Core Principles of the Montessori Method P2

PASSAGE 2

The Montessori method of educating children is guided by perhaps a half-dozen major principles of education. The first affirms the biological programming of child development, the child's capacity for self - realization, for "auto-education." The second calls for "scientific pedagogy." A science of childhood based on observation. The third demands a natural environment in which self-development can be expressed and observed. Montessori believed that the school could be made into such an environment, thus becoming a laboratory for scientific pedagogy. This environment should be determined scientifically. In order to expand, children, left at liberty to exercise their activities, ought to find in their surroundings something organized in direct relation to the children's internal organization. All of these principles imply the next, which Montessori calls the "biological concept of liberty in pedagogy": the child must be free to act spontaneously and to interact with the prepared environment. The entire program is concerned with the individual child; the spontaneity, the needs, the observation, the freedom are always those of the individual. Finally, the modus operandi of the method is sensory training.