Imagination and the Arts

One of the core purposes of the Montessori elementary education is to develop the child’s imagination through intelligence.  In many of her works, Maria Montessori argues that the child has infinite intelligence and boundless imagination and it is our task as educators to offer learning opportunities that take the child always beyond that which he alone can see.  

Imagination, according to Montessori, is the power to extrapolate reality and envision oneself in a place or situation beyond the known and into realms that may exist only as ideas in one’s mind.  Such ability to transport oneself is, however, firmly anchored into reality by sensorial experiences that child has been immersed into.  It is these experiences that help the child develop an internal filing system, understandings and views on which to base new ways of thinking, new places to explore, new ways of doing and seeing things.  This is imagination.

Modern schools of thought have discovered that imagination and creativity are very closely linked.  According to one of the most prominent voices in education today, Sir Ken Robinson, creativity is defined as innovating ways of solving problems.  However, without imagination there can be little creativity and creativity is the intrinsic and tireless search for new understandings, new ways of thinking. Some may argue that the Montessori curriculum provides little opportunities for creativity. At first glance, the Montessori curriculum does not seem to encourage creativity, a view which is further supported by the absence of an art curriculum.  On further inspection of the curriculum, progressions and her own writings, we come to understand that artistic expression of the child is an important consideration in her work.

Maria Montessori has some very strong and unfavourable terms to describe the artwork of young children.  She calls free drawings a ‘hideous’ product of a ‘chaotic’ mind and ‘errors’ of the soul. She explains that a young child who has not yet trained his mind to appreciate the beauty of the world around him, cannot be creatively artistic.  It is further explained that alongside the mind, the hand must also achieve a high level of control and precision before a child can engage in free drawing. The child must also have had some training in the use of tools and techniques such as watercolour and colour mixing.  Only then is he capable of free drawing and self-expression in the ways that we understand artistic creativity.  

When examining the curriculum, we can clearly see that the geometry curriculum supports the development of subtle understanding of shapes, their relationship and interrelatedness.  Designs with metal insets creates the opportunity for the child to achieve precision and strength in the hand. Work in botany, further promotes the appreciation of natural beauty and desire to replicate it.

In the Montessori classroom, artistic expression is the result of a process the child has undergone from the preparation of the mind and extending the imagination to the training of the hand as well as concentration and focus. As with everything else, artistic expression begins with copying or replicating images that the child experiences through his senses and develops an appreciation for, a reverence.  Only then, can he engage in free artistic expression because, according to Montessori, his soul is free – his imagination has been set free.

In conclusion, in a Montessori child, artistic expression is the same as reaching the abstract stage in mathematics. Only through rigorous training of the mind and full development of the imagination can a child be fully and creatively artistic. Art then becomes what is should be – an expression of the soul – a language that the child has learned to communicate in effectively though his experiences and learning.