Maria Montessori Her Life and Work ch 1

Miss Roxie still doesn't have her copy of Pride and Prejuduce, so we aren't starting that book yet. So, what shall I read?? I'm itching to start The Lord of the Rings, but I can't find a copy I like, something small and hardbound that fits nicely in my hand and is lovely to hold and look at. Which leaves the book about Maria Montessori that I've been talking about reading for months. So, that's what I'm going to read. Here's what I got out of the first chapter.

Maria Montessori Her Life and Work by E. Mortimer Standing, written in 1962

Chapter 1

Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was born in Italy, an only child. She sounds like a determined, confident (perhaps to the point of bordering on arrogant), and ambitious child. She wanted to be a mathmetician in an era when women only had nursing or teaching careers open to them. So she went to an all boys school! Then she changed her mind and decided to go for biology, then changed her mind again and decided to be a doctor against her father's wishes. She was the only girl in her medical classes, and, because of rules about co-ed dissections of cadavers, she had to dissect after dark by herself - a spooky prospect, but she was determined enough not to let that deter her. She held her own when the guys gave her a tough time and earned their respect, though not necessarily their affection. She paid her own way through the university by tutoring.

At one point, she was discouraged and ready to give up. As she walked home, she saw a beggar woman with a toddler. As the woman begged for money, Maria watched the child happily playing with a scrap of paper, totally oblivious to her plight of poverty. That inspired Maria not to give up, so she continued with her medical training.

When she graduated, her mother supported her, but her father still disapproved. Critics who disapproved of a woman doctor were ready to heckle and protest at her first medical lecture. Her father was persuaded to attend by an acquaintance and she was so brilliant that she earned his approval and even stopped the critics from causing a scene at the lecture. She was chosen to represent Italy at a feminist convention in Berlin. She spoke out for working women, then went to another convention in England to speak against child labor.

As a doctor, she was assigned to a psychiatric clinic, where she had to visit insane asylums. There, she saw idiot children (?) mixed in with the lunatics and her heart went out to them. After being given their food, the children would scavenge the floor for crumbs. The nurses were disgusted by the children's lack of refined manners, but Maria realized that they had no toys, they were treated like cattle, and grabbing crumbs were their way of reaching out for tactile experiences to feed their minds. She thought that they might benefit from some kind of educational attempt. She began to work with two French doctors whose lives were dedicated to 'defective' children - Jean Itard (who worked with deaf mutes) and Edouard Seguin (famed for his work with deficient children). Maria told an educational congress that those children were entitled to an education as much as normal children. The result was an orthophrenic school in Italy, with Maria as its director for two years - 1899-1901. Deficient children from regular schools were deposited there, as well as the idiot children from the asylums in Rome. Maria visited London and Paris to learn how others were dealing with these kinds of children. Then she returned to Rome to observe and study the children themselves. She spent 13 hours a day with the children, and then she stayed up late writing her observations and assembling plans for their education.

She decided that the method that was working for these children should be used with all children. After all, if the methods were rational enough to get through the mind of even imbeciles, wouldn't it work with anyone? [This, I think, is what alarmed Charlotte Mason - that someone would have so little respect for the personalities of children that they would presume to think that methods that worked for idiot children would be good for all children across the board.] With her direction, these defective children learned to read and write and even did as well on public exams as normal children. While the world marvelled at the miracle she had wrought with imbeciles, she was wondering why normal children weren't scoring higher on their exams than defective children. She decided it was a lack in their education. She felt that the methods she had used with idiot children could 'develop and set free the personality' of normal children.

In 1901, she gave up her position at the school and went back to the university to study philosophy and psychology, and to reflect on her theories about education. She felt a need to clarify her vision and theory. She translated long books by Itard and Seguin from French into Italian, a labor of love for her admiration of their work. She also studied the nervous diseases of children and was an examiner/lecturer at a teaching college. In her lectures she emphasized that the teacher's duty was to help, not to judge, and that real mental work doesn't exhaust the mind, but nourishes the spirit (that sounds CM-ish!) Some of her students said, "Her lectures make us want to be good."

There is a story of how, as a doctor, she paid a housecall to a woman who had just given birth to twins who were nearly dead. She lit a fire, held the babies and brought them back to life. Years later, the mother credited Maria as being their real mother, since it was she who had given them back their lives.

Read the next part of this series.
Read about the pictures in the book.
Read Charlotte Mason's Letter to the Editor about Montessori that prompted me to read this book.

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If you want to know more about Charlotte Mason, you can start with this FAQ. You can also read CM's six-volume series online, including an in-progress modern English paraphrase, here.