Revealing our unique potential

Katelin's education currently includes lots and lots of art projects. I'm looking to add to that.

I've been reading. Filling my mind up with new ideas. Turns out there was this amazing woman, Maria Montessori, born just 139 years ago in Italy, whose philosophies and developments in education are having quite an impact on little old me, born just 29 years ago in Idaho, of all places.

The woman was simply brilliant and understood something about education that we have yet to understand or at least to implement in our education system. There's this website which gives a short description of her philosophy -- "She believed that each child is born with a unique potential to be revealed, rather than as a "blank slate" waiting to be written upon."

Wow! What if we were each born with unique potential just waiting to be revealed?

Sound familiar? Well, I believe it is true, and I'm totally excited to be learning about her schools, her process of education, and all of the activities you can use to teach your children. The book I've been reading is called Teaching Montessori In the Home: The Preschool Years, just in case you were wondering.

Here's a last quote from this woman, Dr. Montesorri -

"Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society."