We’ve all been travelling a very interesting path recently. Day after day, all around the world, we’ve toiled with how to get ahead of the next stage of the coronavirus. Safeguarding our lives and our livelihoods was the imperative. But now we’re starting to move ahead. We’re starting to think about how we will all focus on thriving beyond COVID-19. We’re starting to feel free again to dream and to re-imagine opportunities.
Montessori has a lofty goal.
Montessori Aims to Lift Up Humanity
We know. This is a big goal. From the very beginning, Dr. Maria Montessori saw it as her mission to improve the world through education. She believed that by giving children the honor and respect they deserved, the benefits would trickle through to families, the community, and society in general. She believed in equality of all people, and saw that education has the potential to be a great leveler.
Montessori schools aim for peace. This starts between individuals and teaching our youngest students how to be kind and gracious toward one another. A great respect for the environment and other living beings is another important aspect of our work, as is a reverence for the wide diversity of cultures around the globe. Combined, these elements are cultivating within the child a respect for themselves and others, as well as a desire to ensure connection and fairness for all.
This week, we’re sharing a bed time story from Probably Tom Foolery that we hope you will enjoy. We’re providing the text and the video because sometimes the words are enough and you might like to create the visuals in your own mind. We think Dr. Maria Montessori would have approved and we know our path beyond COVID-19 will continue to lift up humanity.
The Great Realisation
“A world of waste and wonder of poverty and plenty back before we understood why hindsight’s 2020. You see the people came up with companies to trade across all lands but they swelled and got much bigger than we ever could have planned. We’d always had our want but now they got so quick. You could anything you dreamed of in a day and with a click. We noticed families had stopped talking. That’s not to say they never spoke but the meaning must have melted and the work life balance broke. And the children’s eyes grew squarer and every toddler had a phone. They filtered out the imperfections but amidst the noise they felt alone. And every day the skies grew thicker until you couldn’t see the stars so we flew in planes to see them whilst down below we filled our cars. We’d drive around all day in circles. we’d forgotten how to run. We swapped the grass for tarmac, shrunk the parks until there were none. We filled the seas with plastic because our waste was never capped until each day when you went fishing you would pull them out already wrapped. And while we drank and smoked and gambled, our leaders taught us why, it’s best to not upset the lobbies, more convenient to die.
But then in 2020, a new virus came our way. The governments reacted and told us all to hide away. But while we all were hidden amidst the fear and all the while, the people dusted off their instincts, they remembered how to smile. They started clapping to say thank you and calling up their mums. And whilst the car keys gathered dust, they looked forward to their runs. And with the sky less full of voyagers, the earth began to breathe and the beaches bore new wildlife that scuttled off into the seas. Some people started dancing, some were singing, some were baking. We’d grown so used to bad news but some good news was in the making. And so when we’d found the cure and were allowed to go outside, we all preferred the world we’d found to the one we’d left behind. Old habits became extinct and they made way for the new. And every simple act of kindness was now given it’s due.”
“But why did it take a virus to bring the people back together?”
“Because sometimes you have to get sick my boy before you start feeling better. Now lie down and dream of tomorrow and all the things that we can do and who knows if your dream hard enough some of them will come true.
We now call it the Great Realisation and yes, since then there have been many. But that’s the story of how it started and why hindsight’s 2020.”
