The Garden of Eden

Fifty years ago Maria Montessori left her work in the hands of her followers to be carried forth with diligence, intelligence and insight into its relevance - a relevance that will persist as long as children continue to be brought into the world.

…Already during Maria Montessori’s lifetime - and most certainly after her death - Montessori became a concept open to an endless variety of interpretations, subject to a kaleidoscopic multiplicity of definitions.

This can be seen from two contradictory perspectives: either as a trivialising fragmentation of the still elusive concept of education as an aid to life, or as the random sprouting of seeds whenever and wherever they fell on fertile ground. If we choose the latter, an image emerges of an inchoate wilderness more akin to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Secret Garden than to the biblical Garden of Eden of our title.

Taking a closer look at the rambling plantation, we realise that this is the human way to re-create The Garden of Eden, for re-create it we must, since, once having tasted the fruit of knowledge, a return to the original is denied us. Knowledge, once attained, is ineradicable. The pursuit of knowledge is undeniably humankind’s greatest passion and the thought of reinstating the misperceived bliss of ignorance is grotesquely contrary to our evolutionary ethos.

…The environment we prepare for our children, whether in the home, in educational institutions or anywhere else, should be founded on truth and honesty and free from hollow absolutes of which we ourselves are not quite persuaded. A clear and transparent milieu will allow the child the liberty to learn the disciplines of existence, acquiring the knowledge it seeks by following the compelling dictates inherent in its human condition. Thus, the physical, intellectual, and spiritual properties of its world will become the prime matter for its self-construction.

…In the Montessori Prepared Environments for children from three to six years of age, now and again, at a propitious moment, a gentle event takes place called The Silence Game. It had its serendipitous origin in the first Casa dei Bambini in Rome and, to all intents and purposes, was created by the children themselves, as recorded in The Secret of Childhood by Maria Montessori. Children are not afraid of silence, being as they are in a state of grace and as yet unthreatened by the stillness of infinity.

It might take decades, possibly centuries, probably millennia for the entire population of the earth to reach a level of concord that will allow the re-creation of a global Garden of Eden.