Paul Epstein, Ph.D.
Remember Goldilocks and the Three Bears? How Goldilocks wandered off into the forest, despite warnings and admonishments from her parents to never ever leave home without their permission? How, Goldilocks, now very lost, arrived at the threshold of an inviting cottage-like house and (again, without permission) walked inside? Greeted by three bowls of porridge, a hungry and tired Goldilocks tasted the first one. It was too cold. The second was too hot. But the third was, "just right". Goldilocks next walked into the living room and tried each of three chairs. The first was too hard, the second too soft, and the third was, "just right". Finally, our precocious child found her way to the bedroom of three beds where the third was also, "just right". And now, finally, we have the connection between Goldilocks and Montessori. In Montessori preschool education, teachers are charged with providing learning environments in which everything is, "just right".
Everything. Food, furniture, learning activities, social relations, clothing, routines, and rituals must all be "just right" in order for each young child to develop her or his fullest potential. No one knows what motivated Goldilocks to wander off into the forest. But Montessori educators for nearly ninety years have observed a set of motivations shared by young children worldwide. Dr. Montessori called these motivations the "sensitive periods". Each is a specific kind of compulsion motivating a young child to seek objects and relationships in his or her environment with which to fulfil his or her special and unique inner potentials. These cannot be directly known. The young child is neither consciously aware of nor capable of directly communicating his or her potentials. Nevertheless, Montessori philosophy believes that each child can become the equivalent of a "Mozart", a "Picasso", or a "Salk". If, that is, everything in the child's environment is "just right."
Montessori teachers have three powerful tools with which aid in getting things right. A first is their knowledge of the sensitive periods. The second is knowing how to prepare the classroom environment so that each sensitive period is satisfied. The third tool is learning how to observe.
The Sensitive Periods
More than 90 years ago, Dr. Maria Montessori first understood that children must learn from their environments and are self-motivated to do so. Borrowing ideas from the biologists and philosophers of her day, Montessori proposed that each child carries within him two sorts of genetic designs - one physical and one psychical. The physical plan will determine the child's eventual height, hair colour, and other physical characteristics. The psychical plan takes the form of the sensitive periods. Each sensitive period is:
Sensitive Periods occur from birth through the age of six. The following table identifies 11 Sensitive Periods. Approximate ages of the onset and conclusion of each one are indicated after the general description:
(1) Order Characterized by a desire for consistency and repetition. A passionate love for established routines. Deeply disturbed by disorder. The environment must be carefully ordered with a place for everything and with carefully established ground-rules. (2 - 4)
(2) Movement Random movements become coordinated and controlled: grasping, touching, turning, balancing, crawling, and walking. (birth - 112)
(3) Small Objects A fixation on small objects and tiny details. (112 - 4)
(4) Grace and Courtesy Imitation of polite and considerate behaviour leads to an internalization of these qualities into the personality. (212 - 6)
(5) Refinement of the Senses Fascination with sensorial experiences (taste, sound, touch, weight, and smell) results with the child learning to observe and with making increasingly refined sensorial discriminations. (212 - 6)
(6) Writing Fascination with the attempt to reproduce letters and numbers with pencil or pen and paper. Montessori discovered that writing precedes reading. (312 - 412)
(7) Reading Spontaneous interest in the symbolic representations of the sounds of each letter and in the formation of words. (3- 512)
(8) Language Use of words to communicate: a progression from babble to words to phrases to sentences, with a continuously expanding vocabulary and comprehension. (birth to 6)
(9) Spatial Relationships Forming impressions about relationships in space: the layout of familiar places, able to find the way around the neighbourhood, and increasingly able to work complex puzzles. (4 - 6)
(10) Music Spontaneous interest in and the development of pitch, rhythm, and melody. (2 - 6)
(11) Mathematics Formation of the concepts of quantity and operations from the uses of clear and concrete material aids. (4 - 6)
The Prepared Environment
Eventually the Three Bears return to their prepared environment; they come home. Baby bear makes several startling discoveries. Somebody ate all my porridge. Somebody sat in and broke my chair. Somebody is sleeping in my bed, and there she is. For the young child, life in a Montessori classroom is also about making discoveries. The classroom is filled with learning activities designed for young children to fulfil their Sensitive Periods and learning potentials.
