P. 62 says not to attempt to change too many things at a time, so I’ll try to stick with that approach. The whole chapter on habits has a lot of advice that’s very different from Montessori. Going by what EFL said in Educating the Child at Home, I always assumed that the two systems should be fairly compatible, though I could never figure out what that was supposed to look like. Now that I’m reading Bookless Lessons more carefully, though, they seem to disagree on many points. Trying to combine their ideas seems as confusing, and perhaps futile, as trying to combine Abbott and Trumbull. I wonder if she changed her views over the years, or perhaps didn’t know very much about Montessori in the beginning. (Few Americans did, in 1914.) Or maybe there’s something I’m missing that ties the two together. This is quite possible, as I’m realizing that I haven’t been reading many of these books as closely as I intended to. For example, just recently, I noticed that EFL never said it was helpful to have the Montessori apparatus - just the training. But if she didn’t recommend the special didactic materials, or the “free choice” aspect, or much of the lifestyle stuff, then what’s left? Small brooms? To be honest, that’s about what it’s come down to with us, these days. Volumes of pedagogy, reduced to a cleaning implement. 🧹 😄

Okay, here’s a bit of a cheat sheet I just made. Feel free to add to it. Ways to prevent bad behavior: Teaching the habit of obedience from toddlerhood with regular, small, easy tasks. Modeling good behavior. Keeping the child with you. Building a close relationship. Prayer for the child. Proper meals, snacks, and drinks of water. (Not free access, though.) A regular, balanced schedule of activities. Good sleep habits. Doing the most challenging things in the morning. Noticing when children are getting grumpy or overexcited, and switching to a pleasant or soothing activity. Ways to deal with misbehavior without confronting it directly (if that’s what you consider best in the circumstances): “Not noticing” some minor infractions at times. Treating the child as if he were tired or ill. (Montessori often took this approach. She assumed that a naughty child must be ill, and set him up with some toys in a spot that was comfortable but separate from the rest of the class. The child was usually back to normal quickly. But she had the power of peer pressure to work with.)

mms, thank you for bringing up the door example! I was also thinking about it, but had forgotten about your post and couldn’t remember the source. I did remember that the book in question had been recommended by Elisabeth Elliot, and thought it might be John S. C. Abbott’s The Mother at Home. On re-reading that one, though, I found that he said compulsion was sometimes necessary. Abbott was writing in 1833 and Trumbull in 1890, which is likely relevant. Mainstream Protestant attitudes toward child discipline grew more liberal during the latter part of the 19th century (in England as well as the US, as Charlotte Mason noted). Here’s an article from 1869 whose author says the tide is turning against all compulsion. He gives a negative description of one of Abbott’s anecdotes, or rather his misrepresentation of the anecdote. If you’re interested, you can read the real version in chapter 3 at the link above. Trumbull also seems to see children as tiny adults, and spends a lot of time emphasizing that the adult should try to treat the child the way God treats the adult, which seems odd to me. Back when I was starting out, I got hold of all the books Elisabeth Elliott recommended and read them carefully. No wonder I was so confused when it came time to figure out what to do in practice! I wish she’d been clear on the fact that they sometimes disagreed with one another, even on matters of principle.

