A Lasting Peace

by Anne Kruk, All Day Primary Teacher

Maria Montessori's most enduring legacy today is child-led education, but in her own time she was also widely heralded for another guiding principle: her commitment to peace.  Shaped in no small part by the tumultuous era in which she lived, she is often considered one of the pioneers of modern peace education.

            

Montessori received her medical degree in Italy just prior to the turn of the century, and began her work studying children's educational needs.  By the nineteen-teens there were Montessori schools around the world, and her work was a popular topic in newspapers and other publications.  Already, she was clear that the type of education she espoused was meant to encourage critical thinking, equality, and democracy.  To an interviewer in 1915 she said "The mere habit of obedience is not preparation for life in a democracy. [ . . . T]he safety of democracy depends upon the intelligence and independence of the voters.  Intelligence can be developed only by allowing young people to deal with actual life problems."

          

  Alongside stories of this educational pioneer, newspaper headlines were becoming evermore dominated by the growing tensions in Europe, and then the descent into the Great War.  Montessori's work continued on, becoming determinedly more pacifistic throughout the war and the all-too-brief interwar years.  It was during these latter years that she gave a series of speeches at peace conferences that became the basis for her book Education and Peace, detailing the importance of not just peace as an absence of violence, but as a positive, active force for both individual and communal good.  Montessori looked at the people who had embroiled the world in war and realized that the seeds of peace would need to be sown much earlier in life.  "All politicians can do is keep us out of war," she observed, "establishing a lasting peace is the work of education."

          

  Despite the efforts of Montessori and many other peace educators, the War to End All Wars proved bitterly misnamed, and once again the storm clouds closed over Europe as World War II began as the 1930s drew to a close.  Montessori continued her work throughout the war, teaching, lecturing, and training others, but her ability to travel freely was obviously impeded.  For a time she found herself stuck in British-held India (being an Italian, she was considered an enemy alien), before being permitted to continue her work and travels.  That work continued to promote anti-violence in all its forms, and she became increasingly recognized for her devotion to peacemaking.  She was a strong proponent on first the League of Nations and then the United Nations, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times in her life, in 1949, 1950 and 1951. 

           

 Montessori's belief that children are mankind's best hope for peace is still evident today in the schools that bear her name.  Respect (along with related traits like empathy and compassion) is a hallmark of the Montessori classroom.  Both children and adults are taught to treat each other with dignity and respect, and to communicate clearly, openly and honestly with one another.  Conflicts are treated seriously, with deference to children's hurt feelings even when the slight seems insignificant to an adult, but without judgment or anger, and always with the aim of helping children negotiate those conflicts peaceably on their own in the future.

           

Along the same lines, children are continually encouraged to be more independent.  That doesn't mean that children can do whatever they want all the time, but it does mean that they are constantly encouraged to both problem solve and take responsibility first for themselves, then for their classroom, school, and eventually the world at large.  The effect that this encouragement has upon forming civic duty and responsibility in young citizens is obvious; having experienced firsthand their own ability to affect change, why wouldn't a Montessori child (and then teen, and then adult) believe they have both the ability and duty to influence the world for the better?