The life history of Dr Maria Montessori

Copyright 2002 by Montessori International magazine, http://www.montessorimagazine.com/

Maria Montessori was born in the town of Chiaravalle in the province of Ancona, Italy, on 31 August, 1870. When she was twelve years old the family moved to Rome. Showing an independence of spirit that characterized her throughout her life, Maria attended a boys' technical school and studied mathematics and engineering.

Maria Montessori was more than just a woman seeking how to better educate young children. She was someone who had a real mission in life, someone who dedicated herself to understanding how and why children learn.

Her scientific background meant that she approached the task very methodically, never simply suggesting a theory, but always backing up her ideas with observations taken from real life situations of working with the children. Indeed she described her work as a 'body of research' and herself as merely 'the child's interpreter'.

When looking at her accomplishments it is important to realize just how revolutionary her ideas were at the time. Childhood, in the early 1900s, was seen as a time when children were 'empty vessels' waiting to be filled.

They were seen as being always in need of adult control and intervention, learning was recognized as something that they more often than not tried to avoid, and discipline had to be imposed from outside and certainly was not something associated with childhood.

When Montessori opened her first school and started experimenting with her ideas what happened astonished everybody involved. The young slum children who came from the poorest of backgrounds and were recognized as being typically difficult to control, started to demonstrate changes in their behavior that simply did not fit with what was expected of children.

And all this was without any adult intervention! It seemed that the more the children were allowed to be free to choose their own activities within an exciting, structured environment, the happier and more motivated they became. Montessori became increasingly convinced that she had uncovered the key to the transformation of society and from that time on she dedicated her life to fighting for the rights of the child.

She saw that given special educational training and methods, the mental condition of these defective children could be greatly alleviated and improved. Her biographer, E.M. Standing, gives a striking example of how her ideas and practice for education were formed by her observation of children. Montessori watched a group of special needs children who were kept in a completely empty room, lacking any equipment for them to handle.

The children were so desperate for stimulation that, after meals, they searched the floor with their hands looking for crumbs. Montessori saw their behavior as an instinctive effort to learn about the environment through their hands. This idea that the path to intellectual development is through the hands is a major theme in her method.

Montessori was so convinced that these mentally deficient children could be helped that she traveled to London and Paris to study the work of two pioneers in this area, Jean Itard and Eduoard Seguin. She was subsequently greatly influenced by their ideas and methods.

Jean Itard (1775-1838) who lived through the French Revolution, made a particular study of deaf mutes. Over several years Itard attempted to educate and humanize a retarded boy who was found abandoned in the forest of Aveyron. An account of his efforts is given in a book he wrote called The Wild Boy of Aveyron.

Edouard Seguin was a student under Itard and he later founded his own school for deficients in Paris. Seguin describes his method as physiological as he began by educating the muscular system and the senses. Starting by teaching children with learning difficulties how to walk, he guided their learning through a series of increasingly complex activities.

Firstly, he taught them how to maintain balance and equilibrium in most difficult body movements. Once they had achieved this he led them on through a series of increasingly difficult exercises to finally making judgments based on muscular and other senses. All of this activity was grounded in the practice of touching, hearing, smelling, seeing and tasting.

By using the senses, children were able to build up a picture of the concept of the reality of the world. This eventually led to abstract thought. This process of educating the senses became the basis of the 'Montessori Method'.

In 1899 at a special congress on teaching and learning held in Turin, Montessori gave a paper on her ideas on education that she had developed up to this point. She was convinced that the retarded children's problems were those of teaching, not medicine. As a result, the Minister of Education asked her to give a course of lectures to teachers on the education of special needs children.

Out of this course came the State Orthophrenic School, and from 1899 until 1901 Montessori directed this school. For her it was a period of intense activity. She trained teachers, taught the special needs children and developed and tested a variety of teaching or didactic materials. Ideas for these teaching materials were drawn from the work of Itard and Seguin.

Under her methods a number of special needs children were successfully taught to read. Montessori wrote of her work: "I succeeded in teaching a number of idiots from the asylums both to read and write so well that I was able to present them at a public school for examination together with the normal children. And they passed the examinations successfully."

While she was working in the asylum and training college, Montessori became involved with a man named Dr Montessori Montessori became pregnant and had a son who was called Mario Montessori. He was sent to live with a foster family in the country, and although Montessori visited him she was not acknowledged as his mother until much later. In fact, he was publicly known as her nephew for most of her life.

The birth and apparent abandonment of Mario strikes many people as hypocritical when they study Montessori's ideas about children and child care. If the society of the times is taken into account, however, one can appreciate that a woman of Montessori's social and professional standing would be completely ruined if it was known that she was an unmarried mother.

