One connected body of work
From living cells to free minds.
Writing, conversations, and educational programs — on biology, psychology, neuropsychology, philosophy, literature, and how a person learns to think for themselves.
Writer · Educator · Founder — Chicago
The connections
These are not six separate interests. They are one question asked in six places — how a living mind develops, and what free people need in order to think, judge and choose for themselves. Biology sits under the psychology; the psychology sits under the education; the education is why the programs exist.
Each subject below opens onto the others. The index is arranged that way on purpose.
Open the topic indexAbout Marsha
Marsha Familaro Enright trained first as a biologist and then as a psychologist, and works where the two fields meet: what a living thing actually is, and how a mind becomes capable of judging for itself.
She co-founded and leads a Montessori school in Chicago, founded a research institute and a discussion salon that ran for thirty-five years, and speaks at The Atlas Society Summer Seminar. She writes on biology, psychology, philosophy, education, freedom and culture, and the arts.
Reliance College is where all of it is put to use — seminars, conversations and programs in which the ideas are tested with actual students, and a new model for higher education she is developing.
The writing
Essays and papers across biology, psychology, philosophy and education — each one sits in at least one of the six topics.
A paper on the nature of life — why a living organism fits neither of the old categories, mechanism or spirit. It is the question underneath everything else here: how minds develop, how people learn, and what free beings need in order to flourish.
If you read one thing, read this one. Everything else on this page grows out of the question it asks.
Read the paperThe topic index
Follow any one of these and it will hand you to the next. That is the shape of the whole thing.
Watch & listen
Three to begin with. The full run of interviews and appearances follows below.
Reliance College
reliancecollege.org
Reliance College is the educational initiative Marsha founded and leads: a set of active programs, and a new model for higher education she is developing.
Everything on this page — the biology, the psychology, the philosophy of education — ends up here, in rooms with real students in them.
See the programsPhotographs
Seminars, discussions and gatherings.
Photographs from Reliance College programs.
Speaking
Keynotes, seminars and conversations on education, psychology, and the culture of freedom — from the Montessori classroom to the Great Books seminar. A speaker at The Atlas Society Summer Seminar for more than twenty years.
Tell us about the audience and the occasion, and we’ll come back with a shape for the session.
Invite Marsha to speakBy email
New essays, new conversations, and news from the Reliance College programs.
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