Montessori Mother, A.
An Early Guide To The Montessori Method
[Montessori, Maria]. Fisher, Dorothy Canfield. A Montessori Mother. Illustrated. New York: Holt, 1912.
8vo.; photographic frontispiece; other photographs throughout; brown cloth, stamped in gilt; black and white photographic dust-jacket, lightly tanned, spine tattered, few internal tape repairs.
First edition of a very early book on the great Italian educator’s method, in which “a thoroly [sic] competent author who has been most intimately associated with Dr. Montessori tells us just what American mothers and many teachers want to know about this new system of child training” (from the dust-jacket). Montessori’s own first book The Montessori Method was released that same year, 1912.
Maria Montessori was born in Italy in 1870. Montessori initially distinguished herself by becoming the first woman in Italy to receive a medical degree (in 1894). But her true interest was not medicine but teaching. Accordingly, she became a lecturer on pedagogical anthropology at the University of Rome and a government inspector of schools. Encouraged by her success with mentally challenged children in the Orthophrenic School, of which she was appointed director in 1898, Montessori applied her educational method to the “average” pre-school child in several “case di bambini” (houses of children) which she opened within the Roman school system in 1907.
Montessori’s famous teaching method evolved out of her many years of experience with children both in and out of the classroom. The main features of the “Montessori Method,” which was considered revolutionary at the time of its introduction, are the encouragement of the child’s initiative through freedom of action, the improvement of sense perception through training, and the development of coordination through exercises and games. In a Montessori classroom, the teacher acts less as an authority figure and more as a supervisor and guide. This 16-chapter profile of Montessori’s teaching approach was written by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, a reporter who toured Europe and spent the better part of a year observing her at work.
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