Sensitive Periods and Development

One of the major breakthroughs in Maria Montessori is her discovery of the developmental stages of a child.  Her discovery flows out of some of the positive developments in modern life, one of which is the realization that there are real and natural stages of development and the second is the growth of modern biology. 

The discovery of development is not new in Western Civilization of course but it has taken a new prevalence in the last few centuries.  Arguably the oldest group that understood themselves as developing took place because of God’s unfolding Revelation to the Israelites.  The Jewish faith is deeply historical and knows itself as that.  One finds it when old testament prophets refer to the God of Abraham and Jacob and Isaac.  The prophets recognized that God was forming and shaping a people over generations teaching them bit by bit, and forming and reforming them even through exiles. The late prophets (eg. Joel) discovered that God brought them to hope for a messiah. 

In the Christian new testament, the incarnation of the Son of God is the fulfillment of that hope for a messiah.  The new testament gospels manifest this historical sense both in their genealogies and in the key ways that Jesus is articulated and manifested.  Understanding Jesus as the fulfilment of the Old Covenant (or covenants if you want to articulate the stages that God’s relation developed from Abraham through David), and then articulating him in terms of a language begun in that covenant reveals this historical realization of God’s love for a fallen human race. 

In Western history this historical sense unfolds in individuals like Saint Augustine. His book the City of God paints the portrait of a God deeply in love with all of creation and a God who comes after the people whom he created and loves, even though they rejected Him.  Revelation is the realization of this love.  It is historical. In scripture, this love culminates in a new heaven and a new earth, a re-creation of the world. The book of Revelation completes the book of Genesis. 

Down through history, this unfolding is one that is both historical and personal.  Augustine wrote the first and most classical spiritual autobiography that  reveals how intimate we are with God and with each other.  Our lives are intertwined in a grand unfolding drama of good and evil.  Spiritual writers down through the ages have articulated this drama.  And stages have been found — think for example of St. Theresa of Avila’s interior castles or St. John of the Cross and his ascents and dark nights of the soul.  It has led to the classical account of each person’s development from a stage of purgation to that of illumination that culminates in a mystical union with God. 

This developmental sense of existence first begun in the religious realm also has its secular realizations.  Rome was not found in a day and there was a realization in every Roman of an unfolding glory of Rome, even if warped by the lust for domination as Augustine writes. 

Our modern age  (last 500 years or so) has taken this historical and development view into every walk of life — the history of technology, of economics, of polity, of organic life, of culture, of family, of civilizations. 

Key for Montessori and her discovery of the child was that these developments are not mere continuums but they have clear developmental moments where major breakthroughs arise.  One stage unfolds until a break through happens into the next, and there is a natural order to this that is found in all children throughout the world.  She called each stage a sensitive period. I recommend her book “The Absorbent Mind” as an introduction to this phenomenon.  Roughly, these stages are as follows. 

• 0-6 years: The Absorbent period — a child absorbs with extreme rapidity the immediate culture of his  or her life, and this forms the child’s interior soul.
• 6 – 12 years: The stage in which the child awakens to the world of society and culture.
• 12-18 years: the stage of self-discovery.
• 18-24 years: the stage of self-giving.

Each of these has a multitude of characteristics that form into a whole.

With Phyllis Wallbank, I found a number of neurological studies that support Montessori’s sensitive periods.  More on that later.

The discovery of these developmental stages of each human person  provides a key for educators.  The mind has different propensities and interests and needs during each of these stages, and thus the learning world that feeds each stage must be setup right.  I intend on spending a number of blogs discussing how Montessori feed these stages, what Phyllis Wallbank added, and how we can continue to move forward.

-Dr. David Fleischacker