History of Montessori: Part Two

📚 Series — History of Montessori · Part 2 of 2

By 1900, Dr. Maria Montessori had become one of Italy’s most recognized voices for education. She had fought her way into medicine, become Italy’s first female doctor, and was now training teachers of children with disabilities. But her most transformative work was still ahead of her. In Part Two, we follow the founding of the first Montessori school and how a single classroom in a Rome tenement changed education forever.

From Medicine to Education

After her work at the psychiatric hospital, Montessori returned to the University of Rome to study pedagogy, the science of teaching. She immersed herself in the work of earlier educational reformers, particularly Jean-Marc Itard and Édouard Séguin, who had developed hands-on, sensory-based methods for teaching children with disabilities. Montessori adapted and expanded their ideas, developing her own set of specially designed learning materials.

What struck her most was a simple but radical observation: when children were given the right environment and the right materials, they taught themselves. The role of the adult was not to pour knowledge into a child, but to prepare the environment and step back. This insight would become the cornerstone of everything she built.

“The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, ‘The children are now working as if I did not exist.’”

— Maria Montessori

The First Casa dei Bambini

1907

On January 6, 1907, Dr. Montessori opened the first Casa dei Bambini - “Children’s House” - in the San Lorenzo tenement district of Rome. The school served approximately 50 children between the ages of 2 and 7, most of them from impoverished families whose parents worked during the day and had nowhere safe to leave them.

The space was simple. The materials were carefully chosen. And the results were extraordinary.

Montessori equipped the classroom with child-sized furniture, low shelves stocked with her specially designed learning materials, and real tools for practical life activities: small brooms, pitchers for pouring, frames for buttoning and lacing. She trained a young, untested teacher and observed closely. What she witnessed astonished her: children as young as three were deeply, joyfully absorbed in their work. They chose their own activities, returned materials to their proper places, and helped one another without being asked.

“The children were not being taught, they were learning. And they could not get enough of it.”

Word spread quickly. Educators, journalists, and dignitaries from around the world traveled to San Lorenzo to observe. What they saw defied everything they believed about young children and learning.

The Method Takes Shape

Over the next several years, Montessori refined her approach through careful observation. She identified what she called “sensitive periods”: windows of time in a child’s development when they are especially receptive to learning specific skills, such as language, order, movement, and the refinement of the senses. She designed her materials to meet children precisely in these windows.

She also observed what she called the “normalized child”: A child who, when given freedom within a prepared environment, becomes calm, focused, self-disciplined, and deeply engaged. This was not the result of reward or punishment. It was the natural outcome of a child whose developmental needs were being met.

1909

Montessori published Il Metodo della Pedagogia Scientifica, translated into English as The Montessori Method. The book became an international sensation, translated into more than 20 languages within a few years of publication. It remains in print today.

1910s

Montessori schools began opening across Europe and the United States. Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel were among the early American advocates, founding the Montessori Educational Association in Washington, D.C. in 1913. By 1916, there were more than 100 Montessori schools in the U.S. alone.

1929

Montessori founded the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) in Amsterdam to preserve the integrity of her method and oversee teacher training worldwide. AMI continues this work today.

A Legacy That Endures

Dr. Maria Montessori spent the rest of her life traveling the world, lecturing, training teachers, and refining her method. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times: in 1949, 1950, and 1951. She passed away on May 6, 1952, in the Netherlands, at the age of 81.

Today, there are an estimated 20,000–25,000 Montessori schools worldwide, spanning more than 110 countries. Her method has been embraced by public and private schools, homeschoolers, and early childhood programs on every continent. The children who attend them, and the adults they become, are her enduring legacy.

“We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are part of the universe and are connected with each other to form one whole unity.”

— Maria Montessori

At ShillerLearning, we are proud to carry this tradition into homeschool families across the country. Our curriculum distills the Montessori method into a scripted, multisensory, open-and-go format so that any parent, regardless of background, can give their child the gift of a Montessori education at home.