presenting you with a presentation will give you an idea of how you might design some activities for your child at home.

5 If you re a linguist you probably remarked that the definition of Adjective above is an oversimplification in the linguistics of any language. However, for this early work, a simple, even an oversimplified definition is the most functional. And the rather remarkable complications analyzed by, say, Svartvik and Leech in their magnificent book, A Communicative Grammar of English, enable us to revisit such an apparently easy concept as Adjective again and again with children, all the way through their PhD s, going broader and deeper with each new encounter. That aside is a point of interest for you (I hope), and would definitely not be part of the presentation. Elegance is the essential feature: going the shortest, clearest way to establishing the child s new skill, verifying it, and then releasing the child to pursue their related interest and put their new skill to work. In essence, all of the presentations, materials, the setting of the tone, the cultivation of the culture, the building of relationships based on respect, and the celebration of the coming to prominence of others, are all just angles on what is essentially one thing: a unit which is elegant, efficient, integrated, and all built-in. Kind of like the furniture and furnishings are built into this house, making it simply and incontrovertibly beautiful: Which begs, in turn, for a replay of this old classic written by Graham Nash for Joni Mitchell: I ll light the fire You place the flowers in the vase that you bought today Staring at the fire For hours and hours While I listen to you play your love songs all night long for me Only for me Our house is a very very very fine house With two cats in the yard Life used to be so hard Now everything is easy cause of you John Dewey said, Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. We've got school to attend, or life to live, I forget which... Bob