After years
of expression, mainly in pre-schools, Montessori philosophy is finally
being used as originally intended, as a method of seeing children as
they really are and of creating environments which foster the
fulfillment of their highest potential - spiritual, emotional, physical,
and intellectual - as members of a family, the world community and the
Cosmos.
Dr. Montessori gave the world a scientific method, practical and
tested, for bringing forth the very best in young human beings. She
taught adults how to respect individual differences, and to emphasize
social interaction and the education of the whole personality rather
than the teaching of a specific body of knowledge.
Montessori practice is always up-to-date and dynamic because
observation and the meeting of needs is continual and specific for each
child. When physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional needs are met
children glow with excitement and a drive to play and work with
enthusiasm, to learn, and to create. They exhibit a desire to teach,
help, and care for others and for their environment.
The high level of academic achievement so common in Montessori
schools is a natural outcome of experience in such a supportive
environment. The Montessori Method of education is a model which serves
the needs of children of all levels of mental and physical ability as
they live and learn in a natural, mixed-age group which is very much
like the society they will live in as adults.
Today Montessori teacher training centers and schools exist on all
continents. There are Montessori parenting classes, "Nidos" ("nests" for
infants), infant communities, "children's houses" (for age 3-6), and
classes for children up to age eighteen in public and private schools.
Montessori works in gifted and talented programs and for children with
developmental disabilities of all kinds. Many parents are using Dr.
Montessori's discoveries to raise/educate their children at home.
The discoveries of Maria Montessori are valuable for anyone living
and working with children in any situation.
(courtesy of http://www.montessori.edu/maria.html)
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.
"...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 have the clarity of vision to direct
and shape the future of human society.
- Maria
Montessori, Education for a New World
Maria Montessori: A Brief Biography
Montessori General Questions
