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Maria Montessori (August 31, 1870 – May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician, educator, philosopher, humanitarian and devout Catholic; she is best known for her philosophy and the Montessori method of education of children from birth to adolescence. Her educational method is in use today in a number of public as well as private schools throughout the world.
a Montessori was born in Chiaravalle (Ancona), Italy to Alessandro Montessori, and Renilde Stoppani (niece of Antonio Stoppani).
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Quotations
Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.
The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, The children are now working as if I did not exist.
The man who, through his own efforts is able to perform all the actions necessary for his comfort and development in life, conquers himself, and in doing so multiplies his abilities and perfects himself as an individual.
If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future.
(Montessori, 1949, Ch. 1)
Encyclopedia
Maria Montessori (August 31, 1870 – May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician, educator, philosopher, humanitarian and devout Catholic; she is best known for her philosophy and the Montessori method of education of children from birth to adolescence. Her educational method is in use today in a number of public as well as private schools throughout the world.
Biography
Maria Montessori was born in Chiaravalle (Ancona), Italy to Alessandro Montessori, and Renilde Stoppani (niece of Antonio Stoppani). At the age of thirteen she attended an all-boy technical school in preparation for her dreams of becoming an engineer. Montessori was the first woman to graduate from the University of Rome La Sapienza Medical School, becoming the first female doctor in Italy. She was a member of the University's Psychiatric Clinic and became intrigued with trying to educate the "mentally retarded or "unhappy little ones" and the "uneducatable" in Rome. In 1896, she gave a lecture at the Educational Congress in Torino about the training of the disabled. The Italian Minister of Education was in attendance, and was impressed by her arguments sufficiently to appoint her the same year as director of the Scuola Ortofrenica, an institution devoted to the care and education of the mentally retarded. She accepted, in order to put her theories to proof. Her first notable success was to have several of her 8 year old students apply to take the State examinations for reading and writing. The "defective" children not only passed, but had above-average scores, an achievement described as "the first Montessori miracle." Montessori's response to their success was "if mentally disabled children could be brought to the level of normal children then (she) wanted to study the potential of 'normal' children".
“Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives;
education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is
acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of
the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over
a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference.
Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the
master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the
rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision
to direct and shape the future of human society”.
Because of her success with these children, she was asked to start a school for children in a housing project in Rome, which opened on January 6, 1907, and which she called "Casa dei Bambini" or Children's House. Children's House was a child care center in an apartment building in the poor neighborhood of Rome. She was focused on teaching the students ways to develop their own skills at a pace they set, which was a principle Montessori called "spontaneous self-development". A wide variety of special equipment of increasing complexity is used to help direct the interests of the child and hasten development. When a child is ready to learn new and more difficult tasks, the teacher guides the child’s first endeavors in order to avoid wasted effort and the learning of wrong habits; otherwise the child learns alone. It has been reported that the Montessori method of teaching has enabled children to learn to read and write much more quickly and with greater facility than has otherwise been possible. The Montessori Method of teaching concentrates on quality rather than quantity.
The success of this school sparked the opening of many more, and a worldwide interest in Montessori's methods of education.
After the 1907 establishment of Montessori's first school in Rome, by 1917 there was an intense interest in her method in North America, which later waned. (Nancy McCormick Rambusch revived the method in America by establishing the American Montessori Society in 1960). Montessori was exiled by Mussolini mostly because she refused to compromise her principles and make the children into soldiers. She moved to Spain and lived there until 1936 when the Spanish Civil War broke out. She then moved to the Netherlands until 1939.
In the year 1939, the Theosophical Society of India extended an invitation asking Maria Montessori to visit India. She accepted the invitation and reached India the very same year accompanied by her only son, Mario Montessori Sr. This heralded the beginning of her special relationship with India. She made the international Headquarters of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Chennai, her home. However the war forced her to extend her stay in India. With the help of her son, Mario, she conducted sixteen batches of courses called the Indian Montessori Training Courses. These courses laid a strong foundation for the Montessori Movement in India. In 1949 when she left for The Netherlands she appointed Albert Max Joosten as her personal representative, and assigned him the responsibility of conducting the Indian Montessori Training Courses. Joosten along with Swamy S R, another disciple of Dr. Maria Montessori, continued the good work and ensured that the Montessori Movement in India was on a sound footing.
During a teachers conference in India she was interned by the authorities and lived there for the duration of the war. Montessori lived out the remainder of her life in the Netherlands, which now hosts the headquarters of the AMI, or Association Montessori Internationale. She died in Noordwijk aan Zee. Her son Mario headed the AMI until his death in 1982.
Maria Montessori died in the Netherlands in 1952, after a lifetime devoted to the study of child development. Her early work centered on women’s rights and social reform and evolved to encompass a totally innovative approach to education. Her success in Italy led to international recognition, and for over 40 years she traveled all over the world, lecturing, writing and establishing training programs. In later years, ‘Educate for Peace’ became a guiding principle, which underpinned her work.