Children search the classroom and discover objects and exercises, which satisfy the compulsions of their sensitive periods. The sensitive period of order, for example, compels children to sort and sequence objects into just the right places. Younger children might choose the knobbed cylinders, pink cubes, or red rods. The sensitive period for order compels children to insist that events take place in exactly the right sequence. Parents of toddlers know that their children react loudly whenever anything is out of sequence or order.
If the environment does not contain what the child seeks, Montessori believed that the child would not obtain his or her full potential. The child's personality would become permanently stunted.
"Just right" takes on, now, a second meaning. In addition to the environment being prepared with just the right objects, the environment must also be prepared at just the right time. Each Sensitive Period has its own specific beginning and ending, beginning and ending in its own time. This idea was powerfully expressed in Nikos Kazantzakis' novel, Zorba the Greek:
"I remember one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited a while but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes - faster than life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget the horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled. The wretched butterfly tries with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it I tried to help it with my breath, in vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear - all crumpled - before its time. It struggled desperately and a few seconds later died in the palm of my hand.
"That little body I believe is the greatest weight I have on my conscience for I realize today that it is a sin to violate the great laws of nature.
"We should not hurry. We should not be impatient but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm."
It's not uncommon for Montessori teachers - student teachers, first year, and even the very experienced and seasoned teachers - to experience periods of angst and worry. A pattern of thought runs like this: "How will I ever know each child well enough to insure that I have exactly prepared an environment in which he or she will find all the necessary required objects, materials and relationships in order to satisfy his or her quests for self-perfection?" This thought is more pronounced, because the teacher asks this question for each and every child. There are, however, several principles that guide the preparation of the environment.
The principle of freedom is a primary characteristic. Children freely choose their own "work" - learning activities - based on their currently active inner sensitive period. But freedom is not a free-for-all. Instead, the principle here is that of freedom-within-limits. The Montessori teacher understands that for young children, freedom is an accomplishment of the development of inner self-discipline. Self-discipline is understood to be a result of succeeding independently of others. In other words, adults must never do for the child anything that the child can learn to perform for him or herself. Instead, the adult must protect each child's choice by ensuring that the child will be able to work with the chosen learning materials without interruption of interference from other children.
Beauty is another principle of the prepared environment. Each learning activity is complete; everything needed is present and in good repair. Objects placed in the classroom are attractive and elegant, designed to attract the child's interest and attention. The classroom objects also represent reality and nature. Children use real sinks and refrigerators instead of play ones. Because in real life everyone does not have the same thing at the same time, there is only one piece of material instead of multiple sets.
Contact with nature and reality are a third principle. Dr. Montessori taught that a child's direct contact with nature results with understanding and appreciating order, harmony, and beauty. The Montessori classroom environment is a place of life. Children learn to take care of plants, animals and fish. Magnifying glasses, microscopes and simple experiments are available for children to observe and learn from nature.
Observation - The Montessori Method
The sensitive periods describe inner states of young children. Children do not directly reveal them. Instead, Montessori teachers must learn to observe children for indications that suggest which sensitive period is now awake. The classroom environment is prepared based on the teacher's observations.
Dr. Montessori understood that observation is a habit, which must be developed by practice. She further understood that observation has for its purpose assisting the child's developing spirit; that is, a teacher observes children and constantly re-prepares the classroom environment so that children will always satisfy their inner sensitive periods. The quality of observation that Montessori teachers must aspire towards is that of intimacy for it is during these moments that we know another well. Intimacy involves reflection, and reflection must begin with ourselves. Montessori wrote:
"We insist on the fact that a teacher must prepare himself by systematically studying himself so that he can tear out his most deeply rooted defects, those in fact which impede his relations with children. In order to discover these subconscious failings, we have need of a special kind of instruction. We must see ourselves as another sees us."
In the version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears that I know, Goldilocks wakes, explains her presence to the bear family, and is invited to stay on for lunch. So too do children awaken as they become six; that is, children become more self-aware and aware of their own consciousness. The sensitive periods as a primary method of learning is complete. Elementary age children do not learn in the same ways as the young child. Instead, the elementary child seeks to satisfy a profound sense of wonderment. The elementary child wants to know the reasons for all things. The elementary child also seeks to understand his place in the social and moral universe. Why did Goldilocks disobey her parents? What right did Goldilocks have to enter the Three Bears' house uninvited? What properties of science make one bowl of porridge too cold, the second too hot, and third "just right"? By comparison with elementary age children, the young adolescent would simply say, "who cares?"
Adolescence - now that's a story for another time.
© 1996 The Montessori Foundation