Your Children Are Not Your Children

Montessori, Microschooling, Kahlil Gibran, and Children's Liberation

This article was written as part of my NaNoWriMo challenge for the month of November. See more information here. With that in mind, please excuse any errors and quality control issues!

Micro-School, Macro-Vision

This week, I facilitated a workshop for a small group of Montessori teachers involved in a Montessori microschool project in the UK. Most of the workshop was focused on the nuts and bolts of classroom management and use of Montessori materials. But as I reviewed the agenda beforehand, I realized that the workshop was desperately missing a greater sense of vision. It’s understandable that I had focused on practicalities, because I was parachuted in to support a group of teachers dealing with a difficult situation who needed immediate solutions. However, pragmatism without vision lacks heart. It lacks that sense of purpose needed to be able to persist through the difficulty of the everyday.

As I recently wrote in an article about the relationship between Dr. Montessori and the great sci-fi writer Octavia Butler, one of the most compelling aspects of Montessori education is that it is a visionary movement, centered in the belief that “The child is both a hope and a promise for [humanity].”

This is a vision that should drive our work. But on reflection, when I think back upon all of the Montessori schools in which I’ve worked, this sense of grand vision was often lacking. Mostly the schools were focused inwards—on retaining families, running successful classrooms, maintaining academic standards, and upholding “authentic” Montessori practices. Sometimes we would proselytize about our “peaceful” alumni going forth and changing the world, but otherwise we were very much focused on what happened within our walls.

So going into this workshop, I wanted everyone to think bigger. I wanted the teachers to think about how their work was both directly and indirectly involved in a movement for children’s liberation. I wanted them to consider:

• What is the role of this Montessori project beyond the school?

• What impact can it have in the homes of our families?

• What influence can it have locally?

• How can it fight for children’s liberation at a national or global level?

• What role does it play in the historical movement for children’s liberation?

• This may be a “micro” school, but what does it mean to part of something so huge?

• What is this school’s cosmic task?

Has your school asked these questions of itself? One of the most powerful exercises we completed at my previous school was our adolescent program co-created our own mission/vision statement to tap into this sense of purpose. This was something we did over and above our school mission/vision, because we were creating an entirely new program. We determined that our mission was:

“To cultivate a healthy community where adolescents learn about themselves and the world in order to achieve a peaceful and just restructuring of society.”

And our vision was:

“An exemplary student-centered model for Montessori secondary education in a safe and inclusive environment where all guides and adolescents are empowered to achieve their full intellectual, social-emotional, physical, and spiritual potential. Through authentic, purposeful work, our students will learn how to leverage their unique abilities in collaboration with others to contribute to the goal of building a more sustainable and equitable world.”

By fully tapping into our sense of why as a team, we found it so much easier to deal with the difficulties of shaping our how and what moving forwards. One regret I have is that we didn’t also co-create this mission/vision with the students themselves.

For life goes not backwards nor tarries with yesterday…

So back to the workshop. Instead of my original plan of beginning by demonstrating a Montessori lesson, we began with a mindfulness exercise and the following poem by Kahlil Gibran (shout out to

Bows and Arrows

):

On Children by Kahlil Gibran

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
     And he said:
     Your children are not your children.
     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
     They come through you but not from you,
     And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
     For they have their own thoughts.
     You may house their bodies but not their souls,
     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
     You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Ok, yes, this may be a cliché poem in the world of education, but it is such a powerful poem to revisit with a group of educators. It is one worth coming back to time-and-time again because of how rich and challenging each line is.

For me, it’s a poem all about the agency and potential of children, and the responsibility of adults in the face of such potential. We must be stable bows. I’ve always found the line—“You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you”—especially thought-provoking. What I hear there is an echo of “follow the child”—for they are the living arrows that point the way. This poem is nothing short of a parenting and teaching manual.

I then followed up from this poem with a quick speech I wrote to introduce what I believe is the purpose of Montessori education:

I think it is really important when talking about Montessori to begin with the grand vision in mind. Maria Montessori was a radical and a revolutionary.

She believed that our current way of educating children has stunted the evolution of our species - making us individualistic, petty, violent, destructive, bigoted, and competitive.

Her educational method is therefore intended to liberate the human potential that is inherent in all children and put us on the path towards world peace and the evolution of our species. Towards building a more peaceful, liberatory, equitable, interconnected, and collaborative world.

And her fundamental belief was that in order to release children's potential - adults have to get out of the way. “Follow the Child,” she said.

Our current system is adultist. It locates all power with the adult, and sees children as inferior—as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge. To be controlled, shaped, and trained by adults to become adults.

This system is oppressive—and extinguishes the natural powers of learning and development inherent in all children.

Our mission and vision as Montessorians is to liberate the child from this system in order to create a better future.

It is a grand and idealistic vision, but one that is worth holding onto as we delve into the nitty gritty of classroom management. Because this vision brings us hope. Hope amidst the difficulties of everyday life, and hope in a world that often feels overwhelmingly violent and chaotic.

The child is the hope and future of humanity.

And lastly, you are part of a movement. And that gives this little school a lot of strength. This is bigger than just a job or a school for your children. I believe that each little school that tries a different path like yours is moving us a little closer to a better world.

Yes, we had a lot of other work to do, but in order for any of this work to matter it had to be given a visionary frame. We had to discuss rigorous systems of recordkeeping and how to run a community meeting, but we also had to discuss our plans for bringing about world peace!