Except for those schools that are associated with a particular religious community, we do not teach religion, even though many of the holidays presented in this volume are religious in origin. From the child's perspective, many of these holidays, like Christmas, Chanukah, and Chinese New Year, are special days of family feasting, merriment, and wonder. The young child rarely catches more than a glimmer of the religious meaning behind the celebration. On this level, our goal is to use the festivals that we celebrate to build a sense of community within the classroom and to introduce the child to the different cultures of the human family. Our goal is not to teach theology, unless our Montessori school is sponsored by a religious organization, but to focus on how children would normally experience each festival within their culture: the special foods, songs, dances, games, stories, presents-a potpourri of experiences aimed at all the senses of a young child.

On the other hand, one of our fundamental aims is the inspiration of the child's heart. While we do not teach religion, we do present the great moral and spiritual themes, such as love, kindness, joy, and confidence in the fundamental goodness of life, in simple ways that encourage the child to begin the journey toward being fully alive and fully human. Everything that we do is intended to nurture within the child a sense of joy and appreciation of life, a sense of the poetic, and humanity's interrelationship with the universe.

It does not help to avoid the issue of religion and cultural differences. For thousands of years, people have gone to war with their neighbours over them.

If we ever want to achieve peace, we have to begin by teaching children how to understand and accept these very real differences. Truly, though we are all the same inside, we are very different from one another in the ways we live our lives and perceive the world. To build peace, we must learn to see people as they really are, and not be afraid of that which is strange and vastly different from our own ways. With older children, this readily extends to the study of political and moral differences among societies.

We don't mean to suggest that we ought to teach children that everything that people do is equally good. As mankind matures, we have begun to develop global standards by which we judge certain actions and political systems to be destructive of the human spirit.

While Montessori felt that we must teach our children how to live in peace and how to make a positive contribution to the society in which they live, she believed first in the importance of nurturing and protecting the dignity and integrity of the individual.

Montessori was an advocate of the individual's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of personal fulfilment, above the right of any community to enforce standards of behaviour or thought that are destructive to human dignity. We need to give children not only the facts, but also standards to live by.

By sidestepping these issues, pretending that terrible things don't really happen; that prejudice doesn't exist; that there are no major religious, cultural, and political differences, we present a dishonest picture of the world. For some time our young people in America have been confused because they don't know what we really stand for, and see so many cases where our actions belie our words. In order for children to grow up emotionally and morally complete, they must be able to trust and understand the important adults in their lives. In the end, they must learn how to think and judge for themselves. An education for life is one which prepares children to grapple with the real issues of their times.

Family, friends, and beauty surround us. So often we are too involved in our everyday affairs to notice the passing of the seasons and the milestones that mark our lives. Of the things that we can teach our children, the very finest thing of all is to teach them how to live and how to love!

This article originally appeared in the introduction to Celebrations of Life, a program of creating a hands-on, integrated curriculum in international studies and moral themes written by Musya Meyer and Tim Seldin, 1986, Barrie Press.

Another excellent resource is Nurturing The Spirit by Aline Wolf, 1996, Parent Child Press.

© 1996 The Montessori Foundation