Drawn from my three-year immersion for the film Let the Child Be the Guide, my research, and my Montessori teacher training (AMI), this quote is an excerpt from a thematic selection I compiled to remove the primary obstacle to education: our adult prejudices. This post presents one of the themes from this collection, designed to transform, step by step, our gaze upon the child.
“With his passionate love for order and work, the child […] demonstrates intellectual capacities far superior to those he is supposed to have. It is clear that, in traditional systems of education, the child instinctively resorts to dissimulation, with the aim of hiding his abilities and conforming to the expectations of the adults who stifle him. The child submits to the cruel necessity of having to conceal himself, burying in his subconscious a life force that seeks to express itself and that is, inevitably, frustrated.” — Maria Montessori, Education and Peace