Story Telling In Montessori Education
by Dr. Paul Clement Czaja
The word “story” comes from the ancient Greek word “histor” and means literally “a narration from a learned man.” Since the beginnings of human time, noble men and women who had survived life long enough to be old would share stories of wisdom to all who would gather around the fire and listen. I say they were “stories of wisdom” because in the particular happenings they told about the hero survives by not being foolish. A great story told has always been the leading edge of personal communication for it is the sharing of a wisdom – a piece of common sense – a tale of selfless courage – a victory of the good — which can provide those who hear the chance to share in a life experience in a way that makes words come alive and practical advice about living become personal and truly experiential.
The problem in sharing wisdom with others is that the profundity – the complexity — of the human person makes every personal experience hard to express directly for often the truth within a human life is ineffable: “more than words can tell” as the saying goes when we are in love.
Such personal living is based on a felt experiencing that has more to do with the revelation of truth and beauty (or lies and chaos, or of the good and the evil, or of our deepest hopes and fears) than words by themselves could ever relate. And this is precisely what storytelling is all about. It must be a personal telling if it will have the power to uncover the “heart of the matter” for those who can hear. By telling the story one is able to share a human act on a much higher level of communication than just talking can, and that is so because storytelling is an art form, while mere blabbing is not. Coming to meet and know a life story gives one the opportunity to meditate on its reality and then to contemplate the storyteller ‘s personal communion with it measure for measure. Such a story is full of accessible wisdom.
The telling of a story from the storyteller ‘s heart/mind/soul imbues the saying with the magic inherent to every truly creative act. A story well told has the power to set imaginations aflame, to engage the listener ‘s feelings, to become a matter of life revealing life. The art of storytelling involves the storyteller filling the story with vitality. When the storyteller tells a story rather than merely reciting the cold facts, he or she recreates a human experience that has vibrant existence. When storytelling has vitality, it will reveal to those listening a life-reality with all its possible dangers together with all its hopeful victories – and also with the choices that must be met. As the ancient prophet has God say to a man: “I put before you life and death, my child. Choose life. ”
The prophetic revelation of the storyteller is always brand new news — even if that means newly seeing something that has been there around the listeners a long time without them coming to know about it really. So the storyteller is a modern day prophet who stands up before a crowd and proclaims a story that says: “Once upon a time, a man had to make a choice because he was free to choose. This is what he did. This is what happened. ” Within such a listening, one is deeply touched by the act of deciding and feels the decision was made for all mankind. The listener in a secret, deep way lives the consequences of the hero ‘s choice and within the sacred place of conscience actually weeps or rejoices over it. “Did the hero choose wisely or foolishly? What would I choose if such a choice came to me? ” From such an encounter, wisdom is gained – and with the story, a way has been found to share such wisdom with others.
The primary problem to overcome by anyone moving to take the first steps toward becoming a storyteller is how to move away from the strong habit of conceptualization (surface-thinking) which our past schooling has laid on us all. We are in the habit of looking at a “tree” as a noun, as an abstraction. There are no inch worms on its juicy leaves – no squirrels scurrying up its trunk – no man sitting in its shade thinking, resting, soon to get up and return to work. No in our schooling we are introduced and kept focused on the noun “tree ” which had no real living going on – and so Montessori suggests to the child to place a black triangle shape over it like a tombstone. A tree is a tree, is a tree (to hint at Gertrude Stein ‘s insight) and the mental presumption of sameness obscures us from the innate gift of intuition that here is life with all its wonder happening gloriously right there before us. Perceiving living trees and all the living going on within their noble company through the myriad seasons is the life spark of religious experience and the blossoming of our inner life where music is felt and art created and is the communion that is knowing becoming loving care.
The path to becoming a storyteller requires us to develop in our daily life a new habit of being aware of our immediate and direct experiencing. We have to become attentive to the concrete in the here and now – and to become aware at the same time of the meanings – the connections – the implications — existing within the “thing ” we are experiencing.
To experience human life in such an existential manner we must become like the experiencing child – or like the alert native walking off trail moving through a primeval forest so keenly sensing everything out there, above him, around him, and under each stepping foot. To be able to do this, we each must stop being a “somebody” and begin to become for that time of observation a “nobody.” By that I mean, being a “somebody” is when you are focused on yourself — on your cortex thinking – on ideation rather then on the ongoing experiencing of what is there outside of you with all its existential reality. Being a “nobody ” is when you are so focused on observing the other that you are no longer conscious of your self but completely taken up in the taking in of what is there in all its immediacy – there dragging its past, showing its present, and so obviously leaning into its future. This “nobody, ” philosopher ‘s teach, is our soul ‘s “I ” which is able to experience truly with humility and disinterest and is open enough to meet the other as a “thou ” – and so perhaps to connect personally enough to commune with this other being – becoming for that time a mutually beneficial “we. ” It is when the artist before the stretched canvas or the athlete on the cinder track, or the child at play or the native in the deep forest becomes such a “nobody ” that instinct and body knowledge and intuition and creative genius take over and accomplish truly wonderful deeds.
The tragedy is that such existential experiencing was so naturally ours when once we were babies and little children – when we all were “little Indians ” — before our schooling caused us to be almost always completely distracted by thoughts and so hindered from experiencing our experiences. Our schooling did not reward intuition or creativity or any other jazzy human act. Too interested in the products of their teaching – the ability to do the times table thoughtlessly – the ability to remember without a shudder of horror the date in Civil War history when thirty thousand young men died in bloody battle – the ability to copy and copy correctly paragraph after paragraph of their chalk written notes on the big black board without ever being given the opportunity to compose anything of our own, to be creative –no, our teachers were trained to be solely interested in the testable products of their teaching. And because of this regime of mass teaching, our teachers were too uninterested in what was going on there within us where the authentic organic life of our truest selves reigned in a so hidden kingdom. They were more interested in teaching us something. They would have us skip over the beginnings and put our energies on the finished work — not respecting the primacy of the sacred ground that personal experience of a truth is for all people.
So what are we to do? Here is Montessori ‘s answer: Bring everything to the children “indirectly ” through a storytelling that reveals to their deepest knowing the challenge, the truth, the meaning that lies hidden within. Storytelling is the only way. Storytelling has the power to give the experience of that which is ineffable — that given reality of another which can never be put into words but only can be captured in the life of the telling – in the drawing – in the music – in the dance – in the story. Sharing such a given causes a communion to take place between us, the educators, and them, the listeners sitting right there before us. The magic comes from the fact that in the act of storytelling we ourselves return to innocent experiencing, to that primeval connecting with others sitting around the fire that alone is the sacred place of wisdom sharing. To become a storyteller we must first of all be gloriously alive–alive to ourselves–alive to all that is going on around us–alive in our seeing, hearing, touching. The sure sign that we are becoming the storytellers we need to be will be found in the pure fact of this happiness of our being alive.
Storytelling every “academic subject ” with the children enables us to possess and share with them every aspect of human life in a timeless experiential way that has wisdom at its core. Once the story has had its way with them, they are ready to work and to make all their learning a personal, self-motivated act. The profoundly personal sharing that is storytelling is the beginning of wisdom for children — and is the wellspring of human compassion without which knowledge is soulless and without purpose. Without wisdom and human compassion, knowledge is pernicious. So of all the skills we must master in our craft as Montessori educators, the art of storytelling is primary.
