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HISTORY:  MARIA MONTESSORI

“When I was at school we had a teacher who made us learn by the heart the lives of famous women to incite us to imitate them. The exhortation was always the same: ‘You too should try to become famous. Would you not like to?’

“Oh no,” I replied one day, “I care too much for the children of the future to add yet another biography to the list.”   In spite of this praiseworthy desire, fame did come to the schoolgirl who spoke those words.

Maria Montessori was born at Chiaravalle in Italy on 31 August 1870.

Her father, Alessandro, was a military man commended for bravery in action. Maria’s mother was Renilde Stoppani, a lady of singular piety and charm. She and her daughter were close.

There are still some people who think the Montessori method is about allowing children to do what they like. This was not the method employed in Maria’s home: her mother believed in discipline.  Once after returning from a month’s holiday, little Maria complained she was hungry. “You must wait a little while, dear,” her mother replied.  But the child became so insistent her mother, opening a cupboard and finding a piece of bread left there a month earlier, said: “If you can’t wait take this.”

Maria’s childhood  was spent in Ancona where she attended the usual state school. One day she met one of her companions crying bitterly because she hadn’t been moved up into another class.  “I couldn’t understand this,” Montessori said, “because, as I told her, one room seemed to me just as good as another.” 

Maria must have seemed a rather odd and puzzling child. When playing with her school friends she’d sometimes make unexpected remarks. To express her disapproval she’d exclaim contemptuously: “You! Why you’re not even born yet!”

Maria had a great sense of personal dignity even as a child.  One day one of the teachers spoke disparagingly about the expression in her eyes within her earshot. In protest Maria never raised “those eyes” in the presence of that teacher again. The incident is worth recording in view of the great importance Montessori placed, in her system, on treating even the smallest child with a respect amounting almost to reverence. 

When Maria was 12, her parents moved to Rome and suggested she take up teaching, practically the only career open to women at the time. She refused to consider it.

Since she had an aptitude for mathematics, she decided to become an engineer – unheard of for women in those days. “High-class seminaries for young ladies” didn’t cater for such an unusual ambition so Maria attended a technical school for boys. But in time she decided what she really wanted was to study medicine. 

A young lady to attend a medical school! Preposterous, impossible. But Maria didn’t care. She was duly admitted to the medical faculty of the university – the first woman medical student in Italy. She won scholarships and gave private tuition, thus largely paying her own way through university.

Once admitted to the faculty of medicine, jealous male students subjected her to a series of petty persecutions. She confronted her tormentors with such pluck that in time persecution changed to grudging admiration. Students passing her in the corridors used to emit a contemptuous “Pooh!”  “Blow away my friends,” she would reply. “The harder you blow the higher up I shall go.” 

Maria had to face other, more terrifying difficulties. It wasn’t considered proper for a girl to dissect bodies in front of men, so she was obliged to spend many hours alone among the corpses, often at night.  Her way was made still more difficult by her father’s disapproval of her chosen career. 

One day, overwhelmed by despair, she decided to abandon the unequal struggle and left the dissecting room with her mind made up to seek another career.

Her way home led through a park. She passed a beggar-woman accompanied by a child of about two. As Montessori approached, the mother tuned up her professional whine, but the child, quite unconcerned, continued to sit on the ground playing with a piece of coloured paper.

There was something in the child’s expression – so serenely happy in the possession of that worthless scrap of coloured paper – that it brought an unexpected sensation to the student watching.

Moved by emotions she couldn’t explain, she went straight back to the dissecting room. From that moment, her revulsion for the work in those uncongenial surroundings left her, never to return. She never again doubted her vocation. 

Happily too, the estrangement between father and daughter ended in a dramatic manner. It was a tradition for graduates to deliver a public lecture after the first year. Prejudice was still running high and many in the audience had come to criticise. I felt like a lion-tamer that day,” Montessori said later. 

