I don’t know about you, ladies, but I don’t remember diddly-squat from my rote learning days. I couldn’t rattle off dates of battles, or places those battles unfolded, or the names of the generals who fought.
But I can tell you this: I sat down at a pottery wheel for the first time in over six years and created something beautiful. Why? Because I learned pottery by doing. I experienced the process for myself, with my own two hands, and the hands remembered. The pottery teacher wandered by my first night back and asked me how long it had really been since I’d thrown. When I told him, he let out a low whistle and said, “Welcome home.”
There’s a reason people apprenticed to masters become masters themselves, in time. There’s a reason I could show my new teacher a way to choke in a pot that he’d never tried before. I’ve studied with masters. I wasn’t sitting in a corner, trying to learn how to throw a bowl from a book.
Montessori school brings a ‘learn by doing’ attitude to education that far outstrips the ‘traditional’ schooling that most kids get. And thanks to my friend and temporarily single mother Laura, I’ve been reading an interesting treatise on the difference between ‘progressive’ and ‘traditional’ education:
“Progressive schools are the legacy of a long and proud tradition of thoughtful school practice stretching back for centuries” — including hands-on learning, multiage classrooms, and mentor-apprentice relationships — while what we generally refer to as traditional schooling “is largely the result of outdated policy changes that have calcified into conventions.” — Progressive Education: Why it’s hard to beat, and also hard to find, by Alfie Kohn, Independent Education
I’m not saying our children should become journeymen, but if you can link a learning experience to a hands-on slice of life example — say, reading about Roman civilization and then visiting the Pompeii exhibit at the museum — you’ll create knowledge that lasts a lifetime.