¶ … Montessori Perspective
As Mary Conroy and Kitty Williams state there is something different about the Montessori method that makes outsiders rush to extremes in their attempts to classify it: "I've heard Montessori is too free and chaotic' or 'I've heard Montessori is too structured'" (Conroy, Williams). The truth is that the Montessori method is neither. It is, in fact, something completely different. This paper will analyze just how discipline and obedience are instilled in children from the Montessori Perspective.
Discipline
As Conroy and Williams not, "the best Montessori teachers or facilitators understand that maintaining the delicate balance [between freedom and structure] is one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of their job." This challenge is brought into perspective by Montessori's own definition of discipline: "discipline is 'not…a fact but a way'" (Conroy, Williams). This way, as Montessori observed, was found independent of the teacher when the children were given the freedom to "reveal their inner or self-discipline" (Conroy, Williams).
Indeed, as Samuel Ravi notes, the Montessori perspective is one that insists that "discipline cannot be attained by way of commands, by sermons, by any of the disciplinary methods universally known" (359). The trick is to foster it in the child indirectly "by developing activity in the spontaneous work" (359). To reinforce the idea that discipline must be instilled in the child from within because it will not be instilled from without, Ravi quotes Montessori, who acknowledged that "in truth, the 'good' are those who move forward towards the goodness which has been built up by their own efforts" (Ravi 359). What this means is that for true education to take place, the will has to directed to receiving it -- and no one can force a will but the person whose will it is. That is the Montessori perspective of discipline.
Obedience
How does it relate to obedience? Conroy and Williams observe that "discipline presupposes a certain degree of obedience." Montessori herself states that "obedience appears in the child as a latent instinct as soon as his personality begins to take form" (Montessori 367). Obedience, like discipline, is something like a virtue that the child must acquire -- or, in other words, it is a habit that it must attain. Virtues are, after all, merely habits that are good (just as vices are habits that are bad). Therefore, the essence of understanding obedience in the Montessori method is this: the habit of obedience is something that should be acquired by the child. The question is: how can the teacher help the student acquire this obedience?
The Three Levels of Obedience
The first period of obedience is arrived at a subconscious level -- "when in the confused mind of the child, order produces itself by a mysterious inner impulse from out the midst of disorder, producing as an external result a completed act" (Montessori 368). What is significant here, however, is the fact that because this order is arrived at on a subconscious level, the child cannot reproduce it at will (because the child has not been conscious of how order was produced).
The second stage of obedience, then, is a continuation of the first, with this improvement: the child recognizes the impulse to obey. In other words, "he looks as though he understood the command and would like to respond to it, but cannot -- or at least does not always succeed in doing it, is not 'quick to mind' and shows no pleasure when he does (Montessori 368). This second level of obedience is like a developmental stage. The child has grown into consciousness, is aware of an outside order that exists, and is compelled to adapt himself to it -- but not always and neither is the child even always capable of adapting himself to it were to desire it anyway. The child is, essentially, still fumbling his way along.
The third level of obedience, then, occurs as a result of this second. The child develops, matures, acquires the capacity to succeed in an orderly fashion at the performance of whatever task is at hand: in this third and final stage of obedience, "the will can direct and cause the acts, thus answering the command from someone else" (Montessori 368). As Conroy and Williams note, this third level of obedience is called "joyful obedience" and it is united to self-discipline in such a way that the child is able to see "the value of what is being offered to him by authority and rushes to obey" (Conroy, Williams).
How Discipline...
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