Maria Montessori: Renaissance Educator

            March around the world has the recognition of International Women’s Day on March 8th. In the United States, March is highlighted as a women’s history month, so I wanted to add this piece about Maria Montessori before the month ends. Maria Montessori was the first woman in Italy to graduate from medical school. Her specialty was pediatrics and she also followed and learned about the new field of psychiatry. Topping these qualifications and interests, she became an educator in practice and theories.

          Born in 1870, in Italy, Maria Montessori had a voracious interest in learning. Kramer (1988) described the time when Maria was a young student. Schools required sitting immobile for hours and rote work under teachers who saw no reason to make learning interesting. Sadly, one can still see teachers who still such classroom practices in 2022. For students to feel a sense of belonging in a classroom and as empowered learners, teachers need to use diverse methods and show a caring attitude toward each student entrusted to them (Heslinga, 2015).

           In Maria Montessori’s time, teachers felt angry because their responsibilities were many and their pay was meager. Often these teachers acted meanly, like uncaring dictators, to students. Every area of study was guided by a syllabus and included reading material students had to memorize.

           Still, Montessori’s interest in learning grew. She was passionate about learning and curious about every subject, even those that her country set aside just for boys. Her father was not happy at her desire to attend a boys’ technical school, but her mother supported Maria’s desire to learn beyond the age that most girls went to school. With her mother’s strong support, Montessori overcame her father’s negative attitude. Montessori also ignored the dismissive attitude of anti-feminist men, proceeded to learn engineering, and then went on to attend medical school.

           When she graduated as a physician in 1896, she was the first woman in Italy to receive a medical degree. Maria Montessori’s friends reported that she could not explain how the desire to become a doctor gripped her, but it did, completely. Montessori wanted to know physiology, psychology, and sociology. Becoming a doctor seemed like the door to all she wanted to learn. The choice to become a doctor was a major decision made on Maria’s intuition and persistent belief in her ability to reach a goal, even one her society did not condone for a woman.

Maria Montessori’s theories

            In her medical studies of psychiatry, anthropology, and child development, Maria Montessori learned to practice observation skills. She continued to trust her intuition too. Kramer (1988) explained that Montessori’s social concern for children and education developed in the two years after her graduation and through the contact she had with children from a variety of the asylums in Rome.

            Maria Montessori saw a need for special schooling that could reach children with emotional and learning needs. She was convinced from reading, research, and experiences that children with unusual learning needs could successfully learn if only there were school environments and trained teachers who cared about such children. Montessori believed that with teachers who would respect a child and the child’s family, no matter how poor, dirty, or uneducated the family was, children could gain confidence, learn, and thrive. With determination and passion, Montessori set out to create a school where children of the poorest people in Rome could learn and overcome their poverty-stricken home environments.

           The Casa dei Bambini, Maria Montessori’s first school for children of the poor, opened in a tenement in Rome. Like Mary McLeod Bethune, Maria Montessori worked hard to physically create the environment she believed would help children to feel safe and valued. Montessori wanted children to be intrigued by this new experience, school. The children who would come to the first Casa Bambini were considered little more than animals by the high social class and society of Rome. Most members of the upper echelons did not believe in investing time, energy, or money to help the poor with educational opportunities.

           Montessori enlisted the help of friends, associates, and anyone else who would generously provide some help for the poor by donating supplies for the school. Martin (1994) explained Montessori defined education by actions and showed an educational philosophy based on scientific knowledge, ideals, and intuition. Montessori knew people were curious, apprehensive, and cynical of her methods so she not only established educational processes that led to her two-time nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize, but she also wrote about her ideas and ideals. Montessori wanted others to understand and value educational practices that allowed for all children to learn at their own pace. She believed that as children felt safe and valued, as they had the freedom to move and choose their activities, their learning could very naturally include social skills as well as academic content.

            What did this woman, who had studied like a boy in her culture, who had become the first woman to receive a medical degree in her country, who had gone into a poor slum to start a school that would change the lives of children, believe about education? Montessori (1964) believed children had an innate and spontaneous interest in learning. Although she acknowledged that genes affected the developmental capacity of intellect, Montessori did not believe nature was the determinant for what a child could learn or grow to accomplish.

           Montessori believed the nurture children received would have the greatest effect on potential and future achievement. Seldin (2006) highlighted the imaginative playful approach to developing creativity, focus, and narrative abilities in children. Seldin also examined how Montessori teachers and parents show empathy, care, respect, compassion, and integrity to build environments where young students can show the same qualities to others.

