The nature of work
and the work of
nature: the power of
childhood and
Montessori
Geopedagogy
Prof. Raniero Regni
Lumsa (Italy)
“Man builds himself by working.
Nothing can substitute the lack
of work: neither welfare nor
affection” (The Secret of
Childhood, p. 262)
 “A broken soul becomes
whole…No teacher could do this.
This is the work of nature when
children are given possibilities for
work in the right environment”,
The 1946 London Lectures,
p.156”
“The principal enemy of
civilization is generally
civilization itself” (A. Camus)
The work of Nature
(Evolution) has produced the
man
 Nature has produced the hand as an
organ of the intelligence and as a visible
part of the brain.
 “Today we have nearly lost the use of our
hands. We use our hands for
writing…The hand is divorced from the
drama of thought” (The 1946 London
Lectures, p. 152).
The child’s hand
 A little child thinks with his hands.
 There is a tie between hand and mind,
as the result of the evolutionary
dialogue between hand and brain
 Taking and leaving
The Child craftsman, the
child worker
 The child's hand is an expression of
the instinct of work: the child feels the
need to work .
 the child worker who can combine
soul, mind, eye and hand.
Play-work
 We should talk of play-work: the child
combines the spontaneity and freedom of
the game with the seriousness and the
concentrated effort of the work
 The Action absorbs the whole attention
and Energy of a child ...The use of the
hands brings a profound attention, The
1946 London Lectures, p. 153
The differences between
adult’s and child’s work
 The child’s work is free like play but
serious like work.
Work as a pain VS Work as a joy
 Conscious VS unconscious
 Exterior purposes VS Interior purposes
 Minimun-max law VS maximum effort
The differences between
adult’s and child’s work
 Work consumes the adult VS work
regenerates the child
 Fast VS slow
 When it achieves its target it stops VS
When it achieves its target it starts again
The love of the
environment
 The child’s work doesn’t aim at a welfare or a
comfort, but at something deeper, invisible
which is the fruit of a mysterious love, because
when you love, you can see things that nobody
has seen or can see.
 The love of the environment, when it is diverted
and broken, becomes possession desire. The
instinct of the unsatisfied work can be
transformed into the idea that not working is a
privilege.
The work instinct
 All this is a revelation of energies that come
from faraway and have a transcendent aim.
The adult work is a collective, organized, social
one; the little child’s work is often an individual
activity. If the adults in their work are fast, in
order to save time, because time is money, the
child is slow and only if we respect his being
slow, the child will subsequently become fast.
The man’s work (agricultural
and industrial revolution)
produced the Super-Nature
 “The environment is part of life and life cannot
exist without the environment” (London Lectures,
p. 224)
 Human work should have a different aim from the
one which is generally attributed to human affairs.
 If also plants, animals, and other living beings
normally accomplish tasks and have missions
other than the simple survival, how can human
work be different? On one hand its aim is the
conservation of the cosmos, on the other hand it is
the construction of a Super-Nature.
The artificial and
technological Super-Nature
may destroy Nature.
 In the adult society instead, they seem
to diverge; the work seems to
separate man from Nature and man
from himself and it becomes hideous
work
 All the other organisms already do it,
how can the man be the only element
disturbing the universe?
The work of Nature and the
work of the Child converge
 The child with is play-work teaches us
that work, can also be a vocation, an
attractive work can exist even in the
adult world.
 Every vocation is the expression of
human beings’ love towards life.

The child’s work has the task
of harmonizing the work of
Nature with the human work
 The child’s work has the task of
harmonizing the work of Nature with
the human work, of finding again a
work capable of producing life, of
improving nature, of collaborating
with the creation, a cosmic mission
assigned to a better humanity,
descendent of a better childhood
The normalized child
 The normalized child, the child who can
find an environment and some materials
specially prepared for him, will become
calm, serene and concentrate. He will be
born again he will be a happy child.
The work of nature
 “A broken soul becomes whole…These
children became ‘master of themselves’. They
seemed to be newborn personalities. They lost
their defects and became happy and calm;
they were completely transformed. No teacher
could do this. This is the work of nature when
children are given possibilities for work in the
right environment”, (London Lectures, p.156)
Collaborating with Nature
means collaborating with the
Child’s nature
 Teachers should help the natural teachers, the
great work of Nature. The Child is the New
Man, no more victim of the events. As
everything is connected, we must adopt a
new way of thinking.
 We need to develop an eco-friendly
intelligence, ecological intelligence (D.
Goleman), capable of unifying the
naturalistic intelligence with the social
intelligence of H. Gardner.
Cosmic Mission and
Education at the time of
Globalization
 What can we say about the world society and the globalization?
When Einstein, flew away from Europe threatened by Nazism and
arrived in the United States, he had to fill out a form at the
immigration office; he wrote, under the word "race", "human
being".
 The same Einstein’s perspective was expressed by Maria
Montessori when she returned to England after the Second World
War, after her stay in India. When someone asked her what
nationality she was she answered: "my country is a star that turns
around the sun and it is called Earth."
The children and their education have also the secret to create the
world society. The child is seen as a cosmic agent. Montessori is
able to absorb the best intuitions of Humanities and Science.
The Child's gesture and
human destiny
 Starting from the Child's gesture
Montessori has in her mind the
destiny of the world.
 The world needs cooperation
Cosmic education and the
civilization of empathy
Education and politics, beyond the crisis of the future
Cosmic Education as the building of the civilization of
empathy (j. Rifkin)
Paradoxical relationship which exists between empathy and
entropy, empathic expantion and increasing entropy.
Increasing complexity, interdependence, awareness >
increasing energy consumption > depletion of natural
resources.
More energy – communication – consciousness= more empathy
More energy= more entropy ( usable, available > not available,
order > disorder)
Will empathy or entropy win in the end?
The biophilia
 the love for everything which is alive, is innate in
human beings according to E. Wilson; they try to
establish relations with the rest of living world
 “Consilience” is making the philosophical idealism
converge with the religious universalism and the
scientific rationality; it is making the scientific field
and the humanities meet; it is making the people
who believe that the life was aroused in an instant
by the divine gesture converge with the ones who
think that life on the earth is simply fruit of the
evolution.
Montessori helps us to
look forward
 “Freedom never exists where it is fought to
suffocate something, but only where it is left
an infinite expansion of life… Equally, trough
the conquests of conscience and thought
liberty, we are moving towards a great religious
triumph… Also the Spirit has its nature - and it
is the spiritual life that dominates the existence
at any age... The secret of the whole Nature is
in the child’s soul… It is a pedagogy inspired
by the high concept of Emanuel Kant: the
perfect art returns to nature (Il Metodo della
pedagogia scientifica, pp.277, 278, 280)