Peace Education

In the final decades of her career, Montessori turned to a question her followers often treated as peripheral but that she considered the ultimate purpose of her life's work: peace. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times. She lectured at the League of Nations and UNESCO. Her concept of peace was not the diplomat's — absence of war, suspension of hostilities, fragile equilibrium of competing powers. It was structural peace: the active construction of a social order in which the dignity of every person is recognized, the potential of every individual is supported, and relationships are characterized by mutual respect, cooperation, and recognition of interdependence. This peace, Montessori argued, could not be achieved through treaties or sanctions. It could only be achieved through education — through developing people who possessed the cognitive, emotional, and moral capacities coexistence demands. The connection between this vision and the Montessori method is architectural: every element of the method serves the ultimate purpose of constructing a person capable