Reading aloud is real physical exercise. Some old-time writers gave this as a reason for keeping it in the school curriculum. I’m with you on finding it a bit of a chore. It’s something I only ever do for short periods, with books I really like, when I’m not already tired. Usually we have some sort of special ritual around it, e.g. while eating lunch, or at bedtime when daddy’s away. Even with all that, I rarely manage to finish a longer book before something disrupts the routine and we just don’t get back to it (despite the children asking). Wow, I feel like a worm now! Will try to restart one of their favorites this week. I’m pretty sure almost everyone in the country today is suffering from what EFL calls “that obnoxious American malady, ‘nerves.’” (p. 41). Harried housewives, bookish types, and idealistic people with “over-lofty purposes” are among the worst affected, according to old medical books on the subject. Those doctors would agree with what EFL says about the preventive value of self-control and regular habits. But they also say that we should avoid all sorts of things that seem almost unavoidable today. Some say that the epidemic of “nerves” started with the faster pace of American life in the 1860s. Maybe this would include artificial lighting, express trains, and telegraphy influencing newspaper contents? But I’ve started trying to put some of their advice into practice anyway, with myself and my older children. I’m going to quote this whole passage from EFL, which mms referred to, because it’s quite helpful. “Punishment, however, is only one phase of child management. It will be readily seen how much the physical well-being of a young child has to do with its disposition and behavior. Health and bodily comfort, good physical habits, exercise, food, drink, properly fitting garments, occupation— any one of these will make the difference between a good and a “bad” child. When baby gets tired, hungry, thirsty, or sleepy, it gets “cross” and naughty, and it is upset by unusual excitement or too much attention. Do not let a young child go too long without food, for even with a grown person that weak feeling in the stomach loosens self-control. If breakfast is early and dinner at noon, there should be a snack between ten and eleven, otherwise the child becomes ravenous and naturally naughty. One slice of bread and butter, an apple, or a glass of milk, will do. Let there be no sweets, for too much sugar is one of the deadly destroyers of a child's nerves and discipline. In the afternoon, a nap almost takes the place of a lunch. Do your teaching and your disciplining in the morning, when the child is most impressionable, rather than at the wane of day. A little child works hard, harder than we. He gets charged wtih a skinful of poisons, his nerves are tingling, and towards nightfall he is irritable and primed for trouble. I have known mothers who would start late in the afternoon to wrangle with a child and keep it up until both were exhausted. If ever naughtiness or fretfulness is to be overlooked, it should be late in the day, but this overlooking must not be done if the child is conscious of it. Change the whole milieu by a little fun, a game, a story, a drink of water (be sure the children get water often), a little petting and cuddling, or even by a tepid bath and by calling on the sandman for help. But in the morning, do not stand any nonsense.” (pp. 51-3)

Also wanted to add that my older children have seemed quite diligent and well-behaved at age 10-12, but this declined as they got further into adolescence. This is “normal” according to many fellow homeschool mothers, but not according to EFL, Calderwood, and Robinson, who say that the right kind of early obedience will go a long way toward preventing that. So I’m reading Dupanloup, and re-reading EFL, with this in mind. I’m sure strong relationships are important, but I know parents IRL who’ve done much more AP and face-to-face schooling than we have, and many of them have had similar problems. As for Bonnie Landry, she’s a bit vague on the subject of teenagers; her main yardstick for success seems to be how much they love babies. And gummy bears come up yet again. Is this what we’re reduced to - placating ourselves and our children with candy? I’m not bashing Landry here, just asking about our society. I think it’s “The Renegade Home” (1940) that has the anecdote about the woman who asked EFL to help manage her cigarette habit. Now that I think about it, many of the homeschool families we know who are very socially active and seem to be doing well overall — faith, family relationships, respectful behavior, academics — also seem to eat a lot of sweets or junk food treats. The ones who don’t tend to be more subdued. I even know a family who are usually into healthy eating, but switched to fast food for a time out of necessity, and they said that everyone was happier then. Do sugar and flavor enhancers have a role as self-medication, or as fuel for the modern world? This is a depressing thought. I’m currently reading Dupanloup’s chapter on sensuality, which he calls the second great source of defects (after pride). The entire physical side of discipline (including self-discipline) is clearly very important, but I don’t understand it much at all. I just keep getting this feeling that we’re well on the way toward becoming what McLuhan called “discarnate Man.” Even the current trend for very soft, stretchy, lightweight clothing seems to be part of it. Old books recommended against such fabrics, calling them “enervating,” but now they’re almost the only sort of clothes available. It’s as if people don’t want to feel any discomfort, or even any reminders that their bodies exist at all.

