Archetypally speaking, that is to say stretching understanding from the universal to the particular, almost everybody experiences learning. A minority, however, has access to education, and only a few children will have the experience of learning by receiving an education from this cohort of teachers and precisely those fellow students, all of which influence the understanding of what it is to learn--of Learning. One's early ideas about and habits of learning at least set the bar for how understanding changes, and often simply become the way one participates in the shaping of one's own mind and felt sense of the way the world works. The parent and the society should care, therefore, not only what patterns are repeated in the home, but also what kind of schools are made and choosen for children.
[Disclaimer: It has been my pleasure to work with the school profiled herein. Though the ideas offered are the result of over fourty years of consideration, the perspective is not objective in the way that is usually meant.]
The educational system under consideration in this piece was developed by Maria Montessori, the first woman to secure a medical degree in Italy. Being female, she was directed to care for children we would now describe using some diagnostic-sounding euphemism, but whom were then refered to as "".