Cosmic Education--Order and Interconnection

By Sarah Fary, Upper Elementary Teacher

O. E. D. Definitions -

Cosmic - adjective

                                   

1.1 Inconceivably vast

Cosmos - noun

            1 The universe seen as a well ordered whole

One piece of advice my cohort was given during our elementary training at WMI was “don’t call it cosmic education”.  We were warned that the term used by Maria Montessori to describe her method of educating the elementary child was too obscure and had a “New Age” vibe; that it could be confusing or off-putting to parents.  I disagree.  This most fundamental aspect of Montessori elementary education is critical to understanding the richness of the work happening right now in our elementary classrooms.

No matter what we touch, an atom, or a cell, we cannot explain it without knowledge of the wide universe.  What better answer can be given to those seekers for knowledge?  It becomes doubtful whether even the universe will suffice.  How did it come into being?  How will it end?  A greater curiosity arises, which can never be satiated; so will last through a lifetime.  The laws governing the universe can be made interesting and wonderful to the child, more interesting even than things in themselves, and he begins to ask:  What am I?  What is the task of man in this wonderful universe?  Do we merely live here for ourselves, or is there something more for us to do?  Why do we struggle and fight?  What is good and evil?  Where will it all end?"

Maria Montessori, To Educate the Human Potential

Unlike traditional mainstream methods of education, the Montessori curriculum is not starkly divided into self-contained subject areas.  There are no set times during which one subject area is taught during the school day.  The children are free to choose any work they have had a lesson on at any time, from any shelf.  Although the classroom has shelves for art, music, geometry, mathematics, language, history, zoology, botany, and geography/physical science, these subjects are not presented as necessarily separate.  Instead, cosmic education is the presentation to the child of the universe as a whole, in all it’s interconnectedness, from the big picture of the beginning of the universe to the details of the way atoms interact and form molecules.

The Cosmic Education Curriculum is Orderly

Order is one of our needs as human beings.  The developing child manifests this love of order in different ways during different stages of development.  The primary child responds to the comforting order of the materials in the classroom, the security of a daily routine, and the ability to participate in restoring to order a scattered mix of colored bead bars.  The elementary child begins to crave a new and different order - an order in thought and understanding.  The rational mind of the child during this stage is drawn to patterns and connections.  Many of the lessons in the Montessori elementary curriculum serve this type of order by offering the children a framework in which to place the knowledge they acquire.  

The Cosmic Education Curriculum is Interconnected

History, specifically human history,  is at the heart of the elementary curriculum.  All subjects are presented in relation to the idea that we are human, and that the study of any branch of knowledge is the study of the tools and discoveries of those who came before us.  Written and spoken language is a tool we use to communicate, invented by our ancestors long ago.  Math is a quantitative language.  All the subjects and all lessons given are keys to human understanding of the universe.  

            The work that I find the most exciting is the work it is impossible for the children to categorize into a single subject area.  This also seems to be the work they most enjoy doing.  At the moment we have one group of students labeling maps of different continents with the names of the countries, finding the average lifespan of each country, and then calculating the average for the entire continent.  The ultimate goal is to complete all the continents, and then calculate the average lifespan for the entire world.  The conversations and questions prompted by this work have been incredibly rich.  The rescue of an unidentified turtle during recess by a member of our class was an opportunity to present the use of Venn diagrams for organizing information - the children narrowed the possible species down to three and came to the conclusion that Ms. Wrinkles is a red-eared slider.  (They’re right!)

            Comic education presents the universe to the children as a vast, well ordered whole, centered in our experience as human beings trying to learn, understand, and live.  The work of the elementary child is to experience this heritage of discovery, and to determine their own place and purpose within it.

Since it has been seen to be necessary to give so much to the child, let us give him a vision of the whole universe.  The universe is an imposing reality, and an answer to all questions.

Maria Montessori, To Educate the Human Potential