Nathan Archer on Montessori for all?

In my new role, I’ve been reflecting on a busy first few months. Our team has been working hard offering our BA in Montessori education and we have been designing a new MA Montessori education programme for Autumn 2023. We have also hosted a conference on Montessori and social justice, and we are preparing to launch a research plan and professional development webinars in the Autumn.

But I’ve also been reflecting on the origins of this pedagogy and its reach today. It is well known that Maria Montessori, an Italian scientist, medical doctor, and educator, first founded an approach to education in the early twentieth century. However, it is perhaps less well known that Dr Montessori began her work with young children in a disadvantaged community, setting up a school in a newly built social housing estate in the San Lorenzo district of Rome.

In 1942, on 6 January Maria Montessori shared the story of San Lorenzo and the first Casa dei Bambini with her students:

'Many years ago, Rome was a capital that was rapidly developing, which manifested itself in frenzied building activities… One of the few spaces left was bordered on one side by old Roman walls and on the other side by a cemetery… This San Lorenzo Quarter was talked of with abhorrence and seen as the shame of Italy.

'At some stage, another bold building society took on the challenge to renovate the buildings and allocated the flats to married couples. There were some 50 young children who lived unsupervised in these buildings…The solution found was to gather them all in a room during the day and they looked for a someone who would be willing to work with the children.

'Although the lot of the poor was taken seriously, the children had been overlooked. There were no provisions for them, no toys, no teacher, nothing. I managed to find a woman of forty years whose help I asked, and who was willing to take charge of the children. It was on the 6th January 1907 that this room was inaugurated… It was from then that the real work began.'  

Today there are approximately 20,000 Montessori schools around the world, including approximately 700 in the UK. Notably, in several countries, including in Thailand, the Netherlands and Austria, Montessori education is a feature of the public education system, in early childhood, primary and, to some extent, secondary education phases. However, it is something of an accident of history that in the UK, Montessori education has been offered primarily in the private sector of early childhood education and care.

Montessori schools have traditionally been associated with affluent areas, and there is a (mis)conception that this approach is the preserve of ‘middle class children’. However, there is a geographical spread of Montessori provision and a number of nurseries and pre-schools who subscribe to this pedagogy operate across the UK, including in more socio economically disadvantaged areas.

There is no research that captures the voices and experiences of educators and parents/carers from these areas about the perceived impact of a Montessori pre-school education. 

As a result, I am planning to undertake a small-scale study to address a lack of knowledge about provision of Montessori education in socially disadvantaged areas in England. If you work in or with such a setting and would like to be involved, please do contact me at N.J.Archer@leedsbeckett.ac.uk