Montessori and constructivism

Montessori Life, Winter 2003 by Elkind, David

One way to appreciate Montessori's incorporation of the three epistemologies is to look at the cornerstone of her educational philosophy, namely, the child. Montessori believed that perhaps her greatest discovery was that of true child nature and how this is often misunderstood by adults. It is her conception of the child which embodies all three of the epistemologies.

With regard to nativism, in her book The Absorbent Mind, Montessori (1967) writes, "There is, so to speak-in every child a painstaking teacher, so skilled that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world" (p. 6). Her description of sensitive periods also reflects this recognition of inborn propensities. "A sensitive period refers to a .transient disposition and [is] limited to the acquisition of a particular trait. Once this trait or characteristic is acquired, the special sensibility disappears" (Montessori, 1966, pp. 46-- 49). Likewise, "Nature endows the child with a sensitiveness to order. ... order consists in recognizing the place for each object. and in remembering where each thing should be" (Montessori, 1966, p. 19). In practice, Montessori employed self-- didactic methods by which children could learn concepts by correcting themselves. The set of wooden cylinders with different diameters that are to be placed in like-- sized holes is an example. With these cylinders the child can learn the correct sequence because, unless the cylinders are placed in the right holes, they will not all fit in. The child's own logic gives rise to the solution. (One might argue, however, that her self-didactic methods are also empiricist, in that the child is learning by trial and error as well as by logic.)

Montessori's empiricist bent is observed most clearly in her book From Childhood to Adolescence (1973). In that book she first commends Comenius for introducing pictures into the education of children. But she then objects that this approach has been misused to close children in, rather than to open them out. She writes, "There is no description, no image in any book that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and the life that is to be found around them, in a real forest" (Montessori, 1973, p. 35). Montessori also invokes the empiricist principles of abstraction and generalization used to go from the particular to the general, the inductive method of empiricism. "After seeing a river or a lake, is it necessary to see all the rivers and lakes of the world to know what they are? The imagination, afterward is able to form a concept of the world. ... This is a universal means of learning" (Montessori, 1973, p. 35).

Montessori's constructivist leanings are reflected in her constant emphasis upon the child's own activity in his or her construction of knowledge and intelligence. "The hands are the instruments of man's intelligence. ... He constructs his mind step by step till it becomes possessed by memory, the power to understand, the power to think" (Montessori, 1967, p.27). Like Piaget, Montessori emphasizes the importance of the child's own activity in the construction of both mind and knowledge. To a greater extent than Piaget, however, she emphasizes the importance of the hand in the constructive process: "His hands under the guidance of his intellect transform the environment and thus enable him to perform his mission in the world" (Montessori, 1967, p. 152). Montessori is thus a constructivist to the extent that she regards the child as constructing and transforming the environment through his or her own activity.