Daily Reflection
The development of language is part of the development of the personality, for words are the natural means of expressing thoughts and establishing understanding between people.
—Maria Montessori
Today we’re going to keep talking about Language, surveying another great scholar with soul in the game, Maria Montessori.
While Wittgenstein was primarily focused on meaning and use within language, Montessori was primarily concerned with the mechanics of development and social function.
She was also fascinated with children, and spent countless hours observing them and testing hypotheses of their development.
The greatest observation she left for us was the way in which children began absorbing language as early as 3 months old.
She noted a “special window” of sorts in which a child is hyper-absorbent between birth and 3 years old. In this stage our brains are physically primed to take on their first language.
She concluded that we do not learn how to speak, as much as our …
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