The Thammasat University Library has acquired a new book that should be useful for students interested in education, sociology, psychology, religious studies, and related fields.

The Child Is the Teacher: A Life of Maria Montessori is by Cristina De Stefano, an Italian journalist.

Maria Montessori was an Italian physician and educator best known for her philosophy of education and writing on scientific pedagogy.

The TU Library collection includes a number of books by and about Maria Montessori. 

Her educational method is in use today in many public and private schools globally, founded on the observation of children to act freely in an environment prepared to meet their needs. Montessori called for observation of students to develop methods that could transform them:

Scientific education, therefore, was that which, while based on science, modified and improved the individual.

She felt that education should be transformed by science:

The new methods, if they were run on scientific lines, ought to change completely both the school and its methods, ought to give rise to a new form of education.

Montessori decided that children’s spontaneous activity in an educational environment revealed an internal program of development, and that educators should remove obstacles to natural development and provide opportunities for it to flourish.

Her schoolrooms were equipped with child-sized furnishings, practical life activities such as sweeping and washing tables, and specially developed teaching materials. Children were free to choose their own activities at their own speed.

Under these conditions, Montessori she observed great concentration in the children and spontaneous repetition of chosen activities. She also noted a tendency in the children to organize their environment by straightening tables and shelves. As children chose some activities over others, Montessori refined materials offered to them. Over time, the children began to show what she called spontaneous discipline.

The Montessori method of education for young children stresses development of a child’s own initiative and natural abilities, especially through practical play.

This approach allows children to develop at their own pace and provides educators with a new understanding of child development.

Students learn through activities involving exploration,  order, repetition, abstraction, and communication. Teachers encourage children to use their senses to explore materials in their immediate environment. Older children deal with abstract concepts based on newly developed powers of reasoning, imagination, and creativity.

In an online interview, the author further described Montessori’s method:

It’s important to understand that Maria Montessori wasn’t a schoolteacher, but a psychiatrist, so the core of her work was the study of the child. She made great observations on how the child learns, realizing that the child has a very powerful brain, with its own way of functioning. Maria Montessori’s message was simple: the child is a machine for learning. Let him work freely—he knows how to do it, and will do it if adults don’t get in his way.

In practical terms, her method is based on three pillars: a prepared environment (the classroom and its furniture should let the child move freely and choose desired activities), a prepared material (which is to be used by the child alone, incarnates a concept, and offers the possibility for self-correction), and a prepared teacher (the Montessori Method asks the adult to keep quiet and avoid intervening, except when it is really necessary—something that’s hard for adults). If you manage to do that, the child blossoms and develops the cognitive process in a complete way.

Here is a good image to describe the difference between a traditional school and the Montessori concept: the child is a very powerful and wild creature, and the traditional school is designed like a zoo, where the child works in captivity inside a cage. The Montessori school tries to be like a safari, where the child can move freely and the adult drives the car around to watch without disturbing him. The Montessori concept is very demanding, it requires a teacher who is willing to work deeply on himself… Luckily, many ideas from Montessori—respect for the child, for example, or the notion that emotional stability is required for a child’s optimal development—are now considered to be common sense. The problem doesn’t lie there. Schoolteachers all around the world often do a terrific job and put a great amount of effort into everyday activities. The problem is that the school as an institution is still not built around the child, but around adults: the teacher, the program the system has decided to use, and the parents and their requests. The good news is that the child has such a powerful and amazing brain that he manages to learn anyway. But if we put him in the ideal situation—particularly in the first years, when he creates the basics of the whole cognitive process—he will be invincible… Montessori used to say that we should create a Ministry of the Child. The child is often absent from political speech. Montessori’s ideas are not just for school, they are for everyday life, in the family and in society…She was a scientist, and had the mindset that observation was everything. She looked at children as if they were an experiment. That was new, and led to a new approach. Neuroscience today confirms many elements that she identified a century ago: she spoke of learning through movement and manipulation of materials—now scientists all agree about the link between movement and the learning process; she discussed the different steps of learning—now scientists talk about the “executive functions” of a child’s development; she called the child’s brain an “absorbent” mind—now scientists talk about “synaptic pruning.” Maria Montessori’s assertion that intelligence is developed by sensory organs and coordination is now backed up by research. It is amazing how ahead of her time she was, without MRI scans or anything.

Here are some thoughts from books by Maria Montessori:

Adults have not understood children or adolescents and they are, as a consequence, in continual conflict with them. The remedy is not that adults should gain some new intellectual knowledge or achieve a higher standard of culture. No, they must find a different point of departure. The adult must find within himself the still unknown error that prevents him from seeing the child as he is… If a child finds no stimuli for the activities which would contribute to his development, he is attracted simply to ‘things’ and desires to posses them.

The Discovery of the Child

The best instruction is that which uses the least words sufficient for the task…This then is the first duty of an educator: to stir up life but leave it free to develop.

The Absorbent Mind 

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man’s future… The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.

The Child’s Part in World Reconstruction

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)