Texts for a New Time: Let The Child Be The Guide
A documentary film about children, adults, attention, learning — and a place where all these are in harmony
Texts for a new time is a space where I share recommendations — books, music, films, or other works that bring forward humanity’s potential.
Today’s text is the invitation to step across the threshold, into a sparkly-clean world of genius. It’s sparkly-clean because the children in this film are continuously tidying, organizing, and polishing everything in it with great seriousness. And it’s genius because you see something you’ve been missing for a long time: human beings paying attention to what they are doing. Today is the invitation to Let The Child Be The Guide, a beautiful 2017 film by Alexandre Mourot.
If we all were able to pay attention to what we were doing, and let children do the same, the world would be changed.
In Let the Child Be The Guide, you might think the hero is Géraud. And for sure, I could watch this small human all day. He strolls solemnly about like a little professor, his hair sticking every which way, his eyelashes as thick as the neuron networks being built one day at a time by his handiwork here. He’s just so stinking lovable.
But actually, the real hero in this film isn’t little Géraud; it isn’t teacher Christian Maréchal; it’s this place. It’s a place where paying attention to what you are doing, while you are doing it, is the gorgeous norm. Where children can finish the things they start without being interrupted.
It is places like this that are defragmenting the broken hard drive of humanity, upgrading our whole collective operating system, one learning community at a time. I actually believe places like this are reintroducing the sacred into the day-to-day life.
So this is my way of thanking and celebrating this great and wise revolutionary, Maria Montessori, born more than 150 years ago this month. Let The Child Be The Guide is available in many languages and on many platforms.
And whether or not you are involved in a Montessori learning community, there are many ways to enact and amplify Dr. Montessori’s deep respect and reverence for children! Here are a few examples I’ve enjoyed lately:
Setting Up Your Home Montessori-Style, a super practical 4-week course by Simone Davies with examples on how to make space for attention at home;
Hope Wilder’s wonderful new work, Let’s Decide Together: Practicing Sociocracy with Children, a handbook on how to include children in decision-making;
Power to the Children, a film by Anna Kerstig with the story of an incredible child-led governance initiative called the Inclusive Children’s Parliaments.
Happy birthday to Maria Montessori!