Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori was an Italian physician and educator best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and her writing on scientific pedagogy.
107 Facts About Maria Montessori
2.
At an early age, Montessori enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school, with hopes of becoming an engineer.
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Maria Montessori soon had a change of heart and began medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome, becoming one of the first women to attend medical school in Italy; she graduated with honors in 1896.
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Maria Montessori was born on 31 August 1870, in Chiaravalle, Italy.
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Maria Montessori's father, Alessandro Montessori, age 33, was an official of the Ministry of Finance working in the local state-run tobacco factory.
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Maria Montessori had a loving relationship with her father, although he disagreed with her choice to continue her education.
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The Maria Montessori family moved to Florence in 1873, then to Rome in 1875 because of her father's work.
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Maria Montessori entered a public elementary school at the age of 6 in 1876.
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In 1883 or 1884, at the age of 13, Maria Montessori entered a secondary, technical school, Regia Scuola Tecnica Michelangelo Buonarroti, where she studied Italian, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, accounting, history, geography, and sciences.
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Maria Montessori graduated in 1886 with good grades and examination results.
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Maria Montessori did well in the sciences and especially in mathematics.
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Maria Montessori initially intended to pursue the study of engineering upon graduation, then an unusual aspiration for a woman.
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Maria Montessori appealed to Guido Baccelli, the professor of clinical medicine at the University of Rome, but was strongly discouraged.
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Maria Montessori was met with hostility and harassment from some medical students and professors because of her gender.
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Maria Montessori resorted to smoking tobacco to mask the offensive odor of formaldehyde.
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Maria Montessori won an academic prize in her first year, and in 1895 secured a position as a hospital assistant, gaining early clinical experience.
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Maria Montessori graduated from the University of Rome in 1896 as a doctor of medicine.
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Maria Montessori's thesis was published in 1897 in the journal Policlinico.
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Maria Montessori found employment as an assistant at the university hospital and started a private practice.
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Maria Montessori began to travel, study, speak, and publish nationally and internationally, coming to prominence as an advocate for women's rights and education for children with learning difficulties.
21.
Mario Maria Montessori was born out of her love affair with Giuseppe Montesano, a fellow doctor who was co-director with her of the Orthophrenic School of Rome.
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Maria Montessori wanted to keep the relationship with her child's father secret under the condition that neither of them would marry anyone else.
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Maria Montessori was forced to place her son in the care of a wet nurse living in the countryside, distraught to miss the first few years of his life.
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Maria Montessori read and studied the works of 19th-century physicians and educators Jean Marc Gaspard Itard and Edouard Seguin, who greatly influenced her work.
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Maria Montessori was intrigued by Itard's ideas and created a far more specific and organized system for applying them to the everyday education of children with disabilities.
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Also in 1897, Maria Montessori audited the university courses in pedagogy and read "all the major works on educational theory of the past two hundred years".
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In 1897, Maria Montessori spoke on societal responsibility for juvenile delinquency at the National Congress of Medicine in Turin.
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In 1899 Maria Montessori was appointed a councilor to the newly formed National League for the Protection of Retarded Children, and was invited to lecture on special methods of education for children with intellectual disabilities at the teacher training school of the College of Rome.
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That year Maria Montessori undertook a two-week national lecture tour to capacity audiences before prominent public figures.
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Maria Montessori joined the board of the National League and was appointed as a lecturer in hygiene and anthropology at one of the two teacher-training colleges for women in Italy.
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In 1901, Maria Montessori left the Orthophrenic School and her private practice, and in 1902 she enrolled in the philosophy degree course at the University of Rome.
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Maria Montessori pursued independent study in anthropology and educational philosophy, conducted observations and experimental research in elementary schools, and revisited the work of Itard and Seguin, translating their books into handwritten Italian.
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Maria Montessori's work developing what she would later call "scientific pedagogy" continued over the next few years.
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In 1902, Maria Montessori presented a report at a second national pedagogical congress in Naples.
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Maria Montessori published two articles on pedagogy in 1903, and two more the following year.
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Maria Montessori was appointed to lecture in the Pedagogic School at the university and continued in the position until 1908.
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Maria Montessori's lectures were printed as a book titled Pedagogical Anthropology in 1910.
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In 1906, Maria Montessori was invited to oversee the care and education of a group of children of working parents in a new apartment building for low-income families in the San Lorenzo district in Rome.
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Maria Montessori was interested in applying her work and methods to children without mental disabilities, and she accepted.
