The mental state of a child is not outwardly visible. Therefore, it is imperative that we utilize scientific methods to uncover its mysteries.
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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.
