Montessori

Cossentino, Jacqueline M. (2006). Big Work: Goodness, vocation and engagement in the Montessori Method. © 2006 by The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto.
Curriculum Inquiry 36:1 (2006)
Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road,
Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK

proposition that work is an especially useful lensfor examining the theory and practice of Montessori education. In contrast to the playcentered approach favored by many early childhood educators (Beatty,
1995; Kramer, 1976), Montessori placed deliberate and emphatic emphasis on the concept of work. From the holistic project of development to the very ideal of active, purposeful engagement, work is cast as the means
as well as the end ofMontessori education. I explore the manner in which work is invoked by practitioners as well as by Montessori herself not as drudgery but rather as vocation.
Montessori’s materials aimed to sharpen the senses and teach the skills of everyday life. The graduated blocks, rods and cylinders, the skeins of different colored thread, the sandpaper letters and numbers, which have become emblematic ofMontessori learning the world over, all originated in the desire to create educational materials that would at once draw the child to engagement through the senses and enable him to keep his mind focused on mastery.

The healthy formation of personality, or what Montessori called “normalization,” can only be achieved through this conception of work as engrossing and transformative. Throughconcentration the child transforms her personality from “defective” to “normal.” She replaces the “vices” of sloth, timidity, and caprice with the “virtues” of work, sociability, and concentration. Work, in other words, is both the path to and the manifestation of a particular conception of “goodness.” In contrast to other conceptions (see Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1983), Montessori’s vision aims for the“perfection of the self,” and elevates particular virtues as emblematic of perfection.
Montessori’s multilayered conception of work overlaps in some important ways with current understandings of play (Bruner, Jolly, & Sylva, 1976; Sutton-Smith, 1997; Vygotsky, 1933/1976). Work in a Montessori environment is child, rather than teacher, directed. It is designed to “set free” rather than mold the child’spersonality. Because it is driven by a natural desire to develop through exploration and eventual mastery, work, in this scheme, is also joyful, even a site of “optimal experience” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Rathunde, 2001). Yet the differences between play and work are just as pronounced. The defining conditions of work are that it is both natural and effortful. Work is not an escape from “reallife,” but rather a path toward its fulfillment.
Most evident in the exercises of “practical life,” Montessori’s concern with reality stemmed from her observation of children happily choosing to manipulate her specially designed brooms, mops, and dressing frames over interactions with play toys. “It was the children themselves who showed that they preferred one another’s company to dolls, and the small‘real life’ utensils to toys” (1949/1995, p. 169). Beyond enjoyment, Montessori also identified educative value in the repetition of exercises, pointing once again to perfection:
Repetition is the secret of perfection, and this is why the exercises are connected with the common activities of daily life. If a child does not set a table for a group of people who are really going to eat, if he doesnot have real brushes for cleaning . . . he will never attain any real ability. (Montessori, 1948/1967, pp. 97–98)
The freedom to repeat as many times as necessary occurs in what Montessorians refer to as “work cycles.” The child’s internal work cycle is the sequence of activity entailed in choosing, doing, and completing work; the conclusion of a work cycle is determined not by the...