The Great Work

The path to normalization, in Montessori's observation, passed invariably through what she called the great work — a period of deep, sustained concentration on freely chosen activity pursued until an internal need was satisfied. The great work could not be prescribed by the teacher. It emerged from the child's own developmental needs, which were individual, internal, and not fully knowable from outside. The teacher's role was to prepare conditions so that the great work could emerge, then protect the child's concentration once it began — ensuring nothing interrupted the process through which scattered energies coalesced into focused, purposeful activity. The great work was transformative not because of what the child produced but because of what production did to the child. The child who built and rebuilt the pink tower twenty times in a single session was not practicing a skill. She was constructing a new relationship between her will and her attention, her intention and her execution, her desire and her capacity. The repetition was the mechanism