Sharon's ground rules

I'm going to open a can of worms right at the outset with this one.

I know many classes have lists of "ground rules" - some very short and some
very long. I'm going to suggest that we look at an alternative to rules.
(or, at least, if you are going to have rules, then arrive at them
differently).

Rules are the way one person (big, powerful) tells another person (small and
without power) how to behave. In democracies then the majority tell everyone
else what they should do (either directly or through elected
representatives). Where there are rules, the mandated behaviour is enforced
- usually through fear of punishment. When you have rules you need to
enforce them or they are meaningless.

Dr. Montessori's approach is fundamentally different on all levels. While
she clearly felt that dangerous or disruptive behaviour should be stopped,
this is not because someone is breaking some rule (and has either forgotten
or disregarded the rule) but because the child moves towards pro-social
behaviour through a process of development of the will (and observing worthy
models). If we assume that a child who has not yet developed his will cannot
obey (thus the rules, in a sense, are just setting him up for failure) and
that a child who has normalized will behave with care and consideration
regardless of the rules, the rules are in a sense "impediments" to a child's
development. [I am talking about the first plane of development here.] If
you have rules, everyone will focus on the rules - but if you focus on the
child, and leading the children toward concentration then everything else
follows and you don't need rules - caring, compassion, kindness cannot be
legislated.

On the second plane all of this becomes more conscious and deliberate and
there is a fascination with rules - the child becomes interested in the
details of how these things fit together and should be involved in the
process of making rules - and constantly changing them - to meet the
changing needs of the group. But in this case it is the dialogue and process
of understanding how humans inter-related that is more important than the
rules themselves.

Sharon Caldwell