History of the Montessori Method
Maria Montessori was born on August 31, 1870 in the town of Chiaravalle, Italy. She attended an all-boys school to study to be an engineer, but eventually changed her career interest to medicine. Both careers were unheard of for women at the time and the director of the program at Sapienza University, where she got her medical degree, said that women would never be allowed to be a doctor in Italy. Maria Montessori replied that she indeed will become a doctor and ended up attending that University. She had to work under less than desirable conditions. She had to be alone at night in many of the labs since it was improper at the time for females to be in the labs with males at the time. She also often had trouble gaining respect from her classmates. She made it through and graduated in 1896, becoming Italy's first female medical doctor.
She became a member of the University's psychology program. It was there that she realized the importance of a good environment. She theorized that, in the right environment, the children who were otherwise labelled as "deficient children" (the term used at the time) could learn many skills if given the proper environment. She ended up teaching these children so well that they ended up testing above average on the Italian standardized tests. This made her curious as to how her ideas would work on children that did not face a host of learning disabilities.
