Philosophy

The fundamental premise within the Montessori philosophy of education is that all children carry within themselves the person they will become. In order to develop her physical, intellectual, and spiritual potential to the fullest, the child must have freedom: a freedom to be achieved through order and self-discipline. The world of the youngest child, say Montessori educators, is full of sights and sounds that at first appear chaotic. From this chaos children must gradually create order, learn to distinguish among the impressions that bombard their senses, and slowly but surely gain mastery over themselves and their environment.

Dr. Montessori developed what she called the prepared environment, which already possesses a certain order and allows children to learn at their own pace, according to their own capacities and in a non-competitive atmosphere. "Never let children risk failure until they have a reasonable chance of success."  The years between three and six are the years in which children learn the rules of human behavior most easily. These years can be constructively devoted to "socializing" children, freeing them through the acquisition of good manners and habits, to take their places in their immediate world.

Dr. Montessori recognized that the only valid impulse to learning is the self-motivation of the child. Children move themselves toward learning. the teacher ("directress" or "guide") prepares herself/himself and the environment, directs the activity (gives presentations), and offers the child stimulation, but it is the child who is the active agent in his own learning, who is motivated through work itself to persist in a given task. If Montessori children are free to learn, it is because they have acquired an "inner discipline" from their exposure to both physical and mental order. This is at the heart of Montessori philosophy. Patterns of concentration and thoroughness, established in early childhood produces a confident, competent learner in later years. Montessori teaches children to observe, to think, to judge. Montessori introduces children to the joy of learning at an early age and provides a framework in which intellectual and social discipline go hand-in-hand.

 

“Free choice is one of the highest of all the mental processes.  Only the child deeply aware of his need for practice and for the development of his spiritual life, can really be said to choose freely…  The child whose attention has once been held by a chosen object, while he concentrates his whole self on the repetition of the exercise, is a delivered soul in the sense of the spiritual safety of which we speak.”                                     Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind