Maria Montessori
María Tecla Artemisia Montessori (Chiaravalle, province of Ancona, Italy, August 31, 1870-Noordwijk, Netherlands, May 6, 1952), better known as María Montessori, was a doctor, educator, psychiatrist and philosopher, as well as a humanist, feminist activist, Italian suffragist and devout Catholic. At the age of 26, in 1896, she became one of the first female doctors in Italy, not the first as she herself claimed. Later as an educator she was known for the philosophy of education that bears her name and her writings on scientific pedagogy. At a young age, she Montessori broke gender barriers and expectations when she enrolled in classes at an all-male technical school, hoping to become an engineer. She soon changed her mind and began medicine at the Sapienza University of Rome, where she graduated, with honors, in 1896. Her educational method is used today in many public and private schools throughout the world.
Trajectory
He was born on August 31, 1870 in Chiaravalle, province of Ancona, Italy, into a bourgeois Catholic family. His parents were Renilde Stoppani and Alessandro Montessori, a military professional. The family moved to Rome when he was 12 so that he could have a good education. At first they had thought that she would study teaching, the only professional opportunity for women at the time, but she considered other options.
She studied engineering at the age of 14, then biology, and finally was accepted into the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Rome "La Sapienza". In 1894 she won a well-paid prize for a paper on general pathology, in 1895 she won a position as a medical assistant in a women's hospital and another in a men's hospital without resources. She entered the psychiatric clinic of the University of Rome and began to transfer her thinking to other disciplines.
Despite economic and social difficulties, at age 26, in 1896, she became one of the first women to earn a medical degree in Italy. She later studied anthropology and earned a doctorate in philosophy, at the time in which he attended one of the first courses in experimental psychology. She developed her own classification of mental illnesses.
Six months before her first pedagogical intervention, on March 31, 1898, she had a secret son, Mario Montessori, the result of her relationship with her colleague Giuseppe Montesano, who was sent to be discreetly raised by a family in the countryside.
In 1898, at a pedagogical conference in Turin, he explained the importance of education and care for children with mental deficiencies and raised the relationship between child abandonment and the subsequent development of delinquency.
From this intervention, the Minister of Education, Guido Bacelli, proposed that he hold a series of conferences in Rome to present his ideas on the education of these children. Later, she founded a state school of speech-language music, of which she was the director of Montessori between 1899 and 1901. During this period, she was part of a group of teachers specialized in the observation and education of minors with disabilities.
Between 1898 and 1900 she worked with children considered mentally disturbed. He realized that these children had potential that, although diminished, could be developed and that they were worthy of a better life without representing a burden to society. At this moment he decided to dedicate himself to the children for the rest of his life. He observed the children of an institution for "ineducable" children playing with the crumbs of the food, because there were no other objects on the site. He saw that they did not eat them, but rather manipulated them and he realized that what they needed were objects to touch, that human beings need activity, reality, to cultivate their intelligence and personalities.
He later moved to London and Paris to study new methodologies. Back in Rome, he continued with his observations, developed a method based on the principles of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard and Édouard Séguin and began a series of new experiences in the field of reading and writing, a method that was positive for minors with disabilities. The set of his investigations gave him the opportunity to occupy the chair of pedagogical anthropology at the University of Rome, where he dedicated himself to teaching for several years.
Gradually he shifted his initial interest in children with intellectual disabilities to school-age children. From this displacement, in January 1907 Montessori founded the first Casa dei Bambini, a place where boys and girls had the opportunity to learn by following his innovative methods. In fact, the foundation of this first center was basically promoted by the Instituto Romano dei beni stabili, a social organization that sought to promote the rehabilitation of the San Lorenzo neighborhood of the Italian capital through the construction of modern buildings, since the inhabitants of this neighborhood lived in a great hygienic precariousness. The director of this organization, E. Talamo, knew of Montessori's experiences as a doctor and as an educator and thought it appropriate to entrust him with the management of a training center for children. In reality, the center was a pedagogical institution aimed at children between the ages of three and six who lived in the buildings of the Roman Institute. As Montessori acknowledges in her book "Il Bambini", "the initial project intended to bring together the children of the residents of a building in order to prevent them from taking the wrong stairs, mistreating the walls and planting the mess.” Upon accepting it, Maria Montessori set herself two objectives: on the one hand, to seek a better life for those who resided there, based on hygiene and family and social harmony; on the other, she pursued a pedagogical purpose. The main innovation of the Casa dei Bambini was to offer the little ones an adapted space where they could live all day accompanied by a governess, the parents were invited to enter the center and follow the work of their sons and daughters as long as they respected the manners and property of minors. As for the governess, she had the obligation to reside in the building in order to facilitate the cooperation with the fathers and mothers in their task of educating her children. It was in this first center (later transferred as a model to many others around the world) where Montessori began to apply the results of her studies, creating what we know as the Montessori Method.
