Washington: The 142th Birthday of Maria Tecla Artemesia Montessori, known for her educational method used in public and private schools throughout the world, is being celebrated with Google doodle across the globe.
Maria Montessori and Her Method:
Just who was this woman who began an educational revolution that changed the way we think about children more than anyone before or since?
Maria Montessori, born on August 31, 1870 , was the first woman in Italy to receive a medical degree. She worked in the fields of psychiatry, education and anthropology. She believed that each child is born with a unique potential to be revealed, rather than as a “blank slate” waiting to be written upon. Her main contributions to the work of those of us raising and educating children are in these areas:
• Preparing the most natural and life supporting environment for the child
• Observing the child living freely in this environment
• Continually adapting the environment in order that the child may fulfill his greatest potential — physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually
The Early Years:
Maria Montessori was always a little ahead of her time. At age thirteen, against the wishes of her father but with the support of her mother, she began to attend a boys’ technical school. After seven years of engineering she began premed and, in 1896 became a physician. In her work at the University of Rome psychiatric clinic Dr. Montessori developed an interest in the treatment of special needs children and, for several years, she worked, wrote, and spoke on their behalf.
In 1907 she was given the opportunity to study “normal” children, taking charge of fifty poor children of the dirty, desolate streets of the San Lorenzo slum on the outskirts of Rome. The news of the unprecedented success of her work in this Casa dei Bambini “House of Children” soon spread around the world, people coming from far and wide to see the children for themselves. Dr. Montessori was as astonished as anyone at the realized potential of these children:
Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants – doing nothing but living and walking about – came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning: would you not think I was romancing? Well, just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child’s way of learning. This is the path he follows. He learns everything without knowing he is learning it, and in doing so passes little from the unconscious to the conscious, treading always in the paths of joy and love.
Montessori Education:
Montessori education focuses learning on independence, relative freedom and respect for a child’s natural mental development. Some defining features of Monstessori education include:
1- Mixed age classrooms, with classrooms for children aged 2½ or 3 to 9 years old by far the most common
2- Student choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options
3- Uninterrupted blocks of work time
4- A Constructivist or “discovery” model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction
5- Specialized educational materials developed by Montessori and her collaborators
6- In addition, many Montessori schools design their programs with reference to Montessori’s model of human development from her published works, and use pedagogy, lessons, and materials introduced in teacher training derived from courses presented by Montessori during her lifetime.
On May 6, 1952, Montessori died of a cerebral haemorrhage in the Netherlands. She was 81.
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With inputs from www.michaelolaf.net
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