We’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share your comments!

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. Works as a software developer and a weekend farmer. Father of two.

Good work comes from good rest.

Yati
This six to twelve article is titled “Good at Work, Good at Rest.” That’s something you always talk about. Can you explain briefly what it means?

Hiro
Resting is important. If you’re not good at resting, you can’t work for long, and you can’t work efficiently. In other words, “knowing where to ease off” is part of becoming good at work, and mastering something means knowing where you can let go of effort.

Yati
Can you give an example?

Hiro
Say there’s a kid who’s bad at throwing a ball. If you watch closely, they’re tense the whole time. That keeps the arm from whipping properly. To throw far, you relax, then use force only at the very end. Basically, you stay loose.

Yati
By relaxing, you can harness centrifugal force.

Hiro
Right. Figuring out how to produce results while staying relaxed is what you should really be thinking about when it comes to work.

Yati
I always thought Europeans were the ones thinking about “work-life balance.” In one study of over 35,000 people across 30 European countries, higher work-life balance was associated with higher work engagement, a positive, sustained psychological state combining vitality, dedication, and absorption in work. People who were “relaxed” in the sense of valuing time outside work were also good at their jobs.

Hiro
Interesting. But if you can’t do this, time is finite, and what you can accomplish in life is limited. What you choose to do matters.

Yati
The study also found that work-life balance varies by country, explained by welfare regimes, the characteristics of welfare policies and social security systems. Different countries, different patterns. In Japan, as kids, we dream of “taking it easy,” wanting to be YouTubers, for instance. But as adults, we feel like we “have to push hard.”

Hiro
Right. Homework culture is part of the problem. It instills the wrong mindset.

Yati
True.

Hiro
Homework is really terrible. You’re forced to do something unnecessary even after going home, and you get scolded if you don’t. Not a single kid actually wants to do homework.

Yati
Nobody does. We were thrilled when the teacher said, “No homework today.”

Hiro
That’s the opposite of good work. Being forced to do something you don’t want, getting yelled at if you don’t, that’s awful. It leads straight to overtime culture in adulthood. “I’ll take work home.” What we should be training is finishing within the allotted time. There’s a perfect game for this.

Yati
There is. [laughs]

Hiro
It’s called Pikmin. [laughs]

Yati
I played it as an elementary schooler, and I still love it.

Hiro
I really want everyone to play Pikmin. It’s work training dressed up as a game.

Yati
[laughs] Get good at Pikmin, and you get faster at real-world work.

Hiro
It’s pretty intense training. Here’s something most people don’t know: there’s a famous company called McKinsey, often called the world’s hardest firm to get into. It’s a “consulting firm” where only the elite of the elite are hired. A single day of consulting can cost 2 to 3 million yen, the equivalent of about 15,000 to 20,000 dollars. An unbelievable business world.

Yati
That’s about 2,000 dollars an hour. Wow.

Hiro
Basically, they consult for major corporations everyone knows. New hires there spend three years being drilled on one thing.

Yati
What?

Hiro
Preparation. The Japanese call it “dandori,” meaning advance preparation and planning. They’re trained rigorously in dandori. Preparation means that to produce results within the time allowed, you have to get many things ready in advance.

Yati
Exactly.

Hiro
Preparing materials, for example. Before making a proposal, you need to have read a lot of documents. Reading documents means working backward, identifying what you need to read, preparing in advance, and then performing at a high level and finishing on time during the actual consulting work.

Yati
Mm-hmm.

Hiro
There’s a contract, so you deliver results within that contract period. Otherwise, no one hires you again. At McKinsey, even young employees in their twenties earn tens of millions of yen a year, the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the first thing they learn? Preparation.

Yati
Pikmin.

Hiro
Exactly. That’s what makes Pikmin amazing. A 7 or 8 year old can learn what McKinsey’s brightest spend three years mastering, practically for free, for the cost of about a 30-dollar game, and play as much as they want.

Yati
And you can fail as many times as you like. No one yells at you. You don’t get fired.

Hiro
So if kids master Pikmin, they’ve unconsciously learned the essence of work. They absorb it without realizing. They naturally understand that work means preparing properly and moving forward step by step.

Yati
They can learn the essence of work through a game, starting in childhood.

Hiro
And cooking is the same. If you cook regularly, you know: cooking is preparation. If “dinner is at 7,” you get everything ready by then. One dish, two dishes, whatever you’re making, it all has to be done by that time. It takes a lot of mental effort, so cooking is really good for the brain. Elderly people who cook, maybe because they use their hands, maybe because of the mental planning, have lower rates of dementia.

Yati
Some medical institutions use cooking for rehabilitation, and a lot has been studied about cooking’s effects. But most nutrition research focuses on “what to eat.” Studies that focus on the “cooking” process itself and show it contributes to brain function recovery are rare. Researchers at a Japanese university studied this, led by Dr. Kawashima, who’s famous for designing Nintendo’s Brain Age games. They measured the brains of people while cooking, and found the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for planning and decision-making, was activated when participants planned menus. Further, tasks like “planning the menu,” “cutting,” “stir-frying on a gas stove,” and “plating” activated the brain more than simply moving the hands. In another study, retired elderly men who attended weekly cooking classes and cooked at home five days a week for three months showed improved prefrontal cortex function.

Hiro
There’s a funny phenomenon: men who reach retirement age and never cooked before start cooking and get really into it. Soba noodles, for instance, a Japanese buckwheat noodle.

Yati
If only they’d done it during their working years.

Hiro
Right. It would have helped their work, too. They might have climbed higher. Well, that’s unsolicited advice. [laughs]

Yati
[laughs]

Hiro
The point is, the essence of work is preparation. Coming back to our title, “Good at Work, Good at Rest,” what is preparation, really? It’s about how to create free time. If you’re constantly focused on stir-frying or cutting, you can’t do anything else. Good preparation means reducing time when you’re tied up with one thing and running tasks in parallel. Make soup while you prep the salad. Chill the salad in the fridge so it’s not lukewarm when served. Don’t boil noodles first or they’ll get soggy. Time them to finish right before eating.

Yati
Start the rice first.

Hiro
Exactly. Rice takes time to cook and steam. Know how long water takes to boil. Prepare dashi, the Japanese soup stock, the day before. That’s preparation.

Yati
Preparation.

Hiro
Work is really a chain of preparations. Flip it around, and it’s also about how you spend your rest. Becoming good at resting means being able to use time freely. Your time actually increases.

Yati
You get better at preparation, gain more free time, get better at using that free time, get better at preparation again, a virtuous cycle.

Hiro
So the most important thing isn’t just what you do, it’s also what you don’t do. “Does this really need to be done?” Reviewing that is crucial. But it’s hard to do in elementary school. If a kid says, “I don’t see the point of this, so I’m not doing it,” they get scolded. “This class isn’t relevant to me, so I’ll study on my own. I’ll go read in the library. Excuse me.”

Yati
In college, that’s allowed, even encouraged. If you already know the material, study something else.

Hiro
Right, in college it’s fine. It’s totally self-directed. If you’ve got it, you don’t have to show up. So for elementary students, the ideal environment is probably something like a university.

Yati
When you keep asking, “Does this really need to be done?” you start wondering about exams and credentials, too. Are they really necessary?

Hiro
It’s paradoxical, counterintuitive, but what everyone’s really looking for isn’t rest; it’s work.

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
People think they want endless vacation, but what they really want is work they can be absorbed in.

Yati
That kind of work is enjoyable.

Hiro
Exactly. Doing nothing is actually quite hard. Boredom is hard. The brain craves stimulation. You want to do something. If you fill that void with noise, social media, gossip, your head becomes noisy. Thinking gets scattered. So you resist, cut out the noise, rest properly, and then you’ll want to work. Focus on work, get tired, rest properly. That cycle works for adults and children alike.

Yati
It’d be great if kids could do that from an early age.

Hiro
Related to ages 6 to 12: in infancy, synapses in the brain spread and multiply rapidly. During six to twelve, pruning is happening, and thinking can become scattered. Daily life may suffer.

Yati
In Montessori terms, the precise sense of order in three to six, keeping things in exactly the same place, neat and tidy, gets internalized by six to twelve. Externally, children realize, “I don’t have to be quite so particular.”

Hiro
Right. People say things get “rougher,” but it’s more that children become more “thinking-oriented.” Imagination flourishes, and they can set direction through thought.

Yati
Because order is internalized, this is when they get better at setting priorities and preparing.

Hiro
Yeah. Cooking, cleaning, doing your own things for yourself. Plus doing things for the family, for the community, for the team. Those are fundamental human needs, so it’s good to create an environment that allows for them.

Yati
In regular school, those inner workings aren’t assumed, so kids might be too tired to do them. At this stage, it’s less “practicing” daily life and more “living” it. Maria Montessori said that at three to six, children experience sensory differences among types of fabric, but at six to twelve, they choose their own clothes based on fabric type and learn different ways to care for them.

Hiro
I got sidetracked, so let me get back to the main point. As something other educators don’t say, I want to emphasize the importance of rest. Not “it’s okay to rest sometimes,” but “learning never ends.” The premise is fundamentally different. Finishing an elementary curriculum doesn’t mean learning is complete. Learning has no end. And if learning has no end, swimming forever without coming up for air is exhausting. So you have to learn in bursts, with breaks. Otherwise, you just stop learning entirely. You give up.

Yati
I see. To put this into practice, I think we need a clear definition of “rest.” Is consuming noisy information on social media “not resting,” while reading a book or visiting a museum “resting”? What about playing games to unwind? What about playing Pikmin? Cooking? Are those all rest?

Hiro
I’d define rest as “minimizing noise entering the brain.” You could also call it “intentional living.”

Yati
Huh? Intentional living takes effort, doesn’t it? When you’re tired, it seems impossible. That’s rest? Though I do feel fulfilled when I set the table properly for tea time.

Hiro
Right. Letting go, feeling lighter, being filled. It means consuming information carefully, too.

Yati
Careful information consumption. [laughs] Like reading books. But if you’re exhausted, you can’t. Your eyes just slide off the page.

Hiro
If you’re that tired, your brain is exhausted, so you just have to sleep. But rest essentially means “not being careless.”

Yati
That’s the opposite of normal thinking. “I’m tired today, so let’s do a lazy meal.”

Hiro
But then you use the time you saved scrolling on your phone. If you cut out phone time and other careless activities, real idle time appears and you can truly rest. For example, brewing a single cup of tea very carefully. Actually doing something you might think is a waste of time. That’s rest. Like the Zen expression “kissako,” which simply means “Have some tea.”

Yati
I’m starting to get it. Folding clothes properly. Cleaning into the corners. Lately I’ve been avoiding social media and doing those things, and I feel a strong urge to work.

Hiro
Another way to put it: rest means “using parts of your brain you don’t usually use.” Consciously engaging brain areas that aren’t your usual ones. That’s rest. Meanwhile, the parts you use for work get a break. People don’t realize it, but the brain is active even during sleep.

Yati
That’s a great definition. If you’re on a computer all day, exercise becomes good rest. And what you said earlier, people want “work” more than “rest,” could be rephrased: they want “real rest, where the brain is engaged,” not “fake rest, where the brain barely works.”

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share your comments!

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. Works as a software developer and a weekend farmer. Father of two.

Create an environment that truly delights your child’s sense of smell.

Hiro
The theme is Practical Life, and when we talk about ages 3 to 6, it usually turns into “daily life is important,” “increase sensory experiences,” “let kids help in the kitchen,” but others have already said all that.

Yati
True. [laughs] So, continuing from the zero to three article, let’s dig deeper into the five senses.

Hiro
Sensory information can be broadly divided into two groups. In terms of sense organs, one group is the eyes and ears. The other is everything else: nose, mouth, and touch. Do you know the difference?

Yati
Sight and hearing versus smell, taste, and touch? Well, I don’t know.

Hiro
It’s like a “spot the difference” question. Eyes and ears are non-contact senses.

Yati
That’s true.

Hiro
Light and sound can be transmitted through TV or radio. But smell and taste, scents and flavors, can’t be transferred as information yet.

Yati
They can’t. You can’t express them digitally.

Hiro
You have to be there to experience them. Same with touch. MIT and others are working on it, but tactile sensations still can’t be transmitted. Smell, for instance, involves receiving chemical substances. And 90 percent of taste is actually smell.

Yati
So we’re mostly “tasting” through our noses.

Hiro
Right. That means smell accounts for two of the five senses. So today I want to talk about smell, specifically, about salmon.

Yati
The fish. Born in rivers, traveling the ocean, returning to rivers, an anadromous fish.

Hiro
Exactly. In Iwate, our prefecture in northern Japan, salmon swim upstream in the rivers. But recently, 97 percent aren’t coming back. Fewer and fewer return each year. Just like people.

Yati
When we moved to Iwate, I was looking forward to seeing salmon run upstream, but I still haven’t seen it. Why aren’t they coming back?

Hiro
The cause is unclear, but when people face problems like this, they blame climate change. There’s an atmosphere of “just say climate change.” A while ago it was COVID-19; now it’s back to climate change. Basically, blame anything but yourself.

Yati
Scientific Montessori not selling well in Japan must be climate change, too.

Hiro
Exactly. Blame that, and everyone nods, “Ah yes, of course.” Anyway, I’m contrarian, so I don’t buy it.

Yati
Right.

Hiro
I wanted to know how salmon actually find their way home, so I looked into it. For those unfamiliar: salmon are anadromous. They hatch from eggs in a river, head out to sea, and in Japan’s case spend about four years circling the Pacific before returning to the same river.

Yati
A four-year journey.

Hiro
Here’s what’s strange: rivers are freshwater.

Yati
Right. No salt.

Hiro
And the ocean is saltwater. Different osmotic pressures.

Yati
How does that work? For a human, it’d be like suddenly switching your drinking water to seawater every day. That’s a huge strain on the body.

Hiro
They go off on this intense warrior training. Remember when Shohei Ohtani, the baseball superstar, wanted to go straight from high school to the American Major Leagues? He was told the “osmotic pressure” was too high, so he joined a Japanese pro baseball team, the Nippon-Ham Fighters, first to acclimate to the pro world before heading to the majors.

Yati
[laughs] That’s right.

Hiro
So over about four years, salmon travel toward Alaska, up north, through the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska, spending four years training in America before returning. It’s called natal homing.

Yati
They go that far?

Hiro
About 30,000 kilometers over four years. They grow big. And their appearance changes. Beautiful as juveniles, almost delicate-looking, but they come back muscular, bulky, totally wild.

Yati
Of the fish, not Ohtani?

Hiro
Yes. Their faces and bodies become rugged. You can tell they’ve been through training. Surviving in the ocean is tough, with sharks and other dangers.

Yati
Yamame trout, a type of trout native to Japan, are also anadromous. Some stay in the river while others go to sea, and the difference is obvious. The ones that went to sea look truly wild.

Hiro
Right. They travel all that way and return home in glory to their hometown. So you’d wonder, “How do they find their way back?”

Yati
Seriously. Four years, all that distance, how do they remember their home river?

Hiro
Exactly. They’re not booking tickets like humans, flying from America, connecting through Tokyo, then taking a regional flight to our local airport. There are no signs in the ocean saying “200 kilometers to go.”

Yati
How do they do it? Maybe like migratory birds? Do they have an internal compass?

Hiro
That possibility has been suggested. The answer is: a magnetic compass and smell. The compass part is still hypothetical. They mainly rely on smell to navigate.

Yati
What do you mean? How could they smell something so far away in the ocean?

Hiro
Most people don’t know this, but fish choose paths and directions by smell. More than two-thirds of a shark’s brain is devoted to smell.

Yati
Really?

Hiro
That’s how they detect a single drop of blood from several kilometers away.

Yati
Scary. You shouldn’t go in the ocean with an injury. You’ll end up in Jaws.

Hiro
That ominous “duh-dun, duh-dun” theme from Jaws? It’s been playing for kilometers already. The shark knew there was blood and came looking.

Yati
Terrifying.

Hiro
Sharks are fish. Fish have incredibly powerful senses of smell. So if salmon aren’t coming back, the scent has either disappeared or been disrupted. They’re lost. And “Did they lose their sense of smell from COVID?” No.

Yati
So it’s not climate change or COVID.

Hiro
I doubt warming changes smells that much. My hypothesis: it’s synthetic chemicals. Fragrance compounds in laundry detergent and fabric softener. Scent compounds in chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Those accumulate in rivers and erase the scent of the salmon’s home.

Yati
That might be true.

Hiro
People return to their hometowns sometimes, right? If you have one. When you go back, there’s a smell. “Ah, that’s nostalgic.” Places have their own scent.

Yati
Absolutely. Smell is tied to memory.

Hiro
Smell carries an enormous amount of information, even if we’re not conscious of it. When you stay in one place, your nose adapts, and your brain stops actively perceiving it. But go somewhere different, and the smell is strong. India probably has an Indian smell; America has an American smell. Each place has its scent, a mix of food culture, climate, humidity, and more. If there’s this much variation within a single country like Japan, the natural world must be the same. It’s not strange that salmon remember and can distinguish the scent of where they were born.

Yati
I see.

Hiro
A hot topic lately is bears coming down from the mountains into human areas. Bears apparently have a sense of smell seven times sharper than police dogs. Yet people are running into them unexpectedly. It’s strange. Maybe strong synthetic fragrances are disrupting their noses. Maybe they can no longer detect “human scent.” That’s one hypothesis.

Yati
Losing a functional sense of smell is fatal for wildlife.

Hiro
For wild animals, smell is essential, for finding food and avoiding danger. Bears fear fire, and they can detect a distant fire by the smell of burning. Wildfires are the scariest thing for wildlife. They can avoid fire thanks to their sense of smell.

Yati
So, to bring it back: your hypothesis is that synthetic chemicals may be having a significant impact on wild animals’ sense of smell. There doesn’t seem to be research on this yet.

Hiro
Unfortunately not. Smell varies widely among animals. Their olfactory abilities and how they use them differ from humans. I gave examples of bears and fish, but the importance of smell differs for each species.

Yati
Let’s talk about smell for humans, specifically for three to six year olds.

Hiro
As I said at the start, sensory information divides into two categories. Eyes and ears can basically be satisfied by TV. But smell cannot. So the key senses are smell, taste, and touch. If you set up the environment to prioritize these three, it becomes harder to fake things. If you include sight and hearing when thinking about sensory environments, TV and digital media sneak in. But if you focus on smell, taste, and touch, you naturally avoid artificial chemicals. You move toward natural aromas, plant scents.

Yati
Real herbs, for example.

Hiro
If kids only eat chemical-laden snacks, everything tastes the same. They miss the variety within bitter, sweet, sour. By the way, limonene is apparently the strongest scent molecule in citrus.

Yati
It’s the most abundant fragrance compound in lemons. But natural things contain about 100 scent compounds, and subtle differences create nuanced fragrances. Children can probably distinguish them. In fact, there’s a pine tree called Japanese red pine that contains limonene, and my eldest daughter noticed it smells like lemon.

Hiro
So my point is that artificial, tasteless and odorless Montessori materials alone aren’t enough.

Yati
There’s something called the smelling bottles, small opaque jars with aromas or herbs inside. You prepare pairs with the same scent and children match them. But that alone isn’t enough.

Hiro
Instead of buying herbs, grow them yourself.

Yati
We grow various herbs in planters in front of our house. We grow them, harvest them, play scent-guessing games, use them in cooking, steep them in hot water for herbal tea, and lately we’ve been adding the brew to the bath for a medicinal soak. We’ve even made potpourri.

Hiro
Right. And incense, too, real sandalwood. Creating an environment that delights the sense of smell in many ways is part of living a more intentional life. If you’re familiar with natural scents, you’ll notice when something smells chemically off.

Yati
As I mentioned, natural fragrances contain many compounds. To recreate a rose scent in perfume, you need floral notes, woody notes, citrus notes, many elements.

Hiro
True. And building vocabulary around that helps. Terms like “woody” and “floral” exist, but the natural world is broader. Even within citrus, plants differ. For instance, Japanese pepper, called sansho, is in the citrus family. That sansho aroma comes from citrus origins. The spiciness of sansho berries and the sourness of citrus belong to the same family. This connects to cooking. That’s why sansho pairs well with strawberries.

Yati
That’s interesting.

Hiro
It seems odd at first, but it’s the same principle as strawberries going with oranges.

Yati
Like the idea that foods grown in the same place during the same season taste good together.

Hiro
Vegetables grown naturally are different even at the chemical level, phytochemicals. The smell and flavor differ. If you train your nose properly, you start noticing these things.

Yati
I think children have incredibly sharp senses of smell and taste. They say “It stinks!” right away. [laughs] They love meat braised in red wine, and adding just a little cardamom changes how eagerly they eat curry. Oh, spices are another way to enrich the olfactory environment at home.

Hiro
Cumin and coriander aren’t spicy, so they’re easy to use. Spices let you enjoy combining scents, and they can boost immunity. In old Europe, there were medical professions focused on creating pleasant scents.

Yati
Health conditions show up in body odor, so noticing your child’s scent is important. Strong artificial fragrances might mask that.

Hiro
Smell alone is incredibly deep. Summing it all up as “increase sensory experiences” says almost nothing. What I wanted to convey today is: “Create an environment that truly delights your child’s sense of smell.” And returning to the beginning: salmon remember something from four years earlier. From their perspective, a “distant memory” of early life. Their home scent has changed, and they can’t find their way back. Salmon who can’t return home. It’s sad.

Yati
It is sad.

Hiro
People think if they release lots of fry, salmon will come back upstream, but maybe the cause lies elsewhere. Humans need to reduce the synthetic chemicals we produce. We need to cherish the beautiful chemicals that nature creates. They may seem similar, but they’re fundamentally different.

In particular, while Montessori education emphasizes the importance of sensory experiences, this time we discussed the sense of hearing from a scientific perspective.

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share your comments!

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

Having ears, they hear not.

Yati
Today’s topic is “Practical Life.”

Hiro
I’d like to dig into the five senses this time.

Yati
Maria Montessori put it roughly like this. Nothing reaches the intellect that doesn’t first pass through the senses. A defect in the senses affects every faculty of the mind. In carpentry, it’s not just the hands and eyes being trained. In football, not just the legs and eyes. The whole body and mind are involved in any activity. So why is it that so many people, young and old, fail to see or hear what trained observers easily notice? Having eyes, they see not; having ears, they hear not. Imperfect knowledge comes from poor observation. That’s why the Montessori Children’s House prepares an environment where the mind naturally turns to what should be observed, and the sensory activities go hand in hand with Practical Life. Training becomes training for life. So, “knowledge begins with the senses.” Exploring the senses under the theme of Practical Life is, I believe, in keeping with Maria Montessori’s intent.

Hiro
Let’s start with the zero to three range. At birth, babies can’t really see. Vision is almost nonexistent, and all they can perceive is sound.

Yati
Right. Sound is heard even in the womb.

Hiro
Exactly. And there’s touch and the sense of warmth. Babies sense temperature to know a mother is nearby or that they’re being held.

Yati
They even suck their thumbs in the womb.

Hiro
But they can’t sense temperature from far away. To know what’s happening at a distance, they rely on sound. And then they cry. Crying is how they communicate, using sound.

Yati
That’s true.

Hiro
They don’t suddenly run a fever to signal something. Shivering a lot and generating heat to say, “I’m hungry,” would use up so much energy. To communicate without expending energy, the answer is sound.

Yati
Our four-year-old still does that, stomping her feet when she’s angry.

