Unschooling Journal

Maria Montessori presents her concept of the absorbent mind - in her book of the same name - as a type of mentality that is particular to children in which they do not attempt to learn, but rather do so with almost no volition, as an act of their nature. This period in a child’s development, while not lasting a predefined amount of time, usually takes place from birth to 6 years old. And it is further evidence to support the argument that children do not need to be taught so much as they need freedom to learn, freedom to do what comes naturally to them. Montessori writes:

Our mind, as it is, would not be able to do what the child’s mind does. To develop a language from nothing needs a different type of mentality. This the child has. His intelligence is not the same kind as ours.

It may be said that we acquire knowledge by using our minds; but the child absorbs knowledge directly into his psychic life. Simply by continuing to live, the child learns to speak his native tongue. A kind of mental chemistry goes on within him. We, by contrast, are recipients. Impressions pour into us and we store them in our minds; but we ourselves remain apart from them, just as a vase keeps separate from the water it contains. Instead, the child undergoes a transformation. Impressions do not merely enter his mind; they form it. They incarnate themselves in him. The child creates his own “mental muscles,” using for this what he finds in the world around him.

This, to me, has two very immediate and very important implications. The first is that currently both parenting and education methods do a great deal to stunt and mar this process. The second is that children who are brought up with this principle in mind will prove that extremely bright, curious, precocious children are not an aberration, but rather the natural, normal state that the child is compelled towards.

Until a handful a decades ago, the most important portion of a student’s development was considered to be university. There he received “higher learning,” there he was prepared for the world. Younger children were all but entirely ignored as curious, learning beings. But now we know better, and vague stabs at applying this knowledge in shown in the form of preschool classes. This, however, is not good enough. A different kind of mind needs a different kind of education. And to Montessori, and myself, this implies a complete abandonment of the educational principles currently supported. Montessori writes of the role of parents and teachers:

The discovery that the child has a mind able to absorb on its own account produces a revolution in education. We can now understand easily why the first period in human development, in which character is formed, is the most important. At no other age has the child greater need of an intelligent help, and any obstacle that impedes his creative work will lessen the chance he has of achieving perfection. We should help the child, therefore, no longer because we think of him as a creature, puny and weak, but because he is endowed with great creative energies, which are of their nature so fragile as to need a loving and intelligent defense. To these energies we want to bring help; not to the child, or to his weakness. When we understand that the energies belong to his unconscious mind, which has to become conscious through work and through an experience of life gained in the world, we realize that the mind of the child in infancy is different from ours, that we cannot reach it by verbal instruction, nor intervene directly in the process of its passion from the unconscious to the conscious - the process of making human faculty - then the whole concept of education changes. It becomes a matter of giving help to the child’s life, to the psychological development of man. No longer is it just as enforced task of retaining our words and ideas.

If that notion doesn’t excite and anger you, then I can only think to blame the French to English translation, because it seems so clear to me that we are missing out on incredible opportunities in the minds of the young, that they are literally being beaten into bored stupidity when they could be raised to such heights of intelligence and freedom that those of us who experienced compulsory school can only imagine.

Some of these I’ve read, a couple I am in the process of reading. But I believe there is great insight in all of them, even if sometimes you have to wade through a little nonsense.

The Absorbent Mind by Maria Montessori: Maria Montessori, the creator of the Montessori Method, made incredible and long-lasting contributions to the principles of educating children. She promoted the concept of the “Normalized” child, meaning that independence and a love of learning of normal qualities which all children possess. The Absorbent Mind is considered her cornerstone work.

The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn: This book, written for and to teenagers, presents the argument for quitting school to pursue your own education. Definitely controversial, but very thought-provoking. She makes her points on the negative - but intentional - practices of compulsory education, while providing heaps of information and anecdotes about quitting school and those who have done so successfully.

How Children Fail and How Children Learn by John Holt: Two excellent books by the pioneer of the unschooling concept.

Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto: This new book by Gatto exposes the true nature of compulsory education. His book is “a demonstration that the harm school inflicts is quite rational and deliberate, following high-level political theories constructed by Plato, Calvin, Spinoza, Fichte, Darwin, Wundt, and others, which contend the term “education” is meaningless because humanity is strictly limited by necessities of biology, psychology, and theology. The real function of pedagogy is to render the common population manageable.”