Isn’t Calderwood’s whole system based on scaffolding? The parent works directly with the child for the first several years, giving whatever help is needed. After that, she stays involved mostly by checking in and giving enthusiastic feedback. This would be a problem for me, as while I enjoy working with my children, I’m not usually very enthusiastic in my reactions. Nor am I a high energy person in general. (When she says of herself and her husband, “We’re molding, shaping, disciplining, loving, praying, laughing, and cheering for them all along the way,” I get tired just reading that, TBH. 😉 ) Another thing I noticed is that her whole family is very involved in activities such as music and athletics. This provides some balance to their lives, and likely also fosters connections among family members. I’m reminded of the way the Robinson curriculum doesn’t have much parental interaction, but the Robinson family seems to have had quite a bit, including farm and lab chores and a lot of mealtime conversation (often with visiting scientists, etc.). This is something I appreciate about EFL: her system isn’t modeled on the experience of a single family, with its own peculiarities that might not apply in our situation. Instead, it’s based on her interactions with hundreds or thousands of families in various walks of life. The down side, of course - and it’s kind of a big one! - is that all of those families were living a century ago. Hmm, and perhaps also that the version we have effectively ends at age 8 or so. LOL

I think our expectations for the children can be higher than for ourselves in some ways, as it’s much harder for adults to change old habits than it is for children to form new ones. I see this as the children get older, and are more reasoning and less purely imitative. They have the potential to achieve a lot even in areas where we’re still struggling. We just have to have humility, kindness, and discretion in talking to them about these things. That isn’t much help with the tiny ones, though. Have we talked about “The Self-Propelled Advantage?” It’s a fairly recent homeschooling book that has some similarities to EFL, but in a completely different way from Bonnie Landry. It’s based on standard “book lessons,” but the author is very big on self-directed learning, and she emphasizes the importance of first-time obedience as a foundation. Obedience is presented as a pathway to self-mastery, and a way to establish trust, both of which are essential for the sort of independent homeschooling she recommends. I looked through the book a few years ago, but didn’t take much away from it besides the use of planners with checkboxes (which have become central to our homeschool). In particular, I skipped over most of the discipline part, because she insists that both parents have to work together to fix problems, and that wasn’t really happening here for various reasons. Just now, though, I was searching for advice on obedience, and her book came up again. The fact that she agrees so closely with EFL is compelling me to take this seriously. Maybe my high schoolers’ never-quite-solid obedience is the foundational reason why they still require a lot of hand-holding, of the sort that the “Self-Propelled” woman stops giving in fourth grade. Maybe my own never-quite-solid obedience was the cause of a lot of my difficulties in late high school and college, when schoolwork got harder and sometimes less interesting. Okay, she is a bit like Bonnie Landry, in that she recommends finishing up the day’s schoolwork (for the younger child) with a dish of ice cream or some candy. This “give them candy” thing seems to be the #1 difference between EFL and more recent homeschool writers with similar advice. Even Ruth Beechick did it. 😄

This is from p. 37: “Much of the trouble and worry over children is really due to faulty domestic arrangements. Now regularity is the keynote of success, therefore be methodical. Systematize your household plans. Draw up a regular daily schedule, and not only keep to it but make your children do so as well, so that all day long they know ‘what comes next,’ whether mealtime, bedtime, playtime, playing with baby, or helping mother in some other way. This does away with a certain amount of questioning and eventual protesting, which are excusable in a child if regularity is not observed.” Do the rest of you feel you’re doing well with this? Even after many years of trying, our household still isn’t very methodical about anything, except maybe making breakfast (probably because we’re too sleepy and hungry to get distracted), and then starting school right afterward. When my children were younger, I tried books such as Mother’s Rule of Life and MOTH, but couldn’t stick with them even for a few days. Now I can’t even imagine creating such a comprehensive schedule, let alone implementing it. The few school routines we have tend to be loose, and easily thrown off by some unusual circumstance, of which we seem to have many. Maybe, instead of trying to schedule the whole day at once, I should start with just a few more things? That would be a *methodical* way of doing this.

Trying to picture EFL in a van full of children. 😄 Here are a few items that come to mind: Some new literature to read aloud at bedtime (maybe related to the trip) Probably some audiobooks and recorded music Sketchbooks and drawing implements One or two small, lightweight balls (ball pit or ping-pong type), in case you’re stuck indoors We’d also likely bring a bunch of Wikki Stix, as they’re compact, versatile, and fairly tidy, though IDK if EFL would agree. Plain waxed candle wick might work the same way; I assume that’s what inspired the commercial product. And some pony beads, or buttons with large holes, to use with them.

That sounds great! My current list also includes a one-hole punch, string, metal cans without sharp edges, thin scrap wood, a hammer, and small nails or tacks (as we don’t currently have someone who’s likely to try to eat them). Plastic recycling is something I’m undecided on, partly because I find it unaesthetic, and partly because the crafting process tends to make it even less recyclable than it already is. I might just let them have a few types. I’m also unsure about tape. In the olden days of my childhood, we only had a few kinds of tape, and my parents treated most of it like a precious resource, to be brought out when nothing else would do the job. The one exception was the beige masking tape, which had limited sticking power and wasn’t a thing of beauty. As a result, we became fairly skilled in using staples and glue. (Even white glue was somewhat of a luxury. Our regular school glue was a brownish mucilage. Or, in kindergarten, flour-based wallpaper paste. I can still remember the smell. 😁) In my home now, when the children have free access to scotch tape or duct tape, they tend to use it as the default way of joining things together. They tend to use too much of it, often in applications where it doesn’t work well anyway. They’re often reluctant to try using other fasteners, even when I suggest them. I’m going to have to think this over some more. Not for too long, because I tend to get bogged down in details. But I have this feeling that some craft materials have become less educative and more elevator-ish, and I’m not sure what (if anything) to do about it.

BTW, don’t worry if you’re not caught up yet. I think we’re going to need to spend a bit longer on chapter 4. It’s too important to rush through. Meanwhile, I have a pair of questions for you (not really related to the chapter, sorry). 1) If you had a room (not very big) to set up as an EFL-ish play and craft area for under-7s, what would you put in it? 2) If these little ones would sometimes be supervised by other people who knew nothing of EFL, what special instructions, if any, would you give to them?

Military discipline has a lot to do with group cohesion, and it makes use of many arbitrary rules and practices to foster that cohesion. Marching drill is the best known of these. Basically, the individual is subordinating his will not so much to a particular human authority, as to the military group as a whole. The commanding officers are there to facilitate that, and are even somewhat interchangeable. We can see a watered down, informal version of this sort of discipline in sports, traditional summer camps, and college freshman orientation. Military drill itself was once part of the regular curriculum in public schools in the US and elsewhere, and some writers on education were enthusiastic in their use of military analogies. I think this peaked around 1900-1910 (which also happens to be the time frame in which CM wrote School Education). There was also something called a drill that looks more like an elaborately choreographed stage show, also done by school children. Now we’re just left with vestiges such as “addition drills” and “fire drills,” which also derive from the military use of the word. Another major difference between regular and military discipline is that the military deliberately uses harsh methods and words, especially with new recruits, causing strong emotions which have to be controlled. They take away the person’s access to necessities (food, sleep, etc.) and dictate his or her actions for all the hours of the day. I guess it’s a sort of infantilization, so they can make a new start? Again, there’s a parallel with the rougher sorts of orientation events. I think these might have been the sorts of things EFL was thinking of, when she said that military discipline should play no part in the parent’s approach.

