The College of the United States Incorporates the Montessori Method

Maria Montessori (1870-1952)

Maria Montessori’s theories were based on the idea that human beings are born eager to learn, but must be taught in a way appropriate to their needs.

At first Montessori worked with mentally deficient children.  She developed an educational theory which took the ideas of scholar Friedrich Froebel, the German educationalist who was best known as the originator of the kindergarten system, anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi, and French physicians and educators, Jean Itard and Edouard Seguin, and incorporated them with methods that she had found in medicine, education, and anthropology.

Her success with the mentally deficient was so stunning she yearned to apply her principles to normal children.  It was in 1907 that Montessori first implemented her theories and methods of pedagogy. She began by directing the “Casa Dei Bambini” (Children’s House), a daycare center for working class children in Rome's slum, San Lorenzo.

The children entered her program as "wild and unruly." Much to her surprise they began to respond to her teaching methods. She always held them in the highest regard and taught her teachers to do likewise.

From the beginning amazing things happened. Children younger than three and four years old began to read, write, and respect themselves. The Montessori Method encouraged what Maria saw as the children's innate ability to 'absorb' culture. “And then we saw them 'absorb' far more than reading and writing...it was botany, zoology, mathematics, geography, and all with the same ease, spontaneously, and without getting tired," she explained in her book “The Absorbent Mind.”

Montessori spent the next 50 years developing this method for students through the first years of high school. The College of the United States’ Founder/President Marsha Familaro Enright has now applied the Method to the post-secondary developmental level of education, i.e. to college.

"The hallmark of a well-functioning mind is the ability to identify facts, analyze ideas, integrate knowledge, and successfully translate principles into action."