About Maria Montessori

Who was that woman who started an educational revolution that changed our way of thinking about children more than anybody before or since?

Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. 

The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society. – ” Maria Montessori, Education for a New World ”

Maria Montessori, born in 1870, was the first woman in Italy to receive a medical degree. She worked in the fields of psychiatry, education, and anthropology. She believed that each child is born with a unique potential to be revealed, rather than as a “blank slate” waiting to be written upon. Her main contributions to the work of those of us raising and educating children are in these areas: 1.Preparing the most natural and life supporting environment for the child, 2.Observing the child living freely in this environment, 3.Continually adapting the environment in order that the child may fulfill his greatest potential – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

The Early Years

Maria Montessori was always a little ahead of her time. At age thirteen, against the wishes of her father but with the support of her mother, she began to attend a boys’ technical school. After seven years of engineering, she began primed and, in 1896 became a physician. In her work at the University of Rome psychiatric clinic Dr. Montessori developed an interest in the treatment of special needs children and, for several years, she worked, wrote, and spoke on their behalf.

In 1907 she was given the opportunity to study “normal” children, taking charge of fifty poor children of the dirty, desolate streets of the San Lorenzo slum on the outskirts of Rome. The news of the unprecedented success of her work in this Casa Dei Bambini “House of Children” soon spread around the world, people coming from far and wide to see the children for themselves. Dr. Montessori was as astonished as anyone at the realized potential of these children.

From Europe to the United States

Invited to the USA by Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison, and others, Dr. Montessori spoke at Carnegie Hall in 1915. She was invited to set up a classroom at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, where spectators watched twenty-one children, all new to this Montessori method, behind a glass wall for four months. The only two gold medals awarded for education went to this class, and the education of young children was altered forever.

India (1939 – 1946) and the Nobel Peace prize

During World War II Dr. Montessori was forced into exile from Italy because of her antifascist views and lived and worked from Tamilnadu (Chennai & Kodaikanal). It was here that she developed her work Education for Peace and developed many of the ideas taught in her training courses today. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Gandhi’s practice of satyagraha had distinct influence on the development of Dr. Maria Montessori’s perspective on peace education and fostered the start of many Montessori schools for the lower caste systems in India. Gandhi was very interested in the Montessori system of education, and he personally taught the children in his Ashrams using a technique similar to the one Dr. Montessori developed. Montessori met Mahatma Gandhi in London in October 1931. On October 28, 1931, at Maria Montessori’s invitation, Gandhi spoke at the Montessori Training College in London.

During Montessori’s stay in India, she and Gandhi communicated with one another. One of the letters Montessori wrote to Gandhi is on display at his Ashram in Sevagram. Montessori and Gandhi both strongly believed that to have real peace, we must begin with the children.