The Montessori Method

Maria Montessori's method of educating children, which she details in this book, is based on a conception of liberty for the pupil; it entails formal training of separate sensory, motor, and mental capacities; and leads to rapid and substantial mastery of the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The Montessori Method is important because it springs from a combination of sympathy and intuition, social outlook, scientific training, intensive study of educational problems and the author's unusual experience as a teacher and educational leader.Following opening statements from J. McV. Hunt and Jaan Valsiner, Maria Montessori discusses topics including pedagogical methods used in the children's houses, discipline, diet, gymnastics, manual labor, education of the senses, intellectual education, methods of teaching reading and writing, language in childhood, and teaching of numeration.This classic volume in the education of children takes on urgent relevance for parents, teachers, and administrators in all parts of our society. The suburban mother seeking an environment of "structured freedom" for an imaginative, quick-learning pre-schooler; the educator jolted into awareness that slum children are irreparably handicapped by cultural impoverishment before the age of six; explorers of "new" techniques of teaching reading, of programmed instruction and learning by conditioning and reinforcement-by-approval all these are instructed by Maria Montessori's theory and the reports of her work in the Casa dei Bambini in the slum quarter of Rome.

INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION, INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I A CRITICAL CONSIDERATION OF THE NEW PEDAGOGY IN ITS RELATION TO MODERN SCIENCE, CHAPTER II HISTORY OF METHODS, CHAPTER III INAUGURAL ADDRESS DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF ONE OF THE CHILDREN'S HOUSES, CHAPTER IV PEDAGOGICAL METHODS USED IN THE CHILDREN'S HOUSES, CHAPTER V DISCIPLINE, CHAPTER VI HOW THE LESSON SHOULD BE GIVEN, CHAPTER VII EXERCISES OF PRACTICAL LIFE, CHAPTER VIII REFECTION—THE CHILD'S DIET, CHAPTER IX MUSCULAR EDUCATION—GYMNASTICS, CHAPTER X NATURE IN EDUCATION—AGRICULTURAL LABOUR: CULTURE OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS, CHAPTER XI MANUAL LABOUR—THE POTTER'S ART, AND BUILDING, CHAPTER XII EDUCATION OF THE SENSES, CHAPTER XIII EDUCATION OF THE SENSES AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE DIDACTIC MATERIAL: GENERAL SENSIBILITY: THE TACTILE, THERMIC, BARIC AND STEREOGNOSTIC SENSES, CHAPTER XIV GENERAL NOTES ON THE EDUCATION OF THE SENSES, CHAPTER XV INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION, CHAPTER XVI METHOD FOR THE TEACHING OF READING AND WRITING, CHAPTER XVII DESCRIPTION OF THE METHOD AND DIDACTIC MATERIAL USED, CHAPTER XVIII LANGUAGE IN CHILDHOOD, CHAPTER XIX TEACHING OF NUMERATION: INTRODUCTION TO ARITHMETIC, CHAPTER XX SEQUENCE OF EXERCISES, CHAPTER XXI GENERAL REVIEW OF DISCIPLINE, CHAPTER XXII CONCLUSIONS AND IMPRESSIONS

Henry Bienen