Beyond Divisiveness

A Common Journey

By Daniel Bachhuber

I’m a good example, I suppose, of the eclectic nature of a contemporary Montessorian. AMI trained, I work in a largely AMS public school in St. Paul: J.J. Hill Montessori. Including myself, there are four AMI teachers in the school working happily beside our AMS colleagues. The issue of who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s superior and who plays second sister literally never comes up. We have plenty of disagreements, but not over the relative “status” of our trainings. It doesn’t ma

The apparent conflict between the American Montessori Society and Association Montessori Internationale is largely artificial.

I know that AMI-EAA restricts summer conferences to AMI members, but I think this is done in a spirit of enhancing diversity, not of declaring superiority.

NAMTA conferences are open to all, but are often poorly attended by AMS teachers. This points to the need for better advertising, and more communication, not to any claims of superiority by AMI over AMS.

AMS, to its credit, has never played the bully, and has left an open invitation to AMI Montessorians to join in and collaborate.

There’s probably some truth to the claim that AMI teachers have a more spiritual vision, while AMS teachers are more creative. But these generalities, if they apply at all, are opportunities to learn from each other, not excuses for pointless conflict.

The effort of the AMI community to maintain purity against revisionists is valid, but it should be everyone’s concern. A watered-down methodology doesn’t help children. Efforts to maintain purity, however, need not exclude adult creativity and innovation.

AMI and AMS are children of the same mother. Brother and sister, they may argue; they may at times stake out unique positions in order to define themselves in relationship to their sibling; they may be jealous or contemptuous, but neither is “better.”

To AMI’s claim that “I’m the older sibling and I spent more time with Mother,” AMS can reply, “I’ve learned more from my experience.”

I believe, for the most part, Montessorians have gotten beyond these hollow distinctions. There’s important work to do, and none of us can afford to waste time staring at our own navel.

The historical root of this controversy, and the fact that it is not fully resolved, have huge consequences, however, and do untold damage to our movement. But not in the way we usually think.

AMI comes out of a European educational model, which is autocratic.

AMS comes out of an American educational model, which is democratic.

Autocratic models do not work in this country because they depend on complete trust in authority, and selfless devotion to a cause.

Montessori began her work in a culture that supported both attributes, but ours does not. Too often our training centers, both AMS and AMI, treat their adult students with disrespect. These centers are working out of an outmoded European model of selfless compliance to authority rather than a collaborative format, which an American educational system requires.

When I talk to adult students just out of their training, or in the middle of their training, I too often hear of wounds, and with the wounds come anger, and with the anger comes separation from the methodology, and with separation from the methodology come Montessori schools that don’t maintain a commitment to their ideals, that become Montessori in name only and prey to educational fads.

The villain in this drama is neither AMI nor AMS but the autocratic temperament, strangely unique to our educational model, that is systemic in the Montessori movement.

Public school administrators often cringe at our self-righteousness. They are not always as able as we are to recognize that the depth of our passion for our educational mission can come out in ways we don’t intend.

The AMI training center in Bergamo exemplified this autocratic temperament.

Discussion of any kind never happened in the classroom. Neither did the lecture format permit questions. We were too busy transcribing every word from the lecturer; that evening we took four more hours to retype and illustrate our notes. The trainer made it known that he’d brook no disagreement, and entertain no suggestion, or answer any question beyond technical adherence to the particular steps of a presentation. We made materials to exacting standards reinforced by intimidation and fear of failure, a considerable concern for those who brought families across the Atlantic.

One night, after I finished my geometry charts, I dreamed that one of the trainers, operating on my brain, snipped the “wire” connection between my left and right hemispheres. The trainer wrestled with the tool before snapping the wire and then commented, “That was a tough one.”

That dream, as vivid now as it was 20 years ago, stands as a symbol of the traditional AMI attitude toward adult students: cut off creativity from logic and you’ll develop a faithful servant of the cause.

Outside the chief trainer’s highly organized sequences of materials and presentations were human beings with values, hopes, dreams, experiences and feelings that might have added, with the right kind of instruction, new richness and meaning to the methodology he religiously revered.

The whole experience in Bergamo, while I ultimately found it gave me what I needed to teach, was a lesson in obedience.

