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The Natural Child

by Molly O’Shaughnessy

(AMI teacher trainer and champion of bringing Montessori to needy children)

2013 International Congress: Guided by Nature

“This force that we call love is the greatest energy of the universe.”—Dr. Maria Montessori

In an opening video clip, Anthony, the father of a five-year-old boy, in a Montessori school, is moved to tears by his son’s commitment to peacefulness. His hope is that his son will remain peaceful and whole. Anthony has changed as a parent because of his son. His heart is full. The deep emotion he feels moves us as well, for we know the purity and power of the young child. We know Anthony’s son will continue to grow and develop in this manner if he is not prevented from doing so. We know his spirit is the true spirit of humanity, one that we long to recapture. We know he is born with the drive to connect with, love, and cherish all that his human environment has to offer. We know that love is the humanizing need and what makes us most human.

Montessori looked deeply into the nature of love, particularly as part of the nature of children. She said we must study love and use it. It is a gift that has a specific purpose. She states, “It must be treasured, developed and enlarged to the fullest possible extent… It holds the universe together because it is a real force, and not just an idea” (Absorbent Mind, 259).

The love Montessori spoke of is not simply a sentimental kind of love, but “a love of the intelligence which sees and assimilates and builds itself through loving” (Secret of Childhood, 99). And this powerful kind of love that we witness in the child allows him to engage with the environment in an intense, observant, and meticulous way. He has the power to see things no longer visible to us.

The novelty of the world intrigues him; its beauty and graciousness inspire and comfort him. With an open heart and mind, he fully embraces it, longing to know everything about it. Just as when we newly fall in love there is a spotlight, to the exclusion of everything else, on the object of our desire, for the child, the object of his desire is all the details of this new world, and he wants to know about everything. There is a spotlight on the world for the child that illuminates all its splendor.

This intense love of the environment within each child is “the secret of all man’s progress and the secret of social evolution” (Education and Peace, 106).

Montessori says we adults have lost much of what the child has. Children are here to remind us, if we are open to it, that “There is another life, that you have forgotten. Learn to live better” (Secret of Childhood, 103). Children renew us. Anthony’s son renewed him. We must all learn to live better. And children can show the way.

We can take one line from TheSecret of Childhood as the foundation of our work, allowing all that we do to flow from it:

The whole labor of life, which fulfills itself subject to its laws and brings beings into harmony, reaches consciousness under the form of LOVE.… [The child’s] self-realization comes about in him through love. (99)

Life, says Montessori, “… fulfills itself subject to its laws.”This is the key—subject to its laws. These laws require our knowledge and our deep protection.

The laws of nature are immutable. Just as we cannot go into the womb and form the child, we cannot form the child once he is born. This is his creative work. The child loves whatever he takes in, absorbs it into his life, and uses it to create himself.

In light of the theme of this congress, I share John Stuart Mill’s insightful metaphor about the laws of nature:

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.… A person whose desires and impulses are his own—are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture—is said to have a character. (On Liberty, 34–35)

The laws of nature must be our guide. The duty of adults is to protect children. To borrow a line from the song “All Love Can Be,”we must tell each child, “I will guard you with my bright wings, stay till your heart learns to see all love can be.”

The creative process has vast implications for achieving a new world. Each child born is an adventure into a better life and represents an opportunity for change, invention, innovation, and creativity. Each child has a deep longing to understand what it means to be a human in this universe and what his or her contribution might be to the whole. A failure to nurture the child’s tendency to create is not just an omission; it is an obstruction of the laws of nature. Such an obstruction may lead to malformation and improper adaption of the human being—a shutting down of the most potent gift available to humans, causing a profoundly negative consequence on all of society, worldwide. Montessori took it a step further and called it a “diseased humanity.”

Our Montessori environments inherently support the creation of minds and spirits capable of self-transcendence, wills capable of acting intentionally for the ethical and responsible advancement of humanity. Freedom to develop the mind to its fullest creates a new level of perception, resulting in new mental structures capable of thinking in more profound ways. Through this advancement, the child becomes the renewer of a new world order.

Unless constrained or obstructed, the human being energetically seeks to transcend the observable and predictable, discovering the universe as a source for creativity. To protect these boundless energies, each period of development requires conscious and intentional care and cultivation. Montessori metaphorically states, “The life of man is whole in its length, like a cord” (To Educate the Human Potential, 116).

