What is Montessori?
In a time of information explosion and virtual, screen-based experience, Montessori education focuses not on the collection of random bits of information available at our fingertips, but on the nature of children and adolescents as learners: how they think, what they experience, how their brains work, how developmental characteristics change over time, how the innate human intelligences of language and mathematical thinking unfold, what the connection is between the hand, the brain and language, how a fundamental need for choice makes the difference in engagement, how freedom of expression and creativity unleash human potential, how social interaction is a developmental human right, how purposeful work, freedom of movement, and time to explore, think and reflect promote lifetime joy in learning.
Montessori educators study the developmental needs of children and adolescents and design extraordinary learning environments that follow nature’s internal stages of growth. These consciously prepared environments are child/adolescent-centered; they offer genuine experiences of social contribution and learning through discovery and problem-solving. Knowledge is not TAUGHT to children; children uncover the nature of the world and the universe, propelled by their own interest and curiosity.
This remarkable approach to education was founded in 1907 by Maria Montessori, a visionary Italian anthropologist and doctor of medicine, and based on her own practical experiences and observations of children in San Lorenzo, the poorest section of Rome. 110 years later and refined by educators, researchers, and scientists, Montessori education today is implemented on six continents. In North America alone there are close to 5,000 private and public Montessori schools.
Montessori communities (“classrooms”) are mixed age and generally include children in 3-year age spans (0-3 years, 3-6 years, 6-9 years, 9-12 years, 12-15/15-18 years). Montessori teachers observe each child or adolescent carefully over time and come to know them with extraordinary depth, allowing the adult to respond to indications of need and engagement as they arise and with appropriate and timely response.
Montessori is known as a hands-on, experiential pedagogy and each classroom level includes beautiful, precisely made manipulative aids to learning. At the adolescent level, those “materials” become a fully fleshed-out social environment—a “village” of adult level activities such as growing, preparing, and preserving food, designing and building structures, managing natural resources, making and selling products in student-run businesses, designing, using, and repairing tools and technologies –so that the adolescents themselves are operating their own “microcosm” of society and experiencing their contributions as essential.
The intended outcomes of a Montessori education are profound, but also intrinsic to our humanity. The goal of a Montessori education is that natural human development should unfold toward a mature, responsible adult who has developed strength, courage, compassion, empathy, a high level of knowledge and skill, a highly developed ability to adapt to changing circumstances, and a natural inclination to collaborate in moral and peaceful ways.
Dr. Montessori believed not only that this was possible—but that these are the outcomes human beings are designed to achieve.