Montessori History

Maria Montessori was born in Italy in 1870. At the age of twenty-four, she was the first woman to graduate from the medical school in Rome. It was in a Rome psychiatric clinic that she came to be in charge of children from orphanages and asylums across the city. She saw her young patients first and foremost as human beings, and searched for ways to help improve their mental and spiritual and physical health. Through the study of these children, she made discoveries that impelled her to leave her medical practice and investigate these discoveries. The refinement of this work became the Montessori pedagogy.

Maria Montessori was interested in the end-result of education, not its method. She cared about developing “a complete human being, oriented to the environment and adapted to his or her time, place and culture.” She had no preconceived ideas about how young people should be taught. Her most remarkable technique during this time was passive: she observed them. These observations supplied her with indications about what their needs were. The result was to develop an educational practice that would respond to and fulfill those needs. That practice is going on every day in Montessori classrooms around the world.

Maria Montessori was a visionary and a humanitarian, a friend to Gandhi and Thomas Edison, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Until the use of the euro, her face was on Italy’s 1000 lire bill.