Montessori on my mind

Working day and night on the Free School campaign, I’ve had Montessori on my mind. It’s been a crash course, I confess. Knowing I liked the way it looked, respected its results and admired its practitioners was different to being able to write knowledgeably about it or argue convincingly in defence of Montessori in a bid for government funding. This kind of immersion in the subject has got me thinking differently about the things I do with, and particularly for, my children.

Montessori 101. It’s all about the kids, their independence, self-confidence and self-discipline. I have begun to realise that even at the age of three (she would indignantly yell “three and three quarters actually”) there’s a lot my daughter can do for herself that, out of habit, I continue to do for her unquestioningly. Reminded by my growing awareness of Montessori philosophy, I am encouraging her to fend for herself more.

This may sound like neglectful or lazy parenting. Not the case. Her delight at being able to do more for herself and even her little brother, her pride in getting it right is evident. When I told her today that she can make a jug of juice, a flavour of her choice, each morning and help herself to it whenever she wants to, she was thrilled at how “grown up” she had become.

This is hardly lazy parenting. There’s the supervision and the gentle guidance and reminders to mop up. It’s all a big investment in time and patience that I can’t always make given the pressures of working full-time and being human with limited patience. How much easier it would be to pour the juice myself but small freedoms are at the heart of Montessori. They may be small to us, but they are huge, exciting achievements when you’re three (and three quarters).

When I read that Montessori classrooms have only child-sized furniture, I began to question why, for example when decorating the children’s room I put pictures on the wall level with my eye line and not theirs. What pleasure can she get from her favourite flower picture when it’s six feet off the ground? I am trying to be better at seeing the world as my children see it and acting accordingly. I have a long way to go.

I am lucky to have grown up close to a grandmother who, though she never made a comparative study of teaching methods (or anything else), was I now realise, a natural Montessorian. Some of my earliest memories are of ambling walks through featureless areas of suburban Kent that she managed to turn into fantastic adventures. We picked, smelled and ate wild blackberries and she let me create outlandish recipes, the results were often inedible, but I weighed, measured, mixed and learned along the way.

When it came to revising for ‘O’ levels, ‘A’ levels and even my degree, she invited me into her tiny, peaceful and orderly home where she surrounded me with everything I needed to learn. While I was conjugating Latin verbs, she was renting “I, Claudius” on video and borrowing library books about Roman civilization. She would tell me to abandon the grammar for an hour and ask me questions like: “So, how did they really speak?” and “What did Romans eat for lunch?” Again – time and patience.

Some might say her dedication to the cause of learning through discovery was extreme. When my eight-year-old cousin told her he wondered how it would feel to break an egg on someone’s head, without hesitation, she told him to try it on her. So strong was her belief that a child needs to experiment, she was willing to be the guinea pig.

Like Montessori teachers, she operated no system of rewards for good behaviour. She never seemed to need it. Materially, she had nothing to give but I see now from my venture into the world of Montessori where “grace and courtesy” prevail, the value of what she left me. She would be surprised to know that there is any debate over the merits of Montessori so obvious is its benefit, let alone whether teaching should be child-led. As far as she was concerned, everything in life was.