According to Maria Montessori, the three goals of an Erdkinder "Earth Children" Curriculum are:

1.  To open the way to the possibilities of the adolescent for personal expression, that is, to facilitate, by exercises and exterior needs, the development of the interior personality.

2.  To supply that which we consider to be the creative elements necessary for the physical being of man [woman] in general.

3.  To put the adolescent into relation with present civilizations by bringing him [her] general culture and by experience.

These general goals, as stated by Maria Montessori near the end of her professional career, never fully developed by Montessori herself, have been the subject of debate even among Montessorians.  That is, the under development of these ideas, in contrast to her other more defined pedagogy, has left much room for subjective interpretation and idiosyncratic creation of schools. Even when committees of Montessorians write a contemporary curriculum, it may not reflect what a living Maria Montessori might have meant by this new approach.  The imperfect idea as originally presented in her book, From Childhood To Adolescence, could have progressed to include modern day ecological science, and Ecocentric ideas as well.  Although her emphasis on the socialization of the adolescent into a responsible, loving and compassionate member of his/her society are aspects of her earlier education program, these qualities or virtues take a special meaning and priority in the final development of the adolescent into a mature adult.  Her emphasis of the almost teleological development of human culture and technology without an ongoing criticism of its accompanying anthropocentrism, leaves her idea of Erdkinder an unfinished product, even in present-day interpretations.   To name a few, human-centeredness, an uncritical view of the agrarian legacy, obsession with human civilization and culture, and the failed notion that Earth was "made for" humanity, are some of the anachronistic and environmentally antagonistic notions that still persist in Montesori education and in Erdkinder models today.

To reiterate, absent from her approach, and the approaches of her successors, is the fact that a humanistic emphasis, without an ecological grounding, may slip very easily into anthropocentrism, and a blind eye and heart is created to the full complexity of a biosphere and community that shares (should) equally in our development and ethics.  This is the same blind spot associated with other scientific attempts to understand ethics itself.  Lawrence Kohlberg, interested in Piaget's ideas of the development of ethical reasoning, discovers moral reasoning and development that amazingly excludes relationship and ethical obligations to non-humans or to the natural world.  With this example as illustration, lays most of the limitations of a human-centered cultural education.  If altruism is not for the non-human or the natural world, not present in a discussion of ethics or in a psychology of ethical reasoning and moral development, then the education of the child must go outside this human-made world for more encompassing and real answers.

Paul Shepard's cynegetic approach reflects contemporary views of human development that have made a far reaching and stronger case (e.g., Erik Erikson, Theodore Roszak, and Erich Fromm) for the fact that mental health, normal development, caring politics, sound economics, and meaningful science are all connected to the successful bonding of the child and the adolescent to, and the integration of his/her identity (cultural and personal) with a living world that exists intrinsically, that is, a world that has existed without being manufactured, coerced into being, or selfishly exploited by this one, now predominant species: Homo sapiens sapiens.

The educational philosophy and pedagogical practice of the cynegetic child assumes that the ecological challenges that the new Montessori child faces were not even formulated at the time when Maria Montessori wrote about education.  By logical implication, the cynegetic child and vision does not appear in her under formulation of Erdkinder, nor does it appear in full rendition in present-day Erdkinder models.  Montessori herself offered a general plan for an Erdkinder education, contending that a more specific plan would establish itself naturally based on the experiences of the community.  If by the "experiences of the community" we mean the entire biospheric community of human and non-human inhabitants, then Erdkinder practice must include an encompassing Ecocentric approach and method.

Being that the education of the child/youth demands all the help it can get, Elsbeth's Farm has synthesized all approaches and sources of education, psychology and science into a more encompassing and realistic educational model that aims to prepare the child/youth, not only for the world of human culture and its challenges, but also for the real and more ancient world of an entire biosphere which includes geophysical, biological, and chemical processes. For us the "cosmic" in Montessori means real and complex interconnections of a larger community of species, including Homo sapiens.   So a "cosmic purpose" must be reinterpreted as the questions: What is the role and function of the human species on this planet given our cultural activities?  Which of these activities do not seem "cosmic" in the sense that they are anti-nature? and How does one form and educate a new community of humans who understand, with an understanding that is not simply academic but that is internalized as personal ethos, that this planet has a "history" that precedes our short one, and that this history gave rise to our very consciousness?  In the answers to these questions lies the beginning of maturity, healing, and finding our more pressing and real "cosmic purpose."  With Montessori we agree that:

The stars, Earth, stones, life of all kinds form a whole in relation with each other, and so close is this relation that we cannot understand a stone without some understanding of the great sun!  No matter what we touch, an atom, or a cell, we cannot explain it without knowledge of the wide universe.