Cycle Three: The relationship between schools and homes

Once I realized The Schoolhome was about Maria Montessori and the Montessori schooling, this book became a reluctant read for me. I delayed reading it for the first couple days of the week before I got my act together and realized I needed to get over my own biases towards the Montessori schooling way. So, I started reading with the most unbiased view of the subject I could muster. One thing I learned that I did not know is that Maria Montessori opened her second school in Rome in apartment buildings that were unfinished, unsafe, and unsanitary. The poor and recently released prisoners moved into these buildings, along with their children. Not knowing what to do with children too young for school that were running around all day while their parents were at work, the authorities asked Maria Montessori for help. So, she built a school in each of the apartment buildings.

            Virginia Woolf spoke of the bridge, the gateway to society and how women were beginning to cross over it, enter the workforce, and leave their children at home in the process. She spoke of what that did to the child/children at home. She talked about what that did to the child/children at home and how Montessori’s method of education went along with those changes taking place in society. Montessori knew that the connection between home and school was a strong one, so she wanted her school to strongly resemble “home”, even for many children who did not have a safe or welcoming home. That is one of the reasons that she called her school the school home instead of the school house.

            I, too, know that there is such an important connection between home and school, one that we do not value enough in current educational fields. I do not understand what makes Maria Montessori’s schools more “homier” than public schools. I say this partly because I worked in a Montessori preschool/Kindergarten school for the first two years after graduating college. Since I do not have a Montessori teaching degree or certification, I was only able to work there as a teacher aid. There was nothing in the classrooms that seemed any “homier” to me than in public schools. All the materials were on wooden shelves, in trays, or wooden baskets. Children had the choice of sitting and working on tables and chairs or rugs. In a public school classroom, at least for lower elementary school, students are welcomed into the class with colorful posters on the walls, their names on desks, sometimes, bean bag chairs or other inviting areas for reading, etc. A teacher in a Montessori setting or public school setting wants to make their children feel welcomed, safe, and loved; just like what they should be experiencing at home.

            I worked at that the Montessori school for two years, each under a different director. The first director was, in no better words, a hippie. She let the kids do whatever they wanted to do; if they wanted to run back and forth from one room to another, she let them. If they still needed to be fed their lunch and snack, we would feed them without at least making them try on their own. When she left, I asked her if she could write me a letter of recommendation and she said I would not need one because principals would see my aura and know what a good teacher I was. The second director was very rigid and strict. The students must properly roll the rug and put it back, and if they did not, she would unroll it and have them reroll it until it was done perfectly. If they could not feed themselves, they sat at the table and cried. That was really hard for me to watch. She did not smile at the children. We were not allowed to tell the children that we “liked” what they did. We had to say, “And how do you feel about that?” Everyone worked quietly and independently. In the epilogue, Martin mentioned walking into a third grade classroom seeing 25 students working silently, reading books independently, and discussed their books with the teacher. It is great that the students were working independently so nicely, but do they always need to be working on their own? Isn’t there something to be said from working collaboratively with peers? One of the reasons I have my students sitting in tables instead of on their own, is so they can work together on classwork. It is important for students to be able to build their social skills as well as academic skills.

            She also mentions how nicely Montessori teachers incorporate a diverse curriculum even though diversity is not very much included in our currently curriculum. Students read Huckleberry Finn and Little Women, boys do not think they should have to read Little Women, but end up relating to it anyway. High school students make time to listen to Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream Speech”. Once again, that is fantastic, but nothing different from what public school teachers do for their students, as well. Montessori schooling is put on such a high pedestal and I wonder if Maria Montessori’s original vision for what her schools would be and who they would teach has been lost throughout the years. I say this because she started her school to help children from disadvantaged areas, but think about who goes to Montessori in this day and age. It is definitely not the children that come from disadvantaged areas. For one, they do not have the money to afford Montessori school. I just yesterday enrolled my three year old into nursery school for the fall. Classes are two days a week for two hours each day. I looked into the cost of the Montessori program offered by the district and that is $395/month!! That is more than three times the amount I am paying for nursery school. How many people can actually afford that? Certainly not the families of students I used to teach in inner city Detroit. I wonder what Maria Montessori would think of the way her schools are run now.