The Montessori Method

At the turn of the 20th century, a gifted young woman named Maria Montessori (1870-1952) became the first woman physician in Italy. Perhaps because the medical community did not know what task befitted a woman doctor or perhaps because no one else wanted the job, Dr. Montessori was assigned to work with retarded and mentally defective children in the slums of Rome.

It must have been a horrific task, since these children were locked up in mental asylums along with seriously deranged adults, but Maria Montessori courageously took up the challenge. As a student of the Scientific Method and an admirer of pioneer psychologists of human development, she made meticulously detailed observations of the children. She tried various methods of teaching and types of instructional materials on the children and concluded that she needed to know more about child learning and instruction to deal with her task.

So it was then that Maria Montessori traveled throughout Europe visiting schools in hopes of discovering a more effective method of teaching young children. What she found appalled her. She concluded that children were “stuck like butterflies on a board, immobilized

Maria Montessoriby confining rules and stultifying discipline.” She set out to find a remedy for the situation.

Instead of reading textbooks, she decided to let the children themselves serve as her textbook. She developed her own methods to assist child learning, and devised her own learning materials for them to work with. In a short time, her so called retarded and defective children were passing the exams required for entrance into public schools in Rome.

After this remarkable success, Montessori decided to apply her methods to normal children as well. Her results were so well received that she went on to publish nearly a dozen books on her methods and received requests to lecture and train teachers all over the world.

Quality Education for the Crucial Early Years

Line time for Blue group in Montessori Academy’s Primary Program.

Key Concepts of the

Montessori Method

1. Children learn differently than adults

2. A child learns more effectively that which he teaches himself, than that which others try to teach him.

3. Children need freedom to explore and learn what they want at their own pace, but that this freedom is not at the expense of order and self discipline.

4. A child’s pursuit of knowledge is optimized when it takes place in a “prepared environment.”

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