What does a typical day look like?
Independence
Sometimes people think that tamariki can do whatever they want in a Montessori school, and sometimes they think that the rules are too strict!
Maria Montessori said:
A child’s liberty should have at its limit the interests of the group to which he belongs…. We should therefore prevent a child from doing anything which may offend or hurt others, or which is impolite or unbecoming. But everything else, every act that can be useful in any way whatever, may be expressed. It should not only be permitted but it should be observed by the teacher – The Discovery of the Child p.51
In our system we obviously have a different concept of discipline. The discipline that we are looking for is active. We do not believe that one is disciplined only when he is artificially made as silent… Such a one is not disciplined but annihilated. We claim that an individual is disciplined when he is the master of himself and when he can, as a consequence, control himself when he must follow a rule of life – The Discovery of the Child p.51
The environment in a Montessori school is planned and set up to meet the needs of the children. For the child to learn self-discipline, this setting provides the right opportunities based on the child . The planned environment gives the child some freedom, but only within certain limits.
In a Montessori school, children learn how to control themselves, which helps them learn how to be disciplined. We can see the growth of independence and responsibility at the same time that this is growing through activity.
Children have as much freedom as they are able to handle.
The freedom and limits look different dependent on the child and class and perhaps even the time of the year.
Children are free to choose work that they have had lessons on, they are not free to take that work and destroy it or interrupt others or to do nothing. If a child struggles to make choices on what to do the teacher may guide them, for example “Do you want to do this maths work or that maths work?” If the child is struggling to work without being in the teacher’s eyesight they may be restricted to a smaller area of the classroom.
Children are free to decline a lesson if they have a reasonable other commitment or work they are not free to decline a lesson because they want to chat to a friend who is in a lesson.