P. 37 - We should be disciplining babies, and helping them to develop self-control, even before they can speak. If we forget the broader meaning of “discipline,” this will immediately bring to mind all sorts of dire images (due especially to certain child-training manuals from several years ago), but I think the basic issue here is just the formation of regular habits. I found some magazines from the late 1800s that used the word “discipline” to describe getting the baby (past newborn age) on some sort of a feeding and sleeping routine. This is controversial in itself, in some circles, but it was typical advice from 19th century doctors and clergy, including those in places where bottle-feeding wasn’t promoted. They also tended to advise weaning from the breast onto carefully selected table foods around one year of age, completing the switch in a fairly short time frame, rather than doing the sort of long-term mixed feeding that’s the norm these days. Montessori’s advice about teaching babies to use a cup was based on this assumption, for instance. Once a very young toddler was drinking from a cup, he or she would no longer nurse, and would thus be more independent. Of course, a follower of AP would likely see this independence as a bad thing. Especially after reading more of Bonnie Landry’s writings, I’ve been wondering if the groups that traditionally practice something like AP also tend to have the sort of non-hierarchical social dynamic that Rogoff describes. And, on a different note, if their usual daily tasks require a different sort of attention from ours. There certainly seems to be some sort of package deal going on.

Okay, time to enter chapter 4... on the always challenging, and often confusing, subject of “Discipline.” P. 35 - We need to understand that she’s referring to the traditional, humane meaning of discipline. This is very important. Once we’ve grasped the meaning of the term ourselves, it still tends to pose a difficulty in communicating with other people. Even my older family members tend to equate it with either punishment or military discipline. When I was searching for advice on teaching docility, one of the texts that came up was Charlotte Mason’s School Education. She writes at length on the importance of “mechanical obedience” in the younger child, and even uses an example of a retired soldier who still snaps to attention. This was a surprise; given her online reputation, one would expect her to speak even more humanely than EFL, not less. But here we have a passage that doesn’t seem to fit with all the discussions of picture books and tea parties, or even with the idea of children being “born persons,” at least as that’s often interpreted. Thinking back to when I was starting out, Elizabeth Foss did write an article saying that prompt obedience was important, but I can’t remember anyone on CM-inspired blogs or forums addressing the nuts and bolts of achieving this. Maybe everyone else found it too easy and obvious to warrant talking about? 😄 Apparently not, since I just came across an updated version of the article in answer to requests for more concrete advice. But this one also leaves me with far more questions than answers. Most significantly, it says nothing about how to teach the habit of prompt obedience to children too young to be reasoned with, as both CM and EFL considered essential. Does anyone know of a source that gives a detailed description of CM’s own advice on disciplining young children, so I can compare it with EFL’s? I don’t have the time to tackle more of CM’s lengthy prose at the moment, especially as the passages on discipline are spread across several books.

You’re not the only one! I did that recently (with a very weak excuse). I just didn’t have the courage to tell you guys. ☺️ TBH, gardening used to be relaxing, but since I’ve gone back to reading EFL, it’s become kind of emotionally fraught. Everything wrong with the plants reminds me of some mistake I’ve been making with one or more children. “Reluctance to prune, leading to sprawl” is the latest one. 😉

Chapters 4 and 5 are both about discipline, and they’re fairly long, so I think it would be best for us to take the whole week to discuss them. Chapter 4 could be the focus on Monday through Wednesday, and chapter 5 on Thursday through Sunday. Again, feel free to jump in with your thoughts or questions. Also, before I forget, I recently came across a reference to the 19th century French psychologist Ribot, who distinguished between two types of attention: 1) involuntary (or natural) attention, which happens effortlessly and is controlled by the emotions, and 2) voluntary (or artificial) attention, which requires the use of the will, is a product of education, and is a requirement for civilization. It struck me that “voluntary attention” is very close to what EFL calls “the work habit.” Many writers in the early 20th century made use of Ribot’s classification, including Vygotsky. I would love to learn more about his angle (if only the book in question weren’t $150). The social aspect of learning also reminds me of something Robinson said: that it was extremely helpful to have the parent sitting and doing desk work, in the same room, while the children were doing their schoolwork. Here’s a link to the English translation of Ribot’s Psychology of Attention (1890). Oh, and I just learned that some current researchers believe that the development of attention is the controlling factor for the development of executive function. And the time frame they’ve observed lines right up with what EFL is saying. Very interesting!

