Conscious Choice: A Tale of Two Schools

September 1995

A Tale of Two Schools

by Jonn Salovaara

I am an ex-teacher with a bias against schools, one who believes that there is too much weirdness inherent in any system based on the awarding of letter grades. Students in most schools spend much of their day more or less uninvolved in the pageant of education performed by their teachers. When they do become involved, it’s often for all the wrong reasons: grades (combining the possibility of ego-gratification with the threat of humiliation) or the promise of some other even more extrinsic reward or punishment. It is rare to find a student who is working on something because he or she is really interested in it.

I have read and heard about the advantages of home schooling, but, as a writer, I’m not ready to give up the psychic energy I perceive to be required by that route. So, when my daughter turned three, and her age cohort was moving on to schools from play group, I reluctantly began to consider schools she might attend the following year. When I taught, I worked consecutively at Catholic, public, Jewish, and independent schools, but never at a Montessori or Steiner school. That may be part of the reason two schools, Near North Montessori and the Waldorf School of Chicago, were most interesting to me.

Gradually, it became apparent that choosing between these two schools would be difficult indeed. It seemed that my daughter could be educated as an active, independently learning child (the Montessori emphasis) or as an artist (the Waldorf), but not both. Although my choice was between two private schools, this same dilemma will be familiar to anyone who has tried to select among the different magnet schools of the Chicago public system. In that system, parents are forced to try and decide which of two or more different educational emphases might be best for a still largely embryonic person. It’s an absurd predicament, but one we must embrace — if we don’t wish to find our children educated by default. To make my tale more interesting, I will pretend that I actually made such a choice.

First, I visited Near North Montessori. I have heard about Montessori schools where the principles elucidated by Maria Montessori are watered down with non-Montessori practices. Near North Montessori is not one of these. Maria Montessori broods over the proceedings from her photograph on the main stairway of the school. She would approve of what goes on there. Her basic principle of child-directed learning within a uniquely outfitted classroom is taken quite seriously by a highly competent, very experienced staff. In her The Child in the Family, Montessori talks with rapture about the kind of entranced involvement "thinkers and scientists" experience with their own thoughts. The classroom she designed is intended to permit a similar experience to children. In reading that book, one gains a sense of Dr. Montessori’s spirit. It is the spirit of the knowledgeable, exacting, opinionated physician, and it is palpable in the very atmosphere of Near North.

Two students captured my attention when I first toured the school. One, a child in a 3-6 year-old classroom, was sitting at a little table using a sharp knife to cut a carrot. No one hovered nearby to make sure he didn’t cut himself or to provide first aid if he did. The boy was mesmerized by his task, completely absorbed in what he was doing. And he seemed to know what he was doing. The second child, maybe in a 6-9 classroom, lay curled up on a big pillow in a chair, just reading a paperback. Other children went on with a wide variety of other tasks around him, tasks that they too had chosen to spend time on.

As a teacher, I was used to a much more teacher-directed classroom. I chose books to be read, assignments to be completed, topics for discussion. And, much against my inclination, I graded student performance on the activities I devised. This Montessori classroom, where children have the opportunity to choose for themselves and where there are many interesting choices — this was more like my idea of what education should be like, if only one could find a school organized on these principles. Here students can pursue real interests in the classroom, not just feign an interest in a subject and topic chosen by the teacher, the principal, or the board. There are no letter grades; teachers instead write descriptive reports about what the kids are doing in the classroom.

I liked the appearance of the place: the handsome woodwork, the abundant daylight and potted plants. I was also impressed by the director’s statement to the group of touring adults that Montessori seeks to introduce children to "the beauty of the world." Wow! The ability to say something like this without rolling the eyes is rare for anyone in the metropolitan area, rare even for teachers, and certainly rare for the school administrators of my experience.

The other school that most attracted me was the Waldorf School of Chicago. In many ways it was the direct opposite of Near North, although both seem to be permeated with great respect for the children. The pre-school classroom at the Waldorf School felt like backstage at a Symbolist theater. In the darkened space, children were moving around unusually shaped, but somehow beautiful, wooden partitions to create a number of performance spaces for fantasy play. Amorphous dolls and pieces of fabric formed their props. There was not the mind-boggling array of possible activities arranged neatly on the shelves of the Montessori classroom. Nor was the relation of the classroom activity to traditional academic pursuits of literacy and numeracy immediately apparent, as it was in the case of the Montessori activities. Kids were making up their own play, the way they do at home, on the sidewalk, or on the playground.

