With only a few months to go, we figured it was about time to check out the child development options around here. Montessori is well known though the implementations can be inconsistent and there isn’t one really close by. So we checked out a local place that is supposedly part of an international conglomerate with 600 or so centres.
I was a little disappointed. Turns out they’re charging ¥240 ($42) per 45 minute class… and you still have to be there. The walls are pretty colours and the leaders are very animated, though the children didn’t seem at all engaged. And I can’t quite call the staff ‘teachers’ since they’re mostly just English majors who did a 2-month in-house course.
Yet what are the options?
The sales guy suggested that Shanghainese parents don’t know how to play with their kids so they bring them there instead. Ouch!
Maybe I had an enlightened childhood but it just looked like the kids were on the set of a second-rate version of the television show, Play School.
Maybe we’ll be looking elsewhere for a place that has a stronger pedagogical foundation than “let the kids play and they’ll learn something”.
Still, what is important in child development?
There have been a few people who have really annoyed me.
Sometimes they’re stupid. Sometimes they’re continually asking for me to help them but failing to understand the concept of reciprocity. Sometimes they’re just obliviously obnoxious.
Yet I’m finding that these people disappear when I bother to really listen to them. Sometimes they disappear because they find other people to annoy and so stop bothering me. Sometimes they disappear when I confront the part of them which is annoying and I realize that it wasn’t them at all.
It’s like these people show up to teach us lessons. And, once the lesson is learned, those teachers move on.
Now I don’t know if that’s really true – that there’s some cosmic conspiracy to help us grow and transcend – but I know that I’m happier when I think like that… to honour these annoying, frustrating, pains-in-the-butt as my teachers.
Though maybe like that teacher that taught you a lot but whose class you were glad you had finished.
When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
It’s a simple enough concept – when you are ready to learn something new, someone will arrive to help take you to the next level.
When the teacher is ready, the students will appear.
Again, a fairly simple concept – an ironic reversal of the previous statement, reflecting how when you are ready to share knowledge, students will find their way to you.
However, a few days ago, Joanna Hsu was kind enough to share with me a new insight on this old and delightful notion. That not only are these phrases similar in structure, but that they are actually equivalent in meaning. As ‘real’ teachers are not just telling people what to think, but rather they are called to demonstrate that which they purport to know, both the role of teacher and student are learning processes; when a ‘teacher’ is ready to learn by demonstrating their skills to ’students’, individuals will present themselves to the ‘teacher’ to help them learn – to take them to the next level.
As we are perpetually and simultaneously both students and teachers, we can remember that when we come across an interesting or challenging student, we are being called to demonstrate.