LostCove, best wishes as you prepare for your upcoming adventure! That passage from p. 17 reminds me of St. Jean Baptiste de La Salle, who had such a hard time keeping elementary teachers that he had to make them promise not to study Latin and Greek. In his experience, once a teacher had tasted the delights of higher learning, he was rarely willing to keep teaching the little ones. (Of course, this was also partly due to the desire for prestige.) Perhaps we could draw inspiration from LaSallian saints such as Benildus Romancon, who sounds as though he could have achieved eminence in his studies, but who in fact attained sanctity through what Pius XII described as "the terrible daily grind” of teaching and helping beginners of all ages.

p. 24 - Says that on average, children should start reading between 7 and 10, and that asking “why” questions is a sign of readiness. p. 27 - I have to laugh when she says, “few mothers would confess their inability to learn how to care for and to train the babe.” Now we have mini publishing empires, classes and support groups, all on the subject of infant care. I’m not sure most mothers have felt confident in their “good sense” for a couple of generations, at least. p. 30 - I really like the part where she recommends that the mother look to nature as a guide. Somehow her analogies to plants are more relatable and insightful than all those recent exhortations (e.g., from certain of the publishing empires) to model ourselves on marsupials. This also reminds me to keep faithfully and prayerfully obtaining the correct fertilizer for my alfalfa. 😁 Maybe I’ll print pictures of all these plants and have the children color them, then post them as reminders.

So, on to chapter 3, “Psychology and Pedagogy.” Things got a little busy here, and I haven’t finished reading it, but feel free to post on any part that interests you. (I’m trying not to get discouraged by her list of five important outcomes of home education, on p. 22. My not-very-EFL homeschool only seems to have reliably achieved two of them: reverence and vocabulary. Observation, prompt obedience, and the work habit are still very patchy.)

I’m having trouble coming up with much to say about the second chapter. She was firmly on the side of education (vs. heredity), especially for moral development. This was at a time when eugenics was on the upswing, and everyone would have been familiar with the stories of “degenerate families” such as the Jukes and Kallikaks. Will await others’ responses. 🙂

A few more passages that stand out to me: “One of the most pernicious blunders of modern education is putting a book into the child's hands before he is ready for the lessons it contains.” “Unfortunately, the term education is confused with schooling, instruction, and book knowledge, and is used more often in a wrong than in the right sense, a confusion for which schoolmen are probably chiefly to blame.” On the psychology of her day: “Its strange, wild theories seem to have originated from the process of imagining what children like best to do and writing these things out, averring them to be the science of exactly what ought to be done.” “The home is the only institution that is in itself strictly an educational institution. The church and the school can each help, but the home and the home only can educate.” “The mother's chief strength lies in her moral nature. Her very presence and example must exercise a constantly stimulating and elevating influence. Such a mother, even if no great aid to her children in the acquisition of school subjects, is the ideal mother.” “Alfalfa is a difficult crop to establish, as it needs a special kind of fertilizer to enable the roots to draw their nourishment from the ground and air, but once it gets a start and finds itself at home in the new soil, it thrives and becomes not only a most valuable and abundant crop but also a permanent one, and moreover the soil becomes fourfold richer for its having grown therein. What this fertilizing principle does to alfalfa, faith and courage do for the mother.” Please feel free to add your own thoughts, on these or any other parts of the chapter.

