Category: Classroom Community

Enjoying the silence

That was one of the most poignant moments for me—conversations I had with a class of kids in a school in a tough neighborhood who simply had no positive associations at all with the idea of silence.
– George Prochnik (Gorney, 2010)

In constructing the Montessori classroom we aim for an open, uncluttered environment. George Prochnik has an interesting little interview in the Atlantic about the value of silence in our noisy world. He points out that there has been a movement away from the sound deadening carpets, tablecloths and wall hanging in the interior design of restaurants, in an effort to generate more energy. Of course that makes things louder. Thinking about the interior design of the classroom, I can see how there might be a trade-off between creating an uncluttered environment and designing for a quiet classroom.

Of course, in a classroom of adolescents, some prefer to work in quiet, while others favor the energy and noise in the background. I try to create nooks and crannies where students can get out of the noise but are still visible to the rest of the room. I also allow students to use headsets during individual work time.

Thinking about it now, the nooks were designed to fit small groups of three, but the students only really migrated toward them as individuals. So it may be that their primary value has been to provide small cones of silence and I should make more of them but smaller ones.

Fractured thinking – How the internet affects how you think

While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.

And scientists are discovering that even after the multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of focus persist. In other words, this is also your brain off computers. Richtel, 2010

Matt Richtel has an intriguing article in the New York Times on how multitasking on computers is affecting the way people think. I don’t have a whole lot of time to get into it is a well resourced article citing work from researchers such as Clifford Nass, Eyal Ophir and Melina Uncapher at Stanford, Steven Yantis at Johns Hopkins, Daphne Bavelier at the University of Rochester, Gary Small at UCLA and Adam Gazzaley at UCSF.

Other choice quotes:

[Multi-taskers] had trouble filtering out … the irrelevant information.

multitaskers tended to search for new information rather than accept a reward for putting older, more valuable information to work.

that people interrupted by e-mail reported significantly increased stress compared with those left to focus. Stress hormones have been shown to reduce short-term memory

Finally, the article ends with a thought about how technology use affects our ability to relate to others.

Mr. Nass at Stanford thinks the ultimate risk of heavy technology use is that it diminishes empathy by limiting how much people engage with one another, even in the same room.

“The way we become more human is by paying attention to each other,” he said. “It shows how much you care.”

That empathy, Mr. Nass said, is essential to the human condition. “We are at an inflection point,” he said. “A significant fraction of people’s experiences are now fragmented.”

This work of course ties in with Nicholas Carr’s thesis that asks the question, “Is Google Making Us Stupid“. Carr’s book, “The Shallows” takes up the argument that we should spend less time online. While I tend to agree with Carr that we would benefit from more time offline, I really think his explanation that the invention of the press, and cheap books, lead to more deeper concentration (and that’s what we’re loosing now) needs a lot more evidence to back it up.

Mercenaries on the playing field

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

– A.E. Housman

Three themes converged on the playing field today; poetry, competitive sports and video war games. We’d used Alfred Houseman’s “Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries” for a lesson on OULIPO yesterday because it’s short and one of my small groups had presented a week ago so we were all familiar with the poem. We’d been trying post-games discussions after frizbee (and soccer) to learn sportsmanship. We’d been having issues with video games and the definition of the word “duty“. I’ve long suspected (and would love to find a study that looks into this) that video game players are more likely to give up when the odds are against them because they are so used to just restarting the game (or respawning).

Today at the end of our post game discussion, I recited Epitaph to highlight the strength of character shown by some of the players who put up a great comeback despite part of their team stopping playing. It was a serendipitous convergence of three themes we’ve been dealing with this entire cycle (if not the whole year). It was a moment when I really appreciated being able to be so engaged with all parts of the curriculum.

Poetry in the morning (update)

Some clichty folks
don’t know the facts,
posin’ and preenin’
and puttin’ on acts,
stretchin’ their backs.

– from Weekend Glory by Maya Angelou

We’ve started poem presentations in the mornings. They are supposed to be a part of our daily community meeting, at the beginning as part of their sharing, but the meeting is such an established ritual that we frequently forget the poems until the end. What’s been nice is that the students have been reminding me about it rather than the other way around. This seems to indicate some interest.

Monument of Vahid Poet? (from Wikimedia Commons).

Despite my having presented a couple poems, their having seen a video of Anis Mojgani’s excellent poetry performance, and their having read how to read a poem out loud, I had to do a lot of coaching for the first couple students; slow it down (it’s something I always have to work on myself); put some emotion into the performance; match the tone and expression to the meaning of the words.

Poets' Tomb, Tabriz, Iran (image from Wikimedia Commons)

I’m not the most experienced drama coach. Fortunately I did pick up one or two things from the excellent director we found for our play last winter (the importance of projection for example). It also helped that one of the first students to present has had quite a bit of experience in the theater, so, once I conveyed the idea that it was a performance, she knew what to do. Finally, because I’d called for volunteers to be the first presenters, the first few students who presented were not types to be easily embarrassed at being coached and commented on by myself and the rest of the class.

Monument to János Arany (from Wikimedia Commons)

So far it’s worked very well. We’re doing one poem, from memory, a day, with no real theme for the week, rotating through the class. I’ll poll my students to figure out how they want to continue after we get through most of the class. Specific poets, poems on specific subjects, specific types of poems, there are a number of themes I’d like to try/negotiate. If I can get this started as an ongoing tradition there’ll be time to try it all.

