"The citizen of the universe": education and peace in Maria Montessori's vision

Abstract

The sojourn in India assumes a particular relevance for the reworking of the pedagogy of Montessori, testifying both theoretically and practically to a change in the value of childhood and the need to start afresh from it in order to rethink the very way of being and experiencing humanity. From this perspective, education and peace prove to be strongly interconnected: children do not need to be taught peace because it is already potentially present in them at birth. Educating them for peace therefore means fostering the conditions for the development of their inner processes, cultivating feelings of interest and sharing in what surrounds them. According to Maria Montessori, precisely in the activation of the child’s psychic energies lies the possible construction of a new humanity capable of committing itself to a future of peace.