As we move along the continuum of life, we incarnate the elements that surround us, weaving the cord of life with all its delicacy and intricacy. Each season, unique unto itself, contributes to the unity of the being. As the primary characteristics of one season fade and the next one evolves, all that was previously created is securely woven into the cord, and “if touched in one part, the whole length vibrates” (To Educate the Human Potential, 116).

Sustaining the unity of the person throughout development must be a primary goal. Real learning incorporates what it means to be human in all dimensions, enhancing all energies—intellectual, spiritual, and moral—in an undivided form. And as Montessori tells us, if we “satisfy the constructive energies of man, the rest follows” (“Moral and Social Education”).

This is what is possible—but what is our reality?

Many of today’s environments, both educationally and socially, unconsciously obstruct and impede the natural process within each child. And tragically, one of the most influential environments, nature, is increasingly missing in the lives of many children. The patterns of interaction children establish with nature throughout childhood influence their actions throughout life—thus, the loss of the natural world puts development at great risk. As John Sawhill, former CEO of the Nature Conservancy, concludes, “In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create but by what we refuse to destroy.”

Somewhere, as we navigate life, we drift off course, forgetting to collaborate with nature and instead becoming repressed by overwhelming negative societal forces of poverty—both financial and spiritual—violence, inattentiveness, stress, and so forth. We lose the enchanted world of childhood, the wonder of cloud formations, the comfort of a gentle breeze upon our face. We become more serious, analytical, suspicious, and closed-minded.

A book I read ten years ago continues to inspire me. If I Get to Five, by pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Fred Epstein, was inspired by a four-year-old girl named Naomi, who had a life-threatening brain tumor. Dr. Epstein decided she needed two surgeries if she had any chance of surviving. She recovered from the first and in a feisty voice told him, “If I get to five, I am going to learn to ride a two-wheeler.” She intuited that it was an “if,” not a “when.” He found himself drawing courage from Naomi. He states,

[Children] inspire us to dig deeper for the strength to do what feels the hardest, what’s scariest.… People tend to think of children as weak and vulnerable, as fragile little people. In my experience, they are giants. They have immense and open hearts. Their minds can expand to encompass any reality. Their bodies and souls are amazingly resilient. (3–4)

Twenty years after Naomi, Dr. Epstein had his greatest life lesson through a letter from the grave. He was at the top of his game. His success had made him arrogant enough to perceive technology as an end in itself. Then a grieving mother sent him a poem.

Chris, a seventeen-year-old who had been a patient of his, had written this poem two weeks before he died:

I have for many useless hours contemplated eternity.

I have prayed in the night

By the cold and lonely side of my bed

For the peace and strength of our living God.

And I still wonder: Will I be saved?

I wait with hope in my heart.

I am struggling, O Lord, to stay alive

I am losing sacred strength

I am living a life of confusion

And death is very near.

I ask you, reader, whoever you may be,

Take my trembling hand and warm it with care and sympathy.

I believe that love is the sole purpose of man’s life.

And without love life is sterile and without meaning.

But with love life has wonder.

With love life has color and beauty.

Reading it “demolished” Dr. Epstein. He laments, “I had done everything I could to save his life, but I had ignored his deepest emotional need—to feel love.… I hadn’t heard his plea until it was too late” (If I Get to Five, 15).

As a result of this experience, he created, from the ground up, a different kind of healing environment, “a pediatric unit where emotional intelligence mattered as much as technical expertise” (16). It totally transformed the experiences that families, children, and medical staff had with these gravely ill children. This is just one example of someone who went back to the life he had forgotten. Just imagine if there were thousands more.

Montessori made an ardent and passionate plea for the child. She advocated on behalf of all children at so many levels and in so many ways. Until all segments of society advocate as fiercely, it will be difficult to reach our goals.

Montessori said two things need to be accomplished to ensure healthy development according to the laws of nature: first, constructing suitable environments and second, “bringing a new attitude toward children on the parts of adults” (Education and Peace, 91).

Prepared environments cannot be limited to educational environments. They must include homes, hospitals, museums, and the natural world—just to name a few. Many of these environments currently do not support the needs of children. Prepared environments, permeated with the optimal conditions for development, have the capacity to heal—to make whole again. They become an “oasis of peace,” where children are unencumbered, free to explore in a haven of endless time.

