Stuart Mason – Chemistry Kaiako, High School
The gift that a Montessori High School gives its rangatahi that other schools may never think important is the invitation into real adult work. Not simulations of adult life, but the invitation to work alongside adults on actual work that adults must perform.
“…there is an opportunity to learn both academically and through actual experience what are the elements of social life.” – From Childhood to Adolescence, p.68 (1948).
In Kawakawa Microeconomy, rangatahi run businesses. With necessary guidance, they do everything that any business partners would have to do. The urgency of making sure that everything is right before the market opens can be seen on students’ faces. The coffee must be perfect and the advertising board attractive. There must be no disappointed customers, and indeed really excellent cappuccinos are available on Friday mornings. While they have had guidance and instruction, no adult is telling them to make this effort. They do it because the meaning is clear and the real difference they are making is obvious. Failure is a real possibility. It is valorising work. And the same tuakana-teina relationships exist between older and younger students as exist in the business world where young entrepreneurs are mentored by successful business owners.
“…independence, in the case of the adolescents, has to be acquired on a different plane, for theirs is the economic independence in the field of society. Here, too, the principle of “Help me to do it alone!” ought to be applied.” – From Childhood to Adolescence, p.67 (1948).
An aspect of the gift of real adult work is that it comes with the trust that the adolescents are more than capable of taking it on. Rangatahi are spoken to as if they are adults, and so the trust includes friendliness with error, the understanding that making mistakes is a key to learning, building independence and developing resiliency. Recently the student council took over the organisation of a Wednesday afternoon and engaged the whole High School in a sports afternoon, an event that unified the community and demonstrated their considerable organisational capacity.
An often-made assumption is that because adolescents can appear at times to be rude or can seem a bit vague, that therefore they aren’t capable. But arguably their heads contain the most complex machine in the universe, one that is undergoing profound changes. While the changes of adolescence will eventually lead to better executive function, emotional regulation, faster processing and better abstract reasoning, early teens have the neuroplasticity for learning language and musical pitch, openness to new experiences, and greater capacity for linking ideas in novel and creative ways. Give real adult work to the young adults, stand alongside, then observe results that reassure us that our future will be in good hands.
“It is better to treat an adolescent as if he had greater value than he actually shows than as if he had less and let him feel that his merits and self-respect are disregarded.” – From Childhood to Adolescence, p.72 (1948).
