Montessori emphasized that children are independent individuals completely different from adults. Adults must look at children again and find the value of their existence, instead of arbitrarily imposing self-awareness on children and erasing their personality awareness.
With the spirit of scientific observation and verification, Montessori discovered the natural law of children's growth-children have the potential of self-learning and self-improvement, that is, children are committed to self-improvement. However, due to the improper guidance of adults or the influence of the environment, children will have deviant behaviors, such as untidiness, disobedience, laziness, greed, self-centeredness and so on. Therefore, Montessori emphasized the importance of environment and adults. If you can't see children's true colors, you can't help them develop normally.
To sum up, let's take a look at the ten characteristics that distinguish Montessori education from traditional education:
1. Child-centered
She opposes the adult-centered teaching concept and regards children as independent individuals different from adults. Montessori advocates child-centered, traditional classroom-centered, book-centered, and teacher-centered. Montessori advocates three new centers: child-centered, activity-centered, and experience-centered.
2. Education without teaching
Montessori opposes teacher-centered cramming teaching, and advocates starting with daily life training, with a good learning environment and rich teaching AIDS, allowing children to learn spontaneously and actively and construct their perfect personality.
3. Grasp the sensitive period of children
Children from zero to six years old will have different specific preferences at different times, which is a sensitive period for children. If you learn this feature along the sensitive period of your child, you can get the greatest learning effect.
4. Teachers play the role of facilitators
Generally speaking, Montessori is called a mentor. She must have a deep understanding of the child's spiritual world and know the child's development like the back of her hand in order to provide appropriate and timely help and guidance to the child.
Teachers' job is to observe children's inner needs, design environment for them, demonstrate teaching AIDS and prepare for learning. It is also necessary to educate children's individual differences and inspire and guide them in time. This kind of assistance and inspiration can make the relationship between teachers and students friendly and let children learn naturally and happily.
5. Cultivation of complete personality
The biggest purpose of Montessori's scientific education method is to help children normalize. Through the design of environment and the operation of teaching AIDS, children can establish a perfect personality step by step.
The essence and significance of early childhood education is mainly to help children grow up completely. Therefore, Montessori believes that the purpose of early childhood education is not only to prepare for entering primary school. In the past, we said that early childhood education was to lay the foundation for entering primary school. Now, after research, we think this goal is too simple and short-sighted. Montessori believes that the essence and significance of education is to prepare and lay the foundation for children's perfect life. Not only to prepare for primary school, but to lay the foundation of character and wisdom for children's life. Cultivate children's good habits of lifelong learning from an early age.
6. Respect your child's growth rhythm
Montessori classroom has no timetable, and class time is not considered. She advocates that children should follow their inner needs, choose teaching AIDS that suit them and work at their own speed. If the child's attention is interrupted, it will form the child's sloppy habit. If we respect children's needs and allow them to work longer hours, we can naturally cultivate children's concentration and persistence. Montessori education does not advocate interrupting children's work. If he continues to work according to his own needs, neither parents nor teachers should interrupt her. When his body and mind can't support him, he will naturally stop working without interest.
7. Mixed age teaching
In Montessori schools, kindergartens and classrooms, children of different ages will imitate and learn from each other, and they can develop good social behaviors of being brothers, friends, brothers, respecting each other and helping others.
8. Rich teaching materials and teaching AIDS
Montessori has many teaching AIDS, but these teaching AIDS are not tools used by teachers, but materials for children's homework. Through these works, children can construct a perfect personality from self-repetitive operation exercises.
There are about 400 kinds of Montessori teaching AIDS, which is a major feature of Montessori teaching materials. We often call it a teaching aid, but it is actually Montessori's teaching material. The carriers of the textbooks are different. Different from our textbooks, Montessori concretized the textbooks. This textbook is very rich. There are many living textbooks in Nature and Life. Different from the textbook in the classroom, this textbook is not used by teachers to teach students, but is the material for children to work. This is how children repeatedly operate textbooks from the simple to the deep, and he constantly achieves the goal of self-education. We can say that the rich teaching materials are Montessori's teaching AIDS and can also be said to be a supplement to the teaching materials. Textbooks have become teaching AIDS.
9. Eliminate the reward and punishment system
Because the traditional reward and punishment system is a means for adults to control children, and it is a way to control children's behavior by using external forces. After long-term observation, Montessori found that rewards and punishments are not only useless, but also destroy the budding self-esteem of children, not only failing to help children improve their behavior. Will mislead children's values. Therefore, Montessori advocates abolishing the reward and punishment system, allowing children to develop freely and cultivate self-control ability.
10. The outbreak of teaching achievements
Montessori's scientific education method takes the road of respecting children's inner needs and allowing children to grow up in a timely and moderate way. Although it is not easy to perceive the results in the short term, it will show that the child's heart grows explosively at a certain point in time.
Montessori teaching method is gradual, and children are cultivated by self-education. So it is not easy to see the learning results in the short term. But the teaching results are often presented with explosive force. Suddenly showing the growth of the child's mind. Training a child according to Montessori's educational method will benefit him a lot in primary school, junior high school and senior high school. After high school, children accepted the knowledge of physics and chemistry quite quickly, and then appeared. For example, the number of mathematical gold beads ranges from 10 to 100 to 1000. He used various methods to stimulate children to master mathematical concepts and four operations, such as banking games and currency exchange, instead of teaching him how many words he knew and how much mathematics he knew. So it has the ability to suddenly appear. After going to school, his ability to accept is particularly fast and he can understand immediately. So, although the teaching results can't appear immediately. But it is helpful for his lifelong learning.
Montessori said: "Our school can be compared to a nursing home at first. The first thing children here should do is to restore their mental health. " Montessori believes that only by dealing with work can children's deviant behavior be treated. Because children will build themselves through work. Therefore, although Montessori pre-school science education has a wealth of teaching AIDS, its biggest purpose is not to teach children how to use teaching AIDS, but to help them establish a perfect personality through the operation of teaching AIDS. Concentration is the key to a child's inner treasure. Only in the atmosphere of free choice and concentration can children enhance their energy and mental ability, and then reach the realm of self-control.