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From the Lessons of Grace and Courtesy to Community Service The following presentations, excerpted below, opened the Parent Education Evening, September 25, 1997.
Introduction
The Children's House Perspective
Elementary I
Elementary II
We have a great topic, one of the cornerstones of Montessori education: from the Lessons of Grace and Courtesy to Community Service. The theme is the natural need of every human being to find meaning outside oneself - and to find one's place in the interconnecting web of life. I love the language: GRACE: characterized by effortless beauty, kindness and warmth; COURTESY: similar to politeness but of a more voluntary, generous nature, actively meaning to be helpful; COMMUNITY: from the Latin communitas, common, in common; SERVICE: work done for others.The initial lessons of grace and courtesy in the Children's House classroom are essential to the formation of the community in the classroom; they answer the need of the individual to belong to that community; they offer structure and language so the individual can develop herself and find her place in the community; they also make possible the formation of community, that common space serving and served by all.
This need for order and for one's place is a universal need that is within every child. Montessori believed that every living creature has a cosmic task to contribute towards the sustenance of life on earth. In Education and Peace, she said that it is the task of all people to labor not only for the self but to be a part of something great and awesome, not only to serve individual interests, but to serve humanity as a whole. This great need for one's place in the cosmos is inherent in every human being; grace and service have to be nurtured in the child and allowed to grow and to flourish.
Dr. Montessori was a genius at recognizing the embryonic beginnings of language, of order, of mathematics, of music. The generous, gracious adult is created by supporting the need in the child to be generous and gracious. These qualities are naturally present in the child, just as the ability to acquire language is naturally present. We don't have to instill grace and courtesy and community service, but we do have to make it available and model it - just as we have to speak to children frequently and clearly in order for them to acquire language. A child raised without language does not acquire language; a child without models of grace and courtesy and community service does not acquire the habit of grace and courtesy and community service.
The Children's House Perspective by Peggy McKenna
In her book, The Absorbent Mind, Maria Montessori spoke of a universal harmony and the child's relation to it:
"So in the child, besides the vital impulse to create himself, and to become perfect, there must yet another purpose, a duty to fulfill in harmony, something be has to do in the service of a united whole." (Montessori, The Absorbent Mind, p. 57) So in a sense, the child is by nature drawn to serving community.
Now, in the Children's House level this natural draw can be seen in very concrete terms. We have what we call our "Grace and Courtesy" lessons. These lessons start immediately with even the youngest children. They help the child understand how to act appropriately in her culture. These lessons run the gamut from how to blow one's nose to how to greet someone, from how to introduce oneself to how to apologize/excuse oneself, from how to offer food to how to receive visitors and so on. Through these lessons children learn how to be with dignity, respect and politeness toward others. They are developing a sense of their culture. They are learning how to live in community.
In Children's House we speak of the child's developing consciousness of himself as an individual, but the child is also developing a consciousness, an awareness of others. The Grace and Courtesy lessons help the child learn how to interact with the people he meets in daily life in the classroom and beyond.
I have a story to share about a young boy in our class several years ago. His mother told me this story the summer after his first year with us as a three-year old. He was at a family birthday party. The adults were passing out the birthday cake and he was served his piece. He refused to touch it, much to the dismay of the adults. They simply could not understand why this little kid didn't dive into his cake immediately even with encouragement. Many of the adults started eating their cake right away. When the boy was finally questioned, he calmly explained that we don't eat until everyone has been served. The child learned this basic courtesy through the birthday celebrations at school.
We expand on the concepts of etiquette and manners into community service by promoting opportunities to help one another in many ways. We have 5 and 6 year olds who very willingly go to the aid of a younger child. For example, if a younger child spills water on the floor, a group of older children rush to the scene to offer their help. The older children will help walk a younger child to French class or to the bathroom. When an activity with many pieces spills, children happily say, "I'll help pick it up." This is a way younger children help each other.
All of these things make the children from the oldest to the youngest puff up with great pride. Their sense of self is bolstered enormously because they have served their community. They have participated valuably. They are part of that universal harmony.
Elementary I by Katie Leo
In Elementary I we address the issue of grace and courtesy in both the social and academic areas. We emphasize the idea that our classroom is a community of learners who care about one another. For example, the children care for the environment in the jobs they do at the end of each day. In my classroom, they are arranged in mixed-age groups with a list of jobs for the group. In this way, the older children are encouraged to lead the younger ones, and everyone is accountable to the others in his or her group. This leadership/fellowship phenomenon is key to the Montessori method and translates well to the elementary classroom. The elementary child's newfound awareness of peers leads to collaborative work as well as opportunities for group problem solving.
Academically, the Montessori method as it applies to elementary children revolves around the idea of the cosmic task. The great stories that begin the year bring in the idea that all creatures have a meaningful role to play in the universe. This concept runs through every lesson and ties what I used to think of as different academic subjects into one vast web of knowledge. In Elementary I, then, we sow the seeds for the understanding that all things are interconnected and interdependent.
This leads me back to how the Montessori philosophy applies to our modern world. The Montessori method, by promoting the full development of children at each stage of growth, fosters human beings with a strong sense of self and responsibility to others. This is something we desperately need for the future of our world. So, once again here we have the Montessori concept of the individual connected to the whole. We help the child build him or herself into a strong, independent individual who, aware of the interconnectedness of all things, can help change the world.
Elementary II by Pat Schaefer AWE: When Maria Montessori looked at the seven year old child emerging from infancy to childhood, she saw a child capable of awe, a child with a new awareness. This gift of childhood brings passion to whatever the child is interested in.
The child in the elementary years emerges with a new reason to be courteous - a moral one. That child now wishes to break out beyond the walls of home and school to see how the world runs, what it needs and how it got to be how it is.
POWER: This precious period of childhood is imbued with power - to choose, to plan, to get out in the world and help all who need it: the aged, the weak, the disenfranchised, the poor animals and plants, all that need protection. Where the hand of the child touched and formed the earlier child, now the feet of the child carry him or her to where they can meet real world.
MORAL SENSE: Their world begins in the classroom where they first apply their moral sense of who and what is right or wrong, how they can help to care for others, for the environment. As that awareness grows and they become more and more competent, the acts of courtesy and graceful functioning give way to acts of leadership and community building skills. Older children routinely help younger children who help with the lunch in Children's House.
There emerges what James Hilman calls a sense of "calling": an unconscious movement towards helping others and a moving outward to do it. It is left to the adult the task of inspiring the child, the task of touching that potential awe, that passion, and igniting the process that employs the child's fullest potential.
This is an awesome task.
This article appeared in the Fall 1997 issue of the Lake Country School CourierLCS Home Page > Parent Resources > Articles > From the Lessons of Grace and Courtesy to Community Service