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Ah yes, reverberations of the New Soviet Man. "Awaken the Child's Social Conscience" to come into a world where they don't need to be controlled, but know exact

Ah yes, reverberations of the New Soviet Man. "Awaken the Child's Social Conscience" to come into a world where they don't need to be controlled, but know exactly what they must do already. ... "truly humane". Also the inversion student-teacher roles sounds like Paulo Freire and his opposition to the strawman "banking model" (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970). The question comes ultimately to: Is Rousseau correct that adults are correcting and that children in nature are pure, or are humans naturally selfish and children must be taught goodness and culture for them to live good and well. I believe in the second mode; the first one end in disaster for parents and society.

amadeuspagel 4y ago
TIL, the banking model of education[1]. It doesn't seem like a strawman to me. It is of course only a model, and not a complete description of existing education. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_model_of_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_model_of_education
throwaway71271 4y ago
I dont question the teaching of 'goodness and culture', but how deep do you teach it? Imagine our ultimately technical society manages to build an education system that is so personal that it directly reprograms you. You go to school, hook up your airpods and get the program. How will culture change if everyone has exactly the same culture and goodness?
lo_zamoyski 4y ago
I think that if we wish to evaluate the Montessori method, we need to avoid cynical laziness on the one hand and utopian expectations on the other. Some things that came to mind while reading the article and the reactions to it: - Not all Montessori schools are the same. Not all are accredited by a Montessori body. - Children may benefit from varying methods, and Montessori seems capable of absorbing or accommodating them to by having the teacher adjust to each child's individual needs. - Individual needs do highlight the oddness of modern education, of how impersonal and bizarrely artificial it is. In a natural setting, children grow up in a family in which they learn from their parents and siblings, through the interactions with friends, and so on. Our social interactions, especially those that take place in the family, are all about responding to each other's individual and particular needs. Learning and what is needed to learn falls under this category of human needs. Learning is fully integral and self-same with life itself, not some thing to be artificially set apart into some separated, alienated thing, a factory that thinks of students as units. - As Montessori was Catholic, and Catholicism accepts the doctrine of original sin, it is more sensible to presume that she did not accept a Rousseauian anthropology. However, a rejection of Rousseauian anthropology doesn't automatically construe children as little monsters or reject the notion that we may become corrupted by others later in life. As a Catholic, Montessori would also be familiar with the age of reason before which children maintain innocence of any personal sin (sin entails culpability, culpability entails assent, assent entails understanding, and children still lack understanding). Of course, children can be said to be selfish in the sense that early in life, they have a good many basic needs that need to be met by others, etc. The effects of original sin concern the greater or lesser insubordination of both the corporeal faculties and the will to reason (the tendency to sin is a tendency to act, with greater or lesser awareness, against reason and what reason informs us is the good). - I doubt the encyclical criticizing "scholastic innovators" was criticizing Montessori specifically or all educational reform. Papal encyclicals are not some kind of grumpy, curmudgeonly grunt of the pope in which he complains about things young people are doing that he doesn't like. They're often quite pithy and contain a good deal of foresight and depth (Pius X's predictions w.r.t. "modernism" have played out, for example). Note that at the time, the modern system of schooling was not that old (some say it was inspired by Prussian methods). What he was likely criticizing were strange fads in education rooted in really bogus philosophical anthropologies. All education systems make tacit assumptions about human nature, and if they are wrong, they will misshape educational methods and possible misshape the child. There is no way Montessori held the do-what-thou-wilt view of children or would have opposed punishment categorically. She may have only objected to the prevailing educational paradigm, and in it, the way punishment was used.
Viliam1234 4y ago
> Is Rousseau correct that adults are correcting and that children in nature are pure, or are humans naturally selfish and children must be taught goodness and culture for them to live good and well. This is a false dilemma. The fact that humans are capable of many different behaviors means that we are biologically prepared to exhibit all of them... in certain circumstances. Actually, the difference between nature and learning is also a false dilemma. The nature of homo sapiens is to learn. Some apes are born smarter than human babies, but the human babies dramatically exceed them at capacity to learn. For example, it is natural to be nice to your family and friends, and hostile to strangers. The culture tries to overcome this. Less hostility to strangers, and less nepotism, so that a large civilization can be built. The civilization brings many good things (food, safety, comfort), but also lot of frustration, as we constantly need to overcome our instincts. Sometimes we find out that we were suppressing our instincts more than was necessary, and can relax a bit. The main thing we teach children is self-control. Children can be super nice, when they are in the right mood. We teach them not to hit or bite their potential friends, when they happen to be in the opposite mood. Does this make friendliness natural or learned? The question is false. We learn how not to ruin the thing that we naturally want. In education, kids are better at learning by observing than by listening. Teachers often err by talking too much. Instead, they should talk less, and let the kids observe each other as they succeed. Still, the teachers should teach; it is not reasonable to assume that kids will reinvent the entire civilization in 10 years.

