Core Concepts of Montessori education

 Write short notes on the following core concepts of Montessori education.

a)      Mixed Age Group

One of the very prominent features of a Montessori classroom is Mixed-age grouping means the classroom does not have children of the same age as in a conventional classroom setup; rather of the same age group based on developmental stages of childhood. Therefore students are divided among the following 7 levels:

●       Level 1: Infants (birth to 1 ½ year)

●       Level 2: Toddlers (1 ½ to 3 years)

●       Level 3: Early Childhood (3- 6 years)

●       Level 4: Lower Elementary (6-9 years)

●       Level 5: Upper Elementary (9-12 years)

●       Level 6: Middle School (12-15 years)

●       Level 7: Secondary (15-18 years)

Keeping children of different ages has a very good impact on both younger and older students. This setup makes teaching easy as younger students in the same class learn from their older peers by simply observing and imitating their activities. It provides students with a real-world scenario where we interact with people of different ages, so children learn to socialize with both their younger and older peers. They learn this code of conduct of life where younger ones seek help gracefully and older ones become kind, empathetic, disciplined, and responsible towards their younger fellows.

 As children go through different periods while growing up, for example, they sometimes are obsessed with toy cars and when that phase passes their liking for cars fades out and they become obsessed with other toys, dinosaurs may be. So they start giving away toy cars easily but if everyone needs toy cars then it will create problems. So keeping students of different ages together balances give and take situations under control and nurtures harmony among students. In short, mixed-age groups setups are beneficial where the cooperation among students is best

b)     Spiritual Embryo

 We all know about the physical embryo that is inside the uterus right from conception to 9 weeks of gestational age. Dr. Maria referred to a newly born baby to a three years old child as a spiritual embryo. During the physical embryo stage if the mother is malnourished it may manifest as physical defects in the child physically, similarly if during the spiritual embryo stage the child does not have enough exposure to experience required as per the sensitive period he is going through it may cause learning delays and/ or developmental deficiencies. During this infancy period, a human child needs respect, love, and compassion. The child slowly discovers his/her environment, adapts to it, develops it, and uses his/her environment to reach his/her personality. It is the most important phase in the psychological, intellectual, and spiritual life of a child.

We can nourish the child during this phase in two ways, first is by stimulating their senses in the right way, giving them maximum opportunities and freedom to engage in purposeful activities, and supporting them in their little ventures. Instead of doing things for them, supporting and helping them to do their job. The second most important aspect is to be a positive influence in their life by modeling best behavior, good moral practices, avoiding any kind of abuse, disorder to avoid confusion, aggression, oppression, anger, violence, lies, malice, or any other activity. In this phase, we can teach them compassion, love, and harmony through our positive behavior.

c)      The Absorbent mind

The absorbent mind refers to the brain of a child from birth to the sixth year of their age where the mind has the natural tendency to absorb things happening in their surrounding effortlessly and indiscriminately. For example, a child is born with very few surviving skills like latching and sucking but soon mastered so many complex skills like motor skills and complex language learning, which after this age has passed requires a lot of focus, determination, and hard work. Things learned during this age are incarnated in their mind and form the foundation of their personality. This age of absorbent mind is divided into two sub-phases:

1. Unconscious Absorbent mind
2. Conscious Absorbent Mind

The unconscious absorbent mind starts right after birth to three years whereas the conscious absorbent mind spans from the third year to the sixth year of their age.  The first phase is the period of construction where a child is born and starts developing the skills like movement, language, emotions, and memory without a choice by the art of mimicry/imitation. But as they grow to third-year they pursue various activities more consciously. During this phase, they consolidate, organize and classify the knowledge they have learned previously in the unconscious phase.

During this phase, their learning is rather purposeful, and given the suitable environment and freedom, they develop 85% of core brain structure during this phase. As children are hand-minded, the use of hands enhances their learning experience. If this phase is not utilized properly, the child may develop serious developmental deficiencies and face learning difficulties too.

d)     Prepared Environment

A prepared environment is one of the key factors of Montessori education. As Dr. Maria firmly believed that children should have freedom of choice so they become independent as they grow up, but in adults' world where everything is bigger than their size or what they can handle they have a lack of opportunity which causes frustration. Therefore she observed children thoroughly and developed the environment of Montessori class scientifically Montessori rooms are divided into two areas: indoor and outdoor.

The indoor prepared environment has everything of child size, spacious enough for all the activities, and aesthetically attractive. All the things are placed on low line shells so that they are easily accessible so that children can participate in chores comfortably. The indoor space is divided into areas as per the subject i.e. language, mathematics, practical life, sensorial development, culture, and science. Additionally, there can be a library area plus a storage area. This way learning objectives are embedded in the environment.

The outdoor environment provides the child to have an opportunity to contact nature and learn to care for the environment. Nature teaches children about the harmony and beauty of nature and can be extended to cosmic awareness and environmental issues which is a pressing issue faced by the entire planet and humanity these days. Therefore outdoor activities related to gardening like watering plants or drawing new plants sweeping fallen trees or physical play like playing with a ball, jumping should be incorporated in early childhood learning which is also a great way to acquire and refine gross motor skills. These outdoor activities also encourage movement completely urged by nature and social interaction among children as they may play in teams and learn to cooperate and be kind to each other.

e)      Focus on Individual progress

Dr. Maria believed that every child is different as they have unique nature, cognitive, psycho, motor, and intellectual abilities. They have different interests and passions and based on that have different developmental milestones and paces of learning. Therefore there should not be competition among them rather in the classroom teacher should nurture the environment of co-operation. So in order to achieve this, most of the activities are taught individually and sometimes only they are taught in the group of 2-4 students but never the whole class teaching method is deployed. There is no blackboard to institutionalized teaching.

As Dr. Maria disliked the old way of education where education means parting the knowledge and testing it through exams, therefore there are no tests or examinations taken in the Montessori education system to destroy the comparison of the children's abilities because a report card can never reflect child abilities and real potential. Although a child’s progress is recorded individually just to better guide them in their weak areas better and communicate with the children. She believed that every child is genius and intelligent in their own way.

As she firmly believed that children solely follow their natural urge during certain sensitive periods there should be no reward or punishment to motivate or guide them to do certain activities or learn certain things instead just provide them suitable apparatus and environment to engage in appropriate activity right to the sensitive period they are going through and they will find satisfaction for themselves by remarkably indulging in those activities without the need of a teacher or guardian reinforcement like reward or punishment. On the other hand, if things are reinforced on kids by any means like rewards or punishments, or any other classroom management technique