To many critics with a modernist mindset, sentiments such as this appear to be merely “child-centered” in a romantic, anarchistic sense, but a holistic philosophy of education goes deeper, and explains why we are justified in maintaining such faith in the child. The child is endowed with an inner power, says Montessori, and this power is nothing less than the cosmic force that breathes life, love, and creativity into the world. The highest and truest purpose of education is to nourish this force, to bring forth this power. “Education” harnessed to the machinery of an impersonal, rapacious system of production, consumption and control chokes off these possibilities and is thus a tragic diminishment of what education, and the human being, might be.