amadeuspagel 4y ago

TIL, the banking model of education[1]. It doesn't seem like a strawman to me. It is of course only a model, and not a complete description of existing education. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_model_of_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_model_of_education

throwaway71271 4y ago

I dont question the teaching of 'goodness and culture', but how deep do you teach it? Imagine our ultimately technical society manages to build an education system that is so personal that it directly reprograms you. You go to school, hook up your airpods and get the program. How will culture change if everyone has exactly the same culture and goodness?

lo_zamoyski 4y ago

I think that if we wish to evaluate the Montessori method, we need to avoid cynical laziness on the one hand and utopian expectations on the other. Some things that came to mind while reading the article and the reactions to it: - Not all Montessori schools are the same. Not all are accredited by a Montessori body. - Children may benefit from varying methods, and Montessori seems capable of absorbing or accommodating them to by having the teacher adjust to each child's individual needs. - Individual needs do highlight the oddness of modern education, of how impersonal and bizarrely artificial it is. In a natural setting, children grow up in a family in which they learn from their parents and siblings, through the interactions with friends, and so on. Our social interactions, especially those that take place in the family, are all about responding to each other's individual and particular needs. Learning and what is needed to learn falls under this category of human needs. Learning is fully integral and self-same with life itself, not some thing to be artificially set apart into some separated, alienated thing, a factory that thinks of students as units. - As Montessori was Catholic, and Catholicism accepts the doctrine of original sin, it is more sensible to presume that she did not accept a Rousseauian anthropology. However, a rejection of Rousseauian anthropology doesn't automatically construe children as little monsters or reject the notion that we may become corrupted by others later in life. As a Catholic, Montessori would also be familiar with the age of reason before which children maintain innocence of any personal sin (sin entails culpability, culpability entails assent, assent entails understanding, and children still lack understanding). Of course, children can be said to be selfish in the sense that early in life, they have a good many basic needs that need to be met by others, etc. The effects of original sin concern the greater or lesser insubordination of both the corporeal faculties and the will to reason (the tendency to sin is a tendency to act, with greater or lesser awareness, against reason and what reason informs us is the good). - I doubt the encyclical criticizing "scholastic innovators" was criticizing Montessori specifically or all educational reform. Papal encyclicals are not some kind of grumpy, curmudgeonly grunt of the pope in which he complains about things young people are doing that he doesn't like. They're often quite pithy and contain a good deal of foresight and depth (Pius X's predictions w.r.t. "modernism" have played out, for example). Note that at the time, the modern system of schooling was not that old (some say it was inspired by Prussian methods). What he was likely criticizing were strange fads in education rooted in really bogus philosophical anthropologies. All education systems make tacit assumptions about human nature, and if they are wrong, they will misshape educational methods and possible misshape the child. There is no way Montessori held the do-what-thou-wilt view of children or would have opposed punishment categorically. She may have only objected to the prevailing educational paradigm, and in it, the way punishment was used.

Viliam1234 4y ago

> Is Rousseau correct that adults are correcting and that children in nature are pure, or are humans naturally selfish and children must be taught goodness and culture for them to live good and well. This is a false dilemma. The fact that humans are capable of many different behaviors means that we are biologically prepared to exhibit all of them... in certain circumstances. Actually, the difference between nature and learning is also a false dilemma. The nature of homo sapiens is to learn. Some apes are born smarter than human babies, but the human babies dramatically exceed them at capacity to learn. For example, it is natural to be nice to your family and friends, and hostile to strangers. The culture tries to overcome this. Less hostility to strangers, and less nepotism, so that a large civilization can be built. The civilization brings many good things (food, safety, comfort), but also lot of frustration, as we constantly need to overcome our instincts. Sometimes we find out that we were suppressing our instincts more than was necessary, and can relax a bit. The main thing we teach children is self-control. Children can be super nice, when they are in the right mood. We teach them not to hit or bite their potential friends, when they happen to be in the opposite mood. Does this make friendliness natural or learned? The question is false. We learn how not to ruin the thing that we naturally want. In education, kids are better at learning by observing than by listening. Teachers often err by talking too much. Instead, they should talk less, and let the kids observe each other as they succeed. Still, the teachers should teach; it is not reasonable to assume that kids will reinvent the entire civilization in 10 years.