Educational Culture and History of Child-centred
Education:
1. The Age of Enlightenment, Liberalism and Human Rights.
The 18th century was a period of political and scientific innovation,
discovery and change. The revolutions in America (1776) and France
(1789) accompanied a rethinking of the power of the traditional
authorities of the Monarchy (Divine Right of Kings) and the Church
(Papal Infallibility).
(Background reading to this lecture can be found in the two Helen
May extracts in your Course Reader, pp1-13 and the Colin Gibbs
chapter on pp14- 27.)
2. Liberalism and Education: An emerging wealthy middle class
were demanding a recognition of human rights. The philosopher John
Locke argues that all people have natural rights to their own
autonomy, a freedom of choice based on rationality and a respect for
the truth, to determine the direction of their own lives. But rational
autonomy requires that the individual’s choices must be informed by
the most valid of knowledge. This means that each individual has a
right to an education, and it is the responsibility of every liberal
society to ensure that this happens.
3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Many of the ideas we encountered in the
first lecture on Summerhill, have their origins in the model of
education of Rousseau (1712-1778).
(a) Like A.S.Neill, he sees society as a corrupting influence on the
child, not something that the child should be socialised into.
(b) He assumes that the child is innately good and wise. This is in
stark contrast to the Churches Doctrine of Original Sin, which implies
that like all humankind, the child is innately sinful and goodness must
be disciplined into them, with physical punishment if necessary.
(c) Rousseau rejects all punishment of children, just like Neill.
Discipline is the cause of evil in a child, not the cure.
(d) Like A.S. Neill, the founder of Summerhill, Rousseau believed
that the freedom was both the method of education, and its purpose or
aim. The child should be free to learn from their own experience, not
the restrictions and guides of some teacher. Freedom is also the aim
of education as it was for Neill who called it ‘self regulation’.
Rousseau called it “the well-regulated liberty” that arises when a
child is left free to do those things of which he is able.
(e) Child-centred education means letting the nature of the child be
the teachers guide. Rousseau is the first educator to see that the
child’s inner nature emerges in stages from within the child. All
subsequent child-centred educators (including A.S. Neill, and Maria
Montessori) make this same assumption about the human nature of the
child. This is the essential core of all child-centred education.
4. Johann Pestalozzi: A number of other key themes of child-centred
education can be traced back to Pestalozzi, who was himself
influenced by Rousseau.
(a) He emphasises the importance of a family atmosphere of love and
acceptance in the learning environment which we see at Summerhill.
(b) He also stresses learning is initiated through the child’s own
activity and engagement with the world of the senses (sight, touch,
hearing, smell, and the kinaesthetic sense of movement), rather than
through abstract learning.
(c) Pestalozzi sees the process of education as one of growth, a theme
that we will meet again when we look at John Dewey’s model of
education. Pestalozzi looks at the child as like a plant that will grow if
they are nurtured in an enriching context of learning.
5. Friedrich Froebel : The German educationist Froebel (1782-1852)
was similarly influenced by Rousseau and Pestalozzi.
(a) Froebel picks up Pestalozzi’s metaphor of the child as a growing
plant. In fact, this idea is contained in his name for the pre-school
which ‘children’s garden’ or as it is said in German, “kindergarten”.
The kindergarten was envisaged a bridge between the home and the
more formal school and the movement spread world-wide. The first
free kindergarten was established in Dunedin in 1889.
(b) Froebel advances child-centred educational thinking by stressing
education through the child’s activity and play. He envisaged play
not simply as recreation, but as children’s work. Play, for Froebel is
an outward expression of the intellectual and spiritual building of the
child’s mind.
(c)Froebel sets out a series of quite distinct stages of development of
the child’s nature “unfolding” like a flower blossoms across the ages
of three to six: infancy, early childhood and childhood. As we shall
see, Montessori picks on this idea of stages of development, as the
child’s nature emerges and grows.
(d) He also begins to set out a curriculum content and methods for
children in these early years. He invented a series of geometric
playthings that were to be introduced to the child in a particular order
or sequence.
