12/29/2025
Thanks Ann Solomn. What a wonderful image.
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CONTINUATION OF THE TRUE ELDERS: IF THEY COULD SIT TOGETHER NOW
A Quiet Imagining
Imagine a long wooden table in a sun-lit room, simple, with comfortable chairs, tables covered with white linen cloth and beautifully arranged flowers - pulled close.
No podiums.
No cameras.
No titles on the place cards.
Not having to be honored but here to honor.
Just seven people who once dared to believe that education could heal the world.
It is 2025. December and the year enters its final days. The Elders are concerned.
The Elders frown; eyebrows pulled up; shoulders tense.
Maria Montessori arrives first, white hair pinned simply, eyes still sharp with wonder.
Rudolf Steiner follows, carrying the scent of beeswax and watercolour.
Loris Malaguzzi comes head hung softly, pockets full of children’s drawings.
Charlotte Mason - shoulders rounded, enters with a basket of wildflowers and a well-worn copy of poetry.
John Dewey brings the steady gaze of a man who trusted experience above all. Success of experience shining through his footsteps.
Ken Robinson arrives last, notebook in hand, already sketching a cartoon of the group.
They do not argue about who was right.
They listen.
They look out the window at our world in 2025:
children anxious before they can read,
screens glowing in prams,
test scores worshipped like idols,
playgrounds silent because recess was shortened again,
teachers exhausted by targets instead of children.
Montessori speaks first, voice quiet but unyielding:
“It is not enough to train teachers in the method.
We must turn around: Philosophy first. Method second.”
Steiner nods slowly:
“The head, the heart, and the hand must be educated together,
or we produce only half a human being.”
Malaguzzi adds, eyes bright:
“The child has a hundred languages,
but we steal ninety-nine
when we reduce education to worksheets and rankings.”
Charlotte Mason, gentle but firm:
“Children are born persons.
We feed them living ideas, not dry facts.
Nature, beauty, narration—these are their birthright.”
Dewey leans forward:
“Education is not preparation for life;
education is life itself.
Let children do real things in real communities,
or we teach them only to obey.”
Robinson smiles sadly:
“We are educating people out of their creativity.
The system is designed for a world that no longer exists.
We need diversity, not standardisation.”
They fall silent for a moment,
listening to the echo of our children’s unspoken questions.
Then Montessori speaks again:
“I once borrowed from Seguin, from Froebel, from Itard—
not because I lacked ideas,
but because truth is larger than any one of us.
We must do the same now.”
They agree.
They would not compete.
They would collaborate.
They would draft a single, fierce letter to every politician, every education minister, every school board on earth.
It would read something like this:
We, who spent our lives watching children unfold,
declare that the current system is wounding the very souls it claims to serve.
Stop measuring what matters least.
Start nourishing what matters most.
Put philosophy before method.
Put the child before the test.
Put wonder before compliance.
Put the hundred languages before the single standardised answer sheet.
Give children time—
time in nature,
time with books that breathe,
time with music that does not need to be loud to be heard,
time with hands in clay, soil, paint, wood,
time with one another without adult orchestration.
Train teachers not as technicians,
but as guardians of the human spirit.
Reduce class sizes.
Increase beauty.
Replace fear with curiosity.
We did not agree on everything in our lifetimes,
but we agree on this:
the child is born whole,
and it is the task of education
to keep them whole.
Do this,
or admit that schooling has become something else entirely.
They would sign it together—
Montessori, Steiner, Malaguzzi, Mason, Dewey, Robinson—
not as rivals,
but as elders who finally sat at the same table.
And perhaps, just perhaps,
someone in power would read it
and remember
that education was never meant to produce workers for factories that no longer exist.
It was meant to produce
human beings
capable of wonder,
capable of love,
capable of changing the world
by first refusing to wound it.
The room falls quiet again.
Outside, a child laughs somewhere in the distance.
They smile. They nod. They breathe in deeply.
The work is not finished.
But the circle
is wide enough
for all of us
to sit
together.
Let’s come together for the world.
©️articles Althea Cutting
16th December 2025
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