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New Year's Message 2001
A young man of outstanding intellect was not quite sure about the quality of his beloved's mental aptitudes. He loved her very much and was therefore kind, if perhaps a whit patronising. One day he banteringly suggested that she give him her personal definition of intelligence. After some consideration, she said 'The ability to distinguish the essential from the non-essential.' He became silent and thoughtful, then quietly commented that of the many definitions he had heard this was among the best. She was pleased, he was pleased and life was good.
Eventually the young woman became interested in Montessori pedagogy. To her amazement, she found the theory to be an endless source of discoveries, revelations and unadulterated delight. Her cheerful interest in the Montessori autodidactic materials - so intellectually glamorous, so attractive - gradually changed to profound respect, akin to reverence.
She found the underpinnings of the Prepared Environments mesmerising in their scientific aptness. Here was the ultimate milieu divin that would enable children to distinguish essential from non-essential, making this distinction an enduring habit of the mind. A place that of its nature eschewed boredom and the easy melancholy of incomplete experience to be sloughed off like so much fluff. An environment rooted in reality, unconditionally allowing the possibility to discern truth, and recognise fabrication.
Our truths and our fabrications are inextricably entwined, forming a tissue woven from natural and artificial fibres. Our days and months and years are based on the observable reality of cyclical phenomena. Our sub-dividing and grouping of them into weeks, centuries and millennia is a convenient human arrangement providing structures to hold our history; to prepare our secular and religious celebrations; to measure the passage of time and the passage of life.
When contemplating the passage of life many of us stand aside and one step up to look upon the erratic mix of truths and half-truths, of certainties and specious absolutes that have guided our existence. We seek its essence, aware that we are a speck of living matter that has the good fortune of knowing it is a speck of living matter, part of an infinite universe, caught in the silent benevolence of endless time.
Then, we step back into the here and now and continue our daily doings, mingling eternal realities and human contrivances with the earnest playfulness that is characteristic of our species.
For a while though, the eternal realities linger and we ponder deeply on the raison d'être of our work, which happens to be that of the AMI. We read the Objectives of the Association Montessori Internationale as set out in Articles 3 and 4 of the Articles of Association, and wonder in a desultory way to what extent they are being furthered. Desultory not because of indifference, but because the series of clear, dry phrases in which they are couched do not even remotely convey the vital passion that engendered the AMI.
It is love of life and of the child as one of life's most magnificent expressions on our earth that caused the AMI to be created. Without this passion the AMI is devoid of its essence and becomes merely a fallow fabrication.
So what has this to do with a New Year's Message for 2001?
As always, AMI's most cordial good wishes go out its members, adherents, friends and supporters. However, this year, since for a portion of humanity it is a year that has been dealt a most auspicious and promising number, AMI would add an appeal to its season's salutations.
Please rekindle with us the fire that, at its inception, made the Montessori Movement a force on behalf of the children of the world. In these times of inordinate exposure to virtual reality, it is a vital necessity that they shall be allowed to follow their inner directives and given the freedom to achieve their immeasurable potential. The future of humanity and of our luminous planet depends upon their capacity to distinguish the essential from the non-essential.
Renilde Montessori
© 2001, Renilde Montessori
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