Maria Montessori

     As a medical resident, Dr. Montessori came into contact with mentally disabled children.  This helped her to understand  that mental disability is not only a medical problem but also a pedagogical issue.  From that moment on she was deeply involved in education and pedagogy.

    She discovered that sensory experiences preceded intellectual accomplishments.  She designed materials to train the various senses and achieve good results with the mentally disabled.  The use of sensorial exercises is an important aspect of Montessori's method as well.   

     While working with Mentally disabled children, she realized they were capable of learning much more than she had expected.  They were even taught how to read.  This proved to Montessori that much was suppressed or held back in normal children during their education.  She began to search for the reasons that in her words, "could keep the happy healthy children of the common schools on so low a plane that they could be equaled in tests of intelligence by my unfortunate pupils!"  After much research Dr. Montessori carefully observed how these children learned and she realized the key, overlooked potential!

This query led Dr. Montessori to a conviction; to devote her energies to the field of education rather than medicine for the remainder of her life. 

     To prepare for her new role as an educator, Dr. Montessori returned to the University of Rome to study philosophy, psychology, and anthropology.  During this time she also made a special study of nervous diseases of children, and published the result of her researches.  In 1904 she was appointed Professor of Anthropology at the University, and carried on her other research as well until 1907 when her active life as an educator really took off. 

         Dr. Montessori was asked to direct a day-care center in a housing project in the slum section of San Lorenzo, Italy.  She accepted the position, seeing this as her opportunity to begin her work with a normal population of children.  She called the day-care Casa Dei Bambina.  She was to have 60 children between the ages of three and seven whose illiterate parents were working and the children were left unsupervised in an area known for its oppressive poverty and crime.  What happened next, Montessori says, brought her a series of surprises which left her "amazed and incredulous."  The children showed a degree of concentration in working with the "apparatus" which was not observable in the mentally deficient children at the Institute, and which seemed astonishing in children so young.  Even more astonishing, the children seemed to be not only rested, but satisfied and happy after their concentrated efforts.     

      When Benito Mussolini and the Fascists came into power in Italy, Dr. Montessori and the dictator publicly clashed and Dr. Montessori was forced into exile.  She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949, 1950, 1951.  Mussolini felt that the education of so many masses of people was detrimental to his governmental Fascist goals so she became a self proclaimed "citizen of the world" and her teaching spread to the four corners of the earth.