From this small school founded in Via Marsi, in Rome, came a work that had worldwide echo in the educational media. At this time, it was extraordinary to associate the social and pedagogical aspects of early childhood education, as well as to defend the rights of children before adults. In 1909, Montessori published her seminal work on the method of scientific pedagogy applied to the education of children: "Il metodo della pedagogía científica applicato all 'educazione infantil nelle case dei bambini". Its repercussions were so important that the work was quickly translated into many languages. After the success of the Case dei Bambini he founded four new schools in Rome, and left the original school to expand the method, and in 1913 he organized international courses in Rome attended by a hundred educators from a wide variety of countries, confessions and political affiliations. All those professionals who learned about the method, either through the book or through one of the seminars, contributed to creating a favorable climate in the places where they came from. As a result of this propagation, the Società humanity established the Case dei Bambini of Milan in accordance with Montessori principles. He multiplied his travels throughout Europe, America and Asia, dictating conferences and organizing training courses, participating in congresses, establishing contacts with personalities. Rome, Milan, London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Barcelona, San Francisco, Madras or Karachi are some of the cities where all these events were organized. With all this he came to personally train more than five thousand students from all over the world. It is difficult to order chronologically all the trips he made, even so, it is possible to discern those that had a special influence on the fate of his work.
During World War I, he traveled often to the United States where he founded a teacher's college. With Alexander G. Bell, at that time considered the inventor of the telephone, and his daughter opened the first Case dei Bambini in the United States. There, schools multiplied and the American Montessori Association was formed, headed by Alexander G. Bell himself and Margaret Wilson, daughter of President Wilson.
The entry on the Montessori method was discontinued due to the intervention of Professor William Kilpatrick who, in 1914, wrote the book The Montessori System examined in which he declared that Montessori theory had become obsolete.
In 1915 he made a trip to the United States accompanied for the first time by his 17-year-old son Mario Montesori. It was the beginning of a permanent association between mother and son both at work and in personal life. On his return from America in 1917 Mario married Helen Christie and they lived in Barcelona. From the early 1920s her son occupied an increasingly important place in the life of Motessori. In 1929 both founded the International Montessori Association.
In 1926 the Royal School of the Montessori Method was founded with the support of Mussolini, schools and teacher training centers multiplied in Italy and spread to several countries, including Germany. Subsequently, she renounced Mussolini's help because of her desire to indoctrinate children with a warlike purpose, a principle that is incompatible with the concept of freedom, so fundamental in the method. Mussolini ordered all schools closed, and Adolf Hitler did the same in Germany.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out, the Montessori family left Barcelona and emigrated again to settle in the Netherlands in 1936, the year the Fascist government forced them into exile. Holland, specifically Amsterdam, the city that welcomed them, became the headquarters of the International Montessorian Association. There they met the banker Pierson with whom they associated to open a school.
During World War II, Montessori and her son took refuge in India, where they developed work with children over the age of six, starting Montessori elementary school.
The trip to India was at the invitation of the Madras-based Theosophical Society, arriving in Adyar, Madras in October 1939. Maria planned to organize a three-month course and return to Europe in 1940 but World War II made them extend their stay. Due to his Italian status, Mario was forced by the British government (which at that time dominated India), to enter a concentration (labor) camp for civilians in Ahmendnagar and also imposed restrictions on the movements of Maria Montessori. But on August 31, 1940 (Maria's birthday), the British released Mario.
For seven years, from 1939 to 1946, Maria Montessori stayed in India where she conducted 16 training courses and trained more than a thousand teachers. She spoke Italian and her son translated for her into English.
In 1946 he returned to Europe and after the conflict had subsided he rejoined the European circle, returning to Amsterdam. Mario married a second time to Ada Pierson, who had taken care of his family while he was in India.
María Montessori, accompanied by her son Mario, gave courses and conferences in London, Scotland, Rome, Berlin, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, the Netherlands and France. She established her residence in Noordwijk Aan Zee, the Netherlands, until her death at age 82, on May 6, 1952. She is buried in the Roman Catholic Cemetery in that city.
