As a preview of our parent workshop on the subject of Freedom and Discipline (now rescheduled to be on February 13th), I have some thoughts for you on the subject. Keep in mind, however, that the great opportunity we all have to participate in this roundtable discussion. (This must be how priests feel when Christmas is on a Saturday and they tell us that THE SUNDAY OBLIGATION HAS NOT BEEN DISPENSED WITH.)
For the people outside the Catholic Church, my little reference in the last paragraph may have made very little sense, or even reminded you of the stereotype that the Catholic Church is all about rules.
On Tuesday, I heard a wonderful homily at my parish which reminded me of a great truth: that these rules exist to carry us along until we have grown in love to the point where we are so in love with God that we are, as the Apostle wrote, a law unto ourselves. Saint Anthony the Great, one of the first Christian monks, put it this way, "once I feared God; now I love Him." Some of our atrium students would add some nuance here: the saint is not talking about "fear" like fearing spiders or deadlines. The saint is talking about a proper sense of reverence and awe; an acknowledgment that he is in charge and we ought to care what He thinks of our actions. After that, I might add in that if Saint Anthony were here to expand upon what he had said, he would probably tell us that the path to true love of God was through a long season of reverence and awe.
To paraphrase one of our contemporaries (Mrs. Ashton), discipline in the Montessori classroom is a combination of two things: 1. Holding firm limits and 2. Teaching grace and courtesy skills. It is by this combination that we seek to accompany each child on the journey to make their will virtuous so that the limits which were once outside themselves enter their heart and mind.
Here are some notes to ponder, and hopefully whet your appetite for coming to our parent workshop!
1. Maria Montessori's work was originally written in Italian and has been rendered into English by several translators over several decades. In work by Montessori and about her education method, I have seen the dichotomy we are discussing go under three names: "freedom and discipline", "freedom and limits", and "freedom and boundaries". I absolutely give you permission to attach your mind to whichever one speaks to you as we work together as educational partners. Provide your children with limits. Enforce boundaries with your children. We want the same things for your beloved children.
2. When I say, "grace and courtesy", what do I mean? This is not just a Montessori buzzword; it is a section of the curriculum. Every day of school this January we have started our school day with a short lesson on a particular skill. How does one receive a compliment? What can we say instead of "you always" or "you never" when we need to express our displeasure with someone? How does one dispose of food they are unable or unwilling to swallow if it is already in their mouth? Children will not chance upon the norms of living in a community on their own. They need to be taught. If you want your child to be polite, we both need to be consistent models. I must admit that when I was a young teacher back in 2014 and 2015, I was frustrated that my students were less polite than I would have liked. Only eventually did I recall that I am more polite than my parents--that these were skills I learned from teachers, not my parents! That is the day I discovered the importance of grace and courtesy. It is through this curriculum that I pass down the wisdom of the community. Together we practice the unspoken limits of our society.
3. Assessing where the limits are can be a difficult thing, but where the rubber meets the road is what do I do when a child pushes limits? Well, first we enforce the limit. This helps the child know they are safe--no matter what they think at the time, they are thankful that there are responsible adults in charge. The phrase "responsible adults" is used ironically so often nowadays, but I mean it. Even if it is on a subconscious level, your child wants both of us to have consistent rules and hold them to that standard.
What if that does not work? The next stage is to take away some freedom. We try to keep emotions out of it. It is like when I give children math problems that are a little too hard. My response is to dial down the difficulty; I do not want to give the child a task at which they cannot succeed. In what ways do I give children tasks at which they cannot succeed? There are days when one child or another cannot choose where to sit, or cannot choose their work. In those cases, I might choose their spot or choose their work.
How do we keep this from becoming humiliating for the child? More than one of us here at school have read enough of CS Lewis's essays to know that a humanitarian theory of punishment is often the worst of tyrannies. How do we not fall into this trap? We do so by following the dictum I hear often from Mrs. Dankoski: "relationship before rules." What does this mean? It means that when the elementary staff gets together we are trying to think of ways to connect with the children. We chit-chat strategically. Earlier this week at lunch, for example, I drew the tree boss from the video game Kirby's Dreamland on the back of an index card to get a conversation going with someone who played that game over the Christmas break. Thinking back on the words of Saint Anthony, I suppose freedom and discipline are a bit of a mobius strip. We build rapport for the sake of the rules. We enforce the rules so our classroom can be the peaceful place in which relationships may blossom. Each reinforces the other.
More than any theologian, more than any homily or sermon, it is my time in Montessori elementary environment that has shown me the truth of classical ideas of freedom. Are we most free when we see before ourselves an infinite number of choices, some good, some bad, all of seemingly equal quality? No, that is a false idea, a prison. Rather, we are most free when we can walk the virtuous path and choose the good.
