Newton Montessori School

The basis of Montessori philosophy of education is the belief that every child carries unseen within herself the person she will become. In order to develop her physical, intellectual, creative and emotional powers to the fullest, she must have freedom – a freedom to be achieved through order and self-discipline. The world of the child, say Montessori educators, is full of sights and sounds that at first appear chaotic. From this chaos, the child must gradually create order, and learn to distinguish among the impressions that assail his senses, slowly but surely gaining mastery of himself and his environment.

Dr. Montessori developed what she called the prepared environment, which already possesses a certain order and disposes the child to develop at his own speed, according to her own capacities, and in a noncompetitive atmosphere in her first school years. Never let a child risk failure until she has a reasonable chance of success, said Dr. Montessori, understanding the necessity for the acquisition of a basic skill before its use in a competitive learning situation. The years between three and six are those in which a child most easily learns the ground rules for human behavior. These years can be constructively devoted to freeing the child, through the acquisition of good manners and habits, to take her place in her culture.

The child who has had the benefit of a Montessori environment is freer at a later age to devote herself more exclusively to the development of her intellectual faculties. The method by which children are taught in the Montessori school might well be called structured learning. Since the child has learned to work by herself in the prepared environment, enjoying the presence of other children, but not necessarily working directly with them, the Montessori teacher is freed up to teach children individually. The structure of Montessori learning involves the use of many materials with which the child can work individually. At every step of her learning, the teaching material is designed to test her understanding and to correct her errors.

Children move themselves toward learning. The teacher prepares the environment, directs the activity, functions as the authority, and offers the child stimulation, but it is the child who learns, who is motivated through the work itself (not solely by the teachers personality) to persist in her given task. If the Montessori child is free to learn, it is because she has acquired from exposure to both physical and mental order an inner discipline. This is the core of Dr. Montessoris educational philosophy. Social adjustment, though it is a necessary condition for learning in a schoolroom, is not the purpose of education. Patterns of concentration, stick-to-itiveness, and thoroughness established in early childhood produce confident, competent learning in later years. In the correct environment children can learn to observe, to think, to judge. The Montessori philosophy introduces children to the joy of learning at an early age and provides a framework in which intellectual and social development go hand-in-hand.