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DR.
MARIA MONTESSORI, MD
Scientific
observation has established that
education is not what the teacher
gives; education is a natural
process spontaneously carried out
by the human individual, and is
acquired not by listening to
words but by experiences upon the
environment. The task of the
teacher becomes that of preparing
a series of motives of cultural
activity, spread over a specially
prepared environment, and then
refraining from obtrusive
interference. Human teachers can
only help the great work that is
being done, as servants help the
master. Doing so, they will be
witnesses to the unfolding of the
human soul and to the rising of a
New Man who will not be a victim
of events, but will
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have the
clarity of vision to direct and shape the
future of human society.
- Maria
Montessori, Education for a New World
Just who
was this woman who began an educational
revolution that changed the way we think
about children more than anyone before or
since?
Maria
Montessori, born in 1870, was the first
woman in Italy to receive a medical
degree. She worked in the fields of
psychiatry, education and anthropology.
She believed that each child is born with
a unique potential to be revealed, rather
than as a "blank slate" waiting to be
written upon. Her main contributions to
the work of those of us raising and
educating children are in these areas:
-
Preparing the most natural and life
supporting environment for the child
-
Observing the child living freely in this
environment
-
Continually adapting the environment in
order that the child may fulfill his
greatest potential -- physically,
mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
THE
EARLY YEARS
Maria
Montessori was always a little ahead of
her time. At age thirteen, against the
wishes of her father but with the support
of her mother, she began to attend a boys'
technical school. After seven years of
engineering she began premed and, in 1896
became a physician. In her work at the
University of Rome psychiatric clinic Dr.
Montessori developed an interest in the
treatment of children and, for several
years, she worked, wrote, and spoke on
their behalf.
In 1907
she was given the opportunity to study
"normal" children, taking charge of fifty
poor children of the dirty, desolate
streets of the San Lorenzo slum on the
outskirts of Rome. The news of the
unprecedented success of her work in this
Casa dei Bambini "House of Children" soon
spread around the world, people coming
from far and wide to see the children for
themselves. Dr. Montessori was as
astonished as anyone at the realized
potential of these children:
Supposing
I said there was a planet without schools
or teachers, study was unknown, and yet
the inhabitants - doing nothing but living
and walking about - came to know all
things, to carry in their minds the whole
of learning: would you not think I was
romancing? Well, just this, which seems so
fanciful as to be nothing but the
invention of a fertile imagination, is a
reality. It is the child's way of
learning. This is the path he follows. He
learns everything without knowing he is
learning it, and in doing so passes little
from the unconscious to the conscious,
treading always in the paths of joy and
love
FROM
EUROPE TO THE UNITED STATES, INDIA, AND
THE REST OF THE WORLD
Invited
to the USA by Alexander Graham Bell,
Thomas Edison, and others, Dr. Montessori
spoke at Carnegie Hall in 1915. She was
invited to set up a classroom at the
Panama-Pacific Exposition in San
Francisco, where spectators watched
twenty-one children, all new to this
Montessori method, behind a glass wall for
four months. The only two gold medals
awarded for education went to this class,
and the education of young children was
altered forever.
During
World War II Dr. Montessori was forced
into exile from Italy because of her
anti-fascist views and lived and worked in
India. Her concern with education for
peace intensified and she was twice
nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Since her death an interest in Dr.
Montessori's methods have continued to
spread throughout the world. Her message
to those who emulated her was always to
turn one's attention to the child, to
"follow the child". It is because of this
basic tenet, and the observation
guidelines left by her, that Dr.
Montessori's ideas will never become
obsolete.
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