Not ashamed of Catholic schooling: Interview with Kairos Montessori founder

Thomas Edwards speaks to Henry Wigan, who has founded a school with a Catholic heart and Montessori pedagogy

Henry Wigan is the co-founder of Mustard Seed + Partners, a private equity firm that supports companies in creating solutions for the most significant social and environmental challenges.

However, a project that is perhaps closer to his heart, which he has led alongside his wife Candida, is the founding of Kairos Montessori in 2017—an all-through school located in the picturesque fishing town of Cascais, just outside Lisbon.

Montessori pedagogy, the work of the 20th-century polymath Maria Montessori, is the guiding principle for the curriculum of the school. But the beating heart of the school is its Catholic faith. Henry, along with Candida and Inês de la Mata, both directors at Kairos, attended St Julian’s International in the neighbouring parish of Carcavelos. When the time came for their own children to at tend, they were shocked by the school’s secularisation and realised they were looking for something different.

Kairos, meaning the right or critical moment in Ancient Greek, could not be further from its local international counter parts, which have become opulent exam factories bereft of Christian influence. For a start, the school is sacramentally rich. Holy Mass is celebrated daily, Adoration takes place monthly, the school’s catechist Filipa Caldas leads weekend-long retreats for students receiving their First Holy Communion and Confirmation, and the school chaplain, Fr Mendo, is available weekly for Confession.

Alongside this active sacramental life is a curriculum that echoes the school’s desire to be more than culturally Catholic. The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, which synthesises Catholic practice with Montessori pedagogy through the study of the Gospel and the use of sensorially rich materials to bring it to life, is taught for at least two hours a week across all age groups. Theology of the Body sessions are delivered to adolescent students. Saints’ days and the liturgical calendar are celebrated with vigour.

Henry, an Englishman who speaks perfect Portuguese and is the embodiment of the old Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, is a busy man. Despite being a father of five who runs a multinational company, he kindly agreed to sit down with me to discuss how Kairos came to be.

How did Kairos begin?

My wife and I came across the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd during an exhibit on Mother Teresa’s life back in 2015.

The following year, we received an email from a friend and Missionaries of Charity priest, Fr Brian Kolodiejchuk. He asked us to come to Mother’s canonisation. It didn’t make any sense for us to go; at the time, we had little money, a young family with children going back to school that week, and nowhere to stay in Rome. But we felt called to go, so we just went.

It was after this that everything changed. We came home and invited a Catechesis of the Good Shepherd catechist, Deborah Presser-Velder, to come to Portugal to help train other Good Shepherd catechists. One afternoon, we were lamenting about the state of education around us. The Catholic schools were becoming less Catholic, and the secular international schools were becoming more secular. We didn’t feel there was an educational space around us to be joyful Catholics. Deborah suggested we create a Catholic Montessori school. The turnaround was tight; the registration for the following academic year needed to be completed by the next month. Miraculously, we found a guide [Montessori term for a teacher] and a room, and were able to create a Children’s House [the par t of a Montessori school for ages 3-6]. We started off with 12 children who reminded us of the 12 apostles. Jesus Christ, under the title of the Good Shepherd, was the cornerstone of the school. We would never have had the audacity to do it without Him.

Year after year, the school grew to where we are today. But ultimately, it was born out of the desire to provide the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, and the beginning of this journey was the canonisation of Mother Teresa.

What makes Kairos a special place to have your child educated?

We are a Catholic school and not ashamed of being Catholic. That isn’t particularly distinctive, though perhaps it is becoming more and more rare.

We are a Montessori school, and what that means is we follow each child in their educational journey. Each child has their own individual learning plan from when they begin, aged three, to when they leave us, aged 18. We do our best to put their education, not exams, at the centre of their school experience.

We do very little exam work right up until A-levels, to which we allocate three academic years. We are trying to allow them to explore their interests and the big questions of life for as long as possible, rather than just becoming ver y skilled at answering exam questions.

One of the aspects of being Christian is being exclusively under the sovereignty of God, so we value our liberties. We want to see this reflected in the school setting, and therefore believe that throwing exams at them from the age of 11, as is increasingly the case with schools adopting a five-year GCSE programme, is constricting these liberties. We believe our students all have unique God-given talents, and we want our school to reflect and nurture that reality.

The school describes itself as “low technology”. Could you explain?

When we say low technology, we mean that we have to be specific about when we use technology; it should be an irreplaceable utility in the contexts in which it is used.

For example, our students would not use a desktop computer to write an essay when they could write by hand. Exams are generally written by hand, and there is a wealth of evidence to suggest there is a neurological link between the way you think and how you write, so we would not see the benefit of imposing technology in that context.

A photography course at Kairos would start with learning about analogue cameras but would develop into using digital cameras.

In that context, we deliberately choose to use technology, rather than just assuming its necessity.

Your first set of students is now embarking on their A-level courses. If they were not to achieve academic success, would that be a failure for the school?

We want our students to be well-formed individuals and well-placed in society. For some students, going down the traditional route of A-level exams and then on to university is clearly not the right path. Some may be better suited to vocational training and could become excellent in their chosen field.

However, when I look at our first six students who will be taking A-levels, I would be quite surprised if they do not all go on to top universities. Academically, they are a strong group.

But the thing we care about most is that we have confident and joyful learners, and that comes from having a strong community with a healthy prayer life.

Ultimately, the measure of our success is our prayer life.

Photo: Image from Kairos Montessori website

This article appeared in the September edition of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent, high-calibre, counter-cultural and orthodox Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click HERE.

The post Not ashamed of Catholic schooling: Interview with Kairos Montessori founder first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post Not ashamed of Catholic schooling: Interview with Kairos Montessori founder appeared first on Catholic Herald.