Personal life
Maria Montessori
On March 31, 1898, Maria secretly gave birth to a son with her colleague Giuseppe Montesano, who was cared for in the countryside by a family outside Rome. Maria visited him with some frequency but until Mario Montessori was 15 years old she did not know that she was his mother. She never publicly acknowledged him as her son. She at some point introduced him as her nephew and later as her adopted son. When he was 17 years old, Mario accompanied his mother to the United States, a trip that marked the beginning of a lifelong partnership between mother and son. In 1917 Mario married Helen Christie living in Barcelona. In the early 1920s he began to accompany her on all her tours and in 1929 the two founded the International Montessori Association (AMI) to supervise the activities of schools around the world. Until his death on October 10, 1982 he continued to run the association.
Defense of women's rights:
María established a relationship with feminist groups fighting for the political and civil rights of women and in the autumn of 1896, barely graduated in medicine, she was invited to be part of the Italian delegation that would attend the Congress on Women's Rights in Berlin.
I speak on behalf of six million Italian women,said Montessori, “who work in factories and farms eighteen hours a day for pay that is often half what men receive. men for doing the same work, and sometimes even less. (Op. cit., p. 35).
She also defended the right of single women to enter the world of work and their right to decide on marriage and control of their assets, since then hoisting the banner of pay equity between women and men.
At an International Congress of Women in London (1890) she denounced the living conditions of rural schoolteachers in Italy and of children forced to work in the mines in Sicily. In this way, she related feminism to social demands and, when exposing her ideas about the role of women as promoters of change, she insisted on their right to education, knowledge, factory and intellectual work, to vote and to decide about life in couple and maternity conditions. (Op. cit., pp. 58-60).
In 1908, she attended the First Congress of Italian Women in Rome and presented the paper, “Sexual morality in education”, supporting the need for sexual education to free women from puritanism and of the morality that enslaves them “to the role of caretakers and mothers, ignorant of life and its problems, infantile in their thoughts and in their consciences”. (Op. cit., p. 104).
The book "For the cause of Women" contains nine texts in which the author defends and promotes a model of a "new woman", aware of their potential and architect of their own destiny. In her texts, she defends the right to vote and education, equal treatment at work and in marriage, reflecting the first steps of female emancipation in Europe.
Influences received:
While developing her pedagogical work, Montessori discovered the work of two French physicians, Jean Itard (1774-1838) and Eduardo Séguin (1812-1880). The first of these is considered the "father" of the new pedagogy, which establishes the importance of observation in children and understands that nothing can be imposed on children, and the second created exercises and materials to help the child to develop their faculties, in addition to studying the case of the so-called wild child of Aveyron. Later, he became acquainted with the works of the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827). Pestalozzi emphasized the preparation of the teacher, who must first achieve a change in his person and must have love for his work. There must also be love between the child and the teacher.
Educational proposal
Among other points, Montessori says that education is based on a triangle:
- ENVIRONMENT PREPARED: students choose freely within a number of activities appropriate for their development. Montessori said that "Freedom is activity and activity is the basis of life..." The environment not only refers to physical space, but also to the persons with whom the child relates and the activities and guidelines that arise in that space. It is raised according to the specific needs of each stage and each element has its reason to be in development. According to the International Montessori Institute of Barcelona, some of the benefits of conception prepared and directly linked to the child-environmental relationship are the following:
- Independence
Like the ability to do something ourselves. In the Montessori environment, constructive activities are offered that respond to the developmental needs of the child and, through these, the child can achieve different degrees of independence. When autonomy develops, interests and needs are satisfied.
-Adaptation
During his development, the child adapts and recognizes the conditions of the environment in which he has lived. The child lives a different relationship with the environment that surrounds him, makes it part of himself.
-Free choice
Children choose the material they have at their disposal, according to their inner needs, which facilitates the observation of trends and their psychic needs.
-Concentration
Concentration is the starting point in the learning process, all your energy is focused on a job in which mind and actions are directed towards development. The child will be attracted to materials that appeal to sensory interest, such as color. However, as he gains more experience, he will move from the familiar to increasingly intellectual work.
- Control and coordination of movements
Movement is essential for the development of the child, not only the physical aspect benefits, but the mind also develops.
-Montessori Materials
The materials are necessary for the child to achieve concentration. The objects represent a need for the child, he is the one who chooses them and it is through them that he builds himself. The fact that the objects can be transported, used and put back in their place, gives the environment an attractive and irresistible character.
- Trust / Security
One of the benefits is the feeling of confidence and security. When feeling this orderly, predictable space, with established routines; his spirit grows and his energy advances towards his own development. In the prepared environment there is a calm that allows the manifestation of the true nature of each child.
- Development of the will
The ability to choose something with intention develops gradually during the first phase of life and is strengthened through practice. This develops free choice, an indispensable component of the will.
- Social conscience
The prepared environment favors the socialization of the child by allowing the development of two very important social qualities: respect and waiting. Both enter the child's life as an experience that matures over time.
