EYE SUPPLEMENT Professional Book Review: Tracing Montessori

The name of Maria Montessori (1870-1952) is familiar to many, and her fame arguably heralds an ascendancy in pedagogy far greater than the position of so many other reformers in the realms of early years education. This Bloomsbury handbook abundantly shows and projects a view that her influence has been, and is, seismic.

The value of the publication is indeed immense. The 585-page odyssey flows tirelessly across a spectrum covering a very wide range of issues, biographical detail, international impact, contemporary connections, insightful observations, and modern interpretations. Montessori was what can be described as an educational oracle, full of intrigue and wisdom, and the handbook reflects her prowess and inspiration, set against important notions of culture, gender, internationalism and social justice.

The handbook is divided into six parts and contains 62 chapters. Part I sets the tone for many of the fundamental issues discussed later in the book and helps us to consider the experiences of Montessori who trained both as a medical doctor and educationalist. Part II explores her very large collection of writings, based essentially on her pedagogic, training and lectures. Part III relates to a consideration of the link between Montessori’s educational theory and practice, emphasizing the environment. 

Part IV provides more of a contemporary outlook and examines the role of neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Part V gives a greater global perspective and Part VI, having somewhat disproportionately as many as 24 chapters, offers an account of recent research practices concerning the Montessori method.

Such an approach could be guilty of the charge that the tome represents a sort of stuffiness or academic detachment, but nothing could be further from the truth. Yet it is essentially the all-encompassing global account and analysis of Maria Montessori’s life and teachings that stand out from the outset, showing her as a leader of an international reform movement evidenced by, for example, holding training courses in the US, Europe and India. True to the progressive tradition, her educational tools enabled children to take command of their learning process.

The expansion of technology and digital media somewhat predates the debate surrounding the newer and more developed themes on Artificial Intelligence, and instead the ramifications of older, often political issues on the world’s international stage, are not overlooked. There is, for example, what appears to be an apology linking Montessori’s system of education to the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) and later in the handbook the admission that both the Nazi and Italian regimes banned her teachings after the mid-1930s.

Are there, however, challenges from other sources? Can the progressive label here be taken too far and hit on what could be seen as an borrowing from the German pedagogue Friedrich Froebel (1852-1872)? Montessori maintains young children should be encouraged to play with cylinder blocks. Does this not smack of Froebelian ideas, what with the emphasis on ‘gifts’ and ‘occupations’? As history tells us, there is room for both methods, despite the common ground shared by both. 

Finally, let’s not underplay the internationality of Montessori and her special contributions that the handbook unravels. The collected chapters without much doubt provide an in-depth analysis of her worldwide fascination and achievements.

• The Bloomsbury Handbook of Montessori Education, Edited by Angela K. Murray et al. Bloomsbury Academic, April 2023, pp585, £134, ISBN: 978-1-3-5027-560-7