Yes, my trainer was AMI, but how many Montessorians have had similar experiences in AMS training centers?

An increased emphasis on methodology would invite teachers to think through on the job dilemmas the training center can’t even imagine, but it might also allow training centers to feel more confident that, although individual interpretations may differ among their former students, all remain united in their fundamental practice.

Let’s take a case in point: What is more appropriate for the EII student, desks or tables?

Nowhere in Montessori’s writings does she recommend tables instead of desks in EII classrooms. Therefore it’s impossible for any training center to provide a proclamation of “what’s right,” only an argument and a rationale.

Montessori’s closest reference is to Children’s House when she proclaimed, “bring out the little furniture.” We can infer only that she wanted the furniture to suit the reality of children’s lives, and for adults to “see” them as children, with particular needs.

The underlying principle is not desks or tables but how we interpret the sensitive period: communal or private.

I’d argue that EI students are more communal than EII students; especially as they approach puberty, EII students will have a stronger psychological need for privacy within a communal setting. As the self develops, it needs a place to store what it now possesses, not to hoard but to make decisions about how, or what, or if, to share.

Early in my career I felt that if I used desks my classroom would lose its Montessori character. I only changed when I moved up from EI to EII. My new EII students complained that they didn’t like the tables. I asked them why. It was they who provided the insight. By observing and listening to the students in my care, I was practicing the methodology, specifically “following the child,” while at the same time placing myself “out of compliance” with the most typical recommendation from training centers: that tables are always preferable.

Call it “disobedience” if you like, yet what else does any teacher have but his own “Montessori conscience” actively interpreting the every day realities of classroom life?

Two of the five teachers I work with do use tables. Does that mean they are wrong and I’m right? If I took that attitude my own arrogance would fracture our working relationship and ultimately damage our collective ability to bring out the hidden potential of the children in our charge.

My attitude has to be this: my colleagues may come to different conclusions based on their own practice of the methodology. We can both be right.

Our teachers must be taught the methodology, not only the curriculum. They must be taught to think, as well as to obey. If we trusted our teacher’s level of internalization of the method, we wouldn’t be as concerned about appearances—or as irrational and contradictory in what we impose as “correct.”

Montessori training centers can take a cue from traditional educational programs.

As a public school teacher I needed to receive state certification. At The College of St. Catherine’s in St. Paul, professors never lorded their superiority over their students. They presented themselves as capable, interested resources that were as willing to learn from students as they were to teach them. The collaborative atmosphere is, with exceptions I’m sure, the culture of most non-Montessori education programs.

We refer to our best training centers as “humane,” which is, in itself, an indictment. The reference begs the question: Do you mean you have training centers that aren’t?

Our Montessori culture is only now, in the current generation, beginning to evolve beyond the cult of personality, a throwback to Montessori and her immediate descendants.

Even if our modern leaders occasionally possess charisma, without the cultural support their efforts won’t work. Forcing the issue has turned away more teachers than most of us realize. Perhaps that’s part of the reason the demand for teachers always outweighs the supply.

Montessori education, like all profound human endeavors, is a great moral and spiritual risk. We can’t free children by enslaving adults. Rather, by inspiring adults to use their own creative freedom within the limits of the Montessori method we will more deeply inspire children.

As much as we might care about the sacredness of the charge Montessori gave us, we are not in a position to script every nuance of experience once a teacher has her own classroom.

It’s a simple psychological rule: if we want students, adult or child, to learn, we must model the deepest respect for their choices.

We must communicate to our adult students:

I trust you to use your freedom in the service of children’s needs.

I trust that you understand this wonderful methodology, and that you will use it as it was intended.

I trust that there are circumstances I cannot predict, pitfalls regarding administration, district initiatives, uncooperative principals, etc. that will test your mettle. I believe you will find a way to remain true to our shared vision.

To treat our adult students with the respect, we want them to show children will “win them over” to the considerable task at hand. Behave self-righteously, act like “God’s chosen one,” and the trainer becomes the subject with which students are preoccupied. The trainer is what they talk about when they leave the classroom. The trainer is what they learn.


Daniel Bachhuber teaches at J.J. Hill Montessori School in St. Paul