Learning can, and should,
be a relaxed, comfortable, natural process. The secret is to pay
attention to the hidden nature of the child at a given stage of development,
and to design an environment in which she will begin to fulfill her
innate human potential.
What is Montessori?
The Montessori Method was
developed by Maria Montessori (1870-1952), the first female Doctor
of Medicine in Italy. She believed that no one can be educated by
another person. She must do it herself or it will never be done.
A truly educated individual continues learning long after the hours
and years she spends in the classroom because she is motivated from
within by a natural curiosity and love for knowledge. Dr. Montessori
felt, therefore, that the goal of education should not be to fill
the child with facts from a pre-selected course of studies but rather
to cultivate her own natural desire to learn. A Montessori education
is designed to take full advantage of children's desire to learn
and their
unique
ability to develop their own capabilities.
Children still need adults to expose them to the possibilities of
their lives, but children determine their responses to these possibilities.
The main premises
of Montessori education are:
• Children are to be respected as different from adults and as individuals
who differ from each other.
• The child possesses an unusual sensitivity and intellectual ability
to absorb and learn from his environment that are unlike those of the
adult both in quality and capacity.
• The most important years of a child's growth are the first six years
of life when unconscious learning is gradually brought to the conscious
level.
• The child has a deep love and need for purposeful work. He works, however,
not as an adult for completion of a job, but the sake of an activity
itself. It is this activity that enables him to accomplish his most
important goal: the development of himself - his mental, physical,
and psychological powers.
The research
and references on this Web site have been collected from
The Essential Montessori by Elizabeth Hainstock, Implementing
Montessori Education in the Public Sector by David Kahn,
An Introduction to Montessori by Cam Gordon, A Parent's Guide
to the Montessori Classroom by Aline D. Wolf, Montessori
Education by the American Montessori Society. The information contained within this Web site is only a small portion of the vast information available.
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