A Montessori Mother

An observation often made by philosophic observers of our social organization is that the tremendous importance of primary teachers is ridiculously underestimated. The success o...

I had not seen a Montessori school when I first read through Dr. Montessori’s book. I laid it down with the mental comments, “All very well to write about! But, of course, it ca...

Of course one day’s observations do not give even a bird’s-eye view of all the operations of a Montessori school, and this chapter is intended to supplement somewhat the very in...

As I look at the title of this chapter before setting to work on it, the sight of the word “Theory” makes me apprehensively aware that I am stepping down into very deep water wi...

The carefully graded advance, from the simpler to the harder exercises, which is so essential a part of the correct use of the Montessori, as of all other educational apparatus,...

The first thing to do, if you can manage it, is to secure a set of the Montessori apparatus. It is the result of the ripest thought, ingenuity, and practical experience of a gif...

Holding firmly in mind the guiding principle formulated in the paragraph preceding, it may not be presumptuous for us, in addition to exercising our children with the apparatus...

When I first began to understand to some extent the thoroughgoing radicalism of the philosophy of liberty which underlies all the intricate detail of Dr. Montessori’s system, I...

Naturally, the question which concerns us is, how the spiritual discoveries made in this new institution in a far-away city of Italy, can be used to benefit our own children, in...

With the last affirmation of the preceding chapter I have brought myself to another bed-rock principle of this new religion of childhood, one which at first I was unable to unde...

I must stop at this point and devote a paragraph or two to laying the ghost of another Puritan ancestor who demands, “But where does the discipline come in here, if it is all au...

Now, of course, it is infinitely easier in the first place to cry out to a child, “Oh, don’t be so careless!” than to consider thus with painful care all the elements lacking in...

No one realizes more acutely than I that the composition of this chapter presupposes an amount of courage on my part which it is perhaps hardly exaggeration to call foolhardines...

A perusal of the methods of the Montessori schools and of the philosophy underlying them may lead the reader to question if under this new system the child is regarded as a crea...

Dr. Montessori and the average American parent are as different in heredity, training, and environment as two civilized beings can very well be. Every condition surrounding the...

That there is little prospect of an immediate adoption in the United States of Montessori ideas of flexibility and unhampered individual growth is apparent to anyone who knows e...