College of Modern Montessori |  |
College of Modern Montessori | |
Maria Montessori was born in Chiaravelle, Italy, on August 31, 1870 and was educated in Rome. She rebelled against the classical career choices for women at the time and in 1894 became the first Italian woman to graduate in medicine (University of Rome).
Upon graduating, her first appointment was in the San Giovanni Hospital. In 1897 she became a voluntary assistant at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Rome.
The children here were referred to as 'idiot children', but Montessori was convinced that these children were not useless - their minds had just not been stimulated. She worked with them at the clinic and gradually saw glimmers of hope as they responded to her efforts.
On searching for information about the treatment of mentally deficient children, she came across the work of two French doctors, Jean Itard and Edouard Seguin. Itard made a particular study of deaf mutes, but he is better known for his attempts over several years to educate and socialise an abandoned boy known as 'The Wild Boy of Aveyron'. His particular approach was to stimulate the boy's mind systematically through the senses.
Edouard Seguin was a student of Itard and he later founded his own school for deficient children in Paris. His particular approach was to devise a sequence of muscular exercises to bring about a change in behaviour and so educate the child through a method he described as physiological. The study of the work of these two French doctors gave Maria Montessori a new direction in her life. She took the principal ideas of 'education of the senses' and the 'education of movement' and adapted and developed them into a system that became her own.
Her next step was to turn her mind to the study of education. Through her reading, some of the ideas and insights of educational thinkers and reformers such as Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel became synthesised in her mind and, together with the ideas she had taken from Itard and Seguin, the 'Montessori Method' began to take shape.
By 1899 she was involved in the establishment of the Orthophrenic School in Rome, where she spent two years training teachers in the special method of observation and education of the mentally retarded. During this time, she worked with the children, observing and experimenting, using different materials and methods and using all the ideas she had gleaned from her studies. Some of the children she taught, who had been labelled 'uneducable', learned to read and write and some even sat the State primary examinations and passed with higher grades than so called 'normal' children. These events, together with the many public lectures she gave in Italy and other European countries, brought her fame. She was now known as an 'educator' as well as a 'doctor'.
In 1901 Maria Montessori gave up her work at the Orthphrenic School for personal reasons and went on to further her studies at the University of Rome.
In 1904 she was appointed Professor of Pedagogic Anthropology at the Uninversity and, at the same time, continued with her many other activities.
In 1906 Montessori was asked to organise the infant schools that were being built in a slum clearance and rehousing programme. The first school, a large tenement house in San Lorenzo, was for children aged three to six. She called it 'Casa dei Bambini', the Children's House.
In the following two years, other Children's Houses were founded. Montessori was now able to apply her methods to normal children in these schools. She believed that, if her methods achieved such startling results with retarded children, then these same methods would improve the performance of normal children.
The children in her first two Children's Houses were what we would now call deprived. They were often neglected and lacked care and stimulation from their parents. In many cases the parents themselves were illiterate. Under Montessori's care, these children began to learn successfully. In another school, children from relatively privileged backgrounds also proved that Montessori's methods were superior to the conventional teaching of her day. It was soon evident, in fact, that all children were capable of achieving and becoming independent learners when taught her methods. Montessori's hopes were realised. International fame and recognition now came quickly. 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. They were inspired by what they saw and conveyed the word when they returned home. In this way, the Montessori movement spread all over the world. In 1909 the first Montessori Training Course was given. Private Montessori schools were established in Europe. Montessori travelled extensively, giving lectures and training courses in England, Spain, Australia, Holland and the Americas. Her method was endorsed and financially backed by people such as Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Sigmund and Anna Freud, Ghandi and Piaget.
In the early twenties, Montessori was appointed Government Inspector of Schools for Italy. In 1934 friction arose between Montessori and Mussolini and all her schools in Germany and Italy were closed by 1936. Montessori left Italy for Spain and founded a special Teacher Training Institute in Barcelona. With the growing political tensions in that part of Europe in the thirties, she left Spain to live in Holland. By 1939 she was in India, where she was interned throughout the war years, and developed the movement in the sub-continent. As a result, to this day India is a great centre for Montessori teaching. The war years caused Montessori to pursue a passionate quest for lasting peace through education. She was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize and in 1950 she became the Italian delegate to UNESCO. Maria Montessori said, "Love is a gift to mankind which must be treasured and developed to the fullest possible extent, for it is this that unites each and every one of us, and only in this way can we bring about a good, caring, peaceful world."
When her internment ended in 1946, she visited England and revived interest in the movement there. For the next few years, despite advancing years, she continued to travel extensively, teaching and lecturing, and she was honoured by many countries with royal, civic and academic awards. She died at Noordwijk, Netherlands, on May 6 1952 at the age of 81.
Following her death, the movement continued to grow steadily. By the early sixties the growth had accelerated and there was a worldwide revival of interest in her ideas that has continued to the present day.
