Unit 1 (M1): Journey to Casa dei Bambini – The First Montessori School

• – Please watch the video presentation above and then continue to read the lesson below.
• – Refer to Chapter One of Module 1 (Introduction to Montessori) for further reading.

Dr. Maria Montessori

Dr. Montessori is recognized as the founder of Montessori Method and one of the pioneers in the development of early childhood education. She is also respected and reputed for promoting a substantial number of important educational reforms, which now have become integral components of the 21st century’s educational core.

Montessori’s Birth

Montessori was born on 31st August 1870 to an educated middle-class family in Ancona, Italy. She was the only child of her parents.

Montessori’s Parents

Her father’s name was Alessandro Montessori. He served in the military and later worked in civil services. Like most men in Europe in those days he was conservative and orthodox in nature and temperament. His frequent transfers gave Maria a chance to get an education in big cities.

Montessori had a loving relationship with her father, although he disagreed with her choice to continue her education. Her mother’s name was Renidle Stopanni. In contrast to her father, she was a well-educated lady with a liberal mindset for a woman living in 19th-century Europe and supported Maria in her educational pursuits.

Montessori’s Education

Almost the whole of Europe, in those days, was very conservative in its attitude toward and treatment of women. Italy was no exception but Montessori pursued her education with utmost zeal and dedication. Maria entered a public elementary school at the age of 6 in 1876. Her early school record is “not particularly noteworthy”. Most young women in her time, who decided to pursue a secondary education, would chose to study literature and the classics, which included the history, literature, and languages of Ancient Greece and Rome. However, the young Maria insisted on attending a largely male-populated technical secondary school. Her father initially did not approve of her decision as he believed that the education of women should be restricted to a certain limited range of subjects. Her mother’s support and liberal ideology, however, got her the permission to get admission in the technical school that she desired.

Montessori had a great aptitude for mathematics and while studying in the technical school, she decided to study engineering after she graduated, again an unusual aspiration for a woman in her time and place.. Her father again opposed this notion, while her mother supported her intentions to pursue engineering. She graduated with good grades and did well in the sciences, especially in mathematics. Her great aptitude for mathematics clearly shows in the exceptional math materials and activities that she developed later for children.
However, she had changed her mind to pursue engineering by the time she graduated and decided to study Medicine, an even more unlikely pursuit for a woman given the cultural norms of that time. In 1890, she was admitted into the University of Rome to study mathematics, physics, and natural sciences for two years. However, she did not give up her goal to become a doctor. Two years of university studies got her the diploma that made her eligible to apply for entrance to the College of Medicine at the University of Rome.

Somehow Montessori got admission into the medical school of the University of Rome in 1892, although it is not clear how Montessori got admitted since women were not allowed to study medicine at that time. One speculation is that her name was mistaken as Mario (which is a male name) by the university. Another theory is that Montessori wrote letters to the Pope and some Italian educators to gather support for her case. Some say that Pope Leo XIII’s recommendation enabled her to enter the Faculty of Medicine, and she became the first woman to enter medical school in Italy. This was a very difficult decision for her traditional father to accept, and one that presented many pitfalls for a young woman of her time. Her father did not speak to her for months when he discovered that his daughter intended to study medicine.
Montessori became the first woman in Italy who enrolled in a medical university to study medicine. However, Maria was firm in her resolution and continued her studies despite all odds. She faced prejudice from her male colleagues and had to work alone on dissections since these were not allowed to be done in mixed classes. She remained dedicated and in 1896, she became the first lady doctor in Italy by getting a degree in medicine with the highest distinction. Thus, Montessori holds the title of being the first lady doctor in the history of Italy. Montessori received attention from the press all over the world. The recognition, congratulatory greetings, and respect offered to Montessori and her family by all strata of the society also brought the relationship with her father back to normal. The following clip from the movie Maria Montessori: Una vita per i Bambini gives us a glimpse into the odds she might have faced as the only woman in the university.

