The Secret of Childhood

Maria Montessori

After the International Montessori course in Rome, in 1931, dr. Maria Montessori and Mario Montessori gave to her Romanian student, Ilie Sulea Firu, several of her lectures and talks to be presented as chapters of a brochure that was to be published in its translation into Romanian.

Therefore in 1933, the first edition of "The Child" was printed in Bucharest, Romania.

The book was added new chapters and translated into English as "The Secret of Childhood", and into French as "L'enfant", and published in 1936. After a new version in Romanian, the work was first published in Italian in 1938, in Switzerland.

This is one of the best known books of Maria Montessori. It contains a systematic presentation of her ideas based on years of experiments with the child since its birth.

Among the new challenging viewpoints which were to change the common mentality of the time on childhood, was the scientific yet human understanding of the individuality of the newborn, its needs and unique perception of the world it enters, different from that of the adult.

Dr. Maria Montessori was among the first scientists to state about the self creation of the child into an adult as a noble mission and great effort of the child.

The new concept brought by M. Montessori was to let the child accomplish the task of education by its own capacities, in a natural way ruled by the biological laws of growth and by the child's own needs.

What can be considered a revolutionary idea in the pedagogical thought is the focus on the child in education - the child as the nucleus, the starting point and the goal of all educational activity. This approach led for the fist time to a limitation of the teacher's task and intervention. Thus the prepared environment and the limited intervention of the teacher were the two principal innovations of the Montessori method.

The relationship adult-patent, teacher-child is one of collaboration rather than dependence and authority. The new school developed by Maria Montessori is a space for mutual growth in which the child and teacher perfect themselves together as they create their moral personality in a spiritual correspondance.

Another original idea in Montessori philosophy of education was that of the work and effort of the child to develop its being into an adult person. What adults can do to help it in this process is to create an atmosphere of peace and stability, a safe environment adapted to the child's needs. The work and effort of the teacher consist in her own spiritual growth and education, in her understanding of the human soul and that of the child with its specific needs. Being a help to the child, a guide, the adult, the teacher enables the child to attain its freedom, the ideal of all education, offering it the opportunity to develop the best qualities of its personality.