Montessori Philosophy in Contemporary Education

Contemporary primary education derives its form largely from the pioneering Italian Educator Maria Montessori. It was Montessori who introduced to children's classrooms such now commonplace items as child-size tables and chairs, lively colors and developmental learning games. She was the first to trained teachers to approach early education as a cooperative endeavor in which the kindergarten-age child should be guided but not lectured to or blamed. As her biographer Rita Kramer correctly observes, "Montessori belongs on any list on those whose existence shaped our century". And, adds Kramer, "the fact that she was a woman, born in Italy thirty years before the end of the last century, makes that fact even more remarkable."

Montessori was Italy's first female doctor yet she is best remembered because she developed an interest in children with learning disabilities. It is with these children that she became convinced of the value of manipulative materials and age-appropriate sensory stimulation in helping them learn.

In 1907, she opened an experimental school in a Roman slum to test her principles on inner-city preschoolers without handicaps. They made remarkable progress in reading and writing. Explaining her system in the 1912 book The Montessori Method. Montessori denounced traditional schools where children were "like butterflies mounted on pins and fastened each to his place."

Essentially, the Montessori method takes advantage of a child's natural desire to learn. Enormously influential, the book launched an international educational reform movement. The Montessori movement has influenced early-childhood education to such a degree that there is probably not a day care center or kindergarten classroom in America that does not incorporate at least some of Montessori's techniques and progressive ideas into its curriculum.

Reprinted From: Ladies Home Journal - 100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century