Following up from our MIC Montessori Lens general principles of our Adaptation & Human Tendencies, we now take a look at what Dr Montessori called the Prepared Environment.
The importance of a prepared environment and the nature of the individual’s interaction with it as crucial to human development is one of the hallmark contributions of Montessori to education.
The child incarnates the environment – they take it in, absorb it, whatever is in the environment, both physical and psychic. Whatever interactions the child and adolescent have in this environment becomes the material for self-construction.
Being restrained from interacting with the environment, from moving in it, from manipulating the objects, and not engaging with the people and ideas within the environment as a child is a violation of the deepest human need (why does so much of traditional education require children to be quiet, sit still and listen to the adult?)
“There is an interplay between the individual, or rather between the spiritual embryo, and its environment, and by this interplay the individual forms himself, completes himself… Thus the psychic individually develops and organises itself around the action of this motive principle in relation with the outside environment. The child strives to assimilate his environment and from such effort springs the deep-seated unity of his personality.”
Maria Montessori, The Secret of Childhood, Montessori-Pierson, pg 26
Independence is necessary for children/adolescents to survive and thrive, as an individual physically, psychically and in the group; for gaining mastery and being their own agent of learning. The opportunity to engage in the environment by one’s own volition, by following internal drives of human tendencies – that is what will result in natural development.
The Prepared Environment that we establish, set up, and design is to support natural development to ensure human tendencies can be active and we are not obstructing these, and therefore characteristics can be expressed so that the child/adolescent can develop their whole psychic being. Education then becomes the work of the child/adolescent, not the work of the adult to the child/adolescent.
Click HERE to dive deeper into what characteristics make up a Montessori Prepared Environment, which includes the importance of an appropriate psychic and social environment, understanding independence at each age/stage of development and the role of the adult.
Warm regards
Chris
Chris Peach – Principal
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