Maria Montessori: Who Was She?

"Montessori" isn't a tradename, and Montessori childcare centres/education centres are those that follow the methods of Maria Montessori, who pioneered a school of thought, in both senses of the phrase.

Maria Montessori was an Italian woman who was born in 1870 and was one of those "uppity women" who refused to accept the traditional role for women. At first, Maria Montessori wanted to be an engineer, and she studied at an all-boys school. However, she later became a doctor - the first woman to graduate from the University of Rome's medical school. She soon found her area to specialise in: she worked in the areas of psychiatry and psychology, and soon became deeply involved in helping to educate children who had been labelled as "uneducable" (we'd call them "special needs" children; Dr Montessori called these children "poor little ones"). Maria Montessori's pupils thrived with these methods and soon drew level with their age-group peers.

Maria Montessori then wondered what would happen if she applied her techniques to "normal" children. How would they develop? She believed that children learn by experience and doing rather than by listening, and that the teacher should be there to help the child develop more and more complex skills that are tackled at their (the child's) own pace. Dr Montessori soon had her chance to put her ideas into action when a school was needed in a housing development in a poorer area in Rome.

Dr Montessori's first "Children's House" was a huge success, and many other centres where children could learn according to Montessori methods were opened. Around the world, people became interested about her techniques. However, Montessori had to leave her homeland of Italy and go into political exile because she refused to cooperate with the demands of the Fascist dictator Mussolini and use her schools to indoctrinate children and to train them to become soldiers. At first, she lived in the Netherlands, but spent the years of World War II in India, returning to the Netherlands after the war was over.

One valuable contribution Dr Montessori made not only to the Montessori method of education but to understanding of childhood development as a whole is the idea that all children develop at their own pace. Certainly, children can be grouped in rough three-year age bands, but some children are ready for, say, learning to read earlier than others. Another aspect of education pioneered by Montessori is the use of sensorial materials (classic examples are the moveable alphabet and the sandpaper letters used for learning to read). These days, every teacher - primary school and secondary school; Montessori or mainstream - is instructed about different learning styles (visual, audio and kinaesthetic), but these were part of Dr Montessori's educational methods from the outset. Montessori asserted that children are fully fledged and independent human beings who have the potential to solve problems and learn things for themselves; the role of the teacher is to provide learning opportunities suited to the stage the child is at, which is done by observing the child and seeing what they're ready for.

Maria Montessori died in 1952. During her lifetime, some experts had predicted that her movement and methods would fade out without her personality behind them, but history has proven them wrong: after over 50 years after her death, Montessori's philosophy lives on and Montessori child care centres are as popular as ever.

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