Montessori: A Woman Who Flourished in the Face of Adversity
Meagan Ledendecker • May 18, 2020
Dr. Maria Montessori: You probably know her as the woman who cultivated a unique method for educating children. You may know she was from Italy and was one of the nation’s first female physicians. What you may not know is she was a woman who faced adversity throughout her life and still managed to promote incredible progress.
During Dr. Montessori’s childhood, literacy rates were very low across Italy. She was fortunate, however, and received a more advanced primary education than most. Still, women of her time were expected to focus on domestic work. Those that went on to professional careers often went into the field of teaching, a profession she ironically said she would never pursue. She originally had an interest in becoming an engineer, but eventually decided to pursue medicine.
Montessori’s father made it clear that he was not in support of her decision, which was a sentiment echoed by other male figures in Montessori’s life. Upon meeting with a professor of medicine at the University of Rome to discuss her plan, she was denied the opportunity to apply to the program. She enrolled at the university anyway to study math, science, and physics, and after several years worked hard to take and pass the entrance exams necessary to enter the medical program. Women were not allowed, and her enrollment was denied.
Not one to take no for an answer, Montessori persisted. Her efforts even garnered the support of Pope Leo XIII, and she was eventually granted admission to the medical program.
Throughout her time studying medicine at the university, Montessori faced discriminatory standards that would frustrate any of us. As a woman, she was not even allowed to walk to school by herself, so her disapproving father walked with her each day. She could not enter lecture halls alongside her male peers and was made to wait outside until everyone else was seated. The idea of her standing alongside men during dissections of human cadavers was considered highly inappropriate, so she was forced to do her own dissection work alone in the evenings.
Despite everything, Montessori went on to graduate in 1896. Her accomplishments were recognized and she was asked to represent Italy at an international women’s conference. At the conference, scores of protesting women gathered outside, frustrated with the privileged bourgeois women of the conference whose ideas of feminist reform were not enough in their eyes. The women outside believed in revolution, and felt that the slow pace of reform would get in their way.
Montessori was chosen to address the crowds. She spoke passionately about the movement of feminism and how it was not bound to a specific social class. Her words were uniting, and she was well received not just by the women outside, but by the press and the other international delegates as well.
Montessori’s feminist ideals were radical for her time. She believed in equal pay for women. She believed that women who wanted to study in the areas of math and science should be allowed to, but she thought that did not excuse them from being proficient in the areas of domestic life as well. To that end, she believed that boys should be taught practical life skills in the home just as well as girls, and these beliefs carried over into her eventual development of the Montessori primary program.
Several times during her early career, Montessori was charged with overseeing children who were not deemed competent by the standards of society. Each time, she used her scientific background and approaches to develop new ways of working with the children and guiding them to exceed the expectations of others. This first happened in a psychiatric ward where she noted young children housed alongside mentally ill adults. They were forced to exist in plain rooms with nothing to entertain themselves. Gathering ideas from educators who came before her, she began to develop methods and materials to help these children learn. They did, and before long she became the director of a new school in Rome which was tasked with educating children considered incapable by typical schools, as well as to train other teachers to do so. Unsurprisingly, this venture was a huge success. On standardized tests, the children at the school were even able to perform as well as or better than their peers in typical schools.
The next phase of her life and career led her to San Lorenzo, Rome, a very poor area in which parents who had to work during the day were forced to leave their young children at home. The children ran amok and caused general mischief and destruction. This inspired the creation of the famous Casa dei Bambini, the first Montessori school, which existed within the apartment complex of the children it served. It opened in 1907, and welcomed children ages two to six.
It was at Casa dei Bambini that Montessori developed many of her founding principles and materials for what would become the primary program. The school a huge success and, for the remainder of its existence, welcomed people from around the world who wanted to come see it for themselves. Countless people would visit to observe and leave astounded and inspired.
Decades later, after the Montessori method had begun to spread around the world and find enthusiastic supporters in many countries, a political shift began to take place globally. In Montessori’s own Italy, Mussolini rose to power and brought the country into a fascist regime. Somehow, the two came to an understanding: Mussolini wanted Montessori to further develop her work in Italy, and she, denying allegiance to politics of any kind, accepted the support. She felt that her work would bring about peace in the long run, while he was more focused on the fact that Montessori students presented as well-behaved and compliant. When it eventually became evident that he intended to use her schools as a vehicle to train a nation of young fascists, Montessori schools across Italy quickly closed and she fled the country.
For the next twenty years she lived in Spain and cultivated a vibrant and strong extension of the Montessori movement. Sadly, in 1936, the country found itself in a civil war and Montessori and her family quickly escaped to England.
At one point, after having lived in so many different places, she was asked about her nationality. Her response? “My country is a star which turns around the sun and is called Earth.”
Dr. Montessori was a woman who never let others stand in the way of her own progress and success. She lived through two world wars, was a staunch supporter of the early feminist movement, proved her abilities academically, and went on to dedicate her life to enriching the lives of others. She did not allow others to hold her down, and used her own success to model the capabilities of all people.
