Culture Studies
Their [Montessori] way of manipulating the hierarchy is just more subtle. [...] the easiest way to start a new school is with a cohort of young children who have not attended a school before. They have no established classroom culture. By working very closely with them, a Montessori teacher can establish a culture of student-initiated learning; quiet, polite behavior; and extended cognitive focus, all of which are critical for making a Montessori classroom work.
And the key is this: Once you have established this norm, you can add a new cohort of younger children. They will imitate their older, enculturated peers, since Montessori classrooms are age-mixed.
“While the expression ‘mixed-age’ has become commonplace, what is crucial about such an arrangement is that the older students in a classroom come to serve as models for the behavior of the younger students,” Strong said. “Children are biologically programmed to imitate the behavior of our older peers. There are no actions that an adult can take to rival the effectiveness of older children modeling desired behaviors for younger children.”
Humans preferentially learn from people whom we perceive as competent, successful, or prestigious. Children, perhaps because they are less skilled at telling who is competent, also rely substantially on imitating those who are (slighly) older. By elevating these cultural role models, you can affect the norms of the wider group.
If you tried to impose the same type of consistent culture in government schools, there would be intense pushback. And for good reason: Public schools accommodate a much wider set of stakeholders, none of whom can impose their vision on the others. Public schools are legally committed to basic liberal ethics, including not infringing on students’ personal beliefs. This is a powerful ideal. But it can leave them with a muddle of a culture, which makes it harder to achieve the kind of focus and alignment required in an effective learning institution.
When families deliberately choose educational alternatives, on the other hand, there is room for a more radical and far-reaching alignment between the participants. Montessori organizations put out pamphlets detailing a vision of education and encourage parents to compare self-proclaimed Montessori schools with their standards. This puts pressure on schools that use the name but diverge culturally. In this way, the shared vision pushes the instructors and families to align (or break off to form new lineages). By making the values clear and having people opt in, there is less friction to overcome, less work necessary in making sure that the participants share in the culture.
“The inflexibility of the culture made it work as a culture for a particular type of education,” said Garren. It meant they failed to adapt as the world changed. “However, if it were more adaptable, it would have likely been ineffective.” There is a tension between openness and the structure required to maintain highly distinct cultures at scale.
It might be the case that the only way to grow cultures deliberately is by trending toward dogmatism. But I do think there it is possible — with new technology, perhaps increasingly so — to navigate this tension productively. It is possible to instill invaluable ideals. We may struggle to accomplish this equitably, at least in the short term. But if we fail to do so, I suspect that the gap between those who have access to highly functional cultures and those who do not will only grow more pronounced.