Children's Spirituality Summit 2024

The Montessori approach to education has been embraced by a wide variety of educators around the world. Ironically, though, as secular educators have accepted Maria Montessori’s pedagogical methods, they have overlooked perhaps the driving force of her approach: the intrinsic spirituality of children. The aim of this paper is to summarize this often-neglected component of children’s spirituality in Montessori’s own words. In so doing, the spiritual nature of the Montessori method is articulated and compared to an orthodox, confessional Christian view of children’s spirituality. The hope is to provide Montessori-curious evangelical Christians some insights into the spiritual nature of this educational phenomenon.