He called these his (i)”gifts” and they were designed to stimulate the
child’s senses, their imagination, and their intelligence. The soft
knitted ball, for the infant, geometric shapes (a wooden ball, a cube
and a cylinder. We will see how Montessori develops this idea shortly.
In both cases these educators are emphasising the importance of play
and activity learning.
The second invention of Froebel’s early childhood curriculum was his
(ii)“occupations”, as he called them. These were a sequence of
handicraft activities such as drawing, paper-folding, sewing and
construction, along with indoor and outdoor play, gardening, songs,
dance and play.
Maria Montessori’s Model of Education
Educational, historical and cultural context:
Maria Montessori (1870-1952) Italian doctor, feminist and
socialist.
Educated in the male-dominated profession of medicine.
Worked as a paediatrician in ‘asylums’ in Rome.
Studied the work of Jean Itard who believed in taking a
scientific approach to the teaching of children with special
needs. He stressed the importance of careful observation
and experimentation in education.
Also the ideas of Edward Seguin, who developed
systematic training routines for ‘mentally defective’
children. He had developed special teaching materials for
training the child’s senses and manipulative skills.
(i) Scientific observation, experimentation,
(ii) systematic skills development and
(iii) the development of the senses
became key features of her approach to the education of
all children.
1907: Montessori opened a school called the Casa dei
Bambini (House of Children) in a working class area of
San Lorenz.
Children were accepted from the age of three.
In this relaxed and joyful environment, children learned
(i) the practical life skills of everyday living,
(ii) sensorial experiences and
(iii) language education (including reading.)
Curriculum Content:
Practical life education.
This section of the curriculum emphasises the developing
routines of
(i) caring for oneself, eg. Dressing oneself including
dressing frames, shoe polishing, personal hygiene, all
designed to promote independence.
(ii) caring for the classroom eg domestic habits like
dusting, cleaning windows, polishing, tidying the
classroom. Montessori believed that child enjoy this. They
are process-driven, not outcome-driven.(Agree?)
(iii) caring for each other. eg the development of courtesy,
sharing, manners, naturally flows from the affection that
grows in this orderly envirionment. (Agree?)
Sensorial education:
A distinctive feature of Montessori classrooms and centres
is the sensorial materials, designed to heighten the child’s
sensitivity of all the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, smell,
taste, and kineasthetic awareness.
These are aesthetically appealing and graded to
progressively challenge the child’s ability to discriminate,
and self-correct where necessary.
eg. cylinder blocks, for visually and grading size,
eg. tonal bells to sequence pitch form high to low,
eg. smelling bottles (sour to sweet).
eg.classification of natural objects, eg leaf shapes
Children also learn the language that accompanies these
distinctions. This process of observing, sequencing, and
classifying is at the very heart of logical scientific method.
Academic learning:
Reading begins really early, sometimes from the age of 3
years. (Compare with Steiner) .
Reading emerges from writing. Children come to
recognize letters and words as having sounds and meaning
by first shaping letters by touch. eg sandpaper letters are
traced with the finger.
Phonic awareness. Children learn by analyzing the
individual letters and sounds. It is the very opposite of the
whole language approach to Reading, used in N.Z.
Command cards: Sentences are analysed, broken up, and
colour-coded on cards into verbs (red) nouns (black) etc.
Children can use the to construct sentences.
Mathematics learned using a wide range of ingenious
materials and apparatus, designed to render abstact
number accessible to the senses. eg number weights, rods,
test-tube division, scales for equations.
An analytical approach to content. Analysing the ‘big
picture’ into its parts, and building the parts into the
whole.
Curriculum methods:
Activity-based learning.Learning through the senses.
The role of the teacher:Individualising programmes.
Teachers make careful observations and notes on the
progress of each child, judging when and how it to make
the next developmental step, or introduce some new
material.
Repetition is an important step in developing mastery.
The learning envirionment is carefully prepared. Only the
appropriate materials are available to the child. The
teacher ‘directs’ the order of learning.
Children will work in groups, but only when the task is
suited to their learning. Group work is not the norm.
(Do you agree with this practice?)
The learning envirionment is calm, focussed and
attractive, not over-stimulating.