Montessori’s Public Speaking

Being the first lady doctor of the country, she was invited to speak at many conferences. She was asked to represent Italy at the International Congress for Women’s Rights in Berlin in 1896. There, in her speech, she advocated a cause that still hasn’t been resolved in our times i.e. “EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK”. At the conference for women in London, England, in 1900, she spoke against child labor. She attended several such conferences. Extremely pretty and well-spoken, Maria made a splash with her speeches about women, education, and work conditions in Italy. The following clip from the movie Maria Montessori: Una vita per i Bambini gives a glimpse into her public speaking.

Montessori’s Medical Career

Soon after getting the degree in 1896, Dr. Montessori was employed at the San Giovanni Hospital attached to the University of Rome. In November 1896, Montessori also joined the post of surgical assistant at Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome. Her medical practice gave her a chance to have frequent contact with children of the poor and working class. Soon she was able to make her mark as a good doctor. She tended her patients well and along with diagnosing and treating their illnesses, she made sure that they were warm and properly fed. As a doctor, she specialized in pediatrics and psychiatry.

In 1897, she volunteered to join a research program at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Rome. As part of her work at the psychiatric clinic, she was required to visit Rome’s asylums for the insane, to find patients for treatment at the clinic. She found that in those asylums the children were kept in prison-like rooms, under awful circumstances with no hopes of recovery.
The following video clip from the movie Maria Montessori: Una vita per i Bambini gives us a glimpse into the way special children were treated in her time. It shows that they were kept in a prison-like room with no hope of recovery.

A caretaker at the psychiatric clinic once told Maria with contempt how the children loved to throw themselves on the floor to grab bread crumbs. Montessori quickly realized that the lack of any kind of sensorial stimulation and activity in the empty room was making children behave in such a manner. She found that they desperately needed sensorial stimulation and activities for their hands.
The following clip from the movie Maria Montessori: Una vita per i bambini gives us a glimpse into how she worked innovatively with special children.

She believed that the lack of meaningful sensory activities was contributing to their condition. Soon, she began to believe that with special education their condition could be improved. She found that the children needed purposeful activities that could stimulate their minds and senses. This was the beginning of her transition from a doctor to an educator.

Work with Special Children

Montessori was always unwilling to enter education as a career as it was one of the three traditional roles open to women at that time: working with children, homemaking, or the convent. But the ironic thing is that she became best known for her contributions to education. Her approach was more scientific, rather than the familiar philosophical approach followed by many of the educational innovators who came before and after her. Her experience with the children of poverty convinced Montessori that intelligence is not rare, although it seemed to present itself in many forms other than those recognized by traditional schools. As Montessori continued to observe and work with children who had been sent to asylums, she began to read what others had published about working with children with various kinds of disabilities. She soon became interested in the work of three men in particular:

Inspiration from Itard and Séguin

For almost a year (from 1900 to 1901), Montessori browsed the medical libraries of Western Europe seeking successful work previously done with the education of children with disabilities. During her hunt she got inspired by the work of two almost forgotten French doctors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (1775 – 1838) and Édouard Séguin (1812-1880).

Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (1775 – 1838)

Itard is well known even today for his work with the “Wild Boy of Aveyron”, a young boy who was found by some hunters wandering naked in the forest. The boy was, presumably, lost or abandoned as a very young child and thus spent many years of life alone in the forest. The boy could not speak and lacked almost all of the skills of everyday life. This boy had grown up outside of human society without the influence of interaction with his own kind. Itard started a study of the boy in order to shed some light on the age-old debate about what proportion of human intelligence and personality is hereditary (genetic) and what proportion stems from learned behavior (environmental influence). This experiment was a limited success. Itard found his wild boy uncooperative and unwilling or unable to learn most things. This led him to postulate the existence of developmental periods in normal human growth.

