The Art of Self-Creation: Maria Montessori's Weaving Analogy Explained
Left: Maria Montessori (image credits: Getty)
Right: Weaving on a loom (image credits: Unsplash)
In her groundbreaking book, 'The Absorbent Mind,' where she presented new, compelling ideas about early childhood development, Maria Montessori likened childhood to weaving on a loom, emphasizing the progressive nature of character development and the interplay between individual growth, social interactions, and societal influences. While her metaphor may seem outdated in today's digital age, it remains relevant even seventy-five years later. Join me as I unravel the threads of Montessori's wisdom, exploring how each developmental stage contributes to the intricate tapestry of lifelong self-creation.
Blossoming buds
Montessori compares young children to the cotton plant in full bloom: all the raw material you need to create something beautiful is there, but you can’t really do anything with it until it gets refined. She argues that toddlers start preschool packed full of human potential ready to be unleashed. While they have an immense desire to explore and understand the world, they are emotionally unstable and their behavior is usually problematic.
“The first thing to be done with cotton is to purify it after picking, to free it from the black seeds attached to the flock… This corresponds to our work when we gather the children from their various homes and correct their defects, helping them to concentrate.”
Maria Montessori
Defects? Well, yes. Montessori argues that while starting preschool is naturally unsettling for young children, most of their behavioral problems (like biting, yelling, pushing, excessive shyness) are actually defects that disappear once they learn how to focus on meaningful work.
The process of refinement therefore begins when the teacher offers the child interesting tasks he can concentrate on. This could be as straightforward as enabling the child to water a plant by himself. Once the child engages in this purposeful activity, he becomes serenely happy, and his behavioral problems vanish.
Developing personality
“Now let us turn to the spinning. This corresponds to the formation of the personality, which is brought about by work and living in a group.”
Maria Montessori
In preschool, where the child is given the freedom and guidance to work and try new things, he acquires new skills and improves his ability to focus. Engaging with classmates, teachers, and the classroom itself—without unnecessary adult interference—the child feels a sense of belonging and gains increasing confidence in his ability to act independently. He asks to be shown how to put on his coat, offers his sneezing friend a tissue, and works for long periods of time with learning materials that challenge his growing mind.
In Montessori’s analogy, this child represents a well-spun thread. His personality formation, which happens during the early years of growth, “is the basis of everything.” She continues, “If the thread has been well spun and is strong, the cloth made from it will also be strong.” So, if conditions are optimal, the young child will start laying the foundations for a virtuous character in adulthood. He will become someone who is able to reason, empathize with others, and act ethically.
Interconnected lives
Before we can do any weaving, separate threads need to be stretched and placed on the frame to supply structure. Montessori compares these threads—known as the “warp”—to social harmony. (Note “social harmony” is distinct from “society” in Montessori’s analogy. It is our innate desire to socialize and get along with others, rather than rules and organizations put in place that govern human existence.)
Montessori argues social harmony is a part of human nature and absolutely fundamental to human growth: “without the warp the cloth could not be woven.” In other words, the child can only get so far in isolation because he needs other human beings around him to learn language and culture. The way we speak, dress, eat, and buy things, shapes the child from birth as he absorbs what the people around him say and do. It would be immensely challenging to weave a cloth if there were no structural threads to offer support, and in a similar way, the child who is deprived of company or has only bad role models will have a very difficult job constructing good character.
The role of society
Montessori goes on to argue that the combination of social harmony with rules and expectations results in human society, which gives us the “weft”, the thread that does the weaving.
“Now begins the real weaving, when the shuttle passes between the threads and joins them, fixing them solidly together by means of the weft. This stage corresponds to the organized society of man which is ruled by laws and controlled by governments which all obey.”
Maria Montessori
This is where everything comes together. You start with the cotton bud, which gets well-spun into a good quality thread, equating to the young child who has grown up in an optimal environment. You’ve also got a sturdy warp laid on the frame, which corresponds to social cohesion (our desire and ability to get along). Weaving in and out represents the effect society has on us: it pulls together man and group, and combines the aims of the individual with the aims of the whole.
This is the last part of the process. Society acts upon and shapes the piece of cloth by supplying organizations, rules, and laws, which the person grows up to be a part of and serve. Once the cloth is finished, you can take it off the frame and it will hold its shape. The finished cloth is the individual person who has an independent existence, but whose character came together because of all the influences upon him.
Laying strong foundations
Something Montessori highlights throughout her writing is the way in which each developmental stage builds upon the previous one. And because growth is successive, what happens during the previous phase defines what is possible in the next. This is a profound message for educators and families, emphasizing the importance of the first few years of life that lay the foundations for future development.
In an ideal situation, the child is born into an environment that supplies everything he needs to grow (e.g., the freedom to choose his own work) and he is given the stability and structure he requires from society (e.g., the opportunity to work on something without being interrupted). He becomes independent and self-assured because he has a chance to pursue his interests and build upon the skills he has acquired at school. His personality is pretty much set before he reaches adulthood—and as with the finished piece of cloth that holds its shape when taken off the frame—this young man will enter social situations and demonstrate unwavering goodness and determination.
If something goes wrong along the way, however—if, for example, the child doesn’t grow up in a harmonious home or school atmosphere—it makes it exceptionally more difficult for the child to build a strong character. If the child has no good role models around him, it’s as though you’ve mislaid the warp. You can potentially still create a strong piece of cloth, but what is more likely is that you’ll end up with something misshapen and weak, or with flaws that make it vulnerable to damage.
Room for continual growth
While Montessori's analogy may resonate with the challenges adults face in altering deeply ingrained habits or behaviors, it risks overlooking the potential for growth and transformation beyond childhood. Adults, though shaped by their past, are not entirely bound by it. We may struggle with weaknesses rooted in our early experiences, but the capacity for change—however difficult—remains.
As adults, we have a supreme level of agency over our lives that we didn’t have as children; and we have the perspective that years of growth has given us which we did not have in our early years. The child creates himself, yes, but we continue to create and recreate ourselves in adulthood. We learn new skills, and become better at the ones we already have; we can even address our character flaws, correct undesirable behaviors, and develop new habits and thought-patterns.
Montessori says that “a cloth made of weak threads is worthless.” But for the vast majority of people, if they can acknowledge their weaknesses and areas for improvement, I don’t think it’s productive or accurate to think of ourselves as 'finished.' We can see ourselves as works in progress if we want to. We can carry on embellishing and strengthening that cloth, even though it’s been taken off the frame.