           Montessori (1964) found that adults held inaccurate ideas of what children would do with the freedom to move about in a classroom. In Montessori’s experience, motion and movement established essential cognitive and affective connections for any topic from paintings to gardening to building to manners. Decades have passed since Montessori presented her theories until school recognized children learn best through play and participation (Ringsmose, 2017).

         Children who could go through motions associated with concepts not only understood and learned more, they had more positive associations with learning. Activity, motion, choices, and interaction build positive learning environments. Children who explored and moved with freedom in a classroom watched, listened, shared, examined, followed, and connected facts and concepts. Gomez (2022) declared,

                        Learning games uses memory, reasoning, and logic.

                        Inventing new games taps into creativity, storytelling,

                        and problem-solving. Being able to choose who goes first

                        in a fair manner solves the "me first" problems that are so

                        present in children (and in all of our society, if one stops to

                        think about it). Asking someone to join play is a way to show

                        caring and to make friends. Asking to be included involves self-

                        advocacy and increases self-esteem. Learning to trade a valued

                        item for a wanted item teaches the sharing of resources. Running

                        and physical movement increases physical fitness and releases

                        endorphins that decrease stress. These positive skills are just a few

                        of the multitude of essential life benefits of play.

​

           Montessori also decided that correction of children’s efforts was an ineffective educational practice. If a young student made a mistake, immediate correction often added stress to the learning process. If young children have the freedom to observe and try again at their own pace, they saw ways to improve and correct their own misconceptions. Schools do more to add stress when they emphasize one must aim to get something right rather than the idea that one should try to learn, even through mistakes. Rarely are extra opportunities to try again given graciously.

           Consequently, students do not see value in mistakes nor do they try to learn from analyzing mistakes. They feel pressure to avoid making mistakes. Even when influential adults cannot recall pressuring a student, one needs to face Montessori’s words, quoted in Lillard (2005) that emphasized how much children from the youngest ages just try to absorb words and sounds of words for meaning. “If a person says, “There!” as she performs an action, 18-month-olds are much more likely to imitate her than if she said, “Whoops!” (Lillard, 2005, p.196). When children take these words into their conscious and unconscious minds, they also take in the emotions heard with the words. Early, children learn mistakes cause adults to frown. Mistakes are disliked.

            Differences can form another category that meets with dislike among adults. Restrictions based on cultural preferences and prejudices, such as how a person should hold a writing implement or form letters also inhibited learning. Maria Montessori emphasized the need to let youngsters use natural movement, observation, and experimentation to find comfortable methods for writing. Montessori encouraged the dissolution of dogma in presenting students with tasks requiring fine motor skills. Students develop at different paces. Forcing everyone to learn in the same way and in the same amount of time inhibits learning.

           Every youngster works to make sense of the world while learning language and life skills. The levels and interplay of challenges to learning, understanding, applying and analyzing create constant problems for children to solve. Children make sense of the world in different ways and at varying paces. To interrupt their concept formation with demands for different activities, a pace determined by the teacher, or corrections, curtails learning and adds stress to concept building. Montessori (1964, p.368) identified three developmental phases for learning.

1. The first, a subconscious stage, looks to form something meaningful in the midst of confusion.

2. The second stage is a conscious act to try to move through a process or to advance in gaining a skill.

3. The third is attainment and mastery of the skills that can on request or command be accomplished.

4. ​

Montessori advocated looking broadly at possible strategies and applications.

         A safe and interesting environment, with the freedom to move and explore, the chance to choose activities, uninterrupted practice, the exercise of observation, and positive interactions produce young students who feel safe and able to control their pace and options in learning. The list of environmental and teaching strategies, advocated by Montessori does not match the list of traditional classroom environments. In her book, The Montessori Method, (1964) one reads about public schools’ busy work, false bases for strategies, collective presentations, lack of student motion, restricted options for moving outside, emphasis on quietness, and lack of personal passion for learning that inhibit student potential to achieve.

         Lillard (2005) found dissatisfaction with public schools’ traditional rules and methods in the writings of William Blake, the choices of Albert Einstein, and messages from Maria Montessori. Public schools, according to Lillard, have given priority to:

• convenience over creativity,

• efficiency over effort,

• lesson plans over learning,

•  measures over matters,

•  inside work over outside work, 

• standard operating procedures over unique exploratory options,

• traditional practices over reality-based problem-solving, and

• factory or business approaches over humanized and individualized approaches.

Lillard (2005) believed poor approaches stay in public schools because social and economic challenges prevent school systems from taking on new approaches. At best some new ideas are superficially applied.

