On the Subject of Subjects Part 1: 'Cultural Subjects' in the Children's House

Camillo Grazzini and Baiba Krumins co-authored “On the Subject of Subjects”, a two-part article on cultural subjects. Part I gives a thorough and enlightening approach to the role and place of culture in the Casa dei Bambini. From the article...

“...Mario Montessori is referring to a different dimension of the word: culture as meaning a wide-ranging knowledge which is not limited to knowing how to write, to read, to count. The limits to this further exploration are not set by the number of different fields of learning or knowledge, but by the psychology of the age which requires exploration involving the hands, the senses and language rooted in a concrete context, as well as exactness.

Art, music, geography, botany, zoology, history, physics, all lend themselves, or have aspects which lend themselves, to this kind of exploration. Even language and maths are explored well beyond the basics indicated above. In this way, the child of six who leaves the Children’s House to enter the Elementary is, says Maria Montessori, ‘an individual who has already acquired the basis of culture, and is anxious to build on it, to learn and penetrate deeper into any matter of interest’ (To Educate the Human Potential).”