Little Flower Day Care and Learning Center

Please contact us at [email protected] for the upcoming school year2026-27 and the Summer Program.

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REST WELL DOTTORE
31st August 1870 - 6th May 1952

BORN IN ITALY - REBORN IN INDIA - THE ROSARY - NAMASTE

WE HONOR YOU!

“I came to teach, but India has taught me.”

In 1939, when the ship carrying Dr. Maria Montessori and her son Mario docked in Chennai, she was sixty-nine years old, and a woman who had already lived several lifetimes, joys and heartaches of living her Method. She’d already lived the European nobility and travelled extensively.
She expected to give a short training course in Chennai and leave but that was not to be.
War closed the seas and she was stuck almost nine years.

Nine years in exile.

Nine years as a white European woman of noble birth living under British colonial rule in a land that was burning for independence and in troubled upheaval. She now lived and experienced Colonialism . What did she see? How did she feel? What moved her?

Nine years of monsoon heat, mosquito nets, vegetarian ashram meals, and the daily sound of temple bells at dawn.

And in those nine years India did not merely host Dr Montessori.
India remade her. Formed a whole new human being - wholly culturally aware.
This is a phenomena that everyone who has lived in foreign countries for a longer period of time will attest to. Cultural awareness becomes strong. We live. We learn. We experience.

Montessori arrived carrying the rosary of her Catholic childhood in one hand and the scientific method of the Casa dei Bambini in the other.
She left carrying both still, but now the beads of the rosary were interlaced with the strong teachings of India.

She experienced grown women sitting on the floor for hours without a chair back, legs folded like all Indian grandmothers.

She watched, perhaps learned to eat with her fingers, to receive prasad with reverence, to bow to elders with joined palms.

She watched Hindu, Muslim, Parsi, Christian, and Jain children work side by side in the same classroom and realised that the prepared environment works beautifully with Peaceful adults who have prepared their hearts, souls and minds.
Understanding that these Indian teachers and assistants, too, carried their personal burdens yet they continued forward, onward in the search of scientific beauty for humanity- for the child.

She wrote:
“I have seen the same child, born of Hindu parents, of Muslim parents, of Christian parents, reveal the same phenomena, the same forms of creation, the same deviations, the same need for love and for order… The human soul is one.”
Dr Maria Montessori, lectures in Ahmedabad, 1940s

She wore white cotton saris in the fierce Indian summers because dignity does not require European tailoring.

She celebrated Diwali with oil lamps and Christmas with midnight Mass in the same week, refusing to choose between them.

When Gandhi was assassinated in 1948, What did she feel? What did she say? Did she speak up of non violence?

She, of Italian nobility who once dined amongst the aristocracy of Italy, learned from India the deepest lesson of humility:
that truth is larger than any single culture, and the child will find it no matter what language the adults pray in.

TRUTH IS LARGER THAN ANY SINGLE CULTURE, AND THE CHILD WILL FIND IT NO MATTER WHAT LANGUAGE THE ADULTS PRAY IN.
We who claim her legacy would do well to remember this.

When we insist that a Montessori classroom must look, sound, smell, and feel exactly as it did in 1907 Rome, we forget that the woman who created it allowed India to change her. The environment must echo the sounds and smells of the country in which we are living with that special hint of cultural acceptance to all.

When we bristle at a guide who removes shoes at the door, or lights incense before the work cycle, or teaches the children to greet one another with “Namaste” instead of a handshake, we forget that Montessori herself learnt and bowed to a culture not her own and found it. Discovered it. Accepted all of its teachings. So when in India we are greeted beautifully with a “Namaste” we, too can introduce other cultural greetings in our cultural lessons, “Hola! Ciao! Hej! Bon jour!”
In Paris we learn and accept and give graciously lessons that include little ones from far away countries.
“Nie Hao” to the little Chinese boy new from Beijing.
“Hej” to the girl from Sweden.

She wrote from India:

“The education of our day has become too exclusive…
We must take from every nation what is good in its civilisation and reject what is bad, creating a humanity that is truly universal.”
Dr Maria Montessori, The Child, Indian edition preface

And in a later letter to Mario she confessed with rare vulnerability:
“I came to teach, but India has taught me.”

“I CAME TO TEACH BUT INDIA HAS TAUGHT ME.”
So let the Montessori world today be brave enough to sit on the floor when the floor is offered.
Choose a bench when that is offered.
Teach indoors or outdoors whichever is practical.
Adapt to circumstance but do so reverently.

Let us taste the food of another culture and embrace the aromas that feed our senses.

Join in on the celebrations of Light and Color or Thanksgiving, Christmas, Ramadan, Yom Kippur - the most holy of days. With reverence.

Let us learn the songs in languages we do not speak, because the child’s spirit recognises melody before grammar.

Maria Montessori, daughter of Italian nobility, became in India simply “Madam.”
And in becoming simply Madam, she became universal.

The lotus opened in foreign soil and did not lose its fragrance.
The rosary rested against a cotton sari and did not lose its prayer.

This is the deepest curriculum she brought home from exile:

Love does not colonise.
Love learns.
Love bows.
Love becomes larger than the self it started in.

May every Montessori classroom on earth, no matter where it stands, remember the woman who once lived and observed the experience of sitting cross-legged on an Indian floor and discovered that the child, like truth itself, belongs to no single nation, only to the one human family.

We live, we learn from real experiences of others.
Althea Cutting

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As usual with gracious thanks to all who share hours of research discovering historical images via the www encouraging our journey of learning. With gratitude 🙏🏼🕊️

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