Hiro
Right. So fundamentally, information is conveyed through sound. That’s why we recently started an English podcast. Communicating through sound is essential to animals, and we felt we had to do it properly. Text is something you look at without making sound; if you don’t look, there’s no information. But sound can be played continuously. Whether you consciously process it is a separate matter, but information is available.

Yati
Listening to difficult material for a long time is tough, though. Even I end up saying, “Oh, sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

Hiro
That’s a different issue. There’s short-term working memory, and if it’s small, you can’t hold much information, so deep, layered conversations become difficult. Conversation requires a lot of working memory. So it’s good to talk with children a lot so they can train their working memory. There’s a humanities-style interpretation, “creating rich emotional time together,” but from a science perspective, it’s also working-memory training.

Yati
Lately there’s talk about short-video consumption making even young people more forgetful, what some call “digital dementia” or “smartphone brain.”

Hiro
Ultimately, the brain is like a muscle. It’s often thought of as a special organ, closer to internal organs, but it’s more like muscle. If you don’t train it, it weakens. When people age, they stop walking. When they stop walking, their legs and lower back weaken quickly. They get osteoporosis or fall and break bones. You can prevent that, not 100 percent, but largely, if you keep walking. People with a walking habit maintain muscle mass, stay strong in the legs and back, and live healthily. You can fight decline with lifestyle habits. The brain is the same, but these days there are so many traps. Technology keeps developing to minimize how much we have to think. Press a button, and everything’s done for you. That causes the brain to weaken. Once decline reaches a certain point, it becomes dementia.

Yati
There’s even a term now: “smartphone dementia.”

Hiro
But prevention and improvement aren’t complicated. Just adopt a habit of mild training. You don’t need hard hikes or squats to strengthen legs. Just stroll, walk longer distances, do some aerobic exercise. The brain is the same: read aloud, do calculations, that kind of habit. But it has to be effective and convenient. I looked for something simple that I could keep doing long-term, couldn’t find it, so I built an app as a DIY project called BrainDojo. Bit of a plug, I know.

Yati
You really can build a brain-exercise habit in just tens of seconds a day. Maybe brain training is why I, ADHD-leaning as I am, have managed to keep this monthly magazine going. But we got sidetracked. Let’s talk about hearing. How does hearing relate to Practical Life?

Hiro
There’s a Japanese dish called tempura, deep-fried battered seafood and vegetables. Lately I’ve been watching a Japanese cooking anime called Oishinbo with the kids. In one episode, the protagonist and his father compete to pick which chef can fry tempura best, before anyone starts cooking.

Yati
Maybe someone with a big build?

Hiro
The protagonist looked at the chefs’ teeth, nails, and hair, and had them prepare batter, then chose. The father, on the other hand, played a recording of tempura frying sounds and said, “Raise your hand when you hear the sound change.” That’s how he chose.

Yati
Who won?

Hiro
The father. The protagonist checked nails and teeth to see if they were well-trimmed and maintained. Bad habits show up in teeth. If someone smokes, they lose sensitivity to flavor. Hair with styling products dulls the sense of smell. Batter preparation shows skill, whether they chill it properly with ice, for example. You have to do everything right, work carefully, and still be quick. It came down to two chefs, and in the end, the father won by choosing the one who reacted correctly to the sound. The point is that tempura uses all five senses, and sound is critical. If you don’t react to the sound and take the food out immediately, you overfry.

Yati
You do hear sounds when frying, like the rattling when food first goes in. But I thought you judge doneness by color, smell, bubble size, or the feel you get when you tap with a cooking utensil.

Hiro
That’s already too late. Overfried. Amateur. Top-tier chefs at long-established restaurants, the ones you see on YouTube, say it’s all about sound. How well you use your senses determines whether you’re good at cooking or not. Most people rely on visual information, but sometimes sound is the most important.

Yati
We don’t think about it, but just from the sound of water being poured, we can tell whether it’s hot or cold. Sound actually carries a lot of information.

Hiro
Right. A bit on language learning: babies are born able to distinguish sounds not just in their native language but in every language in the world. But between 6 and 12 months, the ability to distinguish foreign sounds drops sharply. In one experiment, nine-month-old infants in English-only homes who interacted directly with Mandarin speakers 12 times over about 5 hours maintained native-level ability to distinguish Mandarin sounds. However, when shown DVDs of the same speakers saying the same things, there was no such effect.

Yati
Researchers argue the key factor wasn’t the live human voice itself, but the presence of live human interaction. The DVDs had studio-quality sound and actually contained more speech samples than the face-to-face sessions. But there’s also evidence in AI that higher audio quality improves recognition accuracy, so we can’t completely rule out that audio quality contains some information babies respond to.

Hiro
True.

Yati
In another experiment, twenty-four to thirty month old toddlers learned new verbs in their native language, comparing “face-to-face interaction,” “Skype interaction,” and “video only.” Video alone didn’t lead to learning. At that stage, the children could already distinguish sounds. They were learning verbs using those sounds, so even lower audio quality should have allowed learning. If someone ran an experiment on whether babies can learn to distinguish foreign sounds via Skype, that might settle the audio-quality-versus-interaction question. The bottom line is that in both infant and toddler cases, simply playing videos doesn’t lead to foreign-language acquisition.

Hiro
Families that succeed with at-home foreign-language learning tend to have siblings rather than only children. You need a real person who will actually speak the foreign language and interact cooperatively with you.

Yati
That’s true. That might be it.

Hiro
Also, Japanese is an especially distant language from English. It’s often said that Japanese speakers have trouble distinguishing the letters L and R. Japanese basically attaches a vowel to every syllable. For example, “class” gets unconsciously pronounced “kurasu” with added vowels. In Japanese transliteration, English words often pick up extra vowels because of these constraints.

Yati
Right. Consonant pronunciation is hard.

Hiro
It’s not only Japanese speakers who struggle with English. French, for example, doesn’t use stress shifts to change meaning the way English does, so French speakers find that difficult, like the word “object,” where stress shifts between noun and verb forms. Japanese has pitch-accent pairs where the same sound can mean different things depending on pitch, like “ame” meaning either rain or candy, so we can grasp the concept. Every speaker gets pulled by the patterns of their native language.

Yati
Huh, I didn’t know that.

Hiro
At the same time, I think it’s important to preserve features unique to your native language. In Japanese, there’s onomatopoeia, like “potsu-potsu” for raindrops falling.

Yati
Actually, onomatopoeia strictly refers to words that imitate actual sounds. Japanese has many words that aren’t like that, bowing “peko-peko,” being “ira-ira” irritated, or going “shiin” silent. In Japan these have been called gitaigo, meaning mimetic words, or gijōgo, meaning emotion-depicting words, but since Western languages rarely have them, they’ve been lumped together with onomatopoeia. Recently, international linguistics has started calling them “ideophones.” Our two-year-old has loved saying “sorori-sorori” while tiptoeing from around age two. That sound doesn’t exist in real life, but the feeling comes through. A fun example.

Hiro
Japanese people have used these expressions for ages. I want to cherish that uniquely Japanese way of perceiving the world.

Yati
And again, authentic sound matters, like adults reading folktales aloud. In my Montessori teacher training course, we learned to talk and sing to babies in the womb. After birth, the mother’s voice becomes a bridge between the world inside and the new world outside, giving the baby security.

Hiro
Voice is important. And it’s good to hear a variety of real sounds, in nature, in the forest, birdsong, insect calls, leaves rustling in the wind. All sorts of sounds. So we want to avoid staying cooped up indoors watching YouTube all the time.

Yati
In the three to six Montessori activities, there’s a game called the Silence Game, where everyone stays still and quiet, listening closely to the sounds around them. It’s fun to try in different places, a park, inside a car. You discover how many sounds there actually are. It calms the mind like meditation. I hope people give it a try.

While worksheet-based learning is a way to increase learning efficiency while reducing management costs for teachers, Maria Montessori criticized it as “busy work.” Is there an alternative to this generalized method of learning?

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share your comments!

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

Learning methods have plenty of room for evolution.

Yati
As I mentioned in the three to six article, this time we’re discussing worksheet learning.

Hiro
In Montessori education, is worksheet learning good or bad?

Yati
It’s bad. AMI’s elementary trainers, the people certified to train teachers, repeatedly devote many pages to saying, “Don’t use worksheets or workbooks.”

Hiro
“Don’t do pencil work.” Why is that?

Yati
“Because we don’t just want to give answers.” And we certainly don’t want rote memorization. We want children to understand for themselves and to reach that understanding in a state of being “set on fire,” deeply engaged. That kind of engagement ultimately leads to new discoveries for humanity. Instead of worksheets, children experiment and make mistakes with didactic materials, set their own problems and research them, or build their own models and materials.

Hiro
So kanji drills and math drills are also out.

Yati
That’s how it goes.

Hiro
Isn’t that specifically for ages 9 to 12?

Yati
Worksheets aren’t part of cosmic education, so it applies to the whole six to twelve range. I believe it’s the same for ages three to six. Worksheet learning never came up in my three to six course.

Hiro
Then how do children develop literacy skills like calculation, reading, and writing?

Yati
They create their own problems. For example, if five or six year olds are doing four-digit addition with the Stamp Game, you just say, “Tell me any four numbers you like,” and that becomes the first number. If you want to avoid carrying, you can say, “Now I’ll pick four numbers I like.” Once children see how problems are created, they start making and solving their own. It’s curious, children aren’t motivated by pre-printed problems, but when they can create the problems themselves, they become eager.

Hiro
Without building that foundation from age three to six, wouldn’t it be pretty painful? The premise is different.

Yati
That’s true. A Montessori environment has many children who are self-reliant, working asynchronously on activities they’ve chosen themselves. For children raised where doing the same thing as everyone else and waiting for instructions is normal, even “pick any number you like” might feel stressful.

Hiro
Exactly. No matter how superior Montessori education is and how bad worksheet learning may be, people ask, “I get the ideal, but what am I supposed to do?” Methods for avoiding worksheets in Montessori education aren’t widely shared or generalized.

Yati
That’s AMI’s fault. I’m grateful to Montessori education for helping me, and precisely because it’s so wonderful, it should become “Open AMI.” Everything should be made freely available. If they’re truly aiming for world peace.

Hiro
Would making it public solve the problem?

Yati
No, that alone wouldn’t be enough. There’s still the issue of teachers. Unless you experienced something Montessori-like as a child, like Will Wright’s games or something similar, and know the joy of becoming absorbed in something and making your own discoveries, you won’t be able to use the materials well. Adults end up guiding children for their own convenience.

Hiro
So the teacher’s own background matters a lot.

Yati
Right. And on top of that, science keeps advancing, new facts emerge, and new technologies become available. You have to keep studying, thinking, and incorporating new things on your own. But people who can do that are rare.

Hiro
And there’s the issue on the children’s side too, like waiting for instructions. Maybe one-on-one teaching would work, but that’s unrealistic. What’s good about worksheets? If the technology is mature, it can be done cheaply. Everyone can use them. You print them, use recycled paper, and the problems are standardized. But there’s also the view that they’re “too outdated” and “too low quality.” On the other hand, the Montessori approach we’re talking about isn’t commoditized yet, so it’s demanding. Still, we can’t just drop existing worksheet learning, and we can’t achieve a perfect Montessori setup. But isn’t there something in between?

Yati
Isn’t that what we’re doing? [laughs]

Hiro
Wait, we are? What do you mean? [laughs]

Yati
We’re digitizing the materials. We’re evolving them and then digitizing them.

Hiro
Go on, even if it sounds like advertising.

Yati
We’re turning didactic materials into apps for iPhone and iPad.

Hiro
This is definitely promotional, but keep going.

Yati
There’s a material called the Sandpaper Letters for learning letters. It’s a thin wooden board with sandpaper cut into the shape of letters, or grooves carved into it, and children trace them in the correct stroke order to learn how to write. We made an app version.

Hiro
In English-speaking countries, three to six year olds learn 26 letters of the alphabet plus 10 numerals. Strictly speaking, there are also sandpaper letters for digraphs like the letters S H and C H. But in Japan, you can’t stop at just hiragana and katakana, the phonetic Japanese writing systems.

Yati
Right. Our app, StudyX Smartpaper Letters, supports over 6,800 characters, including kanji, the Chinese-derived characters used in Japanese. Imagine making that into physical materials. You’d need classroom space, resources to produce them, and transportation costs.

Hiro
A set of 6,800 boards. The materials would cost a fortune.

Yati
Some say that once children are in elementary school, they should learn kanji theoretically by thinking about the meaning of components rather than tracing sensory-based sandpaper letters. But considering how writing evolved, from pictures, to kanji, to hiragana and katakana, I think it’s more natural for three to six year olds to start writing kanji first.

Hiro
Under Montessori purist rules, digital apps aren’t allowed, right? Isn’t AMI telling people to avoid screen time?

Yati
How much time and money do you think it would take to set up the ideal Montessori environment AMI describes for every child in the world? StudyX Smartpaper Letters gets downloaded in China, so we added support for Simplified Chinese characters. That kind of rapid adaptation is only possible with digital.

Hiro
Are you ready to be excommunicated by AMI? [laughs]

Yati
I’m doing this at the risk of excommunication. Maria Montessori was familiar with the cutting-edge technology and developers of her time, and I think she believed education should evolve with the era. But here’s the thing. Environments that officially qualify as “Montessori education” are actually far more restricted than most people realize.

Hiro
How restricted?

Yati
Take Gandhi in India. He exchanged ideas with Maria Montessori, and he tried to adapt Montessori education so it could be practiced even in poverty. He provided real work, spinning thread and making cloth. Gandhi understood the essence of Montessori education so well that Maria personally certified him as a teacher without requiring him to take a course. But in response to Gandhi’s efforts, Maria said something like, “I am not a tailor. I have only provided the fabric. If you want to wear it in an Indian style, how you cut it should be left to the skill and judgment of the teachers.” In other words: don’t call it “Montessori education.”

Hiro
So even Gandhi’s version didn’t count.

Yati
Meanwhile, for an elite school in India that had child-sized furniture and a full set of materials, she said it was “my ideals rendered in brick and mortar.” She held up a Dutch Montessori school with a pool and gymnasium as a model in her training lectures, and she insisted on personally training every teacher and equipping each classroom with a complete set of Montessori materials. So even back then, the spread of Montessori education was heavily restricted. By those standards, you have to wonder whether any environment in Japan qualifies as “Montessori education,” and apps are so far beyond the pale it’s laughable. [laughs]

Hiro
That’s pretty stuck-up. This might sound provocative, but when you actually build apps yourself, you realize: ultimately, “the teacher gets in the way.”

Yati
Exactly! That’s it! Liberation from teachers! And liberation from location constraints at the same time. This is evolution.

Hiro
In a sense, AMI’s very existence would be threatened by apps that “make teachers unnecessary,” so maybe they don’t want that.

Yati
Maybe. With the Sandpaper Letters, having a teacher demonstrate how to write every single character one-on-one is exhausting. Teachers can’t always respond the moment a child is ready, and children want to see it over and over. At the same time, they want a teacher who doesn’t make unnecessary comments.

Hiro
Hard to satisfy all of those at once.

Yati
That’s where a machine wins. It can teach even the most complex kanji accurately every time, whenever the child wants, without saying anything unnecessary. It calculates a score based on tracing accuracy and encourages repetition. My eldest daughter used the app StudyX Smartpaper Letters to teach herself. Within the first half year of elementary school, she finished learning all kanji through sixth grade. Technology just hadn’t caught up before; children’s potential is still largely unknown.

Hiro
The theory was that with lots of children, older ones become teachers for younger ones, but birthrates are declining.

Yati
Right. For a three to six environment, the standard is one teacher, one assistant, and thirty-five to forty-five children, the more the better. But in Japan, where the birthrate is seriously declining, is that even achievable?

Hiro
Tuition running into the millions of yen, the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars, isn’t sustainable either. And as you said, making physical materials isn’t eco-friendly. It goes against the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Yati
I learned a lot from actually making wooden materials. You use wood that took hundreds of years to grow. You use paints that prioritize safety. And yet chemical substances are inevitably involved. Shipping also generates a lot of carbon dioxide.

Hiro
Working with your hands really does teach you things.

Yati
It does. People say materials are expensive, but the prices are reasonable. Making them beautifully is hard. They’re actually cheap, if anything. Cheap materials are scary. Where are they cutting costs? They must be using inferior materials.

Hiro
And probably not paying workers fairly. So, in summary, AMI’s approach isn’t sustainable and isn’t cool.

Yati
I’ve thought many times about burning my teaching certificate.

Hiro
That’s radical. [laughs] Well, we’re anti-establishment. We don’t believe Maria Montessori was absolutely right, that’s why we take a scientific approach. We don’t think we’re absolutely right either; we always work with the awareness that we might be wrong.

Yati
True. Our thinking keeps updating, so I’m glad we created a monthly magazine that can deliver the latest information. That said, I do want to point out that physical materials are still genuinely valuable.

Hiro
In what way?

Yati
I made wooden fraction circles, and the other day my eldest daughter used them in an unexpected way while studying math through programming. This is turtle geometry, where a character on screen draws shapes by tracing its path. “Move forward 100 steps, then turn 120 degrees,” repeated, draws an equilateral triangle. Why does that work? She was able to explore that question hands-on with the material. Experimenting hands-on like this really does lead to discoveries.

Hiro
That’s the difference from worksheet learning. If a worksheet tests knowledge and you don’t have that knowledge, you can’t do anything. But with materials, you might figure something out just by handling them.

Yati
That’s absolutely true. For something like these fraction circles, there are hardware stores now where you can use laser cutters, and wood is easy to get, so I think people should try making them. When parents do that kind of thing, children want to make things, too.

Hiro
That’s ideal, but the bar is pretty high for ordinary families. So I think we should keep evolving apps. I made a handwriting-based math drill app, and it gives immediate feedback on whether answers are correct. I was able to design a learning experience where children naturally write numbers carefully and try to solve problems quickly and accurately. There are lots of ways to encourage learning. The specifics are trade secrets, though.

Yati
I hope we can get the apps we’re developing to everyone soon.

Hiro
I’m going to create apps that unleash the creativity of children around the world. Conventional education spoils creativity. We’re fighting against that.

Yati
Ages six to twelve are what Maria Montessori called the most intellectual period, the time to fully unleash imagination. Let me close with her words.

Hiro
Please.

Yati
“The secret of good education is to regard the child’s intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to sprout and grow under the heat of a flaming imagination. Our aim, therefore, is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force memorization, but to touch the imagination and kindle enthusiasm to the child’s inmost core. We do not want complacent students; we want students hungry for knowledge. Rather than cramming theories into children, we wish to sow life and help them grow, mentally, emotionally, and physically. To do this, we must offer the human mind great and lofty ideas, for the mind is always ready to receive them and asks for more and more.”

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

Who we are is down to nature or nurture?

Hiro
Today’s theme for the 3 to 6 age group is “Liberal Arts Starting at Age 3,” the general knowledge children should acquire by age 6.

Yati
There are a lot of books with titles like that these days.

Hiro
Elementary-school entrance exams often test general knowledge.

Yati
Things like Japanese seasonal items, annual events, plants, and science facts.

Hiro
It’s a problem when people try to cram it all in just because general knowledge matters.

Yati
Like flashcards. In Montessori education, the idea is to learn through hands-on experiences using all five senses.

Hiro
Even at tutoring centers, there are so many worksheets.

Yati
Worksheet-based learning is an important topic with a lot to say, so I’ll save it for the 6 to 12 article. Let’s dig into Japanese culture here.

Hiro
This might get a bit tricky. When is a Japanese identity formed?

Yati
Hmm, that’s hard. Maybe when you can use the Japanese language? If someone asks, “Would you like tea or coffee?” and you answer, “Either is fine,” people overseas might react with, “Can’t you choose for yourself?”

Hiro
That’s Japanese culture, right there.

Yati
But you clearly say “water” instead of tea or coffee. There are lots of ways you’re not very Japanese. Maybe it’s generational, like the “relaxed generation,” or because you’ve been exposed to foreign geniuses and overseas information for so long?

Hiro
Maybe it’s the internet. That’s why I’m curious: when does a Japanese person become Japanese?

Yati
By age 6, you’re already Japanese, right?

Hiro
Yoko, our daughter, says she’s a Tokyoite. [laughs]

Yati
That’s one way to think about it. Some say you’re truly Japanese only after three generations.

Hiro
A true Edokko, meaning a third-generation Tokyoite? A Kyoto native?

Yati
Genes play a role, too. Nowadays anyone can get a DNA analysis and discover unexpected countries in their heritage. But even without Japanese genes, spending a long time in Japan, or spending ages 0 to 6 there, seems important.

Hiro
There are many measures, but personally, I think it comes down to how much brain training you’ve had.

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
You know the Japanese comedy duo Taka and Toshi? They have a routine where one of them lists Western-sounding things and the other shouts “Western-style!” as a punchline. So if I say, “Meat pie.”

Yati
“Western-style!”

Hiro
Right. They list things that sound Western. Now, what if someone says, “I want sushi”?

Yati
“Japanese-style!”

Hiro
Exactly. “I want miso soup” or “Shall I bring you tea after your meal?” Those prompt “Japanese-style!” Similarly, you might see the shrug emoji, you know, the one with the palms up, and think, “What’s that?” But once you see foreigners actually doing that gesture in person, you get it. You learn that it means “Oh well” or “Who knows?” That’s the result of training in behavior.

Yati
I see.

Hiro
Ultimately, being Japanese, or any local identity, depends on how much you’ve been trained in local norms.

Yati
So it’s about how much culture, or general knowledge, you’ve learned. Can someone become Japanese in a single generation if they learn a huge amount of Japanese culture?

Hiro
I think it’s more of a gradient. Someone might be mostly American with a dose of Japanese, like Lou Oshiba, a Japanese TV personality famous for randomly swapping English words into Japanese proverbs. [laughs]

Yati
Right, like his parodies of Japanese sayings: “Out of the yabu, a stick!” “Three-days bouzu.” “Grasping at a straw.” “Even a mago looks good in a dress.” [laughs]

Hiro
[laughs]

Yati
By the way, there was a recent trend where Chinese and Japanese people communicate in writing by mixing kanji and English. They use Chinese characters for nouns, since the meanings often match, and English for grammar words. Apparently it makes communication surprisingly easy.

Hiro
There’s even a rock band that sings in that style. The point is, you’re only purely one nationality if you’re deeply rooted in that place. What I was thinking is: as we become more globalized, and in Montessori education we learn about all kinds of places around the world through hands-on experience...

Yati
Mm-hmm.

Hiro
...that local rootedness gradually fades. You realize, “Here’s one way of thinking; here’s another.” You start to identify with one perspective over another, or prefer certain ideas. Different elements mix in. If it’s all training, then new models keep entering, languages become relative, and values become relative.

Yati
Right. You start questioning, or even feeling embarrassed by, “Japan first” attitudes.

Hiro
Exactly. When someone has only ever grown up in Japan and doesn’t know other cultures, they can’t relativize. Saying things like that is self-absorbed in a bad way, kind of embarrassing. But once you’ve gone through that, you recognize that you grew up in Japan, carry Japanese elements, know what’s unique about Japan, and want to cherish that. That’s the good version.

Yati
Sounds like evolution. So, what is Japanese culture, really?

Hiro
There’s no objective metric for Japanese culture. It’s defined by people’s perceptions. To define it, you have to examine those perceptions. Each person thinks, “This is Japanese culture,” and that’s how Japanese culture gets defined, almost like voting.

Yati
Mm-hmm.

Hiro
People say Mount Fuji, geisha, sushi, tempura, but tempura came from the Netherlands. Yet foreigners think, “Tempura is so Japanese.” Fact and perception differ. So what we really need to define is the Japanese person who behaves in a “Japanese-like” way.

