蒙特梭利成長於一個有教養的家庭。她的父親亞歷山卓·蒙特梭利（Alessandro Montessori）在財政部工作，並管理國營菸草手工製造局。母親芮妮爾.斯托帕尼（Renilde Stoppani），則是具爭議性的神學兼地質學教授
安东尼奥·斯托帕尼[1]（
Antonio Stoppani）的姪女。根據他的連結了神學和自然科學的理論中，蒙特梭利發展出她的
宇宙教育。早在學生時期，蒙特梭利即對自然科學產生興趣，並且因此就讀一間科技高中。1890年蒙特梭利登記研讀醫學。（這在義大利是在1875年才可能發生的事。）
在學業上蒙特梭利特別專研
胚胎學和
進化論。她的科學觀點原則為
實證主義。在蒙特梭利的最後兩學年時，她在羅馬一家心理專科醫院擔任助理。蒙特梭利特別專注兒童醫學，並且在羅馬的大學兒童醫院的兒童心理部門擔任助理醫師和做進一步的研究工作。她重點針對那里需要特別照顧的、精神上有障礙的兒童。蒙特梭利被這些兒童沒有尊嚴、無人照顧的生活狀況深深觸動並致力補救。因此她將
让·马克·加斯帕尔·伊塔尔和
爱德华·塞金（
Edouard Seguin）逐漸被遺忘的、關於「心理學方法」的教科書翻譯成義大利文。
如同這兩位前輩，蒙特梭利相信如何對待「弱智」或「智障」不是醫學的問題而是教育的問題。因此她要求設立針對這些被折磨兒童的特別學校。
1896年蒙特梭利完成精神病學有關「對抗的幻覺」的博士論文。之後便開啟她最重要的研究歲月。直到1907年蒙特梭利發展出人類生物學的理論，並且根據她的教育學和在
兒童之家的實際實驗，奠定神經精神病學的基礎。
1899年蒙特梭利獲得義大利教育部長
圭多·巴切利（
Guido Bacelli）授命，在羅馬舉行一系列關於精神障礙兒童的教育的演講。得益於這門課程兩年後成立了以蒙特梭利為領導者的醫療衛生教育機構。在這個時期蒙特梭利發展出針對語言課程和數學特別的教學法。
1901年蒙特梭利離開這個機構，並且開始
人類學、
心理學和
教育哲學的課業。1904年她在羅馬教育學機構講授人類學和教育學。
1907年1月6日蒙特梭利在羅馬勞工區
San Lorenzo成立兒童之家，給那些來自社會上弱勢家庭的兒童。這個時期她的一個重要經歷是她對一個三歲小女孩的觀察。這個女孩完全沉浸在自己玩圓頂帽的世界，用最強烈的分散注意也不被影響。蒙特梭利從對這個女孩集中注意力的行為的觀察，歸納出「注意力的兩極化」，其中的實驗性研究對她日後的研究貢獻很大。
從這個時期的經驗蒙特梭利發展出針對兒童教育的
蒙特梭利教學法，至今幾乎所有的兒童都被此方法教過，並且在世界各地仍然很普遍。雖然蒙特梭利的教學法在20世紀的30、40年代被很多醫院所遺棄，但在今日已被廣為熟知。
從1913年起在北美形成一股對蒙特梭利教學法的熱潮，之後這股熱潮再度消退，直到1960年
南希·麦考密克·兰布什[2]（
Nancy McCormick Rambusch）成立
美國蒙特梭利學會才再度復甦。
第二次大戰前，雖然蒙特梭利在意大利的實驗學校曾接受墨索里尼政權下的義大利政府資助。但當蒙特梭利看到自己的學校兒童也和青少年一樣接受統一的法西斯制服時，她覺悟到與這樣的政權結合是錯誤的，蒙特梭利不願與
贝尼托·墨索里尼妥協，把孩子如同士兵一樣地訓練，這有違她的原則，她開始逃往西班牙居住，直到1936年西班牙內戰爆發，於是她移居荷蘭直到1939年，在1939年印度的神智協會（Theosophical Society）邀請蒙特梭利訪問印度。她接受邀請並與她唯一的兒子馬利歐‧蒙特梭利先生抵達印度，這預告她與印度開始新的關係，她並在馬德拉斯（今名：金奈Chennai）的阿德雅爾區Adyar造她的居所。戰爭使她被迫停留在印度，她在兒子馬利歐的協助下，主導了16個梯次被稱為印度蒙特梭利訓練課程，這些課程為印度的蒙特梭利活動鋪設了堅固的基礎。在那裡她並發展出
