The Absorbent Mind

While adults build on their knowledge base when we learn, children begin life with no knowledge, no familiarity with their environment, no language, no orientation to space or time. Fortunately they have the benefit of an open, inquisitive, fascinated mind that Maria Montessori called the absorbent mind.

This mind is the quality and process by which they gain knowledge. "Impressions do not merely enter (the child's) mind, they form it, they incarnate themselves in (the child)." In this way, the child's mind prepares for functions-in-the-making and functions-yet-to-come like memory, understanding, and reasoning. "Before three, the functions are being created; after three, they develop." [from Montessori: A Modern Approach, p. 36-7]

Moreover, children are "gifted with a psychic nature peculiar to them ... a constructive energy, a dynamic power ... a special kind of sensitivity which leads (them) to absorb everything about (them) ... that enables (them) to adapt to life."

Through their own efforts (e.g. by use of imitation), children learn the elements of language, they learn to speak and walk, they acquire the culture around them. In fact, no one can do for the child the work the child must do to become an adult - acquire the faculties of strength, coordination, intelligence, language, etc. while adapting to the conditions of the surrounding world.

This remarkable absorbent mind shapes the child into an adult. "Every personal trait absorbed by the child becomes fixed forever, and, even if reason later disclaims it, somthing of it remains ... Out of this truth comes the importance of (pre-schools), for it is the little ones who are building mankind ... The child brings us a great hope and a great vision." [from The Absorbent Mind]

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