Four lanterns to guide us
Happy Friday, everyone.
Montessori held that, fundamentally, education is “an aid to life.” “Education”, she wrote, “is the help we must give to life so that it may develop in the greatness of its powers” (Montessori, 1946 London Lectures, Lecture 1). We agree. Education is the systematic support for the development of fully lived human lives.
There are two huge fundamental questions in education.
First: What does the fully lived human life look like? What is the good life? What does it mean to live excellently?
Second: How can one support the development of such a life? Children are quite different from adults, in their needs and learning. But is there a throughline from childhood to a good adulthood, and if so, what is it?
Higher Ground’s educational approach is premised on unique answers to these questions. The beating heart of that approach are four virtues that we have conceptualized as relevant to both questions. That is, four virtues that are both core to the good adult life and that are developed, or that fail to be developed, in childhood and adolescence.
The four virtues are knowledge, work, agency, and humanism. We call these virtues “lanterns”, as they orient all of our educational offerings, at all ages, across all circumstances and modalities.
Knowledge: Human life is governed by thought. In a fully lived human life, one thinks one’s way through life. Whether it’s specialized knowledge one needs for work, or knowledge of human moral psychology one needs to understand oneself and interact wisely with others, or knowledge of history and science that provides a framework for making basic sense of the messy, miraculous surrounding world, knowledge is paramount.
One learns a lot in childhood. A good education provides a broad, integrated foundation in the disciplines that unlocks and explains the world today: language arts, mathematics, history, science, and literature. Learning these subjects is greatly enhanced by a systematic education; they are indeed the basic reason why schooling was invented.
It also matters, for one’s character, how this knowledge is learned. Is it something real to you, that you independently understand and can independently deploy, or is it just words or an algorithm, black magic that you learned from a textbook or a teacher, that “works” in some sense but that you lack the ability to understand or question, and for which you therefore have a low ceiling for fluency.
Schools often get wrong what subject matters are important for life (and why they are important), and almost always get wrong how one should learn these subjects in a way that results in actual knowledge for life (as opposed to quasi-knowledge for schooling).
“To become conscious of the essential help given by it, to feel how indispensable it is to achieve perfection, success, and therefore the joy of the spirit; this is the greatest urge to study” (Montessori, From Childhood to Adolescence, appendix C).
For more on this topic, see these previous Friday Notes: Place value as soulcraft, Knowing stuff, Is it true?, When it comes to nutrition, content is king, A culture of knowledge, Repetition without repetition, Practice, and Control of error.Work: Work is the power to effortfully and intentionally shape and build one’s world. A full life consists of constantly conceiving of purposes, of putting forth the effort to achieve them, and of drawing spiritual satisfaction from doing so.
One of Montessori’s core theses, one that we strongly agree with, is that work is good. It’s a moral good, both a necessity and an excellence that elevates one’s life. Put negatively, being alienated from work, feeling embittered about it or being unable to find joy from it or moral dignity in it, is crippling.
The capacity to find meaning and joy in work, the sense of oneself as capable of doing things, is developed in childhood. It comes from a thousand hard-won independent competencies, from learning to grasp things as a baby, to learning how to dress as a toddler, to learning how to expertly maintain cleanliness and beauty in an environment as a preschooler, to learning how to plan one’s days and months and years as an elementary student, to learning, in adolescence, how to be a professional, to create real value in the real economy, and to get paid.
Some of these experiences happen naturally, but many do not. And none of them are naturally valorized and impressed upon children as instances of virtue, as something done with effort and worthy of pride.
“The little child who persists in his exercises, concentrated and absorbed, is obviously elaborating the constant man, the man of character, the man who will find in himself all human values, crowning that unique fundamental manifestation: persistence in work” (Montessori, Spontaneous Activity in Education 7)
For more on this topic, see these previous Friday Notes: Vocational training for the soul, Big work in elementary, The unpleasant effort, An early advantage, “All work is noble”, and “It is not that we do as we like…”.Agency: Agency is the recognition and embrace of oneself as the author of one’s life. Each individual has the profound capacity to conceive of a life for herself. This capacity is a responsibility that oughtn’t and can’t be delegated. One who lives a full life is self-possessed, is independent and intentional about both the overall shape of that life and its details, does not take things for granted, and does not have pathological dependencies on others. One who lives a full life accepts its challenges, uncertainties, and risks, and then navigates or solves them.
School is typically a place where opportunities to develop agency are extremely rare. School is typically not designed to build the small muscles of independence. School typically, if anything, encourages a habitual compliance and comfort with dependency.