Yati
It’s not just tempura. Like “Japanese denim is the best in the world.” When something enters Japan, Japanese people make it Japanese. Think of bento culture: dexterous fingers carefully arranging every little item. That really does add a Japanese element.

Hiro
Ultimately, culture is created by habits. Here’s something more intellectual: there’s such a thing as “Japanese architecture.” It’s become quite Westernized, but traditional Japanese buildings have distinctive features. What do you think they are?

Yati
Wooden joinery? Building without nails?

Hiro
No. The essence isn’t there. The essence of Japanese architecture is “how to let humidity escape.”

Yati
That’s true. My family’s old house had raised floors, and air flowed through every room.

Hiro
Right. There’s less separation between inside and outside. In Europe, they use brick. Brick is sturdy, but it traps moisture and molds.

Yati
I see.

Hiro
On the other hand, that moisture enables fermentation. Microbes can thrive. Fermentation is harder in dry climates. Technology comes from accidental discoveries. In dry places, people mainly processed fruits that already hold moisture, like grapes into wine. Otherwise, they bake. Ferment dough to make it rise, then bake it.

Yati
Mm-hmm.

Hiro
Eating things raw is basically not done. Bread isn’t eaten raw. Yogurt and cheese exist, but they’re mainly for preservation. So differences in climate and regional environment shape habits, and those habits shape what it means to be of a certain nationality.

Yati
That might be true.

Hiro
Houses influence people. Thatched roofs also let moisture escape, but they’re different from European structures built to last centuries. The philosophy is different. Europeans build things to last a long time without rebuilding; Japanese buildings are made to last, too, but with the assumption that repairs, replacements, and renovations will happen. Shinto shrines even have the concept of sengu, relocating and rebuilding at set intervals, or renovating. So Japanese people have a kind of mobile mindset.

Yati
You mean building something less sturdy, then discarding it and moving when it breaks?

Hiro
More like a temporary dwelling you can move. It’s a 100-yen-shop culture, similar to a dollar store. But when 100-yen-shop quality levels up, it becomes craft, like kintsugi, repairing broken pottery with gold. You use good materials and make something fine, but it will break, and that impermanence is part of wabi-sabi, the aesthetic of finding beauty in transience.

Yati
That sounds kind of cheap, though.

Hiro
It’s not being poor. It’s wabi-sabi.

Yati
Geta, traditional Japanese wooden sandals, can be repaired part by part, the teeth, the thong, so they last far longer than sneakers.

Hiro
Modular footwear.

Yati
Yukata, the casual summer kimono, are amazing, too. Last year I sewed a yukata and made discovery after discovery. First, with koshi-age and kata-age, tucks at the waist and shoulders, a child can wear the same yukata for years.

Hiro
Adjustable sizing built in.

Yati
And the design uses a narrow bolt of fabric called tan-mono as efficiently as possible, with almost no waste, straight lines everywhere. When I made Western-style clothes, I had to use a big piece of fabric and ended up with lots of scraps. I kept wishing I could design something without scraps, and Japanese people invented that long ago. Even then, there’s a little bit of leftover fabric, and you tuck it into the collar area for future repairs. Isn’t that amazing?!

Hiro
Fundamentally, Japan is an island. Resources are limited. In the end, geography matters.

Yati
And here we connect to the cultural education in Montessori. It starts with a globe that has no borders, land is rough, ocean is smooth, to learn the difference between land and sea. Then you learn continents and oceans, and play with puzzles of countries on each continent.

Hiro
Hands-on geography.

Yati
Right. You do experiments with paired landforms: “island and lake,” “peninsula and gulf,” “isthmus and strait.” Then you explore maps of various places on Earth to see what kinds of landforms exist, color-coding islands and lakes, for example. At the same time, there are materials that show photos of daily life, buildings, clothing, and food from different countries. There are activities where you listen to music from various countries, hear stories about its historical background, and view photos of where that music was enjoyed. There’s also material for learning leaf shapes, which leads to understanding the world’s vegetation.

Hiro
That’s a lot to take in.

Yati
All of this feeds into the 6 to 12 “sensitive period for culture,” when children develop deep intellectual curiosity and a drive to explore the breadth and diversity of the world. Coming back to our topic: Japan is an island nation, so is it similar to another island nation like Britain? What about a small country next to a continent that also has few resources? Is that different from an island nation? Children become able to think through questions like these.

Hiro
Being connected by land makes travel, and invasion, easier. That’s where island nations differ. Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian Empire; easy access makes things volatile. Japan had its own Sengoku period, an era of warring feudal domains, but eventually unified.

Yati
Geographic distance is strongly correlated with genetic diversity, and geographic proximity correlates with similar ways of thinking. So how should 3 to 6 year olds learn about culture?

Hiro
Just enjoy daily life. To enjoy it even more, you need to learn about other cultures so you can relativize your own. Ages 3 to 6 is already the period for learning general knowledge.

Yati
Watching something like Curious George brings in a lot of foreign culture.

Hiro
The problem is there aren’t many anime that teach Japanese culture. The long-running family anime like Sazae-san and Chibi Maruko-chan are outdated now.

Yati
We need more content that reflects contemporary Japanese life without fantasy elements.

Hiro
Young creators need to step up. I wonder if any Montessori alumni will emerge.

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

Liberal arts for children from birth.

Yati
Today’s topic is “cultural education.” Your first question might be, “What is cultural education?” Just as schools have subjects like language arts, math, and science, Montessori education has areas such as “language” and “mathematics.” One of those areas used to be called “cultural education.” It covers content like geography, history, biology, and physics, topics that children can start learning as early as 3 to 6 years old. I said “used to be called” because the term “culture” was considered too broad and has been reconsidered. In the international training course I took, it was renamed “language extensions” or folded into the “sensorial” area.

Hiro
I didn’t know that.

Yati
“Cultural education” probably isn’t Maria Montessori’s own term. It seems to have been coined later. Here’s what Montessori herself said: “We discovered that education is not something the teacher gives, but a natural process that develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but through experiences the child has in acting on the environment. The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.” I think she saw everything as culture.

Hiro
So there’s nothing that can’t be called culture?

Yati
Exactly. Maria Montessori observed children around the world and discovered that “humans possess the ‘absorbent mind’ only during the years 0 to 6.” The absorbent mind is like a sponge that takes in everything, language, food, clothing, people’s attitudes and behaviors, and uses it all to build the self, becoming a unique individual. Everything absorbed by the absorbent mind could be called culture.

Hiro
Changing the subject a bit: I believe that to discuss Montessori education scientifically, we need to translate Montessori-specific terms into language shared by other academic fields. Take the word “absorb” in “absorbent mind.” Isn’t it an unsuitable metaphor? In both neuroscience and engineering, “learn” would be more accurate.

Yati
I never thought of it that way. Having once immersed myself in Montessori education, I feel a certain resistance to that idea. But when I recall first learning about Montessori, I did feel a lot of confusion. I kept asking, “What does ‘didactic material’ mean?”

Hiro
To me, “didactic material” sounds like “brain-training equipment.”

Yati
That makes sense. It’s consistent with our pilot issue, “Raising Children Is Growing Brains.” The discussion of the absorbent mind is really about brain science, but since neuroscience wasn’t well developed in Maria Montessori’s time, she borrowed terms from biology, psychology, and philosophy, and used metaphors, to explain her ideas. Terms like “horme,” “mneme,” “nebulae,” and “engram” unnecessarily raise the barrier to learning Montessori education. This seems like a good opportunity to create a table mapping those terms to neuroscience.

Hiro
That makes it much clearer. Getting back to “cultural education,” I personally think these areas can also be organized in terms of brain science.

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
List the Montessori areas for me.

Yati
“Language,” “mathematics,” “sensorial,” “practical life,” and “cultural education.”

Hiro
These areas roughly correspond to regions of the brain. “Language” corresponds to the language areas in the brain. “Mathematics,” as we covered in an earlier issue, also has corresponding brain regions. “Sensorial” corresponds to the sensory cortex. “Practical life” involves movement, so it corresponds to the motor cortex.

Yati
You’re right. This is groundbreaking. I’d wondered whether the way Montessori divides these areas was a bit odd, but it turns out they’re designed to develop the whole brain in a balanced way.

Hiro
Exactly. As for “cultural education,” I think it corresponds to the occipital lobe.

Yati
Tell me more.

Hiro
I’ve been studying neuroscience lately, so I know a bit about the brain. The occipital lobe, at the back of the brain, handles vision, processing images, perceiving your position in space, and so on.

Yati
I looked it up, and it recognizes the shape, color, and speed of movement of things you see. It also recreates what you’ve seen. It works with the hippocampus for memory and the prefrontal cortex for judgment, so you can decide, “The light is red, so I shouldn’t cross.”

Hiro
It’s also the area involved in viewing things and enjoying visual experiences. That’s what “cultural education” corresponds to. Or maybe we should call it “knowledge education.”

Yati
Right.

Hiro
Isn’t “cultural education” really training to expand knowledge? It doesn’t matter whether the knowledge is about another culture or your own; it’s simply about gaining knowledge and becoming more cultured, developing general education. Like a culture course.

Yati
A “culture center”!

Hiro
The English word “culture” is broad, but personally, I feel what we’re really pointing at here is “liberal education,” or cultivation.

Yati
So it was “liberal-arts education” all along.

Hiro
Exactly. Liberal arts.

Yati
So, what should we do to cultivate liberal arts starting from ages 0 to 3?

Hiro
Liberal arts from ages 0 to 3, huh? Anything works, really, but the biggest bottleneck isn’t the environment. It’s the parents and other adults.

Yati
Mm-hmm.

Hiro
For example, families that visit art museums are different from those that don’t. Their motivation toward art is different.

Yati
True. The same goes for science museums. Did you go to art museums as a child?

Hiro
Actually, I grew up in Iwate Prefecture, in northern Japan, where artwork was displayed all around town, so I didn’t need to go to a museum. [laughs]

Yati
That’s not fair!

Hiro
I got to see works by Shigeo Fukuda, a world-renowned Japanese graphic designer, for free.

Yati
Learning from world-class art. Oh, if I say “absorbing,” you’ll scold me again. Learning from world-class art.

Hiro
Learning. And it’s not just art. Culturally rich towns let you feel “culture” in general. Literature, too.

Yati
Iwate is brimming with traces of Kenji Miyazawa, the beloved Japanese poet and children’s author from that region.

Hiro
If you grow up in a place without a local poet or author, you won’t feel close to literature, unless your parents engage with it themselves.

Yati
In the end, for liberal arts from 0 to 3, “Move to a culturally rich city” is a sad conclusion, but Morioka really is a cultural place. In my Montessori international course, a trainer from abroad said, “Enjoy outdoor concerts in the plaza with your baby.” I thought, “That’s just overseas culture.” But when I came to Morioka, the capital of Iwate Prefecture, there’s a weekly evening street market called Yo-ichi with authentic string-instrument performances, and kids dancing along.

Hiro
Even the nearby Aeon mall had flute trios.

Yati
Exactly. At Yo-ichi, high-school calligraphy clubs do live performances writing giant pieces. Walking around, you see statues of Kenji Miyazawa. There’s Kōgensha, a shop featuring traditional folk crafts from all over Japan. There used to be Iwaizumi Junboku Kagu, a furniture shop whose motto was “Wood that has lived for three hundred years becomes furniture you can use for three hundred years,” though it’s closed now. And adults are having a blast with sea urchin, oysters, local craft beer, and wine.

Hiro
This is turning into a Morioka advertisement.

Yati
But even in Fukuoka, in southern Japan, the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra held concerts that babies could attend. If you look, you can find things like that.

Hiro
True. There’s usually something. Even if you don’t search, you might try attending something you normally ignore, like sumo wrestling or rakugo, the Japanese art of comic storytelling, whatever.

Yati
Right. Culture isn’t just about enjoying it. There’s also the side of creating it.

Hiro
Culture is an accumulation of comprehensive arts. You could call it humanity’s collective memory. Every region has its own culture, an aggregate of the activities of the people who’ve lived there. In simple terms: what have people done? That’s shaped by script, language, customs, climate, and environment. When we say “cultural education,” it encompasses tremendous diversity.

Yati
For example?

Hiro
Take writing systems. Not everyone uses the same script. Chinese people use Chinese characters, English speakers use the Roman alphabet, Japanese people use Japanese script, and each system developed differently. Ideographic scripts express meaning; phonetic scripts express sound. These differences give rise to people who prefer manga and anime, or people who prefer music and podcasts. It’s less about preference and more about aptitude.

Yati
Interesting.

Hiro
Ultimately, human art may be an extension of language. Trace it back far enough and you reach the cave paintings at Lascaux or Altamira. At its core, culture begins with “expressing what you want to express.” Art came first, then art developed, and writing and numbers emerged. Those developed further into scholarship and technology.

Yati
What about religion?

Hiro
Religion? That came even before writing and numbers. Art developed and gave rise to religion. Idol worship: shaping gods into figures, venerating them, feeling gratitude. Everything starts with art. Work, too, began there.

Yati
To apply this to children’s education, should we trace that history?

Hiro
“Cultural education” sounds vague, but essentially, you should have something you want to express and develop the habit of expressing it. First, it’s important to have something you want to express. Second, you need the freedom to express it however you like. Freedom of expression. Freedom of speech and expression really matter for a culturally rich life.

Yati
When 1- to 2-year-olds paint with paints, the pictures are unique, and the moment they’re painting looks like pure joy. The act of painting and expressing is more important than the finished piece. In my Montessori international course, we were explicitly taught, “Art activities exist solely for children’s self-expression.” That’s how much care is needed, adults must refrain from evaluating, to achieve true free expression. Let me close with a quote from Maria Montessori: “If we wish to give the child the joy of drawing, we must create in him an eye that sees, a hand that obeys, and a soul that feels.”

Hiro
In other words: “Children seek not evaluation, but the opportunity for self-expression.”

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

Self-reliance equals freedom.

Yati
In this article on the 6 to 12 age group, I’d like to look at the history of hands and work. Got any interesting insights?

Hiro
There’s a theory proposed by the founder of Omron called “SINIC Theory.”

Yati
What kind of theory?

Hiro
It was developed to predict how human society evolves. The idea is that “management is prediction.”

Yati
How do you make predictions?

Hiro
Ultimately, you study history. When you do, you see that human society started with primitive life, then moved to agricultural life, followed by handicraft, the craft era, then industrial society.

Yati
Mm-hmm.

Hiro
After that came automation, society transformed by spinning machines and steam engines.

Yati
The First Industrial Revolution, around the 1760s to the early 1800s.

Hiro
Right. Then spinning machines evolved, machines in general evolved, and computers emerged.

Yati
Machines began to compute.

Hiro
And after that came the information society, where everything became digitized. What comes next? Right now, we’re in the “optimization society.”

Yati
What does “optimization society” mean, specifically?

Hiro
It means turning everything into computation problems and letting computers solve them. To optimize information, what’s the first step?

Yati
You gather information.

Hiro
Exactly. You collect it in one place, amass huge amounts of data, run calculations, and optimize.

Yati
That’s exactly what’s happening in AI development right now. To train an AI, you have to gather data in one location.

Hiro
Right. In other words, it’s centralization.

Yati
A centralized structure.

Hiro
So what comes next?

Yati
The opposite of centralization? Each entity starts doing its own optimization, calculating on its own smartphone or computer?

Hiro
Exactly. After the optimization society comes the “autonomous society.” This is said to begin in 2025.

Yati
That’s last year.

Hiro
From about 2025 to 2032.

Yati
What’s good about an “autonomous society”?

Hiro
When something shifts from centralized to distributed, it becomes more efficient.

Yati
Can you give an example?

Hiro
Right now, computers rely on “the cloud,” where data is sent to a central location, processed there, and the results are returned. In an autonomous society, each device, every smartphone and personal computer, handles what the cloud used to do. Processing is distributed. AI works the same way today: data is collected centrally, computed there, and accessed remotely. But going forward, there’s no need to access a central server; each device handles things locally. That’s the autonomous society.

Yati
Does social structure change, too?

Hiro
Yes, the same principle applies. Schools, for example, currently bring everyone to one place for activities and then send them home. That’s centralized. And the curriculum is determined by something like Japan’s Ministry of Education, implemented uniformly across the country. So there’s a hierarchy with the ministry at the top. Instead, in an autonomous society, each person has a personalized curriculum tailored to them and carries it out independently.

Yati
True self-reliance.

Hiro
Exactly. There’s no longer any central authority to depend on. Government works the same way. In Japan, governance centers on Kasumigaseki in Tokyo, but authority shifts to local areas, where each community governs itself. That’s the autonomous society. This is the evolution of human society. We’re moving forward.

Yati
Looking at the SINIC Theory diagram, it’s drawn as a spiral, climbing upward but also, in a sense, returning to the past. Does that mean going back to primitive times? What does that mean?

Hiro
Let’s talk about what happens once the autonomous society is complete. Starting around 2033, we enter what’s called the “natural society.” That’s Omron’s term. It’s not a return to the “primitive era” I mentioned. It’s ascending the spiral one level higher. In other words, it’s a “supra-natural society.”

Yati
Wait, that’s exactly what Maria Montessori said: “To contribute to the child is to contribute to all life. By aiding the work of nature, we raise nature to the supra-natural stage. That is the law of life. It is children who bring about the new stage toward a higher dimension.”

Hiro
Exactly. In the end, everyone pursues what they want to do, and that naturally works to improve both the environment and society. Actually, Confucius already said something similar in the Analects: “At seventy, I could follow my heart’s desire without overstepping the bounds of right.” As you mature, doing what you want while naturally staying within propriety is what’s traditionally called “human virtue.” The same principle applies at both the individual and societal scale. Does that make sense?

Yati
Say that again.

Hiro
Right now, if everyone just acted selfishly, society would collapse. But in an ultimately perfected society, each person is self-reliant; and when they all act freely, the result is an incredibly good society.

Yati
No need for rules to constrain anyone.

Hiro
Exactly. No constitution or laws required. No one needs to control anyone. It’s called a “non-control society.” Control is unnecessary.

Yati
Does that mean people genuinely care about each other? That ethics are highly developed?

Hiro
You could say they care about each other, or that from the outside it looks like high ethics. But it’s not forced. They’re acting freely, and it just works out that way.

Yati
An ideal society.

Hiro
Right. Two major trends to note: “things and the individual.” Modern society has emphasized things. Originally, the focus was on “heart and community.” Over time, the emphasis shifted from “heart” to “things,” and from “community” to “the individual.”

Yati
I see.

Hiro
In primitive life, people valued richness of heart and richness of communal life. We’re spiraling back toward that.

Yati
But if we’re talking about “self-reliant individuals,” how does that fit with “community and heart”?

Hiro
Self-reliance has three dimensions: mental self-reliance, physical self-reliance, and economic self-reliance. There’s a lot of overlap with Montessori here.

Yati
Montessori says “self-reliance equals freedom.”

Hiro
Exactly. In the autonomous society, three key perspectives matter: self-reliance, collaboration, and creation. Various things emerge at the boundaries between them. Between self-reliance and collaboration lies “altruism.” Between collaboration and creation lies “emergence.” Between creation and self-reliance lies “empathy.” In other words, you can’t be altruistic unless you’re first self-reliant.

Yati
That’s true. Montessori children can make delicious food themselves, so they can offer cookies to friends without a second thought.

Hiro
What is “selfishness,” really? It’s ultimately an expression of the desire to be self-reliant.

Yati
That may be true.

Hiro
So, bottom line: the transition to an autonomous society starts in 2025.

Yati
Sounds like “The transition to digital TV is starting.”

Hiro
The optimization society will fade away. And what is this new autonomous society? It’s essentially a “Montessori society.”

Yati
Wait, so it’s already here? Does that mean we don’t even need Montessori anymore?

Hiro
The point is that this time, humans themselves must change.

Yati
What do you mean, “this time”?

Hiro
Up until now, the focus was on improving machines. Now, improved machines will help improve humans.

Yati
Machines will change us?

Hiro
Yes. AI is part of that. People who adapt easily will be fine, but those who struggle to change will find it extremely painful. Children can still change. And what technology is called for now? Something called “mind-body technology,” technology for the mental dimension. Controlling the mind.

Yati
I can’t quite picture it. You mean “manipulating or controlling the mind”?

Hiro
Yes, controlling mental states. There are already signs of this. Brain machine interfaces, or BMI for short, use brainwaves to control computers. Smartwatches measure heart rate; if your heart stops, they automatically call an ambulance or send a rescue team. In mountain climbing, for example, if someone gets lost, GPS connects to rescuers.

Yati
So similarly, we’ll monitor mental states and provide feedback to the mind?

Hiro
We’re not quite there yet. Right now, we track blood pressure and health data, but that will advance to tracking mental states. “This person is heading toward depression” or “This person is getting a bit too overconfident.”

Yati
[laughs]

Hiro
Or “They’re eating properly.”

Yati
Like a good mother.

Hiro
Exactly. Doing what a mother would normally do. But not everyone has a good mother. So if we had a “mother AI,” people could rely on it for comfort.

Yati
A mentor.

Hiro
Yes, mentoring. The point is to value the mind. Things like motivation have been invisible, so they were neglected, but they’re incredibly important. Ignoring them is why we have problems like depression. Harassment, too: harassment is essentially “mental distress.” Once “mental distress” is properly recognized, harassment becomes unacceptable. In other words, the mental dimension is finally being evaluated appropriately.

Yati
When you think about it that way, a lot is changing.

Hiro
Before, we only thought about physical needs, like “as long as you’re sheltered from wind and rain.” Now we ask, “Is this space genuinely comfortable to be in?” Schools, too: it used to be “as long as you acquire knowledge.” Now we ask, “Are students learning what they actually want to learn?” and “Are they unhappy about it?” Evaluating that, and bringing unhappiness down to zero, is probably what mind-body technology is about. In short, “always achieving good mental health.”

Yati
I can actually feel us heading in that direction. Technology is making it happen.

Hiro
Even injections. Nobody likes the pain, so needles as thin as a mosquito’s proboscis make them painless. That’s scientific progress.

Yati
As science advances, things we used to “just put up with” become unnecessary to endure.

Hiro
School health checkups could be done remotely or distributed to address shortages of female doctors, for example.

Yati
Medical interviews could be handled by AI. And if every household had technology to monitor health on a daily basis, there’d be no need to gather everyone at school for checkups.

Hiro
If toilets evolve, we could assess gut microbiota every day. And not just physical health. Mental health, too, improving in real time.

Yati
What’s so great about being healthy in body and mind? Work performance goes up. I’m experiencing that firsthand now that I’ve started making sure I get enough sleep.

Hiro
Right now, most Japanese people, both children and adults, are sleep-deprived. Sleep deprivation hurts work performance. So first, let’s fix the sleep deficit, before any other debates. Even the National Diet building is turning into a nap room. So, everyone: please get as much sleep as you can.

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

To be genuine or to be fake, that is the question.

Hiro
Today’s theme for the 3 to 6 age group is “real work.”

Yati
As opposed to fake work, right? Not pretend cooking. Actually making real food, cleaning, tidying up, doing laundry, and so on.

Hiro
Yeah. Western educators make a big deal out of this and call it “Practical Life exercises,” but honestly, why not just call it “daily life”?

Yati
I get why they want to add the word “exercises,” though.

Hiro
The key point is the work itself. So what kind of work? Work that uses the hands. Do plenty of hands-on work, and you’re all set.

Yati
Well then, that wraps up our 3 to 6 discussion!

