Organic Education

Maria Montessori called education a natural process that unfolds naturally as the child constructs knowledge through experiences and interactions, rather than espousing the then-current idea that children were empty vessels waiting to be filled.   In her writings and speeches, Dr. Montessori compared teaching with the idea of planting seeds that will naturally grow in the child’s consciousness.  The gardening analogy is often used for teaching and many people call Montessori teachers “organic” in nature as teachers often allow knowledge to develop spontaneously through the child’s choices, with careful use of supportive structures that allow for the growth of responsibility through choice and accountability. As an avid gardener and consumer of products from farms, I cannot resist the urge to compare organic gardening and teaching to those more conventionally used methods found in most schools and farms today.

In conventional farming methods, the goal of the farmer is output.  It's not as much the quality of the product as it is the quantity.  Chemicals are often used to maximize those outputs; the soil is pumped up with fertilizer, systemic pesticides are used, and some people even choose seeds that are genetically modified to produce more fruits.  We seem to be moving to more conventional ways in education as the factory model of education, with its heavy reliance on data and output in certain areas, is becoming more widely used in the US, while other countries such as Finland, achieve high success with a more holistic approach.

Conventional methods often look at the land from the shorter-term perspective whereas organic farming might look at the land more long-term as far as cultivating the soil from the inside out: Creating nutrients that sustain things, rotating crops to help preserve the land and the farm and everything around it. Today, most schools have gone to an ideology akin to these mass production gardening methods. Many schools are looking for short-term gains rather than long-term ones in the follied “Race to the Top”.  Rather than being interested in producing a fruit that is tasty and desirable, many farmers are more interested in producing crops that are mass produced and profitable. Plant cultivars with a longer shelf life and resistance to bugs are selected by farmers over those that have a better flavor or nutritional value.  As more farms switch to factory farm methods, there is a domino effect that causes some family-owned farms to lose profitability if they do not follow the lead of the factory farms.

We see this in education as well: Rather than producing children that are well-rounded and prepared for life in all areas, we are tending to focus more on "growing" a child with high test scores in a narrow range of skills because that is the measure the policy makers of the state and nation give us to use. Education is seen by most as something that is constructed much like a car in a factory assembly line because that is how most were educated themselves.  Unfortunately, times have changed from when we adults were in school, where teachers had more time to be part social engineer, part scientist and part artist in order to more fully develop the unseen curriculum necessary to master life.  Today’s children need to learn twice as much information that we had to learn as children, and the emphasis on those test scores is in the forefront of many teachers’ and parents’ minds as the most valid measure of growth and teacher effectiveness.

Many people say if they had the money that they would buy organic food because they know that it tastes better and it is healthier for them. However, people will buy conventional food because it is much cheaper and fits their budget.  No one can resist the pineapples for a dollar that look so nice or the GMO corn on a cob that becomes an appealing addition to a barbecue because those conventional vegetables and fruits are also more beautiful on the outside.  Similarly, a traditional approach to education is comforting to parents who were raised with those very same lessons and drills and don’t want to leave the development of their child up to chance.  Just as less than perfect organic produce can be shunned by the consumer in favor of those fruits whose success depended on chemicals and genetic modification, so too, are parents more likely to choose a school where learning is bound with rewards, competitions, controlled whole group activities, and comprehensive, fail-safe curriculums that place an emphasis on content at the expense of developing the intrinsic motivation needed to succeed in life.

This is the challenge with public Montessori education. We have a choice to make: Are we going to put fertilizer on the field and kill "pests" with synthetic cocktails because we think other teachers are doing it or because we're worried about test scores?  Or are we going to get down on our hands and knees and weed the garden with the children and our experienced hands and add manure to the soil? Are we going to throw worksheets out for children that may or may not cover the necessary standards or give explicit lessons and individualized instruction
based on what each learner needs?  Children may be required to learn more today, but Montessori done well covers every standard with greater depth than what is required.  The question is this: Are we Montessori guides doing it WELL?   

Even good teachers in the public realm know that masses of worksheets and whole group lessons don't work for the majority of children; intervention groups and individualization must be nurtured for the success of all.  One of my first experiences as a student teacher as part of my public school teaching degree, was working with students who had not yet begun to read as their peers had.  I sat next to one little girl, sounding out words in a book to her and getting nowhere.  My mentor wisely pointed out that because she was not developmentally ready; it was to her as if I were speaking a completely different and unknown language.  She was not reading because she could not hear the sounds and needed more activities with phonemic awareness to be able to later decode. It was then that I learned that even simple and small steps cannot be skipped in favor of outcomes.  Foundational skills must be developed before a subsequent skill can be truly mastered because learning is very much developmental in nature.

