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Maria Montessori (August 31, 1879 - May 6, 1952) became the first female Italian physician. With superior academic skills and rugged persistence, Montessori surmounted the social obstacles of her time and entered the University of Rome in 1892 to study medicine (the University had initially denied her admittance). Here Montessori studied medicine alongside her male counterparts, honing her powers of observation that she would later employ in her work with children. Proving herself a brilliant student, Montessori graduated with a degree of doctor of medicine.
Afterwards, as a staff assistant at the University of Rome, Montessori visited insane asylums, which inspired her quest to help those shunted by society and thrown into desolate living conditions. She shifted her focus from understanding the body to learning about the mind. In 1906 she began working with sixty young children from lower class backgrounds at her now famed "Children’s House" in Rome. Her radical teaching methods proved so successful that even so-called retarded children passed proficiency examinations. Over the next forty years Montessori created and refined her methodology and curriculum.
Montessori developed her educational Method through a scientific approach, using observation to understand the learning process for young children. Fundamental to her Method is the belief that children have an innate impulse to comprehend the world around them. This drive to learn can be supported through an environment that stimulates and nurtures the acquisitive intellect of the child.
The Montessori classroom emphasizes hands-on, individualized learning within mixed age groups (such as 3-6, 6-9, 9-11, etc.). These deep revelations and discoveries about children’s nature revolutionized education in the United States and around the world.
Montessori was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949, 1950, and 1951.
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