Montessori Materials Movement
There has been a quiet awakening in the last decade in America to the prescient vision of Maria Montessori, who at the turn of the century burst onto the front pages of newspapers and magazines both in Europe and America as the voice of a more modern approach to education from a woman of inspiring personality and scholarship.
Dr. Montessori designed educational environments that produced outcomes based on spontaneous choices in an environment with practical elements. She trained teachers to create and adapt the educational environment in response to observing the children’s purposeful engagement. An educational environment optimally prepared produced choices by the children that were authentic and met their individual needs and interests. This process accelerated learning while catering to the individual’s full development. It allows for each child to progress at their own rate while still participating in a social community.
Why Montessori rings so true in our current age is the environmental approach she took to the educational method and the school itself over a century ago, placing environment in the forefront of the learning experience and the role of the teacher in the background. This was revolutionary in her day, and sadly continues to be the obstacle to a more responsive approach to educating children in modern America. While the environmental movement and the implications have become widely embraced in our culture and our homes, in most schools the role of the teacher and the factory model of curriculum delivery continues to dominate even the most “progressive” schools.
Montessori stresses the importance of manipulating materials to discover answers, rather than merely memorizing content. The Montessori materials promote optimal psychological development. First, multi-sensory learning allows students to use various parts of their brains to learn. Hands-on manipulations encourage active, discovery learning. Second, materials encourage children to work together, and these collaborations involve lots of discussion and rationalization. Third, Montessori students learn to strive for accuracy because the materials provide feedback. They see their school work as puzzles to be solved, instead of assignments to be corrected. Finally, Montessori materials are elegantly designed to advance concepts from concrete experience to abstract ideas.