宇宙教育的原則和
地球兒童計畫。
過世前蒙特梭利在荷蘭的阿姆斯特丹康寧吉尼衛格路161號度過最後的歲月，該處現在成為蒙特梭利紀念館和國際蒙特梭利協會總部（AMI），今日在荷蘭她仍被奉為蒙特梭利國際協會的主席。1952年5月6日她在拜訪朋友時在荷蘭的友人處-諾德惠克 安齊（Noordwijk Ann Zee）過世 ，正如她的遺言“人生旅行的終點就是她的安眠處”，蒙特梭利被安葬在諾德惠克（Noordwijk）的天主教墓地，她的墓誌銘以義大利文刻著『我祈禱我心愛的孩子們，所有人都能與我共同建造人類世界的和平。（IO PREGO I CARI BAMBINI, CHE POSSONO TUTTO DI UNIRSI A ME PER LA COSTRUZIONE DELLA PACE NEGLI UOMINI E NEL MONDO） 』。
1898年蒙特梭利未婚生下的兒子馬利歐出生。她讓人照顧他並且去鄉下探望他。之後馬利歐擔任蒙特梭利的秘書直到她去世，或許他也是蒙特梭利所構想出成長理論的創造者之ㄧ。直到馬利歐40歲時，蒙特梭利才告訴他是她的兒子。
在1952年蒙特梭利死後，馬利歐‧蒙特梭利繼續領導學會直到1982年他去世。
教育理念
兒童之家的教育理念：
（一）兒童獨立性的尊重：只有獨立的人才能享有自由。兒童的好動性是他的特色，大人不要橫加干涉或禁止，師長千萬別「指揮」或「命令」孩子，要讓他自己指揮自己，自己聽從自己的命令。尊重兒童的獨立性，兒童就能自然的活動他的筋骨，健康的身體隨之而至。
（二）肅靜與活動：尊重兒童的獨立性，並非讓他為所欲為，且不可讓孩子以為安靜、順從、聽話、被動就是好事；而活動或工作就是壞事。蒙特梭利的教學法強調兒童主動探索，並著力於設計啟發性的教學情境和
教具，讓兒童藉由具體操作來學習，不只是聽講。
（三）精神勝於方法：蒙氏希望她的学生不要「主動」的想去「教」孩子，應該做個「旁觀者」來注視孩子的一切行為。唯一必須人為的就是設計或製作許多教具，甚至鼓勵孩子盡情的遊玩及操弄，就是對兒童最大的尊重。因為蒙特梭利方法的真正老師，就是兒童本身。
（四）個人自由先於社會紀律：自由第一，秩序只是其次。傳統教育強調「群性」，而蒙氏注重「個性」。蒙特梭利在1932年向
英國的
蒙特梭利學會發表的文章當中強烈痛責孩童受束於大人，比奴隸及工人都不如。蒙氏畢生心血強調：「解放兒童，是教育工作者的使命；因此，兒童個人自由，應列為優先考慮。」
（五）童年期的秩序感：蒙特梭利發現兒童的行為特徵之一，就是秩序感。一般人都認為孩子的房間或遊樂場一定亂七八糟，把玩具或紙屑丟的滿地都是，大人也因此相當頭疼，並認為這是孩子的嚴重教育問題，想辦法要及早培養孩子整齊清潔的習慣。然而蒙氏相信，小孩之所以無法將屋內安排得井然有序，始作俑者是大人。兒童本有順乎自然的秩序感，只是大人以「權力」予以弄壞而已。
著作
- 1909年：「學齡前的兒童自動教育」。
- 1910年：「蒙特梭利法」。
- 1914年：「我的手冊」。
- 1916年：「針對學童的蒙特梭利教育法」。
- 1929年：「住在教堂的兒童」。
- 1938年：「兒童是與眾不同的」。
- 1949年：「關於人的教育」、「創意的兒童，吸收的心智」、「教育和自由」。
- 1948年：「從兒童時期到青少年」。
外部链接
Life and career
Maria Montessori was born in 1870 in
Chiaravalle,
Italy, to Alessandro Montessori and Renilde Stoppani (niece of
Antonio Stoppani).
