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FORZA VITALE!
February 5, 2010
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What Should School Be For?
Written by Maren Schmidt
Highlights from Dr.
Steven Hughes MINW Talk
Dr. Steven Hughes,
a pediatric neuropsychologist at the University of Minnesota and a parent to an
eleven-year old Montessori student, spoke to a full house on September 23. 2008
at the Oregon Health and Sciences Auditorium. In his talk, entitled Good
at Doing Things: Montessori Education and the Higher-order Cognitive Functions,
Hughes posed the question--What should school be for?
What Students Want
Hughes turned to
the research of his associate and mentor, Dr. John Raven, to highlight the
following ten outcomes that students wanted from school:
·
To
leave school confident and able to take initiative
·
To
be independent
·
To
develop character and personality strengths
·
To
hear about career and educational opportunities from experts
·
To
apply knowledge to solve problems
·
To
be able to express oneself effectively
·
To
be able to put forth ones' own opinion
·
To
know about different types of jobs and careers
·
To
be encouraged to express opinions
·
To
understand the implications and responsibilities of marriage
Teacher Wishes
What do teachers want to teach? Raven found the following desires among teachers:
·
Help
students develop their characters and personalities
·
Encourage
students to be independent
·
Make
sure students can read and study on their own
·
Encourage
students to have a sense of duty toward their community
·
Ensure
that all pupils can speak well and put what they want to say into words easily
·
Encourage
students to have opinions of their own
·
Help
student be considerate of others
·
Help
students contemplate what they really want to achieve in life
·
Make
sure students can express themselves clearly in writing
·
Teach
about what is right and wrong
The Reality
What
gets taught? Raven's studies
showed the following educational goals get the most attention:
·
Help
students do as well as they can on standardized tests
·
Help
them develop a considerate attitude toward other people
·
Make
sure they enjoy the lesson
·
Encourage
them to have opinions of their own
·
Encourage
them to have a sense of duty toward the community
·
Make
sure they are able to read and study on their own
·
Teach
them about what is right and wrong
·
Ensure
they can express themselves clearly in writing
·
Ensure
they can speak well and put what they want to say into words easily
·
Encourage
them to be independent and stand on their own two feet
Hughes commented
that Raven's study has been duplicated all over the world with the same
results, finding that teachers and students' desires, actions and outcomes are
in conflict.
Montessori Approach Assists Students and Teachers
What makes
Montessori education different?
Hughes said that Montessori education allows the experimental
interactions of a child with his or her environment. It is the experimental interaction with our environment that
promotes healthy brain development.
Experimental interaction gives a child the ability to achieve
self-confidence, independence, the development of character and personality
strengths, problem solving skills, self-expression, opinion formulation and
more. The work in a Montessori
classroom aligns the goals and outcomes of both students and teachers.
Good at Doing Things
Hughes discovered
Montessori education when he asked his friend, Deborah Sussex, who had
extensive experience working with older children and teens at Camp Widjiwagan
in northern Minnesota, where the best kids in the area came from. Her answer was, "Lake Country
Montessori School." Sussex said
that the kids at the Montessori school could figure out what needed to be done,
do it well, and embellish on the task.
Other
adolescents, she said, had to be asked to do something more than once,
reminded, and held accountable.
But if you asked the students from Lake Country to set the table, they
would do it, and embellish the work by adding flower arrangements. Montessori students, she found, were
good at doing things. That was the
difference.
Pediatric Neuropsychologist as Parent
Hughes
learned more about Montessori education as he watched the process in action
with his daughter. Observing his
daughter he began to understand the power that Montessori education had on
positive brain development.
"Montessori education is the embodiment of all I learned in my PhD in
pediatric neuropsychology," Hughes told the audience. "It's like education
designed by a gifted pediatric neuropsychologist."
Hughes
commented that 75% of his peers in pediatric neuropsychology have children who
attend or have attended Montessori schools. Neuropsychologists see that Montessori environments push the
edge of learning for children, keeping the brain challenged, and thus
growing. The child's hands-on
experimental interactions within a Montessori environment aid optimal brain
development. "What should schools
be for?" Hughes asked again. They
should be about building better brains."
Building Better Brains: A Montessori Strength
How do we build
better brains in Montessori environments?
