Born Aug. 31, 1870, Chiaravalle, near Ancona, Italy died May 6, 1952, Noordwijk aan Zee, Neth. Italian educator and originator of the educational system that bears her name. The Montessori system is based on belief in the child's creative potential, his drive to learn, and his right to be treated as an individual.After graduating in medicine from the University of Rome in 1894-the first woman in Italy to do so-Montessori was appointed assistant doctor at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Rome, where she became interested in the educational problems of mentally retarded children. Between 1899 and 1901 she served as director of the State Orthophrenic School of Rome, where her methods proved extremely successful. From 1896 to 1906 she held a chair in hygiene at a women's college in Rome, and from 1900 to 1907 she lectured in pedagogy at the University of Rome, holding a chair in anthropology from 1904 to 1908. During these years she continued her studies of philosophy, psychology, and education.In 1907 Montessori opened the first Casa dei Bambini ("Children's House"), a school for young children from the San Lorenzo slum district of Rome, applying her methods now to children of normal intelligence. Her successes led to the opening of other Montessori schools, and for the next 40 years she travelled throughout Europe, India, and the United States lecturing, writing, and establishing teacher-training programs. In 1922 she was appointed government inspector of schools in Italy, but left the country in 1934 because of the Fascist rule. After periods in Spain and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), she settled in The Netherlands.Montessori scorned conventional classrooms, where "children, like butterflies mounted on pins, are fastened each to his place." She sought, instead, to teach children by supplying concrete materials and organizing situations conducive to learning with these materials.She discovered that certain simple materials aroused in young children an interest and attention not previously thought possible. These materials included beads arranged in graduated-number units for premathematics instruction; small slabs of wood designed to train the eye in left-to-right reading movements; and graduated series of cylinders for small-muscle training. Children between three and six years old would work spontaneously with these materials, indifferent to distraction, for from a quarter of an hour to an hour. At the end of such a period, they would not seem tired, as after an enforced effort, but refreshed and calm. Undisciplined children became settled through such voluntary work. The materials used were designed specifically to encourage individual rather than cooperative effort. Group activity occurred in connection with shared housekeeping chores.A large measure of individual initiative and self-direction characterized the Montessori philosophy, and self-education was the keynote of the plan. The teacher provided and demonstrated the special "didactic apparatus" but remained in the background, leaving the child to handle it for himself. In the Montessori system biological and mental growth are linked. "Periods of sensitivity," corresponding to certain ages, exist when a child's interest and mental capacity are best suited to the acquisition of certain specialized knowledge.Montessori's methods are set forth in such books as Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica (1909; The Montessori Method, 1912), The Advanced Montessori Method (1917-18), The Secret of Childhood (1936), Education for a New World (1946), To Educate the Human Potential (1948), and La mente assorbente (1949; The Absorbent Mind, 1949). _

