Dr. Maria Montessori: A Brief Sketch
“With Dr. Maria Montessori there came into the sphere of education a new and vital impulse. There is not a civilized country which has not, in some measure, felt the impact of her vivifying principles”.
These are the words of Professor EM Standing of London University and biographer of Dr Montessori.
Montessori’s influence has opened a new chapter in the realm of child care, understanding and education and has revealed new possibilities and potentials towards a reconstruction of human society. It is an influence that has not waned over the years.
In 1907, with the establishment of her first school, “the name Montessori flashed like a comet across the sphere of education”. Today, that name is still in the forefront of educational experience all over the world, revealing new meaning to man’s growing understanding of himself and his needs and problems.
Neither in her childhood, growing up or education was there any promise that in the hands of this woman would be placed the “key which would unlock immense treasures for humanity”.
Born in the small town of Chariavalle, Italy, Maria Montessori was the only child of stern Alesandra Montessori; a man decorated for military valour and Renilde Stoppani her devout mother, daughter of a famous philosopher, scientist and priest. Together they directed Maria’s impulsive nature wisely yet lovingly. She was reared on principles of obedience, courtesy and duty. Love and concern for the downtrodden and distressed were instilled early in her nature in all kinds of practical ways. Thus were fostered in her qualities of patience and compassionate understanding which later in life drew her to spheres of experience from which surged forth her wonderful genius. There was a natural trait of leadership which was manifested even in those early years.
Anxious to give their only child the best possible education, Maria’s parents moved to Rome when she was twelve. At fourteen, Maria decided to take up engineering as a career. She had a great aptitude for mathematics-an aptitude and affection which lasted all through life. Her parents, trying to guide the young adolescent, suggested she take up teaching – the only career in those days open and suitable to women. But this was emphatically turned down with the determined words – “Anything but a teacher”. Little did she know that that was exactly what she was destined to become – a Teacher of Teachers, the guide, light and inspiration of thousands of them throughout the world.
Maria was enrolled in a boy’s technical school, the only girl to do so in the whole of Italy. Until her ambitions altered, this strong willed young girl endured the formidable experience. She later fixed her mind upon studying medicine. Now she faced real difficulties – a woman doctor was unthinkable and unheard of! Her father refused to cooperate as did the authorities at medical colleges. Only her mother had unfailing faith in her daughter’s capabilities. Facing rebuffs, refusing to be intimidated Maria became the only female in Italy to gain admission to the Medical College in Rome. In 1896 she emerged the first woman Doctor of Medicine in Italy. Finally recognizing his daughter’s brilliance, Maria’s estranged father was reconciled.
The following ten years were an interlude between this early development and the final blossoming into the future it was her destiny to create. She was steadily marching to meet her future which lay in other directions. Maria, at that time, had no idea she would find her life’s mission in the sphere of education. Taken as a whole, her life demonstrates the principle she was to preach later “the preparations of life are indirect.”
Dr. Montessori’s biographer, EM Standing says, “In the whole history of education, from the time of Plato to the present day there is no episode more remarkable than the series of happenings which came into being, one after the other, during the next six months.
In her own words, she expressed, “I set out to work like a peasant woman who, having set aside a good store of seed corn, has found a fertile field in which she may freely sow it. But I was wrong, I had hardly turned over the clods of my field, when I found gold instead of wheat: the clods concealed a precious treasure, I was not the peasant I had thought myself. Rather, I was like foolish Aladdin who, without knowing it, had in his hand a key that would open hidden treasures”.
What she had succeeded in doing quite accidentally was to discover a “new” child, with a nature and capacity never attributed so far to children. Realizing the peculiarly absorbent nature of the child’s mind, she has prepared for him a special environment and then placing the child within it, has given him freedom to “live” in it, absorbing what he finds there. The dynamic link between the child and the environment is the trained Directress who must make the environment come alive. It is for her to see that points of contact are established between it and the minds of the children. The response of children then is almost magical! A “new” child emerges; a higher form of personality is liberated.
These small children three years onwards show themselves capable of working with amazing mental concentration, totally absorbed in intelligent activity and following an inner urge to repeat that activity several times.
- Another trait was love for order; still another, that children could act independently and exercise free choice.
- The children soon revealed that they preferred purposeful work to play, that they were basically indifferent to rewards or punishments, that they could keep, and even love, silence and had a great sense of personal dignity.
- The most amazing factor was that out of freedom to work, to choose work and to repeat an activity as long and as often as needed resulted in a spontaneous discipline and not chaos.
On the academic side, the children showed an amazing capacity to absorb culture from the earliest years and through a preparation of mechanical and mental ability to explode into writing and reading with the ease to abstract mathematical formulae and use them with order and precision and to show intelligently respond to basic lesson in geometry, geography, history, botany, zoology and science.
All this between the ages of 3 to 6!
The results has been not only a method of education which is now applied in several countries but a whole new psychology of the human individual, knowing which can influence parents, adults, doctors, nurses, social workers and all those working for the child towards better results in their work.
Dr Montessori worked ceaselessly to demonstrate that the human potential was the same everywhere; that the same principles of her method could be applied in any country at any level of development because growth was the mystical power within man everywhere and education was simply “an aid to life”.
Her researches continued throughout her life and she incorporates her theories in the many books she wrote and published. She was still writing them when death intervened suddenly and peacefully.
On 6th May 1952 this marvelous woman, nearly 82 years old, died and the dynamic spirit quietly slipped out to soar other heights!
“ It seems clear enough that nature lays down a plan for the construction both of personality and of social life, but this plan becomes realized only through the children’s activity when they are placed in circumstances favourable to its fulfillment. ”
