Put more emphasis on Montessori pre-primary education for life skills

By Victoria Dawite

Growing up in rural Karatu, Arusha District, and attaining my pre-primary education 20 years ago, I still have fresh memories of writing on sand, playing and reciting the alphabet and numbers.

I was in a nursery class of about 50 pupils, many of whom quit education in a few years to join family ventures or tending animals – goats, sheep and cattle – or just to help in household chores like fetching drinkable water from far away.

Pre-primary education at that time lasted a year after which, as I turned 7, I started Standard One.

History is important because it gives background with which we judge the context of today.

While so much energy was invested in going to school, the output of school was considerably average because of the unavailability of sufficient resources, including human resources (teachers), limitations of personal teacher-pupil support and infrastructural challenges that made going to and from school and learning much more strenuous for children of pre-primary level.

The school provided us with dolls to play with. Our classroom was simple: without windows or a door, except for the one leading to the teacher’s office.

The teacher was loving and kind, but in her absence, a holiday was declared.

The school was about two kilometres from home, hence the need to walk through vast grazing areas and on deserted roads, which would be flooded when it rained.

There were reported cases of children from our village being attacked and killed by hyenas on their way to school. This is all to say that many of us come from humble beginnings.

Now that I am a Montessori teacher, I can posit that both the method and approach was to merely equip children the basics of writing, reading and counting for the whole year.

Where circumstances are similar, it is surely the same results. Lack of enough qualified pre-primary teachers means that some children pass through school without achieving anything significant.

Montessori education, however, comes as a practical game-changer in which the passions, insights and instincts of a child are taken into account for their growth.

Pupils are not simply spoon-fed knowledge by teachers, but taken along in ways that are easier to grasp, with an assurance of personal teacher-student encounter.

Maria Montessori, the founder of this system, said, “The goal of Montessori education should be to activate the child’s own natural desire to learn.” As such, it is education to prepare children for life and not merely for school or grades.

While life is lived more fully and independently in adulthood, the role of childhood in the formation of healthy adulthood cannot be over-emphasised.

Unless we are formed to be independent, curious and inventive as children, we will struggle so hard to manifest those traits as adults.

Many of us will resonate with the fact that our education is often dictatorial, where teachers say and children obey, memorize and give back. But with the trend of the world today, we need a system that caters for more than that.

Montessori education places the child at the centre of the learning process, while the teacher only facilitates.

This same priority is mentioned in the Tanzanian Curriculum and Syllabus for Pre-Primary Teacher Education (2023), Article 4.1: “This curriculum recommends the use of teaching and learning techniques that treat the child as the centre of learning and the teacher as the facilitator. The teacher will use techniques that engage the child into the teaching and learning process while considering their age, various needs and levels of understanding. … The curriculum emphasises that the teacher needs to be creative and innovative in using real objects available in their environment and he/she must create an environment for the child to use such tools during learning.”

While this is clearly indicated, pre-primary learning facilities in most schools across the country fall short. Nonetheless, it is the minimum and baseline standard to have for Montessori pre-primary education schools.

As we have big dreams with our children and young people, it is worth exploring the avenue that allows them to mature as creative, curious and environmentally-aware young people.

Montessori pre-primary education is affordable and it gives Tanzanians a chance to maximise the time of children in school to becoming more productive in real life skills and knowledge.

Victoria Dawite is a Montessori pre-primary teacher at Sauti ya Mtoto Montessori Day Care in Arusha, Tanzania. [email protected]