Hiro
[laughs] I’m being told this isn’t very scientific…

Yati
All right, let’s dig deeper into what real work means.

Hiro
Instead of heading toward toys, fantasy, or video games, do as much real stuff as possible. The best environment for that? A farm.

Yati
Farms are overflowing with real work.

Hiro
Harvesting vegetables, tilling soil, hauling what you’ve picked, sorting produce, packing boxes. There’s all sorts of work kids can do. And here’s a classic farm-kid confession: I was made to help out constantly, and honestly, I hated it. [laughs]

Yati
So you didn’t like it! [laughs] But there’s work at just the right difficulty level for children aged 3 to 6, and that’s rare. Most real work is either too hard or too dangerous for young children.

Hiro
Right. On a Montessori-related note: Maria Montessori, you know, pretty much abandoned her own son...

Yati
Phrasing! [laughs]

Hiro
...she placed her son with a farming family.

Yati
True. When I first heard that, I thought how painful it must have been for her not to practice her own educational ideas with her son. But once I understood farm life, it made so much sense I almost wondered if she did it on purpose. Maybe the “Children’s House” was modeled after “children on a farm.”

Hiro
She probably did choose it deliberately, partly because of the rural setting and partly the idea that if you want something done, ask a busy person. If you need someone to raise a child, ask people who raise things for a living.

Yati
Exactly. It’s all connected. Humans are part of nature, so someone skilled at nurturing plants is often good at nurturing children, too.

Hiro
Right. When we say “farm,” we tend to picture just crops, but traditional farms raised livestock as well.

Yati
Cows, horses. They used to put them to work. If you can get a cow or horse to work, maybe getting a child aged 3 to 6 to pitch in isn’t so hard after all.

Hiro
Here’s another Montessori-related anecdote. Jeff Bezos is famous as a Montessori child.

Yati
He comes up almost every issue. The founder of Amazon.

Hiro
Bezos didn’t attend a Montessori elementary school. But when he was young, his mother remarried, and his maternal grandfather, a former military officer, started a ranch in Texas after retiring.

Yati
You know a lot about this.

Hiro
Every summer, Bezos went to that ranch. He did farm chores like building things, even constructing a crane, I heard, all while working alongside his grandfather. He loved it. And he kept going back every summer from age 4 until about 16 or 17.

Yati
So he got his “secondary” experience there, too.

Hiro
Exactly. As a young child, Bezos went to a Montessori preschool. For elementary, he was in a gifted program called the “Vanguard Program,” which nurtured curiosity and exploration, but he never did Montessori elementary.

Yati
Mm-hmm.

Hiro
Still, he had plenty of real-work experience on that ranch. That’s where he learned how to work.

Yati
I see.

Hiro
Bezos has said that time was “the best.” All kinds of tasks, castrating livestock, treating his own injuries. He did it all.

Yati
Mm-hmm.

Hiro
They’d start early in the morning, then break for lunch at the house and watch soap operas on TV together. He said he loved that.

Yati
Sounds like a Japanese summer vacation.

Hiro
Remember those shows that came on at 1:00 and 1:30? America had the same kind of thing. On rainy days, he’d go to the library, which was full of science-fiction novels. He’d read them endlessly and let his imagination roam.

Yati
That’s a great balance.

Hiro
Totally. Pretty ideal, actually, farm work plus intellectual stimulation. “Plow when it’s sunny, read when it rains.” Now Bezos is focused on space. This is turning into a Bezos biography rather than Montessori talk, but he runs Blue Origin, a company building spacecraft for space transport. By the way, he hasn’t retired from Amazon. What sparked it all? Watching the Apollo moon landing at his grandfather’s house when he was five.

Yati
In Montessori terms, that’s right in the “hero worship” period, when children find role models.

Hiro
Right. Astronauts, aerospace engineers, rocket scientists became his heroes, and Bezos headed into the STEM world.

Yati
Even without Montessori elementary, he gave himself a cosmic education.

Hiro
Exactly. That’s why Blue Origin’s rockets are named after legendary astronauts, like New Shepard, New Armstrong, and so on.

Yati
I didn’t know that.

Hiro
He’s serious about it.

Yati
Speaking of our 0 to 3 discussion, does Bezos have big hands?

Hiro
I’ll let everyone look that up themselves, but he’s surprisingly short. His laugh, though, is huge.

Yati
[laughs] As for whether his brain is big, well, he writes beautifully. There’s a piece he posted on Twitter when he launched the Montessori-inspired Day 1 preschool, and it’s definitely worth reading. He also tells Amazon employees to “write long documents.”

Hiro
“No PowerPoint. Write a six-page memo.” That’s brutal for people who can’t write.

Yati
I couldn’t work at Amazon.

Hiro
Apparently, many Americans can’t write, or read, for that matter.

Yati
Really?

Hiro
That’s partly why “AI writing” is such a big deal right now. Lots of people struggle with reading and writing, so these tools are popular. When someone says “keep emails short,” it’s often because they can’t handle long text. They blame being busy or short on time, but the real issue is that long reading feels painful. Hence the appeal of 140-character limits and photo- or video-based social media.

Yati
Makes sense.

Hiro
Anyway, I got sidetracked. The point is, Bezos grew up doing real work. He’s also involved with the Long Now Foundation and helped build the 10,000-Year Clock.

Yati
A clock that chimes a different tone every day for 10,000 years. On the site, Bezos, again writing beautifully, describes the clock as “a symbol for long-term thinking.”

Hiro
He’s also donated around $200 million to the Smithsonian to help build museums.

Yati
Of that, $70 million went toward renovating the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and $130 million funded a new educational facility called the Bezos Learning Center. It sounds like a museum-based learning space. Maria Montessori once said, “The school should have a ‘museum of machines.’ The machines should be of a suitable size for children to take apart and reassemble, to use and repair.” This center might embody some of those ideas.

Hiro
Amazon’s headquarters also has a greenhouse called The Spheres, where they collect plants from around the world and conserve species.

Yati
So even as an adult, he keeps doing real work.

Hiro
Exactly.

Yati
I feel like children’s natural interest in real work is being commercially co-opted. When their imagination blossoms and they become curious about people in other countries, their lifestyles, clothing, and cuisine, that interest gets hijacked by Disney princess dresses. But when that curiosity emerges, I also wonder: what counts as real work in that context? Montessori has map materials and tools that show how people live around the world, but still…

Hiro
Maybe the real work is making friends around the world? On a related note, I think it was Will Wright who said there are two types of people: producers and consumers. When something moves you, some people say “Wow, that was amazing” and stop there. Others say, “Great, I’ll use this as inspiration and make something myself.”

Yati
Like reading a great manga and starting to draw your own.

Hiro
Or eating delicious food and deciding to cook it yourself. So the Disney thing is more about people who tend to consume. Consumers, in a way, are at a disadvantage. You could say their hands haven’t developed fully.

Yati
Instead of buying the dress, you could design and make your own. This connects to something Maria Montessori wrote: “Love guides the child not toward possessing things but toward the work that can be accomplished with them. And once work begins, people engage with one another, because no one can work alone. This is how life evolves. Interesting work elevates the individual and enhances the value of personality.”

Hiro
Mm-hmm.

Yati
She continues: “But if the individual is prevented from acting, love turns into possessiveness, and instead of cooperation there is conflict. Instead of collaboration, opposition arises. This great revelation comes from the child.”

Hiro
Heavy.

Yati
And then: “There are two paths of personality development: becoming a person who loves or becoming a person trapped by possessions; becoming independent and working in harmony with others or becoming a slave to possessions and hating others. These correspond to good and evil, heaven and hell. One path leads to supernatural perfection; the other leads to degradation below our true nature.”

Hiro
That’s long. I’m not good with long texts. Could you summarize it a bit?

Yati
Oh, come on! [laughs]

Hiro
Seriously, though, AI isn’t the only thing advancing; robots are, too. Household robots are already here, so how we relate to AI and robots is becoming an important question. They shouldn’t just be servants; we need to become friends with them. Cooperation instead of competition.

Yati
With a kind heart.

Hiro
Exactly. And for that, as we discussed in the brain issue, we need to train the prefrontal cortex, and that means working with our hands.

Yati
I’d like to add a few points we didn’t cover in the 0 to 3 article about spending time in nature, since it’s relevant to the 3 to 6 stage as well. Researchers have long studied how early nature experiences influence later biophilia and environmental attitudes. Nature experiences are associated with improved cognitive function and academic performance, as well as lower rates of mental illness in children.

Hiro
Interesting.

Yati
Maria Montessori also recommended Boy Scout-style activities for elementary-aged children, and I think this applies to 5 and 6 year olds, too. Kids who are hooked on Minecraft may actually be interested in real-life survival.

Hiro
Scouting is survival training. What to do if you get lost in the woods, how to survive if you’re swept away by a river, how to tie knots, how to secure drinking water and food. Practical knowledge.

Yati
We don’t know any of that, do we?

Hiro
I’ve been learning from the blog of Yajin Mu, a Japanese survivalist blogger who writes about wilderness skills, but I still have a long way to go.

Yati
Let’s explore this further in an upcoming issue on nature education.

Hiro
To sum up: the more real work you do, the more your hands develop; and the more your hands develop, the better you get at real work. Whether children enter that positive cycle determines whether they grow into people who do great work or merely consume commercial products. It sounds harsh, but that’s the message in Montessori’s writings.

Yati
True. Maria Montessori was always saying things that stirred controversy.

Hiro
Indeed. And we’d like to keep stirring things up ourselves.

Yati
As advocates for children.

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

Humanity exists to fully understand the universe.

Yati
Today’s topic is “Hands and Work.” Let me introduce some quotes from Maria Montessori: “The hand is the instrument of intelligence. Children learn by touching and moving things.” “Children play with their hands, come to work with their hands, and through accumulating such experiences, they form their personalities.” “Children teach us that we must use our hands to continue developing intelligence.” “Hands and Work” are important for both mental development and human intelligence.

Hiro
Right.

Yati
Before we discuss “Hands and Work,” I want to define “work.” What is “work”? Maria Montessori said it’s “changing the environment” or “creating something supranatural,” but I find that a bit hard to understand.

Hiro
That doesn’t really say anything. We need to define it more physically. There’s a physical definition of work too. What corresponds to work is energy.

Yati
Right. In physics, work is defined as force times distance, and its unit is energy.

Hiro
Energy exists for doing work. It’s a physics term. What Montessori calls “work” isn’t about earning a living. I think it’s physical work. Physical work is, for example, moving an object from here to there, or from a low place to a high place. Energy is used in the form of potential energy, kinetic energy, and so on. And in this universe, no matter how much energy you use, it doesn’t decrease. It doesn’t decrease, and it doesn’t increase.

Yati
The law of conservation of energy.

Hiro
Energy is transformed. What was potential energy here becomes kinetic energy there and does some kind of work. Cosmically, it’s like equivalent exchange. Generally, when people say “work,” they think of it as something to “earn a living,” but that’s the common-sense definition in human society. Human civilization has been advancing and getting smarter, but it’s still inferior.

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
In a perfectly physical world, “earning a living” isn’t part of it. The compensation for work in nature is different from the human world. Nothing in nature earns a living. Things simply do work.

Yati
For example, what does this mean for plants?

Hiro
When we say plants, there are trees, grass, all kinds. This is also a human classification. There’s a huge tree with grass underneath it.

Yati
And climbing vines.

Hiro
Right. There are small ones and big ones. And they’re all doing work. Each one blooms flowers. Respiration and photosynthesis are also work. This relates to the Constructal Law, a new law I’m currently studying. Let me introduce it briefly. It’s a law of design.

Yati
Tell me more.

Hiro
The design of this world is progressing in a certain direction according to physical laws. We call that “evolution.” What direction is it going? The law says it’s “progressing toward greater efficiency.”

Yati
What does efficiency mean here?

Hiro
Efficiency means “making the flow that flows through you flow even more.”

Yati
So the universe is evolving so that flow flows even more. What does that mean concretely?

Hiro
For example, with plants, you can’t see inside a plant, but water flows through it, and oxygen too. When photosynthesizing, leaves open their stomata. At the same time, water and oxygen flow out as gas. Conversely, plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, convert it to carbohydrates through photosynthesis, release sugars from their roots, and pass them to microorganisms. That’s the work they’re doing.

Yati
There’s flow.

Hiro
This has become clear recently with the advancement of science and technology. Before, we just looked at plants blankly and wondered, “Why is it here?” But thankfully, we can eat them, burn them for warmth, and there are all sorts of uses. From a human perspective, we thought plants were doing work for us.

Yati
Right.

Hiro
But actually, when science and technology let us see the micro and macro worlds, we find that just by being there, not moving, they’re doing work just by existing.

Yati
And on a macro level, they’re increasing the efficiency of Earth’s cycles?

Hiro
Not Earth. The universe. In this case, they live on Earth but are doing work for the universe. Why? Because energy isn’t conserved per planet. It’s conserved across the entire universe.

Yati
This is what’s fascinating about physics.

Hiro
It’s amazing. The same laws govern tiny, tiny, invisibly tiny microorganisms and worlds far larger than galaxies.

Yati
Getting back to the topic. In this cosmic evolution, what is humanity’s work?

Hiro
What I want to say, and this is a bit of a leap, is that the work given to humanity as intelligent life is to achieve complete understanding of the entire universe.

Yati
What lies beyond understanding the universe?

Hiro
By understanding the universe, we become able to increase efficiency further. We help nature.

Yati
I see. We’re pushing forward the evolution of the universe.

Hiro
To properly connect this to today’s theme: humans have hands. Having hands means we can manipulate our environment. There’s also the philosophy of operationalism, the idea that the meaning of a concept comes from how we operate on it. For example, beavers build dams too. They block rivers. Beavers gnaw on big trees, conifers, with their teeth.

Yati
With their big front teeth.

Hiro
Right, they’re rodents. And they gnaw on trees that are still standing. They stop partway so they don’t get crushed when it falls. Then at some point, strong wind shakes it and it finally breaks. Then they gnaw it smaller to use. They’re forest carpenters. They’re called a “keystone species.”

Yati
A species that’s important for the ecosystem.

Hiro
They have a big impact on rivers and forests. By damming rivers, fish can’t swim upstream, which creates habitats for various birds. When water overflows, tributaries form. Water seeps into the soil and vegetation changes. By disturbing the ecosystem like this, they make it more diverse and stable.

Yati
But for beavers, they’re just building their own nests, right?

Hiro
Exactly. Beavers probably aren’t thinking, “I’m going to improve the forest environment.” They want a home, so they fell trees, gather them, build a safe place to sleep, and that becomes a natural dam.

Yati
And humans are the same?

Hiro
Yes. Humans also act on self-interest, drilling for oil, doing things for survival. Once they can ensure their own survival, they scale up for the survival of their community. Sometimes science goes too far and causes environmental destruction, sometimes we learn from nature, going back and forth in balance, developing like climbing a spiral.

Yati
So with that human mission in mind, what should we do during ages 0 to 3?

Hiro
Spend time in nature.

Yati
I thought given this theme, you’d say “use your hands to work in nature.”

Hiro
No. If you don’t interfere with children in nature, they’ll start using their hands on their own.

Yati
Why is spending time in nature important?

Hiro
Because no matter how hard humans try, what they create can’t beat the designs nature produces. Great designers usually come from the countryside. Biological design evolves according to cosmic laws. It’s efficient, and it’s about cooperation, not competition. When you touch a pill bug and wonder why it rolls up, you’re sensing those laws. Noticing the seasons naturally is also natural.

Yati
I was worried our older daughter would be bored on the long kindergarten bus rides, but she was moved by how Mount Iwate, in northern Japan, changed through the four seasons.

Hiro
Right. If I had to say what to be careful about when spending time in nature, it’s “don’t let them die.” Nature is harsh.

Yati
What else is important besides spending time in nature?

Hiro
Walking, eating, sleeping.

Yati
As a Montessorian, once children can walk and use their hands, they can do things for themselves and household tasks, so I tend to want to recommend that. But yes, walking is important. Children around 18 months to 2 years who can walk well really walk as if walking is their job. Including eating and sleeping, it’s about building the foundation for the brain and body.

Hiro
By the Constructal Law I mentioned earlier, bigger is advantageous. Speaking of hands, humans have longer thumbs than other great apes. Because this thumb opposes the other fingers, we can grasp things. Large, dexterous hands are a characteristic of Homo sapiens. The magnificence of the thumb might be proportional to intelligence.

Yati
Maybe so. Whether it’s finger length, physique, or brain size, there are individual differences, but everyone can aim for their personal best.

Hiro
Speaking of brains, the current Homo sapiens average is about 1,130 cubic centimeters for women and 1,270 cubic centimeters for men, but some famous Russian writers had nearly 2,000 cubic centimeters.

Yati
They say Einstein’s was surprisingly small. It’s mysterious.

Hiro
AI could solve math problems relatively quickly early on, but only recently became able to produce literary writing. Writing text that makes people groan is that difficult. It probably requires thinking about how the world works and how people feel, activating many different parts of a large brain.

Yati
A large brain seems necessary for understanding the universe too. We’ll cover “eating” in a future issue. As for “sleeping,” I recently watched videos of sleep researcher Professor Masashi Yanagisawa, and I really think everyone should sleep more, not just children.

Hiro
Right.

Yati
Sleep regularity and quality are important, but securing enough sleep quantity is the top priority. For adults, around 8 hours; for elementary schoolers, about 10 hours; so for ages 0 to 3, it’s even more.

Hiro
Children who sleep grow well.

Yati
There’s also research showing differences in hippocampus size based on whether children got enough sleep in early childhood.

Hiro
That’s significant.

Yati
Also, when you get enough sleep, you become more altruistic. Even just 1 hour of sleep deprivation makes people less altruistic. This is evident from charity donations clearly decreasing on the day daylight saving time starts.

Hiro
Religions should let their followers sleep rather than preaching about altruism.

Yati
Toward humanity’s mission of “complete understanding of the entire universe,” during ages 0 to 3, let’s spend time in nature, eat well, walk plenty, and sleep well.

Hiro
With smiles and good spirits.

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

The children begin to use an entirely new coordinate system.

Yati
I want to talk about “Why learn mathematics through discovery?” But first, I’d like to define mathematics. Galileo Galilei famously said, “the universe is written in the language of mathematics.” What do you think?

Hiro
Mathematics can be defined as “the study of structure and pattern.”

Yati
Does that mean it describes the universe?

Hiro
Essentially, what we call “mathematics” is the correspondence of the universe’s structures and patterns to symbols. If you don’t map the universe to numerals, numbers, and mathematical symbols, but instead just speak in ordinary language and turn it into a story, it becomes mythology.

Yati
Is “the mathematics that humanity has developed” the same as “the mathematics that describes the universe”?

Hiro
There are two kinds of mathematics. One is human mathematics, the mathematics we learn in education. The other is cosmic mathematics, the mathematics the universe has. The history of human mathematics is a history of corrections to human mathematics. We hypothesize “Maybe there’s a law like this” and verify it, but eventually it turns out to be wrong and gets corrected by later generations.

Yati
Like relativity theory to Newtonian mechanics.

Hiro
That’s physics. For a pure mathematics example, Euclidean geometry to non-Euclidean geometry.

Yati
Right.

Hiro
The history of mathematical development is mostly like this: first you have some illusion, like “Isn’t this the pattern?” Then the next generation says, “Wait, that’s wrong.” It gets corrected. Like Gauss or Euler. But some people hit the right answer from the start, like Pythagoras, discovering that triangles have certain properties. The Pythagorean theorem. For other people, the next generation, they can’t deny it. It’s too useful. Even ordinary children can calculate area with base times height divided by 2. But we couldn’t use it with confidence if Pythagoras or earlier generations hadn’t discovered the law, or if no one had verified it. However, even things used that way for a long time might still have errors. That’s both the fascination and the terror of mathematics.

Yati
That’s true. Is there a pattern to when corrections happen?

Hiro
Usually corrections come through technological development. What I mean is, for example, when you want to see far into the universe, you build large telescopes. Space telescopes. First you have to think about how to launch them. You need mathematics and physics for the launch. Then you also need technology for seeing farther, and that uses mathematics and physics too. And then how to handle the data you get, what patterns to find from it. You need to answer propositions like whether the universe is round.

Yati
The shape of the universe was actually solved using mathematics and physics with the Poincaré conjecture.

Hiro
Right. And there are various unsolved problems that need proof, like Fermat’s Last Theorem.

Yati
Like verifying whether the proof of the ABC conjecture is correct.

Hiro
Right. And to solve these more efficiently, new mathematics is sometimes needed. And that new mathematics is actually undiscovered cosmic mathematical principles.

Yati
Like Edward Witten doing new mathematics while researching superstring theory.

Hiro
Here’s a spoiler for readers. That “coordinate system” you learned in education is called “Cartesian coordinates” because Descartes created it, and it’s very convenient. When drawing graphs, you say X axis, Y axis for 2 axes. For 3 axes, you add Z axis. This Cartesian coordinate system is not correct cosmically.

Yati
That’s a “What?!” moment. [laughs]

Hiro
It doesn’t work in the universe.

Yati
Since Earth is a sphere too, you can’t express it. When you go to the edge, you have to come out the other side.

Hiro
Right, even on Earth we’re approximating calculations quite a lot to get answers. We’re forcing it, quite a lot actually. GPS calculations, for example. Approximating curves with straight lines, using the squeeze theorem and limits to cleverly handle complex differentiation. The calculations are incredibly difficult.

Yati
Right.

Hiro
Since computers were invented, it’s fine if the computational load is enormous. Or rather, computers were developed because of that computational load.

Yati
Right. [laughs]

Hiro
Being able to do all sorts of things with computers is a really great thing. But really, if there’s a way to reduce computational load, that would be better.

Yati
Mathematical proofs sometimes use computers to brute-force things. Like the four-color map problem. If it could be proven without computers, that would be beautiful.

Hiro
Right. Computers would use less electricity too. Now with AI development, they’re consuming enormous computational resources, and there’s even talk of needing nuclear power. Electricity shortage is a problem. Data centers are running at like 100% capacity, constantly operating. Electricity becomes a problem. Then you’re consuming fossil fuels. Why is this happening? It’s because the mathematics is wrong. The underlying mathematics.

Yati
That’s really true. Whether global environmental problems get solved depends on the evolution of mathematics.

Hiro
Right now we’re calculating in extremely inefficient ways. With the cosmic approach, computational load becomes one-third.

Yati
Is that the power of cosmic mathematics?

Hiro
In other words, because we’re calculating in Cartesian coordinates, computational load is 3 times what it would be cosmically. This is essentially an assumption—people think Cartesian coordinates are always correct. Most people think mathematics has no errors and is always correct. They feel mathematics never changes forever, or that it doesn’t change because it’s been proven.

Yati
So separate from whether something is proven or not, there’s the discussion of whether it’s efficient.

Hiro
Right. We know it can be solved that way. For example, there’s brute force—giving random values, trying lots of random things when solving calculation problems, and if you hit the answer, lucky. Just repeating like “Please let tomorrow be sunny.” That method exists.

Yati
AI is a type of that too. Generating images from random seed values, hoping something good comes out. Or when you want new materials with specific properties, you generate randomly and pick what’s probabilistically likely. Same with shogi moves.

Hiro
If you do that, eventually you’ll solve it. Brute forcing. But if you do that for every problem, it’s game over. In the end, “because it’s proven” isn’t really a reason. The legitimacy of human mathematics is simply how much it matches cosmic mathematics. And the more it matches, the more you can predict the future. This is a bit of self-promotion, but Polymath School, which started in April 2025, defines “intellectual” that way and aims to be “the most intellectual school.”

