Maria Montessori's Children's House

The story

A girl who wanted to be a doctor

Maria Montessori was born in 1870 in Chiaravalle, in the Marche region of Italy. At that time it was not easy for a girl to study: her parents wanted her to become a teacher, and medical faculties were open almost only to men. Maria, however, wanted to be a doctor. With great determination, and with her mother's support, she managed to enrol at the University of Rome and graduated in 1896: she was one of the first women in Italy to graduate in medicine.

She first worked in a clinic for mental illnesses, where she met children who were considered “backward”, left in bare rooms with no toys. She noticed that they were hungry for things to touch and use with their hands. She studied the methods of two French doctors, Jean Itard and Édouard Séguin, and began to teach those children with hands-on materials. She made such progress that some of them passed exams alongside children from ordinary schools. Montessori asked herself: if it works with these children, what could it do for all the others?

San Lorenzo, 6 January 1907

The chance came in Rome, in the working-class district of San Lorenzo. Homes had been built there for workers' families, but while their parents were at work the little children were left alone in the courtyards, and they damaged the walls and stairs. The engineer Edoardo Talamo, who was in charge of the buildings, asked Maria Montessori to organise a place where the children could be looked after during the day. On 6 January 1907, in Via dei Marsi, in San Lorenzo, the first “Casa dei Bambini” (Children's House) opened, with about fifty little ones between three and six years old.

Maria Montessori did not bring a teacher's desk and rows of benches. She had small, light furniture made to fit children: tables, chairs, low cupboards from which the children could take things by themselves. She created special materials: wooden blocks with sockets of different sizes, letters cut out of sandpaper to trace with the fingers, coloured beads for learning to count. The children could choose what to do and work for as long as they wanted.

A new way of learning

Montessori watched the children patiently and noticed things she had not expected. A three-year-old girl spent long minutes putting little cylinders into the holes of a wooden block, one after another, repeating the game dozens of times, and at the end she seemed rested and happy. The children loved washing cups, laying the table and pouring water without spilling it: the more independent they were, the happier they were. One of the sayings attributed to her is: “Help me to do it by myself.”

In her method the teacher is not a boss who talks from above, but a guide who prepares a tidy and beautiful environment, watches the children and helps them when needed. Children learn with their hands, by moving and by experience, not just by listening. In 1909 Montessori wrote a book to describe her method, which was translated into many languages.

From a neighbourhood to the world

The news spread quickly. Journalists and teachers from all over the world came to visit the Children's Houses, and within a few years Montessori schools appeared in Europe and America. Maria travelled a great deal to give courses and lectures. Under Fascism, after a period of government support, Montessori did not want to submit her method to the regime's rules and in 1934, after clashes with Fascism, she left Italy; in 1936 the regime closed the Montessori schools. She lived in Spain, the Netherlands and India, where, confined as an Italian citizen, she stayed throughout the Second World War and trained many teachers. She died in the Netherlands in 1952.