- Ecological Awareness
The child must be in contact with Nature; this allows you to experiment with it immediately.
- Love
- Child-Ambiente ratio: The environments are presented differently to meet the specific needs, is managed by the same students, so that they feel their own and where the dynamics of the classroom are transformed into their habitat.
Love is about respect, freedom with responsibility, with limits and structure. Value it, faith, trust, patience. Know your needs. Empathy.
Love: the ability to give the child the possibility of awakening his spirit and then provide him with the means that correspond to this awakening. It is not a pedagogical method, it is the discovery of man. He discovered that it is the child who can form the man with the best or worst characteristics of him. «The child needs to be recognized, respected and helped. The child is the father of the man. He discovered qualities that exalt the man in the child, such as character, moral force and strength of personality, present from early childhood although they must be developed. The child's right to protest and give an opinion must be respected: this entails the capacities of observation, analysis and synthesis. We need to provide them with the means to develop them.
He used Edouard Séguin's materials in the hospital, and based on these he developed his own materials. He had two assistants without any teaching preparation, without prejudices or preconceived ideas. These two years are the base of his knowledge. He got the children to take the state test: they got results similar to those of normal children. He came to the conclusion that the normal child is underdeveloped.
He elaborated scientific Pedagogy: based on observation and the scientific method, he elaborated his materials and his philosophy. As the socioeconomic situation in Italy improved, social interest housing was made. Children three to six years old did not go to school and the builders worried because they would destroy the facilities; As a result of this, the Minister of Education requested the help of María Montessori to treat these children. On January 6, 1907, the first Children's House was inaugurated in San Lorenzo, in Rome. It began by creating the area of practical life (hygiene and manners) restoring dignity to the child. The children concentrated and repeated the exercise, the toys did not attract them, they were for leisure time. They refused rewards and punishments, the children obtained the satisfaction of doing their work alone. Little by little, the rebellious children normalized, they became kind, respectful, they learned with interest and enthusiasm. They were 60 children. Instead of imposing arbitrary rules and stuffing their heads with data, their spirit was left free. When at four and five years old they learned to read and write as a natural process, the world was shocked. Thus, San Lorenzo stopped being a control center for children and became a research center where the child was developed with dignity, freedom and independence. They had the freedom to be active and the responsibility to know how to use this freedom.
- 1909: first course of guides Montessori. This first course was attended by people from all professions. At the end of the course, at the request of the Franchetti Barons, he writes his first book The method of scientific pedagogy. It establishes the development of the materials and the basis of their method.
- 1912: Alexander Graham Bell and his daughter invite Montessori to the United States and open the first house of the children in that country. Schools in America. The American Montessori Association, headed by Bell and Margaret Wilson, daughter of President Woodrow Wilson, are multiplied and formed. This boom in the Montessori method in the United States ends abruptly when William Heard Kilpatrick in 1914 writes the book The Montessori System Examined in which he declared Montessori theory obsolete and, with harsh criticism, exterminates it. Kilpatrick was a renowned professor at Columbia University and his words had a profound impact on the thinking of his colleagues. In this same year he writes Self-education in Primary School.
- 1915: International Conference in Rome, to which many people are impressed by the age to which children from the House of Children learn to read and write.
- 1926: the Royal Montessori Method School is founded with the support of Benito Mussolini. Schools and training centers are multiplied in Italy. They also start appearing in countries like Germany. Later, Montessori renounces the help of Mussolini, who wanted to indoctrination the children for their war purposes, which is incompatible with the fundamental freedom in his philosophy. The Duce commands to close all schools, as well as Hitler in Germany. Abandona Italy and goes to Barcelona at the age of 64, where it has to start from the beginning (1934).
- 1929: he founded the AMI, which would be responsible for safeguarding the legacy of Dr. Montessori. Its headquarters is in the Netherlands. Mario Montessori continues to lead her, and then her granddaughter Renilde Montessori happens to her. In 2007 the president is the Belgian André Robertfroid who was director of UNICEF.
- 1935: in Barcelona (Spain) it develops methods for catechesis (religion). The Spanish civil war begins, flees from Barcelona and settles in the Netherlands, where its work begins again.
- 1938: publishes his book The child, the secret of childhood.
- 1939: The Theosophical Society of India invites India, and goes with its son Mario. In the short, the Second World War breaks out and it must remain there. At that time the English dominated India and although they allowed it to continue working, they did not let it go. They send your child to a concentration camp (working) in India. Meanwhile, she works with primary school children and applies her 1912 book method.