Yati
Right.

Hiro
“Calculation” layers inferences. Like the Japanese proverb, “When the wind blows, the barrel maker profits.” It’s a saying about chains of unlikely cause and effect. You go through about 10 inference steps from wind blowing to the barrel maker profiting. Mathematics is about becoming able to layer inferences. There’s all sorts of randomness. So people immediately start talking about chaos, saying “We give up, we can’t predict the future.” But including that, you can still produce prediction accuracy. You can express it as probability.

Yati
That’s how AI has been developing too.

Hiro
Weather forecasting too. It keeps evolving, using AI to predict more accurately. This is the Laplace’s demon story—if you could accurately predict the state of all particles, you could always predict the next state.

Yati
The idea that the future is determined.

Hiro
We’re approaching that. In other words, cosmic mathematics is that direction. If you understood all of the universe’s state and principles, you could predict the universe.

Yati
That’s where quantum physics comes in.

Hiro
The idea that things are probabilistically determined, so the future is uncertain. Two states superimposed. But that’s human understanding—it’s not that the universe decided superposition is uncertain.

Yati
This discussion is getting complicated.

Hiro
Simply put, as an efficiency of representing information, superposition is good, so you could say the universe uses it. An interesting point here relates to “The Power of Folktales” from the previous issue. For example, in “The Crane’s Return of a Favor,” a crane secretly weaves cloth disguised as a young woman, and children naturally understand superposition. The crane in the weaving room is in a superposition state of daughter and crane.

Yati
Same with the big wicker basket in “Tongue-Cut Sparrow.”

Hiro
Richard P. Feynman said “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” Elon Musk said “Quantum mechanics is the most difficult.” Jeff Bezos said “I was going to become a physicist but gave up at quantum mechanics.” Meanwhile, in Japan, 5-year-olds readily accept it. Entanglement, the Urashima effect—there must be many more folktales if you look. And it’s not because some great scholar thought them up. They’ve been passed down among farmers since ancient times, and people listen because they’re interesting.

Yati
So children are given all sorts of patterns, and much later, they can discover on their own “Oh, this is that pattern.”

Hiro
“Straw Millionaire” is also the law of conservation of energy. Straw = lotus leaf = miso = sword = millionaire.

Yati
But straw does not equal millionaire, right? Isn’t that mathematically incorrect?

Hiro
That’s being tainted by human mathematics. Buckminster Fuller said mathematics must include time, gravity, and temperature. In cosmic mathematics that includes time, the equality holds.

Yati
It’s hard to escape human mathematics. Please properly teach me about how calculations become one-third without Cartesian coordinates.

Hiro
You’ll discover that yourself. That’s what learning through discovery means.

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

Reliving the history of human mathematics through Montessori math materials.

Hiro
Many people think the essence of Montessori education is the materials, but the first thing I need to say is that materials are just one element that makes up the environment. They are not absolutely necessary. For example, there is essential work for living, like cooking, growing plants, or caring for animals. The parts directly connected to daily life are the necessary and sufficient conditions. If you do those properly, you will naturally acquire the abilities you need.

Yati
Right.

Hiro
When cooking, some people do it by feel without looking at a recipe, but if you try to follow a recipe, you use quite a bit of mathematical ability. You measure quantities, and the ratios of seasonings determine the spiciness, saltiness, and sweetness. That can only be understood through the senses, and robots still cannot do it. But even small children can do such difficult things. They can slice bread, add their favorite fillings and ham, and eat it. So doing that kind of “work” is what is important first.

Yati
This does not change from ages 0 to 3.

Hiro
Materials are convenient tools for environments where such work is not possible, like when you want to cook but cannot, or when you live in the city and cannot touch plants. Now, with smartphones and tablets and lots of digital apps, I personally think Montessori materials are quite similar to them.

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
Materials are tools made of wood and metal that allow children to deepen their thinking and discover various things through play. But without technology, you cannot cut wood to the same length. They standardize natural wood, paint it all, and harden it. In a sense, that is industrially produced while ignoring the nature of the wood. It is quite digital. There is no drama of how that wood grew and was transported, so it ends up extremely inorganic. There is no handmade warmth; it is symbolic.

Yati
I see. But there is still an appeal to materials as concrete objects that digital apps do not have.

Hiro
The drawback of digital apps is that you do not use your hands. Just swipes and touches. Video game controllers also have low diversity in how hands are used. With Montessori materials, you can play by arranging large objects, picking up small things, and transferring liquids, using your hands in diverse ways. That is the fundamental point. There are not many systematically prepared things like that, so if you can use them, you should.

Yati
Right.

Hiro
But it is true that they are expensive. Too expensive to introduce at home. They cost a lot because they standardize specifications, ignore the nature of wood, and do metal processing and painting. They are forcing something that is not natural. Shipping is also difficult and not environmentally friendly. So please understand that materials are not perfect either.

Yati
Right.

Hiro
“Montessori education equals materials” is not correct. That said, compared to conventional kindergartens and elementary schools, materials provide much higher learning efficiency and essential understanding. So let’s examine that.

Yati
This time we will look at math materials, which are designed to repeat the history of human numbers. Stanislas Dehaene, the researcher who proposed “number sense,” said in his book “The Number Sense” that ideally every child should be able to retrace in their mind a greatly condensed version of the history of mathematics, along with the motivations that drove it. Why? Because the evolution of mathematics is also the evolution of the brain.

Hiro
What do you mean?

Yati
The latest research uses technologies like fMRI to roughly identify where in the human brain the primitive number sense that animals also have is located. It is thought that through evolution, humans developed from this primitive number sense brain region as a starting point, deepening connections with various brain regions governing vision, hearing, language, space, and time, eventually developing highly abstract mathematics like modern mathematics. In other words, ideally children develop their brains and number sense by repeating human history. And math materials make that possible.

Hiro
So it is aligned with brain development.

Yati
The first math material is called “Number Rods.” There are 10 wooden rods, ranging from 10 centimeters up to 100 centimeters in 10-centimeter increments, color-coded in red and blue every 10 centimeters. What is amazing about this is that it simultaneously provides children with two concepts at once: quantity, meaning how much, and ordinal numbers, meaning what position. There is often debate among math experts about whether to introduce quantity or ordinal numbers first, but Number Rods introduce both at once with a single material.

Hiro
Two birds with one stone.

Yati
Furthermore, before these Number Rods, children become familiar with length using “Red Rods,” which is a version of the Number Rods that is all red. This is another excellent point.

Hiro
Excellent how?

Yati
Here, try to picture a small number, “1.” Now picture a large number, “100.”

Hiro
Okay.

Yati
Actually, we unconsciously have brains that map numbers to space. For small numbers, we become aware of the lower left, and for large numbers, the upper right. There is a number line in our heads. That is why at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, where higher gate numbers are arranged to the left, many people get lost.

Hiro
I see.

Yati
In short, “space” and “numbers” are closely related in humans. Getting back to the point, when the Red Rods used to introduce spatial length are upgraded and used to introduce numbers, it is smooth for a brain that is trying to connect space and numbers. It also looks like a number line extending. By the way, in some cultures the direction is reversed, with larger numbers on the left, but Number Rods can accommodate either culture just by changing the arrangement.

Hiro
So spatial perception is also being used.

Yati
And as an activity, children trace these long Number Rods with their fingers while counting “1,” then “1, 2,” then “1, 2, 3,” then “1, 2, 3, 4,” matching quantity with number names.

Hiro
Even someone who cannot see can understand numbers.

Yati
Indeed. The next material can also be understood without sight. It is called “Sandpaper Numerals,” which are wooden boards with numerals cut out of sandpaper and pasted on. Children trace them to learn numerals. After that, they match the numeral boards with the Number Rods, connecting numerals to quantities. This allows children to accurately match quantity, number words, and numerals from 1 to 10.

Hiro
That is well thought out.

Yati
Actually, this method of introducing numbers is also effective for chimpanzees. A chimpanzee named Sheba succeeded in matching quantities zero through nine with numerals over 2 years, according to Boysen and colleagues in 1996. Sheba started by placing biscuits one at a time on a tray divided into 6 sections. In the next stage, she learned to match the number of black dots on cards with the number of biscuits, and eventually could match the number of dots on cards with numerals. Another chimpanzee could even do fraction addition, and the tool used to express the answer was a divided disc, according to Woodruff and colleagues in 1981. This also matches the Montessori material for learning fractions. The fact that it is effective for non-humans too shows how user-friendly Montessori materials are.

Hiro
So they are monkey-friendly too.

Yati
Getting back to Number Rods. Because they are simple, they allow children to discover various number concepts on their own depending on their stage of number sense development. For example, combining the 5 rod and the 3 rod makes 8, so they can do addition. Finding combinations that add up to 10 is number composition. Making all combinations of 10 hints at the formula for the sum of consecutive natural numbers.

Hiro
Hmm. Like a universal seasoning.

Yati
After Number Rods, we use “Spindle Boxes.” This is an activity where you count spindles and bundle them with rubber bands to make a group. After bundling, you place them in the corresponding numbered compartment of the box. Defining 1 spindle as “1,” you learn by moving your hands that collecting, say, 3 of them into one bundle is “3.” Nothing goes in the compartment marked 0. In other words, you learn that “0” means “nothing.”

Hiro
Using small stones as tokens, matching 1 stone with “1” to count is human history itself. Representing 10 small stones with 1 large stone is acquiring the “base principle.” Combined with the “place value principle” of assigning positions, like ones place, tens place, and so on, the acquisition of these two major principles is extremely important in the history of human mathematics. For children to discover this themselves by moving their hands with materials is essential. If you realize that the “base” of a logarithm is just that “large stone” idea, college entrance exams get a lot easier.

Yati
Right. After Spindle Boxes comes “Cards and Counters.” This involves arranging small counter-sized balls in 2 rows corresponding to each numeral. It is a material for discovering odd and even numbers.

Hiro
Discovering parity, an important theme in number theory, around age 4 would make for an enjoyable life.

Yati
Next is the “Memory Game of Numbers.” It is a game for multiple children. You draw a slip with a number written on it and bring back that many of something. In other words, you let children define what counts as 1. This completes the introduction of the numerals 0 through 10.

Hiro
In human history, people counted and recorded wheat and cattle, but in modern times, we can freely count all sorts of things. How fun.

Yati
After the numerals comes the decimal system, then consecutive numbers, mental arithmetic, the process toward abstraction, and fractions. Materials in the three-to-six-year-old environment cover up to 7-digit arithmetic operations and fraction operations. There are finely graduated steps leading up to those 7-digit calculations.

Hiro
How does it start?

Yati
First, 1, 10, 100, and 1000 are provided with “Golden Beads,” where the physical size is proportional to the quantity. What is provided along with the Golden Beads is the material for the place value principle I called one of the two major principles. This is also interesting. They are numeral cards. For example, to express 2025, you stack the card for 2000, then the card for 20, then the card for 5. Together, they read 2025.

Hiro
I see, the cards literally line up.

Yati
In the stage after Golden Beads, the shape differences by number disappear, and everything becomes same-sized squares, called “stamps,” with 1, 10, 100, and 1000 written on them. The next stage represents 1, 10, 100, and 1000 with just dots. After that, the abacus is introduced. Step by step, from concrete to abstract, we trace the evolution of human numbers.

Hiro
The evolution of arithmetic technique from abacus to written calculation is inevitable, but you should not skip steps.

Yati
Also, though I cannot cover it all here, geometry is included in “Sensorial Materials.” For example, geometric solids like spheres, cylinders, and triangular pyramids start with lots of touching and feeling.

Hiro
Not with worksheets.

Yati
Getting back to math materials. Since numbers depend on language, there are stumbling points by culture. Another noteworthy aspect of Montessori materials is how brilliantly they avoid these.

Hiro
How so?

Yati
For example, in English, the words for eleven, twelve, and thirteen are irregular. Japanese is much easier to understand because it is based on the decimal system: ten plus one is “juu-ichi,” and ten plus two is “juu-ni.” So even in English-speaking countries, they introduce eleven and beyond with regular naming like Japanese. Using Golden Beads, when counting groups of 10, you count “one ten, two ten, three ten.” So 11 is understood in English first as “one ten and one.” After that, a different material called “Seguin Boards” is used to teach the correct reading, “eleven.”

Hiro
Interesting workaround.

Yati
There is actually research that asked American and Chinese children how high they could count. At age 4, Chinese children could count to an average of 40, while American children could only count to about 15. It was clear they stumbled on the irregular naming of 13 and 14, according to Miller and colleagues in 1995. Montessori education considers even these fine details.

Hiro
That is interesting. Because English speakers are at a linguistic disadvantage for calculation, they invented computers and actively use them. In the West, they have no hesitation in having AI solve calculation problems.

Yati
Similarly, Chinese and Japanese number names are short, easy to say, and easy to remember, so calculation is faster and memorizing multiplication tables is not that difficult. Furthermore, in China, the approach is to remove the “1 times” table, and by rearranging so smaller numbers come first, you only need to memorize half. If you memorize “two times three equals six,” you do not need to memorize “three times two equals six.” Such shortcuts in mental arithmetic are actively incorporated in Montessori education.

Hiro
That is rational.

Yati
Foreigners describe Japanese multiplication tables as being like poetry. I realized again that I love Japan’s number culture. For example, the square root of 5, which is two point two three six zero six seven nine, is remembered with the phrase “Fuji san-roku ni oumu naku,” which literally means “parrots cry at the foothills of Mount Fuji,” where the syllables encode the digits.

Hiro
That is a great mnemonic.

Yati
Learning that English speakers struggle greatly to memorize multiplication tables, and that recalling them takes more time and effort than for Japanese or Chinese people, really changed my view of brain training. For English speakers, it really is harsh training. In Japanese, “seven times eight is fifty-six” is recited as “shichi-ha gojuu-roku,” a quick rhythmic phrase. The English version, “seven times eight is fifty-six,” is much longer and harder to chant. That difference adds up over hundreds of multiplications.

Hiro
Just as parrots do not actually call at the foothills of Mount Fuji, Westerners do not like brain training. Though they do like strength training.

Yati
So as I said at the beginning, materials are not everything, but because they are symbolically organized, they are perfect for organizing the sensory experiences accumulated from ages 0 to 3, and they also compensate for disadvantages from cultural and language differences. I hope you have understood that they really are well designed.

Hiro
In the sense of advancing mathematical understanding more intuitively without depending on language, it would be great if the Montessori approach became standard. It would have very positive effects on preschool education, elementary education, and even higher education. There would be fewer people who hate math. I also found it convincing that the founders of technology companies like Google and Amazon, which handle astronomical volumes of data, came from Montessori backgrounds.

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

The world’s most advanced mathematics education begins at age zero.

Yati
Today’s topic is the “mathematical mind.”

Hiro
What does “mathematical mind” mean in Montessori education? Is it the ability to arrange things in size order with materials or to do matching?

Yati
No. The mathematical mind is involved in everything and is considered a characteristic that humans have from birth to death. In other words, it’s close to a sense. Moreover, it connects with all other senses.

Hiro
So it’s a sixth sense. That means it’s like any sense. If you use it a lot, you become able to use it; if you don’t use it, you lose the ability. The same can be said for all five senses.

Yati
Right.

Hiro
I’m not entirely sure whether “number sense” is a comprehensive ability of the five senses or something else. But since it’s connected to the five senses, I think what underlies number sense is, in a word, “pattern recognition.”

Yati
In the international course, measurement, comparison, contrast, calculation, reasoning, ordering, and sequential processing (executing procedures correctly) were given as examples of the mathematical mind. I don’t think it’s strange to consider that these are executed through sensory pattern recognition.

Hiro
Let’s proceed assuming it’s pattern recognition. Recognizing patterns by sight, by hearing, by smell, by touch. The same goes for taste. With taste, for example, “this is bitter,” “this is delicious,” “red foods are sweet,” “orange means sweet,” “yellow means sour.” That continuous process of recognition like this forms the foundation of mathematical ability. So in the end, using mathematical sense well means organizing within yourself the patterns of things you’ve experienced through various senses.

Yati
That’s exactly what Maria Montessori said about sensory education. During ages 0 to 3, you experience and accumulate various sensory experiences, and during ages 3 to 6, you organize them. Number sense is no exception.

Hiro
I’d like to think about this more scientifically, though.

Yati
I researched various studies and discussions about mathematics education. First, what Maria Montessori said doesn’t contradict the latest research. Babies just hours after birth already have number sense. Also, it’s becoming clear that all senses are connected with number sense in the brain. As for mathematics education discussions, they only go as far as elementary school and preschool. Children, without special education, naturally come up with various algorithms by around age 6.

Hiro
I see.

Yati
Like when counting objects by pointing, the total doesn’t change regardless of the order you point. Or when subtracting, for 8 minus 2 you count 8, 7, 6, but for 8 minus 6 you realize it’s faster to count 6, 7, 8. So the conclusion is that we should use this number sense in both preschool and elementary education. That’s why board games are being introduced in preschool, and Montessori materials for ages 3 to 6 are being reconsidered. But before all that, there’s no discussion about having lots of sensory experiences during ages 0 to 3.

Hiro
We might be talking about the world’s most advanced mathematics education here. For example, in preschool education, they might ask, “When the water level is the same in a tall thin beaker and a short wide beaker, which has more water?” This is completely unsolvable without sensory experience. If you haven’t poured water or juice into a cup yourself and experienced spilling it, you don’t understand what spilling means, and you can’t understand the volume or capacity of that cup.

Yati
I see.

Hiro
At that time you don’t know “this is capacity” or “this is volume,” but later you intuitively understand “which one has more.” So what’s important for ages 0 to 3 is using those senses a lot, and the more you use them, the more the mathematical mind will flourish in the future. Not “flourish” exactly. More like “develop further.” But even “develop further” is really just using abilities you already have.

Yati
Right.

Hiro
Basically, it’s pattern recognition. Various information comes in through the senses. For example, we perceive differences in light frequencies with our eyes and distinguish colors. But colors are something we create ourselves. How things look differs slightly from person to person. Some can’t see green, some have difficulty seeing red, and so on. As information, light reflects and enters our eyes. We perceive that something exists, that there’s a shadow, that there’s light. If light reflects back from every angle, we understand there’s something that reflects there. Confirmed by another sense, we might hear sound, or touching it, “there’s something here.”

Yati
I see. That’s interesting.

Hiro
This “exists or doesn’t exist” heavily emphasizes the tangible aspect of touch. Things you can touch “exist,” things you can’t touch “don’t exist.” But going further, there are things that can’t actually be touched but exist. Small things, for example, electricity, magnetic fields, electric fields. You can’t touch them, but they exist. That’s interesting and scary at the same time. You have to unlearn that once to reach a correct understanding of the universe. Does that make sense?

Yati
It does. Those invisible, untouchable aspects are dealt with at ages 6 to 12. After imagination develops and you can imagine, you explore the micro world and the universe.

Hiro
Right. First, you experience “exists or doesn’t exist” with the five senses, and you make various assumptions, including misconceptions. “This is this,” “this is this,” deciding on your own. At ages 3 to 6, you get a bit cleverer. “Since it’s always like this, this should be like this,” “Since this is like this, it should be like this.” You start being able to calculate a bit: “1 and 2 together make 3.” And “There were 3 but I ate 1, so there are 2 left.” The next stage is that what you processed only through senses, you can now extend in your mind and do something like simulation. You can imagine and act as if “something is there even though it’s not in front of you.”

Yati
Yeah, that’s right.

Hiro
But that’s actually an ability that transcends the limits of the senses, and senses have limits. No matter how much you improve your vision, there are things you can’t see. Small things or distant things are invisible. Stars at the edge of the universe. I want to see them but can’t. But if you increase resolution, you can see more. So “developing imagination” means “imagining things that don’t exist and developing that,” but also externalizing the senses as tools, and if you develop that ability, what you imagined turns out to be correct. That’s the “imagination” trained from ages 6 to 12 onward. Imagination means becoming able to imagine more in accordance with the reality of the universe.

Yati
So, the power of imagination is growing.

Hiro
Ages 3 to 6 come before that. Recognizing patterns and using those patterns to estimate a bit. Being able to calculate. Starting to organize. Ages 0 to 3 aren’t about organizing, calculating, or estimating at all. It’s completely about experiencing various patterns: “If I do this, this happens,” “If I touch here, this happens,” “That was hot,” “That was cold,” “That was spicy,” “That was bitter,” “That was sweet.” Experiencing those sensations and patterns is what’s important.

Yati
For example, cookie-making can start from around 18 months, and this involves truly various elements of the mathematical mind. When measuring, large numbers with units like “150 grams” appear, and “2 tablespoons” might come up too. You mix and the dough becomes one mass. When you rest it in the refrigerator, you feel the cold temperature of the dough. With cookie cutters, you handle various shapes, and while cutting out shapes, you experience counting how many cookies you’ve made. When baking, you experience temperature and time like “180 degrees for 10 minutes.” When they’re baked, children think “I want to share equally with everyone,” so they naturally start doing division. When they repeat such experiences many times, children understand this sequence of steps and start planning and executing on their own.

Hiro
I see.

Yati
It’s actually very important that this is something like cookies that you can actually eat and enjoy. In one experiment with young children, it was found that children could compare numbers more accurately with chocolate than with abstract objects.

Hiro
That’s interesting.

Yati
Our 3-year-old second daughter, who usually struggles to count coins accurately beyond 3, can count caramels accurately up to 15.

Hiro
[laughs]

Yati
Come to think of it, when our daughters were 2 and 6 years old making a tart, the recipe said “roll out the dough to 30 centimeters diameter.” The younger one was rolling with a rolling pin while the older one measured with a tape measure, saying “It grew 1 centimeter. It’s 25 centimeters now. 5 more centimeters to go!” They were doing it together on their own, completely absorbed. They were doing addition, subtraction, and units intuitively. I’m the type who doesn’t worry about those little details in recipes, so it was just when the older one had learned to read and knew how to use a tape measure that she started spontaneously. That’s why she could get so absorbed, I think.

Hiro
Yeah.

Yati
There’s a program called “Rightstart” developed by American educational psychologists. Using board games and such, children of low-income immigrants surpassed the math scores of children in conventional education in just one semester. It’s research that’s like a rediscovery of Montessori education. They had children count the movement of game pieces, calculate the distance to the goal by subtraction, and compare who was likely to win. This is the same thing as “if the tart stretches 5 more centimeters, it’ll be 30 centimeters.” So if you cook and do daily household tasks, you don’t need to prepare special toys or materials.

Hiro
Right.

Yati
I think you can easily include children when adults are casually using their mathematical minds in everyday life. When counting things, point and slowly recite “1, 2, 3.” Show how to count by folding fingers. Show that you can represent “1” with one finger up and “2” with two fingers. In the elevator, say “Let’s press 2” while pressing the button together. Read the calendar or clock together. The same goes for babies. When shopping, you might be carrying them in a baby carrier or pushing a stroller, but you can narrate “We’re buying 2 carrots” while showing them each carrot going into the basket one by one.

Hiro
It’s fascinating that babies can grasp numbers.

Yati
Research has shown that 10-month-old babies, after watching 1 to 3 crackers being put into each of two boxes, can choose the box with more. Don’t underestimate them thinking “they’re still small.” If you properly show them what you’re doing, they understand more than you’d expect.

Hiro
Right. Intuitively.

Yati
I’d be happy if I’ve conveyed that you don’t need to prepare some contrived numerical environment. Our lives are overflowing with numerical elements, and adults just need to naturally introduce interactions with numbers in daily life.

