She is not a scientific pedagogue, in the current sense of the word, but she believes in that part of the practical science of anthropology called pedagogy. And with this ‘scientific pedagogy’ she wants to transform the world of the child into a kingdom of the new person.
Short biography
Maria Montessori was born on August 31, 1870 in Chiaravalle in the Ancona province of Italy. Her father’s name was Alessandro Montessori. He was a descendant of a noble family from Bologna, her mother was called Renilde Stoppani. Maria spent her childhood in Ancona, where she attended state school. When she was 12 years old, her parents moved to Rome. Her destiny was to become a teacher, but after some struggle with the authorities and actually against her father’s wishes, Maria became the first female medical student in Italy. In 1896 she received her doctorate in medicine. She started the first Casa dei Bambini [House of Children] in 1907 with sixty children, where she developed her method of raising children. She gave up her medical practice and her professorship and then devoted herself entirely to the further development of her method, also for children of primary school age.
In 1914 she visits America. She turns down an offer to stay there, meets Miss Helen Parkhurst, among others, who becomes a student of hers, but then goes her own way and develops the Dalton method. In 1914 she also gave lectures in the Netherlands. In 1919 she visited England for the first time and gave many courses there, as well as elsewhere.
When Mussolini came to power in her own country, her schools were finally closed after an initial period of cooperation. She moves her family to Spain, Barcelona, where she puts her ideas about the religious education of the child into practice. Driven out by the civil war, she finds peace in the Netherlands, where a Montessori center is established in Laren.
She died on May 6, 1952 in Noordwijk aan Zee at the age of 81. She is also buried there.
Montessori has traveled almost all over the world to spread her ideas.
Core of Maria Montessori’s pedagogy:
Liberation of the child through a new child-adult relationship. The shortest formula that could summarize Maria Montessori’s pedagogy is: Liberation of the child.
One of her latest books begins with the words: This book represents a link in our ongoing campaign to defend the deep power and the child.
The accidental discovery of the young child’s inner powers surprised her in the middle of life. Only then, after she had devoted herself to the sick and incomplete child for years, did she understand that her real life’s goal should be to raise the normal child. In long years of hard work after her discovery, she built up the method that made her famous.
But this method, which was originally understood as a new path of development of the young child through the use of carefully designed materials in a prepared environment, had at its core a new relationship between child and adult.
The direction of the adult’s gaze is wrong. He constantly sees the child’s mistakes , which he himself has provoked. He judges the child based on his disruptive behavior. The fundamental problem of education is therefore a social problem: there must be a new and better relationship between the two large parts of humanity: children and adults. The adult must discover within himself the hidden flaw that prevents him from seeing the child as he is.
This is how Montessori’s credo is: Through the child to a new world. It is a new world that only comes when the creative powers of the child are released by an educator who has a keen eye for the potential design, that carries within it the burning mass of the child’s mind. An educator who is willing and able to detect and apply the child’s developmental laws.
How did Montessori arrive at this vision?
She herself has repeatedly described the observation that led her to a change in her thinking. The first curiosity I saw was that a little girl of about three years was sliding our row of massive cylinders in and out of the block. I was amazed to see a small child doing the same exercise over and over again with utmost attention. She showed no progress in speed or dexterity; it was just a kind of continuous hand movement.
My habit of measuring things led me to count the number of times she repeated the exercise; then I wanted to see how long her remarkable concentration remained undisturbed. I told the teacher to let the other children sing and move around. They did so, but the little one did not stop her work for a moment. Then I carefully picked up the chair in which she was sitting and placed it, with the child, on a small table. She held the cylinders close to her and placed them on her knee to continue her task. From the moment I started counting, she had repeated the exercise forty-two times. She stopped as if waking from a dream and smiled contentedly. She looked around with glittering eyes. It seemed as if she had not noticed anything and so we had not been able to distract her. Now, for no apparent reason, her work was finished.
In her first description of this, Montessori included the following phrase: The expression on the child’s face was of such intense attention that it seemed to me like a revelation; hitherto none of the children had ever focused such sustained attention on the same object; and my conviction that unsteadiness of attention was a characteristic feature of the young child, who flutters restlessly from one thing to another, made me still more sensitive to this phenomenon. And it ends here: I believe that my unforgettable impression must have resembled the feeling of one who has made a discovery. Here, then, lies the key experience of Montessori for us: in the phenomenon of the polarization of the young child’s attention.
The children come into waves of activity . Writing explosions occur: after the preparatory exercises, the group of children suddenly starts writing [without having done so]. The same phenomenon occurs with reading. So there is a tremendous urge to know in the child, which, under favorable conditions, a well-prepared environment and the right material can lead to very great achievements. However, this work has no purpose beyond itself. The function of the work is: exercise of both mind and body, of hand and head. Hence the repetition of the exercise and, in later stages, the extension of the exercise into very complicated self-devised tasks: a boy who draws all the tributaries of the Rhine on millimeter paper; a girl who performs the desensitization of an entire book; a boy who multiplies numbers with twenty-five and thirty digits. Here is the pure motivation: the joy in the work itself and the joy of the inner result and not the fear of punishment or the hope of reward. Montessori calls this child: the normal child. It has been normalized through the method, through the work. Normalization does not come about exclusively through instinctive movement, but only when combined with concentration on a work that interests you.
Deviations occur when the child’s movements are hindered while he or she wants to be busy; when the adult unnecessarily imposes his will and when children are left to fend for themselves. Then precisely the phenomena of disorder occur, the cause of which is now so much the focus of attention is the term frustration due to neglect or indulgence, etc.
The normalized child not only appeared under the eyes of Montessori himself in 1907, but was noticed everywhere in Montessori classrooms all over the world. The difference between the image that Montessori gives us of the normal child and that of modern developmental psychology is therefore a matter of sampling. Montessori provides an image of normalized children; modern psychology of both normalized children and deviations. Modern psychology usually describes deviated children. Deviated children are those who are not normalized, i.e. those who do not [yet] show the symptoms of deep attention that Montessori noticed. This image therefore shows a mixture of character traits; a statistical picture of children raised under all possible circumstances, while Montessori, in her description of the child’s essence, accepts as characteristic only those aspects of behavior that the observation of the normalized child has shown her.
Montessori as witness to the ‘new’ child
The task that Montessori has accepted now becomes clearly visible: to find the means and methods to bring out the normalized child everywhere and to help him further in his life. Once the adult has first taken the beam out of his own eye and discovered the child’s potential, then the final revolution begins. A nonviolent revolution is this new education. If this succeeds, there will never be another revolution of violence. The revolution of violence is in its early stages.
Mankind begins to grab with its hands and destroy. But she ends up loving with the mind and serving. Now and then there comes a relapse, as in the last war, when loads of lead fell on cities to destroy them; these are incidents. The rule is to serve, to love in charity.
This is deep in man, to be brought out, it is his nature. The children, who were growing plants in the garden, now carefully watch their growth, count the leaves, measure the growth. It is no longer my plant, but the plant. This sublimation and love arise through knowledge and culture; through the penetration of the mind
Only work, concentration, which first gives knowledge and then love, will accomplish the great change. It is the revelation of the spiritual man: to know, to love and to serve. Preparation for this was: own experience and development, no exhortation. As soon as the intellect’s attention to details is there, love and desire come to know all the details, so that we can give our fullest care and not unknowingly disturb.
scientificity
Many psychologists and educationalists, who are interested in scientific-theoretical discussions, find little of interest in Montessor’s belief. It is therefore remarkable to read, in one of its early critics, Gunning, that one of the factors of Montessoris’ success was precisely its scientificity. Gunning means by this that she is inspired by a strict scientific spirit and that she has been capable of patient, unbiased observation of the child.
Montessori is trained as a doctor in natural sciences. Natural science is the positive science from which it expects a lot. She expresses this expectation clearly, especially in her first books. But this science is not there for itself. In the final analysis it is not about description, explanation and system of explanations. Positive science must be the handmaiden of human life. Indications must be found for the proper development of this life. The study of the unknown man must form the basis for the reform of education and society.
However, this scientific study also has a bad chance, because it is hampered by the prejudices that have accumulated about man over thousands of years. Observation and experiment alone are therefore insufficient.
Montessori is a keen observer. But her observations are not coolly matter-of-fact. They do not want to decipher the child’s soul with pure objectivity in order to collect and test scientific hypotheses . She strongly criticizes such a disinterested attitude. She searches for a science that could guide education and at the same time free the child from slavery. That is true experimental science.
Montessori therefore does not practice scientific pedagogy or psychology in the sense in which we use these terms today. She does not comment on the relationship between these two sciences and on the question of whether pedagogy is a science. The only thing that matters to her is the progress of science to better help people, especially children, in their development.
Decision
Anyone who reads her writings critically and has not known her can hardly escape the visionary effect that emanates from her. She is not a scientific pedagogue, in the current sense of the word, but she believes in that part of the practical science of anthropology called pedagogy. And with this scientific pedagogy she wants to transform the world of the child into a kingdom of the new person. Anyone who, in our pillarized Dutch educational world, would think that he cannot do anything with her in his pillar, has certainly misunderstood her. Because, humanist and Christian, both Protestant and Catholic, can no longer ignore her deep attention for the child without remaining poor themselves.