The theme of this conference lends itself to many interpretations. Perhaps the main difference concerns that which is given to the nature of the verb “becoming”, It refers to the role attributed to the activity of its subject. It seems difficult to ignore that the process of becoming who we are, at any given moment of our lives. It is characteristic of man that he continues developing during the whole of his life. It is often interpreted in a passive sense. We cannot ignore that many men seem to interpret their ” becoming” in a passive sense. There seems to be no difference between doing so with regard to oneself and with regard to others. This passive interpretation is very strong when the adult considers the becoming of the child especially when done practically. The difference between the two is astonishingly great. When the process of “becoming who we are” should be recognized as an eminently active process. Why are we adults inclined to think of it in a passive sense?
We refer to that period of human development as the period of fundamental development (to distinguish it from the period like adulthood). The period of development stretches from man’s very beginning, from conception to adulthood. How common is it that we think of that period of becoming who we are as a period when we are “being” made and formed into what we are? As adult educators we try to make children be what we think they should be. For educators ‘What’ seems to be more appropriate than ‘Who’. The difference between the two interpretations is never sharply divided. It is somewhat intermingled with an accent on the one or the other direction. But on which direction depends on circumstances and concrete situations. Then our appreciation of the difference is between the real subject and the grammatical one. This difference exists when the passive interpretation predominates. On the other hand, when the active interpretation holds sway, there is no such difference. Where no subject, whether active or passive, ever acts totally on its own these different interpretations inevitably affect our appreciation of the role played by the various agents involved in it.
Adults should reflect on such questions, because they are presumed to have achieved fundamental development and become mature. As such, they play a very special role and have a very special responsibility with regard to those who have not yet achieved adulthood. We adults seem inclined to concentrate rather too readily and exclusively on our activity as not only agents, but also as active subjects with regard to those still in process of becoming whom we recognize easily in all children. Do we not find the term “formation” rather than self-formation still universally used as almost a synonym for education? Perhaps we thereby actually betray our own incomplete adulthood, our lack of maturity. It should make us think that this attitude and inclination seem most prominent when the adult acts and thinks as natural or professional educator. That is when he has and exercises a great and concrete influence on the child. He recognizes the child as a “man-in-becoming”.
What we call “circumstances” are also considered as agents in the process of becoming who we are. It is, perhaps, next to the role we attribute to ourselves. Lastly, passage of “time”, which is easily and readily credited as an active function, It is considered as one that brings about or protects something by itself.
What all these real or assumed agents, though different, have in common, is that they are external to the human being in course of becoming. The human being in becoming seems to play a somewhat passive role, to become the object of an action and activity carried out by others. Therefore, to that extent, it suffers a loss of its status and dignity as a subject. To that extent also, it is not really he who becomes who he is, but he who is made into what he becomes. Why should we speak of “he” or “they”, why not recognize that it is we too who are concerned, as we also went through this process of becoming? To the extent to which our role as subjects is diminished and we become objects of a transitive activity carried out by others, we may not really become who we are, We would not have become what we were given life to become.
Should we not reflect on this possibility? Is it not something worth thinking about and taking into the consideration our practical and real responsibility and action in the field of education? The field of education actually has no limits. It covers or underlies all other fields of human life and activity directly or indirectly. This is very clear when we recognize that man is in the process of becoming during the whole of his life. So we come up against a truly “radical” issue. The position we assume will determine not only everything we do in this field, but also who we are in our relations with man in course of fundamental development. We do suggest this terminology. I concede, it is a rather cumbersome one. But it is a meaningful term for one who is conveniently, but not accurately, called as “the child”. Even within the fundamental development, Childhood is only one of its periods.
Let us then, try to give some thought to these three agents in becoming who we are and to their role in this process of fundamental development.
If we start with the three external agents: adult, circumstance, and time, to put them in order. It may help us in recognizing the real subject of the process of becoming who we are in the active sense. It may help us fight within ourselves the tendency to overlook and relegate to a minor plane, the real subject and primary agent-The child who truly “acts out” development. We can do so only very succinctly. That may prove a stimulus for us to do so continuously in growing depth and completeness. It will help us to start and stir, an activity that may help us continue becoming. We could help others become who we are meant to be.