Aims, objectives and educational values:
Montessori teachers aim for the ‘normalised child’.
Features: focused, curious, intellectually absorbed,
cooperative, organized, calm, self-motivated, and free.
Freedom implies a discipline from within, engaging with
ones own activity and expressing an inner ‘urge’ for order.
Assumptions about Human Nature:
Children have absorbent minds. Learning is a natural
effect of interaction with the envirionment.
Sensitive Periods: There are times when children are more
susceptible to different types of learning. Miss that period,
and learning becomes much harder.
-language
-social manners
-order
-sense refinement
-physical skills.
Biologically imprinted ‘urges’ :
These are expressions of the child’s ‘horme’.
This is an inner life force to develop the capacities with
which one is born. These urges are freed by the process of
education.
All children have natural urges for,
Language
Order
Classification
Exploration
Manipulation
Repetition and mastery
Exactness
Abstraction
Work
Self-perfection.
But only a well ordered education will free them. (Agree?)
Assumptions about worthwhile knowledge:
Montessori education values these forms of knowledge:
-ordering
-sequencing
-analysing
-matching
-classification
-discrimination of similarities and differences.
While it by no means down-plays the holistic (big picture)
knowledge, it is very rational, logical, and scientific in its
focus.
Montessori emphasises an empiricist view of worthwhile
knowledge.
Empiricism is the epistemological theory that views
knowledge as based upon sense experience.
Empiricism takes a reductionist and analytical approach
to worthwhile knowledge,
(of which, Science is the best example.)
This is the very opposite of Steiner’s holist approach to
worthwhile knowledge,
(of which, Art is the best example.)
John Dewey’s Model of Education.
Educational, historical and cultural context:
John Dewey (1859-1952) …a biographical note.
He was born in Burlington, Vermont. (USA) .
Father was a proprietor of a general store, while mother
instilled a passion for education. He did a Bachelor’s
degree and trained as an elementary school teacher,
working in rural schools in Pennsylvania and Vermont.
He left teaching, went to John Hopkins University where
he completed a PhD in Philosophy in 1884, and lectured at
Michigan and University of Chicago where he received the
Chair in Philosophy, Psychology, and Education in 1902.
While there, he developed a ‘laboratory school’ where he
experimented with new approaches to education. From
1904 until 1930 he was Professor of Philosophy at
Columbia University in New York city.
Over his lifetime he published over 1000 books and
articles including Democracy and education (1916) which
revolutionised educational thinking around the world,
including New Zealand where his influence can still be
seen today.
His lifetime spanned nearly a century of radical social,
political, and economic change in American (and indeed
New Zealand history. This influenced his educational
theory, and school practice around the world.
How come?
The frontier society and industrialization in USA
and NZ.
Frontier (or pioneer) societies in colonies and new lands
throughout the world were:
Cohesive interdependent communities.
Work was meaningful and
Immediately relevant to real human needs.
Industrialisation of these societies meant that workers
found their work
Less meaningful, more repetitive
More specialised and pointless
Lacking a sense of community leading to a feeling of
isolation and alienation.
Education in industrialised societies was similarly
becoming
Meaningless,
Specialised and pointless,
Lacking a sense of community
Leading to a feeling of learner isolation and alienation
from any sense of purpose of the schooling activities.
Against Formalism:
Dewey was critical of subject-centred (or teacherdirected) education because it was not connected to the
interests of children.
and
Against Naturalism:
Dewey was critical of child-centred education (such as
Steiner and Montessori schooling) too, because it merely
followed the inner wants and urges of individual
children. This was too disconnected from the needs of
the learning community and wider society.
Advocates Progressivism:
Dewey argues that true education is experience-centred.
That is to say, education should emerge from children
experiencing the solving of problems and following the
on-going interests that are immediate and meaningful to
the community of the classroom….problem based
learning.
Dewey’s concept of experience:
Typically we talk about an experience of a problem as
something happens to us, as if we are quite passive..it
simply washes over us ,like a wave. Maybe we worry
about it but nothing changes.
