“Monthly Letter from the Principal”
A Musing
by Bob Ruud
May 2014
A Montessori Point: All Built-In
Montessori Education is nothing if not integrated. The arc of psychological development stems from
budding consciousness and intent, on into sensing how the self is distinct from but still essentially part
of the other, through finding out what things are out there, and accomplishing this finding out through
naming (okay, more ‘learning the pre-named names’), all taken in by an amazingly absorbent mind,
and all characterized by a call for help: “Help me to do it myself!”
And then on into a leap into the intellectual, the abstract, the burgeoning ability to realize, and being
drawn to connections, all taken in by an amazingly reasonable and reasoning and yet so, so social
mind, and all characterized by a call for help: “Help me think for myself!”
And onward yet, into weaving deep and broad understanding and introspection into the complicated
and (potentially…) supportive social network, all taken in by a mind that is more capable than ever of
figuring things out, and more sensitive—some would say hypersensitive—to the relation of self to
other, and all characterized by a call….not for help exactly. Hmmm. It’s more a subtle beckoning for
subtle guidance, and subdued attention, a call often disguised as rejection and need for anonymity,
but which is really a low-profile call for appropriate support, from just the right distance, not stated as,
but possibly translated as: “I know you’re there, and I want you there, but no closer than that for
now.” The call is really: “Watch me do it myself!”
One of the things that makes Montessori Education distinct from other approaches is this
comprehensive theory of psychological growth in children, and for its revealing the changing but also
constant needs of children in attaining their optimum development.
The intimacy of theory and practice ideally builds in the means by which the adult, the Montessori
Educator, can best provide the most needed kind of help to bring about the child’s self-sufficiency. It
also means, and it is claimed, that the materials that the children use in school have a certain feature
that allows them to be used independently. There is the proverbial ‘control of error’ built into many of
the materials which is foundational for the child’s competence and exactitude in work: correct
answers, you might say, in many cases. (You may hear some Montessori Educators say: “The process is
more important than the product.” I take issue with that: I think the process and the product are
equally important, as should be obvious observing the demeanor of a child when they have worked
hard on something and didn’t get the right answer, and when they worked hard on something and did
get the right answer. Right answers are good for children, and they confirm to the child that they
followed the process through to a worthwhile end.)
But I must tell the truth: Not all of the Montessori materials have built-in mechanisms for control of
error, for allowing absolutely independent work, work that is completely free of the need for the
teacher to check, work that allows for the possibility of an incorrect answer to appear as if it is correct.
It’s one of the things that teachers work on a lot. When a Montessori Educator says she is preparing
materials, that is one of the things she has in mind: Integrate, that is, build in, a feature that will allow
the child, after she has received the presentation, to work in a truly independent way, integrating
some way in which the child may arrive at a state of completion that is in complete harmony with the
cosmic order of things. Material like the set illustrated below, a Montessori material that only exists in
the Montessori environment if it is made by the teacher (there are other closely related Montessori
materials which are part of the standard set of Montessori materials made or purchased as part of a
teacher’s Montessori training).
Prerequisites for this work include the ability to read simple words, and a basic working vocabulary in
the language of the material and the presentation (you can make and present this material in other
languages; there may be some minor modifications in the design). Also, mastery of the basic parts of
speech.
This prepared set consists of three label cards:
Adjective
Synonym
Antonym
A small set (3 or so) of Adjective cards (look at these cards as forming a row of adjectives; they do not
correspond as in columns to the cards above):
big
nice
hard
friendly
difficult
mean
easy
A corresponding set of Synonym cards:
large
A corresponding set of Antonym cards:
small
Rather than write out the presentation in narrative, I’ll write out the exact words the teacher and child
might say in this presentation in the elementary setting. I hope that this will give you a sense of the
manner and physical layout of the presentation as well as the content, in other words a more
integrated, built-in thing:
Teacher: Do you remember the work you have done with the Grammar Boxes?
Child: Yes.
Teacher: Can you name some of the Parts of Speech that you have worked with in the Grammar
Boxes?
Child: Noun, Verb, Adjective….
Teacher: Right. And do you remember what an Adjective does?
Child: It describes a noun.
Teacher: Right. And today we are going to do something special with Adjectives, with those words
that describe a noun. I have a card here with the word ‘Adjective’ on it. I’m going to set it here.
And I have two other word cards here that are important to this lesson. These words may be new
to you. The first one is ‘Synonym’. Have you heard that word before? No? Let’s practice saying it a
few times: Synonym Synonym Synonym. ‘Synonym’ comes from Latin. ‘Syn’ is related to our
word ‘same’, and the ‘nym’ part of the word is related to our word ‘name’. But in English today it
really has the meaning of ‘another word meaning the same thing’. And here is another word that
might be new to you: ‘Antonym’. This word was ‘coined’, as we say of a word that was invented,
just about a hundred and fifty years ago, by adding the Greek prefix ‘anti-‘, which means ‘against’,
or ‘in opposition to’, to the Latin root ‘-onym’, making ‘Antonym’. Let’s practice saying that word:
Antonym Antonym Antonym. It has the meaning of ‘another word meaning the opposite’. I’ll
put these two words here, making a row, with the Adjective card:
Adjective
Synonym
Antonym
Teacher: Can you point to the word that means ‘a part of speech that describes a noun’? Right:
Adjective. Can you point to a word that means ‘another word meaning the same thing’? Right:
Synonym. And can you point to a word meaning ‘another word meaning the opposite’? Right:
Antonym.
Teacher: Here I have a card on which is written an Adjective: ‘big’. Do you know what ‘big’ means?