[1] At the age of thirteen she attended an all-boy technical school in preparation for her dream of becoming an engineer.
[2] At the time, she insisted specifically that she did not want to be a teacher because the teaching profession was one of the few that women were encouraged to take part in at the time. Montessori was the first woman to graduate from the
University of Rome La Sapienza Medical School, becoming one of the first female doctors in Italy. She was a member of the University's Psychiatric Clinic and became intrigued with trying to educate the "
special needs" or "unhappy little ones"
[2] and the "uneducable" in
Rome. In 1896, she gave a lecture at the Educational Congress in
Torino about the training of the disabled. The Italian Minister of Education was in attendance, and, sufficiently impressed by her arguments, appointed her the same year as director of the Scuola Ortofrenica, an institution devoted to the care and education of the mentally retarded. She accepted, in order to put her theories to the test. Her first notable success was to have several of her 8 year old students apply to take the State examinations for reading and writing. The "defective" children not only passed, but had above-average scores, an achievement described as "the first Montessori miracle."
[3] Montessori's response to their success was "if mentally disabled children could be brought to the level of normal children then (she) wanted to study the potential of 'normal' children".
[2]
"Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society".[4]
Because of her success with these children, she was asked to start a school for children in a housing project in Rome, which opened on January 6, 1907, and which she called "Casa dei Bambini" or Children's House. Children's House was a child care center in an apartment building in the poor neighborhood of Rome. She was focused on teaching the students ways to develop their own skills at a pace they set, which was a principle Montessori called "spontaneous self-development".
[5] A wide variety of special equipment of increasing complexity is used to help direct the interests of the child and hasten development. When a child is ready to learn new and more difficult tasks, the teacher guides the child's first endeavors in order to avoid wasted effort and the learning of wrong habits; otherwise the child learns alone. It has been reported that the Montessori method of teaching has enabled children to learn to read and write much more quickly and with greater facility than has otherwise been possible.
[6] The Montessori Method of teaching concentrates on quality rather than quantity.
[4] The success of this school sparked the opening of many more, and a worldwide interest in Montessori's methods of education.
After the 1907 establishment of Montessori's first school in Rome, by 1917 there was an intense interest in her method in
North America, which later waned, in large part due
[citation needed] to the publication of a small booklet entitled "The Montessori System Examined" by
William Heard Kilpatrick – a follower of
John Dewey. (
Nancy McCormick Rambusch contributed to the revival of the method in America by establishing the
American Montessori Society in 1960); at the same time Margaret Stephenson came to the US from Europe and began a long history of training Montessori teachers under the auspices of the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI). Montessori was exiled by
Mussolini mostly because
[citation needed] she refused to compromise her principles and make the children into soldiers. She moved to Spain and lived there until 1936 when the
Spanish Civil War broke out. She then moved to the Netherlands until 1939.
In 1939, the
Theosophical Society of India extended an invitation asking Maria Montessori to visit India. She accepted the invitation and reached India in the same year accompanied by her only son, Mario Montessori Sr. This heralded the beginning of her special relationship with India. She made the international Headquarters of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Chennai, her home. However the war forced her to extend her stay in India. With the help of her son, she conducted sixteen batches of courses called the
Indian Montessori Training Courses. These courses laid a strong foundation for the Montessori Movement in India. In 1949 when she left for
The Netherlands she appointed
Albert Max Joosten as her personal representative, and assigned him the responsibility of conducting the Indian Montessori Training Courses. Joosten along with
Swamy S R, another disciple of Montessori, continued her work and ensured that the Montessori Movement in India was on a sound footing.
During a teachers conference in
India she was interned by the authorities and lived there for the duration of the war. Montessori lived out the remainder of her life in the Netherlands, which now hosts the headquarters of the AMI, or
Association Montessori Internationale. She died in
Noordwijk aan Zee. Her son Mario headed the AMI until his death in 1982.
Maria Montessori died in the Netherlands in 1952, after a lifetime devoted to the study of child development. Her success in Italy led to international recognition, and for over 40 years she traveled all over the world, lecturing, writing and establishing training programs. In later years, "Educate for Peace" became a guiding principle which underpinned her work.