For Dewey, ‘experiencing’ a problem also means the
active engagement in trying to find a solution to that
problem. He identifies this as intelligent problem solving
Curriculum Content:
Interests and problems:
Dewey does not specify any particular content.
Follow the real interests and problems of children
inlearning community of the classroom.
While they are researching of these interesting
problems, it will become necessary to develop knowledge
skills and attitudes.
Means, ends and ends-in-view:
But knowledge, skills and attitudes of the traditional
subject areas ( literacy, numeracy, science, social studies
etc) are not ends in themselves. Rather, these will
become the ‘tools’ that the learner can maintain as the
means to future problem solving ends. Learning
requires a purpose or end-in-view to make it meaningful
to the learner.
Habits: The learning outcome which is treated an end
in itself, is merely a habit of the mind, because it is
disconnected from its meaning in the solution of a real
problem.
The only habits worth developing are the habits of
intelligent inquiry…problem solving skills and attitudes.
Curriculum Methods:
Problem-based learning begins with an interest or
problem encountered by the learners.
Learning occurs in the context of the activities of
resolving that interest or problem that becomes their
project.
Project Method entails ‘experiencing’ the problem.
‘Experiencing’ a problem or interest means researching
that problem or interest.
Steps of experience:
1. Awareness of the problem or area of interest.
2. Clarification of the problem or area of interest.
3. Hypothesising possible solutions of procedures.
4. Anticipating possible outcomes in discussion.
5. Testing the hypothesis or procedure in practice.
6. Evaluating the outcome in resolving the problem.
Role of the teacher:
The teacher is actively involved in facilitating the
process, but does not dominate it. Their role is help
sequence the inquiry, to optimise the groups chances of
experiencing a satisfying outcome.
-authoratative not authoritarian.
The role of the problem solving group:
All members of the group share ownership of the
problem, the activity, and the outcome.
The democracy of the problem-solving group.
Aims, objectives and educational values:
Steps or ‘spiral’ of experience?
Growth:
The aim of education is growth, and the aim of growth is
more growth.
Growth means maintaining a continuity of experience.
“Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a
preparation for future living.” (My pedagogic creed, p6)
Dewey aims at developing the habits of intelligent
problem-solving, which is an inquiring attitude to life.
Democracy and education:
Education is a social process. Shared inquiry is more
powerful than individual inquiry, and there is shared
ownership of the outcome of that inquiry.
Education, like research is democratic to its very core.
Question: How does this fit with NZ’s highly individualist
approach to education, where grades and qualifications
are awarded to individuals, not groups?
Assumptions about Human Nature and Knowledge:
Experience :
Dewey’s critique of the subject-centred view of experience.
- assumes an unchanging world…false.
- assumes humans can have veridical perception.
ie seeing the world as it really is, without
interpretation….false.
- assumes that experience is a passive process….false.
- assumes an ‘empty bucket’ theory of the mind.
Dewey’s critique of the child-centred view of experience.
-assumes that experience is outward expression of an inner
reality…false.
Dewey’s Pragmatic view of knowledge and human
experience:
Experience is both active and passive .
- trying and undergoing experience
-assumes that the world is constantly changing. What the
child will need in the future, is the ability to ‘experience’
(ie solve problems in ) their world. The curriculum cannot
be fixed and unchanging.
-assumes that experiencing is an interaction with reality.
-assumes that interactive experience, itself alters the
child’s reality.
-assumes that the child passively experiences their effect of
the changes they make on the world,
- and then actively reflects on the changes they have made
- and then adapts their future action.
Experience is a continuous responsive self-adapting
reality-changing process of creating meaningful problemsolving strategies for dealing with the child’s own world.
Instrumentalism:
For Dewey, knowledge is not true or false. It is either
meaningful or meaningless as a tool for solving problems.
What we call ‘knowledge’ is a tool or instrument for
exploring our world….hence , “Instrumentalism”.
It does not make sense to say that known experiences are
true or false, any more than it makes sense to say that a
tool (eg a spade or a lawn mower) is true or false. It either
helps to solve the problem or it doesn’t .
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat the whole
world as a nail.” (Gregory Bateson.)