How Values are Acquired

The values we absorbed in childhood remain with us our whole life long. They are in the culture all around us. And the values concretely expressed in our families and in our early schooling mark us most potently; those in the wider society, more mildly; and adults will see social values through the lens they fashioned in their childhood. The values thus acquired may be positively or negatively experienced. A childhood of neglect and of abuse? Negative toning. A nurturing, caring home? Positive.

The observations of Maria Montessori (1870-1952) are a clue to this. She observed that children pass through periods of heightened sensitivity when their minds are absorbent. They literally acquire all that is about them through the skin—not least their physical surroundings—so that, later in life, they are never really content unless they live in a region that matches the climate and landscape of the one where they spent their sensitive years. All other learning they experience, as young adults and onward, has a less compelling, potent quality. They are imprinted, as it were—not just with the culture and its values but also with their innate reactions to it.

When the values of a culture gradually thin out—say they are deformed, mechanized, edited to conform to some rising fashions—the children who receive that culture through the skin will later manifest it in their lives and thus they also pass it on. The process also works in reverse. A shallow culture may also deepen, usually because of upheavals and sufferings experienced by large collectives. And thus a richer, more meaningful culture may be acquired naturally by the children born into such times.

In modern thought this indelible “imprint” tends to be ignored. Modern thought is marked by the cerebral, mechanical, procedural, and programmatic; intuition is too messy. But the imprint is all-important. The education will not take if the inner culture of the child, the heart, does not resonate with it. If the absorbed culture is good, it acts as an antidote to decadence; if weak, it acts to dilute the strength even of excellent higher education.

We notice this phenomena as we age. One’s own childhood experience, that imprint, forms a kind of benchmark against which all that happens later is compared. And here, again, the quality of that early experience is crucial. If the future deepens, the individual will embrace the good if he or she experienced it potently in childhood. If not, the good will be resisted.

Having said this, I note next the virtual impossibility of “engineering cultures.” Cultures are too complex to be formed by deliberate public actions. Children can’t be left behind if they were properly formed in the first place. Nor can they be promoted if not. Culture is a given, a simple brute datum. It keeps changing not by programs, curricula, and advertising but by something mysterious—and it is mysterious because it is too vast to track.

The Early Grades

It’s sort of obvious, when I think about it: culture is formed in grade- and middle-school. The logic for that runs as follows. The values we form in childhood, the values we feel, later, as virtual instincts, later shape the collective. Their first experience, of course, is in the home. But their socialization takes place in schooling. The child encounters the social collective in grade school for the first time. There the three Rs are, you might say, almost incidental. It is the Big V that really counts.

If the home has effectively formed the child—the values gained there may be weakened, diluted, and eroded if the child’s first contact with society does not at once confirm them. And parents, time and again, stare in hopeless impotence at this process of erosion aided, as it is, by social consensus.

High school? Too late. Or perhaps irrelevant. My own memories tell me that it is the worst stage of education as ordinarily encountered. Puberty: humanity’s most biologically-imprinted age. Wise woman Montessori understood that; in that age, in her design, the abstract gives way to the tasks of social integration.

And by the time we reach college, the hope is that the individual’s values have reached a certain crystallization.

The difficult aspect here is that values have a holistic character. They can be said to represent a fusion of morality, empathy, cosmology, and intellect—but that comes later on. The child simply absorbs a kind of something: life itself. And as it ages, its powers of absorption, in that sense,  grow weaker. Montessori, again, spoke of the early “Absorbent Mind” present in children. Later that something may indeed  be parsed into components; as an adult, the child may modify this or that part of the whole. But something crucial in the whole remains, and it is that remainder that really forms culture. And that’s what we call values.

If we seek to diagnose the ills of our culture, we ought really to concentrated on the level that really matters: the home and the early grades. The ills of vast collective structures like politics, finance, media, entertainment, business, etc., are all of them traceable to failures in the home, where ambitious parents try to “realize” themselves and struggle to advance careers, and to schools that dare not teach values—indeed cannot—because they fear to overstep the line arbitrarily drawn between religion and the state. And you cannot teach values, as such, unless the cosmological component is a part of them.