           Montessori, as described by Lillard, (1972) advanced methods for a curriculum that helps develop students who care about the environment, value family relationships, find balance, gain dignity, increase understanding of others, and build positive interdependence. The Montessori values, highlighted by Lillard, (1972) connect to 21st century needs and challenges. Montessori did not take previous traditions and practices as laws for her schools or any schools. She valued children, simple experiential learning, feeding the senses, and building knowledge through observation, exploration, and interaction. Ultimately, Montessori advanced the idea that teachers and schools should have faith that children can and will learn with preparation, communication, and motivation. Teachers can prepare classrooms, encourage learning opportunities, communicate with encouraging words, provide time for motion, and develop attitudes that build comfort in the classroom as well as confidence in learning.

          In public school classes of the 21st century, with budgets often in crisis, class sizes are larger than optimal, and supplies are minimal. Lillard (1996) used a comprehensive view of Montessori methods for all ages and suggested teachers look for ways to free students from factory and lockstep activities.

 

• Cut down on interruptions.

 

• Allow the flow of exploration over artificial timetables.

 

• Let students learn through errors.

 

• Allow choices for activities and approaches.

 

• Build a repertoire of activities that engage the brain and hands.

 

• Do not allow past educational experiences and   prejudices to inhibit a

 

belief that students can meet with success.

 

• Include motion and outdoor observation as much as possible.

 

           Students who have had traditional education will thrive with Montessori methods if processes are introduced slowly, allowing adjustment to the very different levels of choice, exploration, and motion. Montessori (Lillard, 2005) reminded adults that the language children learn best is the one they learn as infants and toddlers without formal teaching methods. Children desire learning and will develop cognitive connections, more quickly with the freedom to explore, play, question, move, and interact when they are ready to communicate.

          Teachers who desire the implementation of Montessori methods within the traditional elementary, middle school, or high school environments will need to explain that a new set of activities will start. In most schools, there has been little choice for students in what they study, little time for quiet exploration, and more emphasis on preparing for tests than experimenting, moving around, and creating. Students have not used their full observation and thinking skills. The new set of activities and choices will allow all students to expand their learning in depth, breadth, and action.

          The spontaneous enjoyment that comes out of having choices will lead students to spend more time exploring a topic and challenges. Montessori (Lillard, 2005) found that students in an environment of ordered activity desired unity and understanding. When allowed to choose their task and method of accomplishing the work, students became interested, focused, and thoroughly engaged in the learning activity. As a teacher starts to allow choices, allow just a few. Students who have not had this experience will need to move through stages of finding their way, realizing they actually have a choice and power over their ability to learn.

           Provide reinforcement, review, and renewal through walks and motion. Even if students cannot leave the school grounds, time outside walking about will feed students’ need for motion that helps them digest what they have been learning. As a medical doctor and educator, Montessori found walking to provide the best all-around exercise building health, aiding digestion, stimulating curiosity, fueling study, and allowing thought development.

           Montessori (Lillard, 2005) also reinforced the importance of language in building the ability to communicate with others and so to have independence and possibilities. Individuals of any age develop health and abilities through expanding language in construction and adaptation. Montessori explained that movement develops intelligence, and development will crave more movement and action. Twenty-first-century educators need to take scientific knowledge about learning and movement and find ways to build students’ psychic and intellectual energy by combining exploration, practice, and review with language and motion.

Teachers need to show students models of applications.

            For 10 minutes, present a lesson in a traditional manner, then present the same lesson with incorporated motion and appeals to varied senses. Ask the students to compare and contrast the two lessons that covered the same topic. Talk with the students about how people learn and give them an assignment to study a baby or a toddler in their family or neighborhood. For their homework, they should observe what the baby does when the baby is not interacting with other people. When they return with their homework, collect observations, and encourage connections to how people learn. Remind students that they as babies and toddlers were learning in the same ways as the children they observed.

           Maria Montessori (1964) said concepts of liberty in exploration created learners with powerful observation skills and enthusiasm for learning. Montessori contrasted her methods involving motion, walking, and choices with the rows of stationary desks and chairs inside deteriorating schools. Inhibited motion, restrictions in time on tasks, and lack of choice in individualized exploration represented educational slavery to Montessori.

           Montessori believed in the dignity of people, especially in children as they navigated through unknown words and tasks each day wanting to learn and yet frustrated by their lack of control over what and how they could study something of interest. Montessori believed that if schools and societies wanted to have people who would accomplish great tasks, people had to be allowed to follow their personal interests and inspiration. Share inspirational accomplishments with students, something done by a person who had no expectation or hope for any kind of prize for their efforts. Ask students to think about people who have encouraged them in their own special interests, hobbies, and goals. Ask students for stories of people they know who have overcome great difficulties to reach some special goal.

