Developing New Materials for Discovering Substance

by David Fleischacker

One of the areas that children naturally discover is that of substances or unities.  A substance–to use an ancient definition–is that to which one predicates properties and experiences.  It is that identity or unity to which belong colors and shapes, or that which is involved in activity and change.  With the advent of modern science, notions of unity have become challenged from a number of fronts.  Some scientists for example would not say that a tree is a substance, but rather just a flow of chemicals interacting with a flow of chemistry in an eco-systems. A tree as its own thing is just a mirage.  Of course, a child would never think so.  A tree is something that could be climbed, touched, or sketched.  One can see the moral problems this might cause if the same thought process is applied to human beings.  If we are not a substance, we are not a unity responsible for what we did yesterday.

The root of this lies in a seeming contrast that has been put forth in the last number of centuries between the world of the senses and the world of explanation.  The sun does not rise, but the earth spins on an axis.  The earth is not the center of the world, but the sun is (which by the way, turns out to be false as well in the theories of relativity). Science and some of the philosophies that have sprung up because of modern science is the source of this challenge to substance. In reality, these worlds are complementary though, not at odds.  And children need to discover this, but first it is important for them to come to an articulate grasp of substances.   

Just as Montessori was able to figure out the real paths to learning numbers and language in children, so the same can be done with substance. Understand the natural path to learning language and numbers provided Montesorri with the understanding needed to creatively construct materials and activities that facilitated child development.  So the same is needed for understanding the notion of substance.  Already in some of the language materials, the element of naming substances, and identifying their properties can be found (this is built into our language as a note). But more needs to be done.

In my own thoughts on this, the child begins even before birth to recognize certain sensory and motor properties, and then early on after birth, there is the discovery of parts of things (which are discovered through a variety of motor-sensory experiences).  These properties as wells as the derived parts, then can be discovered to be connected to a whole or a unity (or a substance).  One knows it has taken place when a child can project further possibilities of properties and activities of a thing.  One example is when a child sees something that walks behind a rock and can anticipate it coming out the other side. To make such an anticipation, the child has grasped the whole and that it is the substance of movement.

We need to develop more intentional materials and activities that help a child to integrate properties and activities to a substance.

At later stages, when the child begins to move into the world of explanation (usually 12 years and on), then one can do further work to show how the same substances are then the object being explained.  More on that later and how to build an environment that reveals the complementarity of description and explanation.  

At this point, this is just a call to be creative in trying out activities that will facilitate a discovery of things as substances that unify properties and activities.