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A Brief Biography of Maria Montessori
Maria
Montessori was born in Italy in 1870. In her work at the University of Rome's psychiatric clinic, Dr. Maria Montessori
developed an interest in the treatment of children and for several years wrote and spoke on their behalf. At the age of twenty-eight,
she became the director of a school for mentally-disabled children. After two years under her guidance, these children,
who formerly had been considered ineducable, took a school examination along with normal children and passed successfully.
Educators called Dr. Montessori a miracle worker. What was her response?
If mentally disabled children could be brought to the level of normal children, Dr. Montessori wanted to study the potential
of "normal" children. She went back to school to study anthropology and psychology and finally, in 1907, was asked
to take charge of fifty children from the dirty, desolate streets of the San Lorenzo slum in the city of Rome.
Like others I had believed that it was necessary
to encourage a child by means of some exterior reward that would flatter his baser sentiments, such as gluttony, vanity, or
self-love, in order to foster in him a spirit of work and peace. And I was astonished when I learned that a child who is permitted
to educate himself really gives up these lower instincts. I then urged the teachers to cease handing out the ordinary prizes
and punishments, which were no longer suited to our children, and to confine themselves to directing them gently in their
work.
The news of her amazing success soon spread around the world
and people came from far and wide to see the children for themselves. She was as surprised and awed as visitors to the Casa
dei Bambini.
After WWII Dr. Montessori's concern with education
for peace intensified and she was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She instituted the study of Cosmic Education
for the child from six to twelve years of age, since she could see that in meeting the needs of the child, the needs of the
world would also be met. "Cosmic Education" is the child's gradual discovery, throughout the whole of childhood,
of the interrelatedness of all things on the earth, the past, in the present, and in the future.
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