All Montessori classrooms work towards achieving “normalization”. Normalization is that state when children are all self-directed and going about their business at their will, choosing and working on activities that develop their intellect and personalities, and doing all of this peacefully. It is common to see a classroom where over twenty children are busily and quietly going about their work. Some are doing the sensorial exercises, some are using the golden beads, others are washing a table or cutting carrots, while others are carefully walking on a line taped to the floor. These children aged three to six, a group almost notorious for being loud and boisterous are able to do all of this without having a supervisory teacher hovering over them. The teacher is almost invisible in this room; her voice is rarely heard; she moves slowly and quietly and deliberately, as do the children. Such a scene can only occur when the children experience discipline.
Discipline
Montessori speaks almost exclusively of internally driven discipline. Discipline that is forced upon the child from an external source has no place in a Montessori environment. It is merely an illusion of order and gives a superficial impression that the children are growing and learning. When a child is scolded or cajoled into behaving a certain way for the convenience of the adult and reluctantly complies by suppressing his own natural drives, he experiences a tremendous injustice. He has lost an opportunity to form himself. It is after he has experienced internal discipline and is at peace is the child happily able to concede to the wishes of others and patiently do their bidding.
Montessori gives the example of a group of children who were used by her teacher-training program to test the student teachers’ skills in presenting lessons. The children were allowed to go about their work until they were called for a lesson by a student teacher. Montessori “marveled at the patience, constancy and eager readiness of the children. All this might give the impression that these children are excessively repressed (but) for the fact that they are utterly lacking in timidity. Their bright eyes, gay and disarming countenances, and their readiness in inviting others to observe their work or listen to their explanations of it make us realize that we are in the presence of individuals who are masters of their own homes.” [Discovery of the Child]
How and why does such discipline occur? Montessori observed that children first begin to experience a taste of discipline when they find themselves engaged in a meaningful task, what she calls ‘work’. This particular work at this particular time in the child’s development satisfies an intense internal need. It may seem mundane to an observing adult, but it captures and focuses the child’s attention and energies, and gives him a strong sense of satisfaction. He may be picking up stones in the driveway one by one and placing them into a bucket. His interest is not so much on actually having the stones as it is in the process of bending down, picking up, and placing them in the bucket. An affectionate aunt who comes by and ‘helps’ him by picking up the stones for him will be met with huge resistance. In all likelihood, if the child is left to his own devices, once he has filled the bucket he will empty it and start all over again. The exercises in a Montessori classroom are designed to cater to just such activity patterns of young children. They are process oriented and allow the child to repeat it to his heart’s content.
Montessori found that the experience of focusing one’s attention could be enhanced by practicing the silence games. “Perfect immobility, attention aroused to catch the sound of one’s name pronounced from a distance in a whisper, and the carefully coordinated movements required for the avoidance of objects and for walking lightly all effectively prepare a child setting his motor and mental operations and his personality in order.” [Discovery of the Child] In and of itself, the silence game is not enough to create internal discipline. It must be done in the context of work as described above.
Freedom
Having described Montessori’s concept of discipline, we now come to the ingredient without which it could not exist- freedom. The child will never experience internal discipline if he is not free to choose the activities that his psyche desires. The child alone knows, albeit subconsciously, what those activities are. As adults, most of us have lost touch with our natural drive for self perfection and are in no position to dictate to a child what he can and cannot do. We must observe his actions and use them as a guide; only then can we be of help to this developing individual. Granted, we must step in when the child chooses something that is dangerous, but in almost everything else we should step back and see where his actions lead him. Such is the environment that Montessori provided in her first school.
We must also understand what this freedom is not. Freedom is not an “immediate release from oppressive bonds… a cessation of corrections (or) of submission to authority. This conception of freedom is plainly negative, that is to say it means only the elimination of coercion. From this comes, often enough, a very simple ‘reaction’: a disorderly pouring out of impulses no longer controlled because they were previously controlled by the adult’s will. ‘To let the child do as he likes’ we he has not yet developed any powers of control, is to betray the idea of freedom.” [The Absorbent Mind] If order is arbitrarily imposed on a child, he will not be in touch with his own inner sense of order.
Such external order can take many forms, including punishments and rewards. Any time a child is encouraged or required to respond to an external motivator, his inner conscience suffers. Consequently, when the external order is removed, he will be at a loss for what to do and how to behave; he needs the freedom to listen to and follow his inner voice directing him to he own unique order. He is born with a wellspring of motivation, guiding him to fulfill his potential. We should be careful not to get in his way with out meddling, well intentioned as we may be. Read Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards for a thorough look at how children are affected by external motivators.
Obedience
Within this context of freedom, availability of meaningful activities and choices, and the development of internal discipline and order, arises an astonishing trait in these young children- obedience. Obedience develops in three levels. In the first level, when the child is still in the process of developing his inner order, he is ‘psychically deaf’ and cannot always understand commands; thus he is sometimes unable to obey. In the second level, “his powers are consolidated and can be directed not only by his own will but by the will of another” [The Absorbent Mind]. It is this level of obedience most commonly found and expected in schools. “But the child, when allowed to develop in accordance with the laws of his nature, goes much further than this: further than we should ever have expected” [The Absorbent Mind]. The child at this level directs his obedience towards a person whose thoughts and opinions he respects. He begins to have an understanding that this person has the ability to guide him towards his goals and thus willingly submits to this person’s ‘commands’.
The three concepts of discipline, freedom, and obedience are interconnected in the Montessori philosophy. It is difficult to have one without the other. The third level of obedience which arises out of the child’s realization that the person giving him a command is worthy of being obeyed could not have developed if the child did not have the freedom to form his own personality and experience internal discipline. True self-discipline would not be possible were the child never allowed the liberty to listen to and follow his inner voice.