Pestalozzi

Born , Jan. 12, 1746, Zürich died Feb. 17, 1827, Brugg, Switz. Swiss educational reformer, who advocated education of the poor and emphasized teaching methods designed to strengthen the student's own abilities. Pestalozzi's method became widely accepted, and most of his principles have been absorbed into modern elementary education.Pestalozzi's pedagogical doctrines stressed that instructions should proceed from the familiar to the new, incorporate the performance of concrete arts and the experience of actual emotional responses, and be paced to follow the gradual unfolding of the child's development. His ideas flow from the same stream of thought that includes Johann Friedrich Herbart, Maria Montessori, John Dewey, and more recently Jean Piaget and advocates of the language experience approach such as R.V. Allen.Pestalozzi's curriculum, which was modelled after Jean-Jacques Rousseau's plan in Émile, emphasized group rather than individual recitation and focussed on such participatory activities as drawing, writing, singing, physical exercise, model making, collecting, map making, and field trips. Among his ideas, considered radically innovative at the time, were making allowances for individual differences, grouping students by ability rather than age, and encouraging formal teacher training as part of a scientific approach to education.Pestalozzi was influenced by the political conditions of his country and by the educational ideas of Rousseau; as a young man he abandoned the study of theology to go "back to Nature." In 1769 he took up agriculture on neglected land near the River Aare-the Neuhof. When this enterprise collapsed in 1774, he took poor children into his house, having them work by spinning and weaving and learn simultaneously to become self-supporting. This project also failed materially, although Pestalozzi had gained valuable experience. He also took an active interest in Swiss politics.As practical realization of his ideas was denied him, he turned to writing. Die Abendstunde eines Linsiedlers (1780; "The Evening Hour of a Hermit") outlines his fundamental theory that education must be "according to nature" and that security in the home is the foundation of man's happiness. His novel Lienhard und Gertrud (1781-87; Leonard and Gertrude, 1801), written for "the people," was a literary success as the first realistic representation of rural life in German. It describes how an ideal woman exposes corrupt practices and, by her well-ordered homelife, sets a model for the village school and the larger community. The important role of the mother in early education is a recurrent theme in Pestalozzi's writings.For 30 years Pestalozzi lived in isolation on his Neuhof estate, writing profusely on educational, political, and economic topics, indicating ways of improving the lot of the poor. His proposals were ignored by his own countrymen, and he became increasingly despondent. He would have accepted the post of educational adviser anywhere in Europe had it been forthcoming. His main philosophical treatise, Meine Nachforschungen über den Gang der Natur in der Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts (1797; "My Inquiries into the Course of Nature in the Development of Mankind"), reflects his personal disappointment but expresses his firm belief in the resources of human nature and his conviction that people are responsible for their moral and intellectual state. Thus, Pestalozzi was convinced, education should develop the individual's faculties to think for himself.Pestalozzi's chance to act came after the French Revolution, when he was more than 50 years old. The French-imposed Helvetic Republic in Switzerland invited him to organize higher education, but he preferred to begin at the beginning. He collected scores of destitute war orphans and cared for them almost single-handedly, attempting to create a family atmosphere and to restore their moral qualities. These few exhausting months in Stans (1799) were, according to Pestalozzi's own account, the happiest days of his life.From 1800 to 1804 he directed an educational establishment in Burgdorf and from 1805 until 1825 a boarding school at Yverdon, near Neuchâtel. Both schools relied for funds on fee-paying pupils, though some poor children were taken in, and these institutes served as experimental bases for proving his method in its three branches-intellectual, moral, and physical, the latter including vocational and civic training. They also were to finance his life's "dream," an industrial (i.e., poor) school. The Yverdon Institute became world famous, drawing pupils from all over Europe as well as many foreign visitors. Some visiting educators-e.g., Friedrich Froebel, J.F. Herbart, and Carl Ritter-were so impressed that they stayed on to study the method and later introduced it into their own teaching.While dedicated assistants carried on the teaching, Pestalozzi remained the institute's heart and soul and continued to work out his method. Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt (1801; How Gertrude Teaches Her Children) contains the main principles of intellectual education: that the child's innate faculties should be evolved and that he should learn how to think, proceeding gradually from observation to comprehension to the formation of clear ideas. Although the teaching method is treated in greater detail, Pestalozzi considered moral education preeminent.The family spirit prevailing at Yverdon was shattered in later years by a progressively severe dispute among the teachers for first place by Pestalozzi's side. The longed-for poor school, established by means of the proceeds from publication of his collected works, existed for only two years. To Pestalozzi's great distress, the Yverdon Institute lost its fame and its pupils. His efforts at reconciliation were in vain. With a few pupils he retreated to Neuhof in 1825, sad but convinced that his ideas would prevail in the end. His Schwanengesang (1826; "Swan Song") culminated in the maxim "Life itself educates."Pestalozzi was an impressive personality, highly esteemed by his contemporaries. His concept of education embraced politics, economics, and philosophy, and the influence of his "method" was immense.__

kindergarten

Also called Infant School, educational division, a supplement to elementary school intended to accommodate children between the ages of four and six years. Originating in the early 19th century, the kindergarten was an outgrowth of the ideas and practices of Robert Owen in Great Britain, J.H. Pestalozzi in Switzerland and his pupil Friedrich Froebel in Germany, who coined the term, and Maria Montessori in Italy. It stressed the emotional and spiritual nature of the child, encouraging self-understanding through play activities and greater freedom, rather than the imposition of adult ideas.In Great Britain the circumstances of the Industrial Revolution tended to encourage the provision of infant schools for young children whose parents and older brothers and sisters were in the factories for long hours. One of the earliest of these schools was founded at New Lanark, Scot., in 1816 by Owen, a cotton-mill industrialist, for the children of his employees. It was based on Owen's two ideals-pleasant, healthful conditions and a life of interesting activity. Later infant schools in England, unlike Owen's, emphasized memory drill and moral training while restricting the children's freedom of action. In 1836, however, the Home and Colonial School Society was founded to train teachers in the methods advanced by Pestalozzi.In 1837 Froebel opened in Blankenburg, Prussia, "a school for the psychological training of little children by means of play." In applying to it the name Kindergarten, he sought to convey the impression of an environment in which children grew freely like plants in a garden. During the 25 years after Froebel's death, kindergartens proliferated throughout Europe, North America, Japan, and elsewhere. In the United States the kindergarten generally became accepted as the first unit of elementary school. ____

