Maria Montessori's Educational Legacy in America

Introduction: Maria Montessori's Origins and Philosophy

Maria Montessori is best known for her contributions to early childhood educational theory and practice. However, she also became Italy's first female medical doctor. Being steeped in the scientific method, pediatrics, and psychiatry enabled Montessori to devise pedagogically sound teaching strategies. She valued empirical evidence, and yet her methods were initially regarded as experimental both in Europe and in the United States. Her methods have been "criticized for being too structured and academically demanding," and yet she documented her successes in books such as The Montessori Method ("Maria Montessori 1870–1952," n.d.).

Montessori made an especially important mark on the education of children with disabilities and economically disadvantaged youth. In 1907, she found work at the Casa dei Bambini: a school for poor children from the slums of Rome ("Maria Montessori, MD," n.d.). The experience prompted Montessori to take up a greater interest in the study of teaching, as she had previously been immersed in the rigors of a standard medical career. Her budding interest in children — and especially children with special needs — had begun several years before her work at the Casa dei Bambini.

Pediatrics and psychiatry were Montessori's areas of specialization when she began her medical career ("Maria Montessori 1870–1952," n.d.). Her work brought her into contact with poor children who lacked access to the educational resources enjoyed by their peers. Montessori also became the director of the University of Rome's Orthophrenic School, which was essentially an institution for Rome's children with severe disabilities ("Maria Montessori 1870–1952," n.d.). She became a harsh critic of the institutions responsible for disadvantaged children and set out to devise a revolutionary system of education.

Just three months after the first Casa dei Bambini opened in 1907, a second was launched, headed by Maria Montessori herself. For this newer school, Montessori declared her broad view of education as a crucial social responsibility — one that could transform society by minimizing class conflict and gender inequality (Kramer & Freud, 1988). All the while, Montessori fulfilled multiple roles as educator, psychologist, and anthropologist. For Montessori, "the school was a laboratory in which a great social experiment would be carried out" (Kramer & Freud, 1988, p. 144). She created a diligent pedagogy based on systematic observations of children, and her detailed accounts of her educational experiments laid the foundation not just for her signature method but also for progressive educational practice more broadly.

Montessori Comes to America

By the end of 1907, Montessori had a small following, many of whom were middle-class women seeking guidance from a potential mentor (Kramer & Freud, 1988). She had begun teaching courses in professional education in Italy, and her work was drawing considerable media attention. Visitors from around the world — from Asia, South and North America, the Middle East, New Zealand, and throughout Europe — paid visits to Montessori and her schools. By 1909, she was working not just with disadvantaged and disabled children but with advantaged ones as well. Several American visitors carried news of Montessori's methods back to the United States. Initial press coverage offered mixed reviews: Jenny B. Merrill, writing for the Kindergarten-Primary Magazine, described Montessori's approach as radical and peculiar because of its emphasis on the rapid development of practical skills, including early literacy (Kramer & Freud, 1988).

What truly caught the eye of American policymakers and educators was the way Montessori's core teaching philosophy paralleled American ideals of equality. Her method was essentially egalitarian, which appealed to public school administrators and educators in early twentieth-century America. "Many political leaders saw it as a practical way to reform the outmoded school systems of Europe, North America, and Asia, as well as an approach that they hoped would lead to a more productive and law-abiding populace" ("Maria Montessori 1870–1952," n.d.). Montessori advocated a teaching method that was the antithesis of prevailing models, which were teacher-centric, authoritarian, and demanded a passive role of students. Such models mirrored the political regimes that dominated much of Europe — most notably in Montessori's native Italy. Her method was practically the opposite of dictatorial: a student-centered classroom in which the teacher acts as an observer to facilitate maximum cognitive, social, and emotional development. Her methods were admired not only for their underlying political philosophies but also for their grounding in empirical observation.

Maria Montessori first visited the United States in 1913, welcomed by Alexander Graham Bell, who founded the Montessori Educational Association in Washington, D.C. Thomas Edison and Helen Keller were among other prominent supporters of her teaching methods ("Maria Montessori," n.d.). Montessori was invited to speak at Carnegie Hall in 1915. As part publicity stunt and part demonstration of her method, she also participated in the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco: "spectators watched twenty-one children, all new to the Montessori method, behind a glass wall for four months" ("Maria Montessori, MD," n.d.).

Her fame spread, and Montessori became a celebrated educator. She eventually led teaching seminars in South Asia as well as in the Americas. When Mussolini took power, he initiated a partnership with Montessori and hoped to "capture publicity" for the regime by naming her "Italy's children's ambassador to the world" (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2003, p. 175). Montessori refused and was summarily exiled. Not long afterward, she made her mark in India and Sri Lanka, where she helped establish Montessori schools. Her rejection of Italy's fascist regime perfectly paralleled her vehement opposition to an authoritarian classroom.

Montessori's work was applicable to any social setting, but it took root especially well in the United States, where increasing numbers of immigrants were altering class stratification and reshaping the social and political landscape. For Montessori, "education…was still infused by the spirit of slavery, typified by the school desk and the immobility it forces on the child" (Kramer & Freud, 1988, p. 151). Americans — especially politically liberal ones — appreciated her socially conscious worldview and her corresponding approach to teaching children ("Maria Montessori 1870–1952," n.d.). Montessori "had put forward an ambitious plan for reforming society through a method of educating young children" (Kramer & Freud, 1988, p. 143). She reformulated the role of educational institutions in democratic societies: education was to be a vehicle for social change and the foundation of an egalitarian and free society.

Conclusion: Montessori Now

The renaissance of the Montessori method did have a lasting impact on education in America. Moreover, the method seems to be rediscovering its roots as a universal approach to instruction. Montessori education has become "popular with some Black professionals and is getting results in low-income public schools with the kind of children on whom Montessori first tested her ideas" (Matthews, 2007). Just as Maria Montessori practiced her pedagogy with the poorest children of Rome, modern Montessori educators are noting "long-term success in several local public schools that attract low-income students" (Matthews, 2007). The Montessori method is used at thousands of private schools across the country, and up to 300 public schools are now classified as Montessori (Matthews, 2007). Incorporating Montessori's methods with those of mainstream public education allows the ideals of social change and social justice to permeate an educational system in need of reform.

References

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Flaherty, T. (n.d.). Maria Montessori (1870–1952). Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society. Retrieved April 13, 2009, from

Kramer, R., & Freud, A. (1988). Maria Montessori. Westview Press.

"Maria Montessori." Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society. Retrieved April 13, 2009, from

"Maria Montessori (1870–1952) — Biography, Work with disabled children, links to Itard and Seguin, the Orthophrenic School." (n.d.). State University. Retrieved April 13, 2009, from http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2244/Montessori-Maria-1870-1952.html

"Maria Montessori, MD." (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2009, from

Matthews, J. (2007, January 2). Montessori, now 100, goes mainstream. The Washington Post. Retrieved April 13, 2009, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/01/AR2007010100742.html

Zimmerman, B. J., & Schunk, D. H. (2003). Educational psychology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.