Dear TIES Community,
Mid-May, 2018, and a fresh two inches of snow have accumulated outside my window here in the majestic Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It’s lovely and a breath of life to a dry winter. It comes as a contemplative moment that begs the promise of a verdant spring and the re-enactment of the ancient cycle of the seasons.
Everywhere there are cycles — night and day, annual, school, Earth systems, cosmic systems. The TIES faculty senses that the life cycle of integral education is just beginning to be understood. Now is a time of Montessori for adults, a time for a deeper approach to education, a time for us to address the perennial questions of humanity’s purpose, role, and destiny.
Near the end of the first chapter of my favorite Montessori volume, To Educate the Human Potential, Maria Montessori poses the six questions that a child might begin to ask between the ages of six to twelve.
What am I? What is the task of the human in this wonderful universe? Do we merely live here or is there something more for us to do? Why do we struggle and fight? What is good and evil? Where will it all end?
For good reasons, these questions are considered to be universal, questions that capture the essence of what it means to be human in any time and at any place. I have always been captivated by the utterly transcendent sensibility expressed in the first, “What am I?” Not who but what am I, a query at once scientific and personal, both detached and yet intimate with the life process itself. It coheres to all of Montessori’s questions that follow. All of them are universal. And why not? Aren’t they these longings critical for any birth or renaissance of adults as well?
For the past twenty two years TIES has pushed the envelope of the human potential in crafting what we call Montessori for adults. Like Montessori’s approach to cosmic education for the elementary years, we raise and respond to perennial inquiries about the education of humans of all ages. TIES takes Montessori’s lead by embracing a scientific plan that unfolds from modern approaches to life and universe that are re-shaping our collective global vision.
For so many reasons, the cycle is right.
With all best wishes,
John Fowler, PhD.
Adjunct Faculty, TIES