Jean Piaget
What is significant in Montessori’s move from mathematics and engineering to the study of the mind and the science of psychology?
There were interesting parallels in the life of Montessori and Piaget. Montessori moved from engineering to a more biological faculty of medicine, while Piaget who was encouraged by his mother to enter the religious order moved to Zoology.
It is for both of them while in the fields of medicine and zoology that they developed an interest in the growth of human: Montessori through the field of embryology and Piaget through his studies of mollusks and clams. While Montessori also got into the field anthropology before moving on to psychology, Piaget's study of mollusks and clams got him interested in psychological analysis and through his readings, began to be interested in human intelligence and how it develops.
While Montessori was given the opportunity to carry out her observations and test her theories through her work first with the mentally handicapped, Piaget had the pleasure of observing his own children.
Their work thus sprang both from the scientific observation of the child and eventually produced their own scientific pedagogies where the child's growth is divided over stages. Montessori developed the Sensitive Periods while Piaget produced the Cognitive Theory of Development. They both believed that in order to develop the child holistically, we must first respect the stage of development the child is in and duly respond to it.
Rudolph Steiner
Based on his deep understanding of the needs of the growing child what basic areas of the human child did Steiner purpose his education to develop?
A Waldorf education should develop in the child a clarity of thought and a balance of feelings that also produces someone who has a strong sense of self and the people around him. Steiner also strove to develop the child's conscience and initiative.
This is done in a school that stresses on the arts as it touches a part of the child in the most intimate sense for 'reverance awakens in the soul a sympathetic power which would otherwise remain concealed.'
There is a higher man in every child that only when he is awakened, will the child be able to attain supersensible knowledge. This knowledge is made clear to the child when he is given the opportunity to contemplate on his past experiences with the ideas from men who are already knowledgeable.
It is however not developed in a vacuum but is to be related to the world around him. In fact, Steiner believes that a child's aim in learning is not for himself but to see how he can be a productive contributor to the good of the earth.
Here we see a similarity to Montessori's cosmic education where the child is aware of his place in life. Being that he sees the reason for his existence in connection to the rest of life, work becomes a source of life to him.' For now he knows that his labor and his suffering are given and endured for the sake of a great, spiritual, cosmic whole. Not weariness, but strength to live springs from meditation.'
This becomes a spiritual motivation for the child to endeavour in his work as he has innate realisation that this work is essential for the inner man in him, or what Steiner called the work-a-day man, to be actualised so that he can perform his cosmic role.
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