Maria Montessori: A Biography

This is a well written* and compelling book. It sets out quite clearly the strengths and weaknesses of both Dr. Montessori and her method. It is an important read for anyone considering closer ties to the Montessori movement (in its various forms). And like any good art, it raises as many questions as it answers... ...some of which could make Montessorians quite uncomfortable! *there are some annoying typos

Right away there was the happy possibility that I would have a positive response to Maria Montessori: A Biography since the book was written by -none other than - Rita Kramer. She is also the author of the investigative account Ed School Follies: the Miseducation of America's Teachers. She has also been a contributor to some solid periodicals, such as The Wilson Quarterly, American Heritage, and the American Spectator. And she is certainly a reader of that great French-born American teacher, the venerable Jacques Barzun (99 years old!). Ms. Kramer seems to have accepted an offer to write this particular biography based on her expertise in early education, her reputation for solid research, and an objective journalistic approach to her work, but presumably not as a Montessorian. What the reader gets is a factual, historically accurate, rolling account of a person worth the biography. Granted, I'm sold on Montessori anyway, regardless of the struggling doctor's genius or shortcomings, so this story for me is more for a good read on how it all came together. And a good read it is, by any standard.

This book covers Maria Montessori's life very thoroughly. It covers her life well, but it would have been nice to include something of an afterword on what happened to the Montessori movement after her death, it's re-emergence in the US, a little of what Mario Montessori did with AMI, etc. Rita Kramer gave me a good understanding of how Montessori was able to rub some people the wrong way, which had an effect on the success of the movement here in the US. I don't really begrudge her trying to keep tight control over the movement, and I can see it from her point of view, after all, as Kramer points out, the movement had her name attached to it, for good and ill. If it had been presented as a neutral method, or if she had taken an academic post, and therefore didn't have to be so invested in the didactic apparatus, her ideas may have spread farther. I was also interested in what happened to the method in the US after WWI, since Kramer points out that, for example, the Rhode Island school system adopted Montessori for its public schools in something like 1910. When did they go back? Kramer did do a good job of explaining why the method caught on in some countries and not others. The real tragedy was in Vienna, which had a thriving Montessori community in the 20's and early 30's, but which was wiped out in WWII. This book gave me an appreciation for Maria Montessori I didn't have before, and reinforced my opinion that, politics aside, with the grown-ups talking and arguing about committees, names and priorities, what's important is where the rubber meets the road, that is, in the classroom. In the classroom, when you're down with the kids watching what they do, you can see the fundamental truth in Montessori's approach.