Maria Montessori

Works

• 1909The Montessori Method

  Describes the work of the first Case dei Bambini: sensory materials, freedom of movement and choice, and a teacher who observes instead of instructing.

• 1949The Absorbent Mind

  Based on lectures given in India: in the first years of life the child absorbs language and culture from the environment without effort, and education should support this self-construction.

Position

Montessori is on the map as a physician who made early education a field of systematic observation. Her method rests on the idea that children construct themselves through their own activity: in a prepared environment, with self-correcting sensory materials and the freedom to choose and repeat their work, they develop concentration and independence, while the teacher observes, prepares and steps back. In later writings she described the “absorbent mind” of early childhood, “sensitive periods” for language, order and movement, and education as a contribution to peace. John and Evelyn Dewey described and assessed the method in “Schools of To-Morrow” (1915), and Gandhi visited her schools and spoke at her training college in 1931. William Heard Kilpatrick’s critique of 1914, which found her psychology outdated and her materials too narrow for imagination and social learning, contributed to the decline of the method in the United States until its revival in the late 1950s. Her strict control over training in the method has also been criticised. Her relationship with fascism is also discussed critically: from 1923 she sought the regime’s support, Mussolini was honorary president of the Opera Nazionale Montessori from 1924, and only the break of 1933–34 ended the collaboration (E. Moretti, The Best Weapon for Peace, 2021).

Life & context

Maria Montessori was born on 31 August 1870 in Chiaravalle near Ancona and grew up in Rome. She studied natural sciences and then medicine at the University of Rome and graduated in 1896, one of the first women in Italy to do so. At the university’s psychiatric clinic she worked with children with intellectual disabilities, studied the methods of Jean Itard and Édouard Séguin and in 1900–01 co-directed a school for training their teachers. Her son Mario was born in 1898 and grew up at first with a foster family. She then studied philosophy and anthropology and lectured on pedagogical anthropology. On 6 January 1907 she opened the first Casa dei Bambini in the San Lorenzo district of Rome; her book on the method followed in 1909. Training courses and lecture tours, including one to the United States in 1913, spread her work internationally. After Mussolini came to power she sought the backing of his regime: her method was included in Giovanni Gentile’s school reform of 1923, and in 1924 the Opera Nazionale Montessori was founded with Mussolini as honorary president; in 1929 she founded the Association Montessori Internationale. After the break of 1933–34 she left Italy; the Opera was shut down, and Montessori education lost state support there, though it was not officially banned (the Stanford Encyclopedia dates the end of the relationship to 1936). She lived in Barcelona and the Netherlands, spent 1939–46 in India, where her son was interned as an enemy alien during the war, and died on 6 May 1952 in Noordwijk aan Zee.

Further main works

• Pedagogical Anthropology (Antropologia pedagogica, 1910)
• The Advanced Montessori Method (L’autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari, 1916)
• The Secret of Childhood (L’enfant, 1936)
• Education and Peace (Educazione e pace, 1949)