Let us begin with the external agent last mentioned. The adult dominates the other two because the adult, by his very nature, exercises a dominating influence not only on circumstances, but also on time.
Time fulfills a very special function with regard to man. He is received as a human being in time, at a certain moment in time. He is destined to break out of time and enter eternity. To think of time in human life in general as capable of “bringing forth” someone seems inaccurate. Yet, we do it so easily .It plays a considerable part in our life and in our educational activity. It is very common to see that experts, medical and otherwise, need to meet questions put to them. Those who love and feel responsible for human beings in course of fundamental development put the questions. Experts give all-too easy advice by saying “Time will solve your problem”. That is hardly an answer to the question.
It is very common that we think of “our” problem, overlooking that the problem may well be painfully, a problem for children. The children are “accused” of posing, or “being” problems.
Time is a “dimension”, added to spatial dimensions. Together with spatial dimensions, time forms a medium within which something has to be produced and brought froth. Time itself cannot do so and it is sterile. Time cannot, “work”. It has to be used as a medium by a worker. He is a creature who has his origin in time, but not as a result of time. He needs time to work in, but need not expect time to do his work. The worker alone can be a true active agent. Other controlling agents can give or withhold time. But they are already agents in time. They are not the time given or withheld. Often we come up against the tragedies when those responsible have been waiting for time to produce results or solutions. Tragedy is a strong word to use but seems very apt. When it is too late and time has run out, the persons who are responsible find themselves facing the barrenness of the womb of time. Examples are not limited to pathological cases where timely help would have brought forth a cure. We meet with something of the kind when we fail (or did not even sufficiently try) to convince parents of the importance of giving their children the opportunity to work at their’ becoming’, in a prepared environment from the right moment in time?
Time does indeed pass; it cannot stop its flow, nor can we make it do so. Neither can we make it go back on its steps. There is a “tempus opportunum” the right moment. We even call it more accurately as “God’s own time” when it is given for a right purpose. This applies to nothing more directly and fully than to the process of becoming who we are meant to be.
Agents who come next will be the circumstances, situations, conditions and events existing in time. They already play a very active role. They certainly exercise an influence. We do speak of favourable and unfavourable circumstances. To that extent they are agents, to a greater or lesser extent, of what is required to be done in time in order that we may become who we are meant to be. In the life of man their role is limited. Man certainly is not meant to be a “creature of circumstance”. He has to create circumstances, for education to be a help to life. Dr. Maria Montessori so challengingly defined the aims and contents of education.. Man dominates circumstances and makes constructive use of them in view of who he is meant to be and do. Not unlimitedly, of course. He remains a creature. He is called upon to create circumstances favourable to his life and to the life of all other living beings. He is endowed with the power more than any other creature.
While an active yet instrumental role must be recognized and attributed to circumstances, we should also recognize and ensure, as far as possible, that this role will remain truly subservient and auxiliary. It will be subordinate to the purpose it should serve. This forms a part of our becoming who we are. We should progressively turn circumstances to the service of their purpose. In doing so, man expresses and becomes who he is meant to be and become. He can also express the help that is to be given by those whose responsibility and privilege it is to give this help or service. We think particularly of the relationship between man-the-child and those adults who exercise greater control over circumstances in order to render this help. We think of ourselves as adults who, by rendering this service receive much more help than we can ever give. Adults are thus helped to become more fully who they are meant to be. But do we really understand it, do we let ourselves experience it, do we live it?
Dr. Maria Montessori has helped us understand this very well. Few have lived it more luminously than she did. She has shown the fruits of using the circumstances well She, by living this human power, changed circumstances, and used circumstances and time to create and bring forth a unique work of art and science, a monument of charity and justice. She offered her work to mankind so that it might play its part in helping man to become who he is meant to be. She offered help to us to become better than we are, and to build up a world of people moving towards what they are meant to become and be.