Montessori argued that independence is the central and rightful purpose of development. Agency is the expression of independence across a life. It’s both the willingness to live one’s own life and the ability to do so. Limiters on agency are therefore both the lack of spark and eagerness, or the presence of fear, as well as the lack of competence, or the presence of feelings of inferiority.
These things all require development and practice. They are expressions of the virtues of knowledge and work above, and also of practice with selection and persistence more generally.
“Life is based on choice, so they learn to make their own decisions” (Montessori, The Child, Society, and the World, v.7).
“The constant work which builds up their personality is all set in motion by decisions. … A voluntary life gradually develops with them…” (Montessori, Spontaneous Activity in Education 7)
For more on this topic, see these previous Friday Notes: The inherent human love of self-mastery, “He who is strong is ready”, Happiness, Orienting towards agency, Creating the child’s world, “…one of the irreducible facts of life…”, and Of dishes and dreams.Humanism: Humanism is the understanding, appreciation, and love of human greatness—in oneself, in others, and in society at large and the sweep of human history. It’s the opposite of misanthropy, cynicism about or hatred for human nature.
One’s life is heavily influenced by one’s basic attitude towards people—oneself and others—near and far—past, present, and future. That human nature is wonderful is in fact true. A failure to celebrate and revere it, or a persistent habit of elevating human weakness and darkness to be the most essential thing about human beings—these are crippling for a life. People are fonts of tremendous value. Arguably, they are fonts of all human value. One cannot live a full life without this value. Many, many young people today enter adulthood with a deeply entrenched sense that human nature is profoundly flawed, that the future is at best bleak, that other people are as likely to be threats as allies.
One’s attitude towards human beings, like one’s attitude towards work and knowledge and agency, is heavily shaped in development. It’s shaped implicitly, by how one is loved and responded to as an infant. It’s shaped by the benevolence or lack thereof of one’s peer culture. And, as one gets older, it’s shaped by one’s knowledge of history—especially the history of human progress—and literature—the conceptual exploration of moral psychology, and more broadly aesthetic issues of heroism and moral psychology.
“[O]ur marvelous civilization lacks today...the feeling that human life is triumphant over the cosmos: humankind should feel itself king of all that has been created, transformer of the earth, builder of a new nature, collaborator in the universal work of creation” (Montessori, From Childhood to Adolescence, appendix C).
“Beyond everything I should work to inspire a faith in the greatness of man, the greatness that has been proved by enormous progress” (Montessori, The Child, Society, and the World, 4a).
For more on this topic, see these previous Friday Notes: Thanks be to the human, Benevolence without comprise, and A pedagogy of gratitude. The previously mentioned note Vocational training for the soul is also relevant.
Each of these “lanterns” is a major aspect of a life fully lived, and each relates to the others.
One authors one’s life by directing one’s mind and actions towards understanding, towards purposeful work, and towards rewarding relationships. Each individual must choose to work to build her knowledge for herself—including knowledge of herself and others. Work—the effortful pursuit of values—is involved in all aspects of achieving one’s chosen life, including one’s mind and relationships. And the profound value that humanity represents—and the dignity with which one must treat oneself and others in order to access it—flows from each individual’s independent need for self-authorship, for independent knowledge, and for his chosen work.
A commitment to achieving these lanterns at all levels of programming is our core value proposition for developing humans. Each one represents a stand taken on what it means to get education right:
Knowledge and agency are typically seen in education as trading off with one another. To the extent one focuses on providing students with important knowledge, it is by overriding their agency and holding their hand through a curriculum. Insofar as one focuses on nurturing student agency and ownership over their learning, it is by at least partially relinquishing a curricular structure and allowing students to choose their own way. In reality—in human nature—there is no tradeoff or priority. There is just a pedagogical challenge of supporting both without compromise.
Work is typically underappreciated in education. The acts of setting and understanding a goal, the pursuit of a goal across time as manifested in stretches of concentrated effort, the interaction with the world and the cognitive integration of the feedback that follows from it, and the serene inner discipline and genuine, earned confidence that comes from being able to shape one’s world—this process is absolutely core to the good life. Learning to do and to love work in a general way is a critical part of development and therefore of education.
Optimism about humanity is a developmental and educational issue. The world has much corruption and moral darkness. We don’t shy away from this, but the fundamental value implicitly guiding our curriculum is the power of the human potential: our capacity to know, to build, to choose good, to find joy. These are things for each child to discover in herself, and the basis of individual human connection and universal human solidarity.
These lanterns are guiding lights for supporting developing human lives. They are both constitutive of the life fully lived, and the embedded foundation of all of our educational offerings, at every age level.