Striving for Obedience
Having reached the stage of self-discipline, the child moves on to the next stage, the essence of which is the desire for obedience, which arises naturally as a result of the development of the child's free will. This point of the Montessori philosophy is the most difficult for Americans, because will and obedience for them are two opposing tendencies: Obedience is usually achieved by suppressing the child's will by the teacher. Montessori, on the other hand, views willpower and obedience as two sides of the same process, in which obedience is the highest stage of development of the will: “… Will is the basis of development, and obedience is its highest stage, built on this foundation…. If a person’s soul does not possess this quality, if it has never been called to obey the law, then social life is impossible.” Here, of course, we do not mean blind, unconscious obedience, but conscious and free adherence to certain norms and rules of behavior. The natural development of the child’s will leads to the fact that compliance with rules and norms becomes his need and is freely recognized. According to Montessori's ideas, this direction of development of the child's will develops by itself according to natural laws. The main task of the educator is not to interfere or violate these laws in order to provide the child with complete freedom and autonomy at all stages of development.
These theoretical principles formed the basis of the system of didactic games developed by M. Montessori. In these games, as a rule, the pedagogical influence is transferred to the didactic material, and the teacher, so to speak, is removed from the free and independent activities of the children. Its task is to surround the child with useful and developmental material, to create a physical environment for the useful and free activity of children, that is, a developmental environment, and to provide the opportunity for the child to independently choose the necessary and useful activity. Such independent play required children to master practical skills that prepared them for life, etc. Materials for training various senses (vision, hearing, touch) and cognitive activity were also widely used. The tutor only observes the independent work of each child and notes his successes and failures.
The Montessori system of education using didactic materials became very popular at the beginning of the century and is still popular in many kindergartens in the United States and Europe. However, this system has been repeatedly criticized by educators. They noted that the removal of adults from participation in children's activities, embedded in the theoretical foundations of the Montessori system, led to monotonous, independent activities for children, which quickly became stereotypical, lost their attractiveness for them and turned into formal, mechanical exercises. The principle of individuality and freedom without the participation of adults turned into its opposite - children found themselves dependent on objective conditions created by the teacher, performing monotonous exercises that made no sense to them. Of course, we do not question the value and effectiveness of the didactic materials developed by Montessori, nor the success of many kindergartens that still operate according to her system. However, we believe that the effectiveness of this system is determined not only by the quality of didactic materials, but also by the qualifications and personal qualities of educators, which are not given due attention in the Montessori system.
Thus, a brief analysis of the two most basic systems of preschool education based on didactic play shows that providing complete freedom and independence in the use of didactic material can deprive the child of his own activity to the same extent as making him the recipient of pedagogical influences and instructions from an adult. The complete exclusion of an adult from the process of didactic play has the same negative consequences as his dominance and imposition of his influence. Therefore, it is extremely important to determine the specifics of adult participation in a didactic game and its main functions.
In modern pedagogical practice of preschool education, the role of an adult in a didactic game is usually extremely narrowed. It comes down to the fact that the teacher explains the game and directs its course, without participating in it himself. The criterion for a good didactic game is children's independence. However, the task of an adult is not only to introduce children to the rule of action and monitor its implementation, but also (and above all!) to make it fun and subjectively meaningful. And this is only possible with the direct participation of an adult in the game. We believe that the criterion for a good educational game should not be the child’s independence and activity, enthusiasm, which only an adult can provide in the first stages of getting to know the game. To do this, an adult should not be a leader, not a controller, but a direct participant in the game, his emotional enthusiasm.
The peculiarity of an adult’s participation in a game with a rule and the main condition for the developmental effect is the combination of two roles - the participant and the organizer of the game. In the role of a participant, the adult motivates the children’s play actions and sets the subjective meaning of the rules. In the role of an organizer, he introduces rules into the child’s life and helps to comply with the accepted rules of action. These roles are fundamentally different and even opposite: one involves emotional involvement in the game, agreement with the child’s position, immersion in the game situation, the other, on the contrary, involves distancing, analyzing and controlling the actions of children, taking the position of an elder, a teacher. But only a combination of these roles can ensure the development of will and volition in their unity. Together, they cannot provide a developmental effect - if an adult becomes a child in a game, he cannot teach the rules of the game and help fulfill them. If an adult remains a “teacher and controller,” the game loses its attractiveness, it becomes a formal, meaningless exercise, and the child’s actions in it cannot be motivated and active. Only in their totality can these roles have a truly developmental effect, which occurs not only in the game situation, but also beyond it.
Thus, the game becomes a means of developing the preschooler’s volition only when the adult is both a participant and the organizer of the game.
