Maria Knows Best

A grown-up, froggy letter

September 2023
On the train to Bristol, UK
Weather: Gray, drizzly, of course
Tom, Sept 19

Dear Chelsea and Justin,

At school in England, everyone hated studying Shakespeare. From a young age, excited teachers would shove the bard down our throats, like Hamlet with a poisoned pearl, and, without putting in the effort to make him relevant, they expected us to fall deeply in love with his lines and language, because this was our birthright, our English inheritance. But we were teenagers, and so Shakespeare, like grammar or maths, came to represent the establishment. We dreaded the mention of his name at school: “Shakespeare” became our “Macbeth”. And only now, after years of reeducation as a literature student at university, can I appreciate how radical and relevant Shakespeare is. For most British people, Shakespeare was killed in school.

I say this, because I had a similar start with reading Maria Montessori’s writing. During my AMI training course in 2013, I couldn’t believe we were supposed to be inspired by her books. Her writing immediately struck me as bloated, boring, and repetitive. Our trainer would read out quotations from Dr. Montessori, and pause dramatically as everyone in the class nodded their heads in unison. I was left cold, perhaps because I still had a bit of that adolescent, non-conformity thing going on. Don’t expect me to fall in love. I got this feeling that we were all supposed to buy into the idea that “Maria Knows Best,” and the atmosphere of Montessori absolutism irritated me. I remember I found Mario’s writings even more unbearable, though I can’t now remember why.

10 years later, I’m ready for my reeducation. I hope, with the benefit of maturity and experience, and through the perspectives of two educators who always help me see things in a more exciting light, I will fall in love with Dr. Montessori’s writing. I am open to it. And I started The Child, Society, and the World: Unpublished Speeches and Writings (1989) last week with this openness in mind.

I like that this is our first choice for a few reasons. One, it is is short. Two, it includes unfinished works and ideas in progress, which feels like a nice spiritual pairing for own epistolary mode - see my introductory letter. And three, these are writings from the final years of her life, so we are starting at the end. These are the ideas she hadn’t yet been able to bring to complete fruition.

The book opens with two essays addressed to parents titled “When Your Child Knows Better than You” and “Let Your Child Keep his Secret.” I’m going to focus on the first essay. The first thing that surprised me was how funny the writing is. “When Your Child Knows Better than You” opens with a hilarious and deeply troubling extended metaphor:

If a foolish mother frog said to her little tadpoles in the pool, “Come out of the water, breath the fresh air, enjoy yourselves in the young grass, and you will all grow into strong healthy little frogs. Come along now, mother knows best!” and the little tadpoles tried to obey, it would certainly mean the end of the tadpoles.

And yet that is how so many of us are trying to bring up our children. We are anxious that they shall grow into intelligent, useful citizens, with fine characters and good manners. And so we spend our time and patience correcting them, telling them to not do this, not to do that, and when they want to know, “Why Mummy!”, we don’t stop to find out why we interfere, but put them off with “Mother knows best”.

It would certainly mean the end of the tadpoles - oh Maria, stop it! You’re too much. Having just moved to the UK, where there is increased anxiety about children with “fine characters and good manners”, this passage really resonated. I’ve recently found myself hyperconscious about my own children’s behavior in public spaces, and they’ve definitely experienced more parental corrections than they deserve. I have such weird worries about how my “American” children will come across. “Why Daddy!” Well, it warrants further self-analysis.

Of course, Dr. Montessori here deploys the same horror/comic device that was later set to music so deliciously in Disney’s Tangled:

In both instances, our worst impulses as protective parents are reflected back to us in a black mirror.

(As a side note, have either of you watched the Black Mirror episode “Arkangel” which takes helicopter-parenting to an extreme? The tagline of the episode is “The key to good parenting is control” - Tee-hee!)

Maria then counters these impulses to control and mould our children with an alternative proposition:

Have you ever given your children a chance even for one day of doing what they like without interference?

What a radical and disruptive question. As parents and teachers, we are often afraid of ceding control and allowing our day to move at a child’s pace. We even dictate what their play should look like - legos, then coloring, then TV. But why do we do this?

She goes on to say, with a line that made my heart drop:

We say we correct them for their own good, and a great deal of the time we honestly believe it. But it is strange how often what we feel to be their good amounts to the same thing as our own comfort. We are all so busy with our grown-up, froggy work that we forget that the little tadpoles have work of their own to do - the work of growing into men and women.

Rather than busying children away to go play with their toys, “Watch,” she says, “and see how something catches their interest.” She encourages us to allow children the space and time to concentrate on whatever it is that has caught their interest, to see their project through to completion, and to be observant of what then happens with the child. They will seemed to have satisfied some inner urge, and will likely seem more at peace with themselves. And they will probably be less disruptive of your work too!

My six-year-old, for example, is fascinated by insects. The other day, when I took him to the playpark, rather than play on the equipment he spent the whole time building a house for woodlice (US: roly-poly bugs). He was so happy, and spent hours designing and developing his structure. He didn’t need any play equipment, he just needed space and time. The joy and peacefulness of this activity was easy for me to understand, but most often my son’s interests are alien to me - he truly is in a world of his own.

This is a new way to look at the problem of responsibility which weighs so heavily on many parents. Those of us who have tried to learn the ways of childhood from children (instead of from our own ideas) have been amazed at the discoveries we have made. And there is one point on which we all agree - children live in a world of their own interests, and the work they do there must be respected, for though many childish activities may seem pointless to grown-ups, nature is using them for her own ends. She is building mind and character as well as bone and muscle.

Anyone who has been through Montessori training will tell you that the first and most vital step of Montessori education is the self-work you have to put in as an adult. At the core of this self-work is a complete reframing of the adult/child relationship. She asks us to reconstruct society with “child’s work”, the work of self-construction, at its center. I really appreciate that she is trying to convey this in a language that resonates with parents. In my dream school, parents and administrators would be put through a similar training process as the teachers to bring all adults to enlightenment.

I think this essay does a wonderful job of concisely capturing the essence of Montessori’s ideas - what did you both think? Do you think this would be a useful essay to share with parents today? I would love to see a follow-up essay on freedom and responsibility, because I feel like most parents would want to know how to apply this non-interference principle to the reality of their working lives. How do you balance the need to start dinner on time with a child who has an unfinished project, for example? And, going back to my opener, what was your introduction to Dr. Montessori’s work? Were you immediate converts or reluctant readers?

Ribbit,

Tom

p.s. Chelsea, ❤️ you too.