 When a necessary skill is skipped, it can have repercussions in later learning as a child learns to adapt to the demands of life without that skill. Montessori recognized that children developed at different rates and went through sensitive periods with specific needs that if not met, would cause learning challenges in the future.   Special education is designed to help those learners who need more time and more direct instruction, but every child on one level or another is in need of individualized instruction where growth and learning is tailored to their unique level of understanding and mastery.

The idea that children are empty vessels which can be filled equally with the same knowledge at the same time and grow the same way is just as false as the idea that humans can completely control nature.  Even conventional farmers are learning the limits of the new farming methods, as GMO crops bred with pesticide inside each leaf intended to kill pests are beginning to be ineffective at warding off those very pests.  This is because even the lowly insects have the capability of adapting in order to survive.  As the awed scientist in Jurassic Park said, "Nature will always find a way." A good farmer and a good teacher both have a healthy respect and understanding of the work of nature since we both rely on new scientific input in order to gain a valid understanding where we can help and where we cause unseen hindrances.

So, where do we compromise to produce a high-yield while preserving a farm that has good soil and also the ability to produce wonderful fruit?  Must we compromise? Since we are going with farming analogies, perhaps we can use some examples from the farm.  A lot has changed in the hundred years since Maria Montessori began her discoveries of how children learn by educating children in asylums and later opening a daycare center for low income families. A lot has also changed in farming methods and how scientists know what plants need for optimal growth. We have learned from over-farming mistakes such as the Dust Bowl.  A long time ago a horse and plow was still a common way to plant seeds; now we have more efficient machines to do that. Similarly, we have computers today and methods of communication that are vastly different then even when we went to school as children. These kinds of tools for farming have made farming more efficient and yet if used properly, considering the needs of the plants, do not change the quality of the resulting fruit.  

Just as the basic needs of plants (soil, sunlight and rain-showers) have not changed over the centuries, so the needs of our children have not diminished because of increased technology.  Now we find ourselves needing to remember those fundamentals as the availability of instantaneous communication on a global scale means that the concepts of tolerance, peace, personal responsibility, and respect are even more important.  These basic tenets of civilized discourse in the classroom and in preparation for life are not covered by any state standard.   So it begs the question: In practicing Montessori education, how do we incorporate this into our daily classroom activities?  And, if we choose to scatter endless worksheets instead of learner-centered 'works-in-progress', what responsibility do we bear for the outcome?

We use greenhouses so that we can grow fruits and plants in different climates at different times of the year.  However, we also know that taking a plant straight from a greenhouse and planting in our yard will result in certain death for the plant as it tries to adapt itself to a new environment so suddenly. Tending a classroom of children can be like tending a greenhouse—The goal is similar, to prepare the plants for successful growth beyond those clear and sunny walls.  Each cultivar is like a child, some children have varying needs from others.  Some need more social skills or written language just like some plants prefer afternoon shade, or acidic soil. And so our work in the classroom should look at all needs and decide what each child requires for the next step in growth.  Plants in successful greenhouses are actually repotted and moved to different environments during the process of maturation as a preparation to the ultimate result of being planted outside.  We see this in Montessori as the child’s human tendencies are fulfilled in different ways depending on age and readiness.  Children are grouped in multiple ages to account for this natural discrepancy and to use the strengths of individuals to benefit the group in various learning activities.  If we segregate more by age or grade than by readiness, opportunities for optimum growth are missed, much like a plant that is plucked from the hothouse too soon or too late—both cases can be a barrier to successful adaptation into the next level and eventually in life itself.

Many Montessori teachers give up these labor-intensive organic methods too soon, looking to the prepackaged, teacher-proof programs so widely advertised and used by most other public schools in one way or another.  Some teachers, particularly new ones, believe they cannot be effective without such programs to rely on.  I would like to think of the curriculum being used as the fertilizer for the classroom and there are many varieties that can have short and longer term benefits.   (I could go on, since I was in the master gardener program, but I will let you research the details if you wish). We know that synthetic fertilizer, while promoting plant growth, can also cause buildup and runoff that are not always best for the environment. Too much fertilizer can be more harmful to a plant than too little, and even organic fertilizing methods can come with salts that build up in the soil.  And so, all decisions should be made carefully, based on the unique earth of that region.

