Leading Figures in Education: Maria Montessori (1870-1952)

“Sit down or go away.”

This may sound extreme, but with the overwhelming presence of technology in education today, even before pandemic-induced distance learning, children were being trained in inactivity. They are told to sit still, looking at screens, for much of the day.

On the other hand, the current alternative to a rigid early education is a laissez-faire one, in which children are permitted to run amok, without direction from adults – at the cost of respect, connection, and peace. To Maria Montessori, the nineteenth-century doctor and educational philosopher, both approaches undermine the child’s natural desire to learn and his or her intuitive way of learning. We can learn much from Montessori’s philosophy, which integrates the child’s freedom with an ordered and peaceful environment.

Montessori asserted that children need work with a noble purpose – activity in accord with virtue. This is Aristotle’s definition of happiness, which Montessori accused the modern world of redefining toward inactivity. While she did not set out to change the status quo, she was changed by her interactions with and observations of children, and she hoped to encourage a new way of seeing children such that adults could learn from them, just as children learned from adults. From her early work with disabled students, she believed that a new approach to education would help more children learn.

Montessori’s studies and writing contrasted with the rigidness of Italy’s education model, which promoted authoritarian, top-down instruction. For the most part, schools focused only on content, devoting time to memorization, recitation, and discipline. In contrast, Montessori’s research proposed that the method – the form – of education is also instructive.

As a scholar with a rich education herself, Montessori took an approach steeped in the classics of the Western tradition: Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Amos Comenius, students of Rousseau, the Bible, and more. She did not adhere to one school of thought but instead integrated various intellectual strands into a whole that centered around the natural gifts and potential of children.

Today, our culture is in great need of the virtues that the Montessori method prizes: valorization and peace. By “valorization,” Montessori meant that the goals of education should be independence and liberty – that the child should be able to pursue virtue and knowledge free from slavery to negative inclinations and external pressures. Montessori came to believe that children who learn to be strong, courageous, analytical, and cooperative can help promote peace within themselves and in their world. They can learn to cooperate with the natural world and with one another, to use discourse rather than force when met with conflict.

Children are happy when they are active – but not moving frenetically, without an understood goal. They find joy when their actions are teleological, ordered toward an objective good: for example, matching colored balls with colored cups, buttoning shirts, or balancing various objects on a scale. With the right adjustments and the right environment – beautiful and tailored to children – they experience a kind of freedom, one that allows for intentional movement as well as for quiet and attention.

The Montessori method is demanding of teachers, calling for skill, virtue, and wisdom. Montessori thought that giving unneeded help hindered a child’s growth. Therefore, the teacher is responsible for observing the child and carefully discerning what kind of help she needs. The teacher is also responsible for knowing and guiding the child toward the ultimate end of education: healthy human and social development, which in turn foster the skills necessary for living and the virtues necessary for flourishing – patience, humility, and love, to name a few.

The Montessori model asks that teachers be mindful of the highest purposes of learning while also being attentive to the particular, time-sensitive needs and capacities of the individual child. This dynamic interplay demands discernment and prudence. Otherwise, the method risks devolving into forceful indoctrination, something like the going educational model of Montessori’s nineteenth-century Italy. 

The fruit of Montessori’s thought is evident in schools and homes across the world: child-sized furniture, puzzles, child-height hooks, miniature plates and cups. Many schools have also adopted strands of her philosophy, though their faithfulness to her ideas varies.

Montessori’s educational philosophy offers hope in troubled times. There is much to learn from her understanding of children – about their natural desire to know, and their desire for freedom, goodness, and peace. There is much to learn, too, from Montessori’s nuanced understanding of the classroom environment and the teacher’s calling both to guide and learn from his or her students. To raise up future generations by cultivating their inherent sense of dignity, their ability to conduct themselves with peace, and their awareness that all human action has meaning—this could change the course of contemporary culture.