Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Maria Montessori 175
“normal” students, then surely the expectations for “normal” students were not commensurate
with their abilities. Eventually she became convinced that the pedagogical methods employed by
traditional public schools prevented children from reaching their full potential because they were
not responsive to the inherent cognitive and developmental needs of their pupils. She couldn’t
help but speculate that her materials and methods would help “normal” children to develop more
quickly and progress much further (Lillard [2005] Montessori: The Science behind the Genius).
As Montessori’s fascination with the learning process grew, she returned to the University
of Rome to study education, anthropology, and psychology. She also visited traditional public
elementary schools to observe teachers and students. In the schools she visited, Montessori
noted that primary students were made to sit in neat rows, memorize discrete bits of information
fed to them by their teachers, and recite these lessons back, word for word, in unison. The
accepted understanding of the time was that academic learning was not a natural cognitive
process for children, and therefore something that students had to be systematically “forced” to
do. Montessori, however, had a radically different orientation to the psychology of children’s
minds. She believed that children were innately motivated to learn and that if schools provided
the right materials and environment, students would choose to learn, often making tremendous
progress in short periods of time.
This line of thinking prompted Montessori to attempt to gain approval for the application of
her methods in the public schools. Unfortunately, the Italian Ministry of Education summarily
denied her requests. Not one to be dissuaded, Montessori found an alternate opportunity to
work with “normal” students. In 1907 she assumed a position coordinating a preschool in the
poverty-stricken Rom’s district of San Lorenzo.
At that time, the San Lorenzo district contained significant populations of economically disadvantaged
children who were too young to attend the public schools and had no one to care
for them during the day while their parents worked. These children were simply left home alone
all day and, without anyone to supervise them, ran wild throughout the neighborhood defacing
buildings and committing other petty acts of vandalism. The opportunity to work with these
children was attractive to Montessori, as it spoke to her commitment to social responsibility as
well as providing a suitable circumstance to experiment with some of her educational ideas on
“normal” children. So, on January 6, 1907, in the San Lorenzo district of Rome, the first Casa
dei Bambini (Children’s House) was opened.
Montessori’s success was almost instantaneous. With fifty students, ages three through six, her
first step was to introduce the sensory materials that she had successfully used at the Orthophrenic
School. Montessori was fascinated by the way in which the young children were intensely attracted
to the materials, working spontaneously and repeatedly with them, and displaying long periods
of total concentration. The multiage setting, now a hallmark of Montessori classrooms, fostered
a cooperative learning environment through enabling the older children who had mastered the
materials to help the younger ones. Another advantage of this multiage arrangement was that
there was a wide range of materials available to serve the heterogeneous student population.
This permitted children to learn at their own pace, unrestricted by “grade level” limitations (see
Kramer).
Montessori, always the observer, drew conclusions about the developmental needs and learning
patterns of these children through watching what they did naturally, unassisted by adults. She
constantly refined her materials and methods based on these observations of the children’s
unprompted work. Among Montessori’s most significant contributions to educational psychology
was her establishment of particular stages of children’s development, during which it was very
easy for them to learn certain concepts because they had an overwhelming passion and dedication
to command specific skills. Furthermore, Montessori determined that each of these stages only
lasted for a certain amount of time and then disappeared when the related skills had been acquired.
Perhaps most important, she concluded that the rate at which children would move through these