- 1939: When he lives in India, he develops work with the children of workshop and begins the Montessori primary. He then explained that the adult can only offer the child the necessary means and teach him to use them and that he must develop himself. Development is personal and no one can do it for another. At this time his interest is born for children from 0 to 3 years old. He says that education must begin from birth. It develops the Child Communities as a proposal to replace nurseries. At the end of the war he returned to Holland and resumed the spread of his ideas. More Montessori schools are opened, and the movement begins worldwide. He receives the Legion of Honour of France for his outstanding work in the field of education, as well as the Honoris Causa decoration of the University of Amsterdam and is proposed three times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
- 1940: He worked together with Rabindranath Tagore.
Because he had lived through three wars, he wondered about the future of humanity. He said that "salvation is found in the child." He lived and worked for and because of his convictions that the child was a different being and that he had to be helped to develop. All his life he studied, worked and spread his philosophy.
She lived the rest of her life in the Netherlands, where the headquarters of AMI, or Association Montessori International, is located. Her son Mario headed this company until his death in 1982.
Maria Montessori died in Noordwijk aan Zee in 1952, shortly before a planned visit to Africa, invited by the president of Ghana.
Montessori Method
The Montessori Method of education has been applied successfully with all kinds of children and is very popular in many parts of the world, despite criticism in the early 1930s and 1940s XX.
In 1907 Montessori established the first Children's House, Casa dei Bambini, in Rome. As early as 1913, there was intense interest in his method in the US, interest which later waned. Nancy McCormick Rambusch revived the method in the US, establishing the American Montessori Society in 1960.
Basic principles of the method
- The absorbing mind of children: the mind of the child has a wonderful and unique capacity, has the ability to absorb knowledge. They learn everything unconsciously, gradually passing from the unconscious to consciousness. They are compared to a sponge, with the difference that the sponge has a limited absorption capacity, while the child's mind is infinite.
- Sensitive periods: refers to periods in which children can acquire a skill very easily. These are sensitivities that allow children to get into the external world in an exceptional way. These moments are passengers and are limited to the acquisition of a certain knowledge. Maria Montessori describes them as follows:
- the sensitive period of language, which is approximately between 2 months and 6 years old,
- the sensitive period of movement coordination (± from 18 months to 4 years),
- the sensitive period of order (± from birth to 6 years),
- the sensitive period of sharpening of the senses (± from 18 months to 5 years),
- the sensitive period of social behavior (± from 2 and a half to 6 years),
- the sensitive period of small objects (a very short period during the second year).
- The autonomy of children: a way of motivating children and waking up their desire to learn is summarized in Maria Montessori's formula: "Help me do it alone". The material is placed at the height of the child so that he can take it and save it alone. The adult only intervenes when the child asks for help. Thus, autonomy has been favoured since the first years.
- The prepared environment: refers to an environment that has been carefully organized for the child, designed to foster better learning and growth. It develops the social, emotional and intellectual aspects and responds to the needs of order and security. The design of these environments is based on the principles of beauty and order. They are bright and warm spaces, including language, plants, art, music and books. The specific teaching material of practical life, sensory life, language and mathematics is an essential element of the prepared environment.
- The role of the adult: the role of the adult in the Montessori Philosophy is to guide the child, make it known a good and comfortable environment. Be an observer, be constantly learning and personal development. The true educator is at the service of the child by educating and cultivating in him humility, responsibility and love.
- Self-education: it is achieved by creating a free environment, self-correcting materials that children can identify their mistakes and learn from them, taking into account the senses, as these go through different sensitive periods.
- Pair aid: Montessori promotes that when the child has a doubt, first consult his peers, then a senior partner, then a book and if not then go to the adult. This way the child gains independence and often manages to solve his problem without going to the adult, thus gaining independence.
Works
- The children's house (1907)
- The method of the Montessori pedagogy (1909).
- (1912) ed. The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in the Children's Houses
- Pedagogical anthropology (1913)
- Dra's personal manual. Montessori (1914).
- Practical Manual of the Montessori Method General ideas on the method (1915)
- (1921) ed. Italian: Manuale di pedagogia scientifica
- Advanced method Montessori (2 v. 1917)
- The child in the Church (1929)
- The Mass explained to the children (1932)
- Education and peace (1934).
- Psychogeometry (1934) in Spanish
- (2011) English: Psycho Geometry
- The Secret of Children (1936)
- (1947) Education for a New World
- (1970) ed. Italian: Educazione per un mondo nuovo
- (1947) To Educate the Human Potential
- (1970) ed. Italian: Come educare il potenziale umano
- General ideas about my method (1948, editorial Losada, Buenos Aires)
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