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

The history of the universe, the Earth, life, humanity, and language begins.

Yati
In the Montessori elementary curriculum, we first trace the history of the universe, then the history of Earth, the history of life, and the history of humanity, in that order, and then we trace the history of language.

Hiro
Right. There’s a flow where we present the big picture first, then move toward the details.

Yati
Why do we learn this way during the age six to twelve period?

Hiro
Because it’s more efficient for learning. In conventional education, it’s the opposite. There’s an arrow going from familiar things to the world, and with effort, toward the universe. That’s inefficient.

Yati
When you learn about your local area, then Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture, Tohoku, Japan, Asia, the world, people overseas feel like very distant beings. But in the opposite direction, universe, galaxy, solar system, Earth, people of the world feel very close.

Hiro
Right. In the universe, if you live within one parsec, you’re like “neighbors.” One parsec is about 30.8 trillion kilometers, but in the universe, that’s “quite close.”

Yati
Right. [laughing] It’s not just spatial distance. There’s a similar sense with temporal distance too. When you think about the history of life, the origin of language must have been just recently.

Hiro
So even when we say “global,” within the universe, Earth is a “local” planet, and events that happen here are “local” events. Learning things with that awareness helps maintain intellectual humility.

Yati
Because you realize you don’t understand anything at all.

Hiro
In Socratic terms, “knowing that you don’t know.” In Buddhist terms, “avidya,” meaning ignorance.

Yati
Right.

Hiro
Trying to understand even a little of that cosmic unknowability is cosmic inquiry, and the education and learning that happens everywhere daily is trivial in comparison.

Yati
What is language from a cosmic perspective?

Hiro
There are various definitions of language, and first it’s difficult to determine “what language is.” Academically, there are more than twenty different definitions.

Yati
I see. I want to unravel the history of language, but what is language in that context?

Hiro
The simplest definition is “language as a medium of information exchange.” Following this definition, facial expressions, gestures, attitudes, whistles, hand signals, writing, mathematical language, and programming languages, that is, computer languages, are all included in the concept of language. Ants’ chemical language and honeybees’ dance language are included too. So it refers to all forms of communication expression.

Yati
With that definition, we can also address non-human communication.

Hiro
Following this definition, the numerous bioacoustic information exchanges made at frequencies inaudible to humans, that is, organisms producing sounds, also count as language. For example, the audible range of an average fifteen year old human is about ten octaves, from thirty to eighteen thousand hertz. Birds, frogs, dogs, and others all produce sounds within this range. However, some organisms produce infrasound, below thirty hertz. For example, blue whales, elephants, and crocodiles. Sounds produced by ocean waves, volcanoes, and earthquakes are also in this frequency range.

Yati
Maybe the elephants at the zoo were greeting us in voices we couldn’t hear.

Hiro
Maybe. Also, in the ultrasound range, above eighteen thousand hertz, insects, bats, dolphins, and shrews produce sounds. But language includes not just vocal communication. It includes much broader things. Like affection, for example.

Yati
Like grooming.

Hiro
Worrying about someone. Caring. When we talk about the history of language, we humans unconsciously think of the history of human language. But if we consider the “communication media” used by organisms as language, then amphibians have their own history of language, and fish have their own history of language. This has become clear through recent bioacoustics research.

Yati
How can we unravel that history? It can’t be excavated like writing.

Hiro
Sound doesn’t remain. Humans encode it digitally and inscribe it on stone tablets and such, reproducing and preserving sound based on that code. That became possible through the advancement of modern science and technology. Historians from this point forward can trace the history of sound, but they can’t trace history before the invention of sound recording technology.

Yati
So it hasn’t been researched?

Hiro
Actually, humans are clever. From bone structure and such, we estimate muscle attachment and reveal what kinds of sounds could be vocalized. There’s also a method of tracing biological evolution in reverse. Specifically, the history of human language might be unraveled through research on the language abilities of great apes.

Yati
What do you mean? That apes have evolved to use language?

Hiro
Great apes are the animals closest to humans, a general term for apes with well developed cerebral cortexes. It refers to gibbons and hominids, that is, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans. When orangutans were taught sign language, they learned about twenty signs.

Yati
They can communicate.

Hiro
When gorillas were taught sign language, they learned about one thousand words. There was a female lowland gorilla named Koko who had over five hundred active vocabulary words, meaning words she could use, not just understand, and five hundred receptive vocabulary words, meaning words she understood but couldn’t use. This is about the same as a human toddler. And it’s not just a rich vocabulary. She also had high empathy. When she saw “a horse with a bit in its mouth,” she signed “horse, sad.”

Yati
She understood feelings other than her own.

Hiro
Right. When chimpanzees were taught sign language, they also acquired hundreds of vocabulary words. However, while they can communicate, they can’t articulate words because they can’t properly control their lips and tongue. That’s because the laryngeal structure of great apes can’t produce aspirated sounds like humans. They can only produce very simple vocalizations using the larynx, like “boo boo,” “kee kee,” “hmm hmm.”

Yati
So it might have been a very long time from when humans started using language like sign language until they could vocalize.

Hiro
This research on the language abilities of gorillas and chimpanzees made clear that great apes do have language ability. However, it was unclear whether this was actually an ability to use language, or whether it just showed that advanced training was possible, such as wanting rewards, or performing tricks in response to non verbal cues.

Yati
That’s true. There are dogs that do tricks and parrots that talk, and trained monkey performances too.

Hiro
However, language research with the bonobo Kanzi brought a breakthrough. To give you the conclusion first: great apes have the ability to use language. Not only that, but it was also shown that they have the ability to make stone tools, the ability to use fire and cook, and the ability to play games.

Yati
Wait, that’s a lot of information. [laughing]

Hiro
That’s what a breakthrough means. [laughing] The bonobo Kanzi was given an artificial language called “lexigrams” by Doctor Sue Savage Rumbaugh, a researcher of primate language in America. Lexigrams are a keyboard with symbols representing words or actions, and he uses this to converse.

Yati
I see.

Hiro
What’s interesting is that Doctor Sue draws out the bonobo’s language ability using a Montessori style approach. Kanzi manipulates hundreds of symbols and enjoys spontaneous, creative communication with humans and other primates.

Yati
So Montessori education extends beyond humans.

Hiro
Right. This is the story of Montessori education for primates. Kanzi’s language ability wasn’t acquired through operant conditioning like teaching tricks, so he’s clearly using language through intrinsic motivation. In other words, it was proven that he uses language for communication just like humans.

Yati
That’s thought provoking.

Hiro
Once, Doctor Sue had her keys stolen by one of the chimpanzees at the research facility. She asked Kanzi, “Go get the keys back for me.” Kanzi went to the culprit, muttered something quietly, and came back with the keys.

Yati
So he interpreted for her.

Hiro
Right. Bonobos are famous for loving peace and are endangered great apes found only in the forests of the Congo. When you actually see them moving, it evokes indescribable emotions. I’d like everyone to search “bonobo Kanzi” on YouTube.

Yati
I watched it too. The image of him walking on two feet while carrying things with both hands was impressive.

Hiro
Personally, I think bonobos are positioned somewhere between apes and hominins, before Australopithecus in our human ancestry. I think research on bonobo language ability is essentially research that traces back and reveals the history of human language.

Yati
I see. I hadn’t thought of that approach!

Hiro
So I want to mention two discoveries and insights gained from this. One is Doctor Sue’s approach. What Doctor Sue did to get bonobos to use language naturally was to prepare an environment where the humans around them “normally” used language in daily life. She didn’t use direct rewards or punishments to force language acquisition like a trick. She lived together with them and respected their spontaneity.

Yati
That’s exactly the Montessori approach. Can adult bonobos do it too?

Hiro
That didn’t work. Doctor Sue first tried to teach language to an adult female named Matata, but Matata showed no interest at all. However, her son Kanzi, who was watching, started using language purely out of intellectual curiosity, so they decided to implement the education program with Kanzi.

Yati
So bonobos have something like a sensitive period for language too.

Hiro
Probably. Getting back to the point, the other insight is that the habit of combining many sets of symbols to express one’s intentions and thoughts is essential for intellectual development.

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
All great apes can’t speak and converse because their skeletal structure doesn’t allow pronunciation like humans. But if they have a set of symbols like lexigrams, they can combine them to express complex concepts. That’s the essence of the language activity that humans engage in. In other words, we communicate by combining not just sounds, but all “symbols,” such as gestures, facial expressions, and writing, as “expression signs.”

Yati
I see. When our three year old second daughter watched the Kanzi video with us, she got hooked on combining words to express what she wanted to say, like “night, not sleep, bad kid” or “alone, sleep, good kid,” and she seemed to be having fun.

Hiro
Like “room, mess up, sad.”

Yati
[laughing]

Hiro
So language is made of combinations of simple symbols, and I think the experience of playing with combining them in daily life develops language ability. There are pattern differences derived from geography, culture, and customs, like Japanese, English, Chinese, and so on, but the essence lies in wanting to “convey” and wanting to “understand.” If you value just that, I think language ability will become refined.

Yati
As a human environment, it’s important for the adults around to communicate using proper language. Adults deliberately handwriting text or writing letters can spark children’s interest in written language.

Hiro
Right. Unlike the Congo forest, civilized society has libraries, and books are readily available anytime. By making use of that blessed environment, just as we evolved from great apes to humans, I’d like us to evolve from humans to the next species.

Yati
Right. [laughing]

Hiro
Reading and understanding Scientific Montessori is also quite an advanced language activity. We’d be happy if you read it thoroughly and it helps with your daily child rearing. So with that, “today, talk, finished.”

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

Folktales are music, the memory of humanity, and mathematics heard by the ear.

Hiro
Today I want to open the door to folktales. I’d like to invite you into the world of folktales.

Yati
You can’t hide that you’re a fan of Toshio Ozawa. [laughs] In Montessori education, we’re taught to choose picture books with “content grounded in reality.” Things like “a mouse wearing clothes” or “an elephant with big ears that can fly” should be avoided because children might think they’re real. Are folktales grounded in reality?

Hiro
That’s quite a blunt question to start with. I’m a self-proclaimed folktale researcher who informally studies the works of Professor Ozawa, a researcher of folktales and legends.

Yati
My apologies. So, are folktales grounded in reality?

Hiro
There’s a program called Folktale University. They’re not running lectures now, but they have handbooks and such, and you can study folktales academically. To give you the conclusion first: folktales “transcend reality.”

Yati
[laughs] What do you mean?

Hiro
So it’s not whether folktales are grounded in reality, but whether reality is grounded in folktales. Whether the essence of folktales is being preserved.

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
This is borrowed from Professor Ozawa, but “folktales are humanity’s cultural heritage of oral tradition.” Folktale research began around the end of the 19th century and apparently flourished as a discipline in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.

Yati
I see. And then?

Hiro
A European named Max Lüthi studied the texts of European folktales and revealed characteristics of their narrative style: using the same words when the same scene appears, synchronizing time, and not narrating realistically. Professor Ozawa in Japan collected Grimm’s fairy tales from Germany and Japanese folktales, spending about 13 years carefully reading and analyzing about 60,000 Japanese folktales. As a result, he confirmed that Japanese folktales share these same characteristics. Additionally, from his experience translating folktales from around the world, he confirmed that folktales from Africa, China, Siberia, South America, and other regions share these features too.

Yati
I’d like to understand this commonality more concretely. Can you give a well known example?

Hiro
Let’s take Jack and the Beanstalk. First, “once upon a time, a poor widow lived with her son Jack. They had nothing left but a cow.” Then, “Jack’s mother told him to take the cow to market and sell it.” Clean and simple. You immediately know who the characters are and what the situation is.

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
It’s not a complicated story like “Jack had three siblings and they argued about who should sell the cow, and the mother was thinking about getting a job.” It’s told with a clean structure. So anyone listening can easily picture the scene. There’s no mishearing.

Yati
It’s mathematical.

Hiro
Exactly. “Poor” contrasts with “rich,” “down below” with “up above,” “Jack” with “the giant.” Everything is in clear opposition.

Yati
I never noticed that.

Hiro
So actually, folktales are “mathematics for the ears.”

Yati
I’m good at math, but I never noticed.

Hiro
Continuing the story: on the way to market, Jack meets a mysterious man who offers him magic beans in exchange for the cow. What are the chances of that happening?

Yati
[laughs]

Hiro
If he’d left five minutes earlier or later, he never would have met the man. This is “synchronization of time.” It’s convenient.

Yati
I see.

Hiro
Then his mother throws the beans out the window in anger, and by morning a giant beanstalk has grown up into the clouds. Does that happen?

Yati
[laughs]

Hiro
And then Jack climbs the beanstalk. The naming is simple too. Magic beans, beanstalk, Jack. Easy to remember.

Yati
That’s why listeners can remember it easily.

Hiro
Right. Here’s where the repetition comes in. Jack climbs the beanstalk the first time, sneaks into the giant’s castle, and steals a bag of gold. He comes home. Then he climbs the beanstalk a second time and steals a hen that lays golden eggs. He comes home. Then he climbs a third time and steals a golden harp. Each time, the giant wakes up and chases him, shouting “Fee, fi, fo, fum!” The same scene told with the same words, three times.

Yati
That’s “using the same words when the same scene appears.”

Hiro
Right. And at the end, Jack chops down the beanstalk, the giant falls, and Jack and his mother live happily ever after with their treasure. But there’s no vivid description of the giant hitting the ground, or blood, or anything graphic. The violence is passed over quickly.

Yati
This is “not narrating realistically.”

Hiro
Right. Another important thing: folktales start with “Once upon a time,” signaling “I’m about to start a folktale now, this is a made up story so please don’t take it too seriously.”

Yati
That’s kind.

Hiro
At the end of the story, it ends with phrases like “and they lived happily ever after.” In Grimm’s fairy tales, it’s a bit more elegant, ending with something like “And if they haven’t died, they’re living there still.” This signals the end of the folktale.

Yati
This is like “end of proof,” isn’t it?

Hiro
Right. Like “Q.E.D.”

Yati
So in the end it’s “a made up story,” but what happened to whether it’s grounded in reality or transcends reality?

Hiro
That’s why it’s mathematics. Mathematics is the abstraction of reality, right? Mathematics describes the universe, right? So folktales describe reality, and they transcend it.

Yati
I see! Did you realize that yourself? Is Professor Ozawa saying this?

Hiro
I’m saying it on my own. But no one considers folktales as mathematics. That’s why they get arbitrarily made into animations or embellished unrealistically. Those aren’t authentic folktales. I think they’re the type of fantasy that Maria Montessori was concerned about.

Yati
Not many people read folktales aloud with that level of understanding.

Hiro
Not many. More like zero. Many families do it for vague reasons like “it’s good for emotional education” or “it’s good for the brain.” The saving grace is that there’s still a habit of parents reading aloud to their children in their own voice. Apparently there are products now that project animations on the ceiling with a projector to put children to sleep.

Yati
I don’t have many memories of being read folktales, and when I became a parent, there were so many folktales I was learning for the first time. I really empathized with them and even cried. Like the Japanese folktale “The Mice’s Sumo.”

Hiro
I see. The time parents can read aloud to their children is only a few years in a lifetime, so I think we should treasure it more.

Yati
Right. I was surprised when you said the Japanese folktale “Straw Millionaire” explains the essence of Montessori education in a way children can understand.

Hiro
Did I say that?

Yati
Usually people interpret it as “even with just straw, if you keep trading, you can become wealthy.” What you said was, “The main character boy encounters environments where he can give everything he has at each moment, and through that, he can grow.”

Hiro
Did I say that?

Yati
You did! I was so convinced. Folktales are grounded in reality! Folktales are amazing! That’s what I thought.

Hiro
I don’t really remember that, but folktales are parables, so they’re also a medium for conveying various ways of thinking and lessons.

Yati
It makes you think you shouldn’t do bad things. Also, what I find fascinating is that things like the “Urashima Effect” are scientifically correct but counterintuitive and hard to understand in daily life, yet they appear in Japanese folktales, so Japanese people accept them readily. While Westerners struggle with quantum mechanics like “it’s in a state of superposition and you don’t know the contents until you observe,” Japanese people just accept “the big wicker basket, perhaps?” in the Japanese folktale “Tongue-Cut Sparrow.”

Hiro
Right. So there are two things I want to say here. In the original Grimm’s fairy tales, there are descriptions that modern readers find disturbing, like the stepsisters cutting off parts of their feet to fit the glass slipper in Cinderella, or the wolf eating the grandmother in Little Red Riding Hood. There’s a trend of changing these stories because they’re considered too cruel. But this ignores the fact that these stories have been passed down through many people’s mouths and ears over centuries. I think this forgets the essence that folktales speak to the true nature of life and are meant to pass on to future generations how humans should coexist with nature.

Yati
I see.

Hiro
Nature is harsh. Eat or be eaten. Everyone is equal. So I think it’s also a reflection of humanity’s increasing distance from nature.

Yati
In folktales, humans and animals are close enough to talk and communicate.

Hiro
The other thing is that folktales exist only during the time they’re being told.

Yati
Not “existing in books.”

Hiro
Right. Written text and oral narration for the ears are different things. When you transcribe oral narration into writing, it often feels boring when read with the eyes. But that’s because there are techniques so that listeners won’t mishear, so characteristics are easy to remember, and so scenes are easy to picture. That’s why there’s a lot of repetition and simple language is used frequently.

Yati
It’s similar to songs.

Hiro
Right. Professor Ozawa says folktales are music. He emphasizes the importance of voice and rhythm. And the message.

Yati
There are skilled and unskilled storytellers.

Hiro
I want to be careful about that too. When telling folktales, don’t act. Narrating plainly without emotion is considered refined.

Yati
I didn’t know that.

Hiro
Tell it as if you’re passing on a story you heard. The importance of folktales lies in the simplicity of their logical structure. As I said earlier, they’re “mathematics for the ears,” so any age is fine to start, but there’s something called “recursive structure of language” that needs to be acquired by around age 5. So until age 5, I think it’s better to read aloud authentic folktales. If the recursive structure of language isn’t acquired, there will be struggles with tasks related to linguistic logic. For example, in programming or writing, situations requiring multi level logical development will be difficult.

Yati
Can you give me a concrete example of recursive language structure that’s acquired by age 5?

Hiro
There’s a simple test called LEPS. In technical terms, it measures the development of prefrontal synthesis, or PFS. PFS is said to be the brain function that forms the foundation of language ability and imagination, and there’s a critical period for this development, reportedly before age 5.

Yati
So the foundation of language ability and imagination is determined by age 5.

Hiro
Right. As a concrete example of the test, it’s things like “Put the orange cup inside the green cup” or “Put the red cup on top of the blue cup.”

Yati
That sounds easy.

Hiro
Neurotypical children over 4 can pass this test with almost no problem. Many children with ASD score low regardless of age, showing delays in PFS development.

Yati
I see.

Hiro
PFS is the ability to freely combine multiple objects or scenes in your head, and it’s considered the foundation for advanced imagination, grammatical understanding, and creative thinking.

Yati
So real world experiences along with reading aloud become important.

Hiro
Ages 6 to 12 is a period of expanding imagination, so how you spend the 3 to 6 age period is important for laying that foundation. Especially whether there’s a rich language environment or not affects one’s entire life.

Yati
So we should start by reading folktales aloud?

Hiro
Yes. There are authentic and inauthentic folktales, so who retells them is important. Please read aloud stories retold by people who properly understand the function of folktales.

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

A bold hypothesis regarding the history of human language development, the brain, the relationship between apes and birds, and ASD.

Yati
Today’s topic is “language development.” In Montessori education, brain development and language development are understood as connected. The basic idea is to prepare the environment according to this development. For example, the “sensitive period for spoken language” introduced in the previous issue begins at 7 months of fetal age, around 26 to 28 weeks of pregnancy, and the basis for this is that myelination progresses in the brainstem during this period and the fetus’s auditory function begins to work in earnest. That’s why we’re encouraged to talk to the baby in the womb.

Hiro
Right. What’s the most important thing for language development in ages 0 to 3?

Yati
What I realized when learning Montessori education is that the sensitive period for order forms the foundation for language acquisition. Around age 2, children become sensitive to set ways of doing things, routines, and things being in their designated places. I think these become the foundation for naturally understanding and using the rules in language too.

Hiro
So what is language for humans?

Yati
It’s what we speak and write.

Hiro
For ages 0 to 3, very few children communicate through writing, so I think body language and spoken language are what we mean by “language” during this period.

Yati
That’s true. Crying, laughing, pointing. Even babies try to communicate their intentions. And while they look at picture books, they don’t focus on the text.

Hiro
Right. When we talk about language, it can actually be divided into body language, spoken language, and written language. Body language is something we become able to use somewhat instinctively. After that, we acquire spoken language, then written language. Language ability develops in that order. This order probably doesn’t change for any language.

Yati
I see. So you can listen and speak before you can write and read.

Hiro
It’s so obvious that no one thinks about it, but I think understanding this is fundamental to language development. Spoken language is acquired first, then written language.

Yati
Right. What changes when you’re aware of this?

Hiro
For example, during the 3 to 6 age period when written language is being acquired, children make mistakes like spelling “said” as “sed” or “night” as “nite,” writing words exactly as they sound. If you understand that written language is acquired after spoken language, you don’t need to correct these mistakes.

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
They’re just writing down spoken language. They’re in the middle of acquiring written language, so you can leave it alone. For example, even if a child says “pasghetti” instead of “spaghetti,” it will naturally become “spaghetti” without adults correcting them. Correcting them each time only damages the child’s self-esteem, so I’d like to leave them be until they self-correct.

Yati
Right. In Montessori education principles too, the idea is that “all errors should be noticed and corrected by oneself.” However, there is the point that adults shouldn’t imitate “pasghetti” just because it’s cute. They should speak correctly.

Hiro
So serious! [laughs] Don’t think about it so seriously. Just try to make conversations more fun, right? It’s a one-time thing. That period.

Yati
I didn’t talk much with my parents, and at school I had little time to talk freely, so my vocabulary is poor and I can’t make my stories interesting.

Hiro
So, about human language acquisition. When we look at Homo habilis fossil skulls, we can see that Broca’s area is prominent. Broca’s area is the part of the brain that controls speech production, located in the left frontal lobe. It’s called the motor speech center. It’s named after the French neurologist Broca, who reported cases of aphasia in patients with damage to this area. When Broca’s area is damaged, you can understand the meaning of spoken language and have an idea of what you want to say in response, but you cannot put what you want to say into words. Speech isn’t very fluent, and rhythm and stress become inaccurate.

Yati
How is this relevant?

Hiro
We know that Broca’s area is a brain region related to language, speaking and writing, but interestingly, as the term “motor” suggests, it’s also activated when moving the hands with intention.

Yati
So it activates even when doing craftwork silently, without using language?

Hiro
Yes. Brain regions including Broca’s area are activated by hand movements during work and by observing one’s own hands. It’s not just a speech production center. It’s involved in understanding the meaning of hand movements and in verbalization without speech. For example, when observing piano playing hand movements, Broca’s area activates when viewing unfamiliar melodic movements.

Yati
How should we interpret this?

Hiro
Essentially, this is probably a region for understanding hand movements, and as this region develops, we become able to speak words as well.

Yati
I see.

Hiro
Anthropologically, Homo habilis was the first human species discovered with stone tools, called Oldowan tools, simply chipped stones. They’re said to have used these to scrape meat from animal carcasses. Besides stone tools, sticks have also been excavated, showing they made and used tools. By the way, “Homo habilis” means “handy man.”

Yati
So Homo habilis used tools and also spoke?

