January 6th - Maria Montessori Opens School

On this day, in 1907, the first child-care centre and school for working class children was opened in Rome by Maria Montessori. She would use the school to develop her selfishly named Montessori method for education.

Maria was a buxom Italian lass with the glint of achievement in her eye, the thorn of oppression in her side, and the gale-force wind of equality behind her. She dreamt of being an engineer and attended an all-boys technical school. She then changed to a medical school when she realised she wasn't a boy. Even though she wasn't male, she worked hard and became the first woman to graduate as a doctor in Italy.

Her passion became educating the uneducatable. The "special ones" and the "unhappy little ones." When she gave a lecture at the Torino educational congress, the Minister for Education immediately appointed her the head of a special institution to educate the "slows". Of course she accepted so she could use the special children as guinea pigs to use her untested education theories.

Her first success came quickly when some of her children passed a reading and writing exam with flying colours. With this taste of glory she abandoned her special kids and moved on to unleashing the potential of normal children.

Maria saw education as a natural experience that every child goes through independently of the school. The only role the teacher had was to provide the correct environment to allow the student to experience as much as he could. Teachers also had yard-duty and once-a-month social events. Children learn at their own pace with some guidance from the teacher to prevent bad habits like slouching and tardiness.

Her schools were very successful and they generated a great deal of interest. She lived in India and her way of teaching became popular. She lived in the Netherlands and this became the location of the Association Montessori Internationale. Maria also stayed in Belgium but didn't care for their mayonnaise and chips, or their special children.

The Montessori education method is still practiced today. Its main principles include;

• Children are competent beings, except for the slow ones.
• Use of child-sized furniture to make slow, tiny children feel like they are in their own world.
• Not calling children slow.

Maria's methods were groundbreaking and have done a lot for progressing education. Don't you think you could have benefited from it?