A friend of her father ran into him and asked: “Aren’t you coming to the lecture?” “What lecture?” replied the father. Alessandro was persuaded to attend. Maria was so brilliant all opposition was swept away and she received a great ovation. Her father found himself the centre of congratulations.

Maria Montessori became the first woman in Italy to take the degree of doctor of medicine.  

In the following 10 years Maria was appointed assistant doctor at the University of Rome Psychiatric Clinic. Part of her duty was to visit the asylums. It was in this way she was led to take an interest in “idiot children” who at that period, were classed with the insane. 

In one of the asylums Maria asked the woman who looked after the children why she held them in such contempt. “Because,” the woman replied, “as soon as their meals are finished, they throw themselves on the floor to search for crumbs.”

Maria looked around and saw there were literally no objects the children could hold and manipulate.  There existed for these poor creatures, she realised, one path only towards intelligence and that was through their hands. Instinctively they had sought that path by the only means in their reach.

The more Montessori came in contact with these children the more strongly she came to differ from the generally accepted views with regard to them. She came to believe their mental condition could be immensely improved with special educational treatment. 

In 1899 Montessori shared her beliefs at a conference, which led to a series of lectures in Rome on the education of the feeble-minded.  As a result there came into being a state school for “hopelessly deficient” children, which she headed for two years.

She prepared her group of teachers “in a special method of observation and in the education of feeble-minded children.”  She also gave herself entirely to teaching the children herself.  She’d spend from 8am to 7pm with them and then sit up late making notes. 

From the start, she felt her methods “had nothing in them peculiarly limited to the instruction of idiots.”

She believed they contained educational principles “more rational than those generally in use.” In fact it was “because they were more rational that through their means an inferior or mentality was enabled to develop.” 

Under her skilful direction, the children developed remarkably. A number of them learnt to read and write so well they presented themselves with success at an examination taken with normal children. Seven years were to pass before her theories were put into more general practice. During this time, she went back to university to study philosophy and psychology. 

In the 10 years that followed Dr Montessori’s graduation in 1896, she conducted a study of the nervous diseases of children, occupied the chair of hygiene at the Magistero Femminil women’s college in Rome from 1896 to 1906 and, in 1904, was made a professor at the University of Rome where she occupied the chair of anthropology for four years.

She also practised in the clinics and hospitals in Rome and carried on a private practice of her own.But in 1906 Montessori, then 36, was hardly heard of outside her immediate circle. By 1908 her name would be known all over the world. She had made a great discovery. 

In Rome there was a slum district known as the San Lorenzo quarter. A building society constructed two large blocks of flats at its heart. More than 1,000 poor people were installed on condition they observed certain rules.Soon a problem arose. Most of the parents were away at work during the day and the younger children, left to their own devices, generally created disorder. It was decided to collect them in one room and pay someone to look after them.

Authorities decided Dr Montessori was the best person to direct the work.She saw in the job the fulfilment of a long-cherished hope: the opportunity to work with normal children. 

Dr Montessori had tables made, with chairs to match, instead of school desks which were universally in use at that time.  She also had little armchairs made and had scientific materials prepared similar to those she’d used in the institution. 

When she’d worked with the institution children she’d found the materials useful in arousing their interest but she had to use all her energy to persuade them to continue working with them. With normal children things happened differently.  In fact it was the materials that made all the difference. The children chose them and worked with them spontaneously. 

One day Montessori was observing a child of three who was occupying herself with some graded wooden cylinders which had to be slipped in and out of corresponding sockets in a wooden block. She was amazed to find this tiny girl showing a concentration so profound it seemed to have isolated her mentally from the rest of her environment.

Montessori asked the teacher to make other children sing aloud and dance round her. But the child didn’t even seem conscious of this disturbance. Then Montessori gently picked up the armchair with the girl in it and placed her on a table. The child continued her task as if nothing had happened.  Montessori counted the number of times the child repeated the exercise. It was 42. Then quite suddenly she stopped, “as though coming out of a dream.” And strangely enough, she appeared to be rested rather than fatigued. 

