Happy Friday everyone,
Have you ever heard the idea that we don’t need to learn “facts” anymore, because we can just google them any time? Or that we should teach children, not subjects? Or that education should be about how to learn, not what to learn?
Many progressive educators make points like these, and many Montessorians are sympathetic to them. But I would argue that these formulations are misguided. Rather than rejecting a deeply embedded historical false alternative between knowledge-centered and child-centered pedagogies, they just take the opposite side of traditional education. They don’t actually grapple with the hard challenge of relating the what and the how, but just flip the preference.
Our view at Higher Ground is that Maria Montessori is historically unique and unprecedented precisely because she offers a radical new way—an approach that 100% respects the centrality of choice in human life, while simultaneously 100% respecting the centrality of knowledge in human life. The Montessori method transcends a whole host of false alternatives--autonomy vs. structure, freedom vs. responsibility, understanding vs. memorization, interest vs. expertise, method vs. content.
A few years ago, I heard someone argue that it was time for educators to stop focusing on content, and to emphasize curiosity in education. In response, I wrote the following piece, which uses an analogy to nutrition to show that the actual work we have to do as educators is to figure out how to relate the value of natural curiosity to the value of acquiring the knowledge that enables a human being to live well.
Enjoy, and whether you agree or disagree, I’d love to hear your reactions!
Ray Girn
Chief Executive Officer, Higher Ground Education
When it comes to nutrition, content remains king
It is considered forward-thinking in education to emphasize curiosity and interest over content mastery. What matters, we are told, is not what a child learns, but only how he learns it. If a child always wants to bake cakes instead of learn math facts, it is avant-garde to defer to that interest-based exploration.
When it comes to learning about nutrition, however, no one advocates for this approach. If a child always wants to eat cakes rather than veggies, even the avant-garde agree that adults should not just passively let it happen, but should thoughtfully, proactively direct and guide children towards knowledge of a healthy diet.
When the goal is to help children form good eating habits, it is obvious to us that “content” cannot flow purely from interest. There is a lot about diet that we do not know, and a lot of evidence diets need to be individualized, yet we still expect parents and educators to scaffold around that complexity and impart knowledge and good habits. Here we see it as negligent if an adult assumes that any diet a child pursues is as good as any other.
What is true of knowledge of nutrition should be seen as true of knowledge as such. We should help children form all learning habits in the same way we help them form eating habits. We should see that it is neither correct to have children unthinkingly memorize or obediently comply to our adult views, nor correct to just assume that whatever they happen to choose is automatically good for them. In helping children learn and grow, our work is precisely to figure out how to uncompromisingly support agency and self-regulation, and to allow for maximum choice, in a way that also optimizes for the consumption of life-enhancing, scientifically validated nourishment.
Education reform, to avoid simplistically adopting one side of a false alternative, requires a theory of self-directed learning that respects rather than sidesteps the inherent architecture of knowledge and skills. We need an agency-centric pedagogy that helps us grapple with and address, rather than merely trade off against, our central and inescapable adult responsibility to help children acquire the skills and layers of factual knowledge necessary for their adult flourishing.
This content-respecting approach to agency is one of the ways in which the Montessori method, in its core principles, is fundamentally distinct from progressive education. Montessori education is not merely another pedagogy of self-directed learning. It is unique, and uniquely important, precisely because it strives to combine self-directed learning with a respect for the centrality of knowledge in human life.
Yes. What came to mind for me was the difference in nutritional needs between a newborn's diet to that of a toddler all the way to adulthood. I also think of the difference in ability for the human to choose what he or she will or will not eat. The infant relies on the adult to make the best choice. The toddler begins to choose what he likes and does not like....I need to chew on this one a bit more, good stuff & thanks for sharing!