"If the school sends out children with a desire for knowledge and some idea of how to acquire and use it, it will have done its work". This should be the overarching guiding principle for choosing a school. So what kind of education system is built on this philosophy?

I believe that the Montessori philosophy is. And there are four primary reasons why I believe so. These four reasons are so primary that I am reasonably convinced that choosing a Montessori school over a regular school has enormous merits.

1. Based on scientific observations: The Montessori method is based on the wealth of insights gathered through a process of rigorous scientific experimentation and observation. These observations were made by Dr. Maria during her years of work with children. She did not stop at just recording the observations. She went ahead and recreated the experiments under different situations to see if these observations hold good. They did. She tested them in different cultural settings as well and found that these observations are indeed universally applicable. Therefore the fact that the conceptual framework for the Montessori method is strongly entrenched in rigorous scientific research makes the philosophy conceptually sound. No one can dispute science.

2. Based on child's true nature: The Montessori method is strongly founded on the basic principles of a child's true and innate nature. Dr. Maria made some discoveries about the child's true nature. She discovered the child's love for work, its need for activity, its ability to show interest and concentrate on achieving something for long periods of time if sufficiently engaged. She also observed that a child needs order for its development, exercises of practical life to build its personality and an early introduction to many items of knowledge to help it along the path of development. She recognized a child's need for movement, its need to choose, its need for independence as well as its ability to live amicably in a social microcosm and benefit enormously from it.

The following three concepts form the cornerstone of the Montessori teaching philosophy. Together, they are called the three agents of education. Certainly, any educational system that is based on these cornerstones is built on solid ground.

The Montessori method recommends that the physical environment has to be specially prepared keeping in mind the child's developmental requirements such as the need for repetition and the exercise

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