This was later to become one of the fundamental principles of the Montessori method: the reliance on the schoolroom on the spontaneous interest of children as the mainspring of their work.

The love for order isn’t a characteristic usually associated with small children. Here again, a surprise was in store. The materials with which the children worked were kept in a large, locked cupboard. The teacher distributed the materials and later put them away again.

The teacher noticed the children – however often she told them to remain in their places – followed her to the cupboard and solemnly stood round her watching her put the objects back.  This seemed to her to be deliberate disobedience. But Montessori realised what they really wanted was to put the things back themselves so she left them free to do it. They revelled in keeping the environment in order. 

Later Montessori saw in this love of order in small children an example of the “law of sensitive periods in development”.  This was the sensitive period for order which lasts from about the age of 12 months to 3½ years. Montessori was quick to realise without this love of order it would be impossible to grant choice of occupation and liberty of movement to a group of 40 small children without chaos ensuing. 

One day the teacher arrived late. She had forgotten to lock the cupboard the evening before and she found the children had opened the cupboard doors. Some were standing looking on in a meditative sort of way, others were helping themselves to materials, others had already done so and were taking them away, while a fourth group was already busily at work with materials at their own places. The teacher was angry with the children and wished to punish them for “stealing.”

Again Montessori saw deeper into their motives. She realised these children, who already knew how to use the materials, were in a position to be able to choose some materials in preference to others.  This was in fact what they had done.  That they had no intention of “stealing” was evident from the fact they regarded the putting back of the material chosen into its right place as an essential part of the cycle of activity. 

This was the beginning of the principle of “free choice of activity” that became such a vital part of the Montessori system.

Soon after this Montessori replaced the one big, locked cupboard with lots of little and attractively painted cupboards placed round the room at children’s level. In these the materials were so displayed that the children could easily see, choose, take and replace them without the need of adult assistance. This formed an important step towards their more complete independence. 

We usually think of play as the natural, spontaneous expression of the child’s personality and of work as something which has to be imposed.  But now came another astonishing revelation.

Some of Dr Montessori’s rich friends had presented her with a number of expensive toys. She placed them in the room with the children, making them as easily accessible as the materials for work. The children never chose the toys. Montessori was so astounded she showed them how to play with these toys. The children showed an interest for a time, then went away. “They never made such toys the object of spontaneous choice,” she said. 

In this way, Montessori was led to one of the most revolutionary discoveries of all – children prefer work to play.  

The teacher devised a system of reward and punishment. One day, Montessori came into the room and found a child sitting in one of the armchairs and on his breast he wore a “pompous decoration” the teacher had prepared as a reward. As it turned out, this particular child was actually being punished.

What had happened was a boy, decorated for good behaviour, had taken his medal off and pinned it to the breast of the young malefactor. The former regarded his decoration as a thing of little worth, apt to get in his way when working. The culprit, for his part, looked around complacently without feeling at all disgraced by his punishment.  This struck Montessori as anomalous. After a great number of experiments, the teacher realised the children set no store by these rewards and punishments and abandoned the practice.   

Most people think of children as noisy creatures. It was therefore a real revelation when Montessori discovered children have a great love for silence.  

One day Montessori decided to teach the children how to blow their noses. She showed them how to do it politely as possible, with as little noise as possible, and how to take out the handkerchief unobtrusively so the action remains more or less unnoticed.  The children followed her demonstration with silent interest.  When the lesson was finished, they broke forth into genuine heartfelt applause.

Montessori was completely amazed until it dawned on her the question she’d touched on was one children too often o\associate with derision and humiliation.  No one had ever quietly and calmly taught them how to do it without criticising them or reprimanding them at the same time.  

This was the first of many similar experiences which led Montessori to realise even very small children have a profound sense of personal dignity and if adults neglect to respect it “their souls may remain wounded, ulcerated and oppressed in a way adults seldom realise. Perhaps none of the things that took place during these wonderful months made more impression than the fact that a number of these children – ages 4-5 – “burst spontaneously into writing” without having been taught.  

