MONTESSORI, MARIA

Educator and originator of the Montessori Method;b. Chiaravalle, near Ancona, Italy, Aug. 31, 1870; d. Noordwijk, Netherlands, May 8, 1952. The first woman to receive a medical degree in 1894 at the University of Rome, Maria Montessori lectured on anthropology at the University and practiced as assistant physician at its psychiatric clinic where she came into contact with retarded children.

While working at the State Orthophrenic School in Rome (1899–1901), she turned her attention to the education of the feebleminded. She was conversant with E. Seguin's educational methods, which were the forerunner of much of the pedagogical treatment allied with medicine, later known as therapy. In her work at Bicêtre, in Paris, she noted Seguin's use of didactic apparatus rather than teacher–dominated methods. Utilizing this experience she devised a great variety of didactic materials and trained a corps of teachers who were encouraged and stimulated by her dynamic personality.

While lecturing on pedagogy at the University of Rome (1901–07), she became interested in the education of normal children. In 1907 she opened the Casa dei Bambini, the first Montessori school for normal children, and within three years she had established three similar classes. Until 1911 she directed these schools, situated for the most part in the poorer sections of Rome and Milan.

From 1911 until her death she traveled the world— Europe, India, the U.S.—lecturing to teachers and interested persons, writing prodigiously, and instituting teacher–training centers. She introduced her method in Spain when she took charge of the Montessori Institute in Barcelona in 1917, and in London in 1919. On returning to Italy in 1922, she was appointed government inspector of Italian schools but was obliged to leave in 1934, during Mussolini's regime, because of her alleged pacifist ideas. She returned to the Barcelona Institute but again withdrew in 1939 during the Spanish Civil War and established an educational center at Laren near Amsterdam in the Netherlands. In 1939 she went to India to conduct a training course in Adyar, Madras, where, although interned as an enemy alien with her son, Mario Montessori, she continued her courses at Ahmadabad. After World War II, Montessori made the Netherlands her permanent home.

Montessori's major educational contribution was her method, which thrived in the U.S. and abroad in the early 20th century but later waned. Its early demise in the U.S. is attributed to the rising progressive movement and the work of J. Dewey and W. H. Kilpatrick. Her progressive ideas, especially her views on liberty, were often equated with Dewey's, while Kilpatrick, in his brief text The Montessori Method Examined (1914), dealt a severe blow to her infant beginnings in the United States. The restrained description of her work by such educational historians as R. Freeman Butts and Louella Cole contributed to its ineffectiveness. A Montessori society formed in the U.S. in 1913 by a group of socially prominent individuals lacked adequate leadership and quickly disappeared. Since the 1950s, however, there has been a Montessori revival, and interested parents have formed study groups preparatory to opening classes for their children. Leading Catholic universities, such as DePaul University, Chicago, Ill.; Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wis.; and Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Mass.; have inaugurated centers of research and teacher training. Boston College is also engaged in a modified practice of the method.

Among her published works is The Montessori Method (1912), in which she expounds her philosophy, influenced by the English empiricist, J. locke; the Spanish teacher of deaf mutes, J. R. Pereira; and the two French pioneers in the education of the retarded, E. Seguin and J. E. Itard. The heavy emphasis of the work in anthropology and biology stems from her medical background. Other publications include Pedagogical Anthropology (1913), The Secret of Childhood (1936), and The Discovery of the Child (1948).

Bibliography: e. m. standing, Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work (Fresno, Calif. 1959).

[j. concannon]