Pedagogy
Aside from a new pedagogy, among the premier contributions to educational thought by Montessori are:
- instruction of children in 3-year age groups, corresponding to sensitive periods of development (example: Birth-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12, 12-15 year olds with an Erdkinder (German for "Land Children") program for early teens
- children as competent beings, encouraged to make maximal decisions
- observation of the child in the prepared environment as the basis for ongoing curriculum development (presentation of subsequent exercises for skill development and information accumulation)
- small, child-sized furniture and creation of a small, child-sized environment (microcosm) in which each can be competent to produce overall a self-running small children's world
- creation of a scale of sensitive periods of development, which provides a focus for class work that is appropriate and uniquely stimulating and motivating to the child (including sensitive periods for language development, sensorial experimentation and refinement, and various levels of social interaction)
- the importance of the "absorbent mind," the limitless motivation of the young child to achieve competence over his or her environment and to perfect his or her skills and understandings as they occur within each sensitive period. The phenomenon is characterized by the young child's capacity for repetition of activities within sensitive period categories (Example: exhaustive babbling as language practice leading to language competence).
- self-correcting "auto-didactic" materials (some based on work of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard and Edouard Seguin)
Influence
A conference in Rome on 6/7th January 2007 heralded the start of a year of celebrations for children and schools around the world.
Dr. Maria Montessori’s innovative approach was that “Education should no longer be mostly imparting of knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentialities.”
What followed worldwide has been called the "discovery of the child" and the realization that: "...mankind can hope for a solution to its problems, among which the most urgent are those of peace and unity, only by turning its attention and energies to the discovery of the child and to the development of the great potentialities of the human personality in the course of its formation.”
The efficacy of Montessori teaching methods has most recently been demonstrated by the results of a study published in the US journal, Science (29 September 2006) which indicates that Montessori children have improved behavioral and academic skills compared with a control group from the mainstream system. The authors concluded that "when strictly implemented, Montessori education fosters social and academic skills that are equal or superior to those fostered by a pool of other types of schools."
The Montessori method of education that she derived from this experience has subsequently been applied successfully to children and is quite popular in many parts of the world. Despite much criticism of her method in the early 1930s-1940s, her method of education has been applied and has undergone a revival. It can now be found on six continents and throughout the United States, but is still subject to some criticism.
The Association Montessori Internationale is member of the International Coalition for the Decade for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence.
Important events in Dr. Maria Montessori's life
| 1870 | Born | | 1896 | Became Doctor of Medicine | | 1896 | Represented the Women of Italy at a Conference at Berlin | | 1896-1906 | Held a chair in Hygiene at a Women's' College in Rome | | 1898 | Gave birth to Mario Montessori Sr. and sent him to a family in the countryside of Italy | | 1899 | Addressed a Pedagogical Conference in Turin - stressed on the benefits of Education to defective children | | 1900 | Represented at the Feminist Conference in London - attacked the exploitation of children in the mines of Sicily | | 1901 | Enrollment in the University of Rome as a student of Psychology and Philosophy | | 1904 - 08 | Professor of Anthropology in the University of Rome. Her first major publication -"Pedagogical Anthropology" | | 1909 | Publication of "The Method of Scientific Pedagogy as applied to infant education in the Children's Houses" | | 1913 | Conducted the First International Training Course | | 1914 | She visited the United States of America. She was a guest of Thomas Alva Edison. The formation of American Montessori Society under the Presidentship of Mr. Alexander Graham Bell | | 1918 | The Education Society of London sent Mrs. Hutchinson to take a course under Dr. Montessori. The course was considered a "Rhapsody" by the Department of Education | | 1919 | The first official visit to London. She was given a royal reception. | | 1922 | Dr. Montessori appointed the Inspector of schools by the Italian Government. | | 1925 | International Montessori Congress at Helsinki | | 1929 | Founded the Association Montessori Internationale in Amsterdam | | 1932 | International Montessori Congress in Europe | | 1939-1947 | Dr. Montessori makes India her home. She with the help of her son conducts 16 batches of the Indian Montessori Training Courses, thus laying a strong foundation for the Montessori Movement in India. | | 1947 | Reestablishment of the Opera Montessori in Rome, Italy | | 1948 | Dr. Montessori visits India again. | | 1949 | Appoints Albert Max Joosten as her personal representative to conduct the Indian Montessori Training Courses. Conducts the First International training Course in Pakistan. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. | | 1951 | Conducts the International Montessori Course in London. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the second time. | | 1952 | Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the third time. All three occasions the Nobel Prize eludes her. Dr. Montessori passes away. Interred at Noordwijk-aan-Zee in Holland | |
Further reading
- Burnett, Alice. "Montessori Education Today and Yesterday." The Elementary School Journal 63 (1962): 71-77.
- Montessori, Mario. "Maria Montessori's Contribution to the Cultivation of the Mathematical Mind" International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de l'Education 7 (1961): 134-41.
- Gardner, Riley W. "A Psychologist Looks at Montessori." The Elementary School Journal 67 (1966): 72-83.***
External links
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- 4-minute clip from a documentary film used primarily in higher education.*
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