Maria Montessori was one earliest pioneers of nursery education she was born in Chiaravelle Ancona Province, Italy on August 31, 1817. After graduating from the University of Rome as the first woman in Italy to obtain medical degree in 1896, she worked in the University psychiatric clinic. There she became interested in the education of retarded children.
Ontessori believed strongly that education rather than physical or mental treatment was the remedy for their ailment. In 1she started work with children living in slum area in Rome. She achieved initial successes in her educational work with mentally retarded children and consequently opened in 1907 “a case de Bambti” (Children’s House) in a slum district of Rom. She enrolled neglected children aged 3 to 6 years. The mental and social development of these children amazed observers and soon attracted international attention. She proceeded by writing many texts about her methods and conducted many courses and workshop in many countries. The Italian physical educator, Maria Montessori, originated the method of education that bears her name “Montessori Method” which many proprietors over the world use for their schools’ name.
Montessori’s apparent success in her kindergarten experiment, made her give up her medical practice and took to traveling, lecturing, establishing schools and teacher training colleges and conducting training courses. Onibokun et al. (1987:29) observed that Montessori felt that children did not learn because of bad teaching methods. She felt that methods should arouse and sustain the interests of children, give them the opportunity to work alone and to experiment and practice whatever they learn in school in their activities at home. Her method was a system of education and philosophy of human development and learning. In this method, Montessori believed that a child of three, four or five has one intuitive aim of self-development.
Ontessori believed strongly that education rather than physical or mental treatment was the remedy for their ailment. In 1she started work with children living in slum area in Rome. She achieved initial successes in her educational work with mentally retarded children and consequently opened in 1907 “a case de Bambti” (Children’s House) in a slum district of Rom. She enrolled neglected children aged 3 to 6 years. The mental and social development of these children amazed observers and soon attracted international attention. She proceeded by writing many texts about her methods and conducted many courses and workshop in many countries. The Italian physical educator, Maria Montessori, originated the method of education that bears her name “Montessori Method” which many proprietors over the world use for their schools’ name.
Montessori’s apparent success in her kindergarten experiment, made her give up her medical practice and took to traveling, lecturing, establishing schools and teacher training colleges and conducting training courses. Onibokun et al. (1987:29) observed that Montessori felt that children did not learn because of bad teaching methods. She felt that methods should arouse and sustain the interests of children, give them the opportunity to work alone and to experiment and practice whatever they learn in school in their activities at home. Her method was a system of education and philosophy of human development and learning. In this method, Montessori believed that a child of three, four or five has one intuitive aim of self-development.
Because of this, she organized her classroom around a carefully prepared physical environment with child size furnishing and variety of multi-sensory, manipulative and self-correcting learning materials. Thus lazeson in his comments on primary schools observed that “The Montessori classroom emphasized personal hygiene and good mannered children learn to keep themselves clean, set and serve a table and use knives and forks to foster this, Montessori radically altered the learning environmental. She developed moveable child-sized furniture, desk, and wash- basins. She developed her own tools for learning-didactic apparatus – which presented the child with problems to be solved.
The teaching aids, which she referred to as didactic materials include dressing frames, moveable alphabet letters, commend cards, rough and smooth boards, finger and clay. Teaching she believed should progress always from simple to complex and from the concrete to abstract. Children should be involved in representative games like arranging and rearranging sets of materials with freedom given for every child to find out what is of interest to him. This method requires a professionally trained teacher to prepare the environment, observes carefully and subtly guides every child as he works with the material at his own pace. This exposure gives the child the joy of discovering and learning on his own and also enshrine the spirit of self confidence and self-discipline that will help him to live well and adjust to his environment in the society.
Montessori also believed that parents have an important mission in the upbringing of their children. They alone can and must save their children. Their conscience must feel the force of the mission entrusted to them; for in their hands lies positively the future of humanity, life. The influence of Maria Montessori nursery education was very overwhelming in the continental countries of Europe. It’s basic principles of self-motivated learning is applicable at any stage/level of education since the late 1950’s Private Montessori primary schools have increased greatly in the United States and this approach focused implied by such terms as open classroom, learning center, programme instruction upgraded schools etc. took its root from Maria Montessori’s concepts.
The teaching aids, which she referred to as didactic materials include dressing frames, moveable alphabet letters, commend cards, rough and smooth boards, finger and clay. Teaching she believed should progress always from simple to complex and from the concrete to abstract. Children should be involved in representative games like arranging and rearranging sets of materials with freedom given for every child to find out what is of interest to him. This method requires a professionally trained teacher to prepare the environment, observes carefully and subtly guides every child as he works with the material at his own pace. This exposure gives the child the joy of discovering and learning on his own and also enshrine the spirit of self confidence and self-discipline that will help him to live well and adjust to his environment in the society.
Montessori also believed that parents have an important mission in the upbringing of their children. They alone can and must save their children. Their conscience must feel the force of the mission entrusted to them; for in their hands lies positively the future of humanity, life. The influence of Maria Montessori nursery education was very overwhelming in the continental countries of Europe. It’s basic principles of self-motivated learning is applicable at any stage/level of education since the late 1950’s Private Montessori primary schools have increased greatly in the United States and this approach focused implied by such terms as open classroom, learning center, programme instruction upgraded schools etc. took its root from Maria Montessori’s concepts.
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