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Dr Maria Montessori
“The education of children does not aim at preparing them for school, but for life.” Maria Montessori
Maria Montessori
The Champion Of The Child
Born in Italy in 1870 Maria Montessori was a pioneer in early childhood education. She was the first woman to become a doctor in Italy was a woman who was well advanced of her times.
She focused on a child centred education where she believed that education is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences in the environment. She believed in providing an environment that cultivates the child’s own natural desire to learn.
Some of her principles in education included that children have an absorbent mind, which is why they absorb without discrimination from the environment. They learn through their senses and go through sensitive periods. Children must have freedom to choose what to learn and when.
She opened her first Montessori Early Learning Centre – Casa dei Bambini – in Lorenzo, a poor inner suburb of Rome. She used her experience teaching children with learning challenges to develop a new method that could be applied to those without such difficulties.
Dr Montessori believed in providing an environment that cultivated the child’s natural desire to learn. The first children had little to no formal education but quickly became interested in puzzles and learning from the other children around them.
Montessori says education is not something the teacher does but is a natural process that develops in the child. She saw the role of education as providing environments in which children have the opportunity and freedom of following their natural impulses to become the wonderfully dynamic natural learners they are meant to be.
She saw that the child worked for the joy of the process rather than the end result. Children enjoyed repeating activities over and over till that innate need is met. And children are energised and excited by work not fatigued and burned out by it.
