Discipline and Obedience in the Montessori Perspective

Discipline in the Montessori Method

As Mary Conroy and Kitty Williams state, there is something different about the Montessori method that makes outsiders rush to extremes in their attempts to classify it: "I've heard Montessori is too free and chaotic" or "I've heard Montessori is too structured." The truth is that the Montessori method is neither. It is, in fact, something completely different. This paper will analyze just how discipline and obedience are instilled in children from the Montessori perspective.

As Conroy and Williams note, "the best Montessori teachers or facilitators understand that maintaining the delicate balance between freedom and structure is one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of their job." This challenge is brought into perspective by Montessori's own definition of discipline: "discipline is 'not a fact but a way.'" This way, as Montessori observed, was found independent of the teacher when children were given the freedom to "reveal their inner or self-discipline."

Indeed, as Samuel Ravi notes, the Montessori perspective insists that "discipline cannot be attained by way of commands, by sermons, by any of the disciplinary methods universally known." The trick is to foster it in the child indirectly "by developing activity in the spontaneous work." To reinforce the idea that discipline must be instilled in the child from within because it will not be instilled from without, Ravi quotes Montessori, who acknowledged that "in truth, the 'good' are those who move forward towards the goodness which has been built up by their own efforts." What this means is that for true education to take place, the will must be directed to receiving it—and no one can force a will but the person whose will it is. That is the Montessori perspective of discipline.

Understanding Obedience

How does discipline relate to obedience? Conroy and Williams observe that "discipline presupposes a certain degree of obedience." Montessori herself states that "obedience appears in the child as a latent instinct as soon as his personality begins to take form." Obedience, like discipline, is something akin to a virtue that the child must acquire—or, in other words, it is a habit that the child must attain. Virtues are, after all, merely habits that are good (just as vices are habits that are bad).

Therefore, the essence of understanding obedience in the Montessori method is this: the habit of obedience is something that should be acquired by the child. The question becomes: how can the teacher help the student acquire this obedience?

The Three Levels of Obedience

The first level of obedience is arrived at on a subconscious level—"when in the confused mind of the child, order produces itself by a mysterious inner impulse from out the midst of disorder, producing as an external result a completed act." What is significant here, however, is the fact that because this order is arrived at on a subconscious level, the child cannot reproduce it at will (because the child has not been conscious of how order was produced).

The second stage of obedience is a continuation of the first, with this improvement: the child recognizes the impulse to obey. In other words, "he looks as though he understood the command and would like to respond to it, but cannot—or at least does not always succeed in doing it, is not 'quick to mind' and shows no pleasure when he does." This second level of obedience is like a developmental stage. The child has grown into consciousness, is aware of an outside order that exists, and is compelled to adapt himself to it—but not always and neither is the child even always capable of adapting himself to it were he to desire it anyway. The child is, essentially, still finding his way along.

The third level of obedience, then, occurs as a result of this second. The child develops, matures, and acquires the capacity to succeed in an orderly fashion at the performance of whatever task is at hand. In this third and final stage of obedience, "the will can direct and cause the acts, thus answering the command from someone else." As Conroy and Williams note, this third level of obedience is called "joyful obedience," and it is united to self-discipline in such a way that the child is able to see "the value of what is being offered to him by authority and rushes to obey."

Creating a Favorable Environment

Discipline and obedience (or the development of the will) are fostered in the child by way of a good environment—not a tyrannical one in which an outside will exerts an indomitable pressure. In other words, "the classroom should be beautiful, orderly, and so inviting that the child cannot resist exploring. It should be steeped with a sense of wonder." This wonder invites the child to explore all that is within his reach—and this exploration allows the child to become familiar with that which is outside him. By acknowledging an outside world and its design, the child will be more apt to develop his will and acquire the virtues of discipline and obedience (out of his own desire for personal pleasure—pleasure at meeting the demands of the world).

However, one of the most important aspects of the classroom setting is this: the rules must be clearly delineated and thoroughly explained to the child so that he is not ignorant of them. If he knows the rules, he may be expected to follow them. It is that simple. The rules themselves are also simple and in Montessori schools they generally run as follows: (1) Take care of all people and living things in our environment, and (2) Take care of all of the material things in our environment. If you think about it, every "do" or "don't" one could wish to implore fits in these two rules, or could be narrowed even further to this one simple rule: "be respectful of everyone and everything."

Barbara Isaacs seconds this favorable environment and observes that "when Montessori described the favorable environment, she saw the child as an active agent of this environment, and the teacher as the facilitator of the child's learning and development." Complementary to the classroom environment, however, should be the home environment. Neither of the two should be exclusive, but both environments should work together to establish a kind of learning. These environments can give rise to an understanding of maturational development.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Montessori method is neither a method of chaos nor a method of tyranny. It sees each child as a human being that is developing into an adult. That developmental process should be encouraged by examples of virtue and by healthy surroundings that allow the child to acquire self-discipline and a good will towards others. The development of the will and of the mind is the focus of the Montessori method. The Montessori perspective is one akin to the perspective of God, who wants all of us to grow into good men.