The Grandma has remembered one of the best educator of all times, Maria Montessori, the Italian physician and educator best known for her writing on scientific pedagogy, whose first school for working class children was opened on a day like today in 1907.
Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori (August 31, 1870-May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician and educator best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and her writing on scientific pedagogy.
At an early age, Montessori enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school, with hopes of becoming an engineer. She soon had a change of heart and began medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome, where she graduated with honors in 1896. Her educational method is in use today in many public and private schools globally.
More information: American Montessori Society
Montessori was born on August 31, 1870 in Chiaravalle, Italy. Her father, Alessandro Montessori, age 33, was an official of the Ministry of Finance working in the local state-run tobacco factory. Her mother, Renilde Stoppani, 25 years old, was well-educated for the times and was the great-niece of Italian geologist and paleontologist Antonio Stoppani. While she did not have any particular mentor, she was very close to her mother who readily encouraged her. She also had a loving relationship with her father, although he disagreed with her choice to continue her education.
From 1896 to 1901, Montessori worked with and researched so-called phrenasthenic children -in modern terms, children experiencing some form of cognitive delay, illness, or disability. She also began to travel, study, speak, and publish nationally and internationally, coming to prominence as an advocate for women's rights and education for mentally disabled children.
After graduating from the University of Rome in 1896, Montessori continued with her research at the University's psychiatric clinic. In 1897 she was accepted as a voluntary assistant there. As part of her work, she visited asylums in Rome where she observed children with mental disabilities, observations that were fundamental to her future educational work.
In 1906 Montessori was invited to oversee the care and education of a group of children of working parents in a new apartment building for low-income families in the San Lorenzo district in Rome. Montessori was interested in applying her work and methods to mentally normal children, and she accepted.
More information: Age of Montessori
The name Casa dei Bambini, or Children's House, was suggested to Montessori, and the first Casa opened on January 6, 1907, enrolling 50 or 60 children between the ages of two or three and six or seven.
At first, the classroom was equipped with a teacher's table and blackboard, a stove, small chairs, armchairs, and group tables for the children, and a locked cabinet for the materials that Montessori had developed at the Orthophrenic School.
Activities for the children included personal care such as dressing and undressing, care of the environment such as dusting and sweeping, and caring for the garden. The children were also shown the use of the materials Montessori had developed.
Montessori, occupied with teaching,
research, and other professional activities, oversaw and observed the
classroom work, but did not teach the children directly. Day-to-day
teaching and care were provided, under Montessori's guidance, by the
building porter's daughter.
In this first classroom, Montessori observed behaviors in these young children which formed the foundation of her educational method. She noted episodes of deep attention and concentration, multiple repetitions of activity, and a sensitivity to order in the environment.
Given a free choice of activity, the children showed more interest in practical activities and Montessori's materials than in toys provided for them and were surprisingly unmotivated by sweets and other rewards. Over time, she saw a spontaneous self-discipline emerge.
The first Casa dei Bambini was a success, and a second was opened on April 7, 1907. The children in her programs continued to exhibit concentration, attention, and spontaneous self-discipline, and the classrooms began to attract the attention of prominent educators, journalists, and public figures.
As early as 1909, Montessori's work began to attract the attention of international observers and visitors. Her work was widely published internationally and spread rapidly. By the end of 1911, Montessori education had been officially adopted in public schools in Italy and Switzerland and was planned for the UK.
By 1912, Montessori schools had opened in Paris and many other Western European cities, and were planned for Argentina, Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, Syria, the US and New Zealand. Public programs in London, Johannesburg, Rome, and Stockholm had adopted the method in their school systems.
Montessori societies were founded in the United States (the Montessori American Committee) and the United Kingdom (the Montessori Society for the United Kingdom).
More information: Fundación Argentina María Montessori
In 1915, Montessori returned to Europe and took up residence in Barcelona, Catalonia. Over the next 20 years Montessori traveled and lectured widely in Europe and gave numerous teacher training courses.
Montessori education experienced significant growth in Catalonia, the Netherlands, the UK and Italy.
On her return from the US, Montessori continued her work in Barcelona, where a small program sponsored by the Catalan government begun in 1915 had developed into the Escola Montessori, serving children from three to ten years old, and the Laboratori i Seminari de Pedagogia, a research, training, and teaching institute.
A fourth international course was given there in 1916, including materials and methods, developed over the previous five years, for teaching grammar, arithmetic, and geometry to elementary school children from six to twelve years of age.
In 1917 Montessori published her elementary work in L'autoeducazionne nelle Scuole Elementari (Self-Education in Elementary School), which appeared in English as The Advanced Montessori Method.
In 1932, Montessori spoke on Peace and Education at the Second International Montessori Congress in Nice, France. This lecture was published by the Bureau International d'Education, Geneva, Switzerland.
Montessori spoke at the International Peace Club in Geneva, Switzerland, on the theme of Peace and Education.
Montessori held peace conferences from 1932 to 1939 in Geneva, Brussels, Copenhagen, and Utrecht, which were later published in Italian as Educazione e Pace, and in English as Education and Peace.
In 1949, and again in 1950 and in 1951, Montessori was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, receiving a total of six nominations.
Montessori died of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 6, 1952, at the age of 81 in Noordwijk aan Zee, the Netherlands.
More information: Montessori
Working with non-disabled children in the Casa dei Bambini in 1907, Montessori began to develop her own pedagogy. The essential elements of her educational theory emerged from this work, described in The Montessori Method in 1912 and in The Discovery of the Child in 1948. Her method was founded on the observation of children at liberty to act freely in an environment prepared to meet their needs.
Montessori came to the conclusion that the children's spontaneous activity in this environment revealed an internal program of development, and that the appropriate role of the educator was to remove obstacles to this natural development and provide opportunities for it to proceed and flourish.
She observed four distinct periods, or planes, in human development, extending from birth to six years, from six to twelve, from twelve to eighteen, and from eighteen to twenty-four. She saw different characteristics, learning modes, and developmental imperatives active in each of these planes, and called for educational approaches specific to each period.
Over the course of her lifetime, Montessori developed pedagogical methods and materials for the first two planes, from birth to age twelve, and wrote and lectured about the third and fourth planes.
Maria created over 4,000 Montessori classrooms across the world and her books were translated into many different languages for the training of new educators.
More information: Rasmussen College
our children are the roots of responsibility
and the wings of independence.
Maria Montessori
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