Hiro
It’s thought they couldn’t speak. There are various theories that speaking began with Homo erectus. Since sounds can’t be excavated, we can only estimate from archaeological evidence. When analyzing Homo habilis skull fossils, as I mentioned, the Broca’s area in the prefrontal cortex shows a bulge, so the beginning of human language development is thought to have started there. In any case, there’s a flow: hands develop, tools are made, speech becomes possible, hands develop further, tools develop, and speech becomes more refined.

Yati
We now know that birds also have language and grammar, but do birds have a brain region corresponding to Broca’s area? Birds don’t use hands, so how did their language develop to the point of having grammar?

Hiro
Bird wings are arms, right? So if we include arms as hands, I think a Broca’s area like region probably activates when flying. If birds learn to fly through observation and imitation, the logic of language development might be the same.

Yati
Looking into it, birds do acquire flight through observation and imitation. Also, regarding tools, New Caledonian crows use wooden sticks to get insects and combine parts to make tools. And it seems birds do have brain regions corresponding to Broca’s area. Broca’s area is included in what’s called mirror neurons. Those capable of learning through imitation include primates including humans, birds, and cetaceans, which have mirror neurons. It seems that if you have language, you definitely have mirror neurons, but having mirror neurons doesn’t necessarily mean you have language.

Hiro
I see. What I thought about with the mirror neuron discussion is that for humans, being able to “imitate hand movements” seems to have a major influence on acquiring spoken language.

Yati
Right.

Hiro
This is at the hypothesis stage, but there are research reports that ASD, Asperger syndrome, shows structural characteristics in Broca’s area that differ from neurotypical individuals. Personally, I suspect it’s a language area issue.

Yati
If we consider that mirror neurons don’t function well, the symptoms reported in ASD do make sense. Not being able to empathize, not being able to understand others’ emotions, and so on.

Hiro
Empathizing, understanding emotions, understanding intentions, motor imitation. These are gifts of mirror neurons.

Yati
I’m aware that I have ASD, and it’s interesting to start understanding where the problems might have been in my early childhood.

Hiro
Sesame Street, children’s TV shows, hand play songs. In a sense, they’re developing Broca’s area through imitation of hand movements.

Yati
There’s a photo of a baby macaque imitating a human sticking out its tongue, and apparently this is only seen for a few days. In other words, there’s a critical period. There might be a critical period for the human Broca’s area too.

Hiro
Right. That’s why the environment from ages 0 to 3 might influence one’s entire life.

Yati
In Montessori environments, we do what’s called a “presentation,” showing hand movements slowly so even small children can imitate them. By showing hand movements slowly, even 1 year olds can dress and undress, cook, clean, and do laundry.

Hiro
So moving your hands slowly is important. It’s activating the child’s Broca’s area. Also, Broca’s area is the region for verbal communication, located in the left prefrontal cortex. Symmetrically, brain science research has revealed that the right prefrontal cortex is involved in nonverbal communication, understanding emotions from facial expressions and such. It’s been found that children’s prefrontal cortex is highly activated when talking with parents, but when talking with unfamiliar people, the right prefrontal cortex isn’t activated as much. By the way, it’s known that in ASD, the left right network structure of the brain is asymmetric. From this, I infer that very early daycare use might contribute significantly to ASD.

Yati
I was put in daycare before age 1, so this hypothesis concerns me greatly. And the difference in prefrontal cortex activation between parents and strangers is shocking. This scientifically demonstrates the importance of time spent with parents and reading aloud to children.

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

An educational approach grounded in the 13.8-billion-year history of the universe, the 4.6-billion-year history of Earth, and the 3.8-billion-year history of life.

Yati
Montessori education for ages 6 to 12 isn’t very well known. I’d like to talk about “Aid to Life (preparing the environment for natural development)” for this age group.

Hiro
In a word, it’s about “survival.”

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
Sorry to jump straight to the conclusion, but since this topic takes a while to explain, I thought I’d start with the main point. By the way, we don’t hold the international teacher certification for the 6–12 age group. What we’re discussing is based on reading all of Maria Montessori’s works and all the elementary-level texts published by AMI and AMS, combined with our own developmental theory research.

Yati
We’ve also read research papers on Montessori education from around the world. And we’ve done our own investigations into Montessori elementary graduates.

Hiro
That’s right. We know which school Larry Page attended, which school Sergey Brin attended, and about Jeff Bezos’s elementary school years. As for Will Wright’s games, I’ve probably played them more than anyone else in the Montessori community.

Yati
I actually knew Will Wright’s games before I knew about Montessori education, so I was amazed when I started recognizing the Montessori materials his games were based on.

Hiro
Personally, I was shocked that almost no one in the Japanese Montessori community knows about Will Wright. SimCity, SimEarth, and Spore.

Yati
And The Sims and SimAnt.

Hiro
When you play them, you get a window into how someone raised in Montessori elementary thinks.

Yati
For example, in Spore, we simulated 500 million years of life’s history.

Hiro
Right. It was an epic journey, starting as a single-celled organism and heading toward the center of the galaxy. We even experienced terraforming.

Yati
I remember thinking things I’d never normally consider, like “I’m really glad humans are omnivores.” And “Ideals like non-violence alone won’t make running a nation work.”

Hiro
Some of that is due to game design choices. But as an opportunity to think about problems you’d never consider in everyday life or gain perspectives you’d otherwise never have—and as materials for 6–12 elementary—Will Wright’s simulation games are unparalleled.

Yati
SimAnt is an ant simulation game, and the manual includes not just controls but an encyclopedia-like section on ant ecology. It’s a difficult game, so at first things don’t go well. When you get stuck and read the manual to understand ant ecology, you mysteriously get better at the game.

Hiro
All real knowledge is used, and it connects to reality. I heard Will Wright say in a lecture, “There are some game design adjustments to make it more fun, though.”

Yati
I played The Sims so much when I was in elementary school. It’s a life simulation game. Basically a digital version of playing with dolls, but you can see various human needs quantified, and you arrange furniture and adjust the environment to satisfy them.

Hiro
Fundamental human needs.

Yati
Exactly. It’s a major theme in elementary education, and it’s a simulation of the “preparing the environment” aspect of “Aid to Life” that we’re discussing now. From this game, I learned and resolved, “When I grow up, I’m definitely going to sleep in a good bed.”

Hiro
I see. SimCity is probably known by more people—it’s a simulation game where you become mayor.

Yati
Since it was released for Super Nintendo, many people know the game, but I don’t think they know it was created by a Montessori elementary graduate.

Hiro
Setting aside the game content, what Will Wright said about game design was: “You learn more by actually becoming a mayor than by reading a book like ‘How to Become a Mayor.’”

Yati
That really sums it up. I agonized so much over “where to put the waste treatment plant.” Now I understand how the current mayor of Morioka feels.

Hiro
Right. You start thinking about real political issues as if they were your own. Your perspective on urban planning and city design changes.

Yati
I learned that cities grow over time and that you always have to be aware of the fiscal situation. I was a notorious mayor who drove my city to bankruptcy many times. [laughs]

Hiro
When you’re too particular about things, you can’t manage effectively. [wry laugh]

Yati
And when the management target becomes the Earth, that’s SimEarth.

Hiro
First of all, it’s hard just to create an environment where life can emerge.

Yati
Starting from there. [laughs]

Hiro
“Aid to Life” really is difficult. Not too hot, not too cold.

Yati
With carbon dioxide and oxygen in the right proportions.

Hiro
Right, you have to pay close attention to atmospheric composition. The wonderful thing is that you can think childish thoughts like, “Octopuses have taken over the Earth, so should I hit it with an asteroid and reset?” and actually try it.

Yati
It makes you think about the real dinosaur extinction too. I’d love for today’s children to play this.

Hiro
Exactly. But all these games are old now, hard to find, and there are technical issues. I’d be grateful if someone would remake them. But it seems like no one will, so maybe I should do it myself.

Yati
Various people have tried, but I think you really can’t make them without understanding Montessori education and developmental theory. They’re essentially modern Montessori materials.

Hiro
Yeah. It requires knowledge plus sensitivity plus technical skill. It’s difficult.

Yati
The SimEarth manual was written by Hitoshi Takeuchi, a geophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo.

Hiro
The “Age of the Professor.”

Yati
Montessori described the 6–12 stage as the “Age of the Professor.”

Hiro
Yes. But personally, I think “Age of Survival” is more appropriate.

Yati
We’ve come back to your initial conclusion. Why is that?

Hiro
Looking at the four planes of development, ages 6 to 12 correspond to the second plane. In the first plane, it’s a phase of integrating senses and movement, and through that integration, imagination expands.

Yati
Moving from concrete to abstract.

Hiro
Then the question arises: what should that imagination be used for? Looking at what happens in the third plane, it leads to Erdkinder (Children of the Earth). That’s a program where students learn practical self-sufficiency from life on a farm.

Yati
The “Secondary” of the third plane. Secondary corresponds to a time when hormonal balance is unstable, so the idea is to calm down by working with the soil. This stage is also called the “social newborn.”

Hiro
The fourth plane corresponds to university age, a time to prepare for entering social life, but personally, I think of it as the “Age of Natural Philosophy.”

Yati
Since the first and third planes are similar enough to both be called “newborn” stages, and the second and fourth planes are similar enough to both be called “professor” stages, your interpretation seems to fit.

Hiro
Yes. So the fourth plane has a very academic feel. Elementary in the second plane is a phase of broadly and deeply learning about nature at the scale of the cosmos, Earth, and life—knowledge needed for the third plane. To do that, you need to develop literacy in numbers and language. In other words, you need to acquire real knowledge that can withstand the self-sufficiency of Secondary.

Yati
Where does the “survival” aspect come in?

Hiro
In Secondary, you’ll be dealing with many plants and animals, so you need to understand natural ecosystems. You need to understand how the Earth works. Natural phenomena and so on.

Yati
That’s true. As with Will Wright’s games, after learning at a macroscopic scale, you could approach farming and animal husbandry with new perspectives from the viewpoint of the cosmos and ecosystems.

Hiro
Rather than that, knowing “how life was created” before engaging with actual nature versus not knowing changes the difficulty level.

Yati
That connects to the SimAnt discussion.

Hiro
The organism in front of you is an Earth organism, a life form in the universe. It plays some role in the ecosystem. For example, if you know that honeybees pollinate flowers, you’d want to use fewer pesticides.

Yati
Right.

Hiro
Just because something isn’t toxic to vertebrates doesn’t mean you should spread neurotoxins that affect invertebrates in nature. On a planetary scale, that definitely has negative impacts.

Yati
Tracing the 3.8-billion-year history of life would inspire reverence for life.

Hiro
Absolutely. It’s a desecration of all life. I think it stems from ignorance of that miraculous history.

Yati
You mentioned atmospheric composition earlier. There’s lots of nitrogen in the air, and there are microorganisms in the soil that can convert atmospheric nitrogen into forms plants can use. Ignoring that and spreading chemical fertilizers should also feel wrong.

Hiro
Mycorrhizal fungi. In short, I think people who think they’ve learned just by memorizing right and wrong answers from static textbooks can’t grasp nature’s dynamic equilibrium. The real test comes in Secondary, where you find out whether what you’ve learned actually works in nature.

Yati
That’s harsh. Nature passes judgment.

Hiro
Current mainstream education keeps moving further from the real thing. It’s like a simulation of a simulation of a simulation.

Yati
There’s no real work.

Hiro
Spending lots of time there won’t make you wiser. I feel like the fundamental things that should be learned aren’t being learned. Being good at entrance exams isn’t really an essential measure of intelligence.

Yati
I know of overseas Secondary examples where they also function like universities. Teachers act as facilitators, bringing in university professors for opt-in lectures. They also encourage internships at companies. Since students can already do university-level work, being good at entrance exams isn’t really the point.

Hiro
Right. They normally use university research labs too.

Yati
Teachers also teach how to read academic papers, and the children conduct research in agriculture and natural sciences. They also do activities like designing and building cabins. They do real work and learn the knowledge needed for it.

Hiro
Elementary is the preparation period for that, so students need to gain as much real knowledge as possible. The curriculum that provides an intuitive understanding of the roles of humanity, language, and numbers from the grand perspective of cosmic, Earth, and life history exists only in Montessori education. We want to steadily evolve and spread it.

Yati
I’ll continue the research.

Hiro
Having the foundational knowledge that civilization was built from the beginning of the universe, through galaxies, the solar system, Earth, and life—learning various things with that background versus without it changes both learning efficiency and the conclusions reached in discussions.

Yati
That’s right. Though spreading this isn’t easy.

Hiro
It’s not that difficult. If you know history, you realize we’re just following the law of inertia, moving in a certain direction. Once you notice that, it happens quickly.

Yati
Children might be more receptive since they have fewer prejudices.

Hiro
Exactly. World peace begins with children.

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

Fulfilling the mind means empowering one’s capacity for learning.

Hiro
Today I want to talk about the child’s spirit. When we think about the components of life in animals, there are many ways to categorize them, but personally, the division into body and spirit feels right to me.

Yati
Go on.

Hiro
We still can’t fully replicate life physically. We’re gradually making progress on the body side, but the spirit side hasn’t caught up yet. There’s an ongoing debate about whether AI corresponds to the “spirit” of a robot. Personally, I think we need to discuss this more in physical terms. In other words, I want to clarify what the spirit is from a physical standpoint.

Yati
Where should we start to make this physically clear?

Hiro
Personally, I think the spirit can be approximated by learning ability. In animals, it’s closely related to the capacity of the brain.

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
For example, today’s robots are measured against benchmarks like whether they can complete tasks a 5-year-old can do: figuring out how not to be found in hide-and-seek, stacking blocks with a robotic arm, or walking in a park without falling.

Yati
Sounds like they’re doing what toddlers do.

Hiro
On the other hand, AI has been defeating world champions in games like chess and Go. That’s what’s happening in the field technically called “machine learning.” What’s fascinating is that these systems no longer need human data. In fact, research shows that “self-play” without learning from human data produces far more capable and intelligent systems. It’s quite surprising.

Yati
Using that approach, AI has surpassed humans as Go players and is now approaching human-level performance in mathematics too.

Hiro
In autonomous driving as well, AI can now drive far more safely and efficiently than humans. The key point is that humans aren’t teaching it—once you set up the environment, it becomes smarter on its own. No teacher needed. In other words, the teacher was actually limiting its potential.

Yati
The same is true for human children. Especially with children’s spirits, it’s natural for them to be cultivated through self-education. Maria Montessori was the one who emphasized the importance of building an environment for this purpose.

Hiro
Watching AI progress, I think we could say that the maturation of the spirit means becoming able to solve complex and difficult problems. There’s a natural developmental stage of the brain where children move from solving only concrete problems to being able to solve abstract ones. That’s why the Montessori method of progressing from concrete to abstract aligns well with this.

Yati
Right. In Montessori education, children ages 3 to 6 learn abstract concepts like numbers, language, and culture through sensory and motor experiences.

Hiro
In short, the ultimate mission for ages 3 to 6 is to do plenty of integration training between the brain’s sensory input and motor output. Put simply, if there’s an environment where children can immerse themselves as much as they want in self-correcting learning through “trial and error,” their spirits will be fulfilled. As a result of being fulfilled, they reveal their more developed selves. It’s like a program activating that transforms a chrysalis into a butterfly.

Yati
Just as we can’t see what’s happening inside a chrysalis from the outside, we can’t see what’s happening inside a child from the outside. So we can only imagine—but science has actually identified what happens inside a chrysalis. We now know that the chrysalis liquefies parts of its body to rebuild itself into an adult. Similarly, science can help us see a child’s inner development.

Hiro
Everyone pays attention to physical development, but we’re often blind to mental development. When it comes to children’s spirits during this chrysalis-like period of ages 3 to 6, society tends not to place much importance on inner development. In many countries, kindergarten is available, and elementary school starts after age 6. But there isn’t yet a strong movement to make early childhood education mandatory as a social institution and improve its quality.

France lowered the compulsory education age to 3 starting in 2019, and Hungary made kindergarten mandatory starting in 2016. There are also examples from Mexico and Sweden, but globally, we still have a long way to go.

Yati
In Japan, preschool has been made free but not mandatory.

Hiro
That’s right. Japanese nursery schools are classified as “preschool education” by OECD and other international standards, but that was only achieved through 2015 system reforms to align with global standards. In practice, since teachers weren’t required to obtain new licenses, it’s become somewhat hollow. Even with the “integrated centers for early childhood education and care”, the actual quality of education varies considerably.

Yati
I think quality needs to improve along with accessibility. How can we raise quality?

Hiro
Let me proceed on the assumption that if educational quality improves, the learning environment improves, and children’s spirits are fulfilled as a result. In that case, should we measure educational quality by literacy acquisition rates, or is there some other indicator? What do you think?

Yati
Well, I think literacy in reading, writing, and arithmetic can be acquired even with “low-quality education” in the sense of using “the carrot and the stick.”

Hiro
True. But literacy acquired that way doesn’t lead people to use it spontaneously for meaningful purposes as adults—for example, reading lots of books, writing extensively, or engaging in mathematical thinking. This shows up in statistics like reading rates and book purchase rates. The correlation between these indicators and income or assets has also been established. In the end, literacy that was forced on someone reluctantly versus literacy acquired voluntarily affects life outcomes differently, don’t you think?

Yati
That’s true. When you consider the long-term impact, we can’t really say they’ve fully mastered literacy. If we could measure acquisition rates with that in mind, it would become a good indicator of educational quality.

Hiro
Exactly. If we measure literacy acquisition rates at the end of preschool, primary, secondary, and higher education, and then continue measuring during young adulthood, middle age, and old age, I think we’d find that some literacy gets lost. So while we tend to assume literacy is acquired once education is complete, we shouldn’t ignore that unused literacy is easily lost. Including that factor, literacy acquisition rates could serve as an indicator of educational quality.

Yati
In fact, recent neuroscience research shows that people with reading habits or habits of mathematical thinking maintain those abilities even past their 50s, while those without such habits start declining from their 30s, according to Hanushekand colleagues in 2025.

Hiro
Acquiring literacy in childhood is extremely important, but we need to discuss educational environments while considering how the method of acquisition affects motivation to learn in adulthood. So adults don’t struggle later.

Yati
Preschool education isn’t mandatory in many countries yet. But if it becomes mandatory, does that mean educational quality has improved? Does it mean children’s spirits are fulfilled?

Hiro
Their spirits will be fulfilled if it creates an environment where children can freely engage in trial and error.

To understand the impact of making education mandatory, we can look at times when primary education wasn’t mandatory.

Yati
I see. Making something mandatory can meet resistance, but learning from history is important.

Hiro
Compulsory education in Japan began with the School System proclamation in 1872. The turning point was in 1907 when the compulsory education period was extended to 6 years of elementary school. Enrollment rates improved significantly. After World War II, the School Education Act of 1947 extended it to 9 years total: 6 years of elementary and 3 years of middle school. This forms the basis of the current system.

Yati
I see. Before that, were there no educational opportunities? People couldn’t read, write, or calculate?

Hiro
Before that was the Edo period (1603 to 1868), when private educational institutions called terakoya spread throughout the country. There, children learned reading, writing, and the abacus as practical knowledge for daily life. Literacy rates vary by source, but it’s believed to have been over 60% in urban areas and under 30% in rural areas.

Yati
What about before that?

Hiro
In the medieval period (Kamakura through Muromachi), education for noble and samurai children was mainly conducted at temples. Temples were centers of learning, and monks taught not only Buddhist doctrine but also classical Chinese, waka poetry, and calligraphy. The samurai class emphasized reading and writing education alongside martial arts. Literacy among common people was low.

Yati
So historically, new forms of education were for a small elite, and over time they spread to the common people. Most people until recently didn’t have the opportunity to learn letters and numbers.

Hiro
That might be true. So we modern people are having quite a luxurious discussion. “Will making preschool education mandatory actually fulfill children’s spirits?!” [laughs]

Yati
Is this discussion scientific? [laughs]

Hiro
Okay, then let me talk in an even larger historical frame. In the history of life, we originally had no “brain” at all.

Yati
[laughs]

Hiro
We were so tiny we couldn’t be seen, couldn’t move freely—we could only drift. From there, we settled in certain places, photosynthesized, preyed on other organisms, got absorbed by others, grew larger, and became more complex. We came up from the sea onto land, grew legs, and learned to walk. Some learned to fly; others returned to the sea. We climbed trees and came back down. We laid eggs, then hatched eggs inside our bodies. And somehow, now here we are discussing whether to make preschool education mandatory.

Yati
That was quite a sweeping look back. [laughs]

Hiro
Yes. Within that grand flow, we had no brain until relatively recently, and now we’re discussing how to use and develop our enlarged brains. That’s impressive. Look how far we’ve come. So first, I want to give a round of applause to all life for making it this far.

Yati
True.

Hiro
With that perspective, we can then ask about the merits of preschool education. I want to discuss the cultivation of children’s spirits on that kind of macroscopic scale. The idea of “adaptation to environment through learning” might be valid across the entire history of life.

What is nourishment for the spirit? At first I thought it was “language” and “dialogue,” but that wouldn’t apply to all life. When I reconsidered, “trial and error” and “discovery” felt right.

Yati
So “Aid to Life” was actually “Aid to All Life.” When thinking about children’s education, we need to consider whether it only applies to humans.

Hiro
In many ways, I think education will evolve by moving away from “human-centered” thinking. In the world of machines, this is already happening.

Yati
So we’re at a crossroads between being the ones who use machines or being used by machines.

Hiro
Rather, it’s a fork between competing with machines or cooperating with them. Whether we continue the current competitive approach or transition to a cooperative one. Discussions about mixed-age grouping and diversity are becoming outdated.

Yati
That’s interesting. A paper published in March 2025 scientifically suggests that the mixed-age, competition-free experience in Montessori education forms a fundamental worldview that “people are cooperative,” which enhances trust in society and well-being in adulthood.

Montessori-educated Larry Page and Will Wright are positive about AI, and Jeff Bezos is focusing on preschool education for low-income families through the Day One Fund. It’s an initiative to establish free Montessori schools across the United States. Elon Musk’s Ad Astra (a kindergarten and elementary school) is also based on Montessori education.

Preparations are steadily advancing toward a future where all life and AI cooperate.

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. Research Scientist at StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

What does it mean to prepare the environment?

Yati
Today’s topic is “Aid to Life”, a cornerstone concept you’ll discover whenever you explore Montessori education.

Hiro
Right. How should we understand it?

Yati
To summarize the international teacher training course lectures: “Life” means natural development, and “Aid” means preparing the environment.

Hiro
Okay. Does that mean raising children outdoors in nature? Like, for example, Waldkindergarten emphasizes spending time in the forest.

Yati
Of course the outdoors plays a vital role in the environment. But it extends far beyond nature alone. Language, using tools, exposure to numbers and culture, all of these are necessary parts of the environment too.

Hiro
So “natural” here doesn’t just mean “nature” in the outdoor sense. I’m thinking the environmental requirements would change depending on how we define “natural development.”

Yati
Natural development means allowing the innate developmental blueprint within each child to unfold as nature intended. Maria Montessori discovered this through observation: children around the world show the same developmental tendencies. She observed these changes both physically and mentally.

Hiro
Right.

Yati
Within this framework, Montessori education calls the emergence of mental developmental processes “sensitive periods.”

Hiro
How is that different from the brain’s “critical periods”?

Yati
They’re similar, but sensitive periods aren’t as strictly time-bound as the brain’s critical periods. For example, a classic critical period is imprinting, which happens only immediately after birth.