Montessori stood, and continues to stand, as a beacon of hope for humanity. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize in 1949, 1950, and 1951. She died in 1952 in the Netherlands, yet her legacy lives on.
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If you've spent any time in a Montessori early childhood classroom, you've likely noticed the sandpaper letters on the shelf: elegant, tactile, traced by small fingers again and again. And if you've looked closely, you may have noticed something that surprises many families. Those letters are in cursive. In a world where most children learn to print first, Montessori's cursive-first approach raises questions. Why cursive? Why so early? The answers reach back to Dr. Maria Montessori's own careful observations of children, as well as forward to what modern neuroscience is now confirming about the developing brain. What Dr. Montessori Actually Observed Dr. Montessori was a meticulous observer of children, and her thinking about writing developed through years of direct experimentation. One of her core observations was that children naturally gravitate toward curved, flowing lines rather than the rigid, straight strokes that were (and often still are) the starting point for teaching print. She noticed this pattern across multiple contexts. When children who were learning to write began with rows of straight strokes, their attention would gradually drift, and the straight lines would slowly transform into curves, as if the child's hand were following its own natural inclination. And when children drew spontaneously by tracing figures in sand with a fallen twig, or scribbling freely on paper, they rarely produced short, straight lines. Instead, they made long, flowing, interlaced curves. Dr. Montessori paid attention. Rather than something random, she recognized the hand's natural motion expressing itself. Critical of standard teaching approaches that began with isolated geometric strokes, or regimented mark-making, Dr. Montessori saw that cursive script, with its connected, flowing letters, aligned far more naturally with the motions children were already making. It worked with the child's hand, rather than against it. The Neurological Case for Cursive Thanks to her keen observations, Dr. Montessori intuited benefits that research is now beginning to confirm. Modern brain science provides a compelling case for the value of cursive writing. This is especially powerful in early childhood, when the brain is forming the connections that will support reading, fine motor coordination, and cognitive development for years to come. Dr. William R. Klemm, writing in Psychology Today, summarized findings showing that learning cursive trains the brain to develop what researchers call “functional specialization,” or the capacity for optimal efficiency. Brain imaging studies show how multiple areas of the brain are activated simultaneously during cursive writing in a way that doesn't happen with typing or print. The integration of sensation, movement control, and thinking that cursive requires appears to support broader cognitive development in genuinely significant ways. Klemm also suggested that learning cursive trains the brain for more effective visual scanning, with potential benefits for reading speed and hand-eye coordination. In other words, the child who traces cursive sandpaper letters with their fingertips is developing neural pathways that support a wide range of future learning. Clarity, Beauty, and the Practical Benefits Beyond the neurological research, there are practical reasons that Montessori educators have observed over generations of practice. Cursive provides a better visual distinction between letters that are easily confused in print. Think about the pairs that trip up so many young learners: b and d, p and q. In cursive, these letters look different from one another, which reduces the visual confusion that causes so many children to struggle in the early stages of reading and writing. And then there is the matter of beauty, something Dr. Montessori took seriously in everything she prepared for children. She wrote that, in teaching writing, we should pay close attention to "the beauty of form" and "the flowing quality of the letters." Cursive handwriting, when developed well, is genuinely lovely. It is a form of penmanship that connects children to a long tradition of human expression through the written word. The Montessori approach treats handwriting as a craft worth caring about. What This Looks Like in the Classroom In a Montessori early childhood environment, the path to writing begins long before a child picks up a pencil. Practical life activities like pouring, spooning, buttoning, and lacing quietly help children develop the fine motor control and hand-eye coordination that writing requires. The sensorial materials train children’s pincer grip and refine the precision of small muscle movements. And the metal insets give children practice with the flowing, curved lines that build cursive letters. Then children begin using the sandpaper letters. While verbalizing the phonetic sound, children trace the letter with two fingers. Children feel the letter, produce its sound, and see its form. This multi-sensory experience engages multiple brain areas simultaneously and creates rich, layered associations that support both writing and reading development. By the time children are ready to write independently, they have been preparing their hand and mind for months, often without even realizing it. A Method Ahead of Its Time Dr. Montessori consistently arrived at insights that research has later confirmed. Her reasons for emphasizing cursive were rooted in direct observation of children. She watched children’s hands and their natural movements. She also looked to see what helped them and what created unnecessary struggle. Dr. Montessori wasn't following a trend or a theory. She was following the child. Decades later, brain imaging technology and developmental research are catching up to what Dr. Montessori saw. Flowing lines of cursive script, the sandpaper letters on the shelf, the careful preparation of the hand before children ever pick up the pencil. This is a deep and practical understanding of how children's minds and bodies actually work. For families curious about why Montessori makes this choice, the short answer is this: because children's hands already know how to make these movements. Montessori simply listens to what the hand is already telling us and builds from there. Visit our school in Lenox, MA and see the sandpaper letters and writing materials in action. We'd love to show you how the path to writing unfolds in Montessori.
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