The Montessori method is primarily designed to support pre-school children in directing their own learning. They are encouraged to choose from among a range of graded materials within their classrooms, created to develop their abilities in the following areas:
- Practical Life (to refine manual and motor skills)
- Sensorial activity (to train the senses)
- Language development (to develop the ability to listen, speak, read and write)
In The Secret of Childhood, Montessori develops this radical principle of child-centred education through a critique of the traditional view of the child as an empty vessel which the adult must try to fill:
The adult has become egocentric in relation to the child, not egotistic, but egocentric. Thus he considers everything that affects the psyche of the child from the standpoint of its reference to himself, and so misunderstands the child. It is this point of view that leads to a consideration of the child as an empty being, which the adult must fill by his own endeavours, as an inert and incapable being, for whom everything must be done, as a being without an inner guide, whom the adult must guide step by step from without. Finally, the adult acts as though he were the child’s creator, and considers good and evil in the child’s actions from the standpoint of relation to himself. The adult is the touchstone of good and evil. He is infallible, he is the good on which the child must model himself. Any way in which the child departs from the characteristics of the adult is an evil that must be speedily corrected. And in adopting such an attitude, which unconsciously cancels the child’s personality, the adult feels a conviction of zeal, love and sacrifice.
(Montessori, 1936: 19)
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