According to Montessori developmental theory, the 6 to 12 age phase is considered a period when children awaken to teamwork.
In the adult world—particularly in sports and business—the “military-style” teamwork centered around a commander has long been celebrated. However, a deep study of Montessori education reveals that there is actually room for evolution here.
In other words, by basing it on the true nature of children who are spontaneous, creative, and self-motivated, a new form of teamwork known as “Montessori-style teamwork” becomes possible. This requires every single individual to be an independent Montessori child.
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share your comments!
Profile
Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.
Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. Works as a software developer and a weekend farmer. Father of two.
Teamwork evolves as the prefrontal cortex develops.
Hiro
For children ages six to twelve, I want to talk about teamwork.
Yati
Like how playing team sports builds teamwork?
Hiro
That’s the common idea, but what even is teamwork? I think the current concept of teamwork mostly idealizes the military. If winning the competition is the priority, you end up with an army. An army wins by destroying the enemy army, and that requires discipline. So what’s most efficient isn’t everyone thinking freely. It’s how quickly they can carry out the commander’s orders. Top-down.
Yati
Right. The will of the top reaches every corner. Everyone uniting to follow orders is considered teamwork.
Hiro
It’s the same in business. In Japan, companies model themselves on the Self-Defense Forces, Japan’s military; in Silicon Valley, it’s the U.S. Military style. “To win.”
Yati
School education too.
Hiro
Take baseball. The game design itself is a war simulation. They say “steal a base.” An out is called a “kill.” You “gun down” a runner. Pretty violent language. You disrupt the defense and make it home.
Yati
So it was war all along. The Olympics are called a festival of peace, though.
Hiro
No, the Olympics have come full circle to being a festival of peace. Originally, sports were used to vent humanity’s wild nature. Humans have historically been barbaric, killing each other constantly. In ancient Rome’s Colosseum, people fought to the death. We don’t do that now, but we still enjoy boxing, kickboxing, martial arts. Those count as sports too. The deep emotional part of the brain, the limbic system, is called the reptilian brain. It’s extremely primitive and brutal. Chimpanzees in the jungle are very wild; without a developed neocortex, they’re incredibly violent.
Yati
They fight for dominance.
Hiro
And they have 200 kilograms of grip strength, about 440 pounds. Terrifying. From there, we gradually evolved, developed the neocortex, and suppressed the emotional system. But instincts push back. You want to eat what you want to eat, and you want to kill whoever annoys you. We have that wild side. Sports provide an outlet for it.
Yati
We need to let it out.
Hiro
Sports always have rules. In the human brain, the neocortex restrains the limbic system. Sports simulate this through rules. The rules play the role of the neocortex. In daily life, the neocortex checks social rules and regulates how much we can express our limbic impulses. In sports, it’s done within the game’s framework. In baseball, if you hit someone with a pitch and they retaliate, a brawl breaks out. Everyone has to understand that’s not allowed, or sports can’t function.
Yati
Right. No matter how angry you get.
Hiro
Even when the umpire makes a bad call. Referees are interesting. Team sports always have them. The person who pulls out red cards. In an evolved brain, that referee is always inside you. [laughs]
Yati
The referee in your head says, “That comment would be a red card,” and holds you back. [laughs]
Hiro
“If I say this, maybe I’ll get a yellow card, so let me rephrase it more safely.” “I shouldn’t say anything sexist.” As society evolves, acceptable expressions keep getting gentler. We’re right in the middle of that transition. Actually, pretty far along. People born before the 1990s must have it tough. Yellow cards come out fast.
Yati
There’s a hit TV comedy about exactly that. A man with 1980s values wakes up in today’s Japan and can’t say anything right.
Hiro
Stuff you thought was “no big deal” is now totally out. Political correctness, unconscious bias, compliance. All these foreign loanword concepts keep coming in from Europe. And in Japan we even coined a buzzword for it, futehodo, short for that show’s title, “That’s Too Much!”
Yati
For us in our 30s, who grew up after that shift, it feels like common sense. The world has become much more livable.
Hiro
Nominication, the Japanese idea that you bond with colleagues by drinking together, makes no sense to me. Just communicate normally. “I can’t say anything sober.” I can’t relate at all.