So great a wonder would not remain long hidden!  The strange happenings in the heart of the slum quarter of San Lorenzo began to be talked about. A second children’s house was set up in another tenement building and the same wonders began to reveal themselves.

Soon visitors were making their way through the drab streets of San Lorenzo to see these astonishing children for themselves. Not only teachers came, but members of the royal family downwards. Queen Margherita of Savoy was one of the earliest to show an interest. 

The media soon discovered something was happening that was “news”, and before long, tidings flew, first all over Italy and then all over the world. Visitors began to arrive from the four quarters of the globe to observe these phenomenal children “so frank and free and able to write at 4 without any forcing or fatigue”.

Many of those who came to observe wrote books on what they’d seen. The general drift was the Montessori method had revealed a “New Child”. 

Meanwhile Montessori’s writings were being rapidly translated into many languages. Five versions were made in Russia alone where a Montessori school was opened in St. Petersburg for the children of the imperial family and court. Before long, schools were opened in places as far apart as China, Japan and Canada.

With astonishing swiftness, Dr Montessori’s ideas took root. In certain countries they even led to a new form of architecture. In Germany, Austria, America, Holland, India and Italy, special “Children’s Houses” were built in which everything was constructed in proportion to the dimensions and needs of children, not of adults. There’s no doubt the modern nursery school building owes much to Dr Montessori’s influence.

 She began to receive many invitations to lecture in other countries.  Many of the invitations came from ministers of education; others from educational societies and in almost every case she received an official welcome in recognition of her services to education generally.

Arrangements were made for Dr Montessori to give training courses for teachers in Italy, France, Holland, Germany, Spain, Austria, India and America. She paid her first official visit to England in 1919. Her reception was almost royal. A banquet was held in her honour at the Savoy Hotel, London. 

The last few years of Dr Montessori’s long life were characterised by the same activity and zeal she’d shown throughout her career. She was constantly moving from one country to the next to give lectures and direct courses. In the autumn of 1949, she was invited to address a gathering of Unesco. On this occasion, she received a great ovation, the whole assembly rising to its feet to acclaim her at the end of her conference. In December of the same year the French nation honoured her by decorating her with the medal of the Legion d’Honneur.

Early in 1950 Dr Montessori was on a lecture tour in Norway and Sweden; and in the summer of the same year she was back again in Italy, in Perugia, directing a training course for teachers. This was given at the International Centre for Educational Studies which had been recently formed in connection with the University of Perugia, of which she was made Directress.  In recognition of her work there she was made “honorary citizen” of Perugia. When the course was over a similar honour was paid her by the cities of Ancona, (where she was born), and Milan.  

Soon after her return to Holland, which she had made her headquarters, she was received by Queen Wilhelmina who conferred upon her the rank of Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau. About the same time, she received the honorary degree of doctor of philosophy from the University of Amsterdam.

In all these journeys and endless labours, Dr Montessori was assisted by her son Mario Montessori, with an inherited ability, shared in an ever-increasing degree the immense burden of her responsibilities.  

At her death she appointed him her successor in the task of directing and co-ordinating the work of the Association Montessori Internationale. 

Maria Montessori’s long and self-sacrificing labours on behalf of children ended suddenly on 6 May 1952 at Noordwijk-on-Sea in Holland when she was 81.  She was buried in the cemetery of the Catholic Church at Noordwijk, where a beautiful monument has been erected by her many admirers.  

But her most appropriate and we believe most lasting monument is, and always will be, the serene and joyful atmosphere which emanates from thousands of happy children in every part of the world.

The above article appeared in “YOU” magazine of 6 July 2006 and was Extracted from Maria Montessori: Her Life and Her Work reproduced courtesy of the estate of EM Standing and the Trustees of Seattle University.

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