Why Montessori?

Montessori: Maria Montessori (1870-1952)

Maria Montessori was the first female doctor in Italy. She was a medical doctor, a professor of anthropology as well as an educator. She studied Jean Marc Itard (the famous doctor who taught the "Wild boy of Aveyron") as well as Edouard Seguin (a famous doctor and educator) who continued to developed sense training and was famous for teaching special needs children. It has been said that Itard is the Forefather of Special Education as he was the first person who developed an individualized education plan. Seguin started the first school in the world (in France) for children with mental challenges and later helped to set up many schools for special needs children. He was famous for developing a non verbal intelligence test called The Seguin Form Board (1866) which was used in many early intelligence scales.

In 1896, Montessori, who had been appointed as the director of the State Orthophrenic Institute, taught the mentally challenged children who were regarded as unteachable and had many of her eight year old students take the standard State examination in reading and writing. Her students received above-average scores and did better than typically developing children. She was considered a miracle worker as newspapers all over the world marveled at her accomplishments with the children.

Montessori was responsible for creating small, child sized furniture to suit the needs of a child as well as a nurturing environment. She also created an extensive curriculum based on didactic (hands on) materials that had a control of error and a variety of broken down steps. She did extensive work to describe and understand the developmental stages of a child and created her curriculum directly towards each of those areas.

Maria Montessori went on to work with typically developing children in 1906 until her death as she was most concerned with the education model as a whole in the world.

The State Orthophrenic Institute
Montessori spent two years of her life educating 'feeble minded' children at the State Orthophrenic Institute. She would begin her days at eight oclock in the morning and come home at seven oclock at night. She was using this opportunity to observe the children and learn from their behaviour. She would observe them during the day and make notes at night. There was one girl in particular, who was eleven years old and developmentally challenged, who could not sew or darn no matter how often she was shown. Montessori showed her how to weave using strips of paper and later when she showed her how to darn the girl was able to do so successfully. She was able to teach the children to do many tasks by breaking them down into simple steps. She found that by doing this the children performed as well as (sometimes better than) 'normal' children. Montessori said that "the boys from the asylums had been able to compete with normal children only because they had been taught in a different way". (Maria Montessori, A Biography, Kramer, p. 112)

Casa Dei Bambini
This school was opened on January 6, 1907 and was Montessori's second experience with a school where she was free to observe and try new educational techniques. She modified the materials she had used in the State Orthophrenic Institute and observed their use with the children of this school. She asked her assistant to make the materials available to the children. " I merely wanted to study the children's reactions. I asked her not to interfere with them in any way as otherwise I would not be able to observe them." (Maria Montessori, A Biography, Kramer, p. 115)

One day Montessori thought it would be fun for the children to learn how to blow their noses. She showed them how to use a handkerchief and then blew her nose very quietly. She was surprised at the children's reactions. Instead of laughing they watched her attentively and when she was finished they applauded. She realized from this experience that children did not know how to perform certain tasks that were expected of them and this reinforced her view that children needed to be shown lessons from the basics. Montessori designed child-sized equipment at this school. She realized that the original tables and chairs were hindering the education of the child. Montessori knew it was more difficult to teach a child to feed or clean herself, but she felt it was important to give children these skills in order to develop their independence.

Jean Marc Itard

Eduard Seguin

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