He formed the hypothesis that, during these “sensitive periods,” a child must experience stimulation to develop normally, or he will grow up forever lacking the skills and intellectual concepts not developed at the stage when nature expects them to be readily absorbed. In simple terms, if appropriate experiences are not available at specific times during development in the early years, it may get hindered or not take place at all. Although Itard’s efforts to teach the wild boy were barely successful, his work had two important implications;

1. If proper stimulation and experiences are not provided during sensitive periods of development to a child, it may hinder or not take place at all.
2. Furtherance of handicapped children is possible.

Montessori drew further confirmation of Itard’s ideas from the work of Édouard Séguin, a French psychologist who was a student of Itard and carried on his research. His work, however, was far more specific and organized. He also managed to apply his ideas to the everyday education of children with disabilities. Working primarily with the blind, Séguin developed a methodical approach to breaking skills down into small steps and was highly successful with a carefully developed collection of hands-on educational materials. Teens and Tens boards, now used as a Montessori material, were also originally designed by Seguin.

He used the scientific method to develop his educational approach. He would question, observe, hypothesize, and carry out experimentation, then analyze data for an explanation. The scientific approach led Seguin to develop a variety of exercises, activities, and materials to stimulate and develop the senses and motor abilities of the children. From Itard and Seguin Montessori took the idea of a scientific approach to education, based on observation & experimentation. She kept on trying Itard’s and Seguin’s approach creatively and carefully noted the responses of the children, she was surprised that the responses improved further & further. To satisfy her urge to help mentally challenged children, Montessori went on to attend courses in pedagogy, studying the works of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel. Her work with the mentally retarded became prominent, she was invited to address National Medical Congress in Turin in 1898 and the National Pedagogical Congress in 1899.

The Orthophrenic School

In 1900 the National League opened a new institution called the Orthophrenic school, a “medico-pedagogical institute” for training teachers in educating mentally disabled children. It was both an educational institute for disabled children and a training institute for instructors. Dr. Montessori was appointed as the assistant director of the new Orthophrenic School, where she worked with special children (most of whom would be diagnosed in the twenty-first century as autistic* or mentally disabled). She and her colleagues started a wave of reform in the institution. Montessori discovered that her young patients needed purposeful activities, which could stimulate their senses and mind, and add to their self-esteem, and sense of achievement. She employed the scientific approach to the education of these children, the idea that she took from Itard and Seguin. She would observe each child in order to find out his specific needs and then develop materials and methodologies accordingly.

She continued her work with careful practice and objectivity like that of a biologist studying the natural behavior of an animal in the forest. Along with that, she supervised the teachers’ training program offered by the school. The children did not just learn to read and write but also learned to perform most of the everyday tasks involved in preparing the meals and maintaining the environment of the residential school. She kept on developing methods and materials for the children and worked incessantly for two years to make the school a success. Many of the mentally challenged children in the Orthophrenic School, who were considered “uneducable“, passed standardized public examinations along with the normal children. She got the attention of officials from the departments of education and health, civic leaders, and prominent figures in the fields of education, psychiatry, and anthropology. Montessori became well known and was highly regarded for her work with special children and because of her advocacy of children’s rights, women’s movement, peace education, and the importance of the League of Nations.

Transition from Doctor to Educationist

After two years of working at the Orthophrenic school, while her work was getting more and more recognition from all over the world, she left the Orthophrenic school to continue her own education at the University of Rome. This time the focus of her studies was not medicine but rather subjects like philosophy, anthropology, and psychology. She would visit schools to observe how teachers taught and how children learned. Although she continued her medical practice and treating patients, she seemed more interested in attending education conferences and writing educational papers. Her demand as a guest speaker in the educational world also soared up. Montessori began to believe that newborn human beings normally enter the world with an intellectual potential that was barely being developed by schools in the early years of the twentieth century.

