Like a Bar of Soap: Work, don’t play is a fascinating profile of Maria Montessori:
Montessori believed that children were born for gran lavoro – ‘immense work’. She wrote that the ‘power of concentration shown by little children from three to four years old has no counterpart save in the annals of genius’. The purpose of education was to provide them with an environment in which they were free to work without interference from adults. This was far more satisfying for children than ‘play devoid of meaning’. When they were tired, it was because they had worked too little rather than too much. One of her principles was that ‘mental work does not exhaust; it gives nourishment, is food for our spirit.’
