Montessori education has been given to us as “A Pearl of Great Price.” This new booklet from Cross Mountain Press will help you articulate this unique spiritual and educational heritage. This is a great book to give to pastors, board members and other people who you want to understand why Montessori is truly a spiritual journey lived out in an educational setting. Order today at www.crossmountainpress.com
There are four stages to Santa Claus in life:
First you believe in him.
Then you don’t.
Then you become Santa Claus.
Then you begin to look like Santa Claus.
There is probably no better example of imagination versus fantasy than our North Pole friend. The reality of Santa Claus is that he was a Christian bishop who lived in the 4th century in Turkey. He was noted for his generosity. Those are the facts – the rest of it is fantasy. And so what’s our challenge?
Dr. Montessori writes in “Spontaneous activity in Education”, “But how can the imagination of children be developed by what is, on the contrary, the fruit of our imagination. It is we who imagine, not they; they believe, they do not imagine.” Santa Claus is a wonderfully “imaginative” icon of the best of the generosity of the season – but it is a fantasy. And to teach our children anything else is a disservice to them and to their lifetime quest for truth and reality. Now I’m feeling like the Grinch who stole Christmas. Santa Claus brings up many wonderful memories and feelings but the reality is that when we share the “varnished” “truth” of Santa Claus we are doing harm to our children. (Now, I’m also Chicken Little, and the sky is falling.)
Harm? With the sweet story of giving and holiday cheer? Unfortunately, we imagine – they believe! And that’s the problem. When we present a lesson, we tell the child “This is red. This is blue. Touch the red. Touch the blue. What is this? Now, what is this?” When we give the lesson, we are opening the door for the child to reality and to be able to name and define his environment. The young child is not yet ready for abstract concepts like honor and justice. All that he knows is presented to him as reality – and truth. What would happen to the child after three or four years of having presented “This is red. This is blue.” you one day tell him, “This really isn’t red. This really isn’t blue. This is green and this is yellow.” Confusion? Distrust? Perplexity? “But I wouldn’t do that to a child? So then why do we carry on this sweet fantasy when it causes this future confusion?
The four great characters that enter a child’s early life are Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Jesus. If you are “untruthful” about the first three, are you to be trusted about the fourth? Does the fantasy of the first three impinge upon the truthfulness of the only reality in the quartet? These are wonderful sweet cultural icons and stories but are they worth planting the seeds of disbelief in the credulity of our children? (Credulity is defined as readiness or willingness to believe especially on slight or uncertain evidence.) We are far more familiar with the terms incredulous – unwilling to accept what is offered as true, skeptical; and incredible – too extraordinary and improbable to be believed. Dr. Montessori writes, “Religion is not a product of fantastic imagination, it is the greatest of realities, the one truth to the religious man.”
Our service and dedication to the child must be based on reality and truth. Better to lose the fantasy of Santa Claus than the reality of Jesus – the one we really celebrate at Christmas.
In “Spontaneous Activity in Education” Dr. Montessori gives a full analysis of the difference between imagination and fantasy. For many of us we tend to equate one with the other. And our observation of children seems to indicate that children have rather fanciful imaginations – again confusing the terms. Her emphasis on not telling “fairy” tales to young children seems overly strict and kill joyous. Yet, her reasoning has great insight.
Imagination has its basis in reality. Fantasy is outside of reality – talking cats, flying dogs etc. “The true basis of the imagination is reality.” “To develop the imagination it is necessary for everyone first of all to put himself in contact with reality.”
“When man loses himself in mere speculations, his environment will remain unchanged, but when imagination starts from contact with reality, thought begins to construct works by means of which the external world becomes transformed”
Imagination changes things – fantasy does not.
So why are fairy tales (cartoons?) to be discouraged for young children? Because they do not reflect reality. But we don’t want to discourage imagination people will say because imagination is closely aligned with creativity and art.
“Yet no one can say that man creates artistic products out of nothing. What is called creation is in reality a composition, a construction raised upon a primitive material of the mind, which must be collected by means of the senses.”
You cannot draw a house unless you know what a house looks like. You cannot put words together to create a poem or a story unless you know what the words mean. “No genius has ever been able to create absolutely new.” “It is necessary that every artist should be an observer … in order to develop the imagination it is necessary for every one first of all to put himself in contact with reality.” “The immortal art of Greece was above all an art based on observation.” And Dr. Montessori goes on to say, “The more perfect the approximation to truth, the more perfect is art.”
So what makes a poem, a play, a picture or a story “art”? Part of it, naturally, is the aesthetics. But the other part (and this is where great art comes in) is that you don’t “see” the art because the art is swallowed up by truth. What makes a novel classic? Is that it continues to speak truth across time and space. Have you ever watched a second rate movie where the dialogue didn’t ring “true” or the action was implausible? Real art brings us to truth. Again, imagination is based on reality. And the training for imagination is cultivated by observation. St. Paul writing to the Philippians (4:8) says “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” Is this not a case for observation and exercising imagination to reach this goal of truth?
