Production and Exchange...Where'd Microeconomy Go?
By Emily Dowell,
IMTI Team Member, Practitioner Support
I don’t know if I’ve come across a group of people who love the precision of language more than Montessorians. 0-6 Guides infuse their environments with rich, elevated, and exact language for the Absorbent Mind to take in. 6-12 Guides captivate the imaginative intelligence of the elementary child through storytelling. 12-18 Guides conscientiously and deliberately choose every word we use in our interactions with adolescents to avoid any unintentional harm to their tender psyches. Montessorians know—words matter.
We value language because we understand it powers the human tendency to communicate but also because so much of our professional practice originates in the words of one person: Dr. Maria Montessori. We pour over her texts, looking for guidance, inspiration, and clarity in our work with children. Sometimes that’s earned us a reputation as pedants--originalists who dogmatically follow the words Montessori. Whether the reputation is fairly earned is a topic for another post. I will say that for my own experience, revisiting the writings of Montessori, especially the small collection of writings about the adolescent, has always been invaluable.
One of the most significant outcomes of the years-long effort to formalize the work that has been done at the 12-18 level into a full AMI diploma training is a recommitment to using the words of Montessori to describe what we do.
Each time I read From Childhood to Adolescence, “The Four Planes of Education”, “The The Social Newborn”, or “Third Oxford Lecture” I deepen my understanding of Montessori’s plan for the adolescent. I read something that’s always been there but I missed in previous readings, for whatever reason. The impression I’ve formed of Maria Montessori through my repeated readings is that words mattered to her too.
One of the most significant outcomes of the years-long effort to formalize the work that has been done at the 12-18 level into a full AMI diploma training is a recommitment to using the words of Montessori to describe what we do. Nowhere is this change more evident than when we speak about the opportunities for economic independence for adolescents in our communities.
Like many of you, when I attended the Orientation to Adolescent Studies, the business ventures of an adolescent community, whether they included selling eggs, meat and produce grown or raised on their farm or the cafe, bakery, or handicraft markets of an urban programme, were called the Micro-Economy. Every community I visited or observed at had a Micro-Economy. When we started selling lunches to staff at our school, we called it our Micro-Economy.
But when I returned to the Orientation to Adolescent Studies as a lecturer, I was introduced to a new and more accurate term: production and exchange. It’s taken me awhile to change my terminology but now that I’ve had a few years to adjust, I think production and exchange is a much more fitting term for Montessori’s vision of the adolescent’s experience.
Here’s why I’ve come to prefer “production and exchange” to micro-economy:
It comes from Montessori’s writings. Despite loving the term micro-economy (and I do) it doesn’t actually appear in any Montessori text. Though it does a great job of describing the economic system which can exist in an adolescent community as we become a training equal to those at other levels, the terminology we use needs to be rooted in the language Montessori gave us.
It gets to the heart of the experience for the adolescents. Creating something, transforming raw materials into useful products, providing a service that is of actual need in the wider community are the essence of production. It’s not enough to sell value added products like chocolate bars or hold a bake sale. Adolescents need the opportunity to work with their hands, whether tending the garden, welding a piece of sculpture, or plating gourmet meals, to produce something of value from start to finish. There is satisfaction in the process of creation but also in seeing that item be valued enough by another person to be exchanged for money.
It encompasses the complexity of the entire adolescent community. Too often, I thought of micro-economy as separate from the rest of life in the community. Micro-economy could only happen in relation to the goods and services the adolescents created and sold at our sales events. Really a system of production and exchange should be woven into the fabric of your community. When I lived in the Great Lakes region of North America, we sold maple syrup every year not because it’s a great money maker but because there’s a long tradition of people tapping their maple stands. It was an opportunity to combine practical work which required technical expertise and scientific knowledge with the social organization required to accomplish such a complex task. Because production and exchange is a key element of social living, it is embedded in everything an adolescent community does.
It allows for contributions that aren’t so easily quantified. If we only focus on the bottom line of our adolescent’s business ventures, we miss out on recognizing and valuing contributions that don’t necessarily have a monetary value. How do you, for example, quantify the value of the work students put into designing and hand lettering all the flyers for the school production of Romeo and Juliet? Is that work of more or less value than the students acting? What about the retiree who comes in to show the students how to make soap with no mention of compensation? Is that any less an act of exchange just because no money traded hands? Thinking about the system of production and exchange as larger than just monetary transactions helps our adolescents see the true costs and benefits of all work.
It’s amazing how a change in language can lead to a change in perspective. By thinking of work in terms of production and exchange rather than micro-economy, a new world of opportunities and challenges has opened up. Where’d mico-economy go? It’s still there, it’s just part of a much larger and richer landscape than I ever realized.