Activity

Terri — I can certainly relate to what you’re saying . . . that the discovery of other lineages is at once challenging (as in overwhelming) and exciting. Overwhelming in the sense that it’s so hard to take it all in . . . exciting in that it demonstrates the pervasiveness of a global impulse to understand a grand narrative of our origin. Over the next few weeks, we’ll start to define some of these different lineages and name the principle resources produced by each one that have inspired so many.
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Jonathan — Thanks for your comment too. Also a critique, the Montessori philosophy is grounded very much in the idea that the minds of young children are at once fresh and ancient (as you so well articulated). Montessori well understood that development comes from the inside out, that education is more than anything an evocation and nurturing of processes that are already present in the child. Her ideas were developed after years of observation, trained as she was in scientific methodology as part of her medical training. The term “popular psychological ideas” doesn’t really do justice to the depth of her research, writing, and the practice of this approach in Montessori classrooms around the world for over seven decades. But being a rebel is good. And your book, Grandmother Fish, is wonderful in the way that it focuses on movement and mimicking our ancestors as a way of coming into communion with them. I love that!