Dottoressa Maria Montessori’s version of education for all

August is Dottoressa Montessori month. Dr. Maria Montessori was born August 31 at Chiaravelle in Tuscany, Italy in 1870.

I envy the collection of Montessori memorabilia of my good friends Donald McDowall, a famous chiropractor of Canberra, Australia and his Filipina wife, Annie, our former Montessori teacher and visual artist. Among the books is a very old issue of Time magazine, dated February 3, 1930, which featured Dottoressa Maria Montessori on the cover.

It recounted that "the young woman who showed up at the new housing project in the slums of Rome one day in the early 1900s was supposed to be more than a medical adviser for the children of the tenants. But as soon as she saw her little charges, she knew that she would have to be a good deal more than that. The 60 children were bedraggled and obstreperous lot, ‘naught because of mental starvation’. There and then, physician Maria Montessori decided to give them a whole new type of school."

Within a few short years, the article underscored, the Montessori system of education became "the talk of educators all over the world".

Her life and works

The only child of Alessandro Montessori and Renilde Stoppani, Maria Montessori was born the very same year Italy first became a part of the United Nations. When she was five years old the family moved to the bustling city of Rome.

Maria entered the Scuola Tecnica Michaelangelo Buonarroti in the fall of 1883 at the age of 13. At the school, no one knew what to do with her. She was not allowed to mix with the boys so she spent recess periods and lunch in a room by herself. She studied Italian literature, history, geography, mathematics, drawing and calligraphy.

After three years, she graduated from the technical school earning a final score of 137 out of a possible 150 points. She also spent four years in the Technical Institute Leonardo da Vinci. At 20, she graduated and was ready to pursue a career in engineering. However, she decided to take up medicine. At that time, a young lady attending medical school was unheard of and preposterous, but she managed to obtain an interview with the head of the Board of Education.

Maria Montessori was the first woman in Italy to take up Medicine. She won a scholarship – in fact, a series of scholarships – year after year. Once admitted to the faculty of medicine, the male doctors were jealous of the intrusion of a woman into a sphere, which they felt was exclusively their own. Thus, they subjected her to a series of petty persecutions for many months. She was not frightened away and eventually became the first woman doctor in Italy.

The champion of the oppressed

Like Christopher Columbus, a Spanish navigator who discovered the world without (the Americas), Maria Montessori discovered a world within – within the soul of the child. It is really this discovery that made Maria Montessori famous, not her method. Her method is a consequence of her discovery. Montessori had the rare ability to arouse great enthusiasm in her followers – a great gift, but not without its dangers.

Dr. Montessori was an effective liberator of mankind. She represented Italy at a feminist congress in Berlin, championing the cause of working women. In 1900, in a similar congress in London, she attacked the use of child labor in the mines of Sicily. Queen Victoria patronized the movement in response to this.

As the assistant doctor at the University of Rome’s Psychiatric Clinic, Montessori gained interest in special children, who were then classed together with the insane. They had no toys nor materials, and the room was bare. The more she worked with these children, the more she realized that mental deficiency was a pedagogical problem rather than a medical one. She concluded that "defective children were not extra-social beings, but were entitled to the benefits of education as much as – if not more than normal ones." Much interest was aroused in her novel point of view. Dr. Guido Bacelli, then Minister of Education, invited Dr. Montessori to give a course on scientific pedagogy. A state orthophrenic school was placed under her direction from 1899-1901.

Montessori comes in touch with deficient children

Under her skillful direction, the defective children learned to read and write so well that they passed the public examination together with normal children. The applause that greeted the "miracle" made Dr. Montessori remarked, "while everyone was admiring my retardates, I was searching for the reason, which could keep back the healthy children of the traditional schools on so low a plane that they could be equaled in intelligence to my unfortunate pupils."

Montessori later gave up most of her medical practice and registered in the newly developed course of Psychology. She occupied the Chair of Hygiene at the Magistro Feminile in Rome and the Chair of Anthropology in the University of Rome. She was also a permanent external examiner in the Faculty of Pedagogy with the playwright Luigi Pirandello.

Seven years later, Dr. Montessori confirmed her intuition, "To collect one’s forces, even when they seem to be scattered and when one’s aim is dimly perceived – this is a great action, which sooner or later brings forth fruits."

The origin of the scientific education

The future would have to reveal itself stage by stage. In the whole history of education from the time of Plato to the present, Montessori’s discovery of "the hidden treasure of the children" was remarkable. "...Nothing that took place in Pestalozzi’s school at Iverdun or in Froebel’s Ansalt at Neuheim or among Tolstoy’s peasant children could match Dr. Montessori’s discovery."

On January 6, 1906, Maria Montessori worked with 60 "ignorant little vandals", normal children from San Lorenzo quarters, the poorest district of Rome. Backed by the principal banks of Italy, the building society — Instituto Romano dei Beni Stabili built two large adjacent blocks of flats.

The dottoressa, as she was often referred to, filled it with small furniture instead of regular sized school desks. Unlike Friedrich Froebel, she was inspired by the research of unknown specialists: the Spanish priest, Fr. Pereira, the French scientist Jean Itard and his protégé Edouard Seguin, who specialized on the experimental treatment of nervous diseases of children; and Dr. Itard who succeeded in the education of the boy of Aveyron who grew up in the wilderness.

Dr. Montessori designed and ordered self-teaching devices to develop the child’s independence in movement, the sharpening of his senses and eventually the gradual introduction to the three R’s and other cultural pursuits. Like Maria Montessori, Pereira (1715-1780), Jean Itard (1775-1838) and Edouard Seguin (1812-1880) were not educators, but scientists.

The dawning of the ‘new children’

Unlike the unfortunate children who Dr. Montessori had to energetically persuade to use the materials, the normal children worked spontaneously with them. She discovered that children possess different and higher qualities than those we usually attribute to them. It was as if a higher form of personality had been liberated and a new child had come into being.

The "new" child as seen through the eyes of Maria Montessori revealed hidden treasures such as: an Amazing Mental Concentration, Love of Repetition, Love for Order, Preference for Work instead of Play, No Need for Rewards and Punishment, Lovers of Silence, Refusing Sweets, as well as Explosion into Reading and Writing.

"A child is mysterious and powerful and contains within himself the secret of human nature. Anyone who wishes to follow my method must understand that he should not honor me, but follow the child as his leader... Let our eyes turn towards the little child, for in the future alone lies the hope of the world." – Dr. Maria Montessori

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