Human Potential

The social problems of the child and the adult are therefore integrated, but can also be separately considered, and the school bears special responsibility for the child.  Youth is universally recruited in the school for the great army of life.  The potentialities of a cultivated humanity should be the root of every social question, but the adult is beyond reform, and experiments with him repeatedly fail.  (Montessori, To Educate the Human Potential, pg. 82-83)

The human potential is something Montessori felt that was rarely seen, as a result of cultural and educational practices.  She felt that humanity was limited by the many obstacles placed in our way and that a new type of education could correct these problems and let children develop naturally into the “new men” she envisioned as bringing about a future peaceful world.