Maria Montessori (1870–1952) was an Italian physician and educationalist whose revolutionary "method" changed forever the way in which infants are taught. She was born in Ancona and, in 1896, became the first woman in Italy to receive a medical degree having completed her studies in medicine at the University of Rome. Subsequently she took a position in the psychiatric clinic at the university. There she developed an interest in teaching children with learning difficulties. Employing methods similar to those of the French physician and teacher Jean Itard and his pupil Edouard Séguin, Montessori experienced remarkable results at a state school for children with learning difficulties.
Montessori began to research the effect of the method on normal children and between 1904 and 1908 she was professor of anthropology at the University of Rome, while at the same time working as a government school inspector and a medical doctor. In 1907 she opened the first Montessori school, the Casa dei Bambini in San Lorenzo, Rome. She enrolled three to six year olds from the surrounding slums and the mental and social development of the children soon attracted international interest.
The success of her experiment in teaching prompted her to publish her educational system and, in 1909, Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica (translated as The Montessori Method, 1912) first appeared. She advocated the use of a "prepared environment" which would provide the child with a variety of sensory materials and allow them to progress at their own pace. Underlying the system was the belief that voluntary learning and an emphasis on the child's natural creative potential would increase the child's self-discipline and self-confidence. Thus, such skills as reading and writing would start when the child was ready, interestingly enough usually sooner under the Montessori method.
Montessori traveled throughout the world in the 1920s and 1930s and Montessori schools were opened in Italy, Spain, south Asia, and the Netherlands. She elaborated her theories in several later publications and with some modifications, her ideas have become an integral part of modern nursery- and infant-school education.
"And if education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?"
The Absorbent Mind(1967)
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