At the beginning of chapter one, EFL emphasizes that for all families, rich and poor, the home has the potential to be the “greatest educational institution in the world” for the child. Yesterday, I watched some YouTube videos of North American and European homes in the first part of the 20th century. The gap between rich and poor, in terms of material lifestyle, looked much greater than it does today. Many things that were once luxuries are now the norm (home appliances, electricity, plumbing). Still, everyone’s home chores looked a lot more “Montessori” than they do now. More direct interaction with, say, water and dirt, and less interaction with the strictures of machines. More sewing, which meant more fabric scraps, buttons, etc. Perhaps because I started out with my little ones by studying classroom-oriented advice (Montessori and RIE), I think I’ve focused too much on having various resources available, and not enough on making sure they’re visible and used in our daily lives. In other words, the advice was oriented toward making the home into a better educational institution by adding desirable things and practices (and, to some extent, removing undesirable ones), rather than by recognizing and using the educational potential that existed already. Will have to think about how best to achieve the latter.

I think three chapters a week would be a reasonable pace, at least to start. (Some of the later chapters are longer.) So this week would go: Monday-Tuesday: Chapter 1, “The Teacher-Mother’s Opportunity” Wednesday-Thursday: Chapter 2, “Education or Heredity” Friday-Sunday: Chapter 3, “Psychology and Pedagogy” Does that sound okay? We could always go back and discuss things from earlier in the book, as it all fits together.

For example, this AMS “Montessori at Home” page says: “Based on your observations, make changes to the environment to ensure your child’s success, interest, and independence. For older children, work together and include them in the decision-making process. Give choices, but be sure that you are comfortable with all of the available options, so you support the child no matter what choice is made.” Is it just me, or is this not very helpful in most aspects of family life? I feel as if Montessori herself would have had some more practical advice. Or, failing that, at least admitted that she didn’t know. She often expressed respect for mothers in traditional societies, who I’m pretty sure were not putting a lot of effort into coming up with lists of choices.

Regarding Montessori, I still don’t know what her principles look like when applied to raising one’s own children. (Beyond the obvious stuff, of course, such as keeping things they need within reach.) From what I’ve seen of the homes of Montessorians - including some very dedicated, professional ones - while they were all different from the mainstream, they were also very different from one another, and all seemed to go against the method in some central way or other. More lax, more restrictive, too much clutter, hardly any resources available to the children, etc. It’s as if they just melded some bits of it with whatever they were going to do anyway. So maybe they don’t know, either. The M. classroom environment is artificial, in the sense that it has a large group of peer models, carefully chosen activities with built-in “control of error,” precisely choreographed demonstrations (repeated as needed), and not much practical necessity for the child to do anything in particular. All of these increase the likelihood that the child will spontaneously work toward doing things “exactly so,” at least in the specific activities that he or she chooses. Turning to the home: 1) Lack of peer models means that the parent is more important as a model. Montessori (unlike CM) wrote positively about the child being motivated by devotion to the adult, so this seems workable in principle. It can be very hard in practice, though. I often feel far too wilted to be an enticing “carrot.” 😁 2) Control of error. There are results that might look okay to the child, but that the adult knows are not acceptable and need to be corrected somehow. I see this more and more as my children get older. I even followed Amy Chua’s example recently, and told a couple of my children (not tiny ones) to redo birthday cards they’d made. I don’t know if there is a more enlightened way of doing this. 3) Precise, repeated demonstrations. Again, easy in principle, though challenging in practice. 4) Free choice of activities within a given variety, such that the child can work on whatever he or she is drawn to. This is not part of EFL’s method for chores, or really for academics either. She does give them plenty of free time, and some scope for following their interests (e.g. with literature), but certain things just have to get done, and without self-motivation, I’m not sure we can rely on the child’s innate pursuit of excellence. Something I’ve been thinking about is that for elementary age and up, Montessori starts to incorporate standards from the outside world. State requirements for education might be posted on the wall, or the middle school children might run a business that serves the public. This provides real-world expectations and limits that are not inherent to the M. method, and will vary from place to place. In a more extreme way, radical unschoolers tend to rely on outside institutions to eventually provide standards that the parents do not. With old-style home education, though, the family itself is the main institution, and children interact with the expectations of the “grown-up world” from day one. I’m not sure what this tells us, but it seems relevant.