MONTESSORI

MONTESSORI Maria (Maria Montessori, born 1870), physician, renowned educator, creator of her own system of preschool education. The first Italian woman to receive a doctorate in medicine. She established a school for the treatment and education of mentally disabled children. Subsequently, M. in 1907 became the initiator and talented organizer of 'children's houses' for the children of workers. Giving her work a reformist character, she transferred here the principles of education developed by her in the school for mentally disabled children. The foundation was laid for the development of child receptiveness and education of the senses. M. rejected a number of the principles and methods of Froebel, such as weaving, embroidery, etc., placing at the forefront the development of children's activity, their self-activity and self-exercise. However, the development of excessive individualism in children, and somewhat excessive training, which in M.'s garden is overly serious, force one to recognize M.'s system in its pure form as unacceptable. M.'s main work: 'The Method of Scientific Pedagogy Applied to Child Education in Children's Houses,' translated into many languages, went through 4 Russian editions (the last - Moscow, 1920).