It is 100 years since Maria Montessori, an Italian scientist and teacher, founded the first Casa dei Bambini school in Rome. Her life story is a fascinating tale of intellect, endeavour and innovation as well as war and politically motivated migration while her legacy, the Montessori Method of teaching – which stresses a more hands-on approach to education – is as influential today as it was 100 years ago thanks to a revival that has been gathering pace since the 1960s. Although her methods have achieved their greatest success and adoption in the United States, her Italian homeland still boasts a tradition that is celebrating its centenary this January with a major conference in Rome.

Ahead of her times
Maria Montessori was born during the twilight years of the Italian Risorgimento on 31 August 1870 in Chiaravelle near Ancona in the Marches region of Central Italy. At a time when females were not encouraged to pursue a formal education, the confident and determined young Maria benefited from having a well-educated mother who was also a prodigious reader. She attended a technical college at the age of 13 – practically unheard of for a girl – and graduated in 1886 with such high marks that she won a place at the Regio Istituto Tecnico Leonardo da Vinci (now called IISS Leonardo da Vinci) in Rome. During her time at the Institute she excelled in her formal education of the natural sciences, mathematics and languages. However it was the biological sciences that caught her imagination and sparked the idea of pursuing a career in medicine.
Despite having her application to study medicine at the University of Rome turned down because of her gender, Montessori enrolled as a student of physics and mathematics obtaining her degree (diploma di licenza) within two years. She so dazzled the all-male panel of examiners with her final thesis that she was awarded a full medical degree in 1896 and thus became the first woman doctor in Italy.

Observing children
Between then and 1906 Montessori practised medicine at Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome, represented Italy in two women's conferences in Berlin (1896) and London (1900) and had a child out of wedlock whom she gave up for adoption so as not to derail her blossoming career (she was to be re-united with her son Mario 15 years later).
She became a member of staff at the University of Rome in 1897 and continued to conduct research. However, her field of interest was changing. She enrolled again at university to study philosophy and psychology in 1901 and was awarded a professorship in anthropology in 1904. Her medical work had allowed her to observe the behaviour of young and handicapped children close up and thereby discern that their ability to learn was greatly influenced by the environment, an idea taken for granted today but completely revolutionary at the time.

The Casa dei Bambini
Maria's desire to help disadvantaged children – the mentally retarded, the poor and the orphans of Rome – led her to leave the university in 1906 and found a new type of school, the Casa dei Bambini in the working class area of San Lorenzo, on 6 January 1907. The Casa dei Bambini was immediately successful and Montessori quickly acquired a large following of parents eager for their children to benefit from her 'teaching' and teachers willing to learn her methods. It was here that she developed what was ultimately called the Montessori Method of education.
Having bypassed the traditional path of teacher training, Maria's scientific observations had allowed her to deduce that children absorb knowledge from their surroundings and that they have an unquenchable desire to learn and use their hands to discover things. They have an innate drive to learn - all they need is the right environment and the right materials. Her method is essentially built on these twin pillars: the will to learn on the part of the children; and the careful crafting of the setting in which they can thrive. In substance she was the first pedagogue to suggest that children teach themselves and the results of her school were to prove her right.

The Montessori Method
As it was developed at the Casa dei Bambini, the Montessori Method embraced a few simple but carefully arranged requirements:
Self-learning – children are competent beings who should be encouraged to make their own decisions.
'Absorbent minds' – children are limitlessly motivated to learn and absorb new ideas within specific periods of development.
Age groups – children should be divided into 3-year age groups (0-3, 3-6, 9-12, and early teens) that correspond to these specific periods of learning and within which they can more easily learn from and teach each other.
Child-sized environment – a small, self-contained environment which is a microcosm of the child's world is created at the school and run by each child.
Observation – children are individuals and need to be observed so that their curriculum evolves with them. Adults need to pay more attention to children rather than vice versa.
Self-correction – the child has control over his/her education.
Parental involvement – for fruitful schooling parents are duty-bound to guarantee the health and hygiene of the child.
This Montessori Method remains practically unchanged to this day. According to Elena Dompè of the Opera Nazionale Montessori, the umbrella organisation for Montessori schools in Italy, “the materials may have changed – today you'll find computers in the classrooms - but the methods are the same, that is particular care and attention are given over to the learning environment and the materials available to children”.

