Who was Maria Montessori?

Dr. Maria Montessori with child

If you wish to apply the Montessori Method to the upbringing of your own child, it is worth knowing a little about its founder, Dr. Maria Montessori.

The Childrens's House

Maria Montessori was born in 1870 in Chiaravalle in Italy. She was the first woman in Italy to graduate as a doctor of medicine, much against the wishes of her father and despite endless prejudices and difficulties. She became interested in education when she worked as a doctor with children who would nowadays be recognized as having special needs. She observed these children, who were locked away with nothing to do, crawling on the floor looking for crumbs. It occurred to her that these children were trying to learn about their world through their hands. This idea was to become a major theme in her method. She began to work with these children, stimulating their previously neglected minds and soon they started to respond.

Maria Montessori wanted to learn more about children with special needs so she studied the work of two French doctors, Jean Itard and Edouard Seguin who were pioneers in this field. Based on their ideas of education of the senses and freedom of movement, she created a system of her own. She was so successful that the children managed to pass examinations alongside normal children at a public school.

Soon Maria Montessori was given an ideal opportunity to apply her method to normal children. She was asked to organize a school for sixty 3 to 7 year olds in a slum housing clearance in San Lorenzo. On January 6th 1907 the first 'Casa dei Bambini'(The Children House) was opened.

She brought in a number of sensorial materials that she designed herself and began to see certain patterns appearing in the children's behavior: they were more interested in the challenge of the new materials than in their normal toys, they wanted increasingly to do things for themselves rather than with the help of an adult, if they were allowed to work freely they would repeat the same thing again and again until they had mastered it, and they didn't seem to seek any interesting rewards other than to be allowed to carry on working with interesting things.

Word of Maria Montessori's work spread and more children's Houses opened. She spent the rest of her life traveling the world giving lectures, training teachers and writing her works. She died in 1952 in Holland.