Chiaroscuro

From the reports on and reactions to the Paris Congress we quote...This issue of Communications also amply reflects and celebrates the sentiments, talks and addresses given at the 24th International Montessori Congress 2001. Renilde Montessori’s sketchings in ‘Chiaroscuro’ outline the strength of her convictions in respect of the motto Education as an Aid to Life.

“When we speak of ‘Education as an Aid to Life’ it is commonly assumed that, from the point of view of educators, it is merely the lives of those being educated that are under consideration - our children, our pupils, our students - the mandate being ostensibly to ensure that they, as individuals, will achieve an optimum quality of life.

However, this is a narrow view - poor, dark and dismal; a tunnel leading nowhere for a human being educated solely for his own good, oblivious of the context of his interdependencies, unaware of the web of life and his place within it, cannot be said to have received a sound education.

Education as an Aid to Life, if it is to have any meaning, must encompass the phenomena of life itself. From this perspective, it is the educators’ task to allow the child’s innate complicity with his environment to flourish. This is becoming more and more difficult for the child’s spiritual environment is becoming sedulously impoverished.

It is imperative that the educator ....prepare environments where children will be able to develop in accordance with the inner directives that are part of their human condition....Human beings...have been very good at envisaging and systematically constructing adequate environments to suit their endeavours.

Man is a learning animal. In the child, the need to learn is a powerful, passionate drive, for that which the child learns is the prime matter for his self-construction.”