During a visit to Italy, Hazrat Inayat Khan met with the Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori, and from this anecdote, it seems he also visited one of her schools.
I was very much interested in what Mme. Montessori told me when I was in Italy: that besides all the activities that she gives to children, she makes them keep silence; and after a little time they like it so much that they prefer silence to their activity.
And it interested me still more to see a little girl of about six years of age who, when the time of silence came, went and closed the windows and closed the door, and put away all the things that she was playing with. Then she came and sat in her little chair and closed her eyes, and she did not open them for about three or four minutes. You could see on her innocent face an angelic expression. It seemed she preferred those five minutes of silence to all the playing of the whole day.
That’s it.
Karima
Lovely. That’s been my (and my three brothers’) personal experience also in the Montessori basic school in Bussum around the 1940s. Classwise! This was a standard tool in her philosophy. My mother has known her and was a Montesori educated practitioner, Maria Montessori was happy with the Dutch cultural climate and loved to work here in the Netherlands.
Wali
That’s nice to know Wali.
Of course as a primary school teacher this touches me. It is nice to know this story of Murshid Inayat Khan, but now as a real experience from you and your brothers it even touches me more. Thank you!
Thank you ,
Murshid!