Maria Montessori Critical Analysis

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Educational Reading Responses:

Response 1: Montessori, Maria. (1949). From The Absorbent Mind. The Theosophical Publishing House. -- http://www.moteaco.com/abcclio/absorb.html

Passage: “Education, as today conceived, is something separated both from biological and social life. All who enter the educational world tend to be cut off from society (Montessori, 1949, para.32).

This passage from Maria Montessori describes the egalitarian approach that teachers and students must create in the learning environment. The current methods of education define the students and teachers are “separated both from biological and social life”, which reflects the disconnect between the learning process and how people actually interact in a social context. …show more content…

The concept of “banking” is based on the teacher’s assumption that they know more than the student, and that the student must completely submit to tier educational curriculum. In contrast to this method of teaching, the educator can also possess the “problem-posing” method, which allows the teacher to engage the student and develop a mutual understanding of the educational process without being authoritarian. Therefore, the banking concept is really a negative and controlling way to educate students, since the teacher cannot possibly know everything or presume to have knowledge that is absolute. This is a danger to the educational system because it merely regurgitates old ideas and does not engage the student’s opinion on new phenomenon that can learned by teacher and student alike. Certainly, Freire (1970) is defining the two different positions of authoritarian and anti-authoritarian methods of learning, which he presents as an interesting dichotomy about the learning process in 19th century …show more content…

However, his wife does not know basic multiplication tables that are typically taught to students at a very young age. Certainly, Kohn’s wife is able to comprehend these mathematical practices, but it also defines the limits of knowledge of so-called "educated people.” More so, it defines the impossibility of any single person having absolute knowledge of everything, which defines the parameters of education that occur within a classroom setting. This is why Kohn (2004) finds a value in the limitations of wife’s education because no single person really knows everything, which makes the learning process a social and cooperative exchange of ideas by people with different expertise. This is part of the “purpose of education” in Kohn’s point of view, which defines the learning environment as a place in which ideas can be exchanged, but not controlled through an authoritarian top-down style of education. In addition to this idea, the teacher/professor should remain open to the idea of their limitations as teachers, which can be expanded by engaging the student to bring their own input into the learning

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