In particular, the natural environment has the capacity to heal, inspire, and keep us whole. Unfortunately, children are too often given artificial outdoor spaces instead of natural landscapes—sterile, cold, and uninteresting. Yet we know that a child’s exploration of unspoiled nature stimulates his powers of observation, develops patience, fosters creativity, and instills a sense of calm and connectedness.

Although designing and creating physical environments for children has certain challenges, creating healthy psychological environments is a far greater challenge.

Too many children are suffering in the world, suffering from the obstacles they face—physical, psychological, or cultural—while striving to follow inner directives. We must attempt to remove these obstacles if we are to support a new humanity. We must be committed to creating environments congruent with life. In this effort we become both a protector and an “interpreter” for the child.

A negative, ill-prepared psychological environment can have dire repercussions. It can manifest itself in violence and aggression, or more subtly, as passivity. Such an environment is often created unconsciously, due to lack of understanding, rather than out of malice. Both external and internal factors repress children’s natural instincts.

A repressed person cannot develop normally, so we see a variety of malformations. And when children act out at home or in school we ask, “What’s wrong with you?,” when the correct question is “What happened to you?”

In Childhood Under Siege, Joel Bakan describes the “New Curriculum of Childhood” as infested with violent images, media sexualization, addictive use of technology, and a culture that “works to pry them loose from us,” making it harder for us to connect with and safeguard children’s natural energies in a healthy way (37).

To counteract these negative influences, we continue to perfect what Montessori calls the “technique of love” (“The Three levels of Ascent,” 1) in our approach with children. It is a revealing term to use. Technique implies rigor, order, and structure, while love adds empathy, compassion, and reflection. Without love, the technique is rendered meaningless. Many of our educational woes today may exist because our systems are developed as “techniques,” not necessarily rooted in love. Love is the motivating factor and is the most potent source of unity. From this central virtue, all other virtues flow.

Over a hundred years ago, Dr. Montessori told us that the truths she had discovered about children should concern us not only as educators, but as a society as well.

She impressed upon us that change could not come about through theories or through the work of a few energetic organizers, but would evolve slowly with the emergence of “a new world in the midst of the old—the world of the child and the adolescent” (Secret of Childhood, 225). And if tended to, “normal life of society would gradually evolve”(225).

What continues to lag is a focus on the inner presence of the child. Most of the work being done under the name of “educational reform” has primarily to do with curriculum and standards, worrying more about the future child than the present child.

Metaphorically, if we try to force-feed children whose digestive systems are not matured, it will make them sick. Just as we know that chewing very slowly helps the digestive enzymes break down the food more effectively, yielding more nutrients for the body, we know that perception, knowledge, and insight take time and unlimited attention and focus.

There is an old Polish saying, “Sleep faster, we need the pillows,” which reminds us there are some things that just will not be rushed. Studies demonstrate that “the brain is designed to work most efficiently when it works on a single task and for sustained rather than intermittent and alternating periods of time” (Restak, The New Brain, 58).

Every child is unique in his process of learning, and each needs to be honored. Montessori’s understanding of the need for rest, reflection, and silent mediation in the process of learning is more countercultural now than ever, as she writes:

We must therefore turn to the child as to the key to the fate of our future life … to learn from him the practical secret of our own life. From this point of view the figure of the child presents itself as powerful and mysterious, an object of meditation, for the child who holds in himself the secret of our nature becomes our master. (Secret of Childhood, 227)

It takes deep reverence for the child to be able to embrace him as our master, recognizing him as the source of love, and our greatest hope for both personal and world renewal.

References
Bakan, Joel. Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children. New York: Free Press, 2011.
Epstein, Fred, and Joshua Horwitz. If I Get to Five. New York: Henry Holt, 2003.
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. 1859. London: Longmans, Green, 1913.
Montessori, Maria. The Absorbent Mind. 1949. Madras, India: Kalakshetra, 1982.
Montessori, Maria. To Educate the Human Potential. 1948. Madras, India: Kalakshetra, 1975.
Montessori, Maria. Education and Peace. 1949. Trans. Helen R Lane. Madras, India: Kalakshetra, 1972.
Montessori, Maria. “Moral and Social Education.” Lecture, Edinburgh, 1938. AMI Communications 1984, no. 4: 15–19.
Montessori, Maria. The Secret of Childhood. 1936. Trans. Barbara Barclay Carter. London: Orient Longmans, 1985.
Montessori, Maria. “The Three Levels of Ascent.” Around the Child 7 (1962): 1–3.
Restak, Richard. The New Brain. New York: Rodale, 2003.