Embracing "Family Values"

Montessori schools in the US, I think, provoke a variety of reactions among the public.

Some people are turned off by the sense of elitism they exude, as many of them come with very hefty tuition fees. Others are bothered by the sense of individualism that seems to pervade many of them—as children can spend so much time pursuing their individual interests that they can perhaps fall behind in other areas of academic development.

Both of these are fair criticisms.

Yet I think it’s also fair to say that Montessori schools probably exhibit just as much diversity as the public schools. The label of “Montessori” probably doesn’t guarantee any particular type of schooling experience.

In her book The Schoolhome, I would argue that Jane Roland Martin, initial appearances to the contrary, does not have any real attachment to Montessori schools. Part of her strategy in the book is to show how little we Americans know about the life and work of Maria Montessori and how much her original vision shifted as it immigrated to the United States.

In the US, we have to come to think about Montessori schools as promoting the values of choice and individualism. Martin makes a good case, however, that Montessori’s first schools, in those poor Roman neighborhoods, were more about helping children learn through the use of peer relationships and care of their natural and domestic environments.

So we might think that Montessori has had very little impact on American education. But, that said, I think that this is also not quite the case.

Part of Maria Montessori’s aim was to build an atmosphere specifically for kids--with desks, and chairs, and couches, and cubbies, that were all kid-sized. We expect that in a school nowadays, but it wasn't, of course, always that way. For a long time, kids inhabited a world built for adults. Now we recognize that children are not just “miniature adults” and that environments built with their needs and interests in mind better facilitate their comfort, safety and learning. We can thank Maria Montessori, in part, for that.
 
Yet even now, I'm guessing, most schools still build windows at the height of adults, rather than thinking that a child may want to look out of them! When John Dewey went to try and buy desks for his famous lab school in Chicago, the salesman listened for a while, and then said: You want desks the kids can work in. These are all for listening.
 
Unfortunately, the battle for truly educative environments for children must continue!
As I think about the enduring message of Jane Roland Martin’s book, then, it comes down to this: both homes and schools need reshaping.

Homes have acted as if they can be refuges from a harsh and competitive world—while clearly, they can't. Schools have sometimes acted as if they should model themselves on this ideal of the “home as a refuge”—sheltering kids from the tough truths that exist out there in our world. But this is not necessarily what we would want either a good family or a good school to do. We need families tackling public issues like racism and homophobia. And we need societies that are built around the "family values" of cooperation, respect for individual needs, and the value of all people.
 
To me, that is what Martin’s book is all about, after all--the reconstruction of both family and society, with a consideration of what role the schoolhome might play in that process.
 
For putting comfy couches and funky lamps in our classrooms, as important as that might be, is not, at the end of the day, going to be enough.