In the first half of the 20th century, Dr. Maria Montessori, a highly intelligent, scientifically-minded woman who had found school boring in her youth, decided to address the problem of education with a fresh outlook. In effect, she redesigned education from the ground up.
Maria Montessori was born in Italy in 1870. She was a math prodigy, a physicist, and anthropologist. At 24 she was the first woman to graduate from the medical school in Rome. She was a pragmatist and a visionary and a humanitarian; a friend of Gandhi’s and Thomas Edison’s; a three time Noble Peace Prize nominee. Her face is on Italy’s 1000 lire bill. Today, we know Maria Montessori best for the educational method that bears her name.
Maria Montessori was interested in the end-result of education, not its method. She cared about developing “a complete human being, oriented to the environment and adapted to his or her time, place and culture.” She came to her work with no preconceived ideas about how young people should be taught. She simply observed them, gathering evidence about how their minds worked and formulating tools that responded to their needs. Her observations contained groundbreaking insights into human development and cognition—insights that are largely upheld by research today. They also contain luminous descriptions of the potentialities of children in the tender process of self-formation. Perhaps most moving: the picture her writings paint of a world made better by the way we adults touch those unfolding personalities. Maria Montessori recorded her observations in prose that stands as some of the most beautiful in literature. We can do no better than introduce her words and then step aside.
Maria Montessori on Teaching: “A teacher must be consecrated to bettering humanity. She must be like the vestal who kept the sacred fire that others had lighted pure and free from contamination; the teacher must be dedicated to the fire of the inner life in all its purity. If this flame is neglected, it will be extinguished—never to be lighted again.”
Maria Montessori on Teacher Training: “Knowing what we must do is neither fundamental nor difficult, but to comprehend which presumptions and prejudices we must rid ourselves of in order to educate our children is most difficult.”
Maria Montessori on Peer Tutoring: “People sometimes fear that if a child of five gives lessons, this will hold him back in his own progress. But, in the first place, he does not teach all the time and his freedom is respected. Second, teaching helps him to understand what he knows even better than before. He has to analyze and rearrange his little store of knowledge before he can pass it on. There is nothing that makes you learn more than teaching it yourself.”
Maria Montessori on Choice: “These children have free choice all day long. Life is based on choice, so they learn to make their own decisions. They must decide and choose for themselves all the time. They cannot learn through obedience to the commands of another.”
Maria Montessori on The Montessori Method: “I beseech you, do not go around speaking of an educational method that has convinced you, nor of having studied the way to make culture for children easy, universal and attractive. Speak instead to everyone of the child and his secret. Proclaim him for what he is: the father of man, the builder of humanity, the creative and transforming energy which can act on hearts and offer new elements for the solutions of social problems.”
