Maria Montessori opens her first school in Rome - January 6th, 1907

On this day in 1907, Dr. Maria Montessori opened a new kind of school in an impoverished neighborhood in Rome.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show for those who can never know enough about history.
I'm Gay Bluzier and in this episode we're talking about
the life of Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori, including

(00:25):
the breakthrough educational method that bears her name. The day
was January six, nineteen o seven. Dr Maria Montessori opened

(00:45):
a new kind of school in an impoverished neighborhood in Rome.
It was called the Casa day Bambini, or the Children's House,
and it didn't function like any other school in Italy.
That's because Dr mont Tsuri had spent years developing a
new approach to children's education. Instead of following structured lessons

(01:08):
and teacher driven schedules, her school allowed the students to
choose how they spent large portions of the day, while
the teacher or director merely observed and only stepped in
when needed. This framework required a new kind of classroom,
one that was specially designed to encourage free interaction with

(01:29):
learning materials and classmates instead of just sitting at a
desk all day. Monastoris approach proved so successful that it
was later implemented at schools throughout Italy and eventually at
schools all over the world. Maria Montessori was born on
August thirty one, eighteen seventy, in Keira Vale, Italy. Her

(01:55):
father worked for the Ministry of Finance as the financial
manager of a run tobacco factory. Her mother was a
homemaker but had received a much better education than most
Italian women of the era. As a result, she instilled
a love of reading and learning and her daughter at
a young age. When she turned thirteen, Maria decided to

(02:18):
study engineering. She made waves by enrolling in an all
boys technical institute, and while she was admitted, she quickly
changed her mind and realized she'd rather study medicine instead.
Her father tried to talk her out of it, but
Maria was resolute. She enrolled in a prestigious medical program

(02:38):
at the University of Rome, and when she graduated in
eighteen ninety six, she became one of the nation's first
female physicians. For the next few years, doctor Montessori focused
primarily on children's psychiatry, and it was during this time
that she began to develop an interest in educational theories.

(02:59):
She to taking classes on pedagogy, and her studies eventually
led her to question the traditional model of children's education.
In particular, doctor Montessori believed the established methods weren't well
suited to children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She theorized
that those students had the same innate desire to learn

(03:22):
as everybody else, They just needed opportunities to pursue that
impulse in a less structured environment. In nine hundred, doctor
Montessori got the chance to test out her ideas when
she was made the co director of a new training
institute for special education teachers. She experimented with different teaching

(03:43):
methods and materials, and she observed how the students responded
to see which one's worked best. Many of the children
benefited from this new, self directed, hands on approach to learning.
The two year program was deemed a success, and doctor
Montessori began to imagine how her methods might be adapted

(04:04):
for mainstream education. Montessori spent several more years developing what
she would later call scientific pedagogy. Then, in nineteen o seven,
she accepted a daunting challenge to oversee the full day
care and education of fifty to sixty children between the

(04:24):
ages of two and seven. All of them were children
of low income working parents who had been provided with
housing and a new apartment building in the San Lorenzo
district of Rome. This new learning center became the first
Casa day Bambini. Dr Montessori didn't teach or care for

(04:45):
the children there directly. Instead, she oversaw and observed their
work in the classroom, which included practical activities such as
sweeping and personal grooming, as well as the learning material
she had developed over the years. Based on her observations,
doctor Montessori began to see independence as the goal of education,

(05:07):
and she gradually changed the classroom to reflect that view.
For example, she replaced heavy chairs and tables with lightweight,
child sized furniture that could be easily moved around by
the students. She also placed learning materials on low shelves
to make them more accessible, and she carved out large
open sections of the classroom so that the children could

(05:30):
move freely between the different areas and lessons that were
set up throughout the room. Although they were rowdy at first,
over time, the children developed self discipline and became self
motivated to learn new skills and concepts. Essentially, teaching themselves.
Decades later, doctor Montessori published a book about her educational

(05:53):
philosophy and methods. She summed up the model saying quote,
before elaborating any sist stem of education, we must create
a favorable environment that will encourage the flowering of a
child's natural gifts. All that is needed is to remove
the obstacles, and this should be the basis of and

(06:13):
point of departure four all future education. The first thing
to be done is to discover the true nature of
a child and then assist him in his normal development.
Cosa day Bambini was a monumental success, and a second
location was open just a few months after the first.

(06:34):
The children in the Monassori programs continued to display high
levels of concentration, attention, and self discipline, and this eventually
drew the attention of other educators and members of the press.
Word of the Montessori method began to spread, and by
nineteen ten it had been adopted by schools throughout Western Europe.

(06:57):
A year later, in nineteen eleven, the method made its
way across the Atlantic with the opening of the first
Montessori school in the United States in Terrytown, New York.
Doctor Montessori spent the rest of her life advocating for
her child directed approach to education. She wrote dozens of
articles and books, and gave numerous lectures on the psychological

(07:20):
and developmental benefits of collaborative play and hands on learning.
She developed a program to train teachers in the Montessori method,
and then she taught it herself in countries across the globe.
In fact, she lived in exile during World War Two,
and she used the displacement as an opportunity to teach

(07:41):
her method in India. When the war was finally over,
she returned to Europe and lived out the remainder of
her days in Amsterdam. She died there peacefully in the
garden of a friend on May sixth, nineteen fifty two,
at the age of eighty one. Through her efforts and
the work of those who believed in her cause, the

(08:03):
Monossori method has been adopted by schools in a hundred
and ten countries. Today, there are more than twenty thousand
Monossori schools worldwide, and the influence of Monossori programs can
be found in countless more at every age level and
every developmental stage. Thanks to Maria Montessori's pioneering work. Parents

(08:26):
now have other options and don't have to settle for
the old, one size fits all approach to education. And
better yet, many children now get to go to school
in engaging, non competitive classrooms where they're allowed and encouraged
to learn at their own pace without a bunch of
stuffy adults getting in the way. I'm Gaybe Louzier, and

(08:51):
hopefully you now know a little more about history today
than you did yesterday. If you have a second and
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(09:13):
heart media dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing
the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see
you back here again tomorrow for another day in History class.

(09:33):
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