The story I often return to appears in chapter 21 of The Montessori Method. Montessori observes an 18-month-old in a park shoveling gravel into a little bucket. When it is time to leave, the child's nurse (read "nanny") attempts to enlist the baby's cooperation in abandoning his work to get in the carriage. When that fails, the nurse fills the pail and puts baby and pail and shovel in the carriage. Montessori describes what follows as ". . . loud cries of the child and . . . the expression of protest against violence and injustice which wrote itself on his little face" (Montessori, 1964, p. 355).
Montessori, rather than characterizing the child as spoiled or willful, cuts to the heart of his reaction:
What an accumulation of wrongs weighed down that nascent intelligence! The little boy did not wish to have the pail full of gravel; he wished to go through the motions necessary to fill it, thus satisfying a need of his vigorous organism. The child's unconscious aim was his own self-development; not the external fact of a pail full of little stones. (Montessori, 1964, p. 355)
- The freedom to repeat work
- The freedom to move around the classroom
- The freedom to choose which work they want to do