Books – Page 5 – Montessori Muddle

Circadian rhythms and a nature deficit

I remain fascinated by the Brazilian study that found that kids living in homes without electricity did not have the same sleep deprivation issues as those with electricity. I thought of it again recently when I ran across the term “nature-deficit disorder” in Oak Hill Montessori school’s newsletter.

Unstructured nature time is so important because children live through their senses. When they are right there in the forest, they are getting a primary multi-sensory experience of nature as opposed to the secondary, often distorted, dual-sensory view presented by TV. – Daniels, 2009 (p. 4)

The idea of nature-deficit disorder comes from the book “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv. Written in 2005 and updated in 2008 with a bunch of practical things you can do to change things, Louv’s book advocates for more time in nature because, “a growing body of research links our mental, physical, and spiritual health directly to our association with nature.” Not only does it affect our individual health, but directly experiencing nature also helps increase environmental awareness (which ties into the Montessori peace curriculum). Louv argues that children have a fundamental right to walk in the woods:

Science sheds light on the measurable consequences of introducing children to nature; studies pointing to health and cognition benefits are immediate and concrete. We also need to articulate the underlying “first principle”—one that emerges not only from what science can prove, but also from what it cannot fully reveal; one that resists codification because it is so elemental: a meaningful connection to the natural world is fundamental to our survival and spirit, as individuals and as a species. Louv (2009)

I can’t say I disagree very much with this diagnosis. My adolescents are too often opting for technology rather than being outside, especially if it’s in nature. This is one reason my students are building the nature trail. The trail has been coming along slowly though, but the seasons are changing and we’ll spend more time outside in the warmer weather. The timing is also nice because we’ve just finished covering simple machines in physics. There are logs and junk to be moved and saplings to be cleared.

Note: Louv has a long list of links to print and broadcast articles on the whole “nature-deficit disorder” concept.

Montessori secondary and the university

I’ve been thinking recently about the similarities I’ve observed between Montessori Middle and High Schools and liberal arts education at the university level. Especially when compared to a traditional secondary education the two are remarkably similar. Two that stand out are the variety of choice for the students to tailor their own learning, and lots of responsibility given to the student to use their time and resources effectively. The Montessori experience should be really beneficial in college, but that just leaves the little matter of High School.

Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, has written quite a bit about the failure of the traditional high school in the “rich world”.

[I]n secondary schools there is a demand for uniformity and regulation of behavior that results in less autonomy and the dumbing down of academic expectations – Botstein (2008).

Botstein argues for universities taking over high schools because they have credibility as educational institutions and because the structure of secondary education in the U.S., with rapid turnover of school boards and superintendents, is a failed model. One fundamental problem that Botstein and others such as Angeline Lillard identify is that the traditional educational is based on a factory style model. Students are fed through the assembly line and those who do not, or can not, conform to the necessary automation get rejected by the system. This model co-evolved with the industrial revolution when the power of the factories and efficiency were novel marvels to behold.

To a degree the education factory worked well in the past, providing the workers for the industries at the time, and certainly, for a while, helped rapidly raise educational levels and productivity. Yet as more and more rote jobs are now being automated, the educational premium is now on creativity. Where technology takes the place of the assembly line worker it also makes it easier and cheaper for the individual inventor or creator.

Personally, when assessing high schools my students go on to, the main thing I look for is the degree of independence they offer their students. Hemmed in by the needs of standardized testing and curriculum standards, it is too rare that students get the opportunities to follow their passions. My own teaching philosophy has also evolved. I’ve come to the conclusion that by the time my students graduate my Middle School they should be the type of independent learners who would succeed in the college environment (and hopefully in the world). That type of independence also means that they also have to tools to deal with anything that comes up in high school, even if they have to work around the system.

How much technology in the classroom?

The title of Mark Bauerlein‘s book is somewhat provocative. It’s called, “The Dumbest Generation, How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.” As I am very much an advocate for incorporating technology in the classroom, it’s not too unexpected that I disagree with large parts of his thesis.

Yes there is probably an important link between the brain and the hand that facilitates creative work. But it does not necessarily follow that, “Writing by hand, students will give more thought to the craft of composition. They will pause over a verb, review a transition, check sentence lengths …” (Bauerlein, 2010). As we work on habits of revision there seems to be no real reason why they should spend more time on improving a sentence they’ve hand written than one they’ve typed. True, if students are conditioned to write in short rapid bursts of texting it will translate into their other writing, but it is the role of the teacher to help them delineate these different genres of writing. I also have not seen the evidence that writing by hand is any less abstract than writing by typing on a keyboard. We are already expressing ideas using an abstract medium, words, why is one form of expression better than the other?

Where I do agree with Bauerlein is on the need to take breaks, even substantial ones, from technology and the online world. Where I see the greatest need for this is in aiding student’s comprehension of the natural world. You live too long in the virtual world and you begin to translate that experience into the real world. Yet the virtual world remains a model of the real one. It is simplified and enhanced to make it a more enjoyable experience, so the lessons you learn there do not truly apply to the real world. In addition, physical experience in the virtual world, at least for now, cannot create the kinesthetic, mind-body understanding of the laws of physics and biology that you learn from real-world games and just walking along the nature trail. This is why I am a firm believer in our week-long immersions every six weeks.

So I continue to allow my students to introduce new technology to the classroom, as long as they can show me that it is effective in helping them learn. The latest thing is the proliferation of iPod Touches. I like the iPods because of apps like iSeismo that lets you monitor vibrations in 3D. However, on our recent visit to the Le Bonheur Hospital a number of my students took their notes on their iPods. I personally don’t believe that these are more effective than pencil and paper because you can’t combine text and images very effectively on an iPod, but they did take copious notes (which they were quite proud to show me). I’m planning on giving them a quick quiz to see what they learned from the trip so we’ll see just how effective their note taking was.

We’re all swimming in a sea of new technologies, and we can’t really tell what will benefit and what will hinder without trying them out. So, I at least conclude that the key goal of middle school education should be to create in students a core competence and confidence that will help students navigate steadily in this world of much information and rapidly changing fads. A fundamental understanding of the mechanisms that underlie people’s behavior is key. Know yourself and understand how societies behave. The first is not trivial and the second requires drawing general conclusions from a lot of historical data, which is quite challenging for most adolescents, but that’s why we teach the way we do.

Note: There is an interesting discussion of the use of technology in the traditional classroom going on now on Will Richardson blog post “The Big Questions: Now What?“