A question of choice

Montessori Life, Spring 2003 by Kirby, Karen

Should a child choose an exercise prior to teacher presentation?

This question looks at two schools of thought I have witnessed in my Montessori observations. One school of thought holds that the child must be presented with a lesson before he or she may choose the work. The second believes that the child should be allowed to choose any work from the shelf that the child desires.

In answering this question, it is important to examine both sides of the issue. First let's look at the presentation of materials before the child chooses the work, the argument for this philosophy, and the pros and cons in this type of classroom leadership.

Presentation First

The argument for presentation first, before the child may choose that activity, has some valid points. Discussion with classroom teachers who possess this philosophy reveals the reasons behind it: success and independence. Teachers using this structure in the classroom feel that. a child who is unable because of developmental reasons to succeed by herself at an activity should not be allowed to use that work from the shelf.

When Montessori (1988, 1995) spoke of using the sensorial materials, she seemed to indicate that presentations are given first to the children.

A teacher gradually presents now one object and now another to a child according to his age and the progressive difficulty of the materials. But the presentation of these materials is only the first step. It introduces the child to them but nothing more. The important activities only begin later. As he is attracted by the various objects, a child will go freely choose any of the objects which he has come to know and which have been already presented to him [italics added]. (Montessori, 1988, p. 98) This passage clearly stated that the work must already have been presented.

Montessori also talked about the teacher's role: "the teacher's principal duty in the school may be described as follows: She should explain the use of the material. She is the main connecting link between the materials, that is, the objects and the child" (Montessori, 1988, p. 151). The teacher "must be able to choose an object suitable for a particular child and place it before him in such a way that he understands it and takes a keen interest in it," she said (1988, p. 152). Both statements indicate that the teacher's duties include presenting the material to the child. Did Montessori mean that the teacher must present all materials before the child can use them? If we showed them exactly how to do something, this precision itself seemed to hold their interest. To have a real purpose to which the action was directed, this was the first condition, but the exact way of doing it acted like a support which rendered the child stable in his efforts, and therefore brought him to make progress in his development. Order and precision, we found, were the keys to spontaneous work in the school. (Montessori, 1995, p. 186)

Montessori appears to be telling us that the precision of a teacher presentation acts as a catalyst to the child's development in use of the materials. But does this mean that the teacher must present the materials before the child can use them?

Perhaps the clearest statement in support of presentation first appears in Standing's work.

No child is allowed to choose any piece of material unless he already knows how to use it. That is why Bridget was not allowed to use the number frame, an apparatus beyond her present capacity to understand. [Dr. Montessori] says: `In voluntarily doing a thing we must first know what that thing is .... We cannot choose a thing without knowing it first.' The child spontaneously chooses amongst a great many stimuli, but he must choose only those things he knows .This is real choice . . . .True choice is something from within. It is often said that it is curiosity which stimulates these researches with the materials. But it is not curiosity which urges them, because, when he has understood a thing, he no longer has intellectual curiosity with regard to it. So it is just when curiosity is satisfied that there begins the real expansive activity of the child. He does not now act so that he may know, but that he may grow; because he has need of action to reinforce and expand his mind. (Standing, 1957, pp. 285-286)

Examining these sources makes it easier to see why some Montessori professionals take the presentation-- first position. Many believe, with Standing, that Montessori herself set this as a limitation on the child's freedom to choose. These professionals also want their young charges to be independent and to build on success-- as children presented only with materials that are developmentally appropriate for them will undoubtedly be able to do.

But this also can become a form of classroom management which gives the teachers an inordinate amount of power over children's freedom to choose. They control children through their own choice of which lessons they present. Individuals who haven't had the lesson are not allowed to do the work. When teachers construct the situation in this way, children can't make a mess or can't get out work they need help with or are unable to put away. This rule puts the adults in control. This may be their intent-but I do not believe it was ever the intent of Montessori herself. Presentation of lessons was never meant to be a form of classroom management.