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At first, the classroom was equipped with a teacher's table and blackboard, a stove, small chairs, armchairs, and group tables for the children, and a locked cabinet for the materials that Maria Montessori had developed at the Orthophrenic School.
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Maria Montessori, occupied with teaching, research, and other professional activities, oversaw and observed the classroom work, but did not teach the children directly.
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Maria Montessori noted episodes of deep attention and concentration, multiple repetitions of activity, and a sensitivity to order in the environment.
43.
Maria Montessori replaced the heavy furniture with child-sized tables and chairs light enough for the children to move, and placed child-sized materials on low, accessible shelves.
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Maria Montessori expanded the range of practical activities such as sweeping and personal care to include a wide variety of exercises for the care of the environment and the self, including flower arranging, hand washing, gymnastics, care of pets, and cooking.
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Maria Montessori included large open-air sections in the classroom encouraging children to come and go as they please in the room's different areas and lessons.
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Maria Montessori felt by working independently children could reach new levels of autonomy and become self-motivated to reach new levels of understanding.
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Maria Montessori came to believe that acknowledging all children as individuals and treating them as such would yield better learning and fulfilled potential in each particular child.
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Maria Montessori continued to adapt and refine the materials she had developed earlier, altering or removing exercises which were chosen less frequently by the children.
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Maria Montessori began to see independence as the aim of education, and the role of the teacher as an observer and director of children's innate psychological development.
50.
In 1909, Maria Montessori held the first teacher training course in her new method in Citta di Castello, Italy.
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Maria Montessori's work was widely published internationally and spread rapidly.
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Maria Montessori societies were founded in the United States and the United Kingdom.
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Maria Montessori's work was widely translated and published during this period.
54.
In 1914, Maria Montessori published, in English, Doctor Maria Montessori's Own Handbook, a practical guide to the didactic materials she had developed.
55.
In 1911 and 1912, Maria Montessori's work was popular and widely publicized in the US, especially in a series of articles in McClure's Magazine.
56.
The first North American Maria Montessori school was opened in October 1911, in Tarrytown, New York.
57.
Maria Montessori traveled to the United States in December 1913 on a three-week lecture tour which included films of her European classrooms, meeting with large, enthusiastic crowds wherever she traveled.
58.
Maria Montessori's father died in November 1915, and she returned to Italy.
59.
Influential progressive educator William Heard Kilpatrick, a follower of American philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey, wrote a dismissive and critical book titled The Maria Montessori Method Examined, which had a broad impact.
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Critics charged that Maria Montessori's method was outdated, overly rigid, overly reliant on sense-training, and left too little scope for imagination, social interaction, and play.
61.
In 1916, Maria Montessori returned to Europe and took up residence in Barcelona, Spain.
62.
Maria Montessori education experienced significant growth in Spain, the Netherlands, the UK and Italy.
63.
On her return from the US, Maria Montessori continued her work in Barcelona, where a small program sponsored by the Catalan government begun in 1915 had developed into the Escola Maria Montessori, serving children from three to ten years old, and the Laboratori i Seminari de Pedagogia, a research, training, and teaching institute.
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In 1917 Maria Montessori published her elementary work in L'autoeducazionne nelle Scuole Elementari, which appeared in English as The Advanced Maria Montessori Method.
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Around 1920, the Catalan independence movement began to demand that Maria Montessori take a political stand and make a public statement favoring Catalan independence, and she refused.
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In 1917, Maria Montessori lectured in Amsterdam, and the Netherlands Maria Montessori Society was founded.
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Maria Montessori returned in 1920 to give a series of lectures at the University of Amsterdam.
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Maria Montessori programs flourished in the Netherlands, and by the mid-1930s there were more than 200 Maria Montessori schools in the country.
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Maria Montessori education was met with enthusiasm and controversy in England between 1912 and 1914.
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In 1919, Maria Montessori came to England for the first time and gave an international training course which was received with high interest.
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Maria Montessori education continued to spread in the UK, although the movement experienced some of the struggles over authenticity and fragmentation that took place in the US.
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Maria Montessori continued to give training courses in England every other year until the beginning of WWII.
73.
In 1922, Maria Montessori was invited to Italy on behalf of the government to give a course of lectures and later to inspect Italian Maria Montessori schools.
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In December, Maria Montessori returned to Italy to plan a series of annual training courses under government sponsorship, and in 1923, the minister of education Giovanni Gentile expressed his support for Maria Montessori schools and teacher training.
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In 1924 Maria Montessori met with Mussolini, who extended his official support for Maria Montessori education as part of the national program.
