Last October, I got to deliver the keynote address at the Montessori Foundation’s 28th Annual Conference in Atlanta.
At that time, the U.S. presidential election was less than a week away. Newspapers had just reported the tragic death of a young person whose chatbot had unwittingly urged him to commit suicide. And all of the educators assembled in that ballroom were actively wondering, in order to meet this moment, for this generation, WWMMD (what would Maria Montessori do)?
In response, I tried to provide some shared context for the moment in which we all find ourselves, and what it’s requiring of us -- a task I approached by trying to answer three questions:
What’s new? What’s not? And what’s next?
As a postscript, you’ll see I challenged the group to begin co-creating a “Syllabus for Humanity,” a task that Andrew Faustich has already advanced via his own Substack column. Check it out and add your thoughts as well.
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