 Quality educators recognize that every community is different, every child comes from a family with different expectations and cultural habits, so these decisions will vary with each teacher, school, and location. We also know as teachers that we do the best we can to connect all learning to real life examples that will become habitual, but some lessons are more synthetic in nature than real.  The fact that the basis for learning to read in a Montessori classroom hinges on synthetic phonics, shows that even Maria Montessori recognized the need for teaching direct and explicit lessons to promote growth while later on giving the child the holistic foundation of language needed to take off.

The standards and expectations can be thought of as a guide for the seeds (knowledge) that are sown in the hearts of the children.  We are told by Maria herself to give as many lessons as possible and to understand which are impressionist and which are required to build mastery of necessary skills.  Many schools have eliminated music, art and even history and science from their programs because of test-taking concerns.  Is building a monoculture of learning a wise cultivation in our classrooms? We can look to farming history for examples of planting a narrow variety of seeds.  We have learned from the Dustbowl and the potato famine that farming too much of one variety of plant can have disastrous results both economically and environmentally in the long-run.  In short, while technology and research has improved many ways for the farmers and made life easier in how we get our food there are still many things about nature that we must obey or risk results that are negative. 

Even with all we know about botany, nothing can replace the work of the simple honeybee.  No machine that is able to pollinate flowers to produce the kind of result that farmers truly need to succeed in their work.   (in fact, the honeybee is responsible for the success of a 16 billion dollar industry and the decline of the honeybee has caused great economic loss). While it is prudent  to use many  modern methods,  we still must respect the rules of nature.  We must listen to the needs of the child.  And despite all this automation in the field of education, we must understand that the growth and development of children is a natural process that unfolds in a unique timetable for each individual.

So where do we compromise as old wisdom meets newer progress?  We cannot make the children change their natural process of development, but we can find ways to better track the learning and growth of each child by creating and using assessments that are the least intrusive.  My assessment teacher in my traditional teaching program said that you do not pull the carrots out of the ground each week to measure how well they are growing, just as you don’t let assessment take the place of the meaningful learning and growth that must occur on a daily basis.  Unfortunately, a lot of public school administrators believe that success on high stakes tests is dependent on weekly tests and drills and many parents and politicians, ignorant of the science of the learning process, go along with this notion. 

But, we Montessori teachers have always been required to assess and observe frequently and take those notes.  The gardener can examine the stems and leaves of  to gauge the full size without uprooting the entire carrot plant.  Pests and diseases are noticed in leaves, just as good assessment uncovers learning deficits before it is too late. We may have more work as we collect data in the form of checklists, real time assessments, informal assessments and more, but we also understand the lovely relationship of assessment and instruction as we learned and employed  the three period lesson as the backbone of instruction for those important concepts. 

We also know it is not enough to merely collect data, but to examine it and ponder on our effectiveness with each child.  As more lessons are given at the proper level to be received, those seeds will sprout and it will start the chain reaction of spontaneous growth and learning that is unforced and unlimited.  When this spontaneous learning happens, the joy is contagious and the work of the teacher seems less necessary.  In the end, while children can be forced to learn their skills at the grade levels determined by the state, it is a much more enjoyable process when learners are treated as individuals with the capability to exceed every standard put forth by adults.  Maria Montessori experienced this spontaneous joy as four-year-olds learned to write and then read.  Young toddlers become potty trained willingly without force or bribes. I see it in my classroom when a child or small group take a lesson and runs with it, spreading their learning to others as if they were an explorer discovering the new world.  After a while, we may forget that it started with one child and one lesson and one material. 

So while we have tools to help the children adapt to our technological society, children still need concrete and real experiences before they abstract.  They still need to repeat lessons through multiple senses and multiple activities, and teachers must realize that placing growth too heavily on another person's timetable is akin to a department of agriculture cabinet member who once said that lambing season should be changed to make it occur during different parts of the year.  When learning is forced, it is not true learning, just as when a plant is staked too early, the stem becomes weak.  

To build a stronger plant as well as a stronger brain, the same principle applies:  Freedom and resistance.  A plant will grow stronger with wind, or even a fan blowing periodically at its stem.  A brain will grow stronger as it responds constructively to the challenges set before it.  Too much challenge and a child gives up,  fakes it, or becomes a behavioral challenge while too little challenge results in growth that is stunted just as plants will warp their structures as they try to gain more light from a dim room.  We can learn the magic balance by treating our classroom like a farm--observing, nurturing, waiting, and making the necessary course corrections (however challenging they may be), to produce future sustainable growth in the classroom community, the school, and beyond.