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Sometimes it’s a shame that Montessori pedagogy was not invented by me. All my life experience and all my observations of children suggested that adults seriously misunderstand something in relations with them. And it’s not about how the education system works, it’s about a principled attitude to childhood and our desire to rule over it.
I wanted to build a school for free children, but its image did not come for a very long time. It originated in Holland. Friends took me to a school that had Montessori-school written on the door. I did not know who Montessori was, but I was delighted to find that children here study on their own, without the visible help of adults. And teacher-advisers approach one or the other only at their request. Children of different ages study together and can enter any classroom. A year later, I began to create such a school in Russia. This took me 10 years. In her, as I dreamed, the spirit of inspired cooperation between children and adults settled. It turned out to be a school for children, as Maria Montessori invented it, and not a school for children, as it is arranged in our country. About a hundred years ago, the great Italian offered the pedagogical world a unique method of teaching and self-development of children: the weak, the capable, and the most ordinary. A century ahead of her time, she became the most famous teacher in the world.
Today in Russia there are already about 2000 preschool groups working in the spirit of Montessori pedagogy. But the first school classes are also opening, and our children will be able to study in Montessori lyceums or gymnasiums, because, I am sure, this pedagogy from the past is our future.
Her dates
- August 31, 1870: born in the vicinity of Ancona (Italy).
- 1896: received the degree of doctor of medicine.
- 1898: Participates in the International Congress for Women’s Rights in Berlin.
- 1904: Head of the Department of Pedagogical Anthropology at the University of Rome.
- 1907: Opens the first Orphanage for workers’ children in Rome.
- 1909: publishes the work “Children’s House. The method of scientific pedagogy”, translated into 8 languages of the world (first published in Russia in 1913).
- 1914: Montessori schools open in Europe and the USA.
- 1934-1939: in Germany, the Nazis burn her books, together with her son she leaves for England, then to India. Working with Gandhi, Nehru and Tagore, he participates in the training of Indian teachers.
- 1946: Returns to Europe to help rebuild schools closed during the war.
- 1951: Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
- May 5, 1952: died in Noordwijk (Holland).
Five keys to understanding
A child is just a child
He is not a miniature adult. The adult always submits to external circumstances and expects immediate results. And the child tirelessly and continuously works on his own development, obeying the laws of growth and not feeling either the past or the future. The rhythm of his work is unhurried. He learns the world through numerous repetitions of different actions: small children can take off and put on socks dozens of times, drive the same cars on the floor every day, ask the same question many times.
He is never idle
The child’s mind works like a beating heart – involuntarily, without coercion and fatigue. How to make sure? Remember the tremendous work that a child does in the first three years of life. Unbeknownst to himself, he is trying to create and distinguish between two Universes: “I” and “not-I”, real and imaginary, cause and effect, past and future. Everything around attracts him and helps him grow. Children are able to concentrate their attention so much that they do not hear or see anything around. They prefer to work for real. Their main job is play. Children become obedient if they have something to do and they are carried away by the work. The role of adults can only be reduced to showing how to handle educational toys and objects, how to perform this or that action.
He seeks knowledge
The child’s mind does not function by itself, but in close connection with the nervous and motor systems. The child absorbs information like a sponge: looks, listens, twists in his hands and tastes everything he can reach. With the help of tactile, visual and taste sensations, he constructs his consciousness. The child is in constant development, experiencing growth phases and transitional states. For example, the period of “readiness for the development of speech”, when he unconsciously listens to everything he hears; “readiness for order” when he feels the need for stability; or a period of development of feelings …
Free development environment
The success of young students directly depends on how accurately adults prepare the children’s developmental environment. We can say that a hundred years ago M. Montessori discovered a phenomenon that modern psychologists call background knowledge. At school and in kindergarten, Montessori arranged the classrooms so that children could act completely freely and independently. Furniture and objects designed for the growth of the child give him freedom of movement and stimulate the development of all his senses. Maria Montessori has developed a whole range of educational materials that help the child master the entire spectrum of knowledge about the world. These materials require minimal adult intervention in the learning process.
Help do it yourself
Authoritarian parenting, like overprotectiveness, interferes with a child’s development. The desire to be independent is one of his strongest feelings, Montessori believed. Therefore, the main concern of adults is to observe the free development of children, to create the atmosphere necessary for their growth and the realization of creative energy. Children need our help and guidance, but you need to get involved in solving their problems only when the child asks: “Help me do it myself.”