Page 24 - NewsandViews 2023 whole publication

Peace Education and Montessori Tania Ortu

I recently attended a short online course with Montessori Global Education about Montessori’s ideas on
education for peace. Montessori was an Italian doctor who lived between 1870 and 1952. She observed
children and their learning in a scientific way and initially worked with disabled children, before setting up
schools for children in slums. Her writing demonstrates a strong spiritual nature. Unfortunately her
method of education has become the preserve of the rich in many countries, including the UK. As a
former primary school teacher, turned home educator, I found much in her work to inspire me when
raising and educating my son. I hasten to add I am not a purist and gathered and continue to gather ideas
from a number of eclectic sources. I do have a particular interest in the adult-child relationship, how our
own upbringing influences our parenting and how parenting can affect a child’s emotional and mental
health both in the present and the future.

Montessori’s great quote, from the book Education and Peace, is, “Establishing a lasting peace is the
work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.”

As an educator I have watched with much concern the development of our system of education. I feel in
the future we may have grave misgivings about what is happening. I see a growing mental health crisis
with no or very little support and that too little and too late, a rise in ‘school refusal’ with a
misunderstanding as to what is driving this, resulting in punitive measures for both child and parent, a
disregard for how children really learn, particularly those neurodivergent, a misabuse of power as regards
bathroom facilities and visits, movement and nutrition, and the opportunity to speak truth to power and
a narrow and outdated exam system that frankly operates like a factory production line.

Even in the late 19th and early 20th century Montessori observed similar issues. She was working at a
time of great technological advancement and concerned about looking at the child where they are right
now, and not in seeing a child as a useful unit of economic production of the future. “For Montessori
Peace Education was education. To educate for peace, the child must be the centre of society, loved,
valued and cared for by all. The provision of the spirit is paramount, and the enabling of the child to be
the master of themselves will allow them to grow as an adult who has mastered themselves. Once this
happens they will be better able to focus and serve the whole of humanity.”
(From course notes)

It is this development of ‘mastering themselves’ that I find interesting in Montessori education and so at
odds with what is going on in our national education system. What, in many ways revolutionary, ideas did
Montessori have about this?

Trusting the child to follow their own path of development

In a Montessori school, the guide (Montessori teacher) gives regular presentations in maths, language
arts, science, history, art, music and so on. Self correcting study material is then made available to the
children if they have an interest in this work, as well as opportunities for follow up research, inside and
outside the classroom. There is a culture of trusting the child. In this way, each child forges their own path
in both how they learn and what they learn. Classes are mixed age and children can decide whether to
work alone or with others. They share their learning and therefore learn from each other. Children work
with their hands, can choose whether to sit on the floor or at a table, work inside or out. This is very
different to the emphasis in state education on sitting at desks inside for the majority of the time, with a
cohort of same aged children, being asked to meet certain targets at certain ages, and being seen to be
‘falling behind’ if this doesn’t happen. How does this movement and autonomy lead to peace? The child
learns to trust themselves and gets to know themselves They do not learn shame. They learn that

24