confined to this place with her movements
restricted to a zone of five miles. She
worried that all her work in Europe was
lost, with her schools shut down by Nazi
Germany and Fascist Italy.
“I imagined Maria Montessori
in a white, very loose-fitting
full-length gown…walking up and
down most of the time in the open
balcony of the bungalow. What
had she been thinking as she
lived in this foreign country that
showered her with respect and
strived to meet all of her needs?
Did she miss the way of life she
was used to? Or was she so
absorbed in studying the universal
“bambino” that it did not matter
to her where she was?”
(Bhatia, 2019, p. 99)
During these extremely tough times,
Dr. Montessori stayed focused on the
child and her work continued. When she
told her hosts that she could not train
teachers without a school for children
where she could observe them, they
opened a school for her on the first floor of
the Bungalow. She needed time, she said,
to study the Indian educational situation,
for her methods must adapt themselves
to the needs of different types of children
throughout the world. Here she witnessed
the effortless absorption of language, the
development of movement and independence
among children where there was no
distinction of class or religion.
She addressed the audience for her
first training course in India:
“I feel as I stand facing you
that this is one of the greatest
moments in my life. For many
decades of years, the child has
helped and revealed to me
something which lay in the depths
of its soul. And my work has been
the work of a follower, a follower
who has discovered something and
followed that child, followed that
something which had been
discovered in the soul of the
child. But how much lack of
comprehension, how much
misunderstanding, have I not met
in so many countries, because the
people thought I was talking about
a method of education, while
I was speaking of a revelation
given to me by the soul.”
(2009, p. 26)
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Montessori found this deep and clear
understanding of what she had been trying
to do in India, where, as she describes it,
she found “the awakened spirit and soul”.
She goes on to say,
“I will not talk about a method
of educating children, but about
something which has been
revealed by the children, which
had come forth from the Child’s
soul.” (2009, p. 27) (2009, p. 27)
It is important to reflect on this quote
as we decide what best to do for the child in
the novel circumstances in which we presently
find ourselves. We are without our
tool kit, and suddenly those albums we created
with so much detail are not standing
us in good stead. We are scrambling to recreate
the didactic apparatus in virtual form.
Have we stopped to think if this is what the
child needs and is this what following the
child means? The child is our treasure and
in the process of cultivating them, we as
their teacher must be transformed too. A
method implies something set in stone and
this is one thing that the Montessori way
is not. We could have a knitting method
when someone tells you exactly what to do
Olcott Bungalow, Chennai Rose Bank, Kodaikanal
/IMC
