Learning and Education Today have to be Connected with a Greater Opening Up of Schools

It is frequently demanded that the school of the future open up to its surroundings more than in earlier times. Thus, a connection between learning and living shall be established.

At first glance, Montessori institutions seem to be far away from that. Is it not characteristic of them that they put free play and free work at the centre of attention and that these are carried out almost exclusively by dealing independently with didactic material that is beneficial to the children’s development? However, Montessori’s way of thinking was more complex.

In her work Von der Kindheit zur Jugend, she asked teachers to leave the school quite often and to use the school’s surroundings as a learning area. She recommended original encounters with nature and culture. The immediate experience of a forest with all the senses, for example, cannot be replaced by any medium in the school, as Montessori explained.

Montessori not only made general observations but always looked for possibilities to put them into practice with regard to education in families, nursery schools and schools. This is a particularly strong point of her educational theory. However, one cannot content oneself with a level of the educational concept and its realisation that has been reached at Montessori’s time or a later time but is always responsible for developing and refining Montessori Education creatively within the framework of Montessori’s basic ideas.