The act of giving up Mario to pursue her career could have been so traumatic for Montessori that it actually led her to develop the philosophy for which she is famous. 'The Child', in the universal sense, became for her the most important and precious thing in the world and she devoted the rest of her life to promoting the needs of the world's children. It could even be alleged that without Mario there may never have been a Montessori method of education.

In 1901 she gave up her work in the Orthophrenic School and enrolled, once again, as a student in Rome University attending courses in philosophy and psychology. She translated the writings of Seguin and Itard into Italian so that she could gain a deeper understanding of their ideas.

In 1904, she was appointed Professor of Pedagogic Anthropology at the university, and at the same time she continued her many other activities.

In 1906, Montessori was asked to organize the infant schools being built in a slum clearance rehousing program in Rome. The first school, a large tenement house in San Lorenzo, was for children aged three to seven years old. It was called Casa dei Bambini, which means 'The Children's House'.

In the following two years, two other Children's Houses were founded. In these schools Montessori was now able to apply her methods to normal children. She believed that if her methods achieved such startling results with special needs children then these same methods could improve the performance of normal children.

She wrote: "I felt that the methods which I used had in them nothing particularly limited to the instruction of idiots.... I became convinced that similar methods applied to normal children would develop or set free their personality in a marvelous and surprising way".

The children in her first two Children Houses were what we would now call deprived children. They were often neglected and lacked care and stimulation from their parents. In many cases the parents themselves were illiterate. Montessori's hopes were realized. These deprived children began to learn more successfully. In the third school, children from relatively privileged, middle-class backgrounds also proved that Montessori's method was superior to the conventional teaching of her day.

It was soon evident that all children were capable of achieving spontaneous and independent learning. Spontaneous activity and independent learning are key principles of the Montessori method.

The Montessori Method

The chief components of the Montessori method are self-motivation and auto-education. Followers of the Montessori method believe that a child will learn naturally if put in an environment containing the proper materials. These materials, consisting of "learning games" suited to a child's abilities and interests, are set up by a teacher-observer who intervenes only when individual help is needed.

In this way, Montessori educators try to reverse the traditional system of an active teacher instructing a passive class. The typical classroom in a Montessori school consists of readily available games and toys, household utensils, plants and animals that are cared for by the children, and child-sized furniture: the invention of which is generally attributed to Dr. Montessori.

Montessori educators also stress physical exercise, in accordance with their belief that motor abilities should be developed along with sensory and intellectual capacities. The major outlines of the Montessori system are based on Dr. Montessori's writings, which include The Montessori Method (1912), Pedagogical Anthropology (1913), The Advanced Montessori Method (2 vol., 1917), and The Secret of Childhood (1936).

Fame and recognition now came quickly to Montessori. The world's press was recording stories of how successful her methods were. In a few years she was internationally known. In 1912 The Montessori Method was published as the English translation of her first book, Il Metado della Podagogica Scientifica applicato all'educazione infantile nelle Casa doi Bambini (1909). The first edition was sold out in four days and the book reached second place among the
non-fiction best sellers of 1912 in America.

Visitors came from many parts of the world to see for themselves the successful and stimulating teaching and learning taking place in the Children's Houses. The visitors were inspired and Montessori movements began to spring up all over the world. Montessori schools opened in places as widely separated as America, Russia, Japan, Germany and India.

Montessori now spent her time on her new work, training teachers, writing and giving public lectures. She travelled extensively, visiting the newly-founded schools and Montessori societies.

In America her ideas were widely acclaimed. She was received at the White House and the daughter of the President of the United States, Margaret Wilson, became secretary of a Montessori school sponsored by Alexandra Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.

A strong attack on her method was, however, launched by a Professor of Education, William Kilpatrick. He published a book that had a great deal of influence on teachers and administrators, and as rapidly as the Montessori movement had grown, it withered and temporarily died in the United States.

In the early 1920s, Montessori was appointed Government Inspector of Schools for Italy. She did not hold the post for long because of her disagreement with the Fascist government. Incidentally, at this time she spent more time in Spain where she founded a special teacher training institute.

With the rising political tension in Europe in 1936 she left Spain for Holland. By 1939 she was in India. The outbreak of war prevented her return to Holland and she spent the war years in activity building up the movement. As a result, India is to this day a center of Montessori enterprise.

In 1946 she again visited England and revived interest in the movement. She continued to travel extensively, teaching and lecturing, and she was honored by many countries with royal, civic and academic awards. She died in Holland in 1952.

Following her death, the movement continued to grow steadily. In the early 1960s the growth accelerated and there was a worldwide revival of interest in her ideas. In America, by the early 1970s, there were over one thousand Montessori schools. Likewise, in Britain the growth of new interest in Montessori has been rapid and continuous.