The Montessori Method

About this book

In 1907, in a poor district of Rome, Maria Montessori opened a 'Children's House' for the small children of working families, and in this book she describes the method she developed there. Children, she argues, learn best when they are free to choose their own work in a prepared environment, with materials designed to train the senses: wooden cylinders of different sizes, textured surfaces, colour tablets and sandpaper letters. Teachers observe more than they instruct, and the children, she reports, taught themselves to write and read with surprising joy and discipline.

Context and significance

Montessori (1870–1952), one of the first women in Italy to qualify as a doctor, built her method on her earlier work with disabled children, and this book, translated by Anne E. George in 1912, spread it around the world. Montessori schools still follow its principles. Compare Rousseau's Emile and Dewey's How We Think.

About the author