The nature of work and the work of nature: the power of childhood and Montessori Geopedagogy

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The nature of work and the work of nature the
power of childhood and Montessori Geopedagogy

• Prof. Raniero Regni
• Lumsa (Italy)

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• Man builds himself by working. Nothing can
  substitute the lack of work neither welfare nor
  affection (The Secret of Childhood, p. 262)

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• A broken soul becomes wholeNo 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

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• The principal enemy of civilization is
  generally civilization itself (A. Camus)

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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 writingThe hand is divorced
  from the drama of thought (The 1946 London
  Lectures, p. 152).

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The childs 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

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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.

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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

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The differences between adults and childs work

• The childs 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

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The differences between adults and childs 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

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The love of the environment

• The childs work doesnt 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.

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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 childs 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.

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The mans 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.

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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?

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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.

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The childs work has the task of harmonizing the
work of Nature with the human work

• The childs 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

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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.

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The work of nature

• A broken soul becomes wholeThese 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)

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Collaborating with Nature means collaborating
with the Childs 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.

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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 Einsteins 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.

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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

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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 gt increasing energy
  consumption gt depletion of natural resources.
• More energy communication consciousness more
  empathy
• More energy more entropy ( usable, available gt
  not available, order gt disorder)
• Will empathy or entropy win in the end?

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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.

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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 childs 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)