Gandhi Searches for Truth

by Stephanie Van Hook

The resource I picked for our blog this morning is a playlist from our Youtube channel, Gandhi Searches for Truth: A Practical Biography for Children, read outloud, chapter by chapter.

The book has recently been re-published as a new edition, with a new preface, dedication, and extra resources. Here’s that preface:

I wrote this book while I was working as a Montessori teacher with children ages three to six years old. A bit of the history: I was already the executive director of the nonprofit organization, The Metta Center for Nonviolence, and had been working closely with Dr. Michael Nagler, a world-renowned Gandhian scholar for years. So when I decided to train in early childhood education through the Montessori approach, I was motivated to better understand how very young children can learn about nonviolence. I believed then, and still do, that the Montessori method holds many key insights about how nonviolence can be learned and institutionalized in our world today. It’s about guiding them to discover the nonviolence that already lives inside of them as it does in all of us. All of us can learn from this approach. I have tremendous respect for Maria Montessori as a nonviolence educator. I was equally fascinated to learn that Maria Montessori admired Gandhi enormously. She met him while he was in Italy and spent many years in India. 

The children in our classroom ended up learning quite a bit about Gandhi, and I was delighted to know that a small group of children in Petaluma, California, in a small school tucked away in the countryside knew more about Gandhi and nonviolence than many college graduates! 

I wrote this book for those children because I could not find a biography of Gandhi for them. I found that reading it with them prompted many important conversations. When I meet those students today, now that they are no longer little children, they remember Gandhi, and that pleases me to no end. This book is a just small offering to peace, as both Gandhi and Montessori said, “If we are to have peace today, we must begin with the children.” So we shall. 

The book is available at our bookstore in ebook and print.