The genius of Maria Montessori ; ‘The hand is the chief teacher’
I received a heartening mail from a reader in response to the piece in my column, “The freedom to think in our schools” (Daily Graphic August 11, 2014). I wrote that the key idea in teaching “is to imbue learners with the freedom to think on their own, make their own observations and mistakes and for them to put in the effort to make sense of their own thinking”. The reader shared the following observations (slightly edited):
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“One evening, I asked a nine-year-old girl to look at the full moon and tell me what she sees. The quest reminded me of my own childhood where my brother, friends and I would look at the moon and describe what we saw. It was quite interesting. Everybody saw something different. Someone saw a rabbit. Another saw a drummer. Someone else saw a king wearing a crown and so on.
“So it was with great anticipation that I waited for the imaginative response of this nine-year-old girl. But she covered her mouth and would not speak. She thought she would get the answer wrong! It was likely that if she had her own way, she would go and look into a book to come and tell me the 'correct answer’. I couldn't hide my amazement and disappointment; disappointment at both our formal education system and our training at home.
“How do we solve our local problems if we continue like this? Are our children going to grow up with new ideas? Are they going to be innovative? Can they solve problems without looking into books? Something must change in our training. Where do we begin? At home, maybe, and a liberal education system and institutions that allow you to think, that reward you for thinking, not punishing you for thinking!”
[The scenario of the little girl is a classic example of those learners who agonisingly disguise the silent anxieties of their own mind with false smiles of joy.]
Psychological development
Realising that “all human progress stands upon an inner force,” Maria Montessori (1870 – 1952) was so enthused by such concerns that she developed a system of education, as she put it, to allow “The free natural manifestations of the child”. She was the first woman to receive a medical degree in Italy and that challenging obligation incited her to take on a bunch of poverty-ridden children from the slums of Rome and make something profound out of those lowly lives.
In her view, the cutting edge of psychological development resides chiefly in the individual’s interests and intention. She believed that if a teacher can discern what a child is trying to do in his informational interaction with the environment and if that teacher can have on hand materials relevant to that interest or intention, if the teacher can derive a relevant challenge with which that child can cope, if she can supply a supportive model for imitation or pose a relevant question that the child can follow, that teacher can call forth the kind of accommodative change that constitutes a positive psychological growth. This sort of thing was apparently the genius of Maria Montessori to raise children into a superior adulthood than previously thought possible.
A founder of Faith Montessori School - Accra and trainer of teachers in the Montessori approach to teaching and learning, Mrs Emma Amoo-Gottfried, has observed that “We need to redefine education, retrain our teachers to have the spirit to inspire our children and allow the latter to soar to heights the former can only imagine.”
She said “In our Montessori philosophy of education, the hand is a big thing: The hand is the chief teacher; The hand should always be at the service of the mind and it is in the doing that learning is ensued. Dr Maria Montessori made these profound statements 114 years ago. Do we ever listen and do?”
Effective education
The need to develop and depend on one’s own self- through one’s own creative effort- is supported by the mother of all theories, “God helps those who help themselves.” For that reason alone, our instructional strategies have to support our youth to advance by guiding them to be creative, to be hands on and to be divergent thinkers; that is, for our youth to be able to see multiple perspectives and possibilities and not just think narrowly in the linear or convergent ways. Creative thinking, coupled with hands-on activities, provides a foolproof platform for developing abilities that often support bold possibilities and inventions.
An effective educational process has become dynamic, knowing that what you memorised the last time might not fully apply this time around. The field is everything but static; it’s in a permanent state of flux, shifting and evolving on its own axis. So subscribing to a traditional rote point of view of teaching may not only be misplaced but narrow-minded.
A learner-centred inclusive education is characterised by a move towards greater emphasis on hands-on, experience-based, active and cooperative learning. From the Montessori viewpoint, children learn through all their senses and on their way to cleanliness, confidence, order, poise and conversation, they build a solid foundation for success in pursuing advanced disciplines.
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