MONTESSORI SCHOOLS

Education for Mentally Handicapped Children

Dr. Maria Montessori was a medical student in the 1890s serving as an intern in the psychiatric clinic of Rome, Italy, which housed the "idiot children" then relegated to insane asylums. Appalled by what she saw happening to these children, she began a lifelong study of mentally deficient children and then quickly extended her work to the study of normal young children. The approach to educating the very young which she pioneered in her "Homes of Children" over several decades resulted in successes that exceeded even her own expectations. In working with retarded children she transformed threeto-seven-year-olds into avid pupils who learned cleanliness, manners, "grace in action," and they became acquainted with animals and plants and with the manual arts. They got both sensory and motor training and learned rudiments of counting, reading, and writing. When, in 1912, Montessori published The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in "the Children's Houses," people from all over the world pressed her to communicate her methods to others. In the United States there was interest at the time, but by 1917 articles in the American press had dwindled to less than five a year.

Explosion of Interest in Montessori in the 1960s

Five decades after the publication of Montessori's book, there was an explosion of interest in the United States in her methods and theories. This renewed fascination was partially due to a 1964 publication of The Montessori Method, introduced by Prof. J. McV. Hunt. Hunt, a leading researcher in learning theory, reendorsed Montessori's beliefs that even very deprived children can learn if they are taught with the method: liberty for the child complemented by organization of the work by an adult (a "nonteacher" in Montessori's terms). Through movement and manipulation of the Montessori materials the child can develop order and logical thought—and a firm foundation for success in the three Rs, claimed Hunt.

How the Method Can Help Deprived Children

Various research studies in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s had convinced scientists that the longer children experienced cultural deprivation, the more permanent were the effects. Such considerations made it even more important to consider ways to enrich preschool experience as an antidote to cultural deprivation, and the earlier the better. Montessori's methods promised success in reversing the effects of early deprivation on those symbolic skills required for success in school and in an increasingly technological culture. Moreover, the fact that she had based her teaching methods on earlier attempts to educate the mentally retarded gave her approach a significant advantage to other, more traditional, preschool methods. In the Great Society of the mid to late 1960s, intense scrutiny was given to any approach that promised a solution to the problem of children who came to school, even to kindergarten, unprepared to learn. Montessori's program, repopularized by countless advocates of early-childhood enrichment, became a model to which many educators looked as a solution to preparing both deprived and so-called normal children for the challenges of learning.

Source:

J. McV. Hunt, Introduction to The Montessori Method, by Maria Montessori (New York: Schocken Books, 1964): xi-xxxviii.