Who is the extraordinary woman behind the worldwide Montessori education movement?
Born in Chiaravalle, Marche, Italy on August 31, 1870, Maria Montessori displayed a natural proclivity to the natural sciences and mathematics from a young age, and she had initially intended to study engineering. While later attending the University of Rome, she decided to pursue an interest in medicine, eventually graduating as Italy’s first female physician in 1896,
with a specialization in paediatrics and psychiatry. After graduation, Maria Montessori continued to work at the University of Rome’s psychiatric unit, intent with a focus on researching and working with children experiencing various forms of cognitive delay, illness or disability.
During her time working at the University, Maria Montessori continued to research and study influential 19 th Century physicians and educators, such as Jean Marc Gaspard Itard and Edouard Seguin. Through her studies of the various educational methods, she identified two main principles as the foundation of Montessori pedagogy – the existence of universal characteristics
of the child; and the child as a unique and respectable individual to be unconditionally accepted. As Montessori further developed her educational research, she began to travel, publish and speak publicly, and was soon recognized as a world renowned educator known nationally and internationally for her philosophy of education along with her writings on scientific pedagogy.
In 1907 Maria Montessori’s work included observing a group of special needs children in Rome’s San Lorenzo slum district. As she observed the children and their response to the environment she saw them demonstrate capabilities and interests that far exceeded her expectations. It was through these observations that she began to develop The Montessori Method, an approach to education that is based on a set of five guiding principles:
1) Respect for the child
2) The prepared environment
3) The absorbent mind
4) The Sensitive Periods of learning
5) Self-education
The Montessori Method
The Montessori Method is characterized by providing a prepared environment: orderly, pleasing in appearance, simple and real, where each element exists for a reason in order to help in the development of the child. A Montessori classroom integrates children of mixed ages that are in groupings of 3 years. This promotes socialization, respect and solidarity among children naturally.
The prepared environment offers the child opportunities to commit to interesting and freely chosen work, which results in long periods of concentration that should not be interrupted. Freedom develops within clearly defined limits, and this allows children to live in harmony with each other in the small community they belong to in the classroom.
Children work with concrete materials that were scientifically designed, providing them with the keys to explore our world and develop basic cognitive abilities. The materials are designed to allow the child to recognize the error by him/herself and become responsible for his/her own learning.
The adult is an observer and a guide: he/she helps and stimulates the child with all his/her effort. This allows children to act, want and think by themselves, and helps them to develop confidence and inner discipline.
The Montessori education covers all areas in education, from birth to 18 years of age, providing an integrated curriculum.
The Montessori Environment
The Montessori environment is a spacious, open, orderly, pleasing in appearance, and simple space, where each element exists for a reason in order to help in the development of the child. The environment is proportional to the children's height and size, and it consists of low shelves and tables and chairs of different sizes where children can sit individually or in groups. The classroom is divided into curriculum areas where related materials and bibliography are exposed on the shelves, allowing great freedom of movement. Children can work in groups or individually, respecting their own learning style and rhythm. Each child chooses the material he wishes to work with by taking it from the shelf and putting it back in its place afterward making it available to others.
The environment promotes the child’s independence in the exploring and learning process. Freedom and self-discipline is made possible by each child finding activities that respond to their evolutionary and developmental needs.
Montessori classrooms group children in 3 different ages: younger than 3 years old or infant-toddler, from 3 to 6 years old, from 6 to 9 years old and from 9 to 13 years old. These "mixed age classrooms" facilitate spontaneous cooperation, an intrinsic motivation and desire to learn, mutual respect and the acquisition of deep knowledge in the process of teaching others.
The Child
Dr. Montessori believed that every educator should "follow the child”, recognizing the evolutionary needs and characteristics of each age, and building a favourable environment, both physical and spiritual, to respond to these needs. A child’s development emerges as a need to adapt to his/her environment: the child needs to give a meaning to the world that surrounds him/her, and he/she constructs him/herself in relation to this world.
Maria Montessori observed that the child goes from infancy to adulthood
through 4 evolutionary periods called "Planes of Development". Each period presents characteristics that are radically different from the other periods, but each of them constitutes the foundation of the following period. In her book, The Absorbent Mind, Montessori explained that "In the same way, the caterpillar and the butterfly are two creatures very different to look at and in the way they behave, yet the beauty of the butterfly comes from its life in the larval form, and not through any efforts it may make to imitate another butterfly. We serve the future by protecting the present. The more fully the needs of one period are met, the greater will be the success of the next."
The first plane of development that starts at birth and continues until the child is 6 years old is characterized by a child’s "Absorbent Mind", which takes and absorbs every aspect, good and bad, from the environment that surrounds him/her, its language and its culture. In the second plane, from 6 to 12 years old, the child possesses a "rational mind" to explore the world with imagination and abstract thinking. In the third plane, from 12 to 18 years old, the teenager has a "humanistic mind" which desires to understand humanity and to contribute to society. In the last plane of development, from 18 to 24 years old, the adult explores the world with a "specialist mind", finding his/her place in it.
