Name : Maharani K.

NIM : 208221411782

The Montessori Method for Early Childhood Education

From the many approaches teachers have today, there is the Montessori approach or method. The name Montessori was taken from the name of the inventor, Maria Montessori. She was the first female physician in Italy when she was graduated from medical school in 1896. She then became interested in how children learn and gave much attention to it rather than medicine that she decided to be an educator. She is as a controversial figure in education today as she was a half century ago. She was criticized because she did not follow the traditional school at that time. So what did she concern about in her method that differ her from the traditional school? There are many aspect that we can see how she is ahead than other educators. However, what I am going to present here are the three of them which are the most prominent: the classroom design, her decision to group children together in such large multi-age classes, and her guides for Montessori school teachers to meet the needs of many different children.

Dr. Montessori argued that a school must carefully design to meet the needs and interests of children to have them work more effectively. Therefore, she developed her first school and named it “Casa dei Bambini” or well-known as “Children’s House”. It was opened in 1907 and made up of 60 inner-city children. Just like its name, the classroom specially designed for the size of children from the chair, table and even she made the window easily reached by the height of children. Nevertheless, you would not find rows of desks there. Students were found scattered around the classroom. The idea is to free children to move and choose activities they like to do with the materials available. The classrooms were normally bright, warm, and inviting, filled with plants, animals, art, music, books and other intriguing learning materials like: mathematical models, map, charts, fossils, historical artifacts, computers, scientific apparatus, and perhaps a small natural-science museum. Her idea has been widely spread and adopted by many school in the world. Today, there are perhaps 4,000 Montessori school in United States and Canada and thousand more around the world.

Many pre-school are proud of their very small group sizes, and parents often wonder why Montessori classes are so much larger. These schools reason that as the number of students decreases, the time that teachers have to spend with each child increases. There, teachers are the source of instruction. Montessori school works the other way around. Children are expected to be independent as individuals and self-discipline. They can decide what skill they likely to develop by activity chosen by themselves. Moreover, Montessori believed that the best teacher of three year old is often another child who is just a little bit older and has mastered a skill. Since Montessori allows children to progress through the curriculum at their own pace, there is no academic reason to group children according to one grade level.

A typical Montessori class is made up of 25 to 35 children, more or less evenly divided between boys and girls, covering a three year age span. Each child is different so they surely have various needs. Now, how can the teachers meet all those different needs of that many students in a class? First of all, what we must understand is teachers are rarely the center of attention so they will not spend much time to work with the whole class at once. Second, Montessori teachers teach children to think and discover for themselves rather than presents them the right answer to be memorized, feedback and forget. Third, teachers must understand each child as a full and complete individual in her/his own right and help them to learn the thing by themselves. This way, Montessori sets a pattern for a lifetime of good work habits and a sense of responsibility.

The Montessori Method had been criticized for not following the traditional school method. Rather, it is different that we can see from the design of the classroom, the large and multi-age classes, and the guides for teachers to meet the needs of many different children. Nevertheless, Maria Montessori had proved that she was an individual ahead for her time with the method she invented.