Today's Almanac--August 31, 2010--Part I
It’s Two-fer-Tuesday!
On August 21, 1870 the extraordinary Maria Montessori was born in 1870 in Chiaravalle, Italy. From an early age she was a brilliant student and yearned for a forbidden career as a scientist or engineer. Her supportive parents enrolled her in an all boys technical school at age 13 and she went on to become the first woman to graduate from the University of Rome La Sapienza Medical School. As the first female doctor in Italy, she joined the University's Psychiatric Clinic where she undertook the study of the special needs of children considered uneducatable.
A 1896 lecture at the Educational Congress in Torino on the training of disabled children so impressed the Minister of Education that he appointed her Director of the Scuola Ortofrenica, which was devoted to the care and education of the mentally retarded. She soon had uneducatable 8 year olds taking the national examinations in reading and writing and scoring above the norm. The results were acclaimed as the Montessori Miracle and encouraged her to apply the same method to “normal” children.
Montessori believed that learning was natural and spontaneous to children and that the roll of the teacher was not to stuff knowledge into empty heads, but guide children on their own journeys of discovery at their own pace by providing tools to allow them to advance. The abandonment of traditional rote learning and recitation was a radical breakthrough.
In 1907 she established her first school, Casa dei Bambini-Children's House-in a Roman housing development for the working class. The success of the school spawned many more Montessori Schools in Italy and eventually led to a world-wide education movement.
Her ideas were first introduced to North America in 1917 by a small booklet entitled The Montessori System Examined by John Dewey’s disciple William Heard Kilpatrick. A visit to America gained the support of Alexander Graham Bell, who himself had begun as a teacher of disabled children, and of Thomas Edison. Outside of an almost cult like following by some intellectuals, however, Montessori’s techniques were slower to catch on in the United States than in Europe. Eventually the re-establishment of the American Montessori Society in 1960 led to a revival of popular interest and the establishment of Montessori schools across the country and the introduction of some of her techniques into public education.
When Benito Mussolini rose to power, he tried to attract the support of Montessori, by then one of the most internationally renowned Italian citizens. He offered her state posts and honors, which she declined, and then pressured her to introduced nationalist and Fascist ideology into her schools. She refused to “train future soldiers.” Eventually the pressure led her to exile in Spain. .
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 forced her to move again, this time to The Netherlands. There in 1929 she had established world headquarters for her Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) which oversaw the specialized training of Montessori teachers worldwide. At her side as her companion and reliable aid was her only son, Mario Montessori, Sr. who had been born out of wedlock in 1898.
As war closed in on her again she and Mario accepted an invitation from the Theosophical Society of India to visit that country and introduce her methods. Stranded there by the war until 1947, she developed a specialized course of study for teachers suitable to India while she lived at International Headquarters of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Chennai. Thousands of teachers were trained and the Montessori system remains an important influence on Indian education.
In 1947 she returned to the Netherlands to resume her work there. She was able to re-establish her schools in Italy under her model in the post war years. As her health permitted, she traveled and lectured widely and was honored around the world. Three times she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Montessori died at Noordwijk aan Zee on May 6, 1952 at age 81. Mario continued as director of the International Association until his death in 1982. But her method and influence continue to live on.