Freedom and Discipline

The social functioning of the environment is just as important as the physical environment and its contents. The Montessori environment provides the children with the tools they need, and they also grant them the freedom to use them and to show their tendencies to repeat, to explore, or to manipulate.

Each child is given freedom of choice. The child’s interaction with the environment is most productive in terms of the individual’s development when it is self-chosen and founded on individual interest. From the moment the children enter the class in the morning they are free to choose their activities for themselves. One will choose to start the day with a drink and chat before washing up some cups. He may then choose to sit and do nothing, quietly watching friends, before choosing to join a singing group. Another may arrive and immediately start to trace some sandpaper letters with his fingers and then write on a chalkboard. This is “auto-education”—the child has the freedom to respond to the teacher within him and has access to materials in the environment that can satisfy each developmental need.

Each child is given freedom of time. He is free to work with an activity as long as he chooses, free to repeat it as many times as he needs, or simply to take his time. A four-year-old might spend an hour and a half washing some fifty or more small cloths that have been used throughout the morning. He is left undisturbed and finishes when the force that compelled him to concentrate for that time is satisfied. Long periods of concentration of this type are frequently observed in Montessori environments in children as young as three-years old.

It is this freedom the leads to discipline. This may seem paradoxical. In contrast, the traditional approach to discipline holds that children are inherently disorderly and that their willfulness and impulses must be inhibited by external discipline. The widespread assumption is that children need rewards (like gold stars) or punishments (such as “time out”) in order to behave appropriately. Consequently, if the external motive is withdrawn, there is only a weak will, or moral compass, within the person to direct his intentions and actions. The desire to learn or cooperate within society is based more on a notion of “I should” than “I want to.”

Montessori education aids the development of the child’s will. Through constant decision-making (choices) the child’s ability to listen to his interests and impulses is developed. But the environment also contains limits, both natural and social, that give the child constant practice in the inhibition of those impulses. For example, in the prepared environment there is only one of each set of materials—one easel for painting, for instance. If a child has an impulse to paint and another child is already painting, there is a natural limit to that impulse for the former child must wait until the latter is finished. Similarly, an activity freely chosen is only complete when it has been returned to its place on the shelf, ready for the next person to use. The only limit to individual freedom then are the needs of the group as a whole.

Montessori education has a special term for the process whereby characteristics including initiative, self-discipline, concentration, independence, a love of purposeful activity, and compassion become manifest in the child—“normalization.” As discussed previously, this does not refer to a standardization or a process of being forced to conform, but rather describes a unique process in child development. Maria Montessori used this term to indicate her belief that these characteristics are the normal characteristic of childhood. She believes that the characteristics that we normally associate with childhood—such as capriciousness, selfishness, laziness and the inability to concentrate—appear only when a child’s natural development is being thwarted. When children are allowed freedom in an environment suited to their needs, on the other hand, they blossom.

Referenced from:

http://montessoricentenary.org/briefins/WhatIsMontessoriEducation.pdf