Rudolph Steiner, the Austrian philosopher who — in addition to the Waldorf approach to education — also has biodynamic farming to his credit, did not believe in the infant academics of the Montessori classroom. He believed in the importance of play, imagination, and fantasy. This other side of the educational coin seemed just as bright to me as the Montessori side. Of course! Why rush children into reading and writing and counting? Let them revel as kings and queens and witches for a while.

There was less daylight at Waldorf than at Near North Montessori, but the halls were decorated with children’s paintings of unusual power. Steiner had theories about color in art that seem to work in practice. I was also impressed by the information that as children progress from year to year after the pre-school, they learn about a variety of world myths. One year might be focused on Greek myth, the next on Norse myth, and so on. And the school takes dance movement to be a means of expression as important as painting or myth. These subjects, which most schools treat as peripheral, seem to be central at the Waldorf School.

My exposure to Steiner made me question Montessori’s opinions about fantasy and art. She clearly has a bias in favor of daylight activities, whether practical life (cutting carrots, etc.) or learning to read, write, and count. To be fair, there are opportunities for individual art projects in the Montessori classroom. Fantasy, doll-play, and dressing up, though, are not encouraged. Yet, though the candle-lit Steiner activities of drama and art appealed to me, there was a shortcoming there too, that balanced what may be the artistic shortcoming of Montessori. There seemed to be a big difference between the pre-school and the upper classes of the Waldorf school. The free exploration of the pre-schoolers in their performance spaces is followed by a much more teacher-centered classroom from the first grade on. The teacher (the "ego" of the classroom, I was told at the Waldorf School) may be someone immersed in art, but he or she is still expecting all of the children to participate in the same art project at the same time. Of course, it’s not the same art project because each child does his or hers differently, but what if the child wants to read that day or write in a journal instead of painting? What if the child can’t abide this particular art project? The Montessori school, on the other hand, seems to permit the actual interests of the child to become active.

So — here were these two very interesting, very different schools. How should we decide between them? Would our child benefit more from the beautiful, rational world of the Montessorians, or the beautiful, intuitive world of the Waldorf School? The child, of course, demonstrates both tendencies. Which do we encourage? Why should we have to choose?

The most common alternatives to these two approaches, at least at the primary level, combine the worst aspects of both. At most schools, you get a teacher-centered classroom (as in Steiner’s grades above pre-school) where imagination and the arts are relegated to the fringe (as in Montessori’s method.) Students are not encouraged to be independently motivated to pursue real interests, as they are at Near North, nor are they set loose in a realm of art and imagination, as they are at the Waldorf School. It seemed to be a case of one or the other, or neither, but not both.

Let’s say I decided in favor of the Montessori school. I chose an environment that gives her a multiplicity of choices for intellectual or practical life activities. With luck, she will learn that she has interests to pursue, she will understand what she likes, she’ll get in the habit of involving herself in what interests her for extended experiences. Let’s say I decided that this was more important than promoting her enjoyment of communal fantasy and imagination.

I would never make such a decision — at least, not with any confidence in its finality. What actually happened was much more prosaic. The Waldorf School, being small, put my daughter on its waiting list. Near North, which is larger, did the same. Later in the summer, Near North Montessori managed to find room for her. So there she went. I told myself that I would make sure her imagination and artistic inclinations were nurtured outside of school. And I have done this, though not to the extent promoted by the Waldorf School.

The decision came back to me after a year and a half, when my daughter was offered a space at the Waldorf School. That time, I said thanks but no thanks, but that belated choice lacked the meaning of my original dilemma. By now I was attached to the teacher at Near North and to the idea that the Montessori experience takes at least three years to bear fruit. Since the classes are mixed-age, a child stays with the same teacher for three years, gradually trying out more and more of the materials in the same classroom. (The Waldorf pre-school is mixed ages but the higher grades aren’t; there, however, the same teacher stays with the kids through all eight grades.)

In a sense, I made my choice by default, after all. It’s an imposing fact, when you consider the implications: who can say how important the earliest experience of schooling might be? Because there really are choices out there, however, there really are roads not taken — whatever your choice may be. The Montessori and Waldorf routes continue to be among the more interesting on the map. They come closer than most to educating the whole child; but they both still requires some explorations off-the-road.

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