More on Autism

In an earlier post I noted changes in the official diagnosis of autism (link). One thing leads to another. On a walk with Monique, talking about that, she alerted me to the absolutely fascinating story of Temple Grandin—and a movie about that lady’s early struggles—helped by a heroic mother, aunt, and various other creative and determined individuals to draw her out. Grandin developed from the most unpromising beginnings into a major innovator in animal husbandry; later she distinguished herself as professor and lecturer on autism. A brief video (link) will introduce her. Watching that video—in which, among other things, she discusses the education of the young and the importance of hands-on-learning—and having just seen the film, it occurred to me first, what the real differences are between “hard” cases of autism where some genuine differences exist in the formation of the brain, Grandin’s case, and the spread of “soft” autism which is most likely due to failures of nurture, rearing, and education—hence the changes in diagnosis. Second, I discerned here the similarities between very gifted and creative and autistic people—which may have much to do with natural gifts of “seeing more,” as Temple Grandin did—she understood many things that others didn’t even notice—and good nurture, education. Grandin’s is a story very similar to Helen Keller’s—with very similarly triumphant outcomes. We know too little. But what I’m beginning to see clearly now is that the old ways of life were better suited to let children develop—playing in the real world with toys of their own making—and that the best educational method, based on real observation of children, is Maria Montessori’s.

Montessori's Erdkinder

“We have called these children the ‘Erdkinder’ because they are learning about civilization through its origin in agriculture. They are the `land-children.’ They are learning of the beginning of civilization that occurred when the tribes settled on the land and began a life of peace and progress while the nomads remained barbarians and warriors. …” [Maria Montessori, From Childhood to Adolescence]

Montessori bequeathed pedagogy with several new terms, not least her own name. She also left “the absorbent mind” and “sensitivity period,” although the latter originated with Hugo de Vries; he was the Dutch botanist who made mutation famous; she made “sensitivity period” famous. She also introduced the term Erdkinder, but her focus was on early childhood education; hence this term, used to designated those in the last years of childhood, has remained the property of specialists. Most people have never heard of Erdkinder—even in Germany, althought this is a German word.

Maria never tired of repeating that intense observation of children taught her all she knew. “Sensitivity period” arose from the observation that at different ages children have a very pronounced tendency to learn different things; in these periods their minds become absorbent and acquire experience and knowledge spontaneously, effortlessly. She suggested three periods of sensitivity (and phases within those): birth to 6, 6-12, 12-18. She developed methods and materials to optimize learning in the first two periods, but she only outlined what she saw as the ideal way to educate adolescents, the last cohort. She picked a German word for this, “earth children.” Why she chose a German word I’ve never been able to pin down, not years ago when we were much involved with the Montessori method nor even now with the help of the Internet. I think she heard the word and liked it during one of her lectures in Germany. But the word, Erdkinder, is not in general use in Germany and never has been. It is thus a technical term.

She observed that with age twelve or thereabouts, a new sensitive period begins in which the adolescent becomes keenly interested in social interaction and integration with the group. Hormonal changes disturb and also catalyze this process; emotional turmoil is a consequence; intense anxiety is an on-and-off feature; periods of withdrawal are common. These are what all of us know as the terrible teens. This is not a period, as Montessori saw it, when abstract learning attracts the child—nor a time when the relative solitude and confinement of the classroom answers to the needs of youths.

She projected an interesting—and, indeed challenging—departure for the education of children between 12 and 15 and a modified form of it for those aged 15 to 18. Children, she wrote in the work cited above, should live in a sizeable community on the land, on a farm, something analogous to a Kibbutz—but located reasonably far from the city. Not, she emphasizes, in the suburbs. Children, at this stage, should be shielded from the tense ways of city life. She imagined them spending much of their time in direct participation in the work of the farm, out there in the agricultural environment, in company with suitably trained adults. The earth children would not merely labor; they would take active part in planning the work and solving problems that arose: their participation would be comprehensive. They would also earn money. Montessori considered that an important part of socialization. She also imagined that the Erdkinder would live on the farm with those assigned to teach them.

At this age in life, she observed, children are drawn to communal forms of art, including the theater and music. She pictured them organizing and staging their own entertainments—and also continuing with academic subjects at regularly scheduled times—but always in the context of solving actual problems that arose in the work requirements of the farm. Physical labor, she believed would nicely balance the emotional turmoil produced by their maturing bodies. In the last stage (15 to 18) the formal education would intensify somewhat, but still in the context of the community’s needs. At graduation they would then be full adults, with a comprehensive preparation—be it for life, work, or additional formal education.

Montessori called this the education of the New Man. Alas, she lived before gender-neutral phraseology became de rigeur. When I think about it, I can visualize that such an educational revolution, especially if carried out without compromises, would indeed produce vastly beneficial results for society. The greening of America would have a different meaning…

In the process of checking on recent developments, I discovered that such schools have indeed been implemented up to a point. You can view a video depicting one of these schools, the Hershey Montessori Adolescent Program in Ohio, here. A cursory check shows me that such schools are also sprinkled around the world here and there. The seeds are in the ground.

I’ll leave this subject with a quote from Maria defining her method in a sentence. “I have studied the child,” she said. “I have taken what the child has given me and expressed it and that is what is called the Montessori method.”