Yati
Just say it properly. Step into the ring and fight fair.
Hiro
If you have something to say, say it. Because they haven’t trained for that, they drink and cause problems. They haven’t been checking themselves against their inner referee, so they make inappropriate remarks, commit harassment. Everything becomes harassment. They act at a level they think is okay, and it turns out to be harassment. They become the emperor with no clothes.
Yati
Young people are really skillful with this. They say what they want without drinking, and it doesn’t become a problem. How did they train?
Hiro
There’s this wonderful system called the internet, and that’s where they trained. The internet connects the whole world, not just Japan. On YouTube, you can watch videos from everywhere. Different languages, English, Chinese, and different cultures. You start to see things in relative terms. Nothing is absolute. That makes you a bit humble. Depends on the person.
Yati
I see.
Hiro
But the generation that watched TV shows constantly telling them how amazing Japan is really believes Japan is amazing. Japan does have amazing aspects, but instead of saying it out of insecurity by comparing to others, I’d rather understand it from a larger perspective, like the role the Japanese archipelago plays in Earth’s ecosystem.
Yati
We got sidetracked, but back to teamwork: you’re saying that teamwork is shifting from using the limbic system to using a bit more neocortex, but isn’t there a kind of “neocortex-centered teamwork”? And sports might evolve along with that.
Hiro
Exactly. At the brain level, everything is built assuming the limbic system is at work. The military model is used as a framework to channel that energy in a good direction while suppressing the limbic system. But flip that around, and it means everyone’s neocortex is underdeveloped. So it’s a model for how to get results from underdeveloped people, a way to unite selfish actors toward a goal. But if individual strength is high to begin with, that’s not needed.
Yati
Keisuke Honda just entered the chat. “Individual strength” is one of the Japanese soccer star’s catchphrases.
Hiro
That’s where the “room for growth” is, another one of his phrases. I think that’s what Keisuke Honda is saying. Each child’s power is the power of the prefrontal cortex. If each person can act autonomously, we can have Montessori-style collaboration instead of military-style. Sports evolve, teamwork evolves, business evolves. That’s why Google feels Montessori-like and fresh.
Yati
It’s very Hiro that when talking about sports and Montessori children, you don’t bring up Steph Curry the basketball player. You start talking about Google.
Hiro
Steph Curry is about exceptional individual strength within the old framework. We’re talking about teamwork, so that’s not relevant.
Yati
So the Google teamwork story. Is it about the two Montessori children?
Hiro
No, no. It’s not just about Larry Page and Sergey Brin, it’s about the whole company. Google basically gathered smart people, mathematicians and physicists with developed prefrontal cortices, prepared the environment, and let them play as much as they wanted, do whatever they wanted. That’s why it made headlines. Offices like that didn’t exist. A playground, unlimited free gourmet food, a gym, nap pods. A dream place. It pulled the rug out from people saying, “You’re not here to play.” Google was saying, “Please come play at work.”
Yati
Everyone aspired to that. There was the 20% rule, about one day a week to work on whatever you wanted. A company that respected autonomy.
Hiro
Apparently that’s gone now. When Google started, Larry Page said, “We don’t need managers,” and abolished managers.
Yati
Wait. No bosses?
Hiro
Right. He said management wasn’t necessary.
Yati
What does that mean? Teams and leaders just form on their own?
Hiro
No. The idea is that managing yourself is the default. In the existing work model, bosses train and evaluate subordinates. Or 360-degree reviews where colleagues evaluate you. He was saying we don’t need evaluation.
Yati
That’s so Montessori. Maybe it didn’t work because not everyone was a Montessori child.
Hiro
Every Friday, at the end of the workweek, Google held an all-hands meeting. So everyone knew the company’s situation, what problems existed, what the bottlenecks were, what people were struggling with. Since everyone understood, people could assign themselves to work, tackle it on their own, clear the bottlenecks, and the company would run.
Yati
Instead of a boss saying, “You do this job,” you decide, “I’ll take that on.” That’s high-level and efficient. But I really feel this at our Polymath School during cooking activities. Kids say things like, “You’re cutting carrots, so I’ll cut mushrooms,” on their own, and they work so fast.
