To answer this recurring question of – “ is the Montessori Method still modern?”, allow me to resume what has happened since its inception.
In 1907, a miracle happened. In a tenement house which had been built to house vagrant families, an institution was created for their destructive and handicapped children of ages between 3 and 6 years. They had been entrusted to a young lady doctor, specialized in psychiatry.
She gave them objects proportioned to their size.
Noticing their eagerness to do things by themselves and their resentment when this was not allowed, she gave them exact techniques for attending to themselves and doing the household tasks and forbade the attendants to give them help.
She did not correct them when they made a mistake but created conditions so that they could notice and correct the mistakes by themselves.
She did not punish them for their rough behaviour but taught them the technique of good manners.
She did not command what they should do but gave them the possibility to choose their occupations.
The only indication she gave was that they should not disturb the other
children at work.
These children became disciplined, altruistic, sober, refined in manners, ethical, eager for work, self-reliant and self-confident. At four and a half they started to write and at five they read all that they could find. No one had taught them – all had come about spontaneously!
That was the miracle!
Discipline did not have to be imposed from outside: it was the result of self-control in conditions of freedom. Given toys, they chose to work. Their timidity was replaced by self-assurance; their violence gave place to the care for their environment, to solicitude not to hurt or offend others. Somehow these children had become integrated personalities; bodily, mentally and ethically.
That was the miracle!
Dr. Montessori realized that spiritually children lived in conditions of slavery because no one recognized that their development was guided by special natural laws; no one perceived that in order to develop, children needed freedom for purposeful activity. She went looking for objects like furniture, cutlery etc proportioned to the size of children and she found nothing. “The child is the forgotten citizen!” she denounced.
Now, this is the story of 1907, years and years since that first miracle happened. Science, including psychology, has made tremendous strides and against that background the question is asked, time and again. “Hasn’t the Montessori method become old-fashioned? Can it still claim that it is modern?”
The answer has not been given by Dr. Montessori or by the Montessorians, but by others, because of the deleterious impact of the two World Wars, specially on the youth, psychology multiplied its efforts to find an answer to the problems, one, how to combat the increasing maladjustment and delinquency in youth (which had been predicted by Dr. Montessori) and the other, how to combat the appalling ignorance confronting the atomic age which required mathematics and science to become a ‘second language’ for mankind. They found that maladjustment and delinquency were due to the errors in adult’s treatment of the child; that to avoid it, conditions have to be created which would promote the integration of the personality right from the earliest years of life; ignorance could be remedied if one took advantage of the children’s powers in those early years; their recommendation was “early learning.”
Years ago, early learning and integration of the personality shown by the children of the first Casa Dei Bambini were the two items that astounded the world. Old-fashioned? Perhaps. However, nothing has yet been found to offer another alternative.
If education, as Dr. Montessori recommends, should be a help to the natural laws of human development, whatever successful help is given, is by the very old-fashioned process. If that development aids in the formation of intelligence, speech etc., that help will be modern.
During all these years the Montessori approach has shown its success in offering this help. And judging by the recommendations of science which exhorts creating integrated personalities and ‘early learning’, the Montessori approach is not only modern, it is the education of the future.
– edited from an article by Mario M Montessori