Seminar: Beyond the Children's House February 2006
It is important that as a community we now become concerned with trying to develop Montessori education in this country. For many, the name Montessori conjures up the idea of ‘nursery' education but as we know Maria Montessori considered the educational needs of the child from birth through to maturity. If we want to attend to the full development of the human being we need to start thinking about what we can provide for the child not only from birth but right through to maturity. With these aims in mind the Montessori Society AMI UK invited Baiba Krumins Grazzini to speak about the fascinating subject of Cosmic Education. Ms Krumins Grazzini is Director of Training at the International Centre for Montessori Studies Foundation in Bergamo , Italy . She has been involved with Bergamo 's AMI Elementary Training course since 1975. This distillation of her lecture has been further illustrated with quotations from Maria and Mario Montessori's writings.
The need for compulsory education arose originally from a desire to give children literacy – to help them to read and write. Traditional education has evolved from this standpoint and is largely based on what adults think that children should know. Consequently, it is not based on development and it is often reduced to making sure the child acquires a fixed stock of cultural knowledge. Conversely, Montessori viewed education as helping the human being to reach optimum development. If children achieve this they will naturally learn all the things that adults think they should know. As we know, the development of the human being unfolds according to laws laid down by nature. This development occurs in four distinct periods or planes which each last for about 6 years. An understanding of the planes helps us to understand the characteristics of the child at different stages in his life so that we may provide a different kind of education at each plane of development.
In the first plane of development the child acquires and refines all his human characteristics – and most of us are pretty familiar with this – this is the developmental work of the first plane.
“(In the first period) there were the exercises of practical life which led the child to go beyond the limits believed possible for children of that age. They were exercises for the co-ordination of movement which was brought to a refinement extraordinary for this age. These two things together brought independence to the child.
In the second period it is not enough merely to continue these exercises because now the child is already independent and all the actions for perfection of movement are no longer necessary because the co-ordination now exists. What would happen if we did go on developing these things? The children would merely become more and more perfect – in laying the table for instance; or would become so perfect in their social behaviour that they would become like people at Court.” [1]
So, what then, is the developmental work in the second plane? There is no further development of human powers and faculty but all that the child has acquired in the first 6 years is used to support his further development. That is why the first 6 years are so important, since all further development will draw on the things he has built in the first plane. In the second plane the child uses his intelligence to learn and for this he needs contact with reality. It is not the kind of reality that he needs in the first plane – between 6 and 12 the reality that the child needs to understand is huge – it is the whole universe. But how can he see a reality that is as huge as this? He cannot see it with his eyes – he needs his imagination – the imagination is the eyes of the mind. He needs to be able to imagine the reality of the whole universe.
The secret of good teaching is to regard the child's intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination. Our aim therefore is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his inmost core. We do not want complacent pupils, but eager ones; we seek to sow life in the child rather than theories, to help him in his growth, mental and emotional as well as physical, and for that we must offer grand and lofty ideas to the human mind, which we find ever ready to receive them, demanding more and more.[2]
As we know the first plane is so important because it is crucial for development but the second plane's miracle is explaining a reality that you cannot see. Only human beings can do this. Only human beings have the ability to imagine a reality that is far away. What a marvellous gift it is to be able to adapt to a reality that you cannot even see but can construct in your own mind. The second reality he has to imagine is what happened in the past – again he can only see this with the eyes of the mind. The third reality is the one that lies hidden within the apparent. When we look at a plant we know that the leaves are growing - we don't see them and we don't know how they grow - this is the hidden reality. The child in the second plane explores these kind of realities using his imagination – this is called Cosmic Education.

As the child moves from the first plane to the second he changes in many ways. The changes are so great that it is almost like a rebirth. Because there are such large changes the environment has to change and so does the adult. The only thing that does not change is that the adult's task is still to help development.

“It is a mistake to take as a philosophy for life what the children show in the first period from 3 to 6 …..Indeed in the period from 3 to 6, if Dr. Montessori's indications are followed, the child is an ideal individual: dainty, loving of order and cleanliness, carer of his environment, eager to obey and accept as gospel-truth whatever he is told, mild and loving towards animals and human beings etc.
No wonder that adults think this is the way of life they would like to see perpetuated and advocate that its principles be adopted as a permanent philosophy. But reality is another thing. Reality is not made of wishful thinking, it is made of facts and if we want to follow Dr. Montessori in helping the child, we must do as she said: ‘Study the child, whatever his age may be, remove the obstacles to his self-creation.' [3]
As we know this is the plane of compulsory education. The time in which the state wants children to acquire that fixed stock of human culture. Fortunately, the child is interested in this too. We can take the subjects apart and offer some aspect of them in each plane. In the first plane they can undertake exploration of culture through movement and the senses. The cultural knowledge gained then enriches their language – this is the way in which we give culture at this age. In the second plane the child will learn it using his intellect. This is an intellectual period of life for the child. It is a very calm time both physically and psychologically. The imagination, power of reasoning and memory are the great powers that help the child to assimilate knowledge at this time. The child has a sensitive period for culture and a sort of sensitive period for the use of the imagination at this time. We call it a sort of sensitive period because it is very powerful and very strong but he is not using it to build himself as with the sensitive periods of the first plane. Children seek to know and understand the world and human society and how they function – they want to have a knowledge of nature and that, which is built on nature – what Maria Montessori called supernature. The mind starts to reach a more abstract level of thinking and reasoning. They can reason things out for themselves, they do not need to be told. The adult just needs to help them to picture the realities that they cannot see or touch themselves and the rest of their learning springs spontaneously from this. We can offer more than they need and they will take up and work with what they need but we must not force them to learn it as is so often the case in traditional education. At the back of our minds we must always bear in mind the need to facilitate independence, provide opportunities for work and to consider their developmental needs at this age.