Video Game Addiction

Boys tent to have more problems with games (From Hauge, Marney R., Gentile, Douglas A., (2003, April)).

While the American Psychiatric Association does not yet include it as a diagnosis (as of 2009) video game and internet addictions are problems I’ve seen first hand, and, given my own plugged-in-idess, are topics I personally think about when I reflect on my own computer use. The web is a powerful tool so it’s not so unusual that we’d spend a lot of time using it. There is a point however when it becomes compulsive and takes so much time that it becomes a detriment to our other work.

There are any number of website and online resources about the topic and even a few commercial sites that offer treatment. For anecdotal descriptions there is the Berkley Parents Network website. which has a few examples from parents dealing with the problem. The National Institute on Media and the Family has a good page describing video game addiction. For adolescents they describe the symptoms as;

  • Most of non-school hours are spent on the computer or playing video games.Falling asleep in school.
  • Not keeping up with assignments.
  • Worsening grades.
  • Not telling the truth about computer or video game use.
  • Choosing to use the computer or play video games, rather than see friends.
  • Dropping out of other social groups (clubs or sports).
  • Irritable when not playing a video game or on the computer.

Interestingly, this tends to be more of a problem for boys. And one solution recommended is wilderness therapy. I think that may be a bit extreme. Another suggestion was:

… the experts … said the best way to cure kids’ video game addiction is to set strict limits. They suggested not allowing kids to have computers, PlayStations, TVs, etc. in their bedrooms if monitoring their behavior is a problem.

The Montessori classroom is a closely knit community and, especially in a small classroom, falling asleep in class and being irritable (especially more so than normal teens) can be very disruptive to the entire class. It is, therefore, essential that the problem be addressed as soon and as quickly as possible.

Artists sit to the right

With open classrooms allowing lots of movement, we don’t often have to deal with issues of seating arrangements. But, an interesting study (from back in 1993) found that students (adults in this case) who sit on the right side of the room are more right-brain oriented. They tend to be more the artistic types, less cautious in responding and less analytical. Right side sitters also scored higher on femininity on a Masculine-Feminine scale.

Since we’re creatures of habit, I wonder if we can see this pattern in the seating arrangements for lessons and community meetings. On balance though, I’d think this would be another argument (if another was necessary) for allowing students and lots of movement so there is more mixing and sharing of talents.

This seating pattern preference also shows up in where people prefer to sit in movie theaters.

Where does morality come from?

“Do to others as you would have them do to you”. The golden rule (in some form or the other) is almost universal. And because it is found throughout different cultures and belief systems suggests that much of what we view as morality and ethics are innate to the human mind. But what are we born with, and what do we learn from culture? Is the golden rule necessary for successful social groups, so that cultures with the golden rule are more successful that ones that don’t have it? These two questions are fundamental to how we educate, particularly in a method such as Montessori’s that has such a strong moral dimension.

Maria Montessori herself came from a strong catholic background, but the success of her approach in so many different cultures does argue that, at least for the younger kids, the innate aspects of morality and needs of the child are most important. By the time students get to the Middle School, however, the influence of the local culture has become much more important.

Morality and culture affect students’ motivations and behavior, yet much of what is considered acceptable in many cultures conflict with the core Montessori principles of respect for oneself and for others. Much of popular American culture for example, is driven by television where moral messages can be decidedly mixed. How often is it appropriate to use violence (or even torture)? Television shows give decidedly different answers from Montessori. But there are many other, more subtle differences. As Montessori educators we will be faced with the question of what to do when Montessori philosophy differs from the beliefs of the student, their family and the larger culture.

My thoughts are that the “cosmic education” that is a part of the Montessori method should be based on the “universal” aspects of morality that can be shown to make for successful individuals and societies. Some interesting work by Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia looks at how certain systems of morality have contributed to the success of societies. As Nicholas Wade summarizes:

… natural selection and the survival of the fittest may seem to reward only the most selfish values. But for animals that live in groups, selfishness must be strictly curbed or there will be no advantage to social living. Could the behaviors evolved by social animals to make societies work be the foundation from which human morality evolved?

Haidt suggests there are “five innate and universally available psychological systems” of ethics, and different cultures add stories, virtues and ways of policing these ethics. The Moral Foundations Theory website has a good summary of the five systems, harm/care, fairness, loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity.  In a beautiful example of adding transparency and technology to scientific research, he even has a page for challenges to the theory. Each of the moral foundations these deserves separate consideration of how they evolved, how they benefit society, and how they mesh with Montessori philosophy.

Nicholas Wade has a good article on the subject and on Haidt’s work in the New York Times.

Why collaboration is important

Montessori middle schools depend a lot on collaborative work and discussions. Individual parts of group work allow students to specialize in areas, hopefully, where they are interested and willing to learn the most. Then when they share their work with the group the whole group gets the information, and the person presenting it gets feedback from different perspectives. Collaborative work is excellent preparation for creative work in the future.

Some recent research by Kevin Dunbar, a neuroscience at the University of Toronto, gives some strong support to the usefulness of collaborative work. He found that group discussions, with people from different backgrounds can be much more effective at solving problems than discussions among specialists. Different backgrounds mean that each person is forced to take a step back from their expertise and think and describe the problem in a way someone else with a different perspective can understand. This allows both the expert and the person they are describing the problem to, to see the problem from different perspectives.