Montessori System
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a method of instruction used by Dr. Maria Montessori and, as yet, used only in the branches of elementary education and with children between the ages of 3 and 10 years. It is largely the development of the ideas of Froebel, and more especially of Séguin and Itard. The chief principle is that of "self-education"-allowing the child to learn ideas by its own activity and by following its own inclinations and not by being dictated to or disciplined by the teacher. In the Montessori system there are no classes, no lessons. There rewards or punishment, the only incentive used is the desire on the child's part to do things well in which he or she is interested. When the child enters the school he sees groups of children playing games and joins the group which is doing the things he likes best. The games are ones involving the senses of touch, sight, and hearing, and are so arranged and conducted that these senses soon developed without the child conscious of learning a task. "Touch," for example, is practiced by playing games blindfolded, hearing by playing games in the dark. The interest and attention of the child never wavers as in the conventional school system, since he is always doing what he likes. comes before reading in the system and is learned by of playing with letters, and imitheir shape. It usually takes a of four years about two months to learn to write. "Reading" is learned by the application of similar methods. The rôle of the teacher in all this work is radically different from that under the old system. The material itself does the teaching, for it contains the control of errors. The teacher does not impart information; she is a "passive force, a silent presence."
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921, the method was barely a decade old "Casa dei Bambini" experiment (Rome, 1907) and the encyclopedia could note it was "as yet" used only with children aged 3 to 10. In the United States the vogue collapsed soon after, partly under the weight of William Heard Kilpatrick's 1914 critique that the materials were too narrow and too rigid, and by the mid-1920s American Montessori schools had all but vanished. The revival came only after Maria Montessori's death in 1952, led in America by Nancy McCormick Rambusch, who founded the American Montessori Society in 1960; a US court later held that "Montessori" was a generic term anyone could use, which is why the name now covers schools of widely varying fidelity. Today the method runs from infant programs through adolescent and even secondary levels, in thousands of private and public magnet schools worldwide, though the classroom picture Collier's paints — self-chosen work, self-correcting materials, the teacher as "a silent presence" — is still recognisably what a Montessori room looks like.
Written for this edition, 2026.