Independence is acquired gradually as the child moves from birth towards maturity. Different kinds of independence are acquired at different stages. In the first plane the child is acquiring functional independence. In the second plane children have a natural urge to get out and have a wider practical experience and independence. The independence that the child needs now is to be able to think for himself and also to have his own moral code – so independence is both mental and moral. Everything that they accepted without question when they were under 6 is now up for question – they are constantly asking what is right and what is wrong – this is a very important factor in children's relations with each other.
The mind is important in this plane but other things are important too – we have to take time out for moral issues. Socially they are interested in their peers. In fact, they have an irresistible fascination for their peers. They practice socially within their own group. It is not a real society but it is an agreed society with a set of agreed rules that they have to accept to abide by. Emphasis is now on work that is shared in groups. The children collaborate and this kind of association brings strength and stimulates new energies. By thinking together they learn more.
Emotionally what is important is self-esteem and self-respect. Self-esteem comes from the ability to be able to do things and to think for oneself and as such it is closely related to independence. They need to be able to contribute rather than need help. True freedom comes from such independence -so long as we depend on others we are not free.
Having understood a little about the needs of the child in the second plane, we can explore the type of education that we should be providing. No plane other than the 6-12 plane is cosmic. The focus of Cosmic Education is how the world functions. We never consider the disciplines in isolation but we use the disciplines to answer the children's questions. The subject areas can be thought of as the bank of human knowledge ordered or classified in a particular way. They are places to seek for answers – if the answer isn't in one subject area it will be in another.
The tool that is used to spark the children's imagination is the telling of the cosmic fables. These are special stories that we tell the children. There are 7 of them: ‘The God who has no hands' is about the coming of the universe and the earth and leads to an exploration of geography. ‘The story of life' gives the interrelations between biology, animals and plants. ‘The story of human beings' is about human history – it starts with early settlement and civilisation and eventually leads to the child's own country – it is the opposite of the way this is taught in mainstream education. There is also ‘the story of language' and ‘the story of numbers' and ‘the great river' – a special story that stands apart from all the others – it is the heart of cosmic education.
In Montessori we are used to the idea of starting with the whole and then examining the parts. Cosmic Education always starts with the Universe – this is the greatest whole. It then passes from one whole to another offering a new picture of a new whole at every stage. In ‘the God with no hands' the children think about the whole universe and the sun and the earth. They start by listening to the cosmic fable and then they explore writings about the earth and how it functions. For example, one of the things they learn about is the relationship between the seasons. They have already experienced the seasons in the first plane, now they want to explore the how and why because reasoning and cause and effect come into play. This is how they pass from the whole to the detail and explore the related subject areas. A grand vision is offered to the child. The grandeur of the stories fascinates the child and he feels a sense of awe and wonder which is terribly important, especially in today's society where we have become so blasé. The child's desire to find out more is then driven from within and the mind is focused because he is at one with the universe and life.
Subject areas end up integrated because as soon as they pass from the whole to the detail they are involved in more that one subject area because of the interdependence of the different disciplines. Cosmic Education puts the child at the centre and orientates him by giving him cultural knowledge. In this way everything they discover can be related to the whole. They group their knowledge through the stories. A great and living truth can grow within the children and help them in their development.
As well as the cosmic stories there are also materials and other aids to the imagination. The stories can be as fantastic as fairy stories but they are still stories of truth. These truths have to work their way into the child's consciousness. We do not teach it to the child – what we are looking for is for the child to develop a spontaneous consciousness of these things.
We have a tendency these days to talk about humans as being bad and destructive. It is important that the children understand that human beings are also good. We can t keep telling the children in the second plane that man is terrible, it is not right to bring them up with an evil image of humanity. Who would want to belong to a humanity like that? We want them to see the positive side so that they feel they belong to the earth and the universe. They should feel that they are a part of life so that they can feel gratitude to nature and human beings because they are part of a great human nature and society.
…let us give him a vision of the whole universe. The universe is an imposing reality and an answer to all questions. We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are part of the universe and are connected with each other to form one whole unity. This idea helps the mind of the child to become fixed, to stop wandering in an aimless quest for knowledge. He is satisfied, having found the universal centre of himself with all things. [4[
References
  1. Maria Montessori, The Second Plane of Education, London 1939, AMI Communications 1975, No. 1
  2. Maria Montessori, To Educate the Human Potential, 1996, Clio Press p.11
  3. Mario Montessori, Study Conference on Cosmic Education in Bergamo , Introductory Lecture, AMI Communications 1969, No. 2/3
  4. Maria Montessori, To Educate the Human Potential, 1996, Clio Press p.5-6