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by Sharlet J. McClurkin
February 21, 2003

Even though the theory of the “great leader” in history may be out of fashion among historians, I, nevertheless, can’t see any other way of explaining what has happened to education in the last century without looking again at Dr. Maria Montessori. In 2007 we will celebrate her 100 th birthday of her first school in Rome, and it is time to think about what would have happened to education without her vision and genius.

Traditional education, i.e., desks or tables, work sheets, authoritarian teachers, and classrooms empty of manipulative materials, are still the rule, after nearly 100 years. Adults just can’t imagine any other way than using power and control to teach children. There are exceptions, however, as one travels around the world to view children learning. These oases of beauty can be seen in hundreds of countries. In a Montessori research project in Beijing, the parents of Montessori parents said to the principal, “My children love to come to school. They love their teacher!” In this school, two of the foundational principles of Montessori education had been ignored (children were divided by age and had only a one-hour work time), but it was still enough of a taste of “freedom of choice” and “learning by doing” that it was a success. In Korea, the competitive culture drives the Montessori director to implement long circle times, work choices made by teachers and traditional lessons in English. Despite the aberrations to the Montessori philosophy, the Korean children are learning well and are happy. In Hong Kong, the government requirements for each age group can restrict the mixed age classroom, or can limit the freedom of the child from moving among all areas of learning. To see a Chinese child washing a table, hoever, is a lovely thing to behold. A few years ago a vice-president of a major university in North China said to me, “We know that the Chinese comprehensive curriculum can teach our children the basics, but we believe that Montessori education can bring them creativity!”

nges in today’s culture, new Montessori schools are opening in many places in our country. Even with under-capitalization, restrictive school zoning codes, and lack of understanding in the public educational community, Montessori entrepreneurs, with vision for children in their communities, work ten to twelve hours per day, choose to spend their money on the classrooms rather than themselves, and keep the faith despite the occasional complailning parent or challenge of monthly payroll taxes. Our rugged individualism as Americans, our belief in the capitalist system and the individual entrepreneur, provided the fertile soil for the Montessori philosophy of education in the 20 th century and will, I believe, continue to do so in the 21 st century.

Where would education be today without Montessori’s vision of manipulatives? Look in school catalogs to find copies of her decimal materials, geometry, movable alphabet, and many more, and it is clear that education today has benefited greatly from her view that children learn best through their senses. Boxes of 1,000 cubes sit in public teachers’ closets, however, often not used, mainly because the teachers are not sure how to use them successfully. Isn’t it ironic, as well, that Montessori’s concepts of sensorial learning arose in the same century as computer technology? Without Montessori’s view of the need for concrete materials, would three and four year olds be sitting at their computers in classrooms?

Although Howard Gardner stated that he would send his own child to a Reggio Emilia school, he has built upon many of Montessori’s ideas in his theories of multiple intelligences. One “multiple intelligence” classroom I observed in my city could have been a Montessori elementary classroom in many respects, with the exception that math was still done with workbooks.

Perhaps the most outstanding and effective student of Montessori, Nancy McCormick Rambusch, said something very provocative to a group of teachers in Chicago shortly before her death: “We were just a small band of Catholic women with a dream of a better education for our children…I believe that Montessori education was a “charisma” (a special gift) for the 20 th century.”