{"id":16610,"date":"2015-09-29T07:58:06","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T12:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=16610"},"modified":"2015-09-28T19:31:28","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T00:31:28","slug":"book-review-the-child-in-the-family-by-maria-montessori","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2015\/20150929-16610.htm","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Child in the Family<\/em> by Maria Montessori"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the years, I’ve read my share of books about homeschooling, looking forward to the day when I’d be doing history timelines with my elementary students, science experiments with my middle schoolers, and higher maths with my high schoolers. But, then… what do you know? I don’t have any of those. I have a baby. And before she’ll be a high schooler or a middle schooler or even an elementary schooler – she’ll be a preschooler.<\/p>\n

Which is why I resolved to pick up something on early childhood education on one of my recent library trips.<\/p>\n

And who better than Maria Montessori, right? She’s a universally recognized early childhood educator.<\/p>\n

I started with The Child in the Family<\/em> because we’ll be training our children in our family (not in a school setting) – and because I guessed that this would be about very early childhood, even infancy. And… I was right!<\/p>\n

The Child in the Family<\/em> is highly theoretical. <\/p>\n

Montessori begins by stating that children are the last repressed class of humans – practically slaves to their parents, who exercise god-like power over them. She argues that while adults tend to think of children as blank slates, ready to be made after their parents’ image, children are in fact living spirits ready to begin to make their physical selves in their own likeness. <\/p>\n

Montessori’s method, then, is all about giving children the freedom to raise themselves, to learn as they desire, to mold themselves as they like.<\/p>\n

Montessori’s child is some sort of idealized angel, innately aware of both morality and of his own dignity. When the child sees injustice, he bristles. When his dignity is wounded, his spirit is crushed. As such, adults should tread lightly, recognizing their great potential for injuring this otherwise perfect being.<\/p>\n

Does this sound melodramatic? I thought so too. <\/p>\n

Montessori seems fully aware of one half of the human condition: Imago Dei<\/em>. But imago Dei<\/em> is only one half of the equation. Original sin means the child is not only a spiritual being made in God’s image, but also spiritually dead, bent toward evil.<\/p>\n

Montessori’s only-half-right-theory means that her practice is only-partially-helpful. In this volume, Montessori mentions a few practical ways by which a parent or other adult can avoid offending the child. The first is to be patient with a child’s curiosity (a child isn’t being dirty or naughty when he picks up a fallen leaf from the sidewalk). The second is to, for lack of a better phrase, allow the child to be a grown-up. Montessori encourages the use of real miniature glasses and plates and silverware, rather than having unbreakable “child-friendly” dishes. She encourages the use of child-sized furniture that the child can move around (and discourages the use of rubber caps to keep the movement of said furniture from making noise.) She encourages the use of child-sized cleaning equipment so a child can sweep her own floor and dust her own furniture.<\/p>\n

In general, I’m okay with those practices. I don’t think I’m anywhere near as dogmatic on the child-sized-but-real stuff – but certainly Tirzah Mae has no interest in using a plastic baby spoon, eschewing it in favor of real flatware (child-sized flatware<\/a> for her is on it’s way, since she can’t exactly fit the real flatware in her mouth!)<\/p>\n

The second to last chapter speaks of the Montessori teacher and how she uses “various stimuli to awaken a sense of security in the child.” She is all about making her educational material attractive to the child so that the child will initiate learning activity. Once the child has initiated the activity, she is careful not to interrupt either with praise or correction (I really appreciate this idea – I often see moms completely disrupt their child’s purposeful play by inserting themselves into the play.) Unfortunately, that is the extent of the discussion of Montessori’s pedagogical methods in this book. I certainly hope she elaborates more in other books – since this proposed role for the teacher seems much more interesting to me than the silly theories about a child’s innate goodness promoted by this particular book.<\/p>\n

\n

Rating:<\/b> 2 stars
\nCategory:<\/b> Early Childhood Education
\nSynopsis:<\/b> Montessori propounds her theory that children are innately good and should be allowed freedom to mold themselves as they like.
\nRecommendation:<\/b> Lots of ridiculous theory, very little of practical use. Skip it.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the years, I’ve read my share of books about homeschooling, looking forward to the day when I’d be doing history timelines with my elementary students, science experiments with my middle schoolers, and higher maths with my high schoolers. But, then… what do you know? I don’t have any of those. I have a baby. … Read more Book Review: The Child in the Family<\/em> by Maria Montessori<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16610"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16612,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16610\/revisions\/16612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}