Think of the million cube from the Wooden Hierarchical Material. It is big. And what part of speech
is ‘big’? Right: it’s an Adjective, because it describes a noun, just like ‘big’ describes the million
cube. We’ll put it under the Adjective card, here:
Adjective
Synonym
Antonym
big
Teacher: And here I have several other cards. One of them says ‘nice’. Do you know what ‘nice’
means?
Child: Like when somebody says: “Oh, I like what you are wearing today.”
Teacher: Right. The word ‘nice’ can mean slightly different things. But we are going to use it today
in exactly the way you have just described. And it is also a word that describes a noun. Your
example is a ‘nice’ thing to say. We’ll put it here in the Adjective column, under ‘big’. And one
more word: ‘hard’. This word can mean different things, too. But the way we are going to use it
today is like when somebody might say: “This is hard work.” Have you heard ‘hard’ used in this
way? Can you say what it means?
Child: Difficult.
Teacher: Right. It is a very common word that means ‘difficult’.
The set-up now looks like this:
Adjective
Synonym
Antonym
big
nice
hard
Teacher: Now you have probably observed that very often when we are learning new words,
defining them, we use Synonyms and Antonyms to make their meaning clear. For example, if
someone asks you, “What does ‘big’ mean?”, you might say, “Large,” or “It’s the opposite of
‘small’. So at the end of this lesson, you will have a way, complete with terminology, of defining
new words, for yourself, or for teaching the meaning of words to others. I’m going to set out six
other cards.
I don’t have room to set them out illustratively here. Suffice to say that you can set them out in no
particular order or design, and outside of the space that they will shortly occupy as the rows and
columns in the nascent table. So I guess you could say on the table but not in the table!
Teacher: Remember that ‘Synonym’ means ‘another word that means the same thing’. Here we
have our Adjective ‘big’. Do you see a word over here that is another word that means the same
thing as ‘big’?
Point of Interest here: If the child knows all the vocabulary well already, he or she will just be learning
this means of analyzing language in a standard Row-and-Column format. If the child is not completely
familiar with the meanings of the words, he or she can still do the work, thanks to the Built-In feature
we haven’t exposed yet, and learn the new vocabulary in the process. I hope you’ll read on…..
Child: I think it’s ‘large’.
Teacher: Okay. Why don’t you try that. Put large here.
Teacher: Remember that ‘Antonym’ means ‘another word that means the opposite’. Do you see a
word over here that is another word that means the opposite of ‘big’?
Child: Small?
Teacher: Try it. Put it in the Antonym column.
Teacher: And now I want to show you something. If I turn over the card with ‘big’ on it, I see that
on the backside there is a Secret Code. It says: Synonym of ‘large’. Now I’ll turn over the card with
‘large’ on it. It says: Synonym of ‘big’. Notice that if we put ‘big’ in the Adjective column, ‘large’ can
go in the Synonym column. And if we put ‘large’ in the Adjective column, we can put ‘big’ in the
Synonym column, and that is also correct. And when we turn over the card with the word ‘small’
on it, we see that it says: Antonym of ‘big’ and ‘large’. So, well done. Everything is correct.
Teacher: Would you like to continue by yourself?
Child: Yes.
Teacher: I’ll just remind you of the usual practice: try to place all of the cards in their columns and
rows before you check the Secret Code.
Two obvious extensions of the lesson, depending on the level: 1) to provide more prepared cards; and
2) to show the child how to use a special dictionary to find Adjectives, their Synonyms, and their
Antonyms, and make their own Row-and-Column collection in their notebook, possibly making more
cards to add to the set. And possibly teaching someone else how to play the game.
The materials and the manner of presentation have self-sufficiency built in. The presenter, in
everything she says and does, conveys a sense of respect for the child’s ability and desire to do their
own work for their own development. The presentation must therefore provide the child with the
combination of: 1) skill; and 2) direct access to verification information. These are both necessary for
truly independent work. The presentation is just a means to cultivate a little interest and a little skill to
serve the greater good of independent work.
I also hope that this way of presenting you with a presentation will give you an idea of how you might
design some activities for your child at home.
If you’re a linguist you probably remarked that the definition of ‘Adjective’ above is an
oversimplification in the linguistics of any language. However, for this early work, a simple, even an
oversimplified definition is the most functional. And the rather remarkable complications analyzed by,
say, Svartvik and Leech in their magnificent book, A Communicative Grammar of English, enable us to
revisit such an apparently easy concept as ‘Adjective’ again and again with children, all the way
through their PhD’s, going broader and deeper with each new encounter.
That aside is a point of interest for you (I hope), and would definitely not be part of the presentation.
Elegance is the essential feature: going the shortest, clearest way to establishing the child’s new skill,
verifying it, and then releasing the child to pursue their related interest and put their new skill to work.
In essence, all of the presentations, materials, the setting of the tone, the cultivation of the culture,
the building of relationships based on respect, and the celebration of the coming to prominence of
others, are all just angles on what is essentially one thing: a unit which is elegant, efficient, integrated,
and all built-in. Kind of like the furniture and furnishings are built into this house, making it simply and
incontrovertibly beautiful:
https://archive.org/details/Built-inBeautyForHomesOldAndNewByMarySamsonHarms
Which begs, in turn, for a replay of this old classic written by Graham Nash for Joni Mitchell:
I’ll light the fire
You place the flowers in the vase that you bought today
Staring at the fire
For hours and hours
While I listen to you play your love songs all night long for me
Only for me
Our house is a very very very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy ‘cause of you
John Dewey said, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” We've got school to
attend, or life to live, I forget which....
Bob