Maria_Montessori_John_Dewey_and_William.pdf

What's The Point?

Dr. Maria Montessori invented educational practices to meet the needs of a diverse variety of children. She was successful in teaching for different cultural, social, and economic backgrounds, as well as children with different abilities. Yet, she remains a quieter, even "cultish" figure in the U.S. because many misunderstand her work and how to put her methods into practice at scale. Thayer-Bacon shares how Montessori's due diligence actually does validate many needs and common ideas in education today—and tries to assign her more ownership.

Bullet Summary

• Dr. Maria Montessori was a practicing doctor who entered the field of children's education when she had to take care of mentally challenged children at her hospital. Because she was a doctor first, her inquiry into education has always been scientific.
• As a woman, it was difficult for her to progress in her vertical as a doctor. However, working with children (which some of her colleagues dismissed as "childcare" early on) led her to her highly celebrated career as an educator.
• Montessori studied children and learned how to structure and navigate a classroom without preconceptions of what "teaching" should look like. The materials she made for kids were "self-correcting," so the exploration process of a child could be independent. In her classrooms at Casa dei Bambini, students had freedom to do as they pleased.
• William H. Kilpatrick, one of Dewey's disciples, documented Montessori's work while she was alive. His work became the voice of criticism, but much of it appears biased and unfounded in hindsight.
  • He criticized her for only focusing on Italian education (Montessori traveled the world to observe classrooms); he called her ideas in psychology 50 years behind (Montessori's ideas actually influenced Jean Piaget work); described how Dewey should be credited with more of the method's successes; and generally misunderstands her values of children's liberty, discipline, work, and play.
• Thayer-Bacon, the author, used to be a Montessori teacher herself. She writes about her experiences to clarify where Kilpatrick misunderstood Montessori pedagogy. She underscores Kilpatrick's viewpoint that Montessori's education was only useful for poor kids in Rome, and not translatable for most Americans.
• Thayer-Bacon discusses and clarifies more of Montessori's recommendations, including: teaching history and science through storytelling; using visual timelines; and avoiding topics that may add to a child's anxieties as they are developing. She contextualizes Montessori with others in the education space, including Itard, Séguin, and Plato.
• Lastly, Thayer-Bacon points out that throughout her education as an educator, Montessori was only a fleeting mention here and there. Her representation has improved (mostly through feminist scholarship), but still is lacking. Thayer-Bacon celebrates Montessori's feats with a list of all the ideas she contributed to childhood education, and pronounces further the fact she was able to achieve all this considering her limitations as a woman in Italy in the early 20th century.

Notable Quotes

"Montessori saw the child as her source of biological information, as the one who was teaching her. She learned to trust that the child would seek to get what she needs from the environment to become the adult she has the potential to be." (12)

"The directress’s task was to note the children’s interests and behavior, what material attracted them, and how they functioned in the room." (7)

"It was during this timeframe that Montessori translated by hand Séguin’s 600-page book from French into Italian so that she could absorb its lessons more completely." (6)

"By 1908, Montessori was world famous, 'for having discovered the world within the child.'" (7)

"Dewey’s lack of direct engagement in women’s educational theories in his writings during his lifetime diminished their contributions to education and theory and has added to the need for feminists to recover their work." (11)

"His best praise for her addresses her general wish to apply scientific conceptions to education: that teachers should have a scientific attitude and keep records of their students (anthropometric and psychologic)." (11)

"Montessori learned that by allowing children to choose what they are interested in as an activity, the children will take care of their deep-seeded needs for independence and self-control, as well as other needs such as order and silence, and will learn how to monitor their own behavior through what she labeled as their 'work.'" (12)