We may think of particular circumstances in Dr. Montessori’s life that she recognized as an indirect help to carry out her lifework. She made the constructive, preparatory use of the six years between her decision to investigate the potentialities of her experience and pedagogical work with mentally defective children for the education of normal children. This led to her pioneering work in pedagogical (nowadays we prefer to call it developmental) anthropology and experimental psychology. She championed the causes of human emancipation on behalf of child-labourers, and of women. She used fruitfully the long years spent in India during World War II when she was restricted in her freedom of movement as an enemy alien. We owe to what she did in those years. We owe, among many other things; her last great work The Absorbent Mind. Once she expressed her understanding of the role circumstances can be made to play. She pointed out how the revolutions, wars, and other upheavals in countries where she might have settled down, helped her to make the world as a whole her field of action. She could truly “carry it out” all over the world.
Nobody better than Dr. Montessori has offered us help to understand and start working around ourselves to become who we are and meant to be. She helps us, to understand and fulfil our role as agents in man’s process of becoming. She has made it possible for us to discover the unique nature of man’s fundamental development? She has enabled us recognize that there is a period in time within the whole of basic development when only a true basis and foundation can be laid for all we are meant to become. Has she not helped us realize that the human being in course of fundamental development is the true primary agent and an active subject of development? By laying its foundation during its first important but very neglected and overlooked part, fundamental development takes place.
Dr.Montessori set us also free by helping us understand that we should play an auxiliary, not formative role in the becoming of man-the-child .We need to recognize and practically acknowledge that any inflation of this real role leads to malformation and deformation .It will also lead to an irreparable loss and damage to the man in the making. She challenges us more than any one to realize that our own development is not of primary importance. Therefore it should not be our first concern. It should not have the first claim on our means, energy, dignity, and time. We need to understand that it is the fundamental development that determines who man becomes. She has given an example that only if first things are given first place, all other things can be added onto them. She called out to use this re-evaluation and consequent actualization in deed, not in word only. She said that we should be able to fulfil the potentialities of our own further development. She showed in her own life. This opens the doors that permit us to re-develop ourselves. Only Man can do this. She has shown a parallelism between the two sub-phases of each period of development .The second phase offers potentialities of correction and remedy with regard to what many have deviated or been incomplete during the first. The two periods of human development are those of fundamental development and continued development during adulthood. It is during this period of continued development, when adults live around the child as helpers of his fundamental development that they can still become who we are meant to be. It is as if we were given a chance to revive the unique potential of fundamental development in our own adult life. We have a chance to realize a true, integrative unity of these two periods in human life. If we recognize this, we find help to understand and live in the real possibility of converting and becoming like little children. We can find our way back to the road that leads to our true and eternal destination and destiny. We can set our feet very firmly,
Resuming our initial line of thought, we many affirm that what we have been making demands that we discover the nature of our role with regard to man’s becoming who he is meant to be. We should recognize that as agents in the child’s development that we are positive agents for development only as a subsidiary one. We cannot be the main agents. Truly we cannot be. We would play our constructive role only if we act as servants of development. We need to predispose circumstances and give time in its favour. We need to work for the purposes of development, recognizing its autonomy.
Dr. Montessori used a definite and comprehensive term “environment” for this complex of agents. It refers to circumstances and time and it includes us. The reason being that we are part of it and have to play so active and determinative a part in it. It is we who have to determine how to dispose circumstances, time, and ourselves to serve to autonomous purpose of development of those entrusted to our care. We should make this insight as part of our own being with all its practical applications. We should never cease developing ourselves in everything we do. Then the real actor can play his role. Not otherwise. The child’s role is that of being the sole actor of development. In this all other roles are those of supporting actors. They offer positive assistance carefully refraining from usurping the role of the main actor.
