“Building Our Classroom”

In one of her post last week, Alice challenged us to think about some of the educational philosophies that have impacted our personal engineering education experience. I would like to take the opportunity to share my first engineering experience that was strongly influenced by the work of Maria Montessori.

First let me take a moment to explain that for the most part, Maria Montessori and John Dewey did not appreciate the others contributions to the field. And Nell Noddings, being a dedicated Deweyan, endorses Dewey’s perspective. But to dismiss Montessori based on the fact that she was not a good philosopher, is to me, missing the point. Maria Montessori did not consider her work in education to be a philosophical experience; she considered her work in education to be an ongoing scientific experiment in education. She was not interested in a theoretical framework, but rather a scientific explanation that would both contribute to our understanding of how children develop and our communities by educating “global citizens” capable of self-control, self-growth as well as community awareness. Considering the fact that history has recorder Maria Montessori as the first woman physician in Italy, her interest and experience in the sciences extend toward using a scientific rather than a philosophical approach to education. The fact that she was somewhat overbearing and dogmatic in her application of her methods is a discussion for another time. While Maria Montessori’s work with Primary and Early Elementary Children is well worked out, she was unable to spend as much time working out the details of her educational program for upper elementary children and adolescents. In fact her ideas on adolescents are only briefly laid out in a short essay she wrote called, “Erdkinder.” Having read some of Montessori’s translated writings, I agree that sometimes she may get caught up in the details or stray off on “mystical” tangents, but her sound advice of “Follow the child,” in the sense that one follows and nurture a child’s natural interest in his prepared surrounding, for me is at the crux of learning. It also echoes of Dewey’s endorsement of experiential education. (I wonder what would have happened if the two of them could have gotten past their biases about the other approach, but that is an essay for another day.) But there is more than just following the child involved, there also at times, has to be an introduction to an enticing idea…

When I was 10, the Montessori school I attended decided to start an upper elementary program. They hired a young man, Jerry, who had recently returned from Bergamot, Italy, one of the premier Montessori training institutes. Jerry decided very quickly into his tenure at the school that the portable building that the school had rented for our program was not going to work out. He decided that with the help of the students, he was going to build a new building for us to use as our classroom. Using some Math Materials that he had created during his time at the Montessori institute, he taught us quadratic equations and essentially as fourth and fifth graders, we had enough math and measuring skills to figure out all of the other information. Now, I know in today’s world, we see projects like this on the DIY channel accomplished in a weekend, but as fourth and fifth graders, we framed a 25’x20’ school house with four walls, a roof, four windows and a door. We were able to get one of the parents of a child at the school to pour an appropriate slab for us, and we planned, budgeted, designed, framed, sided, insulate, roofed, drywalled, and painted the room. It is important to remember that I lived in Arizona, so climate control was not essential, but other than the electricity (which one of the parents provided), we fund raised, built, worked and got the room done. I doubt that it would have survived any hurricanes, but it was a fabulous experience for me. There were 11 children involved, and we all found a niche. Some of us preferred planning, some of us preferred the actual implementation, some of us were better at motivating than doing, and others were better as historians and poets, but all of us were engaged and involved. We also learned a lot about what happens when things don’t work, and why certain projects have to be done before others. I think if you were to go back an interview any of us again, we would all say this was one of our most exciting learning experiences. One of the little girls I used to babysit, daughter attends school there now and the room is still used as a storage area. It’s rewarding to think that something fourth and fifth graders engineered is still standing; though I am sure the dry Arizona weather has helped preserve the structure. My point is that when you engage children in something that matters to them, like physically creating their own learning space, it is easy to see how they become vested in the process. My natural inclination is not toward hammers and saws, but I found that I really enjoyed framing, dry walling, and painting. I have been able to put this knowledge to use throughout my life. I worked at an interior design store in high school and helped design and construct displays. These skills have helped me countless time doing set design and construction in community theatre. However, if I had not had this early exposure to using these skills to create something that was important to me, I might never have tried on this tool belt. On my own, I would never have thought to create or engineer a classroom. But by being in community that had a need, I was provided the opportunity to be a part of a team that designed and built a building, a small one albeit, but a building nonetheless.

While some people who follow Montessori become dogmatic, others have gleaned much of both her and Dewey’s and many other educators belief that children learn through doing, but there is more to this doing than simply experiencing, it is being engaged in a meaningful process, and for most children, seeing the results of their work. Whether we endorse a philosophy of what Noddings calls Piaget’s Genetic Epistemology more frequently referred to as a theory of cognitive development, which is a highly generative theory in my experience, most children under the age of 12 are concrete thinkers. They need to see tangible results of their work. To design a house on paper, or a model is one thing, to walk into a room you built is another. I greatly benefited from having the opportunity to do this. I used to cry when I had a fever, and my mother would make me stay home from school. I loved to be engaged in the work. I loved to be at school. Thanks to Dr. Montessori’s experiment and to some of the people she influenced, I had the opportunity to be a part of engineering my own school…