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Algebra at Five. Today, in a faded yellow-brick-and-plaster house in Adyar, Maria Montessori is hard at work. She lectures in Italian two or three times a week; Mario translates into English for her. She is surer than ever of one thing: "The child is capable of achieving culture at an age hitherto unsuspected." She now teaches arithmetic at 3½, algebra at five, and finds that eight-year-olds learn algebra quicker than 14-year-olds, for they consider it a game, instead of something to dread. An 18-month-old child, she says, is "perhaps happiest when learning" and every child's "age of formation" takes place before he is six. From seven to twelve, says Maria Montessori, is the time for "cosmic education"—the interdependence of everything in nature.
Maria Montessori seems happy enough to be away from the rest of the world and its politics ("that harlequin mixture of rags and silk") and wars ("If men can respect cows during famine, as in India, men can stop killing each other"). She is not even thinking of retiring. Said she: "Work is necessary. It can be nothing less than a passion. A person is happy in accomplishment."