Social Relationships and Natural Tendencies

Montessori’s commitment to freedom reshapes the relationship between teacher and student. The traditional pattern, in which the adult dominates and the child obeys, is replaced by something different. The replacement covers three connected pieces: what the new teacher-student relationship looks like in practice, the social-justice commitment that Montessori brought to children’s place in schools, and the natural tendencies of free children that her observations revealed.

A different teacher-student relationship

Montessori’s account of education has, at its centre, a particular kind of relationship between teacher and student. Her famous formulation: education aims at the biological and social development of the child. Both halves matter. The biological development addresses the individual child’s growth as an organism; the social development addresses the child’s growth as a participant in human community. A school that addresses only one half produces a partial human being.

The implication for the teacher-student relationship is that the relationship itself is part of the education. The traditional relationship of teacher dominance (where the teacher commands and the student obeys) does not fit the kind of social development Montessori has in mind. A child who has spent years being dominated by teachers will not have learned the social capacities of a free citizen; they will have learned how to be dominated. The teaching method has therefore reshaped what the teacher does.

A new teacher emerged within the Montessori method. The new teacher’s job was to help children become independent, self-reliant, and masters of themselves. Each word matters. Independent: able to act without constant adult direction. Self-reliant: able to handle the responsibilities of their own life. Masters of themselves: in control of their own attention, emotions, and choices. The three together describe an adult capacity that the school is building toward; the teacher’s job is to build the capacities in the children rather than to manage children who have not yet developed them.

The shift in vocabulary is part of what made Montessori controversial in her time. Traditional educators used the word teacher for the adult who instructed students. Montessori used the word directress (in Italian, maestra), which carried different connotations. The directress directs the environment; the children direct their own learning within it. The relationship is collaborative rather than dominant.

A modern teacher reading this may recognise echoes in many contemporary educational reform movements. The phrasing varies, but the underlying commitment (that the relationship between adult and child should support the child’s development of self-direction rather than just compliance with adult direction) is now widespread. Montessori was one of the first to articulate it systematically.

Flashcard

What is the new teacher-student relationship Montessori introduced?

Tap to reveal

Answer

A collaborative relationship in which the teacher helps the child become independent, self-reliant, and master of themselves

The traditional relationship of teacher dominance does not fit the social development Montessori has in mind. A child who has spent years being dominated by teachers learns how to be dominated, not how to be a free citizen. The new teacher’s job: help children become independent (able to act without constant adult direction), self-reliant (able to handle their own responsibilities), and masters of themselves (in control of their own attention, emotions, and choices). The word directress signals the shift in role.

Social justice for children

Montessori made what was at the time a striking claim. She was, by many historians’ accounts, the first major figure to recognise the social rights of children in any systematic way. The recognition was not just sentimental; it was practical and political.

Children, in Montessori’s view, were a category of human beings whose rights had been historically ignored. Adults had assumed authority over children without taking seriously the children’s own interests, preferences, or developmental needs. Schools, as institutions designed by adults, had built this neglect into their basic structure. The children went to schools that were not designed with their actual needs in mind, and they endured what the schools imposed.

Montessori was particularly concerned about the physical treatment of children in schools. The schools of her day used corporal punishment routinely, kept children seated for long periods in poorly designed furniture, and generally treated children’s bodies as obstacles to be controlled rather than as developing organisms with their own legitimate needs. The treatment, Montessori argued, dampened the children’s spirits and affected their spontaneous psychic development. A child who has been physically constrained for hours, day after day, develops differently from a child who has been allowed appropriate physical engagement with the environment.

The implication was that schools needed to be redesigned around the children’s actual needs, including their physical needs. Montessori’s furniture choices reflect this. She used small tables and chairs sized to the children. She used real plates and glasses that children could handle. She designed materials at heights children could reach. The redesign was small in any single feature; the cumulative effect was a school that fit the children rather than asking the children to fit the school.

This commitment connects Montessori to twentieth-century children’s-rights movements that came after her. The UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959), the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and various national children’s-rights frameworks owe something to the broad shift in attitudes that Montessori helped initiate. The shift from treating children as property of adults to treating them as persons with their own rights is still incomplete in many parts of the world, but the direction is clear, and Montessori was one of the early voices pushing in that direction.