Maria Montessori

We have a long association with the Montessori Method of education—and when I say we, I mean Brigitte particularly and myself as a humble servant of her endeavors but a close and enthusiastic student of Maria Montessori’s thought, writing, and practices. Our association began in the mid-1960s. In due course Brigitte became a certified Montessori teacher and taught in a school affiliated with Avila University until we left the Kansas City area in the early 1970s.

My thoughts returned to this period doubly triggered, in part by organizing books for a move to another place; my stock taking showed me, again, our rather extensive collection of literature on the method, not least all of Montessori’s books. Another and seemingly unrelated preoccupation also played a role: thinking about the need for a national economic policy. Relating how that idea evoked Montessori I’ll save to the end.

Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was a woman of genius in the progressive, nineteenth century mold, but firmly anchored in tradition nonetheless. She was the first female physician in modern Italy, a graduate of the University of Rome’s La Sapienza Medical School—good name, that. (Alas, humanity forgets so easily. Female doctors were the norm, not the stellar exceptions, in medieval times.) As a member of the university’s Psychiatric Clinic, she was drawn by the problem of educating retarded children. Her interest and leadership rapidly earned her appointment as the director of a school for the retarded. The methods she had devised soon led to success. Some of the children in her charge soon passed state examinations for reading and writing and did so with higher-than-average scores. In the next step she organized a school in a housing project, by invitation. This became the Casa dei Bambini, the Children’s House, the first ever Montessori school.

With some trepidation I’ll attempt to give a very brief summary of the Method. Montessori’s observations led her to the conviction that children learn spontaneously by interaction with their environment. They teach themselves. She optimized this process by offering bambini a specially prepared environment in general and specially designed teaching materials as tools. She combined this by training teachers carefully disciplined to maintain order as unobtrusively as possible, thus to protect the environment and nip conflict in the bud—and to facilitate the children’s learning not by teaching but by gentle guidance (and only when necessary) of the child’s own process of discovery.

When it is properly done—and when the surrounding society does not destroy by night what the school provides by day—this method has wonderful results. But it does require that it be implemented as designed and teachers suited by intellect, character, and temperament to stay out of the way but yet to be there to the extent necessary. The Montessori method continues to gain ground in early childhood education, but it isn’t sweeping the field and perhaps, given the human condition, shall never do so. Lucky the children who benefit. They, and others because of them, will experience the grace that came by way of Montessori into the world.

The Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) has seventeen member countries, predominantly western, but the method is present in the Islamic world in Pakistan and in the Hindu world in India. The method is more widespread in some other countries than our own, but here are some statistics about the Montessori movement in the United States. In the 1993-94 period, using data from the AMI, 732 Montessori schools were active in the country. This is a much lower number than schools that use the Montessori name; it’s a free country, the method has a stellar reputation, and people can and do use it without appropriate certification. In any case these 732 schools were educating 42,800 students. In the 2000-01 period, school numbers had increased to 1,377; these schools were now educating 84,525 students. Now let’s see these numbers in context. The Montessori Method reaches from toddler up to, maximally, 12-year olds. Montessori also wrote extensively about the education of children older than twelve, but she did not form institutions for older ages; and her ideas have never been tried. Why? Several aspects of society would have to be reorganized to do justice to the good doctor’s ideas. So what is the K-through-7 population in toto? According to the Digest of Education Statistics, in a table available here, 2001 enrollment in pre-kindergarten to Grade 8 was 39 million. The category is slightly larger than applies: Grade 8 includes 13-year-olds. But taking this number, it is obvious that Montessori training is almost invisible, accounting for 0.2 percent of students.

This tells Brigitte and me just how influential people of our views generally are over against a vast culture—but that doesn’t mean that we must keep our mouths shut.

Now let me relate why thoughts about a national economic policy made me think of Montessori. It occurred to me that the guiding, optimizing effect of a “prepared environment” and of appropriately trained teachers can bring out the best in children acting spontaneously and following their innate tendencies. The thought was that much as Montessori guided children, respecting them, letting them do things that came naturally—but in a certain environment, an environment the teacher also protected from wanton damage—so also a national policy could optimize the performance of a free economic sector by guiding its actions by proper regulation and minimal but crucial guidance by government. Other nations have done better implementing concepts analogous to Montessori’s method in the larger economic sphere. Is that, perhaps, because a national consensus is more sharply focused at the top? Imagine a Montessori teacher unpredictable from day to day: one day she is authoritarian, one day aggressively laissez faire; one day she favors children whose parents are best dressed and drive the most expensive cars, another she exudes a warm-caring personality toward the most neglected of her unfortunate bambini. Indeed, from day to day, you can't really predict, and sometimes she is entirely distracted because her boyfriend is acting up. Not good, folks. But that’s how policy manifests in the U.S. of A.