The Philosophy of the Classroom Setup

by Dr. David Fleischacker

For Montessori, the classroom is not really a classroom but is a learning world. In realty, nature or creation itself is the natural environment of human learning.  This is why it is so crucial to setup our classrooms along the lines of nature herself.  The more it is like an interesting landscape and garden, the better it will be to call forth from the child wonder, discovery, and creativity. 

Wonder is the starting point of all the higher powers of the human soul.  We wonder what something is or why it is. This is the power of understanding. We wonder whether something is so or not, true or not, real or not. This is the power of knowledge or traditionally what is called reason.  And we wonder what to do, what way to go, what to become.  And this is the power of free will and decision making.  In every case, it is the environment, which includes other human beings, that draws forth human wonder.  A good environment has lots of things to wonder about, and it has lots of minds that are wondering as well. But it is not cluttered. It will look rather simple, like a monastic cell.  There will be simple focal points for discovery and learning.  Too much clutter clutters the mind and usually gets ignored in the end.  The role of the environment therefore takes a central stage in learning.  In the contemporary classroom, the teacher is laying out some steps to learn a subject such as math or English for all or most of the students at any given moment and day of the week.  In a natural environment, the teacher is first and foremost a wonderer who is then a catalyst in the environment by simply being a wonderer, and once in a while expressing that wonder to the children, and show them steps to discover this or that.

Discovery follows upon wonder.  A wondering mind is noticing clues, and the clues lead one to discovery.  The rising mist from a pond in the cool fall morning is a clue.  Why?  What is happening?  The leaves of a plant that follow one as one walks by in the dry air of the winter is a clue.  Why? And if one gets close enough, a spark flies.  Again, a clue. Why? Nearly every moment of life in this world is filled with these kinds of experiences.  Little child who move so slowly on the walk are not really moving as slow as the minds of the adults who are scurrying along to get them to finish the walk around the park.  Why?  They are seeing the clues of the universe everywhere in front of them. The ants, the rustling pieces of grass, the grasshoppers, the pressure of the wind blowing on their skin, the smell of the damp air after a rain, the slow or fast moving clouds and all the formations these make.  Again, all clues, and a little child is alive to these.  This is why so many at the age of 5 are in the upper level of discovery and creativity.  A classroom needs to be filled with the world of clues leading a child on to discovery.  Sounds, smells, touches, sights, tastes need to be all around, as does a world of challenging movement. This is why they like walking across the tops of tracks and climbing over rocks.

At the same time, there needs to be spaces in the environment which are focused and limited for concentration, hence limited to anything but the idea to be learned.  In the Montessori world, these are the spaces for enriching “abstraction” which is a deep dive into some facet of the created world, whether it is a particular motor-sensory object, a math problem, or a new part of speech and grammar.  In these concentrate locations in an environment (on a shelf or at a workstation), each material is not part of the rich embroidery of the natural world, but it has been isolated, and its discovery has been simplified into an intuitive layout so as to make that idea or skill easier for the child to learn.  This is what one finds in Montessori’s sensorial, math, and language materials. It is true of science as well.  So the environment needs to be filled with a rich world of clues and pathways of discovery carefully laid out by the teacher.

Creativity builds on discovery.  A child who sees how the world “creates” or “becomes” is stirred into an artist.  The environment thus needs to be filled with a life of creativity.  Nature is filled with that creativity.  Seeds grow into plants.  Birds build nests.  Ants build tunnels.  All of these are acts of creation.  And then there are human beings, the most creative creatures of all.  Children love to watch cooks cook and carpenters build and landscapers landscape.  Other children might be their inspiration. So can the parents and teachers, or visiting guests, or excursions to worksites and public gardens.  Just as you do not need to teach a child to wonder or to want to discover, you do not need to teach them to want to create.  It is built into them.  Our job is to give them as rich a set of experiences as possible, and be a witness as well, to creativity, hence to let their creativity become enflamed and filled with life.