Montessori chapter 3

This is from Maria Montessori Her Life and Work by E. Mortimer Standing.

Chapter 3

Maria's success attracted a lot of attention. Visitors came from around the world, more schools were set up, and she was persuaded by friends to write a book to safeguard her miraculous method in case anything happened to her. Her method seemed to come from nowhere because she had no teacher training, she was a medical doctor. Froebel [of Kindergarten fame] was influenced by Pestalozzi, who was influenced by Rousseau, who was influenced by John Locke. But Maria had no recognizable educational influences. She was influenced by Seguin and Itard, who were unknown in the educational field. And they were influenced by Pereira, who educated deaf mutes in Spain.

Maria was practically an overnight sensation. She decided to quit working at her school in order to evangelize the world with her discovery. She would live off her book royalties and travel to give courses in her method. [A friend just today speculated that perhaps Charlotte Mason never achieved the kind of household-word status that Montessori and Waldorf did because she was focused on improving the education within England, while Montessori and Steiner actively promoted their methods to the world at large.]

She went to America and impressed Alexander Graham Bell, who was interested in deaf mutes, and Thomas Edison. Five thousand people came to hear her at Carnegie Hall. She set up a model classroom at the San Francisco World Exhibition. But, although the movement started off so enthusiastically in the US, she didn't stay to help mold it. She returned to Europe. And, without her guidance, the movement became 'diluted' in the US as less and less teachers were trained by her and understood her original method.

In Europe, special schools were built with everything downsized to children's scale. Her books were translated into many languages. In 1919, she went to England amidst much acclaim [this would have been during the last years of Charlotte Mason's life.] EM Standing notes her insight into children, her strong yet charming personality, her devotion to her mission, as some of the reasons for her popularity. But she was afraid that people would think of her method as merely a miracle for kindergarten, and she felt that what she had discovered would have implications into adulthood, and would permeate homes and all of society in a few generations. But that would only happen if her principles were adhered to exactly [Charlotte Mason said the same thing about her own principles.] And she felt that the only way to prevent her ideas from being misunderstood and misapplied was to stop traveling and evangelizing, and devote herself to study and development of her method to older children, and give lectures to pass on her vision directly to as many people as possible. She lectured in India during WWII and met Ghandi. She traveled and lectured into her old age, with the help of her son Mario [she had a son? The book never mentioned that development! There was no mention of her marriage or any of her personal relationships, except her mother.] She died suddenly in 1952 in Holland at the age of 81. She was Catholic, and was buried in a Catholic cemetary in Holland.

This isn't the end of the book, it's just the opening biography. I think the rest of the book deals with her method.

Read the next part of this series, or start at the beginning.