Born April 21, 1782, Oberweissbach, Thuringia, Ernestine Saxony [now in Germany] died June 21, 1852, Marienthal, near Bad Liebenstein, Thuringia Froebel also spelled Fröbel German educator who was founder of the kindergarten and one of the most influential educational reformers of the 19th century.Froebel was the fifth child in a clergyman's family. His mother died when he was only nine months old, and he was neglected as a child until an uncle gave him a home and sent him to school. Froebel acquired a thorough knowledge of plants and natural phenomena while at the same time beginning the study of mathematics and languages. After apprenticeship to a forester, he pursued some informal university courses at Jena until he was jailed for an unpaid debt. He tried various kinds of employment until he impulsively took a teaching appointment at a progressive model school in Frankfurt run by Anton Gruner on lines advocated by the Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Froebel became convinced of his vocation as a teacher at the school.After two years as assistant to Gruner, Froebel went to Yverdon, Switz., where he came into close contact with Pestalozzi. Though he learned much at Yverdon, he quickly discovered the weakness of organization that characterized Pestalozzi's work. In 1811 Froebel entered the University of Göttingen, where military service in the Napoleonic Wars soon interrupted his studies. During the campaign of 1813 he formed a lasting friendship with H. Langenthal and W. Middendorff, who became his devoted followers and who joined him at a school he opened at Griesheim in Thuringia in 1816. Two years later the school moved to Keilhau, also in Thuringia, and it was there that Froebel put into practice his educational theories. He and his friends and their wives became a kind of educational community, and the school expanded into a flourishing institution. During this time Froebel wrote numerous articles and in 1826 published his most important treatise, Menschenerziehung (The Education of Man), a philosophical presentation of principles and methods pursued at Keilhau.In 1831 Froebel left Keilhau to his partner and accepted the Swiss government's invitation to train elementary school teachers. His experiences at Keilhau and as head of a new orphan asylum at Burgdorf in Switzerland impressed him with the importance of the early stages of education. On returning to Keilhau in 1837 he opened an infant school in Blankenburg, Prussia, that he originally called the Child Nurture and Activity Institute, and which by happy inspiration he later renamed the Kindergarten, or "garden of children." He also started a publishing firm for play and other educational materials, including a collection of Mother-Play and Nursery Songs, with lengthy explanations of their meaning and use. This immensely popular book was translated into many foreign languages. Froebel insisted that improvement of infant education was a vital preliminary to comprehensive educational and social reform. His experiments at the Kindergarten attracted widespread interest, and other kindergartens were started. Unfortunately, because of a confusion with the socialist views of Froebel's nephew, the Prussian government proscribed the kindergarten movement in 1851. The ban was not removed until after 1860, several years after Froebel's death in 1852.One of Froebel's most enthusiastic disciples, the Baroness of Marenholtz-Bülow, was largely responsible for bringing his ideas to the notice of educators in England, France, and The Netherlands. Later they were introduced into other countries, including the United States, where the Froebelian movement achieved its greatest success. There John Dewey adopted Froebel's principles in his experimental school at the University of Chicago. Kindergartens were established throughout Europe and North America and became a standard educational institution for children of four to six years of age.Froebel was influenced by the outstanding German idealist philosophers of his time and by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Pestalozzi. He was a sincerely religious man who, because of his belief in the underlying unity of all things, tended toward pantheism and has been called a nature mystic. His most important contribution to educational theory was his belief in "self-activity" and play as essential factors in child education. The teacher's role was not to drill or indoctrinate the children but rather to encourage their self-expression through play, both individually and in group activities. Froebel devised circles, spheres, and other toys to stimulate learning through well-directed play activities accompanied by songs and music. Modern educational techniques in kindergarten and preschool are much indebted to him. __

Born Oct. 20, 1859, Burlington, Vt., U.S. died June 1, 1952, New York, N.Y. American philosopher and educator who was one of the founders of the philosophical school of pragmatism, a pioneer in functional psychology, and a leader of the progressive movement in education in the United States___