Throughout time there is one thing that educators seek to establish within their students and that is the ability to concentrate. Until a child is able to concentrate, there will be little learning taking place.
So how do concentration events happen within childhood? How do we encourage these periods of intense attention? There is a wonderful passage in Montessori’s book Spontaneous Activity in Education that I believe answers these questions quite well. The passage tells of her observations of children and those of Ms. George, an American Montessori teacher, as they work with the children.
“..at a given moment a child begins to show an intense interest in one of the exercises…it maybe any object that fixes the attention of the child so deeply; the important factor is not the external object, but the internal action of the soul, responding to a stimulus, and arrested by it.” (p. 89)
From this observation we can conclude:
- The child needs an INTENSE INTEREST in the work.
- Importance is not placed on the object but by the ACTION that it causes within the child.
We need to remember that children are like all of us, individuals. Ms. George’s statement on observations makes this clear.
“They became quite individual…an object of absorbing interest to one child had not the slightest attraction for another; the children were strongly differentiated in the manifestations of attention.”
Each person is different in their interests and abilities. We need to watch/observe the children and see what they are truly interested in. When we do acknowledge what interests them, then we can assist them in developing concentration through presentations or variations with that particular work or area of study.
Want to develop the ability to concentrate within a child? Find out what they are interested in. Rather than forcing our interests upon the child or what we think they should find interesting….sit back and observe. What is the child drawn to? Then take that interest and expand on it. Show the child works and read books in that area and then watch the children as they experience periods of concentration. It is beautiful to watch a child so absorbed in what he is doing that he forgets all else, developing within himself an attention span and the ability to concentrate!
If you want to learn more then I suggest you read Spontaneous Activity in Education by Maria Montessori, pages 88 – 124. The observations of the collective classroom experiences with children are quite fascinating!