Flashcard

What did Montessori contribute to the recognition of children's rights?

Tap to reveal

Answer

She was among the first to recognise the social rights of children, including the right to physical treatment that supports rather than dampens development

The schools of her day used corporal punishment, kept children seated in poorly designed furniture, and treated children’s bodies as obstacles. Montessori was concerned about this dampening of spirits and the effect on spontaneous psychic development. Her redesigned schools used small furniture sized to the children, real plates and glasses they could handle, and materials at heights they could reach. The cumulative effect was a school that fit the children rather than asking them to fit the school. The broader recognition of children’s rights traces partly to this work.

Natural tendencies of free children

The most surprising result of Montessori’s observation of free children was what they actually did when left to choose. The dominant psychological view of her time treated children as animal-like: they would either pursue immediate pleasure or avoid pain, and the educator’s job was to use rewards and punishments to shape behaviour. The view of children as basically appetitive, requiring external incentives to do anything constructive, was the working assumption of most schooling.

Montessori’s free children behaved differently. The list of tendencies she observed reads like a refutation of the dominant view. Free children, given a prepared environment, tended to:

Select materials that attracted them. They did not need to be assigned work; they chose their own. The choices were not random or driven only by what looked fun; the choices were attracted to specific materials that addressed the child’s current developmental needs.

Concentrate and become calmer. The conventional wisdom held that children left to themselves became more excited and unfocused. Montessori observed the opposite. Engaged children settled into focused calm. The agitation that characterised conventional classrooms was, on her observation, often a product of those classrooms rather than of childhood itself.

Choose what to do rather than wait for set tasks. They were not passive recipients waiting to be told. They were active choosers exercising the developing capacity for self-direction.

Work with amazing concentration. Periods of focused work were longer than the conventional view of children’s attention span would have predicted. Children who had chosen their work and were genuinely engaged could sustain attention for an hour or more, far past what most adult observers thought possible.

Repeat an activity they were interested in. The repetition was not boredom; it was the consolidation of the developmental work the activity was doing. The children kept returning to the same materials as long as those materials were addressing their current needs.

Be orderly. Free children, given a well-organised environment, tended to keep it organised. The desire for order was real and intrinsic, not something that had to be imposed from outside.

Prefer work to play. This was perhaps the most counter-intuitive observation. The children preferred genuine work (engaging with real materials in real ways) over play (manipulating toys with no real purpose). When given the choice, they often left the toys for the practical-life materials.

Prefer didactic materials to toys. The didactic materials (the carefully designed Montessori materials with their developmental purpose) were preferred over the toys that conventional wisdom would have predicted children wanted.

Refuse rewards and require no punishment. The most striking observation. Free children, deeply engaged in self-chosen work, neither needed nor wanted external rewards. When offered, they often refused. The discipline problems that conventional classrooms were designed to address largely did not arise in classrooms where the children were genuinely engaged.

Enjoy silence. Quiet was attractive, not aversive. Children sought out and maintained silence as a condition for the deep work they were doing.

Possess a sense of personal dignity. The free children carried themselves differently. They had a settled sense of being persons with their own legitimate purposes.

Become independent. Over time, the children developed the capacities of self-direction that allowed them to function with less adult support.

The cumulative observation was that children, given the right conditions, are very different beings from the picture the dominant psychology offered. They are not appetitive animals requiring external control. They are developing persons capable of focused work, self-direction, and dignity. The implication for educational theory was substantial: if this is what children actually are, then the standard schools were designed for a misreading of children, and a school redesigned around what children really are would work very differently.

Flashcard

What were the natural tendencies Montessori observed in free children in the prepared environment?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Self-chosen engagement, deep concentration, preference for work over play and for didactic materials over toys, orderliness, dignity, refusal of rewards, independence

Free children selected materials that attracted them, concentrated deeply, chose what to do rather than wait for tasks, worked with amazing concentration, repeated activities of interest, were orderly, preferred work to play, preferred didactic materials to toys, refused rewards, required no punishment, enjoyed silence, showed dignity, and became independent. The cumulative observation was that children, given the right conditions, are different beings from the picture the dominant psychology of Montessori’s time offered.