“Following the Child”

[As a note, some blogs will be more practical and concrete.  This particular one is more explanatory.]

“Follow the Child”

Let the nature of the child and the realization of 
that nature be our teacher.

I recommend that you read Maria Montessori’s book The Secret of Childhood. In it, she speaks of an educational precept that should be deeply embedded in every educator’s heart–“follow the child.” The fruits of this precept  in someone who is gifted as a teacher are vast — Maria herself being a supreme example.

The power of this precept comes from the interior nature and life of the child. 

In examining Montessori’s works, two dimensions of this interior nature and life come to the fore. The first is a set of common features found in all children.  The second is a diversity that springs from how those common features develop in particular places and times.

Common Features of the Child

The common features in children are the common features of each human being.  For simplicity, I am going to group these into bodily and conscious features, though it should be noted that far more could be said about the distinction and the relationships of all these features.

1. Bodily. We all have organic systems — circulatory, muscular, digestive, endocrine, exocrine, skeletal, immune, reproductive, integumentary, respiratory, and neural (and probably a few others). 
2. Conscious.  As human beings, barring sleep, we are conscious which itself sorts into a number of types.  

• Sensate consciousness includes seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, proprioceptive, and motor. 
• Intellectual consciousness starts with wonder about the whys and hows which are answered with insights expressed in concepts.
• Rational consciousness starts with wondering about what is true and false which is answered with judgments. 
• Volitional consciousness wonders about what to do and who to become and it is answered with an exercise of free will, a decision. 
• And finally, we all have in common religious consciousness which is rooted in the unrestricted thirst for all of life itself that stretches toward the ultimate meaning and purpose of life.  The answer to this is unrestricted and reserved for the beatific vision, though we get some glimpses of it in this life. 

Diverse Features of the Child

The diversity comes not from a difference of the common features but rather in differences that arise in how these common features are used and developed and formed. The sounds we make with our voices are a good example. In common, we have vocal chords.  But how these are formed early in life varies depending upon the language we learn.  Understanding is another good example.   The people, places, and things that we actually understand in life vary due to natural interests, friendships, family, culture, and faith.  It might seem strange to say that our diversity regards what we all have in common, but it is true. 

Plasticity and the Actualization the Child

Plasticity refers to the potential range of operation of a particular common feature. The real reason that diversity can arise from what we all have in common is a result of the plasticity in each of those common features.  It is key to note that this plasticity is a mere potentiality and thus to NOT actualize it is to remain, well, unactualized.   

In the womb, one finds a broad and sweeping plasticity in the child.  There are great unfolding potentials that have yet to be actualized.  The actualization of a plasticity determines it to be habitualized in this or that concrete way.  Some features realize a potentiality in a manner that then limits what it could have been.  Think of the ability to make sounds that are completely attuned to the dialect of one’s culture. One’s vocal cords and muscle control are habitualized even into the neurons and muscle tissue, and thus settled into a particular routine based on one’s family and culture. This is why it is so difficult (maybe impossible) to learn a different language later in life with a complete attunement to a particular dialect.  

There are many examples of plasticity found in the development of motor-sensory coordination. Such coordination involves complex integrations that take place in the body and brain, and these also have a wide plasticity early in life which then is realized in various directions and ways as one matures.  In all children, there is a standard range of such coordination that takes place in such activities as walking, grasping with one’s hands, and linking sights with sounds, or smells with activities such as eating. Beyond the standard range one finds specialized integrations of motor-sensory operations that spring from personal propensity, family, and culture. One might become a baseball player or a violinist or a hunter.  And of course, these can be added as one grows older, though there are particular sensitive stages in which the body is made to develop and add such integrations with relative ease and with a high level of perfection, and there are other stages in which even mediocre mastery will not be possible. 

Though a number of our cellular and even sensate operations become settled in life (eg. circulatory system), others never actualize in the same way. At the cellular level there remains a kind of plasticity in certain regions of the brain throughout much of life, which in turn allows for the formation of new images and even the reshaping of emotional responses (adult stem cells in parts of the brain help this).  In turn, this allows for a plasticity in higher conscious acts such as understanding, knowledge, and the exercise of freedom.  Habits in these do actualize us, but these do not completely actualize us. In fact, because of the extreme plasticity  and flexibility of understanding, knowledge, and freedom, these never reach fulfillment over generations. What we hand on to the next generation becomes their starting point, and then they might contribute to the next.  Language is a good example. It never is fully actualized because understanding, knowledge, and freedom never fully actualize in a single person or even throughout human history.  