She challenged that if she could attain such results with children who were disabled, schools should be able to get dramatically better results with normal children. She advocated that education should develop from the study of what children needed, rather than from what adults thought children should need. Montessori joined the University of Rome Pedagogic School, in 1904 as a professor which she held till 1908. During this period, her first book for teachers, Pedagogical Anthropology, was published which set out a new approach to education. Montessori’s work strengthened her humanistic ideals, and people began to regard her as a reformer. She actively supported various social reform movements. Montessori became well known and highly regarded throughout Europe, which contributed to the publicity that surrounded her schools, starting just a little later.

Casa dei Bambini

Over the years Montessori established her reputation as an educator who could accomplish miracles with children who presented special challenges. However, Montessori was becoming increasingly interested in applying her educational approach to typical children.
The opportunity came to her when she was offered the position to run a day-care center that was being organized for the working-class children, who were too young to attend public schools in San Lorenzo, one of the worst slums of Rome. Although many of her colleagues and family members disapproved of the idea, Montessori, like always, took on the challenge and grasped the opportunity of working with normal children. Bringing some of the educational materials she had developed at the Orthophrenic School she established the first Montessori school in one large room with one co-worker. The first Montessori school was named CASA DEI BAMBINI (The House of Children) and was inaugurated on Jan 06, 1907.

Dr. Montessori was intoxicated by the new zest of her life to apply her method on normal children, however, the conditions at the new Casa dei Bambini were horrendous. There was only one untrained teacher to teach her first class which consisted of fifty children, from two through five years of age. It was an extended day school and the children remained at the center from morning till evening while their parents worked. The children were also given two meals per day, bathed regularly, and given a program of medical care. The children themselves were the products of extreme inner-city poverty conditions and the ignorance of the parents. Almost all of them came to Children’s House on the first day crying and reluctantly. Most of them were aggressive, impatient, and cranky.

At this stage, Montessori did not know if her experiment would work under such conditions. However, she, not caring about the odds, began by teaching the older children how to help out with the everyday tasks that needed to be done. She also introduced the hands-on materials of perceptual discrimination and puzzles and eye-hand manipulative exercises that she had used with mentally disabled children. Montessori must have had some hope of success but the results surprised her. The materials seemed to be working miraculously. Unlike her mentally challenged children who had to be pushed to use her apparatus, the normal children were naturally attracted to the work she introduced. The aimless street wanderers began to settle down. They began to show longer and longer periods of constructive activity. They were fascinated with the puzzles and perceptual training devices.

Montessori introduced exercises of practical day-to-day living like cleaning, dressing, gardening, etc., and to her amazement, children aged three and four years took the greatest delight in learning practical everyday living skills. She noticed that such activities made them more independent and added to their self-respect. Their interest was developing day by day and they progressed so rapidly that each day they pleaded with Maria to show them more. The older children began to take care of the school. They also assisted their teachers with the preparation and serving of meals and the maintenance of a spotless environment.

The discipline problems vanished dramatically. The children running wild in the street had turned into models of grace and courtesy in just a short period. Montessori, when criticized for her method being too structured and academically demanding of young children, laughed out saying, “I followed these children, studying them, studied them closely, and they taught me how to teach them.” Talking about the role of the teacher, she argued that the educator’s job is to serve the child, determining what each student needs to make the greatest progress.
She believed that children follow their inner strong urges to select their activities and work. These urges are universally similar in all children and are the product of millions of years of evolution. Nature, itself encourages children to select the activities, which are appropriate for development at that stage. To her, a child who fails in school should not be blamed, any more than a doctor should blame a patient who does not get well fast enough. Just as it is the job of the physician to help people find a way to cure themselves, it is the educator’s job to facilitate the natural process of learning.

Montessori’s children showed tremendous progress in academics and each achievement was like a sudden explosion. The children were too young to be sent to public schools, yet they literally begged to be taught how to read and write. They learned to do so quickly and enthusiastically, using special manipulative materials. Montessori just kept on noticing the inclinations of the children and developed manipulatives accordingly.

