Abstract/Notes: The Montessori movement, considered by many a radical departure from traditional educational methods, will receive new emphasis and publicity from the fact that visitors to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition will see during the months of August, September, October and November not only a demonstration of the Montessori system but will see it conducted by the talented woman herself. Associated with her will be Miss Margaret Wilson, daughter of the President, Dr. David Starr Jordan, chancellor of Leland Stanford Junior University, and other well known educators. The Montessori method has been summed up as 'freedom for development of the child under best conditions disturbing as little as possible but helping buy every means this development.' Any estimate of Mme. Montessori's work to be of practical value will involve a comparison between the Montessori method and that of the kindergarten, since the kindergarten is the only system of organizes educational work for young children that has so far received general recognition. In the middle of the last century the sensitive woman soul and philosophic mind of Froebel grasped the fundamental principle of development and say that the first six or seven years are the most important in the life of the individual. After years of study he embodied what he conceived to be the fundamental principles of the education of little children in what is known as the kindergarten, and his ideas of the best means for the application of these principles in his kindergarten program, materials and devices. The discovery of the kindergarten marked a new era in the history of the educational world. Though suppressed for years by government authority in Germany, and received with much suspicion elsewhere, the kindergarten has become an integral part of the public school system of many cities and States in our country. Its introduction into England was championed by Charles Dickens, and in America it found an advocate in the philosopher and educator Dr. William T. Harris. Concerning the kindergarten and the Montessori methods, Dr. P. P. Claxton, United States Commissioner of Education says: 'Though aims and principles are the same for both Froebel and Montessori, their different methods of approach have resulted in difference in emphasis, program and decides. For those who see no further than the form there is apparent conflict. Many cannot understand that the work of both Froebel and Montessori must finally lose each its distinctive characteristics in the larger whole of a more perfect knowledge of the nature of infancy and the means of educating young children.' It must be said of Dr. Montessori that she is first, last and always scientific in her work. Prolonged training in the sciences that relate to human life, vitalized by practical experience in their application to defective children, gave her a method which is the outcome of genius, training and experience. She swung into prominence, against her wish, in the following way: While serving as assistant doctor at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Rome, Italy, she founder herself differing from her colleagues in that she felt, as she says, 'that mental deficiency presented chiefly a pedagogic rather than mainly a medical problem.' The expression of these views in an address brought Dr. Montessori prominently before the Minister of Public Instruction, and her work from this on assumed a public character. Her belief that the methods employed with deficient children 'contained educational principles more rational than those in use and that if applied to normal children they would develop or set free their personality in a marvelous and surprising way,' became her controlling idea, and is the very heart of the Montessori system. The system of Mme. Montessori is indissolubly joined with her famous 'didactic material.' Among this will be found small wooden frames to which are attached pieces of cloth or leather on which are buttons and buttonholes, hooks and eyes, eyelets and lacing cords, and strings to be tied and untied. There are also boxes of cylindrical insets and other simple devices to develop 'man's mystery over nature.' Mme. Montessori is her best interpreter when she says, 'We are inclined to believe that children are like puppets and we wash them and feed them as if they were dolls. We do not stop to think that the child that does not do does not know how to do. Our duty is that of helping him to make a conquest of such useful acts as nature intended he should perform for himself. The mother who feeds her child without making the least effort to teach him to hold the spoon for himself and to try to find his mouth with it is not a wise mother. She treats her son as though he were a doll. We call an individual disciplined when he is master of himself and can regulate his own conduct when it shall be necessary to follow some rule of life. If any educational act is to be efficacious it is necessary rigorously to avoid the arrest of spontaneous movements and the imposition of arbitrary tasks. It is of course understood here that we do not speak of a useless or dangerous act; this must be suppressed, destroyed.' The Montessori doctrine is therefore in substance that the child's inner self or personalit cannot rightfully develop unless free to express itself undirected and unguided by another person. As a consequence Dr. Montessori insists that each child be allowed bodily freedom and have as much unhampered liberty of action as possible in order that he may fully express his inner life in outer activity. The classic illustration by which Dr. Montessori puts in concrete form her doctrine is the following: 'One day the children had gathered in a circle about a basin of water containing some floating toys. A little boy 2 1/2 years old had been left outside the circle. He drew near to the other children and tried to force his way among them, but he was not strong enough to do this. The expression of thought on his face was intensely interesting. His eyes then lighted upon a little chair and he had evidently made up his mind to place it behind the group of children and climb on it. As he began to move toward the chair, his face illuminated with hope, a teacher seized him in her arms, lifted him above the heads of the other children, showed him the basin of water, saying, 'Come poor little one you shall see too.' The child seeing the floating toys did not experience the joy that he was about to feel through conquering the obstacles with his own force. The teacher hindered the child in this case from educating himself. The little fellow was about to feel himself a conqueror, and instead he found himself held within two imprisoning arms impotent.' The now famous 'House of the Children' in Rome, under the patronage of Queen Margherita, faithfully reflects and demonstrates the Montessori principles and methods. It has been described as an old orphan asylum, whose gray outer walls give no idea of the two beautiful and luxuriant courtyards within. These latter are filled with beds of blossoming plans, and the pillars of the inner porch are covered with clinging vines. The schoolroom in which the class for the children is held opens with wide double doors into one of these lovely courtyards, where the children play during hours in which they are not engaged in their Montessori exercises. Miss Elizabeth Harrison, president of the National Kindergarten Union says of this 'House of the Children': 'On my first visit I found the children busy getting out the 'didactic material' with which they were to employ themselves for the next hour and a quarter. Some came forward to shake hands with me; some merely smiled and nodded and did not interrupt their work. All seemed busy, happy and free. I afterward saw as many as eighty visitors in the room where there were only a dozen children, but none of the children were in the least disturbed by or seemingly conscious of the presence of the visitors. Most of the children came from nearby tenement houses, yet even the youngest of them washed their own hands and faces, put on clean, neat calico aprons and looked as fresh and clean as children from well cared for homes.' Comparing the kindergarten and the Montessori systems, the following differences appear: The kindergarten stresses group activities, while the Montessori system emphasized almost exclusively the development of the individual. The kindergartners say that education in coordinating of muscles, the special training of the child's senses and all such phases of individual development are expected to come in the nursery. The Montessori system has no place for stories; the kindergartners are famous for them. Mme. Montessori objects to stories for young children on the theory that all activities of the mind are derived from the outside world and are dependent on sense impressions, and that therefore the child should be kept within the realm of his own personal experience until he is at least 7 or 8 years old. It is not necessary to add that two __ meet at this point of difference. The most remarkable features of the Montessori system, as well as one of its decided points of divergence from the kindergarten, lies in its ___ of definite attitude on religious training. Froebel, trained in an environment where instruction in religion is practically nationwide, says that while the child unconsciously manifests teh divine impuse within him he must follow it with conscious insights persisting in what he knows to do right and must needs have definite training of this kind. Montessori, on the other hand, with nuns as her assistants and attendants in her 'House of the Children,' acknowledges the importance of religious training for little children, 'but confesses that as yet it is an unsolved problem to her.' Miss Harrison, who spent some time in Rome with Mme. Montessori says, 'She [Montessori] seems to feel that a child's spiritual nature will ___ aright if freedom is given ....

Language: English

ISSN: 1940-7831

Language: Hindi

ISSN: 0417-3937

Language: English

Language: English

ISSN: 0140-0460

Language: English

Published: Johannesburg, South Africa: Council of Education, 1915

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Published: Dublin, Ireland, 1972

Language: English

ISSN: 0040-7887

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ISSN: 0362-4331

Language: English

Language: German