The Kodaikanal Experience: Chapter I. Kahn-Wikramaratne Interview

The Kodaikanal years were from late 1942 to March, 1944, a period of internment for Maria Montessori against her will in India. Yet in these remote hills, a fanfare and training course emerged, and so did the inspiration for an in-depth unification principle for the elementary program which we now loosely call Cosmic Education. These two interviews with Lena Wikramaratne and Mario Montessori Sr. [see EJ1078110 for the interview with Mario Montessori Sr.] capture a period of new thinking about Montessori education that personifies the interdependent components of land and water, air and energy, animals and plants, alongside the human-made world. Both Mario and Maria Montessori lived near a complex that housed families with children from infancy to age eighteen, and this location is considered to be the inspiration for their emerging insights around childhood and adolescence. [This article was reprinted from "The NAMTA Quarterly" 5,1 (1979, Fall): 44-54.]