KNOWLEDGE

Seth D. Webb has a radical blog that will keep you all excited and on your toes. He starts out with a great quotation of Maria Montessori’s from “The Absorbent Mind.” “If education is always to be a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of (our) future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual’s total development lags behind . . . ? The child is endowed with unknown powers which can guide us to a radiant future. If what we really want is a new world, then education must take as its aim the development of these hidden possibilities.” . . . take time to tune into his blog: http://radicalmontessori.blogspot.com/2012/08/weaving-cosmos.html

As a mother and a Montessori teacher, I witnessed the hidden possibilities of the young child, the secret of childhood that Maria Montessori expressed in her many books. I can’t tell anyone what the secret is because it is unknowing, an expression of the child’s faith and hope. It’s our unknowing that calls us, the adult, to collaborate with the child’s unknowingness. When we give the child an environment of faith and hope, an experience of love, the child can then develop an intellect and potential for greatness and goodness.

In my book, “Montessori—Living the Good Life,” I attempt to express metaphorically the experience of collaboration enjoyed in the creation and formation of clay becoming a pot. The clay has the potential to be many things. The artist has the desire and potential to create a beautiful pot. With faith and hope in her work, the artist allows the clay to be centered and to spin on the wheel while her fingers are gently working with the yielding clay into an unknowing, unique vessel.

“To aid life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, that is the basic task of the educator.” M.M.

Please read my book: “Montessori—Living the Good Life,”