Montessori Centenary Conference: 6-7 January This conference celebrates the centenary of the first Montessori School, the 'Case dei Bambini' (Children’s House), founded on 6 January 1907 by Maria Montessori in Via dei Marsi, in the San Lorenzo district of Rome. Taking place at the Auditorium the main topics covered by the conference are: education and peace; the child’s mind and social solidarity; as well as contemporary scientific research. Educators, policy-makers and academics with an active interest in the Montessori Method and from Montessori schools all over the world are taking part. As well as the discussions and debates, there are a prize giving for the International “Education and Peace” Award, a visit to the original Casa dei Bambini in Via dei Marsi, an excursion to Maria Montessori's birthplace of Chiaravalle and an audience with Pope Benedict XVI.

A global phenomenon
Almost immediately Maria Montessori's achievements at the Casa dei Bambini drew attention from all over the world, especially in the United States, to her new approach to schooling. Such luminaries as Thomas Edison, Helen Keller and Alexander Graham Bell sang her praises, with Bell founding the Montessori Educational Association in Washington DC in 1913, the year that Maria made her first visit to the USA. During a lengthier visit in 1915 she gave a lecture at Carnegie Hall, ran a teacher training course, and won plaudits for her 'glass house' schoolroom exhibit at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco.
Back in Europe she was invited by the Spanish government to open a new research centre in 1917 and two years later she ran a series of teacher training courses in London. In 1929 she founded the Association Montessori International in Amsterdam to further the spread of her schools.

A fugitive from fascism
Appointed a government inspector of schools in Italy she came under increasing pressure from Mussolini's fascist government in the 1920s and early 1930s to transform her own schools into training centres for soldiers to satisfy the Duce's aspirations of empire. Montessori, a radical intellectual and feminist, was unlikely to fit in with the fascism of continental Europe and she was forced to leave Italy in 1934.
She took refuge first in Spain but left during the Civil War, heading to The Netherlands first where she opened a Montessori Training Centre in Laren in 1938. She visited Sri Lanka and was in India with her son Mario to run a series of teacher training courses in 1940 when the Raj entered the war on the allied side and they were both interned as enemy aliens by the authorities. Fortunately, she was allowed to continue with her training courses and was to establish a Montessori Centre in London just a couple of years after the war had finished.
Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949, 1950 and 1951 without ever winning the prestigious award she lived out the remaining years of her life in The Netherlands where she died in 1952. Her son Mario carried on her work, until his death in the early 1980s, through the Association Montessori International, which still acts as the worldwide umbrella for the Montessori Method and its schools.

Montessori today
While some aspects of the Montessori Method are considered contentious even today, in particular the use of autodidactic materials that are frequently and incorrectly referred to as 'toys', to a large extent the fundamental advances made by Maria Montessori – child-centred, self-learning, peer teaching – have been adopted and applied in a universal way in most industrialised countries. Furthermore, the number of Montessori schools worldwide continues to grow. There are over 3,000 in the USA with some 300 receiving state support. In Italy itself there are over 250 schools, some of which are state or local authority supported while in Rome, where Montessori first developed her innovative techniques, there are 26 Montessori nurseries and elementary schools, the majority of which carry the name Casa dei Bambini just like the original.
Montessori also continues to produce outstanding results. In a recent article in Science magazine (“Evaluating Montessori Education”, 29 September 2006) researchers in Milwaukee found that children attending Montessori schools outperformed those at state schools in a whole range of areas – from standardised tests for reading and maths, to creative writing where they tended to use more complex sentence structures, even to more positive interaction in the playground. They were also more likely to show concern for fairness and social justice and have a greater sense of community at their school.
While no comparable research exists for Montessori schools in Italy, one measure of Montessori's success in her homeland are the long-waiting lists for places at Montessori schools. Most Italian state schools have also incorporated elements of Montessori methods into the standard teaching programmes, “though by no means enough” according to Elena Dompè.
Maria Montessori was an inspirational person whose academic achievements alone made her a role model for the women of her times, and continue to inspire up until the present. The revolution she started in the classroom has undoubtedly changed the way children are educated the world over and helped 'to rescue' many children, often disadvantaged and underprivileged, so they can better themselves and develop lasting skills for their own and society's benefit.

More info: montessori@ega.it Tel. 06328121
Opera Nazionale Montessori: www.montessori.it

Anthony Smith
January 2007
Photo: Maria Montessori with children.