“The subject of our study is humanity; our purpose is to become teachers. Now, what really makes a teacher is love for the human child; for it is love that transforms the social duty of the educator into the higher consciousness of a mission.”
Education is a difficult subject. For every person in the world, there is a different opinion about what a proper education entails. It is no surprise then, that those who don’t think ‘normally’ often have struggles in the classroom, struggles that will define their future for better or worse.
There’s no room to change the syllabus for each student. No room to help them grow.
Maria Montessori realised that back in the early 1900s, and was driven to make a change.
A STRUGGLE FOR EDUCATION
Growing up in the 1870s in Italy, Montessori’s education was a sign of the times. She was close to her mother, who was an especially well-learnt woman for the period. This inspired her, and even as her father voiced his disapproval over her continued education, she persisted.
The abnormal became her goal. She first thought to study engineering, an industry where women rarely had success, but would eventually turn to medicine.
There were no women doctors in Italy at this time, and when the head of her medical school refused to accept Montessori, it appeared it would stay that way. Fortunately, someone intervened on Montessori’s behalf (it is rumoured that this person was none other than Pope Leo XIII), and she commenced her study.
It was the start of an arduous battle to prove herself. She was often abused and discredited solely based on her gender. Furthermore, it was considered inappropriate for her to study cadavers with her male classmates, so she did so alone, after hours, smoking to cover up the various smells.
DESIRE TO CHANGE
Montessori graduated in 1986, and in so doing, became the first female doctor in Italy.
She was hired by the university hospital, opened a private practice, and started working with phrenasthenic children: children with some kind of mental illness. Her work quickly gained renowned, and so she began to travel and lecture on mentally disabled children. At the same time, Montessori found herself becoming a women’s rights advocate and idol to many young females who desired to break into male-dominated industries.
She represented Italy at the International Congress of Women’s Rights in Berlin. When she was asked what her patients thought about having a female doctor, she replied “… they know intuitively when someone really cares about them.… It is only the upper classes that have a prejudice against women leading a useful existence.”
As her studies continued, she discovered that children housed in asylums tended to have pedagogy (educational) problems rather than medical problems. They were locked up in rooms with no stimulation; in her notes she describes how one guard told her they would scoop crumbs off the floor after eating and play around with them. As a result they had few social skills, and little understand of their world, resulting in what doctors perceived as mental deficiencies.
They were wrong, and Montessori’s revelation would come to have a tremendous impact on the future of not just mentally disabled children, but all children around the world.
A NEW SCHOOL
In 1900, Montessori was appointed co-director of Rome’s Orthophrenic School, allowing her to put her ideas into practice. She taught by day, and wrote her observations down at night.
Her desire to teach the ‘unteachable’ interested many, from fellow educators to politicians, who would come to observe her practice, further establishing her notoriety.
It was at this same time that Montessori had a love affair with her fellow director, Guisseppe Montesano. Montessori fell pregnant, and knew that if she were to marry, societal pressures would force her to retire. The pair made a pact to continue their relationship in secret, but it did not last long. Within a year, Montesano married another woman, leaving Montessori deeply hurt. Wracked with despair, she sent her child, Mario, to live with family.
SCIENTIFIC PEDAGOGY
Montessori left the school and her private practice in 1901. She began to study psychology, while continuing her research into defining the relationship between science and education.
Five years later, she established Casa dei Bambini – Children’s House – in order to provide a site of education for those struggling financially in the wake of Rome’s swift socio-economical expansion. These were normal children, but their upbringing often meant they were unruly, and lacked knowledge of social niceties.
“I had a strange feeling which made me announce emphatically that here was the opening of an undertaking of which the whole world would one day speak.”
Children were left to their own devices, and provided materials to help them teach themselves. What they didn’t engage with was removed from the classroom in order to refine the system. Montessori never taught directly, she simply watched over the students. She saw them become self-disciplined, formulating an order in their world and taking to tasks that gave them a sense of accomplishment rather than playing with toys.