Dear Friends,
Barbara and I have been involved with The Urban Connection – an inner city non-profit ministry since last November. They invited us to come down to view the work that they are doing in the housing projects – everything from after school tutoring to job placement, GED prep, food banks and encouragement for the community. They had a vision to start a Christian Montessori preschool – that is where we come in. The project is dear to our hearts for a number of reasons. Dr. Montessori started her first school in a housing project. If there is anything that can transform children (and their families) it is a Christian Montessori education.
For months, we have been meeting with their board, their staff and prospective teachers. We have begun the first steps to help them set up the program and to train their new teachers. They have just been given a building that formally housed a Head Start program and so we are progressing. Next month we will start renovating and begin setting up the program. The urban connection staff is busy raising money for the ongoing project as well as raising volunteers to get the facility in shape. This is where we would like to invite you to join us. We would like to raise $20,000 so we can fully train the new staff and help shepherd the program along. This is a unique opportunity to actually make a life-changing donation. In fact, we can share nine benefits that will come from this one project.
1. Children will receive a superlative early education. Montessori education is still going strong 101 years after starting its first school in a housing project in Rome. The latest brain research and the latest educational studies keep confirming (without intending to) the validity of the Montessori approach.
2. The children will receive a deeply Christian education.
3. The program will impact families because of parent education and involvement.
4. The local community will receive a dramatic emotional and civic boost by having such an outstanding program started in their midst. Excellence in any part of a community, not only challenges the community to do better for themselves, but brings every one higher just by its presence.
5. This is a long-term drop out prevention program. Children quit school in 9th or 10th grade because they did not adequately learn to read in first grade. No one likes to stay in an environment where your inadequacy is highlighted every day. In a Montessori setting good reading skills are often in place by five years old and in many cases by four years of age – and even younger.
6. The school in turn will become a community training center to give training as a Montessori teacher to local residents. There is a big difference between being a day care worker and being a Montessori teacher. It starts with the difference in salary and earning potential and extends to such valuable intangibles as self-sufficiency, pride, financial independence and self-worth.
7. The program will serve as a model to replicate itself in other areas of San Antonio and beyond. There is already interest in Dallas even before the program starts because they see the potential.
8. The training program will create an additional platform for the establishment of more early education Montessori programs around the country.
9. The same training program will be used to help establish early learning programs around the world. We have requests for help from Kenya (where they are starting a school for Aids orphans), Liberia, South Africa, Romania, Latvia and Japan.
If you would like to make a donation to support our involvement in this program you can make checks out to Cross Mountain Forum which is our 501 © 3 tax-deductible organization. We can also accept credit cards. There will also be opportunities to physically help paint, clean and set up. This is a fantastic opportunity for some young children to get a great leg up in life. Montessori provides not only the finest education but the greatest training in responsibility, initiative, self-discipline, goal setting and success. And your help and support would be greatly appreciated.
The DNA of all mankind shares the “O’ chromosome. It is not a biological chromosome but a spiritual one. And it is this one chromosome that makes impossible all the goals of mankind that are not built on a relationship with Christ. Our best moralists, our most dedicated educators, our idealistic politicians all declare that all we need is better morals, better education, more money to deal with poverty and then man will be “good” and society will be great. But it is that pesky “O’ chromosome that prevents heaven on earth, or some variation of it.
Without God (and there have been many societies that have tried it – Nazi Germany, Russia, China) all we wind up with are millions of dead bodies and even greater inequality and injustice. Without God, all man has is this longing to surmount (if not survive) the curse of the “O’ chromosome. There is no real power – not even the greatest will power – that really can make us “good”. And for everyone in a society that might come close to the ideal of being good, there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands (millions?) who come no where near this goodness. The “O’ chromosome is a zero. It makes us impotent in the face of evil. It often makes us choose the evil rather than the good.
So how do we deal with the negative power of the “O” chromosome? First, you have to recognize it for what it is. It is the impossible imperfectability of mankind without divine intervention. Now, this is where we lose the moralists, the politicians, the elites, the intellectuals and most educators who believe we can become “good” by our own efforts. They want no divine intervention nor do they want to recognize the need of divine intervention (or even design.) They want to ignore the reality of the “O” chromosome because if they acknowledge it they have to deal with it and its source.
What is frightening to modernists is the unbearable reality that the “O” chromosome springs from original sin. A concept they cannot countenance nor embrace without acknowledging their need for a redeemer, a transformer. Or the reality that there is no way to get to “good” without going through God. It is only when that “O” chromosome is yielded to God that we have the possibility (and the power) to become good. It is the redemption, the transformation of the “O’ chromosome when immersed in God that gives us the possibility to become what He intended for us to be. The “O” chromosome is a capital “O”. It is all that counts to us. And without God it will continue to be a zero. But when you submit that chromosome to God and let God envelop it; let God swallow it up, it begins to change. It starts off as Go“O”d. And as we are transformed it becomes Go“o”d. And as His power, His love, His life flows through us we have the opportunity and the joy to become “Good.” And it is that goodness and only that goodness that will transform the world.