Who is this main actor? He is the Person- man in course of fundamental development. He is the one whom we call “the child”, The name is not apt .The term “the child” arouses, though unconsciously and unintentionally, feelings of superiority. It arouses the “old man” within us who attempts to make the child and his development subservient to his. The main actor is MAN the child whois fully and resplendently a man. He is a creature endowed with unsurpassed powers to actualize and develop his creative potentialities. This does not happen while working at the conquest of his adulthood. Man-the-child LIVES the development. His life is identical with development, concentrated on it and around it. The center of his being is Man-the-child in whom the powers and characteristics of development incarnate themselves in their highest created form. .By means of the powers he creates, fulfills, and explicates his manhood. By means of this Man-the-child man becomes who he is. He can try further to become who he is meant to be. The whole world waits for him to remain what he is so that he may become what he is meant to be and become. Man-the-child makes himself become the adult. He will decide whether the world is helped to develop into what it is meant to become. He may be cheated of this “hope” by being abused and exploited. Man-the-child himself is often abused and exploited by adults. They are adult in name and age only.
By a law of nature Man’s co-creative responsibility and incomparable dignity require that he exercises the creative activity entrusted to him within himself. The challenging privilege of creating himself with the help of the powers has been given to him. He is also endowed with the inner laws of guidance and timetable of self-creation with which lays the foundation for his co-operative activity. The extent and the manner in which he will later on exercise it is determined. He remains a creature because he does not create from nothing, but with a supremely rich fund of potentialities. What this potential irresistibly urges him to do with himself is incomparable and ineffable. It is truly mysterious a share given in the true creatorship of his Creator It is wholly by the creator that no other creature can be given the term co-creator.
We must learn to understand this never fully understood creative dignity, this mission of human life. We must endeavour to understand more profoundly within the limits of our powers. Again we owe those powers to man-the-child who made us. We can truly say, “made” us who we are. More than understand, we must learn to respect them. Then we acquire the ability to go beyond our limits of understanding. We are offered the opportunity to act and become constructive agents for development. We cannot be agents of development. We are offered the privilege of becoming better than we are and to continue becoming who we are meant to be. In trying to do so we become workers for a new harmony based on subsidiarity and independence. Thus we work do along with the child. We become workers of an order that is based on an all-comprehensive independence of the whole of creation. Only the Creator is truly and fully independent.
We can recognize in what sense help given to the effort to conquer independence is the keynote in Dr. Maria Montessori’s method of education. We can understand her solemn and urgent warning against the still-so-prevalent unconscious tendency to substitute ourselves for the child’s efforts at independent self-construction. Sometimes it is conscious too. These efforts and man’s relative independence give an expression of his belief that he has been created in the imagined likeness of his creator. This effort to grow in independence, to conquer independence is evident. We can observe this clearly and impressively, in man-the-child during the period of fundamental development .The whole of mankind struggles to develop independence in the course of its collective life-history .By trying to help the child in this respect, by placing ourselves and the circumstances and time under our control at the true service of this effort of self-development to grow in independence we truly help him become who he is and is meant to be. We set him free to live in freedom and build up his freedom. We help him use this freedom for the purpose for which it is given. While never ceasing to try to help man-the-child make himself as independent as he is meant to be. We should never forget his dependence on his Maker who created him. He needs to be who the Creator loves him to be. God gave man the mission and the power to grow in his manhood.
Man is called upon to enrich and realize the hidden riches of the family and race of man with the unique contribution of his individual being and work. So Man should helped to develop his individuality.
Neither must be ever forget man’s dependence on all his co-creatures and the whole of creation. All his fellow beings and things have a sacred claim on his respect and on his assistance. It is then they too can fulfil their own being. In turn they enable him to become and be who he, is and is meant to be.
What we have tried to express can help us prepare ourselves to put Dr. Maria Montessori’s method of education as a help to life, and the Montessori movement (social by nature) in a perspective that does justice to them. It can also help to recognize and meet the challenge they offer us, help us serve them better. More effective will be our effort in our work and life to the building of a better world. May it help us to fulfil the prayer we find inscribed on Dr. Maria Montessori’s tomb which makes it a window that opens on the continuation of her life and work.
“I pray that the dear children, who can do everything. unite themselves to me for the building of peace in men and the world”
(Inaugural Address AMI-USA Study Conference Minneapolis, June 1975)
Comments are closed.