The other area, that fascinated the children, was numbers. To respond to their interest, the mathematically inclined doctor developed a series of concrete math learning materials. These materials are so comprehensive and yet concrete in nature that they still fascinate many mathematicians and educators to this day. It did not take those three, four, and five-year-olds long to start adding and subtracting four-digit numbers. They further progressed to multiplication, division, skip counting, and increasingly advanced and abstract concepts. Montessori discovered an unlimited potential in children to learn.

They began to show interest in other areas as well. This compelled the already overworked doctor to spend night after night designing new materials to keep pace with the children in geometry, geography, history, and natural science. Montessori discovered that her children showed more interest in academic manipulatives rather than toys.

She made this discovery shortly after her first school opened when a group of well-intentioned women gave the children a collection of lovely and expensive toys. The children took a profound interest in those new gifts for a few days, but they soon returned to their learning materials.
She also found that children generally preferred work over play, at least during the school day. “Children read and do advanced mathematics in Montessori schools not because we push them, but because this is what they do when given the correct setting and opportunity. To deny them the right to learn because we, as adults, think that they should not is illogical and typical of the way schools have been run before.”
Montessori Method wasn’t so perfect since day one. She improved it through trial and error. She continued to observe the children deeply, made educated guesses, and finally experimented. For example, one day the teacher arrived late at the center. The children, meanwhile, had crept in through the window and started their work. They even took the material themselves from the cupboard, which normally used to be locked, but was open just by chance. She, instantly, recognized that the children were capable of selecting their own work, and removed the cabinet and replaced it with low open shelves on which the activities were always available to the children. This seems to be a small change, but it actually was against all the educational theories and practices of that time.

Montessori Training Programs

In order to convey her method to more and more people Montessori also started a teacher’s training program. She conducted her first teacher-training course in 1909. Infused with the zest of spreading her method, she left the original Casa dei Bambini in 1911 and spent most of her time making new schools and conducting teachers’ training programs. She traveled to places all over the world to conduct teachers’ training programs, give talks, and set up new schools.

“The highest honor and the deepest gratitude you can pay me is to turn your attention from me in the direction in which I am pointing — to The Child.” — Maria Montessori

Worldwide Response

Maria Montessori’s first Casa dei Bambini became famous in the entire world in a very short span of time. Thousands of visitors went away amazed and enthusiastic. After the success of her first school, she started the second one then the third, and so on. Her system worked everywhere in so many different settings.

Montessori became the interest of leaders and scientists around the world. Even, in America, figures like Woodrow Wilson, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford supported and praised her work. Numerous publications and articles written about and by Montessori made her a well-known personality to parents and teachers.

The most incredible thing about Montessori method is that her model center (Casa dei Bambini) got duplicated everywhere, which is a rare attribute, as in this field many others had promoted opinions, philosophies, and models that have not been readily duplicated.
The Montessori method is one of the most systematic systems of education that gets applied very well to new settings. In the first thirty years of the twentieth century, the Montessori Method seemed to offer something for everyone. For instance, scholars from conservative schools of thought valued the calm, responsible behavior of the little children, along with their love for work. People with a liberal approach highly praised freedom and spontaneity. Many political leaders and educationists saw it as a way to reform the old-fashioned school systems of Europe, North America, and Asia, as well as an approach that they hoped would lead to a more hardworking, peace-loving, and disciplined population. Scientists of all disciplines praised Maria’s objectivity and the experimental foundation of this method. At one time the wave of support and enthusiastic praise for Maria was so high that many began to anticipate a dramatic change in the face of education, which unfortunately did not happen that fast.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Montessori focused more on how her method would work with older children aged 6 to 12 years and 12 to 18 years. Many Montessori elementary and secondary schools started working in different parts of the world. The impact of the two world wars also made her focus her attention on developing ideas about integrating Cosmic and Peace Education in Montessori elementary curriculum in particular. She and her followers all over the world began to believe that her system of education would lead to complete human regeneration.

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