Hiro
Exactly. “This area is messy, so I’ll tidy up.” In Google’s defense, apparently this culture still exists. Someone inside Google said so.
Yati
How do you know someone inside Google? [laughs]
Hiro
You can Google it. What that person said is that their work disappears.
Yati
What does that mean? [laughs]
Hiro
Colleagues just do it. Everyone’s capable, so they finish their own work quickly, get bored playing, and start grabbing colleagues’ work. “I’ll take care of this.” Then your work is gone. So you take someone else’s work, and no matter what position you’re in, everyone keeps getting more free time. It’s futuristic.
Yati
What is this, a new game? A job-grabbing game. But I felt that at our Polymath School cooking session I mentioned. Not just the kids. Parents were thinking for themselves and pitching in too. It was so easy.
Hiro
Right. When a team moves proactively, everyone has it easy. That’s real teamwork. No orders needed.
Yati
In that kind of Montessori-style, Google-style teamwork, even when someone proposes something that seems impossible, maybe everyone gets excited and says, “Let’s try it.” Like, “Can we create the world’s most intellectual school without owning a building?”
Hiro
Exactly. “Let’s look into that,” and you try it. What’s important is including what you want to do. Being smart means you don’t set aside what you want for what the team wants. You align them.
Yati
Normally you can’t. If you help one side, you hurt the other. You’re going for two birds with one stone, or three. Work-life balance too. When I was studying Montessori education, I struggled with leaving my own child to get certified.
Hiro
Right. You make it a trade-off. But being able to make it not a trade-off, that’s the advantage of a developed prefrontal cortex. What’s needed to break through dilemmas? Creativity.
Yati
Normally, to make a school 100 times better, you’d make it 100 times bigger, hire 100 times better teachers, introduce cutting-edge technology, increase class hours, and costs keep rising. But you think about doing it for zero cost, with less time. That’s unbeatable. Thinking about it that way, it makes sense that Google owns YouTube and DeepMind and is actively transforming society.
Hiro
This is a complete tangent, but Google avoided decline because of DeepMind. Demis Hassabis of DeepMind didn’t originally want to be acquired by Google. Larry Page convinced him: “What you’re doing is basic research. You should calculate how much money and time basic research takes. Spending half your precious brainpower on fundraising and half on basic research, isn’t that wasteful? Join Google, and you won’t worry about funding. You can use Google’s resources and do even greater basic research.” That’s how Google bought DeepMind for 600 million dollars. YouTube was 1.6 billion dollars. Montessori children are great at using money with a long-term perspective.
Yati
Amazing shoppers. This example helps me understand what future teamwork looks like. It’s win-win.
Hiro
To get a bit technical, the genius Demis Hassabis says the fundamental stuff in the physical world isn’t energy or matter. Below what we commonly call matter, there’s another layer: information. In other words, everything might be computable as information. It goes beyond physics.
Yati
I see. That’s the thinking behind using AI to beat Go champions, designing proteins, and so on.
Hiro
Right. They’re searching through physical information, so it’s the natural evolution of Google. Demis, who won the Nobel Prize, says AI can learn and reproduce even the most fundamental, black-box parts of physical laws through neural networks. Without trial and error in the physical world, just by watching videos, you can know anything, become a genius. That’s the claim. When it comes to real-world implementation, careless mistakes are scary. Current AI hasn’t experienced reality, so it isn’t truly “intelligent.”
Yati
That’s true.
Hiro
The Nobel Prize is very Western. Westerners highly value invention, creating something new. Easterners, on the other hand, find value in how to use what already exists. For example, the Western approach is to extract antibiotics from soil bacteria and make medicine. The Eastern approach is: if they’re in the soil, let’s cherish the soil, enrich it, eat the healthy plants that grow from it every day, and we won’t need medicine. If we study Montessori, science, and teamwork from an Eastern perspective, there’s still so much room to evolve.
Yati
Like China’s Shennong Bencao Jing, the oldest known book of herbal medicine, or India’s Ayurveda. Cultures that treasure the soil and use medicinal herbs and spices. In summary, if we can creatively fuse West and East, the world can become more peaceful.
