What is the Montessori Method?
On January 6th, 1906 a young Italian woman opened the doors of a little school in the slums of San Lorenzo, Rome. It was Maria Montessori, well-known at the time for being the first Italian woman doctor. She had worked among the poor, the abandoned, the children considered ‘idiots’ and hopeless for any education. But Maria saw something different; she saw little minds and souls starving for truth, for goodness, for beauty. How was she going to reach them?
Rather than coming to these children with pre-conceived notions of their abilities, Maria gave them her time, patience, and careful observation, looking to unlock the secret of their potential. Under her care, the children who had previously been considered ‘hopeless’ in mind, began to reveal themselves. They each had a wonderful spark of enthusiasm for learning, for order. From these initial discoveries came the seed of Maria’s philosophy of education and what was to come to be known as “The Montessori method.” Maria later wrote: “I had a strange feeling which made me announce emphatically here was the opening of an undertaking of which the whole world would one day speak.”
It was in this way that the Montessori Method, now famous throughout the world, had its humble beginnings among the poor and abandoned. The little children of that first “Casa dei Bambini” or “Children’s House” were the ones who showed Maria how to begin to guide them—and all little children to fulfill their God-given potential.
In the years since then, Maria Montessori’s profound educational insight—an insight founded on a Catholic understanding of the order of Creation and the development of the human person—has been recognized and praised by many popes, from Pope St. Pius X, who called it “a work for the regeneration of the child,” to Bl. Pope John XXIII, who wrote that, “It is possible to see a clear analogy between the mission of the Shepherd of the Church and that of the prudent and generous Montessori directress – who with tenderness and love knows how to discover and bring to light the most hidden virtues and capacities of the child.”
Montessori and the World 