The Nature and Role of Knowledge

At the core of our educational mission are a handful of very deep, philosophical ideas. One such idea is agency—the recognition that an individual has fundamental control over the choices and actions that make her who she is. Another is work—the recognition that purposeful, effortful activity is at the heart of a healthy development and a good life.

A third idea that is at the core of our approach is knowledge.

Knowledge is the hardest to characterize in a simple way. Historically, knowledge has been treated as synonymous with “content”. Whether the emphasis has been on memorizing facts in the name of academics, or learning a prescribed body of material such as a cultural canon in the name of tradition, or even on developing content-oriented skills such as literacy, the underlying view has been that “knowledge-centered” means being centered on acquiring a set of content.  

Our understanding of knowledge is very different.

In our view, knowledge is a lens on the world. Rather than a set of content “in your head”, it is a way of looking at the world. It is an enrichment and expansion of what happens when we see the world directly, and, in a very fundamental way, should be thought of as sort of an expansive form of “seeing”.

Think of what happens when you look through a lens at the world. You are still seeing the world, but you’re seeing it through a powerful tool that allows you to notice more. Learning is the equivalent of building and using conceptual lenses—you are still looking at the world of experience, but the knowledge you gain allows you to see it from a wider, more relational, more rich perspective.  

The gift that a Montessori education offers is the ability to build and use knowledge-as-a-lens. Not facts, though children learn many facts as part of it, and not skills or methods, though children acquire skills and methods as part of it. It’s a lifelong capacity to build inner lenses that allow for abstract, ever-growing consciousness of the deep structure of the world.

That is why I characterize Montessori as a multiplier. The environment and protocols of a Montessori classroom are designed to multiply the child’s capacity to know, across her entire lifetime.

I do not think it is possible to understand the power of the Montessori pedagogy without appreciating this distinctive view of the nature and role of knowledge in human life.  

If you’re interested in learning more, here’s a talk I gave a few years ago on this theme: The Montessori Multiplier.