This book traces the early history of the Montessori movement in the United States through the lives and careers of four key American women: Anne George, Margaret Naumburg, Helen Parkhurst, and Adelia Pyle. Caught up in the Montessori craze sweeping the United States in the Progressive era, each played a significant role in the initial transference of Montessori education to America and its implementation from 1910 to 1920. Despite the continuing international recognition of Maria Montessori and the presence of Montessori schools world-wide, Montessori receives only cursory mention in the history of education, especially by recognized historians in the field and in courses in professional education and teacher preparation. The authors, in seeking to fill this historical void, integrate institutional history with analysis of the interplay and tensions between these four women to tell this educational story in an interesting—and often dramatic—way.

This book traces the early history of the Montessori movement in the United States through the lives and careers of four key American women: Anne George, Margaret Naumburg, Helen Parkhurst, and Adelia Pyle. Caught up in the Montessori craze sweeping the United States in the Progressive era, each played a significant role in the initial transference of Montessori education to America and its implementation from 1910 to 1920. Despite the continuing international recognition of Maria Montessori and the presence of Montessori schools world-wide, Montessori receives only cursory mention in the history of education, especially by recognized historians in the field and in courses in professional education and teacher preparation. The authors, in seeking to fill this historical void, integrate institutional history with analysis of the interplay and tensions between these four women to tell this educational story in an interesting—and often dramatic—way.

What role did women's leadership play in the introduction and revival of the Montessori Method in America? Phyllis Povell explores this question through the contributions of Maria Montessori and Nancy McCormick Rambusch, who brought the Montessori Method to the American educational scene. Introduced to the U. S. in the early 20th century by Montessori herself, the Method lapsed into oblivion after WWI. Thanks to Rambusch, it was reborn after the launching of Sputnik. In Montessori Comes to America, Povell traces the evolution of women's leadership and its influence on the Montessori Method's development. She includes insights from her own formative years, showing how childhood, education and career all shape women into leaders. New research not only illuminates the unique roles of two historic early childhood educators, but also updates the historical record and reveals the human dimension behind one of the most colorful chapters in American educational development.

A fresh, comprehensive biography of the pioneering educator and activist who changed the way we look at children’s minds, from the author of Oriana Fallaci. Born in 1870 in Chiaravalle, Italy, Maria Montessori would grow up to embody almost every trait men of her era detested in the fairer sex. She was self-confident, strong-willed, and had a fiery temper at a time when women were supposed to be soft and pliable. She studied until she became a doctor at a time when female graduates in Italy provoked outright scandal. She never wanted to marry or have children—the accepted destiny for all women of her milieu in late nineteenth-century bourgeois Rome—and when she became pregnant by a colleague of hers, she gave up her son to continue pursuing her career. At around age thirty, Montessori was struck by the condition of children in the slums of Rome’s San Lorenzo neighborhood, and realized what she wanted to do with her life: change the school, and therefore the world, through a new approach to the child’s mind. In spite of the resistance she faced from all sides—scientists accused her of being too mystical, and the clergy of being too scientific, traditionalists of giving children too much freedom, and anarchists of giving them too much structure—she would garner acclaim and establish the influential Montessori method, which is now practiced throughout the world. A thorough, nuanced portrait of this often controversial woman, The Child Is the Teacher is the first biographical work on Maria Montessori written by an author who is not a member of the Montessori movement, but who has been granted access to original letters, diaries, notes, and texts written by Montessori herself, including an array of previously unpublished material.

Bringing Montessori to America tells the little known story of the collaboration and clash between the indomitable educator Maria Montessori and the American publisher S. S. McClure over the launch of Montessori education in the United States.

The definitive biography of a physician, feminist, social reformer, educator, and one of the most influential, and controversial women of the 20th century. Maria Montessori effected a worldwide revolution in the classroom. She developed a new method of educating the young and inspired a movement that carried it into every corner of the world. This is the story of the woman behind the public figure—her accomplishments, her ideas, and her passions. Montessori broke the mold imposed on women in the nineteenth century and forged a new one, first for herself and eventually for those who came after her. Against formidable odds she became the first woman to graduate from the medical school of the University of Rome and then devoted herself to the condition of children considered uneducable at the time. She developed a teaching method that enabled them to do as well as normal children, a method which then led her to found a new kind of school—the Casa dei Bambini, or House of Children—which gained her worldwide fame and still pervades classrooms wherever young children learn. This biography is not only the story of a groundbreaking feminist but a vital chapter in the history of education. “Highly recommended for educators, parents, and moderate feminists who seek inspiration from one of the most accomplished women of this or any other age.”—Publishers Weekly

The purpose of this book is to expound and defend the great powers of the child, and to help teachers to a new outlook which will change their task from drudgery to joy, from repression to collaboration with nature...the first two years of life are the most important... So here begins a new path, wherein it will not be the professor who teaches the child, but the child who teaches the professor