Educational Philosopher

Maria Montessori

Maria Montessori was born on May 6, 1952, in Chiaravalle, Italy. At a young age Montessori proved that she was not going to be the average Italian woman. She chose to go to an all-boy engineering school to pursue her dreams and went on to be the first woman to graduate from the University of Rome; also becoming the first femal doctor in Italy. She was very well respected becuase of her accomplishments, which meant that people would listen to the ideas she had about how to effectively teach in classrooms.

She believed that all children were able to learn even if they were mentally retarded or misbehaved and unfocused. She was able to help educated students of this nature to receive above-average test scores on standarized testing. Because of this she was able to open her own school were she taught with her methods. She would give the students guidance on how to complete a problem or task before making them complete the task. From there the students would develop their skills at their own pace and when they were ready for the next step she would use the same process to teach the next topic or step.

I agree with this method of teaching because I think that sometimes teachers are just talking and students aren't retaining what they are being taught. When information is just dumped onto them day after day they become overloaded and begin to not understand all the different topics. Especially, with the all the preperation that is being done to help students be ready for standardized testing, I think that teachers and schools are losing the real purpose of school, and that is to learn. I think t he concept we learned about about the technique of "banking" where students are just considered "empty" and they need to just need to be filled with all of the information is not the right way to go about teaching. A student should actually learn and understand a concept before moving onto the next thing. With the "banking" method a student may know the 2+2=4 but do they understand why? I think understanding why is the most important part because understanding these concepts will allow a student to apply them to situations in different areas or outside of school.

Reference

http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/montessori.html