Does the Montessori environment foster creativity?
Experience tells us that creativity cannot be taught and that the child’s environment tends to either foster or restrict creativity. To foster creativity, Montessori realized that the environment must itself be beautiful, harmonious, and based on reality in order for children to organize their perceptions of it. Then they will be capable of selecting and emphasizing those processes necessary for creative endeavours. Children, therefore, need freedom to develop creativityfreedom to select what attracts them in their environment, to relate to it without interruption and for as long as they like, to discover solutions and ideas and select answers on their own, and to communicate and share their discoveries with others at will. Children in the Montessori classroom are free from the judgment of an outside authority which only serves to inhibit the creative impulse.
