“No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child.” ~Maria Montessori
I recently returned from my first North American Montessori Teachers Association Meeting, held in Seattle, WA. What I learned there absolutely reaffirmed that education is the best way, certainly the best voluntary way, to support liberty. I am not talking about college courses and white papers churned out by think tanks (I love you think tanks, you know I do!). We have to start earlier, we have to cultivate a culture that educates about the ideas of freedom from the beginning, not one that merely tries to change minds later.
I had the opportunity to spend time with the lovely Marsha Enright of the Reason Individualism and Freedom Institute, while at the conference. A long time Montessorian who also is a true lover of liberty and the founder of the new College of the United States, whose vision is: “To create the global leaders of tomorrow who will fulfill the vision of our Founding Fathers by becoming successful men and women of principle and action, capable of spreading the benefits of reason, individualism and the bounty of liberty worldwide through their work and their example. “
We spoke about how the Montessori Method supports the development of the child in a way that generates a love of liberty, a respect for others individuality and a recognition of the value of their own. It is such an amazingly thorough pedagogy, and absolutely goes against the cookie-cutter mentality of compulsory education.
“We must, therefore, quit our roles as jailers and instead take care to prepare an environment in which we do as little as possible to exhaust the child with our surveillance and instruction.” ~Maria Montessori
Each Montessori Guide is a gentle hand that helps to cultivate an environment (sort of like law is supposed to be) that allows each child to find their strengths, at their own pace, in a way that encourages a love of learning and therefore a love of thinking.
Isn’t that amazing? An education that in its very principles supports the thing I value the most: freedom, especially the freedom of children!
Below is a song by the elementary students of Countryside Montessori School in Northbrook, Illinois It is an excerpt of their opera, “On the Road to Freedom”
They are reciting the words on the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEW-uDC1VII]
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Thanks for your wonderful comments about the Montessori Method, and my project! And thanks for the video – I’m passing it on to others.
Regarding “the golden door,” if you’d like to see a story about the perspective of wrenchingly ignorant Sicilians coming to the U.S., I recommend the movie “The Golden Door.”