Pedagogy
Aside from a new
pedagogy, among the premier contributions to educational thought by Montessori are:
- instruction in 3-year age groups, corresponding to sensitive periods of development (example: Birth-3, 3–6, 6–9, 9–12, 12–15 year olds) with an Erdkinder (German for "Land Children") program for early teens
- children as competent beings, encouraged to make maximal decisions
- observation of the child in the prepared environment as the basis for ongoing curriculum development (presentation of subsequent exercises for skill development and information accumulation)
- small, child-sized furniture and creation of a small, child-sized environment (microcosm) in which each can be competent to produce overall a self-running small children's world
- creation of a scale of sensitive periods of development, which provides a focus for class work that is appropriate and uniquely stimulating and motivating to the child (including sensitive periods for language development, sensorial experimentation and refinement, and various levels of social interaction)
- the importance of the "absorbent mind," the limitless motivation of the young child to achieve competence over his or her environment and to perfect his or her skills and understandings as they occur within each sensitive period. The phenomenon is characterized by the young child's capacity for repetition of activities within sensitive period categories (Example: exhaustive babbling as language practice leading to language competence).
- self-correcting "auto-didactic" materials (some based on work of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard and Edouard Seguin)
Influence
A conference in Rome on 6–7 January 2007
[7] heralded the start of a year of celebrations for children and schools around the world. Dr. Montessori’s innovative approach was that “Education should no longer be mostly imparting of knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentialities.”
What followed worldwide has been called the "discovery of the child" and the realization that: "...mankind can hope for a solution to its problems, among which the most urgent are those of peace and unity, only by turning its attention and energies to the discovery of the child and to the development of the great potentialities of the human personality in the course of its formation.”
The efficacy of Montessori teaching methods has most recently been demonstrated by the results of a study published in the US journal, Science (29 September 2006)
[8] which indicates that Montessori children have improved behavioral and academic skills compared with a control group from the mainstream system. The authors concluded that "when strictly implemented, Montessori education fosters social and academic skills that are equal or superior to those fostered by a pool of other types of schools."
The
Montessori method of
education that she derived from this experience has subsequently been applied successfully to
children and is quite popular in many parts of the world. Despite much criticism of her method in the early 1930s–1940s, her method of education has been applied and has undergone a revival. It can now be found on six continents, but is still subject to some criticism.
[citation needed]
The Association Montessori Internationale is a member of the
International Coalition for the Decade for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence.
Montessori's image was the last to be featured on the 1000
Italian Lira banknote before the lira itself was phased out of circulation and replaced by the
Euro.
Works
- Antropologia pedagogica (Eng. trans. by F. T. Cooper, Pedagogic Anthropology, New York, 1913)
- Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica applicato all'educazione infantile nelle case dei bambini (Eng. trans. by A. E. George, The Montessori Method, New York, 1912).
References
Further reading
- Kramer, Rita (1988). Maria Montessori: a biography. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0201092271. http://books.google.com/?id=GZHc4_2i20gC&pg=PA21&dq=maria+montessori+born#v=onepage&q=maria%20montessori%20born&f=false.
- Foschi, Renato. "Science and culture around the Montessori's first "Children's Houses" in Rome (1907–1915)." Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences 44 (2008): 238–257. 10.1002/jhbs.20313 [1]
- Burnett, Alice. "Montessori Education Today and Yesterday." The Elementary School Journal 63 (1962): 71–77.
- Montessori, Mario. "Maria Montessori's Contribution to the Cultivation of the Mathematical Mind" International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de l'Education 7 (1961): 134–41.
- Gardner, Riley W. "A Psychologist Looks at Montessori." The Elementary School Journal 67 (1966): 72–83.
- O'Donnell, Marion (2007). Maria Montessori: Continuum Library of Educational Thought. Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-8406-9.
- Brehony, Kevin (2000). Montessori, individual work and individuality in the elementary school classroom. History of Education, 29, 115–128.
- Schapiro, Dennis (1993). What if Montessori Education is Part of the Answer?. Education Digest.
- Cohen, Deborah L. (1990). Montessori Methods in Public Schools. Education Digest.
- Plekhanov, A., Jones, Anthony (1992). The Pedagogical Theory and Practice of Maria Montessori. Russian Social Science Review.
- Maria Montessori. Early Childhood Today. 2000.
- Shute, Nancy (2002). Madam Montessori. Smithsonian.
- Whitescarver, Keith; Cossentino, Jacqueline (2008). "Montessori and the Mainstream: A Century of Reform on the Margins". Teachers College Record 110 (12): 2571–2600. http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?contentid=14765.
External links
