The Next Generation of Leaders"Is the next generation of Montessori leaders prepared to move beyond both the good work and the missed opportunities of the pioneers?"-Lakshmi A. KripalaniPamela AutreyLakshmi A. Kripalani sent out a call for a "new generation of leaders" in the summer 2004 issue of Public School Montessorian Her call is for leaders who can inspire by describing to a new generation of educators and parents the truths Dr. Montessori discovered about children's development and ability To do this, public Montessori educators, coordinators and principals must take ownership of Montessori's discoveries and have opportunities to shape their experiences and observations into public discourse. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 and state-level legislation that is spinning off of it may provide the wind to catch the sail of Montessorians-both private and public-pushing us into dynamic new waters. At the end of her call, Kripalani reminds us of the "real goal" of Montessori education: "the promotion of human rights and peace through the development of such education all around the world." Public Montessori teachers are the vanguard of this promotion in our own backyard. In order to separate the wheat from the chaff in the current context, critical perspectives that explore what works and why are needed as well as quantitative research to provide data that support the difference Montessori education makes. Public Montessori teachers see this difference everyday, particularly when they co-exist with a traditional program. I teach in such a program. A new generation of leaders will speak clearly of the promotion of human rights and peace as the goal of education against the traditional goals of schooling which foster self-centered competition for personal instead of community enhancement. A leap of faith is necessary to demand the resources, admission policies, teacher training, student assessment and preschool components for success with integrity. If the "real goal" is ongoing development of education towards protection of human rights through the proliferation of such education all around the world, then Montessori educators are going to have to let go their unchallenged ownership of Dr. Montessori's ideas in America. As public Montessori teachers, if we are to act to help children then we must trust that our own recognition of Dr. Montessori's discoveries is proof her ideas survive systemic application. Letting go requires a leap of faith. Private Montessori teachers need to visit public Montessori programs not to look for what they do wrong but what works and obeys Montessori's definition of work. Letting go requires a leap of faith because for many Montessori educators, it was the strength of her ideas and the persistence and success with which they continue to be carried out all over the world that renewed our vision of teaching. Public Montessori teachers must watch for and record the differences our students exhibit because understanding and satisfying students' developmental needs, by itself, makes the biggest difference. Initiatives by private Montessori educators and schools to form partnerships with public programs is an example of a grass roots strategy that could generate energy and leadership. Private Montessori education has succeeded with almost no support from government or the educational establishment. Principle issues in the current context that can help cement private and public Montessori educators include the NCLB Act and the high-stakes testing it relies on as well as high pressure to get a certified teacher with a major in her or his area in every classroom. There were tearful farewells when faculty without teacher certification left Whitby School, originally opened by Nancy Rambusch in 1956, last year. They also removed Montessori from their sign. In this context, a coalition of private and public Montessori teachers who know what they are doing and why in the classroom will provide the fodder for leadership. Public and private Montessorians who recognize the critical juncture public schools operate in with dwindling resources and rising expectations need to consider a political identity whose agenda includes bringing our considerable knowledge base to a table that includes traditional educators. We need to let go of our self-imposed isolation. A prophet clarifies a cause, doctrine or group. A prophet speaks clearly and hermeneutically, making the message unambiguous and promoting its meaning. A prophetic speaker speaks to the context of teaching today, reconnecting what we do in the classroom with the larger goal of promotion of human rights. Montessori was such a prophet of her discoveries. Her handbook is a classic. Nancy Rambusch was a prophet, unafraid to trust her own instincts regarding American children. Kripalani's directive to "look unflinchingly at what can be done" means questioning our most taken-for-granted practices. Public Montessori educators, if they are to lead must be equally prophetic leaders. They must expose the middle-class bias of many Montessori training courses so we can move beyond it. This means exposing a hidden curriculum that has created unreal expectations of what learning looks like. The notion of an idealized childhood has a history and was originally based on a middle-class white model of childhood. Most children in the U.S. have never experienced this childhood. The 'normalized' child is a white child from a privileged home when rigid and mechanical presentations of didactic material begin with a classroom model that is separated from the context which produced it. Montessori training programs should offer opportunities to student teachers to autobiographically explore their own childhoods and the ways class, race and gender have shaped who they are as teachers. Before they can travel into the worlds of their students, they must first recognize their own cultural spheres. Broad application of Montessori education in the U.S. means willfully traveling into the worlds represented by our students. We must resist the tendency to confuse children's behavior in a classroom with the teacher's knowledge of Montessori education; that is, newly trained teachers look for an idealized stillness and silence as proof they are successful. This can cause anxiety and frustration which can further focus the teacher on curriculum instead of children. Learning does not look a certain way. Our most profound learning experiences most often do not take place in school. Private Montessori teachers can learn from public Montessori teachers and the process will help to cement the public program. When observing in each other's domain, it is well to remember the child and let the children guide your eye. Both private and public Montessori students are bombarded with a kinderculture manufactured by a handful of corporations. They all know the same stories, in other words. Montessori educators who have both public and private Montessori school experience can compare and contrast private Montessori programs with public ones and the differences that emerge will tell a rich story. Contemporary and contextualized descriptions of what concentration and work look like today will help to redefine and rename what normalization means. John McDermott was adamant about the importance of upgrading Montessori's ideas to include culture and context in the charter of the American Montessori Society. McDermott exposed the naïveté that kept traditional Montessorians from confronting cultural differences in children. The ideal of the universal child, unlike adults but sharing a culture with children the world over, was held onto for the sake of teaching: It was easier to talk about one child. At birth, we are raced, classed, and gendered and these assignations vary in their cultural value and determine our access to resources in most cases. The universal child implies one right way to be a child-white and middle class. Montessori education offers the most workable structure for multicultural education because the teacher can engineer cultural differences into the learning environment. In a postcolonial world, the differences between political maps and physical maps are writ large. Students can appreciate the migrations and balkanization that result when borders are imposed without reference to the fundamental needs of human beings. Montessori's discoveries have outlived her because she was a practical prophet. Schools which bear her name still open somewhere in the world everyday and yet there are no Dewey schools. Something phenomenal happens in classrooms which begin with the children who live in them. Though Dewey recognized the organic quality of classrooms, he did not consider the specialization of such a classroom. Montessori is no longer with us. Nor is Rambusch. New leadership must clarify the cause of promoting human rights and peace through the development of such education all around the world. New leaders must clarify what Montessori education is for the general public. If a meeting of private and public Montessori educators becomes workable, their discourse should be chronicled and published on the internet so all educators will have easy access to it. I agree with Kripalani: the leaders are out there. Maria Montessori provides a model of a teacher who was of the world but not in the world. While her place and time in history provide one story of her work, the places that work took her actually and vicariously still provide the spiritual leadership needed to inspire a new generation of educators. Public Montessori teachers are in the world but this is a call for them to entertain the next level of engagement. Too many private Montessori teachers are of the world of education but not in it and this needs to change. The next great voice of Montessori education will speak to and for both private and public Montessori teachers. Her or his words will forge the lines upon which we can layer our own words and experiences and the fit will be true. As Emily Dickinson said, we know truth when we hear it because the hair stands up on the back of our heads. We need to return to those truths while building new scaffolds that connect with mainstream education. Satisfying the ultimate goal of promoting humane education for all children means letting go so that new understandings and coalitions can emerge. Pamela Autrey, Ph.D, teaches at Belfair Montessori Magnet Elementary School in Baton Rouge, LA. |
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