The Connection Between “Cosmic Education” and the Imagination
By Kim Yul
If you have observed a Montessori classroom before, you will know that students are working a lot with the scientific subject. Science is the most valuable and practical subject to enhance students’ imagination, and they enjoy it very well. Children take a deep interest in dinosaurs and space very naturally, and during that moment, their imaginations develop explosively. Dr. Maria Montessori recognized that all of science and history tell portions of the same story: the continuing creation of the universe. This “Cosmic Education” tells that story. In a uniquely Montessorian way, the experience offers children a context for, and reveals connections between, such subjects as astronomy, chemistry, geography, history, and biology, to name a few. “Learning” the academic subject matter, however, is secondary to a loftier educational goal.
Cosmic Education is the foundation of the Montessori curriculum at the elementary level. It is designed for the child in the second plane of development, who is beginning to ask questions like “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” While traditional education starts with the individual and broadens to the neighborhood, city, and state, cosmic education begins with the big picture and narrows from the universe to the solar system, and then to Earth. Dr. Montessori believed that by presenting the child with the “big picture,” children have a context with which to understand themselves and all subsequent learning.
Cosmic Education is not itself “the curriculum” or a set of facts, but rather an undifferentiated way of presenting stories that open lines of inquiry that roughly correspond to traditional elementary academic subjects. Cosmic Education launches youngsters into society practiced in thinking about who they are as individuals, as part of the human species, as citizens of a nation, as members of a planetary ecology, and so on. Ultimately, it introduces the possibility that humanity might have a “cosmic” task, a meaningful purpose beyond consumption and procreation.
Dr. Montessori recognized four major stages or planes of development. From about age six to twelve, children are moving through the second plane. Some key characteristics of these children include a turning outward toward more comprehensive social experiences, a movement from the material level to the abstract, and a heightened engagement in moral development. Cosmic Education satisfies children’s developing awareness of the larger community, offering them all human history at a time in their development when they are preoccupied with “going out” to meet the world. Many psychologists agree that children reach a new level of moral development around the age of six or seven. During the second plane of development, the child becomes keenly concerned with justice, fairness, right and wrong – signs that the conscience is beginning to develop. In the Montessori classroom, Cosmic Education is there at this critical point to guide the child, from the individual level all the way to the cosmos.
The Author
Kim Yul is originally from Gwangju and has taught in Cincinnati, Ohio, for many years. He is a Montessori elementary school teacher who believes education can change the world.