If you could expand your primary equipment set to include the fundamentals of physics and technology without the use of video screens or computers of any kind, but rather by using simple, elegant equipment that applies the Montessori Method in principle, technique and aesthetic, and if you could do this for less than the cost of a fully populated Bead Cabinet, would you?
If you could access an open curriculum that presents the actions, language, and ideas of primary physics in simple terms and logical order, would you?
If you could adapt physics demonstrations ordinarily, and totally unnecessarily, reserved for high school and college students to activities well within the capabilities of the primary age child, would you?
If you could integrate current models like STEAM (http://www.steam-notstem.com/) and Maker Spaces (http://makerspace.com) into your Montessori classroom in a way visible to parents and supporters but not requiring the realignment of building space and traffic patterns, would you?
If you could produce original work furthering the Montessori Method in terms of the physical sciences and the technological culture in which the child lives, would you?
The Montessori Method is replete with the Life Sciences. We have the Great Lessons, the Botany Cabinet and the Land and Water Forms. We tend gardens and study Biomes. We use shell, bone, feather, and seed samples. We have the plants, fish, reptiles, and small mammals that inhabit our classrooms. We apply to these subjects the fundamental technologies of language and mathematics, household implements, printed media, rulers, clocks and scales, and a unique set of tools providing intentional sensory training.
Our world culture has, however, evolved since the Method reached its mature expression in the 20th century. While the Method itself is perfectly suited to the present task, the equipment set needs to be expanded to include the mechanical, optical, electrical and electronic technologies that pervade the child’s daily experience and academic future. It is crucial that these technologies not be neglected in favor of the information technologies that so dominate the market place and the marketing of schools themselves. Smart phones, touch tablets and laptops are an end point, not the foundation, of what the primary child needs to learn. While they are as ubiquitous, powerful and as necessary as printed books they are also, like printed books, just one technological tool that the child will need to use.
They are by no means the only tool. When they are used principally as wireless communication devices, unable to access the myriad real-world input and output devices, the recorders, sensors, processors, printers, and manufacturing machines that are readily available even at the elementary level, they contribute to a culture of passive consumerism rather than active creation. Used with a lack of understanding of what makes them possible, they result in dependency rather than efficacy.
It is clear that by upper elementary, we need to provide the student the tools of desktop production and equally clear that these tools are computer driven. At this stage of the market place, realistically affordable desktop production includes digital media of all kinds, but it also includes the means of physical production: ink printing and optical etching; light- and heat-cured materials; 3D manufacturing (both printing and milling); robotics; and scientific data generation.
Physical production, making things, begins in early childhood. It begins before computing. It begins before language. It begins with the child’s intimate familiarity with the physical world.
It is too easy, at this stage of our teaching practice, to find older students who can navigate FacebookTM but cannot assemble a circuit connecting a battery to a motor, let alone explain what’s inside the motor, why it turns, and how to measure the amount of energy it converts. The fact is that there is nothing in our primary equipment set that will show the child what a motor is and why it turns.
It is too easy to find a student who can GoogleTM the music from Frozen but has no idea, from the tuning of the acoustic instruments to the editing of digital tracks, to the pressing of vinyl and burning of optical discs, how the music is produced.
It is too easy to find a child who can SkypeTM or FaceTimeTM someone literally on the other side of the planet but has no idea how the sound and images get to the other side of the planet. There is nothing in our equipment set that shows the child how physical events are converted to electrical signals that can be processed, mined, recombined, moved to another place and then used to produce new physical events. The primary equipment set simply does not address the existence of electricity.
We confuse the words technology and computer. Electronic computation, for all of its overwhelming impact, convenience and importance in our lives is still a small and culturally recent subset of technology in general. Electricity itself is an older, deeper technology than electronically based computation. Mechanical computation, think abacus or slide rule, is older than electricity. Steam engines are older than electric motors. Wind, water, and muscle-driven machines are older than fuel burning heat engines. Hand tools and the use of intense heat itself are ancient technology. The specialized tools and materials of art, music, and food predate engines of any kind.
Infatuation with information technology distracts from the real issue, which is the child’s concrete, sensory interaction with the real world. As 21st century teachers, we can significantly expand that interaction. A great deal of our world is not readily apparent to the senses or practically accessible in everyday life and yet can be made so with equipment as easily acquired as a cell phone. The electronic virtual reality of phones and tablets can, in fact, augment a Montessori primary education and is as inevitable in the primary classroom as the printed virtual reality we all accept without question, but neither can substitute for the physical action, the doing, that is the core of the Montessori Method.
What can we give the primary child that will lead to technological understanding and creativity?
More specifically, we might ask these questions about the classroom. Is there a set of hand tools? A set to build electrical circuits? A set to build wire frame structures in three dimensions? A set of springs? Are there nuts and bolts that can be sorted, ordered and used to join other parts together? Is there a gyroscope, a pendulum or a flywheel? Levers, pulleys and gears? A remotely controlled robot? Any way to produce waves in any medium? Is there a solar cell? An example of plasma? A way to measure radiation? A way to measure PH in garden soil? A set of prisms, filters and fibers? A way to record sound? Anything to reveal the presence of a magnetic field? Electricity in any practical, manageable form?
Is there a way to show the child the action of the mind itself?
All of these things are available, affordable, and actually a lot of fun.
I suggest that the logical starting point for practical change in the classroom is with the presentation of electricity, magnetism, and enhanced measurement, using a combination of items that are either easily made or easily purchased. Some of these items present straightforward physical events, some present electronic data resulting from physical events.
PrimaryCoil.com is a great teacher’s resource. The organizational strategy is to present electricity and magnetism separately to isolate their properties at first and then join them together by presenting induction which is
nothing more or less than the interaction between a magnetic field and conductive metal, specifically a coil of wire. The electric coil is in the same class as the lever, the wheel, and the valve in its importance to our way of life. A primary coil gives the child access to primary forces. The chart also presents examples of converting electricity into other forms of energy and vise versa and finally examples of enhanced measurement.
This approach to electricity and magnetism can be applied to light, heat, sound, motion, chemical reaction and consciousness itself. The tools exist. It is possible to give the child concrete experience completely aligned with the Montessori Method that will lead directly to sophisticated computer aided design capabilities, preparing the child for the virtual world by grounding her in the real world.
Michael Johnson is an AMI certified primary teacher with forty years teaching and training experience and a special interest in science, technology and music.
Montessori Leadership / January 2016
