An Education for Peace

By Anne Kruk, All Day Primary Teacher

Reaching for a Peaceful Future

                Maria Montessori was a passionate advocate of world peace.  Living through the tumultuous years of the early twentieth century, she saw the effects of two world wars firsthand, and dedicated her professional life to creating a pedagogy that would help children become the agents of the peaceful future she so dearly desired.

                Born in 1870, Montessori was already a mature adult when the Great War swept through Europe.  In its aftermath, she began seriously discussing, on an international level, the question of how to advance peace in society.  In her view, peace could not merely be discussed "in the narrow sense of avoiding war and resolving conflicts [. . .] without recourse to violence," but in the larger sense of a "positive notion of constructive social reform." (Montessori, Education and Peace)

                She had time to ruminate on this further during World War II, which found her stuck in India for the duration, unable to leave the British colony as an "enemy" Italian.  The beliefs that she refined during these years and shared afterwards upon her return to Europe attracted and inspired many.  She saw children as inherently peaceful, requiring merely the freedom, example, and opportunity to create peace for themselves.  Her work was widely influential; she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times in her latter years. 

                Following her example, Montessori educators work toward a peaceful environment in their classrooms; not just in the narrow sense of resolving conflict (though that remains necessary and important), but also in the larger senses Montessori envisioned: helping children create a social environment for themselves which is inherently cooperative, empathetic, and kind. 

               

Negotiating conflicts
                Conflict is an inevitable part of life, and learning to deal with conflict appropriately is a skill that transcends age.  The arguments that concern small children might seem trivial or even cute to adults—playdate invitations, being friends, who is older, etc.—but they are very serious to the children.  As in all things in the classroom, the phrasings we use to deal with conflict are based on how adults would (we hope!) discuss serious conflicts with one another; that is, we talk with one another directly, using first person language, describing exactly what we are upset about and how it made us feel.

                For example, a child who was upset about accidentally being pushed on the playground would approach the other child to tell them, "I didn't like it when you pushed me."  The other child might spontaneously apologize, but often primary aged children are not really sorry for their actions—the concept of being sorry for something accidental is particularly hard to grasp—so we do not force children into hollow apologies.  At the least though, it’s important to acknowledge the other person's feelings by telling them, "I heard what you said."

                

Respect goes in all directions

                Respect is often conflated in our society with obedience: children are supposed to "respect" adults by doing as they are told without question.  But true respect is not a top-down institution; it is inherently mutual.  In a Montessori classroom, children respect each other, their teachers, and assistants, but in the same breath, the adults must respect the children in their care.  For primary children, this means according them as much autonomy, freedom, and privacy as is reasonable, while still keeping them safe, insuring their freedom doesn’t infer with the rights of others, and also moving their education forward—or in other words, freedom within limits.

                Practically, this can mean offering a range of acceptable choices ("Would you like to choose a math work, or a language work?"); acknowledging their feelings as valid and helping them manage them ("I can see that you're angry with your friend.  Would you like to talk about it now, or do something to calm down first?"); and explaining our actions as much as is comprehensible to a young child ("It's okay to feel upset, but right now your voice is too loud for the classroom, so the other children can't work.  I'm going to help you find a quiet place to feel upset, and when you feel better you can come back.")

               

Spontaneous help

                Trying to instill empathy by lecturing is obviously farcical in the abstract ("Why don't you understand why I feel so annoyed at you right now for not understanding how I feel?!") yet somehow in the heat of the moment, well-intentioned adults resort to this tactic.  Young children are often lectured with phrases akin to "How do you think that made the other person feel!?"  As in all things, though, the young child learns through using their senses and moving, not through lecture.  In the classroom, we do a lot of role playing how to handle social situations, so they have resources to handle problems they encounter. But also, how much more powerful is it to a young child to experientially discover empathy and gratitude by having a child spontaneously offer to help him when he has spilled a bucket of water?  Or for an older child to recognize the needs of a younger child and offer to help them without being prompted? 

The freedoms afforded in a Montessori environment offer children the opportunity to discover their innate desire to help others.  Unshackled by competition, embarrassment, or the logistical constraints of a typical classroom, children are free to embark on the work of building their own peaceful communities; a small, vital practice for the peace that Montessori hoped they would come to build in the world at large.