Margaret Stephenson was a student of both Maria and her son, Mario Montessori. Stephenson led AMI trainings for both Primary and Elementary Montessori educators and helped them to implement their training in the academic Montessori environment. In an article entitled “Freedom and Responsibility” Stephenson writes, “The child cannot learn to be responsible unless he has freedom to exercise it – he cannot be truly free unless he can learn to be responsible.” Later in the article she continues, “Human beings have free will, which means they can choose what they shall or shall not do. Unless they are educated as to what they may or may not do, they will have freedom, but may not be responsible.” The distinction between “shall" or "can" and “may” is foundational and it seems likely that this distinction was much clearer in the time of Maria Montessori than it is now. Recently, I was reading a collection of lectures given by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in the 1980s on creation. In one of his talks, he writes something very similar to this quote by Stephenson. “…Where man no longer accepts any limit on what he may do, but sees the limit on what he can do as the only limit at all – and anything that can be done may be done – then we extinguish the essence of what makes him truly human” (The Divine Project, p. 72). What a gift we give when we offer our Atrium children a space in which they discover what they can do but also where they grow in their understanding of what they may do. This is true human formation and it lays a foundation for our life of relationship with God and one another. For the 3-6-year-old child in the L1 atrium, this foundation begins to be laid on the very first day of our time in the atrium. We begin by introducing the Atrium as a space of listening and speaking with God, and then we provide guidelines for how we live in the space. We have quiet voices and walking feet; we are careful with our bodies, with the materials, and with one another so that we will all be able to listen for God in this space. One of the best ways to strengthen this initial foundation with the children is to present the Exercises of Practical Life materials with great care and attention, providing the children with simple, concrete examples of growing in what they can do (puzzles, pouring, sweeping) as well as how they may do such things (building the pieces outside of the frame without making a sound, pouring just to the line without spilling a drop, sweeping up a spill when a spill has occurred).
Below are two examples of the type of things children can draw in the Atrium...and also a distinction being made regarding what they may draw in this space.