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Maria Montessori lectured in Vienna in 1923, and her lectures were published as Il Bambino in Famiglia, published in English in 1936 as The Child in the Family.
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In 1929, the first International Maria Montessori Congress was held in Elsinore, Denmark, in conjunction with the Fifth Conference of the New Education Fellowship.
78.
In 1932, Maria Montessori spoke on Peace and Education at the Second International Maria Montessori Congress in Nice, France.
79.
In 1932, Maria Montessori spoke at the International Peace Club in Geneva, Switzerland, on the theme of Peace and Education.
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Maria Montessori held peace conferences from 1932 to 1939 in Geneva, Brussels, Copenhagen, and Utrecht, which were later published in Italian as Educazione e Pace, and in English as Education and Peace.
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In 1949, and again in 1950 and in 1951, Maria Montessori was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, receiving a total of six nominations.
82.
In 1937, the 6th International Maria Montessori Congress was held on the theme of "Education for Peace", and Maria Montessori called for a "science of peace" and spoke about the role of education of the child as a key to the reform of society.
83.
In 1938, Maria Montessori was invited to India by the Theosophical Society to give a training course, and in 1939 she left the Netherlands with her son and collaborator Mario.
84.
An interest in Maria Montessori had existed in India since 1913 when an Indian student attended the first international course in Rome, and students throughout the 1920s and 1930s had come back to India to start schools and promote Maria Montessori education.
85.
Maria Montessori gave a training course at the Theosophical Society in Madras in 1939, and had intended to give a tour of lectures at various universities, and then return to Europe.
86.
In 1945 Maria Montessori attended the first All India Maria Montessori Conference in Jaipur, and in 1946, with the war over, she and her family returned to Europe.
87.
In 1946, at the age of 76, Maria Montessori returned to Amsterdam, and she spent the next six years travelling in Europe and India.
88.
Maria Montessori gave a training course in London in 1946, and in 1947 opened a training institute there, the Montessori Centre.
89.
Also in 1947, she returned to Italy to re-establish the Opera Nazionale Maria Montessori and gave two more training courses.
90.
In 1949 she gave a course in Karachi, Pakistan and the Pakistan Maria Montessori Association was founded.
91.
In 1949 Maria Montessori returned to Europe and attended the 8th International Maria Montessori Congress in Sanremo, Italy, where a model classroom was demonstrated.
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Maria Montessori was awarded the French Legion of Honor, Officer of the Dutch Order of Orange Nassau, and received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Amsterdam.
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Maria Montessori was directly involved in the development and founding of the UNESCO Institute for Education in 1951.
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Maria Montessori was present at the first preliminary meeting of the UNESCO Governing Board in Wiesbaden, Germany on 19 June 1951 and delivered a speech.
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Maria Montessori was one of the invited guests who would deliver a speech to commemorate and memorialize the momentous occasion.
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Maria Montessori died of a cerebral hemorrhage on 6 May 1952, at the age of 81 in Noordwijk aan Zee, the Netherlands.
97.
Maria Montessori considered her work in the Orthophrenic School and her subsequent psychological studies and research work in elementary schools as "scientific pedagogy", a concept current in the study of education at the time.
98.
Maria Montessori called for not just observation and measurement of students, but for the development of new methods which would transform them.
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Maria Montessori's method was founded on the observation of children at liberty to act freely in an environment prepared to meet their needs.
100.
Maria Montessori came to the conclusion that the children's spontaneous activity in this environment revealed an internal program of development, and that the appropriate role of the educator was to remove obstacles to this natural development and provide opportunities for it to proceed and flourish.
101.
Accordingly, the schoolroom was equipped with child-sized furnishings, "practical life" activities such as sweeping and washing tables, and teaching material that Maria Montessori had developed herself.
102.
Maria Montessori observed a strong tendency in the children to order their own environment, straightening tables and shelves, and ordering materials.
103.
Maria Montessori continued to develop her pedagogy and her model of human development as she expanded her work and extended it to older children.
104.
Maria Montessori saw human behavior as guided by universal, innate characteristics in human psychology which her son and collaborator Mario M Montessori Sr.
105.
Maria Montessori saw different characteristics, learning modes, and developmental imperatives active in each of these planes, and called for educational approaches specific to each period.
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Maria Montessori's methods are installed in hundreds of public and private schools across the United States.
107.
Maria Montessori published a number of books, articles, and pamphlets during her lifetime, often in Italian, but sometimes first in English.