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    Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook
    Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook
    Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook
    Ebook120 pages1 hour

    Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook

    By Maria Montessori

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    About this ebook

    The Montessori method revolutionized how children were educated. In Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook, Maria Montessori explains the basics of her system, how it works and why it works. There are dozens of figures to help illustrate her points. "My method is scientific, both in its substance and in its aim. It makes for the attainment of a more advanced stage of progress, in directions no longer only material and physiological."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateAug 29, 2014
    ISBN9781633843080
    Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook
    Author

    Maria Montessori

    Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was an Italian educator and physician. Born in Chiaravalle, she came from a prominent, well-educated family of scientists and government officials. Raised in Florence and Rome, Montessori excelled in school from a young age, graduating from technical school in 1886. In 1890, she completed her degree in physics and mathematics, yet decided to pursue medicine rather than a career in engineering. At the University of Rome, she overcame prejudice from the predominately male faculty and student body, winning academic prizes and focusing her studies on pediatric medicine and psychiatry. She graduated in 1896 as a doctor in medicine and began working with mentally disabled children, for whom she also became a prominent public advocate. In 1901, she left her private practice to reenroll at the University of Rome for a degree in philosophy, dedicating herself to the study of scientific pedagogy and lecturing on the topic from 1904 to 1908. In 1906, she opened her Casa dei Bambini, a school for children from low-income families. As word of her endeavor spread, schools using the Montessori educational method began opening around the world. In the United States, the publication of The Montessori Method (1912) in English and her 1913 lecture tour fostered a rapid increase of Montessori schools in the country. For her groundbreaking status as one of Italy’s first female public intellectuals and her role in developing a more individualized, psychologically informed approach to education, Maria Montessori continues to be recognized as one of the twentieth century’s most influential figures.

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    • 4/5
      "Dr. Montessori's own handbook" is what it sets out to be – a concise, practical guide to the Montessori system of educating Kindergarteners. The book is filled with photos and examples of activities, with theory and justification taking a backseat. It is written to guide someone who wants to set up their own Montessori classroom.The text and photos clearly capture a specific moment in time in Montessori's career. As a rising-star educator, she writes with fervor and conviction. Within the handbook are tips that advocate the "organization of work" and "freedom" of early childhood education, ideas that probably resonated with the times. The photos also speak a thousand words, in that they show the early version of Montessori equipment; in fact, my second-hand copy of the book has had a few ripped out of its spine!

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    Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook - Maria Montessori

    Introductory Remarks

    Recent years have seen a remarkable improvement in the conditions of child life. In all civilized countries, but especially in England, statistics show a decrease in infant mortality.

    Related to this decrease in mortality a corresponding improvement is to be seen in the physical development of children; they are physically finer and more vigorous. It has been the diffusion, the popularization of science, which has brought about such notable advantages. Mothers have learned to welcome the dictates of modern hygiene and to put them into practice in bringing up their children. Many new social institutions have sprung up and have been perfected with the object of assisting children and protecting them during the period of physical growth.

    In this way what is practically a new race is coming into being, a race more highly developed, finer and more robust; a race which will be capable of offering resistance to insidious disease.

    What has science done to effect this? Science has suggested for ns certain very simple rules by which the child has been restored as nearly as possible to conditions of a natural life, and an order and a guiding law have been given to the functions of the body. For example, it is science which suggested maternal feeding, the abolition of swaddling clothes, baths, life in the open air, exercise, simple short clothing, quiet and plenty of sleep. Rules were also laid down for the measurement of food adapting it rationally to the physiological needs of the child’s life.

    Yet with all this, science made no contribution that was entirely new. Mothers had always nursed their children, children had always been clothed, they had breathed and eaten before.

    The point is, that the same physical acts which, performed blindly and without order, led to disease and death, when ordered rationally were the means of giving strength and life.

    The great progress made may perhaps deceive us into thinking that everything possible has been done for children.

    We have only to weigh the matter carefully, however, to reflect: Are our children only those healthy little bodies which to-day are growing and developing so vigorously under our eyes? Is their destiny fulfilled in the production of beautiful human bodies?

    In that case there would be little difference between their lot and that of the animals which we raise that we may have good meat or beasts of burden.

    Man’s destiny is evidently other than this, and the care due to the child covers a field wider than that which is considered by physical hygiene. The mother who has given her child his bath and sent him in his perambulator to the park has not fulfilled the mission of the mother of humanity The hen which gathers her chickens together, and the cat which licks her kittens and lavishes on them such tender care, differ in no wise from the human mother in the services they render.

    No, the human mother if reduced to such limits devotes herself in vain, feels that a higher aspiration has been stifled within her. She is yet the mother of man.

    Children must grow not only in the body but in the spirit, and the mother longs to follow the mysterious spiritual journey of the beloved one who to-morrow will be the intelligent, divine creation, man.

    Science evidently has not finished its progress. On the contrary, it has scarcely taken the first step in advance, for it has hitherto stopped at the welfare of the body. It must continue, however, to advance; on the same positive lines along which it has improved the health and saved the physical life of the children, it is bound in the future to benefit and to reenforce their inner life, which is the real human life. On the same positive lines science will proceed to direct the development of the intelligence, of character, and of those latent creative forces which lie hidden in the marvelous embryo of man’s spirit.

    As the child’s body must draw nourishment and oxygen from its external environment, in order to accomplish a great physiological work, the work of growth, so also the spirit must take from its environment the nourishment which it needs to develop according to its own laws of growth. It cannot be denied that the phenomena of development are a great work in themselves. The consolidation of the bones, the growth of the whole body, the completion of the minute construction of the brain, the formation of the teeth, all these are very real labors of the physiological organism, as is also the transformation which the organism undergoes during the period of puberty.

    These exertions are very different from those put forth by mankind in so-called external work, that is to say, in social production, whether in the schools where man is taught, or in the world where, by the activity of his intelligence, he produces wealth and transforms his environment.

    It is none the less true, however, that they are both work. In fact, the organism during these periods of greatest physiological work is least capable of performing external tasks, and sometimes the work of growth is of such extent and difficulty that the individual is overburdened, as with an excessive strain, and for this reason alone becomes exhausted or even dies.

    Man will always be able to avoid external work by making use of the labor of others, but there is no possibility of shirking that inner work. Together with birth and death it has been imposed by nature itself, and each man must accomplish it for himself. This difficult, inevitable labor, this is the work of the child.

    When we say then that little children should rest, we are referring to one side only of the question of work. We mean that they should rest from that external visible work to which the little child through his weakness and incapacity cannot make any contribution useful either to himself or to others.

    Our assertion, therefore, is not absolute; the child in reality is not resting, he is performing the mysterious inner work of his auto-formation. He is working to make a man, and to accomplish this it is not enough that the child’s body should grow in actual size; the most intimate functions of the motor and nervous systems must also be established and the intelligence developed.

    The functions to be established by the child fall into two groups: (1) the motor functions by which he is to secure his balance and learn to walk, and to coordinate his movements; (2) the sensory functions through which, receiving sensations from his environment, he lays the foundations of his intelligence by a continual exercise of observation, comparison and judgment. In this way he gradually comes to be acquainted with his environment and to develop his intelligence.

    At the same time he is learning a language, and he is faced not only with the motor difficulties of articulation, sounds and words, but also with the difficulty of gaining an intelligent understanding of names and of the syntactical composition of the language.

    If we think of an emigrant who goes to a new country ignorant of its products, ignorant of its natural appearance and social order, entirely ignorant of its language, we realize that there is an immense work of adaptation which he must perform

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