Hiro
Right. The language acquisition window closes around age 6 to 7, after which learning language becomes nearly impossible. Some say it might extend to around 12. Because it’s unethical to test directly, we infer this from tragic cases of children found after isolation who hadn’t acquired language. In cats, researchers did rather cruel experiments, like keeping one eye closed, to identify the critical period for vision.

Yati
This diagram (Figure 1) shows the sensitive periods based on the international teacher training course. Imagine sensitive periods like a wave: interest in acquiring a particular ability gradually builds, peaks, then gradually fades and disappears. Maria Montessori described them as “very strong sensitivity to certain knowledge or skills appearing during successive short periods of varying length.”

Hiro
Got it. So sensitive periods track the rise and fall of interest intensity, while critical periods mark windows when learning is structurally possible?

Yati
Exactly. I’ve summarized the comparison in Table 1.

Table 1. Comparison of Sensitive Periods and Critical Periods

Hiro
That’s clear. I wonder whether Montessori’s sensitive periods apply beyond animals with brains.

Yati
Let’s dig deeper into that in another issue. By the way, recent research has revealed that children raised in Montessori environments have different brain responses to errors (Denervaud et al., 2020).

Here’s what happens: when the ACC, the brain’s error detector, fires, Montessori children activate the right parietal lobe and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to think of new moves on the spot. On the other hand, children in traditional education don’t show such responses during errors. Instead, during correct answers, their ACC strongly connects with the hippocampus and striatum, the memory and reward systems, showing a response of “burning the correct answer into memory.”(Figure 2). In other words, this suggests that growing up in traditional education makes you lean toward a strategy of “remembering and recalling correct answers.”

Hiro
That’s why Sota Fujii, the seven-crown shogi champion and one of the most famous Montessori-educated figures in Japan, is so incredibly strong, right? For other shogi players, it must feel like fighting an AI that thinks of moves on the spot.

Yati
Exactly. And there’s more recent research showing that Montessori children have various brain regions that cooperate more strongly with each other. They also develop brains that can sustain concentration better (Zanchi & Denervaud, 2024).

Hiro
Ah, okay. Now I understand why Google and Amazon are so incredibly strong. [laughs] In the end, it’s because the founders’ brains are on another level, right? If you don’t miss the sensitive periods, brain performance can increase that much?

Yati
That’s right.

Hiro
So I understand that sensitive periods are concepts that hold up even with the latest science, but what should parents actually do?

Yati
Don’t interfere with the child’s sensitive periods. For example, during the sensitive period for spoken language, if all the adults around are wearing masks and the child can’t see how mouths move, I think that had a considerable impact. Also, not letting them do what they want to do, not allowing failure, not letting them make choices. Telling them to be quiet, or keeping babies in confined spaces. There are so many restrictions on movement. The earlier discussion about brain connectivity is probably because Montessori education’s learning method always involves movement.

Hiro
That said, raising children in modern society is quite difficult, especially in cities.

Yati
That’s true. For example, due to space issues, it’s difficult to have children cook or keep children’s dishes within reach.

Hiro
So how should we solve that? Even if it’s not an ideal environment, there must be small things that can make it better just by being aware of them.

Yati
One thing is to understand developmental stages and sensitive periods (Figure 1). When the number sensitive period emerges, show them counting anything. Acorns or beans are fine, and counting in the bath works too.

Hiro
That seems doable for any household.

Yati
For the written language sensitive period, just prepare paper and pencils. Since children from 0 to 6 years old learn through imitation, it’s important to show them adults writing as a model.

Hiro
What about ages 0 to 3?

Yati
When it comes to babies in Montessori education, mobiles are iconic, but that’s also for visual development, in other words, the sensitive period for eye movement. You could also go outside and look at leaves swaying in the wind together. Mom and Dad’s faces peering at the baby’s face are also the best material for the baby’s eye development.

Hiro
Oh, really?

Yati
What to be careful about after birth is interfering with motor development by putting them in a crib or fixing them in a bouncer. It’s better to lay them on a wide futon from right after birth so they can move freely.

Hiro
Got it. For example, when you give birth at a hospital, they naturally recommend all sorts of things through marketing, like formula and diapers. There are tons of baby products, and information comes at you with this “everyone uses these” vibe. But you’re saying we shouldn’t just go along with that.

Yati
Right. Many things actually go against natural development, like pacifiers. Also, living in sync with natural light is surprisingly not well known.

Hiro
So blackout curtains aren’t good either?

Yati
Exactly. Even for newborn nighttime diaper changes, if you keep the light minimal, like draping a towel over an indirect light, then just nurse, the baby will calm down and fall back asleep. Living in tune with natural light naturally helps establish the baby’s circadian rhythm.

Hiro
Huh, interesting.

Yati
Also, babies have a grasp reflex in their hands from birth, so they can play with a light rattle. Even without a rattle, they can grasp family members’ fingers and play. I want people to try this when a baby is crying and you can’t figure out why. Sometimes they cry just because they’re bored.

Hiro
That’s a helpful tip. How should we respond to the terrible twos that start around age 2?

Yati
From a Montessori perspective, it’s a sign that they’ve developed their own ideas, so we respect the child’s viewpoint. First, acknowledge their feelings when they say no. Then offer choices between two options.

Hiro
That advice didn’t solve things for us, so I did some independent observation and experimentation. This is purely a personal hypothesis, but I think the terrible twos might actually be “a period of acquiring the logic of negation.”

Yati
That’s a fascinating hypothesis. It’s true that before this stage they didn’t understand negation, but now they’re using it precisely.

Hiro
So the response is to let them negate as much as they want. [laughs]

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
The child wants to put “not” in front of everything. Mom is not me, Dad is not Mom, what I want to do now is not that, what I want now is not that.

Yati
[laughs] So if adults don’t affirm their negation, the negation can’t be established.

Hiro
Right. If you respond to negation with negation, they start thinking, “Wait, is Mom me? Is Dad Mom? Is this what I wanted to do? Is this really what I want? No, that’s not it! Definitely not!” That’s what happens.

Yati
You’re totally simulating a 2-year-old’s brain. [laughs]

Hiro
So that first negation 2-year-olds often make is a pure negation for the purpose of acquiring negation itself. The continuous negations that happen, which we call the terrible twos, are negations that arise in response to the parents’ negations. I think parents confuse them by responding to negation with negation. When I tried this approach with my child, instead of a terrible two-year-old, they became a two-year-old learning logic.

Yati
If you get double-negated when you’re just starting to understand negation, that would definitely be confusing.

Hiro
I noticed this because my second daughter would often say “not this.” Like, “What do you want? Milk?” “Not milk.” “Water?” “Not water.” “Tea?” “Yes, yes.(nodding)” And she’d have this really satisfied look on her face. When language isn’t that developed yet, children can’t negate verbally, so I think they end up expressing negativity through emotional behavior. But I think overall this corresponds to a sensitive period for negation, though it’s embedded within language development.

Yati
I looked into this academically too, and the terrible twos period does overlap with the acquisition of cognitive negation, so your hypothesis might be right.

Hiro
I’m glad I wasn’t negated. [laughs]

Yati
To sum up what we’ve discussed, scientifically speaking, the Montessori principle of “Aid to Life” isn’t wrong. In fact, evidence supporting it seems to be accumulating.

Hiro
I’m glad we can continue “Scientific Montessori.”

Yati
Me too.

“What we need is a transparent will that embraces the galaxy,
Great power and heat” Miyazawa Kenji

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. Research Scientist at StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

How Old-School Drills Light Up Young Minds

Hiro
I’ve been researching the brain and discovered something fascinating. Traditional Japanese elementary schools actually have habits that are surprisingly good for the brain.

Yati
What do you mean?

Hiro
Take reading aloud, mental arithmetic, handwriting, especially writing characters beautifully and carefully. Brain imaging shows these activities create comprehensive neural activation. When they become habits, the prefrontal cortex develops. The elementary curriculum probably wasn’t designed with neuroscience in mind, yet it’s remarkably rational for brain development. Fascinating, right?

Yati
Montessori Elementary and other alternative approaches focus on children’s freedom and advanced content. Repetitive practice, reading, writing, arithmetic, gets dismissed as outdated, even unintelligent.

Hiro
Far from unintelligent, it’s brilliant. The brain develops through daily activation. Only habits create lasting change. Why? Synaptic circuits strengthen with frequent use. That’s basic neuroscience. Elementary schools function as social systems ensuring children regularly practice these brain-building activities: reading aloud, handwriting, calculating.

Yati
That makes sense.

Hiro
Brain training is like muscle training, no pain, no gain. Activation requires load, challenge, effort. I learned this developing a brain training app. People instinctively avoid mental strain. Consider this: cooking, walking, jogging, activities linked to longevity, all activate the brain. Yet forming these habits? That’s the hard part.

Yati
Guilty as charged. I skip the brain training exercises I’m bad at. Walking feels like a chore.

Hiro
Elementary education extends beyond the classroom. School transforms daily rhythms: early rising, breakfast, walking to school, greeting crossing guards, socializing with friends. These “non-cognitive” habits, they’re gold for brain development.

Yati
The research backs this up. Elderly people learning juggling increased brain plasticity (Boyke et al. 2008). Walking habits rejuvenated aging brains (Erickson et al. 2010). For children? Aerobic exercise boosted academic performance (Chaddock-Heyman et al. 2014).

Hiro
Very scientific. But here’s the flip side. Current schools are riddled with brain-hostile practices. Sitting for hours. Passive listening. Hands idle on desks. No wonder school refusal rates are skyrocketing, while there may be various reasons.

Yati
Look at Japanese school refusers’ daily routines. YouTube marathons. Gaming binges. Even learning center kids gravitate toward low-sensory, low-challenge activities. Minecraft. Coding. Comfortable, but not brain-building.

Hiro
That’s a serious problem for development. The root cause? Parents and learning center operators haven’t scientifically studied development. They confuse freedom with abandonment. Left to their own devices, literally, children disappear into digital worlds. Neglecting sensory experiences in the real world.

Yati
The research is terrifying. Internet-addicted children don’t just fail academically, their brain development halts (Takeuchi et al. 2018).

Hiro
It’s a cruel choice in Japan. If you avoid school, you have freedom, but smartphone, game, and internet addiction await. But if you go to school, you lack freedom, and unpleasant things like bullying, mental starvation, and military-style education await. International schools and alternative schools break through this dichotomy, but their tuition is ridiculously expensive. Currently, for most families, even if they wish for their children’s healthy development, their options are limited. So I think most people hope for reform in existing schools.

Yati
But reform faces resistance. The winners of the current system, those with prestigious degrees, comfortable lives, why would they want change? Their identity depends on the status quo.

Hiro
Right.

Yati
They’re myopic, maybe selfish. But can we blame them? The system trained them this way, compete, win, protect your position.

Hiro
True. The Japanese poet Miyazawa Kenji captured this perfectly in “An Outline of Peasant Art”. Let me read it here: “There can be no individual happiness until the whole world becomes happy. The consciousness of self evolves gradually from individual to collective society to universe.” What he wanted to say and the problems we’re sensing are similar. Essentially, our “consciousness is still small.”

Yati
People say education’s purpose is “to become happy.” Miyazawa Kenji ruined that simplicity for me. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma in action. Individual rational choices lead to Nash equilibrium, not Pareto optimality. Personal success doesn’t equal collective flourishing.

Hiro
I think intelligence is the spatiotemporal scale you can grasp, measured by predictive power. Like, sure, everyone can guess what’ll happen an hour from now, but a hundred years? That’s much harder. And if you keep stretching that to a thousand years, ten thousand years, a hundred million years, maybe that’s actually how we could think about developing intelligence in a more quantitative way. But then, how do you even do something that sounds like wizardry, or astrology, or alchemy? In the past, priests who served as advisors to kings had real power because they were skilled in astronomy and mathematics. They could predict things on Earth by reading the movements of the heavens, like nailing the timing of an eclipse, or changes in the seasons, or when snow or rain would come. And the reason they could do that was because they’d quietly been collecting data and working with hidden equations. There was always a trick behind it. But to ordinary people, farmers who had no education about the cosmos, it must have looked like magic, or some kind of divine oracle.

Yati
You’re always talking about these sci-fi kind of ideas, like what schools might be like a thousand years from now.

Hiro
Montessori Elementary curriculum centers on the history of the universe, Earth, and life, dealing cross-sectionally from macro to micro. Children learn the 13.8 billion year history of the universe, the 4.6 billion year history of Earth, and the 3.8 billion year history of life. That’s their foundation for predicting futures. Imagine the accuracy advantage.

Yati
Artificial intelligence follows the same principle. There’s a trend toward creating “smarter” AI by teaching it concepts that apply to larger spatiotemporal scales, like physics and mathematics, rather than just training it on internet data. This leads to more accurate predictions.

Hiro
These days, science and technology have given us access to massive amounts of historical data. But there’s still so much we don’t fully understand in fields like planetary science, geology, and archaeology. Huge parts of the record are still literally buried underground. And once we dig that up and start reflecting it in our knowledge, everything shifts. Academic systems, educational frameworks, all of it will need to be updated. And sometimes that means we’ll have to admit, “what we thought was true was actually wrong.” It’s like when people moved from believing in the geocentric model to adopting the heliocentric one. We should expect those kinds of Copernican revolutions. Knowledge is always moving. That’s why we need educational systems that can stay strong and flexible through constant change.

Yati
These revolutions are happening all the time, in big ways and small. Some people don’t wait for society to catch up. They bring these radical new truths into their daily lives before the rest of us even notice. Quite a few are already living through their own personal Copernican revolutions. The future is already here. It just hasn’t reached everyone yet.

Hiro
Montessori education itself isn’t mainstream in Japan yet. While some countries have made it public education, in Japan, there are almost no private schools offering it. With the declining birthrate and aging population, it’s easy to predict that establishing new schools using traditional school management models will be financially difficult. But since Montessori education is clearly superior in quality to existing education, I personally want to somehow bring it to standardization.

Yati
So we’re ignoring existing models entirely. We’re physically designing a new model from scratch. We’ve launched our experimental alternative school April 2025.

Hiro
Exactly. The school has a new model. The model is distributed, not centralized, and mobile. I think mobile is cosmic. We’ll discuss the details another time. At the societal level, it’s important to increase experiments with these new alternative models, even if they’re small. I think it’s important to regularly increase learning density, deepen education in the right direction, and actively try new things.

Yati
The brain research I cited earlier also says that acquiring new skills activates the prefrontal cortex.

Hiro
Sure, individual prefrontal development matters. But I think we also need to talk about something bigger, like the prefrontal cortex of society, maybe even of the universe. Between the ages of six and twelve, imagination really expands. That’s when independent thinking starts to emerge, and that’s crucial. Elementary school, at the very least, should train kids for that shift. Current schools do help kids build some healthy brain habits. That’s good and worth keeping. But we also need to move to the next stage, where the brain isn’t just active, it’s used more purposefully.

Yati
That’s why at our alternative school, Polymath School of Morioka, we emphasize both brain development support and Montessori-style cosmic education. There’s no other school with such good balance. Plus, it’s free without tax funding. [laughs]

Hiro
That’s right. We’re aiming to be “the most intellectual school on Earth.” [laughs]

“There is no punishment or reward in our schools to interfere with the joy in the work itself. The only reward is in the completion of the work–it is at this time that internal discipline establishes itself, and the foundations of character are laid. ” (Maria Montessori, “Maria Montessori Speaks to Parents”)

Profile

Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. Research Scientist at StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.

Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.

What neuroscience reveals about how praise affects the developing brain

Hiro
Today, let’s talk about praise and its effects on children.

Yati
What’s your take on praising children?

Hiro
I’ve been researching childhood developmental disorders for a brain training app I’m developing. Reading blogs about therapeutic education, I noticed a pattern: everyone gets praised excessively. The children, their parents, everyone gets praised like crazy. Staff at therapy facilities say things like “How cute!” or “Amazing!” at every opportunity. Many parents write, “At first it felt strange, but it saved my heart.” That really stuck with me. It’s as if therapeutic education equals praise. Maybe it’s not quite that extreme, but everyone seems to have strong reactions to being praised or watching their children be praised.

Yati
Preschools and kindergartens are similar, and it makes me uncomfortable too. Since learning about Montessori education, we’ve been careful about evaluating children, including praising. We don’t say “amazing” or “cute.” That probably makes the discomfort even stronger.

Hiro
The early childhood education world seems to treat praising as something wonderful, but personally, I think it’s a double-edged sword. Children might comply while being praised, but without it, they do nothing. There’s this sense of adults controlling everything. It feels like a technique to make children do what adults want rather than what children want to do.

Yati
There are bestselling books on praise techniques, but they’re ultimately about parents controlling children. That goes against the Montessori philosophy.

Hiro
Well, most parenting books are essentially manuals for controlling children to meet parents’ expectations. Actually, I recently read something fascinating in a neuroscience book. The brain region that responds to praise is different from the one that feels personal achievement. Even when you do something voluntarily, if you receive external evaluation, you start responding to the praise rather than the achievement itself. Then when the praise stops, you stop doing what you were doing voluntarily.

Yati
I looked for papers on this and found one. It’s research showing the “Undermining Effect” through brain activity data. This is a psychological phenomenon where people who were acting from intrinsic motivation lose motivation when they receive external factors like rewards or evaluation. (Murayama et al. 2010)

Hiro
That makes sense.

Yati
Here’s what they found. Even with tasks that seem interesting and engaging, when you add rewards, people start thinking “it’s meaningless without the reward.” Brain activity actually drops. In the study, it was a game people naturally wanted to practice. But with rewards, they stopped practicing voluntarily. When they learned the rewards would end, they practiced even less, and during the game, the brain stopped responding.

Hiro
Yeah.

Yati
This study used money as the reward. But other research confirms that monetary rewards and positive evaluation from others affect the brain in similar ways.

Hiro
Tell me more.

Yati
Think about what this means. Activities that should trigger “This looks fun!” get hijacked. They become “If I’m not praised, why bother?” And this rewiring happens at the brain level. Chores, writing letters, cooking... these naturally enjoyable activities become meaningless without praise. That’s terrifying when you really think about it.

Hiro
We made up a song with the kids called “Don’t Praise Me.” Our eldest wrote lyrics like: “Don’t praise me. When you praise, it’s not for myself anymore, and when I grow up I’ll become stupid.” I thought that was a bit extreme. But it turns out there’s actual scientific basis for it. [laughs]

Yati
Maybe that kind of simple, direct message is exactly what adults need to hear from children’s perspective.

Hiro
True.

Yati
This “don’t praise me” theme really resonates with me. As a child, I was completely driven by praise and good grades.

Hiro
I’m the opposite. I wasn’t praised growing up, so I don’t praise others either. I just keep challenging people. That’s why I’m good at developing people. [laughs]

Yati
Remember how you never praised my cooking? You’d only say things like “Try adding more salt next time” or “The timing could be better.”

Hiro
Did I? I don’t remember.

Yati
Then one day, I made something absolutely delicious. I asked “How is it?” and you asked back “What do you think?” When I said “It’s really delicious,” you said “If you think it’s delicious, isn’t that enough?” That’s when it hit me. I’d been cooking for praise, not for the joy of it. The real motivation should have been the pleasure of making food, enjoying it, and sharing it with someone I love.

Hiro
I don’t remember.

Yati
Something similar happened recently. I started cleaning days before guests arrived. The children joined in, and our eldest made the toilet sparkle. I thought “Now we can welcome our guests.” But she said “It feels good when it’s clean.” That made me pause. I was doing it for external validation again! She was doing it for the intrinsic satisfaction. I want to regularly value the feeling of “cleaning because it feels good”, so the children don’t end up thinking “We have to clean because guests are coming.”

Hiro
You’re so serious [laughs.]

Yati
[laughs.]

Hiro
If you genuinely think something is amazing, not to please the child, then praising is natural, isn’t it? Basically, I think it’s good to think once about “Why am I praising?” Making rules about everything like “don’t do this, don’t do that” is exhausting.

Yati
Let me share a failure from my Montessori training. During my AMI practicum at a Montessori preschool, I was careful with my words. I kept them simple: “You did it” or talking about specific efforts. But my trainer said my tone was too excited. It still came across as praise.

Hiro
Really?

Yati
Veteran teachers barely react. They just glance over with a neutral “Hmm.” Complete calm. No disturbance to the child’s concentration. It’s incredibly difficult. I’m still learning through daily practice with our own children. I’m gradually understanding what they taught me during practicum.

Hiro
Hmm. By the way, Maria Montessori said something perfect for you:
“A young student can become a great teacher or doctor if he is driven on by an interest in his vocation; but if he is motivated solely by the hope of a legacy or a good marriage or some other external advantage, he will never become a real teacher or doctor, and he will not make any great contribution to the world through his work. If a young man must be punished or rewarded by his school or family to make him study for his degree, it would be better for him not to receive it at all. Everyone has a special inclination or special secret, hidden vocation. It may be modest, but it is certainly useful.” (Maria Montessori, “The Discovery of the Child”)

Yati
That hits too close to home. Here’s another Montessori quote:
“It may happen, when we fall in love, or when a child has been conceived, or a book published, or a great discovery has been made, and we deceive ourselves with the thought that we are the happiest person in the world. And yet, if at that moment someone who is in authority, or who is over us like a teacher, should come up and offer us a medal or some other prize, he would rob us of our true reward. Disillusioned we would cry out: ‘Who are you to remind me of the fact that I am not supreme, that there is another so far above me that he can give me a reward?’” (Maria Montessori, “The Discovery of the Child”)

I think anyone who’s given birth can relate to this. After all that pain, when you’re holding your baby for the first time, in that fulfilled, quiet moment... If a stranger suddenly tried to give you a medal, it would ruin everything. Once you understand how praise can destroy these pure moments, you can’t carelessly evaluate children anymore.

Hiro
Ages zero to six are for coordinating senses and movement. Children need to experience as many failures as possible in the real world. But typical praise celebrates success, which makes them fear failure. What matters is their own trial and error, failing repeatedly, gaining insights. Parents should establish that cycle as a mindset. If you only praise success, children will hate failing and avoid real challenges. To borrow from Kenya’s Wangari Maathai, that’s “mottainai”, what a waste.

Yati
[laughs.] Adults think praise makes children like them more. But children see right through shallow praise, don’t they? The adults who calmly demonstrate, without fanfare, they’re the ones children really trust and admire.

Hiro
As a child, I knew there were aunts and uncles who praised excessively, so I think children observe adults’ reactions carefully to see if praise is genuine.

Yati
When you think about it, games are representative of things that don’t praise you. Children are absorbed in them even when adults tell them to stop. Really, housework and studying, if not praised, might have the same essential interest that makes you want to continue even when told to stop, like games. Actually, lately our second daughter won’t stop writing letters even when we say “Time for bed.”

Hiro
Think once about “Why am I praising?” And if you’re praising to please children, consider whether they’re really feeling genuine joy from it. Personally, I think having adults help clean up their messes is more valuable than easy praise from adults. When you take on a huge challenge, fail spectacularly, and make a complete mess of the table and floor, which adult would you prefer: one who gets really angry, or one who enjoys cleaning up with you? I think they’d prefer an adult like Curious George’s Man with the Yellow Hat. Even as an adult myself, I think so.

Yati
True. Remember when I first introduced you to Montessori’s ideas? You summarized the parent-child relationship perfectly.
The parent says: “I’ll take responsibility, so experiment freely.”
And the child responds: “I’ll do it myself, so watch quietly. If I fail, I’m counting on you.” That’s the essence of it.

Hiro
I don’t remember [laughs.]