30 years ago, Montessori schooling was unknown in South Africa. The few enlightened people who were trained to teach children in the Montessori Method, focused on the 3 to 6 year olds. However, in the last 15 years, there has been a massive growth in this industry. What is even more inspiring is that there are now Junior Primary, Senior Primary and High Schools scattered around the country.
As a young mother of 2 sons in late 1970’s, I was petrified. I had absolutely no idea of how to raise a child (let alone 2 children!). Parenting was just something a person did, instinctively. The only form of reference available in blinkered South Africa at that time, was Dr Spock’s Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, published in 1946. To be honest, that book was considered outrageous.
In the end, I reared my children, based upon the way I was brought up. As a baby boomer, I had to reconcile my own upbringing with the many changes that society was undergoing in the 1980’s.
While I was using the old, out-dated, autocratic method of child-rearing (children were meant to be seen and not heard!), I was in my 20’s and rebelling against my own upbringing and attempting to act the adult.
When the Montessori Method of teaching children was mentioned to me, I was under the impression that these were children that were “allowed to do what they wanted, when they wanted”. I can’t believe how ignorant I was. Had I had access to a book such as Montessori Today by Paula Polk Lillard then; as a parent, I may have been able to educate myself first, and thus understand my children’s desire for independence and learn how to follow them and understand what they were seeking.
This book is written for parents, teachers and anyone interested in education. Written in a deceptively simple style, Montessori Today provides an enjoyable and definitive overview to those who want to know the essence of Montessori education in the present and where it will take you in the future.
In detailed accounts of both the theory and the practice of Montessori methods, Lillard shows how children acquire the skills to answer their own questions, manage freedom with responsibility, maintain a high level of intellectual curiosity and become active rather than passive learners at all levels.
So you can imagine my delight to find that this book is available in celebration of Maria Montessori’s 150th birthday. Written in a deceptively simple manner, it is an excellent guide to her key ideas where Montessori education fits into contemporary society. “Follow the child” is Maria Montessori’s catechism. simply an acknowledgment that the child has his or her own pattern. We need to take into account where the child is at, rather than impose our idea of what the child should learn now.
