June 23, 2008 12:30 PM
Montessori Mondays - Who was Maria Montessori?
Adapted from the introduction to my book Mommy, Teach Me!
My study of children began with my own . . .In 1969 my first daughter Samantha was born. I was madly in love with my baby and anxious to do everything I could to be a good mom. Because I came from a deprived background myself (fatherlessness, poverty and a very distracted mother), it didn’t come naturally.
There was much I needed to learn, and I knew it. So I read voraciously, trying to find the keys which would unlock the secrets of perfect parenting.
When Samantha was about one, I read a book called The Absorbent Mind by Maria Montessori.
Montessori was the first woman to be granted a medical degree in Italy - in 1896. But she found her true calling while working as a surgical assistant at the University of Rome, where she had the responsibility of visiting asylums for the insane. Here, she met many children labeled “retarded.” Sensing that these children were not truly mentally disabled, but rather suffering from a lack of appropriate intellectual stimulation, she began preparing herself to help them by returning to the university to study the mind.
In 1904 she became a professor of anthropology at the University of Rome, but left in 1906 to begin working with 60 children from working class families.
It was through observing and working with these children that Maria developed her educational theories. Noting the children’s ability to absorb knowledge almost effortlessly from their environment, she created the “Children’s House” – a learning environment designed to meet their potential to learn.
Montessori found that the child has certain sensitive periods when he is most receptive to different areas of learning. Her experience affirmed that if presented with the appropriate environmental materials during those times, the child would learn effortlessly, that learning would be filled with joy, and that the child would continue into a lifelong love of learning. If, on the other hand, these sensitive periods were missed, learning would come about with much more difficulty and the child will regard education as a chore.
What was especially revolutionary about Montessori’s educational philosophy was the idea that these sensitive periods – including the optimum time for reading and writing - occur before the age of five or six, the age at which American education typically begins.
Today, Montessori’s ideas do not seem so novel, as more and more is revealed about the development of the human mind. But while her discoveries have been incorporated into the mainstream education establishment and much of the collective mind, Montessori has never been credited with them, though she began publishing her theory and methods in 1912.
In 1913, Montessori made her first visit to the United States, securing the support of Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel, who founded the Montessori Educational Association in Washington D.C. But in spite of backing from notables like Thomas Edison and Helen Keller, Montessori’s ideas were too advanced to be accepted by the American education establishment until very recently and even today she is not acknowledged as the original author of the idea of the importance of the early years in establishing patterns of learning.
I think that even without the credit Maria Montessori would be happy to know that her ideas had become part of the cultural wisdom about children and their hunger to learn. She would love seeing the child-sized furniture - once not so easy to find - now available all over the place. She would love to see that her emphasis on the importance of considering children's developmental needs when providing an environment for them have become generalized throughout our culture.
And I think she would mostly love today's understanding of the potential of children to rise above circumstances because of God-given potentials.
Because children are built to learn. For parents and teachers, it's simply a matter of learning how to nurture the love of learning - beginning from the earliest years.
You can find past Montessori Mondays here.
And you can link in your own experience using Montessori ideas in your home below:
Posted in Homeschooling, Montessori, Montessori Mondays, Preschoolers, Toddlers | Permalink
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Comments
I'm slow to join in on Montessori Mondays, but I'm going to start! I added my link to this post since it's the most recent I found. I look forward to more ideas from you and other moms.
Posted by: Amanda | July 7, 2008 2:03 PM
