Human Needs and Tendencies 6 - Above Instincts

           Human needs are those things required for survival in order to live as a human being and not as an animal. Human tendencies are activated by our needs in order to fulfill these human needs. These tendencies are traits which only human beings possess in order to achieve our higher calling as stewards of the earth and heirs of the kingdom of God.

            While animals are guided solely by their instincts, humans have a highly motivated innate power to adapt to their environment and cause their environment to adapt to themselves. The human has a much more complex nervous system, a larger brain, the ability to stand upright thereby freeing the hands, as well as the opposing thumb. The entire first plane of development, from conception to age six, is spent adapting oneself to one’s own society and culture, through the development of consciousness, reason, will power, imagination, and conscience.

            These human needs, which are essential to life itself, and tendencies, which are ordered to the fulfillment of needs, act as creative possibilities – as urges or actual inclinations to move or to act to satisfy basic human needs, both physical and spiritual. From conception to age six, the child’s mission is to construct himself into such a being that he belongs within his social group, making the environment around him part of himself. Beyond age six, the child is ready to  enter the world as the human tendencies direct him to expand his energies. 

Human Needs and Tendencies 5: Background and Definition

Background and Definition

            Dr. Montessori viewed the child as a spiritual being. “We have been mistaken in thinking that the natural education of children should be purely physical; the soul, too, has its nature, which it was intended to perfect in the spiritual life - the dominating power of human existence throughout all time. Our methods take into consideration the spontaneous psychic development of the child, and help us in ways that observation and experience have shown us to be wise.”[1] The purpose of true education is to help full development of each individual’s potential at all levels – to serve as an aid to life itself. “Our goal is not so much the imparting of knowledge as the unveiling and development of spiritual energy.”[2]

            Dr. Montessori was not seeking a method of education when she began her work with children; rather she slowly began to see universal human tendencies, more or less strongly at specific age-ranges. She discovered that “there is – so to speak – in every child a painstaking teacher, so skillful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world.”[3] This internal teacher utilizes universal needs and tendencies within each and every human being, throughout each person’s life, but seen most strongly at particular sensitive periods, or windows of opportunity.

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[1] Maria Montessori. The Montessori Method. 1964: Schocken. 374. emphasis mine

[2] Ibid., The Child in the Family.1970. 136.

[3] Ibid., The Absorbent Mind.1995. 6.

Human Needs and Tendencies 4 - Montessori Method

            Human behavior is not only instinctual but humans have potentialities which are only activated by truly living, by interacting with the environment, the people and things, around him. Adults can support this activation or be obstacles to its development. 

Education itself can be transformed only when it utilizes the natural order of the human tendencies, recognizing and respecting them. The Montessori Method is based on tendencies which have always existed; there is nothing new in these tendencies, though the listing and emphasis of them is innovative in the realm of education and of living life. These tendencies come from the spiritual part of the human life. 

“The small child is spiritual. He is the perpetrator of all that is spiritual. He is the link in the long chain of history that ensures human evolution (towards perfection).”[1]

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[1] Mario Montessori. (the pamphlet). 32. 

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Human Needs and Tendencies - 3: Role of the Adult and the Environment

Role of the Adult and the Environment

• The child depends on the adult to provide the environment and the opportunity to use these tendencies to their fullest in order to fulfill their needs. The adult should provide for each tendency as listed above, with the understanding that while each one is important throughout life, there are sensitive periods for each one in which needs and other tendencies are most fully strengthened and matured.

• The physical environment should be simple, beautiful and orderly, with plenty of room to move around, as well as an arrangement which requires both gross and fine motor movement; minimal changes only as needed and with the participation of all affected persons.

• A regular routine should be established with the children, again with the children participating in any necessary changes, i.e. with forewarning or other preparation. The child thrives on hearing real language, enunciated clearly, not baby talk or watered down sentences; he needs guidance and advice for specific social situations as they present themselves.

• The child needs to see excellent role models, who perhaps make mistakes but are quick to recognize them, ask forgiveness and improve themselves.

• The child needs opportunities for rest and reflection after moment of intense work, therefore simpler activities should always be present in the environment to which the child can return at any time.

• The adult should allow the child to participate in the world around him, opening and closing doors and drawers, helping to prepare or clean up for various family and social activities.

• The adult should move at the child’s pace; there should be substantial enough time to allow for plenty of repetition without unnecessary interruption; materials and activities which require exactness, including glass and other fragile items which require exactness of movement; materials at the child’s level to promote usage.

• Mistakes should be expected and almost encouraged, with materials, activities and words set up in a manner which allows for auto-correction.

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[1] Mario Montessori. (the pamphlet). 32. 

Human Needs and Tendencies 2 - Tendencies

            All humans have some typical characteristics in the human tendencies.  While individual outcomes can vary greatly, human tendencies are ordered to the goal of fulfilling human needs.

Characteristics of Tendencies

            Tendencies can be and are latent at varying periods of life, particularly from conception to shortly after birth. They can strengthen slowly or quickly for varying lengths of times, but are hereditary and in their essence unchanging. Human tendencies have functioned from the creation of man and still operate today. Tendencies develop from the human’s need to survive and adapt to his environment. They operate in mature individuals but are clearly present and recognized in the child, particularly during the period up to age six. Tendencies are a driving force behind work towards betterment of the individual person, his family and society and humankind as a whole. Every tendency supports the others as they are all inter-related.

Tendencies

• exploration
• orientation 
• order
• communication
• to know/to reason
• abstraction
• imagination
• the mathematical mind
• work
• repetition
• exactness
• activity
• manipulation 
• self-perfection

Each human need and tendency has historical implications, as well as cultural, modern, practical, educational, spiritual and physical implications. 

Human Needs and Tendencies 1 - Needs

Humans have two types of needs, physical and spiritual. Without one or the other, the person will have less life within him, sometimes to the point of death. 

In the Montessori environment, we refer to these needs as the Fundamental Needs of Human Beings or the Fundamental Needs of Mankind. 

The five (5) physical needs of human beings include 

• sufficient food
• appropriate clothing
• shelter
• defense
• transportation. 

The four (4) spiritual needs human beings include 

• love
• arts/music
• vanitas (to improve and embellish one’s environment)
• religion:  “To deny, a priori, the religious sentiment in man, and to deprive humanity of the education of this sentiment, is to commit a pedagogical error similar to that of denying, a priori, to the child, the love of learning for learning’s sake. This ignorant assumption led us to dominate the scholar, to subject him to a species of slavery, in order to render him apparently disciplined.”[1] 

Each physical or spiritual need has a basic component or aspect for each individual as well as a social aspect, acting upon the environment, including people, as well as bringing the environment within each person. Children without love of some degree will die, even if they have every one of their other needs fulfilled. 

We work with these needs and subsequent tendencies at all ages of development, but we also have impressionistic charts at the elementary level to bring the children's attentions to these areas and to their fulfillment throughout various cultures and history, including their own lives. 

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[1] Maria Montessori. The Montessori Method. 1964: Schocken. 371.

[2] Maria Montessori. The Secret of Childhood. 1966: Fides. 52.

Montessori Fundamental Needs of Human Beings