A standard day, which ran for seven hours, included (as taken from her book The Montessori Method):
- 9–10. Entrance. Greeting. Inspection as to personal cleanliness. Exercises of practical life; helping one another to take off and put on the aprons. Going over the room to see that everything is dusted and in order. Language: Conversation period: Children give an account of the events of the day before. Religious exercises.
- 10–11. Intellectual exercises. Objective lessons interrupted by short rest periods. Nomenclature, Sense exercises.
- 11–11:30. Simple gymnastics: Ordinary movements done gracefully, normal position of the body, walking, marching in line, salutations, movements for attention, placing of objects gracefully.
- 11:30–12. Luncheon: Short prayer.
- 12–1. Free games.
- 1–2. Directed games, if possible, in the open air. During this period the older children in turn go through with the exercises of practical life, cleaning the room, dusting, putting the material in order. General inspection for cleanliness: Conversation.
- 2–3. Manual work. Clay modelling, design, etc.
- 3–4. Collective gymnastics and songs, if possible in the open air. Exercises to develop forethought: Visiting, and caring for, the plants and animals.
One year later, five ‘Casas’ were in operation: four in Rome, one in Milan. The project had garnered such international attention that, soon after, Switzerland’s Italian-speaking section had transformed its kindergartens into Casas.
EXPANSION
Just as things were getting busier, with Montessori training others to follow her style, her mother died. It affected her greatly, such that she brought a now 14 year old Mario home to live with her.
She devoted herself entirely to education, and travelled worldwide, especially to the U.S., where the likes of inventor Alexander Graham Bell leant his support for her findings. By 1913 there were 100 schools in operation in the U.S. alone.
Her insistence on Montessori schools following particular standards garnered ire, and critics began to emerge. William Heard Kilpatrick calling her method outdated, while educational reformer John Dewey wrote a book so scathing that, once Montessori returned to Europe, her system was all but forgotten. It would not recover for nearly 40 years.
However, interest grew in other countries Montessori visited, including Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, Russia, China, and Australia.
By 1929, the system was so large that Montessori and Mario founded the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) in order to oversee the activities of schools all over the world. Initial supporters of the AMI included Sigmund Freud and Indian cultural revolutionist Rabindranath Tagore.
In 1939, Montessori and her son went to India for a three month tour. At the same time, World War II broke out, and the Montessori’s would not see home for seven years. When Mario was released from internment (the British locked up most Italians in the U.K. and its colonies during this period), the pair turned their attention to infant development. Montessori held thirty lectures in Sri Lanka after receiving special authorisation to travel, which would later be used as the content for her book What You Should Know About Your Child.
END OF AN ERA
When Montessori returned to Europe, she was 76, but age could not slow her down.
She spent her final years moving between India and Europe, opening training academies and giving lectures.
In 1949 she received the first of three nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize, followed by awards including the French Legion of Honour, an honorary doctorate from the University of Amsterdam, and she became an Officer of the Dutch Order of Orange Nassau in recognition of all that she had brought to the world.
1951 marked her final public appearance, at the 9th International Montessori Congress.
She died on May 6th, 1952.
BEGINNING OF A LEGACY
“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’.”
Maria Montessori had died, but her worked lived on through her son Mario.
In 1957, Mario defined what he dubbed ‘human tendencies’: the driving elements of development and learning.
- Abstraction
- Activity
- Communication
- Exactness
- Exploration
- Manipulation of the environment
- Order
- Orientation
- Repetition
- Self-Perfection
- Work
They became the core focus of the estimated 7000 – 20,000 Montessori schools that operate in the world today.
These schools have been responsible for the education of students like Google founder’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Amazon head Jeff Bezos, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
What’s more, Montessori’s face is now depicted on the Italian 1000 lire banknote.
Though Montessori education has its detractors, Maria’s work remains a cornerstone of childhood development principals.
To Montessori, it had always been about more than educating. It was about creating a better future.
“If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.”
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