What Montessori can teach us about using AI well

Louise Sommer
2 days ago
5 min read

This essay continues my inquiry into how technology, culture, and human development shape one another.

In my previous article, I explored the idea that artificial intelligence does not exist outside human psychology. It participates within it in a constant interaction between us, AI, and the world around us.

If this is true, then AI cannot be understood only as a tool or a technology. It must also be understood as part of a learning relationship. A relationship, that shapes how humans think, explore, create, and relate to knowledge.

This raises an essential educational question:

If AI is now participating in how humans learn, how do we ensure that this participation supports agency rather than dependency, creativity rather than imitation, and empowerment rather than passivity?

To explore this question, I want to turn to an educational tradition that long predates artificial intelligence and yet, speaks directly to its challenges today.

The work of Maria Montessori.

Learning born from social necessity

Like the Reggio Emilia approach, the Montessori method emerged from Italy during a period of profound social inequality and lost human potential.

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) was an Italian medical doctor and one of the first women in Italy to graduate in medicine. Through her work with children living in poverty, many of whom had no access to formal education, she became deeply aware of how much human intelligence was being overlooked and suppressed.

Rather than asking what children lacked, Montessori asked a radically different question:

What would happen if education were designed around how human intelligence naturally develops?

This shift, from deficit to potential, became the foundation of her pedagogy and contributed to a profound transformation in how learning, intelligence, and human potential were understood in education.

In many ways, Italy has given the world an extraordinary educational gift: an understanding of intelligence as plural, relational, cultural, and deeply shaped by environment. Both Montessori and the Reggio Emilia method emerged as responses to what was missing in society - much like today’s reflections on AI arise in response to misalignments in modern life.

A personal connection

My own relationship with Montessori pedagogy is not only theoretical. I was an intern in a Montessori institution in Scandinavia, where I learned the approach hands-on through observation, preparation of the environment, and daily engagement with children’s learning processes.

If you have read my other blogs on the Reggio Emilia approach, you will recognise how deeply these Italian educational traditions have shaped my professional development. They continue to offer a rich and complex platform of knowledge. One I keep returning to when reflecting on learning, leadership, responsibility, and the conditions under which human intelligence thrives.

Montessori is not about the past. It is about human development

Dr. Maria Montessori did not design an education system for a particular historical moment. She studied how human intelligence unfolds when it is met with respect.

Her central question was simple, yet revolutionary:

What kind of environment allows a human being to grow into their full potential without distortion?

This question matters just as much today as it did over a century ago. Perhaps even more. Let's explore why.

Learning happens in relationship

Montessori understood that intelligence does not develop in isolation. It unfolds through interaction with an environment; physical, relational, emotional, and psychological. Modern neuropsychology now confirms what Montessori observed intuitively: learning depends on safety, agency, meaning, and embodied engagement.

When these conditions are present, the brain integrates knowledge deeply. When they are absent, learning becomes shallow, defensive, or performative. This applies not only to children, but to adolescents and adults as well. Human development does not stop at eighteen.

From the classroom to the digital world

In today’s learning environments, AI has become part of the educational ecology.

Not as a teacher. Not as an authority. But as a powerful presence within the learning space. This means the same developmental principles Montessori applied to classrooms must now be considered within digital and AI-supported environments.

If the environment shapes learning, then AI - as part of that environment - must be approached consciously.

When fear replaces pedagogy

Many responses to AI in higher education have been driven by fear: fear of cheating, loss of control, loss of authority, loss of meaning.

But neuroscience is clear about one thing (and this is important):

A nervous system under threat does not learn deeply. Under pressure, the brain shifts from exploration to survival, from integration to shortcutting, from curiosity to imitation. This is not moral failure. It is biology.

When education responds to AI primarily through surveillance and restriction, it unintentionally reinforces the very learning behaviours it seeks to prevent. Montessori understood this long before neuroscience could name it.

At the heart of Montessori education lies a profound insight: Learning cannot be forced. It unfolds when conditions are right.

The role of the educator is not to dominate learning, but to prepare the environment, observe carefully, and intervene with discernment. This perspective offers a powerful lens for higher education today. If AI participates in learning, then humans must remain the guides. Not as passive recipients of technological output.

Agency must stay human. Judgment must stay human. Responsibility must stay human.

Seeing education through history

This perspective is deeply connected to how I approach education and leadership more broadly.

I tend to see people and institutions through the lens of history. Always noticing how human systems repeat patterns, especially when power, fear, or rapid change are involved.

AI is not the first moment when education has faced disruptive change. But it is one of the clearest mirrors yet.

The question is not whether education will change because it already is. The question is whether we repeat old patterns of control, or step into more mature forms of leadership.

A Montessori-informed approach does not ask: “How do we stop students from using AI?”

It asks: “How do we teach students to use AI wisely?”

This means designing learning environments where:

AI supports inquiry rather than replaces thinking
reflection is valued over performance
process matters as much as outcome
students learn discernment, not dependence

AI becomes a reflective tool. Not an authority.

cover of bestseller The Hidden Camino by Louise Sommer

What this looks like in my teaching practice

In my own approach to education, AI would be integrated transparently and consciously.

Students might use AI to explore perspectives, clarify structure, or challenge assumptions, but the core intellectual work would remain human: interpretation, synthesis, ethical positioning, and voice.

Assessment would focus on how thinking develops, not merely on what is produced. This approach does not deny AI. It contextualises it.

Leadership requires courage

This moment in education does not require tighter control.

It requires courageous leadership: Leadership that is willing to trust development. Leadership that is willing to prioritise learning over policing, and designing environments that support thinking rather than fear.

Montessori offers not a method to copy, but a compass to navigate complexity.

If AI participates within human psychology, then education becomes the space where that participation must be guided wisely. Not through panic. Not through denial. But through developmental understanding, ethical clarity, and leadership maturity. We do not need to invent a new human for the age of AI. We need to remember how humans learn best, and lead accordingly.

(Note: When I write about AI in this article, I am writing from lived experience with Gemini & OpenAI’s language model, used as a reflective, educational, and creative tool. Other systems are governed differently and behave differently. This distinction matters. See previous blog on this topic).

I would love to hear your reflections on this topic. Join the conversation on LinkedIn, where I share more insights and invite dialogue with educators, creatives, and leaders worldwide.

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