Orient BlackSwan

About the BookAbout the Author

Maria Montessori was convinced, from a lifetime of scientific observation, that there are laws of growth in the character and disposition of the child as marked as those in its physical life; that adults generally fail to appreciate these laws and force their own ideas on it. This results in the suppression of the child's deepest drives and its mind is thrown into confusion. This often manifests itself in naughtiness, hysterical crying and sulking. A childhood so full of repression results in an adulthood full of complexes. Dr Montessori's main thesis in this book is, in effect, 'Find the secret of childhood'. It truly becomes the 'Father of Man' and achieves a superior, saner psychological development. Maria Montessori's revolutionary method of education was implemented long ago. Today, institutions practising her method still exist in all parts of the world. This book reaches out to a far wider readership, in fact to all those who care for the young and their development into well-adjusted adults.

Maria Montessori was born in Rome in 1870. She was the first woman medical graduate of the University of Rome. After working as Assistant Doctor in the Clinic of Psychiatry, she was the Director (1898-1900) of the Scuola Ortofrenica, a school for children with special needs which had been founded as a result of her interest in such children. She also studied Philosophy at the University of Rome, with particular emphasis on the psychology of childhood, and lectured to students there in Pedagogical Anthropology. Around 1909, she developed the Montessori method, the famous system of education for children aged three to six, based on free discipline and free choice by children from stimulating learning apparatus provided to them. She was soon in charge of 50 schools for slum children called the Case dei Bambini in which her system was applied. From 1919 onwards she travelled round the world every other year conducting courses in teaching by the Montessori method, holding similar courses every alternate year in London. She died in 1952.