           Explain, illustrate, and demonstrate the term inter-disciplinary to students. Choose a topic, such as the national capital, and then see how many items the students can connect to the topic: history, architecture, transportation, rivers, monuments, signs, entertainment, business, schools, communities, foods. Then ask the students, which school subjects connect to these items. With practice, students will see how many subjects connect to one topic. Students should then be encouraged to come up with ideas for interdisciplinary projects that they can complete collaboratively. The ideas can be shared with the whole class. Ask for adaptations, elaboration, and always offer commendation to students for their ideas and efforts. It is a risk to share a creative idea or to give an answer in public. Provide affirmation so students know the risk will be worthwhile. All over the world students find it difficult to speak in front of a group, even a group of people they have known for most of their lives.

           Allow students to create an interdisciplinary project to complete on their own, with a partner, or with a group. Spend time helping the students to form ideas on how they will work on the project based on what they imagine they will study and connect to their project. Montessori (1964) emphasized the need to reconstruct education, and that methods of instruction had to change if societies wanted to regenerate enthusiasm, effort, and excellence in learning. Teachers need to recommit to excellence each day as they are the most frequent role models, other than family members, seen by the students.

Empowering students requires helping them to understand how they learn.

          With effort made to help students understand how people learn, especially from the early challenge in the synthesis of everything a baby hears, sees, and experiences, a teacher can lead students to admire what they have already learned and to have confidence in their ability to learn. Lead students through the identification of learning skills that merge with life skills that will make life better for the student, the school community, the country, and the world. Review means to go over a skill or layer of knowledge, but a review can be active and fun. Students can use motions, walking, singing, drawing, acting, creating, and other energizing strategies to build knowledge and comprehension. Employing lively strategies in every class helps students grow in ease and application of reinforcing learning with activity.

            Help students to establish goals. If students have goals, they have inner motivation and a focus for their efforts. Practice the strategies that aid students in digesting the new concepts so thoroughly that they will be able to use the material and experiences for more learning. Show students strategies that research has proven are effective in learning.

          Remember, Montessori was concerned about the whole individual, not just one skill or one subject area. Montessori sought to find ways to help students understand that everything connects to something else and swirls this way and that in integration. This differs from the linear ascent of traditional education described by Montessori, the ascent of increased information and pressure.

​

Examine Classrooms and Systems

          Look at the school system honestly with students, provide strategies, and develop skills that will strengthen students for the challenges ahead. Let students know that:

1. Traditional factory-style limited movement learning will not be sufficient to develop all their abilities.

2. Remind students of interconnections between their own health, mental and physical, the methods to develop intellectual prowess, and of the connections from one field of study to another.

3. Use active learning, especially the option for students to walk while studying, reviewing, and learning.

4. Make the environment inviting, respectful, gracious, and stimulating.

          

          If students have opportunities to make choices, move, observe, interact, study, and explore, they will advance and thrive. Montessori (1967) spoke of the way we see a child, “making a gradual and spontaneous conquest of ideas and speech” (p. 164). Educators and parents need awed respect of how much children learn and master. Teachers who understand that it is a privilege and honor to work with young people will make the extra effort to inspire joy in learning through timing and activities suited to a wide variety of learning needs.

​

Examples of Teaching as a Renaissance Educator

Hernando

       Each year Hernando sees most of his students have reluctance to speak in front of the class. Many of them have no idea that they have valuable ideas and can make important contributions by sharing their ideas and observations. Hernando starts early choosing topics that will interest his students. Often a first topic will be a famous singer the students admire.

        Then Hernando takes the students through the various subject areas the school offers, history, geography, English, math, biology, chemistry, physics, foreign languages, mechanical drawing, computer programming, music, and physical education, and asks the students to think of ways all these subjects connect to the singer. How could a person do a project on this singer that would tie into any one of these school subject areas?

        Eventually, the students show proficiency in finding connections from any topic Hernando suggests to school disciplines. Hernando wants them to see how life interests and topics connect with school studies. By the middle of the year, Hernando has his senior high school students looking at careers and businesses and finding connections and possible paths to the careers.

         In the spring, when Hernando sees his students have gained confidence, they have an interviewing assignment. Working with one partner, they create questions to ask local business owners and other local professionals such as doctors, professors, government administrators, and lawyers. Then the two young people make an appointment to go and interview the local professional or business owner about preparation for that career and responsibilities in the daily work. Hernando speaks openly with the students about professional appearance and manners. They role-play the interview process in the classroom.

