Maria Montessori and Peace Education

Step into any Montessori classroom and it won’t be long before you see peace education at work.  In a primary classroom you might find a peace corner, a dedicated area where young children can find peace and practice conflict resolution.  Or you might see the entire classroom playing the silence game at line time as a way to practice stillness and mindfulness.  In an elementary classroom, you will see children learning concepts of global citizenship, social justice, and appreciation for diversity.  Peace is a major component of Montessori classrooms because Maria Montessori, the educator who developed the Montessori method, viewed peace as intrinsic to the aims of education.

Maria Montessori advocated for peace throughout her lifetime and wrote extensively about the connection between peace and children.  She believed that world peace would only come about through a radical transformation in the way adults treat children. She famously said, “The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind.”

Maria Montessori opened the first Children’s House in Rome in 1907, and developed her educational method over the next several decades.  She traveled extensively to train teachers and to lecture about her educational philosophies, and by the 1930s, as fascism came to power in her native Italy, she began lecturing about the connection between peace and education.  Ultimately, Maria Montessori was exiled from Italy in 1934 due to her pacifist beliefs.  She continued her work abroad (notably in India, where she spent almost a decade) before being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times before her death in 1952.

Maria Montessori

Maria Montessori lived through turbulent and uncertain times, and she was deeply troubled by the rise of fascism and violence.  Yet she steadfastly believed that working with children was an antidote to these evils.  Speaking at a conference in Copenhagen in 1937, on the eve of World War II, she said: “Bringing up the subject of an education for peace in such critical times as these, when society is continually threatened by the possibility of war, may appear to be a most naive kind of idealism.  I nonetheless believe that laying the foundation for peace through education is the most effective and the most constructive way of opposing war…”  

In particular, Montessori classrooms foster peace by emphasizing individuality and independence.  When children are recognized for who they are and given autonomy, they feel valued and integral to the classroom community.  This sense of connection encourages them to grow into leaders.  Teachers help children grow into peaceful individuals by promoting skills like emotional regulation, conflict resolution, and communication.

At an address in 1936, Maria Montessori said, “Preventing conflicts is the work of politics; establishing peace is the work of education.”  She defined peace not just as the absence of war, but the presence of harmony, justice, respect and love amongst people.  She thought that children were naturally predisposed to these values, and strengthening their development along these lines was the most important goal of her classrooms.