“Ever so many moralists continually say that our error today lies in wanting to base everything on man’s reason, and as many others are convinced that progress cannot be based solely on man’s reason and its dictatorial claims to rule our entire lives. But each side is quite certain that reason is sovereign and triumphant today. The truth of the matter, however, is that reason today is hidden under a dark cloud and has almost gone down to defeat. Moral chaos in fact is nothing but one side of the coin of our psychic decline; the other side is the loss of our powers of reason. The preeminent characteristic of our present state is an insidious madness, and our most immediate need a return to reason.” Montessori

4yo doing Montessori flower arranging. She’s already trimmed the flowers; here you can see her fill a pitcher, fill the vase, put the flowers in the vase, mist them, place a doily, place the vase, roll up her apron, and dry/clean everything. Sped up segment of a 15 min process.

“If the child were one day to exclaim: ‘But it is you who prevent me from developing will and character; when I seem naughty, it is because I am trying to save myself; how can I help being awkward when I am sacrificed?’…

“How then could it ever have come to pass that work, which should represent the supreme satisfaction, the center of health and regeneration, as it does for the child, should be rejected by the adult man?” Montessori

“Things are the first and best teachers.” Montessori

“To be contented with the imaginary, and to live as if what we imagine actually existed; to run after illusion, and ‘not to recognise’ reality, is a thing so common that scarcely is it apprehended.” Montessori

“…little by little civilization closes the social world to the child. Everything is overregulated, too narrow, too encumbered, too fast. Not only is the quick rhythm of the busy adult an obstacle to him, but the machine comes along…

Montessori is what it looks like when you approach education 1. holistically, viz. with intent to developmentally support a great many facets of life 2. with an strong, explicit set of moral values, used to rank and order these facets 3. as an engineering problem

“Discipline is…attained indirectly, that is, by developing activity in spontaneous work. Everyone must learn how to control himself and how to engage in calm and silent activity, for no other purpose than that of keeping alive that inner flame on which life depends.” Montessori

A child “would rather dress himself than be dressed, even magnificently. He prefers washing himself to the pleasant feeling of being clean. He would rather build a house than own one. He is thus disposed because he must first form his own life before he can enjoy it.” Montessori

“…our marvelous civilization lacks today…the feeling that human life is triumphant over the cosmos: humankind should feel itself king of all that has been created, transformer of the earth, builder of a new nature, collaborator in the universal work of creation.” Montessori

“We must not think that the material of education will always consist of pieces of wood. As the mind grows we need to multiply the forms infinitely, til little by little the stimuli take on the shape of the ordinary means of human culture.” Montessori

Montessori’s influence on the world is in some ways quite small and specific, and in other ways so utterly victorious that it is invisible by virtue of being taken for granted.

I don’t think schools should teach this, exactly, but they should teach something adjacent to this that makes you aware that this is an important type of civilizational literacy, an awareness that the vast majority of people don’t know they don’t know

1yo and 4yo doing Montessori things

4yo counting by 7s to 7^3, marking each 7^2 interval as she goes This is quite time consuming, so she picked up this morning when I dropped her off where she left it yesterday afternoon when we picked her up