The Maria Montessori Archives resting with Association Montessori Internationale, Amsterdam continue to yield unexpected treasures. As with any historical archive, the contents of these archives are a varied mixture of complete articles and lectures, documents that are incomplete, or an outline of what was later to become a fully fledged lecture to be delivered to students, or the general public.
We recently came across two lectures delivered on Maria Montessori’s 1939 London course that discuss the role and importance of money. Montessori talks about its use at different levels, practical, theoretical, and in the context of supranature. She promotes giving children real money to develop a sense of what money can buy. To quote Angeline Lillard,1 ‘Trying out real-life adult activities is a universal form of play’. It drives children’s interest, and so builds their knowledge.