Hughes said the strengths of a Montessori classroom included the child's
opportunities for repetition of activities, the psychological safety and security
of a classroom, the caring for living things, the multitude of activities that
use the hand of the child to reinforce learning, the creation of a cycle of
choosing, doing, and learning, the multi-sensory materials available, the
child's self-guided learning, and the exploration of the out of doors.
Hughes explained
how the brain is especially wired to accept sensory information from the hand
and showed a humorous picture depicting brain development being dominated by
input from the hand. The brain looked
like it was all hands, bringing home the point that the hands-on learning that
occurs in a Montessori classroom is perfect for children's brain development.
Hughes
stated that all meaningful work needs error analysis, and that a strength of a
Montessori classroom is that the child is free to make a mistake and learn from
that failure. It is with the
child's analysis of error that creates the development of executive function in
the child. "Nothing is as good as
Montessori education for the development of executive function," Hughes said.
The Process of Normalization Aids Executive
Function
The prefrontal
cortex in the brain controls executive function. The prefrontal cortex serves to help us link present to
future, develop impulse control, and to modify events remote in time and
space. It is this part of the
brain that allows us to plan, imagine, organize, create self-awareness, self
correct, choose strategies, and make critical judgments.
The child's work
in a Montessori environment fosters the executive functions of the brain. The outward manifestations of the
child's internal brain growth are shown in the child's observable
behavior. Certain behaviors
indicate that optimum development is occurring within the child, a process that
Montessori called "normalization."
Normalization is characterized by the young child's love of order, love
of work or meaningful activity, love of silence and working alone, attachment
to reality, spontaneous concentration, obedience, independence and initiative,
and joy.
Children who
exhibit these behaviors seen in normalization are also good at doing
things. For those concerned
about academic development more than being good at doing things, Hughes
provided some statistical information.
Montessori Research Shows Academic Achievement
Hughes sited Dr.
Angeline Lillard's research at Craig Montessori in Milwaukee that showed that
by the end of kindergarten Montessori students performed better than their
peers at executive control, decoding language and early math, social awareness,
and appeals to social justice. By sixth grade Montessori students outperformed
their peers in social skills, exhibiting a sense of community, creativity in
story writing, and complexity of sentence formulation.
The East Dallas
Community School, a public Montessori started in 1978 in Dallas, Texas serving
children from birth to third grade, had the following results:
In 2002, 78 percent of third graders applied to go to
gifted and talented programs and were accepted 99 percent of students obtained GED's or equivalent 88 percent went to college when only 50 percent of
Dallas public school students go to college.
Montessori Culture, Methods and Materials are
Singular Strengths
Hughes final
point was that Montessori differs in contrast to other theories of education in
that Montessori culture, method and materials are well established. Hughes gave the example of John Dewey's
ideas. Dewey believed that students should be involved in real-life
tasks and challenges, an idea that Montessori practitioners also endorse. Dewey's philosophy in comparison to
Montessori education has not been enriched and developed by a vibrant
learning culture supported by methods and materials.
Educational
culture is the most important part of Montessori education as it contains a
view of humanity that is transformational, and the core values of Montessori
education create civilization.
Our Earth Needs People Who are Good at Doing
Things
As Hughes showed a picture of our Earth
from space, he said we must we realize that no one is going to come and save
us. We are it.
Montessori
education can help our children become people who can solve the problems of our
planet, people who can look around, figure out what needs to be done, and do
it.
Montessori kids
are good at doing things. That's
what Montessori schools are for.
That's what our world needs.
Visit
Steven Hughes' website, www.goodatdoingthings.comand Angeline Lillard's website, www.montessori-science.org. Dr. Raven's research is at www.johnraven.co.uk.
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About Maren Schmidt: Maren Schmidt is
an AMI trained elementary guide who currently writes the award winning child
development column, Kids Talk™.
Visit www.KidsTalkNews.com.
She is author of two books, Understanding Montessori: A Guide for Parents, and Building Cathedrals Not Walls.
Maren also currently serves on the OMA Board.
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Reprinted by permission of the author.
Oregon Montessori Association
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Brought to you by the Oregon Montessori Association.
The Oregon Montessori Association is a group of schools and individuals who support vibrant Montessori education in Oregon and Southwest Washington...and beyond.
Visit www.oregonmontessori.org
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