Happy Friday everyone,
Many people often mistakenly assume that Maria Montessori believed the guide has a passive role in the development of the child.
This misunderstanding comes from the fact that Montessori regarded the child as fundamentally active. It’s as if everyone approached children the way we’d approach building a model out of legos, and she came along and said, ‘No, the child is more like a sapling growing into a tree. The child has her own life force; she isn’t constructed by us, but self-creates.’
Montessori’s focus on the child’s self-creation is often interpreted as a de-emphasis on the contribution of the adult. But instead, she just has a shift in perspective: in relation to the development of the child, she sees adults more like gardeners than sculptors.
The gardener’s role, in Montessori’s view, is incredibly active. The gardener works meticulously to create the conditions in which the sapling grows. Yes, the responsibility of setting the environment, and channeling a child’s life force towards maturity, is different work than the traditional teacher who tries to engineer a specific outcome. But in Montessori’s view, it’s not just different. It’s far more demanding, requires more intelligence, more virtue, more dedication.
In The Absorbent Mind, Montessori makes an analogy to a doctor who has a grasp of theory—who knows the science of human development—but must apply it through individual judgment.
“The teacher knows the fundamental symptoms and the obvious remedies—the theory, in fact, of treatment… and then it is she who does the rest. The good doctor, like the good teacher, is an individual, not merely a machine for administrating medicine or applying educational methods… Details must be left to the judgment of the teacher who is taking her first steps on the new path, as for instance whether general disorder is best quelled by raising the voice, or whether it is best to whisper to a few of the children so as to rouse the curiosity of others and make them quiet.”
The Montessori perspective on the guide is the same as the perspective on the child. It is a perspective on the human being as such: the guide has incredible agency in her work and life. The guide must study, must internalize knowledge, must observe, must assess by applying the lens of experience and study to particulars, and on that basis must actually guide the development of the child. In this way, she has incredible power over what happens.
The eminent educator Haim Gnott puts the point this way:
“I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or de-humanized.”
The role of inspiration is at the core of what great guides do. To inspire is to speak to the independent, thinking mind of the child. It is to respect the child’s power of choice and earn attention through understanding their needs—and to earn that understanding through observation and reflection. It is to direct a child by appealing to the good and the beautiful.
Inspiration is also challenging because it comes not from acting or pretending, but from being and becoming. To inspire is to be a mirror:
“No written word, no spoken plea
Can teach our youth what they should be,
Nor all the books on all the shelves.
It’s what the teachers are themselves.”
The hardest part of being a guide is that, ultimately, what you offer children is not your skill or training or resources. What you offer is your character. Your self.
That is also why this work is so deeply rewarding. You put your soul on display every day, offer it to every child as a model for how to be. That requires taking responsibility for your own person—your character, your attitude, your state of mind.
I believe that all great work requires greatness of character. But, with a guide, this connection is especially highlighted because your character is what you offer children. Your personality, your ability to be curious and approach the world with wonder, to persist, to demonstrate calmness and beauty and authentic interest in the world. And above all your ability to model what it means to self-create—to embrace your power as a human being to demonstrate agency.
Many of the core values at our company—the value of “Mission without Martyrdom”, or of “Practical Idealism”—orient around this theme of the power of agency. This is because the best way to serve our students is to truly be what we want them to become—self-directed, active drivers in the world, capable of taking intentional action in pursuit of chosen goals. That ability to create our own lives is at the core of our pedagogy and our philosophic worldview.
This view of agency cuts against the grain today. We live in an age that elevates the power of circumstance while minimizing the power of agency. We live in a world that often views each of us—children, guides, leaders, human beings as such—as products of circumstance, as patients rather than agents, as people who are acted upon rather than who act.
It is common to emphasize the power and prevalence of systemic factors, of unconscious biases, of all that is beyond our control, and de-emphasize the most powerful element of all: the role of individual agency, of our power to choose, and thereby shape, the much greater range of things that are within our control.
Circumstance is real, as Montessori’s work deeply reveals. An improperly prepared environment can stunt growth and undercut success. Part of being a guide is appreciating the power of circumstance, and then shaping the conditions surrounding a growing child.
But more fundamental than circumstance is our ability to self-create. Both with our students and with ourselves, what we do depends on the self we create given our circumstances rather than on the circumstances themselves.
The thing that is hard about being a teacher is the same thing that is hard about being a human being: we have it in our power to achieve the outcomes we want. That is a lot of pressure, but it is also the glory of this work. We have it in our power to help a child transform her life—and whether or not we succeed depends almost entirely on our will to do it. It is a scary thought, but it is also what makes this work so challenging and rewarding and elevating.
Many people give up teaching because it is so hard. Those of us who don’t give up, usually persist because of how much we love the work. Because our love of the children we serve is greater than our frustration with the challenge—and we choose to honor that.
Many years ago, I shared a message to our guides that expressed my gratitude for all of you who have created in yourself the soul of a teacher—that inner capacity to love which powers our work. I rewatched that old video today, and I was reminded again of how true it is of the people who work at our company, and how grateful I am to be able to make common cause with you all.
I am happy to share that message again below. Thank you for choosing this great work of being an educator!
Ray Girn
Founder and CEO, Higher Ground Education
As a 23 year Montessori guide and now working as a lead at Guidepost, how do we learn more about the start of Guidepost and the vision of what is to come? How do I continue my growth to support other guides and educate self? Ams / ami annual events are not offered to further our education as far as I have searched. First year I have missed, can this be added to our training as a Montessori community at Guidepost? The emails sent our so powerful and inspiring. I want to grow with Guidepost