Who was Maria Montessori? Biography of this educator and pedagogue

Maria Montessori is known for having created the pedagogical model that we know as "Montessori Method". However, his biography is much more extensive. She was also one of the first women to obtain a medical degree in Italy and participated as an activist in defense of the rights of women and children.

Likewise, Maria Montessori specialized in areas such as biology, philosophy and psychology, which allowed creating knowledge and interventions on child development that continue to this day.

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Maria Montessori: biography of this doctor and activist.

Maria Montessori was born in Chiaravalle, province of Ancona, Italy, on August 31, 1870. She was the only daughter of a military father descended from the nobility of Bologna who had fought for the independence of Italy; and of a liberal, Catholic and intellectual mother whose family developed in the world of philosophy, science and research.

It is not surprising that the rest of her biography was developed as it happened: with barely 12 years old, Maria Montessori and her family moved to the city of Rome, with the intention of ensuring that she would study in the best schools of the time.

While there, she showed an interest and a special ability for mathematics, so, despite her father's desire to become a teacher, Maria Montessori enrolled in a technical engineering school where only men attended.

A year later, his concern for studying medicine arose, with which he decided to abandon engineering and start new studies at the age of 22, even in the face of the refusal and initial rejection of the director, his father and his classmates, who considered that the Medicine career was a specialty that only men could exercise.

Finally, in 1896, at the age of 26, Maria Montessori became one of the first medical women in Italy, the same year in which she was elected as the representative of Italian women at the Feminist Congress held in Berlin, where she defended equality of women's rights.

At the same time, he denounced the situation of children working in mines in Sicily, which added to the struggles against child labor exploitation. Later, motivated by an awareness of social justice, she began to work in psychiatric clinics and schools where mainly children with intellectual disabilities attended in very precarious conditions. At the same time, Maria Montessori had continued to study biology, philosophy and psychology, both in Italy and in France and England. These are the experiences that finally allowed him to develop the pedagogical method that bears his name.

From medicine to pedagogy: the beginnings of the Montessori method.

At the time that Maria Montessori lived, medicine was strongly interested in finding treatments and even a "cure" to some conditions such as deafness, paralysis, intellectual disability, etc. But, what Maria Montessori observed while working with children with these conditions, was that what they really needed was not medicine, but pedagogy.

Maria Montessori made many observations at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Rome, which led her to realize that the real problem that many children with disabilities will play in ways that seemed socially inadequate, was that they were bored, because they did not have didactic materials, in addition to that the space in which they were was very messy and their conditions were quite precarious.

From there, Maria Montessori had the idea of ​​building an environment that was pleasant, she was convinced that the conditions of space and materials were crucial for the development of children's intellectual and social skills. At that same moment he learned that there were two French doctors who had developed an educational method in a similar line, so he traveled to Paris to interview them.

Upon his return, the Italian state had inaugurated an institute aimed at enhancing the intellectual abilities of people with disabilities (School of Orthophrenia), where Maria Montessori obtained the position of director and continued as a teacher educator, as well as a university professor and lecturer in different cities.

What was the first Montessori school?

Finally Maria Montessori had the opportunity to create her own educational center. In January 1907, he inaugurated in Italy the first Casa dei Bambini (Children's House -name with which the classroom is known, or Montessori environment, for children from 3 to 6 years old-).

He paid special attention to how the environment would be prepared, he ordered to make furniture the size of children (which at that time was quite innovative). He also designed pedagogical material appropriate to the ages and sensitive periods of the children and hired a teacher as an assistant. Together they started working with around 50 children.

Maria Montessori continued to observe constantly the evolution of children, which allowed her to continue developing her educational method. In the same way he was able to continue designing didactic activities and materials, but above all, he was able to base the theoretical and empirical principles that up to now define the method.

Maria Montessori had finally become a teacher (just as her father had wanted), but her biography shows that she was also a woman who revolutionized the traditional forms of teaching and learning: she kept the commitment to respect children, with what managed to recognize what they needed to learn more easily.

His method was in principle recognized as a "scientific pedagogy" that finally had repercussions in the homes, because it was notorious that children easily transferred knowledge and habits to their homes and also made public spaces. He had inaugurated a way to empower the development of children that had implications far beyond formal education and the schools themselves.