A Primer to Montessori Education

Education nowadays is a necessity for everybody. It is the process of imparting knowledge and/or skills to a person or a group of persons. Education in usually divided into two types: formal and informal education. Formal education refers to the learning process undertaken in school with certain methods and techniques as well as tools and materials. Informal education meanwhile is usually undertaken outside the academe. Formal education could be further divided into two types: traditional and alternative education. The traditional type is what majority of the world’s students are experiencing, while the alternative type focuses on individual students' needs and self-expression. One of the most popular alternative education types is the Montessori education.

Montessori education is an approach to formal learning developed in 1907 by educator Dr. Maria Montessori, an Italian physician. Montessori started developing her philosophy and methods in 1897 by attending pedagogy courses at the University of Rome and immersing herself at previous educational theory. Montessori opened her first classroom in 1907, the Casa dei Bambini, or Children’s House.

Unlike the traditional approach that focuses on learning through listening, watching, or reading, Monterssori’s approach involves learning through all five senses. Montesorri believes that children teach themselves, letting her students choose a number of suitable activities, with a range of options. Montessori grouped the children into age brackets: three to six, six to nine, and nine to 12. She believes that grouping them would create a community wherein older students impart their learning their younger group mates. Basing her methods on scientific observation of children's learning processes, Montessori was able to discover that students learn better if they discover knowledge by themselves rather than direct instructions.

Because of the success of the Montessori education in stimulating student’s learning, this approach has been adopted by a number of schools worldwide.