       The student duos report to the class on their interview. Hernando sees growth in planning, writing, public speaking, and social interaction in his students through this process. Often students learn some of some inspirational accomplishments of local leaders. The students seem encouraged to think there is a wealth of opportunities before them if they prepare well.

 

Harry

For Montessori, manners, and consideration of others stand as crucial parts of an education. Because Harry always tries to develop the serving others outlook with his classes, he does a whole unit on talking to people. Students create a list of reasons why a person has to talk to other people. They look at the plusses and minuses of having strong outgoing talkative skills and social opportunities. Harry has students discuss manners and ways of speaking from casually with friends to meeting an important official.

       Students are asked to create skits about someone interacting rudely and poorly with another person. They present the skits; the rest of the class identifies where the conversation was wrong or inappropriate, makes suggestions for a better and polite way of interacting and the skit is redone with improvements applied.

The other project Harry has his students complete is a local history project. Working with a partner, students decide on a long-time resident in the community who is past the age of 70 whom they might interview. The students create interview questions, submit them to Harry for approval, and then make an appointment to interview the person outside of the school day. From all the class interviews, the students write a chapter on each person. The chapters are put together in a book on local history through the eyes of longtime residents.

​

Heather

       Heather teaches a unit on generalizations and prejudices. Often her middle school students speak in generalizations and do not realize how prejudices connect to generalizations. Heather defines generalization with the students. Generalizations are statements made based on observation or experience. Generalizations can seem reasonable, but since they are made based on a small amount of evidence and perceptions, people actually make a leap to a conclusion that may not be true.

       Assumptions can also affect perceptions and people make assumptions about many actions, expressions, and appearances. Heather has her class list assumptions and generalizations they have heard or said. She gives them the assignment to listen everywhere for generalizations and assumptions in conversations.

       Each day she collects these from students by adding them to the class list. At the end of the week, students evaluate the list for which generalizations contribute to prejudices. After identifying the various prejudices in the generalizations and assumptions, students choose one to investigate further for a short research paper. Heather has noticed this learning activity causes her students to think and observe more carefully and to question assumptions and generalizations. Their thinking, observing, and writing skills seem to mature.

​

HuaXin

       Montessori’s ideas on motion, especially walking as a way to refresh a person and increase cognitive abilities, have captured HuaXin’s attention because her students seem to have rare opportunities for motion in their school day. HuaXin has her students consider various exercises and how these exercises affect the body. Then she asks them, how does exercise affect the brain and their ability to do school work?

       When they have listed, discussed, and evaluated the various answers, HuaXin has the students make a chart of physical exercises they like to do or would like to do. Then she asks them for 2 months to try to do the exercise(s) each day. They are to keep a journal about their successes and failures and about how regular participation in the exercise makes them feel.

       At the end of the two months, there is a class discussion on the practices and results of the students’ choices of exercise activities. HuaXin also watches for especially good weather days when she can take the students outside on the school grounds and have them walk around for 20 minutes while observing something connected to a reading or vocabulary lesson. Then they return to the classroom and discuss their findings. HuaXin believes most students come through this activity and set of lessons with greater interest in physical exercise as a way to improve their life and learning.

 

References

Gomez, L. (2022). The Power of Recess. Communique, 50(5), 17. 

         https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A691005312/AONu=mlin_c_annamc&sid=bookmark

 

Heslinga, V. (2015). Feelings: Actions, Methods, and Strategies to Prepare Students for

             Learning by Creating an Environment Considerate of Affective Needs. Electronic

           Journal for Inclusive Education, 3 (4).

            https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/ejie/vol3/iss4/7/   

​

Kramer, R. (1988). Maria Montessori: A biography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

 

Lillard, A.S. (2005). Montessori: The science behind the genius. New York, NY:

            Oxford University Press.

 

Lillard, P. P. (1972). Montessori: A modern approach. New York, NY: Schocken Books.

 

Lillard, P.P. (1996). Montessori today: A comprehensive approach to education from

             birth to adulthood. New York,NY: Schocken Books.

 

Martin, J. R. (1994). Changing the educational landscape: Philosophy, women,

             and curriculum. New York, NY: Routledge.

 

Montessori, M. (1964). The Montessori method. New York, NY:Schocken Books.

 

Montessori, M. (1967). Discovery of the child. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

 

Montessori, M. (2007). The absorbent mind. Radford, VA: Wilder.

 

Ringsmose, C. (2017, April). Global Education Reform Movement: Challenge to Nordic

               Childhood. Global Education Review, 4(2), 92+. 

                https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A544247902/AONE? u=mlin

 

Seldin, T., & Davies, V. (2006). How to raise an amazing child the Montessori way.

             New York, NY: DK.

​

​

​

​

​

​