Educating and schooling are different concepts: educating refers to training a person in values, rights and obligations, while schooling is the process of accessing school to receive compulsory education, that is, a certain amount of information agreed upon by society.

The difference between educating and schooling is a fascinating and profound topic. Educating is a broad and continuous process that encompasses the integral development of a person. It is not limited to the acquisition of academic knowledge, but also includes values, social, emotional, and ethical skills. Education can occur in any context since it is a lifelong process that seeks to form complete and responsible individuals.

Schooling, on the other hand, refers specifically to the process of attending a formal educational institution, such as a school, where a structured curriculum is followed. Schooling focuses on teaching academic subjects and preparing for exams and certifications. It is an important part of education, but it does not encompass it in its entirety. Both processes are essential and complementary. 

The Montessori method, considering this duality, proposes a unique approach in which schooling is the consequence of a comprehensive education based on the natural development of children, on their interests and needs that are fully satisfied in a prepared environment that simultaneously promotes independence, creativity, responsibility and respect.

Montessori education recognises the existence of enormous human potential that must be transformed into the necessary skills to fully adapt to the environment in which they were born and develop; language, movements, beliefs, uses, customs, knowledge and socio-emotional skills unfold in the first years of life.

The Montessori proposal offers children a living environment that will allow them to develop and acquire the required knowledge simultaneously and naturally.  This offer does not limit education to a simple traditional schooling that has forced the families of one and a half million children in the last eight years to abandon traditional classrooms.

Families have found that traditional practices of education do not respond to the individual needs, interests and abilities of their children, and that the excessive pressure exerted on children to achieve established general expectations often marginalises some of them because the individuality of the human being is not considered, and their development is altered. 

This family nucleus shows, worldwide, a tendency, especially after the COVID pandemic, to seek a better balance between work and personal life that fundamentally modifies its conception. The importance of the family, which Montessori emphasises, in the formation of children and the incalculable value of the parent-child relationship is discovered.

Established curricular programs and traditional forms of teaching applied hinder personal learning through interested exploration, creativity, spontaneous social skills, and personal recognition of abilities and limitations, as the basis of self-esteem.      

Teaching and learning understood as two different activities are essential in the Montessori approach to education. The first as an activity that the educator offers to the child and the second as a personal work of the child to obtain knowledge.

When we refer to teaching, the responsibility for the transmission of knowledge and its learning falls on the adult who must attract the attention of the student so that he learns. The student's responsibility is limited to listening to the adult and then repeating what he or she said. Evaluation is the responsibility of the teacher and success depends exclusively on his or her ability to reproduce.

In this second activity, learning becomes the responsibility of the child, of his effort and his work. External evaluation is transformed into a self-evaluation that allows the student to do what is necessary to learn and fulfil their commitment. Learning requires the student to be creative and resourceful in order to achieve the purpose.

In a simple statement, Montessori Education gives priority to being over knowledge: "First let it be and then let it read" A. Escamilla.

"It is the child who learns alone, it is not the teacher who teaches" Maria Montessori.

Our task as educators is to observe the nature of the child, detect his interests, his abilities and offer life experiences in the environment so that he can develop and learn. 

Matching skill and interest with the right activity will lead the child to concentrate and train. To offer in the Montessori Environment this "Optimal Experience" that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow Theory seeks and that is nothing more than the "Normalisation" of which Maria Montessori speaks to us.

Aware of the benefits of the Montessori approach to education and the need for an education that respects nature and human development, to what extent do our beliefs, the external pressures of people ignorant or less convinced of the potential of the child that Montessori highlights, prevent us from offering children what they need and not us?

To what extent do the expectations of parents and authorities impede the proper practice of Montessori principles?

Let us put the child at the centre of our educational work, let us be allies, interpreters and guides in his development, let us not betray him to satisfy uninformed external interests. 

"The structure of education must be based on the following facts: 

• That the joy of the child is in achieving good things for his age.
• That the real satisfaction of a child is to make the maximum effort in the task he performs,
• That happiness consists in a well-directed activity of the body and mind in an excellent way 
• That the strength of mind, body, and spirit is acquired by exercise and experience
• That true freedom has as its objective the service to society and humanity consistent with the progress and happiness of the individual."

Maria Montessori

Maria del Coral Ruiz Argüelles, AMI 3–6 Trainer