Grace and Courtesy

Many of the methods that were incorporated by Maria Montessori in her pedagogy came from her study of Friedrich Froebel and others who worked with "idiot" children--what I will henceforth call children who learn differently. Additionally, Montessori's first observations of children were those who were in an asylum. So I am thankful that including children who learn differently as well as those who have special needs are being placed back into the national equation as it pertains to Montessori programs. One could ask the question, "How were they ever subtracted from that equation?" But such an answer requires far more blog posts. And they are coming, dear friends. When I saw this Facebook post on your right... It gave me hope for the future of Montessori education in this country. But in order to be an agent of peace for the future of our children, it is worth considering the past (and present) wounds of a nation that places a limit on whose children we conside...

There's something deeply satisfying about organizing a space. Maybe that's just me. I know some find cleaning and organizing to be quite frustrating. Maybe it's laziness (keep it 100, friends), or maybe there are more important things you can do with your time...like finding your keys. But I've found that organizing one's environment has a way of bringing order to your mind. And this is nothing compared to what it does for children of a certain age. Maria Montessori speaks of it in her book Education and Peace: The child is capable of developing and giving us tangible proof of the possibility of a better humanity. He has shown us the true process of construction of the human being. We have seen children totally change as they acquire a love for things and as their sense of order, discipline, and self-control develops within them…. The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind.”  Not only this, but order in a child's environment has an amazing way of brin...

I remember asking my college roommate, what do you think it means to be a man? To which he probably thought that this skinny black guy was crazy. I think his response was something like this: "Being a man and knowing it is not something you recognize, because the by the time you really are one, you'll be too busy to think about it." Seeing as I began writing this post a year ago and never got around to finishing it until now, I think I reached that point of manhood some time ago. But Montessori takes it in a very different direction. Since within humanity is a capacity towards the savage and the gentle, these two  demonstrate themselves in masculine and feminine ways. It is not that women are one and men are the other. When I began writing this post, I had in mind the civility of peace and courtesy which is embedded within the Montessori curriculum. This is taught to both boys and girls, because both boys and girls have a tendency towards and an interest in the ways in wh...