As an observation, the greatest diversity among children and adults arises in those areas where one finds the most plasticity in the organic systems. The brain of the unborn child in the third trimester exemplifies this radical plasticity. Researchers found a seemingly overabundance of synaptic connections which prepare the child for the early years after birth. What happens after birth is that this overabundance rapidly trims down based upon the experiences, disposition, and interactions of the child with the routines of family life and culture. In short, this overabundance of synapses allows a child to rapidly become a unique member the child’s family and culture.  And this absorption as Montessori calls it literally forms the interior being of the child all the way down to the cellular level.

Western Tradition and Human Nature

In Western tradition, these common and integrally related traits among all human beings is what is at the heart of what is meant by human nature. At times, human nature was overemphasized at the cost of attending to the particular and unique features of each man, woman, and child.  At other times, the diversity has been highlighted at the cost of what is common. I tend to think that this second problem is the most common down through history.  Why?  My theological answer is the fall and human sin.  Sin is a fragmentation that separates persons.  The epistemic channel for that fragmentation is to focus on differences.

My philosophical answer to why diversity tends to be highlighted over human nature points to the difficulty in discovering the common features. Human nature is not self-evident. It arguably took millennia for human beings to discover their common nature. And even then, the reality of this common nature can be lost as one finds in 15th and 16th century European merchants who traveled to the “new world”.  When the profound meaning of human nature is forgotten, then it is easy to degrade those who are not like us, especially if they do not look like us.

In our day, we find ourselves in similar views with those 15th and 16th century merchants.  We see all the plurality and differences but not the commonality. There are some philosophies out there that are now beginning to highlight the problem of radical diversity.  For the most part, these rightly highlight how prejudice is based on differences.  To counter prejudice, we hear many saying and agreeing that “your skin color or dialect or dress do not matter.” “What matters is what is inside of you.” But this too presents a problem. The aim of these positions is good.  We should not foster prejudices which separate and divide us. However, this same philosophy wrongly eliminates the value of authentic differences which can distinguish us but do not and should not divide us.  Our skin color is not an intrinsic evil and thus it is good.  Our dialect is not an intrinsic evil but rather is good.  Our eye and hair color are not intrinsically evil but good. We should appreciate these gifts that incarnate who were are. 

All that belongs to nature and is a particular realization of that nature is good. We should cherish and nurture that which we share in common and that which validly realizes and distinguishes us.    Only diversity caused by evil separates and divides because evil is a perversion and privation of what is good  (this is another blog!).

Montessori had a keen sense of the goodness and being of the lives of children.  She knew how to identify what belonged to the common nature of all children, what was specific realizations of that nature that brought about fruitful diversity, and what was a serious violation of those good traits.  To develop such a keen sense takes time, along with regular reflection upon great writers and saints who have helped us to sort through good and evil (eg. the saints and doctors of the Church). One help that I have found is to pray the liturgy of the hours whether morning, daytime, or evening, or all three — you can find this on ibreviary.com as a note. The Old Testament Psalms and Proverbs of scripture are a great help as well.

Following the Child and Building a Four-Dimensional Learning

Montessori’s ability to grasp the features and traits that were key to the flourishing of a child provided the forum in which she could then create a four-dimensional learning world that would feed all of the common features and the natural dispositions found in each stage of life (“sensitive periods”).  One sees for example how she helped to break down the simplest tasks so that children of any natural propensity could learn them — such as pouring water into a glass, zipping a zipper, learning the rudiments of math by forming a mathematical imagination with properly designed blocks and cylinders, or learning how to write through the sandpaper letters that allowed children to link letters and sounds through tactile experiences. These materials were designed for self-correction so that children could repeat these again and again as they naturally do at certain stages.  (At first, I misunderstood this in my own children– for example, when one of my sons or daughters put something away and then took it out again over and over — I just thought they were horrendously inefficient! Instead, I was the fool.) 

So the precept about following the child and about discovering the secrets of the inner life of a child has its fruits because children across the globe and down through history have a common nature and that nature has to grow and become actualized in a manner that is specific to the child’s stages of development, to the child’s own gifts, to the child’s family, and to his or her culture.  Hence, the precept is an attentiveness to both the nature of the child, and the kind of authentic uniqueness and diversity that he or she is becoming. 

The precept requires that one attend to what is good, spotlight it, then build a world that helps it to flourish.

First rule for an authentic teacher.  “Follow the child.”

[as a note, I should emphasize the problem of evil. Evil really causes a failure in the flourishing of the child, and so it is key for a teacher to continue developing this eye for good and evil.  There is not a quick answer to this problem, hence I intend on spending a number of blogs in the future on it].