NP Montessori method (was Re: Ayn Rand

[jbor]

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>From: <monroe at mpm.edu>

> No, nothing in partcular about Ms. Montessori, pretty much just poking
> fun at Ms. Rand.  "A = A" signs, not-so-crypto-fascism, condescension
> and that haircut.

The notion of "directed play", the taking away of the pacifiers, the talking
to the infants as though they were adult, the thing with the locked cabinet
and the keys, the revolt of the babies using the toys as a construct-o-set
on their pacifier-rescue mission: it's a fractured fable straight from the
pages of the Montessori textbook! Don't think Ayn ever went in for infant
educational reform ... I'll pay the haircut, however. That final image of
the roomful of pacified toddlers sucking away, and creeping Marge and Homer
out, is a classic.


~~~
    "By 1945, the factory system - which, more than
     any piece of machinery, was the real and major
     result of the Industrial Revolution - had been
     extended to include the Manhattan Project, the
     German long-range rocket program and the death
     camps, such as Auschwitz.It has taken no major
     gift of prophecy to see how these three curves
      of development might plausibly converge, and
                before too long. ... "
                                 (T. Pynchon, 1984)
                                                    ~~~