The Montessori Method: An Objective View

Dr. Maria Montessori’s method of teaching young children has its beginnings in the early 1900s. Her method has become part of teaching and curricula in many schools, in addition to "Montessori Schools". The following is based on and excerpted from A History of Education, Socrates to Montessori. Taddle Creek Montessori School’s Children’s House provides a modern reflection of the earlier casa dei bambini.

The Montessori Method

The Montessori method has three main characteristics: the adaptation of schoolwork to the individuality of each child; the insistence on freedom for both pupils and teachers; and training of the senses.

The first characteristic is rooted in Dr. Montessori’s belief that the first duty of each human being is to develop as an individual. As a result of this belief, she encouraged pupils to work at their own rate, to concentrate on what interested them, and to use school materials in a way which would develop their latent abilities.

The freedom or liberty as championed by Dr. Montessori is illustrated by a story she told: "One day, the children had gathered themselves, laughing and talking, into a circle about a basin of water containing some floating toys. We had in the school a little boy barely two and a half years old. He had been left outside the circle, alone, and it was easy to see that he was filled with intense curiosity. I watched him from a distance with great interest; he first drew near to the other children and tried to force his way among them, but he was not strong enough to do this, and he then stood looking about him.

The expression of thought on his little face was intensely interesting. I wish that I had had a camera so that I might have photographed him. His eye lighted upon a little chair, and evidently he made up his mind to place it behind the group of children and then to climb up on it. He began to move toward the chair, his face illuminated with hope, but at that moment the teacher seized him in her arms, and lifting him up above the heads of the other children showed him the basin of water, saying, "Come, poor little one, you shall see too!" Undoubtedly the child, seeing the floating toys, did not experience the joy that he was about to feel through conquering the obstacle with his own force. The teacher hindered the child, in this case, from educating himself, without giving him any compensating good in return. The little fellow had been about to feel himself a conqueror, and he found himself held within two imprisoning arms, impotent. The expression of joy, anxiety, and hope, which had interested me so much, faded from his face and left on it the expression of the child who knows that others will act for him."

Although Dr. Montessori considered freedom to be an essential requirement for any true education, she did not, however, approve of or advocate uncontrolled behavior: "The liberty of children should have as its limit the collective interest. . . . We must, therefore, check in the children whatever offends or annoys others . .."

The third feature of the Montessori system is training of the senses. The emphasis upon sensory education is perhaps the most distinguishing mark of the system. The training is used not only as a means of development but as an introduction to reading, writing, and arithmetic: "After the children have had a good deal of experience in tracing contours made from sandpaper they are given cards, each containing a letter of the alphabet in sandpaper against a smooth background. The children learn to recognize the letters, but they also practice running their fingers over each letter, again and again, often with their eyes closed; the object of this exercise is to see if they can follow the sandpaper quickly, lightly, and surely, from memory. In this way they practice the alphabet. To get proper control over a pencil they merely color in the outlines of pictures. They are soon familiar with the muscular-tactical sensations of writing and have a visual perception of each letter./

They then learn the sounds of the letters. The pupils are provided with a box of letters identical in size and form with the sandpaper models but cut in cardboard and unmounted; there are three or four copies of each letter, which are kept in a compartment. The teacher pronounces a short word, enunciating each component sound carefully, while the pupils select from their letters the ones that the teacher is sounding. When several words have been laid out, they are read to the teacher. In this way, students build up a small vocabulary of words they can both spell and read and are ready to begin writing . . ."