Tangible Materials
Montessori materials were scientifically designed in an experimental context within the classroom, paying special attention to children's interests based on the developmental stage they were going through and with the belief that manipulating concrete objects helps the development of knowledge and abstract thinking.
These materials allow children to investigate and explore in a personal and independent way. They make repetition possible, which promotes concentration. They have the quality of "isolating the difficulties", which means each one of these materials introduces a unique variable, only one new concept, isolating it and leaving the other concepts without modification. These materials have a "control of error": the material itself will show the child if he/she used it correctly. This way, children know that errors are part of the learning process; they teach children to establish a positive attitude towards them, making children responsible for their own learning and helping them to develop self-confidence.
The Adult
The Montessori teacher, called the "directress", observes each child, his/her needs, capabilities and interests, and offers him/her opportunities to work intelligently and with a concrete purpose, to service the care of him/herself and of the small community in the classroom. The directress' final objective is to intervene as little as possible as the child progresses in his/her development. The directress allows the child to act, want and think for him/herself, helping him/her to develop confidence and inner discipline. The Montessori directress doesn't give awards or punishments. Each child finds inner satisfaction that emerges from his/her own personal work.
When the child, based on his/her evolutionary development, is ready for a lesson, the directress introduces the use of a new material and presents activities individually or to a small group. With older children, the directress helps each child make a list of objectives at the beginning of the week and then the child administers his/her time during the week in order to achieve them. It is not the directress but the child him/herself who is responsible for his/her own learning and development.
The Montessori Curriculum
From birth to 3 years old
The foundations for the child's future development are set during his/her first three years of life. Montessori calls this period the one of a "spiritual embryo", in which the child does in the psychological sphere what the embryo did in the physical sphere. This process is achieved thanks to the child's "absorbent mind", which incorporates experiences, relations, emotions, images, language and culture through his/her senses and by the simple fact of living. These life experiences shape his/her brain, forming networks or neurons that have the
potential of staying with the person for all his/her life. In this period from birth to 3 years old, the Montessori education concentrates in the development of speaking, coordinated movement and independence, which gives the child confidence, and allows him/her to discover his/her own potential and his/her place within a community.
From 3 to 6 years old
The classroom curriculum for children from 3 to 6 years old is divided into four working areas:
- Practical Life: These are activities that aim to the care of the person, of others and of the physical environment where they live in. These activities include tasks that are familiar to the child: washing, polishing, setting the table, arranging flowers, etc. They also include activities of "grace and courtesy", which are part of all civilized people. Through these and other activities, children achieve coordination and control of movement and exploration of his/her surroundings. Children learn to complete a task from beginning to end, they develop their will, self-discipline, the capacity of concentration and self-confidence.
- Sensorial: Children at this age learn through senses more than through their intellect. The sensorial materials are tools for children to refine each of their senses. Each material isolates a specific quality: smell, size, weight, texture, flavour, colour, etc. In this preschool age, when children are "bombarded" with sensorial information, these materials allow them to find order and meaning to the world, raising his/her capacity of perception, favouring observation and a sense of admiration for everything that surrounds him/her.
- Language: When the child enters an environment at age 3, they enrich the language that they have already acquired. They are capable of using it intelligently with precision and beauty, slowly realizing its properties. They learn to write, starting with their senses (hearing and touching), and as a natural consequence they learn to read. As an extension of language activities, children learn about geography, history, art and music. These cultural areas help the child to know his/her surroundings and to realize the place the child occupies in this world. They teach him to respect and love for his/her environment, and they create a sense of solidarity with all humanity and his/her habitat.
- Mathematics: The materials help the child to learn and understand mathematical concepts when working with concrete materials that lead him/her intuitively to abstract concepts. They offer him/her sensorial impressions of the numbers and set the foundations for algebra and geometry.
From 6 to 12 years old
The classroom curriculum for children from 6 to 12 years old presents a historical, evolutionary and integrated vision of knowledge and human development. It includes five Great Lessons or fundamental lessons from
which specific studies of different areas will develop. These lessons are designed to awaken imagination, curiosity and admiration for the creative and innovative capacity of human spirit.
Great Lessons — Specific Studies
Coming of Life — Biology, botanics, environment, evolution of life, zoology
Coming of Human Beings — History, culture, social studies, scientific discoveries and inventions
Communications in Signs — Reading, writing, linguistics, language structures, literature
The Story of Numbers — Mathematics, origin of numbers, systems of numbers, geometry
(1) Source: The Foundation Argentina Maria Montessori (FAMM)