Last weekend, FMS families joined our quarterly Working Bee. Adults, children and teachers all pitched in to work in our gardens, helping to keep our school environment beautiful and healthy.
This type of community work is not unusual at FMS. From toddlers through to primary school, Montessori students engage in purposeful work. This may involve contributing to the cleanliness of the classroom, the beauty of the environment, the comfort of others or academic work.
Purposeful work is a fundamental aspect of Montessori education and a key value at Forestville Montessori School.
Purposeful work is vital for students’ construction of self and establishing their own sense of purpose. It is the means by which graduates leave FMS ready to succeed as capable, contributory members of society.
Adults and work: a complicated relationship
As adults, our relationship with work is rather complicated. We pay others who have more expertise, more time, or more willingness to do work that we don’t know or want to do. We invent machines to work for us. We aim for expediency and efficiency. We value our non-working time, like vacations, personal time, and leisure. We think about retiring early. We also seek work that is the most fulfilling, makes use of our gifts, and follows through on our passions.
The real value of Work
The reality is that as humans, we need to work to thrive. We find a sense of purpose, meaning, and connection through work. Those who have retired know how it feels to drop out of the social organisation of productive activity and perhaps wonder about contributing to the community, group, or society.
We establish our identity through work and, in the process, contribute to a complex web of interdependent activities shared with others. We provide service to others, and this gives us a sense of belonging. What we do to accomplish our purpose in life is our work.
Purposeful Work
In our culture, we are not particularly well practiced at appreciating all kinds of work. It takes work to care for ourselves, to care for others, and to care for our environment.
At Montessori, we prioritise these three pillars:
- Care of self
- Care of others
- Care of our surroundings
We recognise that children gain deep satisfaction through work that has purpose. They want to feel and be useful!
Work that is purposeful or meaningful comes from an internal drive, while also being connected to the environment and to others, which leads to a sense of responsibility. For our youngest children, this can be as simple as noticing that laundry needs to be folded or that snacks need to be prepared and then wanting to play a role in getting that work done. Older children may feel compelled to share their research or discoveries with classmates.
Adult Work vs. Children’s Work
In her observations of children, Dr. Maria Montessori began to see how the work of adults differs from the work of children. While adults work to minimise effort and make our external environment better meet our needs, children use their environment to develop their internal capacities. Because children’s work is their own development and self-construction, their work doesn’t follow the same patterns, look the same, or have the same outward manifestations as adult work.
According to Dr. Montessori, this is primarily due to the complexities created by modern life. There was a time in human history when children’s need to self-construct through their own activities was naturally and easily met simply by being around as adults worked to secure food, build shelters, or make tools. This work was more immediate, concrete, and apparent. Children could observe, explore, imitate, and little by little participate in adult work.
The work of modern humans is more complex and abstract, making adults’ work more inaccessible to children and thus making the presence of children often an interruption, distraction, or nuisance. As a result, children are often separated from the everyday work of adult life.
The value of work for Self-Construction
By nature, children are compelled to do work that ensures their own development. Children’s work is the work of self-construction. Often this work feels like play!
In Montessori, we recognise the fact that children are forming who they will become as adults. Thus to fully support children’s work of self-construction, we offer purposeful activities so they can learn how to contribute meaningfully to their communities.
Our youngest children slice fruits and vegetables that are served to the class as snacks. They arrange flowers to make the classroom more beautiful. They sweep the floor and wipe the tables. As children get older, they take on more responsibilities, from taking care of dishes to answering the phone, to running class meetings to organising trips.
At FMS, purposeful work extends beyond the classroom to caring for the external environment in our horticulture program and looking after our many school pets in our animal and wellbeing programs.
Montessori children grow into adults who understand the value of work in its many forms.
